Operation Freakout
Encyclopedia
Church of Scientology
The Church of Scientology is an organization devoted to the practice and the promotion of the Scientology belief system. The Church of Scientology International is the Church of Scientology's parent organization, and is responsible for the overall ecclesiastical management, dissemination and...
covert plan intended to have the US author and journalist Paulette Cooper
Paulette Cooper
Paulette Marcia Cooper is an American author who is best known for activism against the Church of Scientology and the harassment she suffered as a result. Cooper's books have sold close to a half a million copies.-Early life:...
imprisoned or committed to a mental institution. The plan, undertaken in 1976 following years of Church-initiated lawsuits and covert harassment, was meant to eliminate the perceived threat that Cooper posed to the Church and obtain revenge for her publication in 1971 of a highly critical book, The Scandal of Scientology
The Scandal of Scientology
The Scandal of Scientology is a critical exposé book about the Church of Scientology, written by Paulette Cooper and published by Tower Publications, in 1971....
. The Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
discovered documentary evidence of the plot and the preceding campaign of harassment during an investigation into the Church of Scientology in 1977, eventually leading to the Church compensating Cooper in an out-of-court settlement.
Background
Cooper, a freelance journalist and author, had begun researching ScientologyScientology
Scientology is a body of beliefs and related practices created by science fiction and fantasy author L. Ron Hubbard , starting in 1952, as a successor to his earlier self-help system, Dianetics...
in 1968 and wrote a critical article on the Church for the British magazine Queen (now Harpers Bazaar
Harper's Bazaar
Harper’s Bazaar is an American fashion magazine, first published in 1867. Harper’s Bazaar is published by Hearst and, as a magazine, considers itself to be the style resource for “women who are the first to buy the best, from casual to couture.”...
) in 1969. The Church promptly sued for libel, adding Queen to the dozens of British publications that it had already sued.
Undeterred, Cooper expanded her article into a full-length book, The Scandal of Scientology (subtitled “A chilling examination of the nature, beliefs and practices of the ‘now religion.’”). It was published by Tower Publications, Inc. of New York in the summer of 1971. The Church responded by suing her in December 1971, demanding $300,000 for “untrue, libelous and defamatory statements about the Church.”
Harassment
Cooper was seen as a high-priority target by the Church’s Guardian’s Office, which acted as a combination of intelligence agencyIntelligence agency
An intelligence agency is a governmental agency that is devoted to information gathering for purposes of national security and defence. Means of information gathering may include espionage, communication interception, cryptanalysis, cooperation with other institutions, and evaluation of public...
, legal office and public relations
Public relations
Public relations is the actions of a corporation, store, government, individual, etc., in promoting goodwill between itself and the public, the community, employees, customers, etc....
bureau for the Church. As early as February 29, 1972, the Church’s third most senior official, Jane Kember, sent a directive to Terry Milner, the Deputy Guardian for Intelligence United States (DGIUS) directing that he find out information about Paulette Cooper so that she could be “handled”. In response, Milner ordered his subordinates to “attack her in as many ways as possible” and undertake “wide-scale exposure of PC’s sex life”.
Cooper counter-sued on March 30, 1972, demanding $15.4 million in damages for the ongoing harassment. However, the Church stepped up the harassment, for instance painting her name and phone number on street walls so that she would receive obscene phone calls, and subscribing her to pornographic mailing lists. She also received anonymous death threats and her neighbors received letters claiming that she had a venereal disease.
United Farm Workers
The United Farm Workers of America is a labor union created from the merging of two groups, the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee led by Filipino organizer Larry Itliong, and the National Farm Workers Association led by César Chávez...
stole a quantity of stationery from Cooper’s apartment. A few days later, the New York Church of Scientology “received” two anonymous bomb threats. The following May, Cooper was indicted for making the bomb threats and arraigned for a Federal grand jury
Grand jury
A grand jury is a type of jury that determines whether a criminal indictment will issue. Currently, only the United States retains grand juries, although some other common law jurisdictions formerly employed them, and most other jurisdictions employ some other type of preliminary hearing...
. The threats had been written on her stationery, which was marked with her fingerprints.
The charges were eventually dropped in 1975 with the filing of a Nolle prosequi
Nolle prosequi
Nolle prosequi is legal term of art and a Latin legal phrase meaning "to be unwilling to pursue", a phrase amounting to "please do not prosecute". It is a phrase used in many common law criminal prosecution contexts to describe a prosecutor's decision to voluntarily discontinue criminal charges...
order by the local US Attorney’s office
United States Attorney
United States Attorneys represent the United States federal government in United States district court and United States court of appeals. There are 93 U.S. Attorneys stationed throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands...
, but it was not until the fall of 1977 that the FBI discovered that the bomb threats had been staged by the Guardian’s Office. A contemporary memorandum sent between two Guardian’s Office staff noted on a list of jobs successfully accomplished: “Conspired to entrap Mrs. Lovely into being arrested for a felony which she did not commit. She was arraigned for the crime.”
The Church sued Cooper again in 1975 in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, and Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
in 1976.
The Church itself was reported to have imported Cooper’s books into foreign countries for the express purpose of suing her in jurisdictions where the libel laws were stricter
Libel tourism
Libel tourism is a term first coined by Geoffrey Robertson to describe forum shopping for libel suits. It particularly refers to the practice of pursuing a case in England and Wales, in preference to other jurisdictions, such as the United States, which provide more extensive defences for those...
than in the United States.
