------------------------------------------------------------------- F.A.C.T.Net, Inc. (Fight Against Coercive Tactics Network, Incorporated) a non-profit computer bulletin board and electronic library 601 16th St. #C-217 Golden, Colorado 80401 USA BBS 303 530-1942 FAX 303 530-2950 Office 303 473-0111 This document is part of an electronic lending library and preservational electronic archive. F.A.C.T.Net does not sell documents, it only lends them according to the terms of your library cardholder agreement with F.A.C.T.Net, Inc. ===================================================================== Special Report ú COVER STORY The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power RICHARD BEHAR Lost fortunes. Federal crimes. Scientology poses as a religion a ruthless global scam and aiming for the mainstream. By all appearances, Noah Lottick of Kingston, Pa., had been a nor- mal, happy 24-year-old who was looking for his place in the world. On the day last June when his par- drove to New York City to claim his body, they were nearly catatonic with grief. The young Russian-studies scholar bad jumped from a 10th floor window of the Milford Plaza Hotel and bounced off the hood of a stretch limousine. When the po- lice arrived, his fingers were still clutching $171 in cash, virtually the only money he hadn't yet turned over to the Church of Scientology, the self-help "philosophy" group he had discovered just seven months earlier.,. '" His death inspired his father Edward, a physician, to' start his own investigation of the church.. "We thought Scientology was something like Dale Carnegie," Lottick says. "I now believe it's a school for psy- chopaths2 Their so-called therapies are manipulations, They take the best and brightest.people and destroy them." The Lotticks want to sue the church for contrib- to their son's death, but the prospect ffightened. For nearly 40 years, the big business of Scientology has shield- ed itself exquisitely behind the First Amendment as well as a battery of high- priced criminal lawyers and shady private detectives. The Church of Scientology, started by science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard to "clear" people of unhappines.s, portrays it- self as a religion. In reality the church is a hugely prolitable global racket that sur- vives by intimidating members and critics in a Mafia-like manner. At times during the past decade, prosecutions against Scientology seemed to be curbing its men- L. Ron Hubbard, 1911-86: the cult's founder and continuing inspiration ace. Eleven top Scientologists. including Hubbard's wife, were sent to prison in the early 1980s for infiltrating, burglarizing and wiretapping more than 100 private and government agencies in attempts to block their investigations. In recent years hun- dreds of longtime Scientology adherents-- many charging that they were mentally or physically abuscd~have quit the church and criticized it at their own risk. Some have sued the church and won; others have settled for amounts in excess of $500.{)1)0. In variot~s cases judges have labeled the church "schizophrenic and paranoid" and "corrupt, sinister and dangerous." Yet the outrage and litigation have failed to squelch Scientology. The group, which boasts 700 centers in 65 countries, threatens to become more insidious and pervasive than ever. Scientology is trying to go mainstream, a strategy that has sparked a renewed law-enforcement cam- paign against the church. Many of the group's followers have been accused of committing financial ~ams, while the church is busy attracting the unwary through a wide array of front groups in such businesses as publishing, consulting, health care and even remedial education. In Hollywood, Scientology has assem- bled a star-studded roster of followers by aggressively recruiting and regally pam- pering them at the churcWs "Celebrity Centers," a chain of clubht~uscs that of- fer expensive counseling and career guid- ance. Adherents include screen idols Tom Cruise and John Travolta, actresses Kitstie Alley, Mimi Rogers and Anne Ar- cher, Palm Springs mayor and performer Sonny Bono, jazzman Chick Corea and even Nancy Cartwright, the voice of car- toon star Bart Simpson. Rank-and4ile members, however, are dealt a less glam- orous Scientology. According to the Cult Awareness Net- work, ~h{~sc 23 chapters m{mitor tnorc than 2{)t)"mind control" culls, no group 5O IINIE. MAY 6. 