Scientology: Parry and Thrust

The Church of Scientology, founded 23 years ago by a science-fiction writer, does not believe in turning the other cheek. In a key church exercise called ''auditing," members are taught, for a handsome fee, to confront long-forgotten traumas--sometimes even from previous incarnations--and then to scourge these so-called "engrams" that have been troubling their subconscious.

The church is equally assertive toward outside critics. Scientologists have filed scores of lawsuits against skeptical journalists, dissident former members and Government agencies, which have long suspected the church of being a profit-making counseling outfit and no true religion at all.* These well-publicized tactics have helped Scientology grow to a claimed membership of 3.5 million (TIME, April 5, 1976).

Dawn Raid. Last week it appeared that Scientologist methods had aroused a half-sleeping giant: the U.S. Government. Federal prosecutors began parading Scientology officials before a Washington grand jury following a door-busting dawn raid by FBI agents on church offices in Hollywood and the District of Columbia. Cartons of documents were seized, including dossiers on the private lives of federal judges hearing the church's suits, data on agency personnel, and other material that originated in Government files. Authorities charged that the Scientologists had pilfered scores of confidential documents after infiltrating the Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service.

The Scientologists retorted that the raids amounted to Government harassment of the church, and that some of the Government documents had been legally obtained through Freedom of Information actions. They currently have 25 F.O.I., lawsuits pending.

The Scientologists' counteroffensive first came to light a year ago when FBI agents stopped two men who had entered the U.S. courthouse in Washington carrying false IRS agents' credentials. One, an IRS clerk-typist, was sentenced to two years on probation after he confessed forging the identity papers as a drunken lark. The second man, however, gave an alias and disappeared. Last month he suddenly turned himself in, identified himself as Michael James Meisner, 27, a former national secretary of the Church of Scientology, and said he had just escaped from two months of "house arrest" by cult members. Meisner told the FBI that he had supervised a whole program of covert operations against several Government agencies during 1975-76. Scientologists had planted the arrested IRS employee and a Justice Department secretary in their jobs for the express purpose of stealing documents concerning investigations of Scientology, Meisner said. Church operatives had even broken into IRS headquarters and planted a bug in a conference room. Repeated pilferings of the files of an assistant U.S. Attorney's office in the federal courthouse produced hundreds of pages on Government strategy and information, he continued. Meisner said the Scientologists' targets were not only the FBI and IRS but also the Food and Drug Administration and the Drug Enforcement Agency, which were suspicious of the church.

Armed with search warrants, dozens of FBI agents used chain saws, sledgehammers and bolt cutters to break into three Scientology offices. They wore rubber gloves to avoid new fingerprints. The raids lasted up to 23 hours, and at the end the FBI needed 550 pages to index some 20,000 documents they had seized in the process. The captured material included files on "bugging devices," a "locksmith course," material on "the correct use of codes" and a folder marked "CIA agents' directory."

Scientology Spokesman Vaughn Young denounced the raids as the work of "little Hitlers" and a "Gestapo police state." Scientology lawyers went to court to demand the return of the seized material and a gag order forbidding the authorities to reveal what they had found. Although the matter quickly bogged down in legal technicalities, most observers predicted eventual court approval for continuation of the probe.

* The IRS has granted tax exemption to 13 of the 20 U.S. Scientology churches; each claims autonomy now that Founder L. Ron Hubbard has retired.

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