With this year’s IAS gala looming, #Scientology’s back-door attempt to get permission to erect its giant tent for the three-day annual event at its UK headquarters, Saint Hill Manor in East Grinstead, England, has run into yet another obstacle, and this one is warty indeed!

One of the things we do is keep an eye on #Scientology’s latest press releases. It’s a thankless task, but sometimes amid all the rah-rah notices there’s occasionally something to pay attention to. Like this week, we did a double take: Hey wait, isn't that Shelly?

Even more bizarre features from #Scientology’s 'Flag Building' that were leaked to us in 2012, a year before the building opened. What do these space cadets need with a 'pain station' or 'infinite pit'? We don't know, but these renderings are still fun to see.

One of our favorite series at the Village Voice was based on renderings of #Scientology’s 'Flag Building' leaked to us in 2012, a year before the building opened. We managed to recover the images from those old stories to find a place for them at our Substack. They're still dope!

On Saturdays we've started to post bonus stories from our past in order to give them a better home on our ad-free Substack. Today it's a wacky piece we wrote in 2000 about a couple of real characters who were suing each other at the time. Please enjoy "Battling Babe-Hounds."

More bad news for #Scientology as it waits to see whether it will get permission for a car park it wants to build and also its giant tent that it puts up every year for its IAS gala. Alex Barnes-Ross alerted us to this latest stumbling block, and shared his thoughts with us.

A fascinating look at the absolute balls of trying to kill or shape a story and how a publisher should respond.

#Scientology was in a panic: It was 2005, and they knew that Rolling Stone was digging into a story. What to do? They had Tom Cruise call Jann Wenner and ask him to talk to Mike Rinder. When Wenner called, Scientology was taping, and now we have the transcript. It's fascinating.

It was just last October that Lisa Marie Presley’s posthumous 'From Here to the Great Unknown' came out and we checked it for mentions of #Scientology. Now, her mother Priscilla has a new memoir, and we go over its mentions of Scientology, which contain some surprising errors.

The showdown going on between #Scientology and local politicians over its big tent for an annual gala in the UK heated up even more as a local town council threw its refusal of the church's plans into the mix. Alex Barnes-Ross updates us things are looking dicier by the minute!

Sunday, we reported the shocking news that #Scientology had caught the attorneys for the Danny Masterson victims using bogus AI-generated case citations in in the 'Bixler' civil lawsuit. We asked appellate attorney TX Lawyer for his thoughts on just how bad this situation is.

#Scientology, through its most unhinged front group, CCHR, has roped in another politician, this time in Florida, to forward a bill that advances Scientology's anti-psychiatry agenda. But the church itself spelled out those goals in a secret document we can show you now.

Just what the Danny Masterson victims did NOT need. Their attorneys at prestigious Boies Schiller Flexner have admitted their 'embarrassing' mistake after #Scientology caught them including bogus AI-generated citations in an appeal briefing. Will the court accept a do-over?

#Scientology is rolling the dice, waiting until the last minute to apply for big changes at its UK headquarters ahead of a major annual event usually attended by Tom Cruise. And to make sure it succeeds, they've lined up various shills to make it sound like the best thing ever.

Clearwater's city council doesn't want #Scientology's richest donor putting a branch of her existing Tampa Bay glass art museum in their library, so they decided this week to try again for a better tenant. And former vice mayor Mark 'Wise Beard Man' Bunker has a suggestion!

Tony's headlines are always a pisser tonyortega.substack.com/p/scientolog...

As a #Scientology OT 8, mega-donor Tom Cummins can resist invader forces trying to erase his memory during his 'between-lives' period, and will remember who he is when he starts out his next lifetime. But what about his stacks of cash? It turns out he's thought deeply about that!

So much of what #Scientology focuses on now is leveraging the few people it has left. You see it in the recovery efforts to bring back former members, and getting active members to bring in everyone they possibly can. We have a fun new example from one of our helpful readers.

We noted yesterday the investigation of #Scientology that appeared at the Wall Street Journal’s website Sunday. But this morning the piece is on the newspaper’s front page. And it’s so rare to see Scientology taken apart at the Journal we figured it was worth pointing out twice!

70 years ago today the unconventional publisher Maurice Girodias published Nabokov's 'Lolita' for the first time. Historian Chris Owen does a deep dive to explain how he then became a target of #Scientology's notorious spy corps. ALSO: The Wall Street Journal takes on the church!

Control Is Hard Work Costs a mint to maintain too.

By 1959, L. Ron Hubbard was feeling the pressure. He and #Scientology were under investigation in the US, and he was increasingly concerned about breakaway groups. So that year he began to write down policies reflecting his increasing paranoia. The result is fascinating.

L. Ron Hubbard's earliest attempts to get the #Scientology movement going were rocked by a series of booms and busts. And as a science fiction writer trying to enslave his fellow man, Hubbard wrote himself into some continuity problems! We have a great example.

Once again #Scientology leader David Miscavige has had a giant tent put up at the church’s UK headquarters for next month’s IAS gala. So today, we’re celebrating Dave’s circus coming to town the best way we know how: With a song from former Scientology celebrity Geoff Levin!

Our helper who dives through old newspaper archives hit on another gem recently that we’ve told you about before, but we thought it was worth looking at it again for its great photos, which #Scientology doesn’t want you to see.

Former #Scientology staffer Alex Barnes-Ross has had more time to consider the last-minute proposal the church submitted to a local council for major changes at Saint Hill Manor, Scientology’s UK headquarters. He's found numerous issues that should concern those local pols.