Operation Freakout
In its initial form Operation Freakout consisted of three different plans (or “channels”, as the Guardian’s Office termed them):
- First, a woman was to imitate Paulette Cooper’s voice and make telephone threats to ArabArabArab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...
consulates in New YorkNew YorkNew York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
. - Second, a threatening letter was to be mailed to an Arab consulate in such a fashion that it would appear to have been done by Paulette Cooper (who is Jewish).
- Third, a Scientologist volunteer was to impersonate Paulette Cooper at a laundromat and threaten the current PresidentPresident of the United StatesThe President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
Gerald FordGerald FordGerald Rudolph "Jerry" Ford, Jr. was the 38th President of the United States, serving from 1974 to 1977, and the 40th Vice President of the United States serving from 1973 to 1974...
and then the Secretary of StateUnited States Secretary of StateThe United States Secretary of State is the head of the United States Department of State, concerned with foreign affairs. The Secretary is a member of the Cabinet and the highest-ranking cabinet secretary both in line of succession and order of precedence...
Henry KissingerHenry KissingerHeinz Alfred "Henry" Kissinger is a German-born American academic, political scientist, diplomat, and businessman. He is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and...
. A second Scientologist would thereafter inform the FBI of the threat.
Two additional plans were added to Operation Freakout on April 13, 1976. The fourth plan called for Scientologist agents to gather information from Cooper so that the success of the first three plans could be assessed. The fifth plan was for a Scientologist to warn an Arab consulate by telephone that Paulette Cooper had been talking about bombing it. A sixth and final plan was added subsequently. It was effectively a re-run of the 1972 plot, requiring Scientologists to obtain Paulette Cooper’s fingerprints on a blank piece of paper, type a threatening letter to Kissinger on that paper, and mail it. Guardian’s Office staff member Bruce Raymond noted in an internal memo: “This additional channel should really have put her away. Worked with all the other channels. The F.B.I. already think she did the bomb threats on the C of S .”
On March 31, 1976, Jane Kember telexed Henning Heldt, the Deputy Guardian U.S., to update him on the situation:
- “PC is still resisting paying the money but the judgement stands in PT ... Have her lawyer contacted and also arrange for PC to get the data that we can slap the writs on her. If you want legal docs, from here on we will provide. Then if she still declines to come we slap the writs on her before she reaches CW as we don’t want to be seen publically being brutal to such a pathetic victim from a concentration camp.”
Exposure and aftermath
Burglary
Burglary is a crime, the essence of which is illicit entry into a building for the purposes of committing an offense. Usually that offense will be theft, but most jurisdictions specify others which fall within the ambit of burglary...
at a courthouse in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
as part of the Guardian’s Office’s ongoing Operation Snow White
Operation Snow White
Operation Snow White was the Church of Scientology's name for a conspiracy during the 1970s to purge unfavorable records about Scientology and its founder L. Ron Hubbard...
. The Guardian’s Office was preoccupied for the next year with attempts to hush up the scandal, even going to the lengths of kidnapping Meisner and holding him incommunicado
Incommunicado
Incommunicado, as an adjective or adverb, refers to a situation or a behaviour due to which communication with outsiders is not possible, for either voluntary or involuntary reasons, especially due to confinement or reclusiveness....
to prevent him from testifying. The Church sought to bring a quick end to the dispute with Cooper in December 1976 when it proposed to settle with her, on condition that she was not to republish or comment on The Scandal of Scientology and agree to assign the book’s copyright to the Church of Scientology of California.
On July 8, 1977, however, the FBI raided Scientology offices in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
and Washington, D.C., seizing over 48,000 documents. They revealed the extent to which the Church had committed “criminal campaigns of vilification, burglaries and thefts ... against private and public individuals and organizations,” as the U.S. Government prosecutor put it. The documents were later released to the public, enabling Cooper and the world at large to learn about the details of Operation Freakout.
Although in the end nobody was brought to justice for the harassment of Cooper, the wider campaign of criminal activity was successfully prosecuted by the United States Government. Mary Sue Hubbard
Mary Sue Hubbard
Mary Sue Hubbard was the third wife of L. Ron Hubbard, from 1952 to his death in 1986, and was a leading figure in Scientology for much of her life...
, Jane Kember, Henning Heldt, Morris Budlong, Duke Snider, Dick Weigand, Greg Willardson, Mitchell Hermann and Cindy Raymond were indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of theft, burglary, conspiracy, and other crimes. With the exception of Kember and Budlong, the defendants agreed to uncontested stipulation of the evidence. Kember and Budlong were convicted separately after being extradited from the United Kingdom. All of the defendants were imprisoned, serving up to four years in jail. Coincidentally, they were tried, convicted and sentenced in the same courthouse that their agents had been caught burglarizing.
The Church of Scientology filed at least 19 lawsuits against Cooper throughout the 1970s and 1980s, which Cooper considered part of “a typical Scientology dirty-tricks campaign” and which Cooper’s attorney Michael Flynn said was motivated by L. Ron Hubbard’s declaration that the purpose of a lawsuit was to “harass and discourage”. Cooper discontinued her legal actions against Scientology in 1985 after receiving $400,000 in an out-of-court settlement.
See also
- Fair GameFair Game (Scientology)The term Fair Game is used to describe policies and practices carried out by the Church of Scientology towards people and groups it perceives as its enemies. Founder L. Ron Hubbard established the policy in the 1960s, in response to criticism both from within and outside his organization...
- False FlagFalse flagFalse flag operations are covert operations designed to deceive the public in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by other entities. The name is derived from the military concept of flying false colors; that is flying the flag of a country other than one's own...
- List of Guardian’s Office operations
- Operation Snow WhiteOperation Snow WhiteOperation Snow White was the Church of Scientology's name for a conspiracy during the 1970s to purge unfavorable records about Scientology and its founder L. Ron Hubbard...