At the last minute, #Scientology has asked permission for much more than simply the large tent it puts up each year for its big UK gala. It also wants to install a new permanent car park, permanent footing for the tent, and more. Dave plans to spend big, as usual!

A helpful reader forwarded an invitation from #Scientology for members to assemble tomorrow and watch one of leader David Miscavige’s propaganda films, this one about his plans for downtown Clearwater. We can't go, but we turned to Mark Bunker for his thoughts on Dave's vision!

More allegations from Priscilla Presley's former business partner have the press reeling. This time, the focus is on a letter from Riley Keough to her grandmother in the days after Lisa Marie Presley's tragic death, and we wanted to add some context to it related to #Scientology.

We talked with Jon Atack about his new book that dives head first into the weird side of L. Ron Hubbard and #Scientology, reaching back more than a century to trace the disturbing ideas that can also be seen in the occultism of the Nazi movement. It's Atack at his best!

Despite what you might have heard elsewhere, John Travolta's aviation-home in Ocala is not for sale, but it is caught up in litigation with the airpark's new owners, as well as a fascinating criminal case we've been watching, and which may drag Travolta into court.

Since we’re all 76 trillion years old in L. Ron Hubbard’s cosmology, the #Scientology founder believed we've lived long enough to have committed every revolting crime possible. In 1961 he came up with an interrogation to find out which ones his followers would admit to. Strap in!

The coming showdown between #Scientology and local UK government is really getting entertaining. The latest escalation by the church over a big coming event is a music video telling members to save the date — but they're still keeping the date a secret even to their own members!

We’ve said it before: #Scientology’s 'OT 3' auditing level gets all the attention, but the other 'Operating Thetan' levels are just as wacky, and deserve to be better known. We have a new OT 4 testimonial for you, and some thoughts about a famous OT 4 husband-wife team!

According to our sources who were there at the time, it was 20 years ago this week when Shelly Miscavige drove away from #Scientology’s 'Int Base' near Hemet, California in a desperate bid to save her marriage. She was never seen there again.

A reader pointed out that an online homeschooling academy run by #Scientology lifers is claiming to be affiliated with Cambridge University. That can't be right, can it? We contacted Cambridge's online schools division to clear it up. Imagine our shock when we got their answer.

The depravity of #Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard's final work of fiction, the Mission Earth series, came up here at the Bunker recently. And now we've found in our library of leaked material some files from the lavish audio production of these wretched books. Oh joy.

More than 20 yeas ago #Scientology leader David Miscavige set out to replace existing churches with gleaming new cathedrals in every major city in the world. But as we’ve seen in so many places, until Dave is ready for a grand opening these properties sit and rot in the meantime.

The FBI raided a church in Tampa yesterday over forced labor allegations — and it had nothing to do with #Scientology. Former Scientologists have been waiting for similar news out of the Tampa/Clearwater area, but about a 'church' whose abuses have been laid bare for decades.

A new #Scientology success story has a mother of four gushing about learning to be 'controlled by a man' regarding processes we first learned about because Tom Cruise had gone through it himself. And meanwhile, new photos of an impending showdown in England over a giant tent.

She had done #Scientology's dirty work for years, following people the church considered its enemies, and even stealing their trash. But then she had a moment of clarity and changed her mind, and spent the next four years spying on Scientology. Until, that is, they caught her.

The holidays are still months away, but #Scientology is already thinking about how it can get you to spend the big bucks and come to the cruise ship Freewinds for pricey services in the Caribbean over Christmas and New Year’s. Take the survey they just sent out to members!

Character assassination is how #Scientology reacts to questions about its abuses, and for Alex Barnes-Ross it’s coming at him from all sides. He let us into the details of just one operation the 'church' threw at him recently, and how he's managed to turn the tables on them.

Australian Scientologist Luke Ayers has a slick website where he’s asking 3 grand for photography lessons. Is that a fair price? We don’t know. But we were thrilled to see Ayers again as an excuse to post once again one of our favorite #Scientology rap videos of all time!

We’ve pointed out numerous times that #Scientology has slowed lawsuits by filing appeals of preliminary matters, and asking for filing extensions. Well, this week Leah Remini apparently decided that she’d had enough of her lawsuit being slow-rolled by David Miscavige.

Last week we brought you the California AG’s 42K-word response to Danny Masterson’s criminal appeal. Masterson is serving 30 years-to-life and he’s trying to walk out of prison with his appeal, but we asked an appellate attorney to give his assessment of the AG’s response.

Four years ago at The Daily Beast we dove into a little-known 1960 collaboration in London between L. Ron Hubbard and Leni Riefenstahl. Later that year, Ron wanted Leni to join him on a bold new film project: But why was it too much even for Hitler's favorite filmmaker?

#Scientology leader David Miscavige has diminished the church’s drug rehab network, Narconon, in the face of so many lawsuits in the US. But at one time, Narconon was going to take over the world, which Patty Moher reminds us in this terrific story of her time running a clinic.

Odd letters from #Scientology members to people who may have bought a single book decades ago regularly end up online. A new one was even sent to someone no longer living. But Marc Headley realized, sadly, that it was written by his mother, who 'disconnected' from him years ago.

Apostate Alex broke the news as we were recording the Group Therapy podcast last night: New photos show #Scientology has begun putting up its big tent for the annual IAS gala despite not applying for a permit the local council said it must have. Oh, the drama!