1991 prompts more telephone pleas for help than floes Scicntology. Says Cynthia Kis- ser, the network's ('hicago-hascd executive director: "Scicnloh~gy is quite likely the most ruthless, the most classically tcrroris- tic, the most litigious and the most lucra- tive cult the country has cvcr seen. No cult extracts more moucy from its members." Agrees Vicki Aznaran, who was one of Sci- cntology's six key leaders until she bolted from the church in 1987: "TIffs is a criminal orga~lizali/~n, tiny in alltl clay otlt. It makes Jim and 'l'ammy [Bakkcr] look like kiudcrgartcn." To explore Scicntology's reach, T~ME concluctccl retire than 150 inlc~icws and reviewed hundreds of court records and in- ternal Scientology documents. Church of- ficials refused to be intc~iewed. TIm inves- tigation paints a picture of a depraved yet thriving enterprise. Most cults fail to outlast their founder, but Scicntology has prospered since Hubbard's death in 1›)86. In a court liling, one of the cult's many entities--the Church of Spirilual Technol- ogy-listed $503 million in in- come just l~r 1987, tligh-level defectors say the parent organi- zation has squirtclod away an estimated $400 million in bank accounts in Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Cyprus. Scien- tology probably has about 50,0~10 active members, far few- cr tim the 8 million the group claims. But in oue sense, that inflated figure rings true: mil- lions of people have been af- fected .in one way or anolhcr by Hubbard's bizarre creation. Scicntology is now run by David Miscavige, 31, a high school dropout and second- generation church member. Defectors describe him as cun- ning, ruthless and so paranoid about perceived enemies that he kept plastic wrap over his glass of water. His obsession is to attain credibility for Scicn- tology in the 199{}s. Among other tactics, the group: ú Retains public relations pow- erhouse i lill and Kn~>wlton to help shctl the church's fri,~gc- gnmp image. ~ Joined such h›~uschold names as Sony and Pepsi as a main sponsor of Ted Turncr's Good- ~ill Games. ú Buys massive quantities of its {Iwll I}I)~}ks [Hllll rcl:tit slorcs h~ pnq~cl tire titles ~1›~ best-sell- cr lists. ~Runs full-page ads in such publicali~us as Ncw.vwcck anti Bu~hws's IIQ'~'A illlit call Scic~- It,h~gy a "phih~,l~l~y," i,l~mg with a plethora ol' 'I'V ads tout- ing the group's books. t,. úRccruits wealthy and rcspcctablc pnffcs- si~nllls Ihrt~t,gll a web t~f constilting grs~ups that typically hide their tics Io Scicntology. The ft~untlcr ~f Illis enterprise was part sited'teller, part llimllam man. Born in Ne- braska in 191 I, Ilubbard served iu the Navy duriug World War I[ and soon after- ward ct~mplaincd to tile Vctcrlu~s Atlmin- islration ilb(}tll his "suicitlal incliuali›~ns" illld his "seriously allotted" miml. Never- theless, I ltlbbartl wils il mt~tlcri~tcly suc- cessful writer t~f pulp science licli›~u. Years lalcr, church brt}churcs described him falsely as an "cxtcnhivcly dcct~ratctj" World War II hero who was crippled illld blinded in acti~n, twice pn~n~unccd ticjill and miraculously cured through Scicntol- ogy. Hubbartl's "tloctoratc" from "Se- quoia University" was a fake mail-ordcr degree. In a 1984 case in which lilt church sued a }lubbard bi›~graphical researcher, a California judge concluded that its founder was "a patllological liar." THE LOTTICKS LOST THEIR SON, Noah, who jumped from a Manhattan hotel clutching $17 1, virtually the only money he had not yet turned over to 5cientology. His parents blame the church and would like to sue but are frightened by the organization's reputation for ruthlessness. Hubbard wrote one of Scientology's sacred texts, Diattetics: Ttte Modent Sci- ctlcc of Mental HealIll, in 1950. In it he inln~duccd a crude psychotherapeutic technique he called "auditing." He also created a simplitied lie detector (called an "E-meter") that was designed to mea- sure electrical changes in the skin while subjects discussed intimale details of their past. Itubbard argued that unhappi- ness sprang from mentlff aberrations (or ú 'cngrams"} causcd by early traumas. Counseling sessious with the E-meter, he claimcd, could km~ck out the engrams, cure blindness and even improve a per- s›~n's intclligcncc and appearance. Hubbard kept adding steps, each more costly, for his followers to climb. In the I%lls the guru decreed that humans are madc of clusters of spirits (or "thetans") who were banished to earth some 75 mil- lion years ago by a cruel galactic ruler named Xenu. Naturally, those thetans had to be audited. An Internal Revenue Ser- vice ru, ling in 1967 stripped Scientology's mother church of its tax-exempt status. A federal court ruled in 1971 that Hub- bard's medical claims were bo- gus and that E-meter auditing could no longer be called a scientific treatment. Hubbard responded by going fully reli- gious, seeking First Amend- ment protection for Scien- tology's strange rites. His coun- selors started sporting clerical collars. Chapels were built, franchises became "missions," fees became "fixed donations," and Hubbard's comic-book cosmology became "sacred scriptures." During the early 1970s, the ~RS c{mductcd its own auditing sessions and proved that Hub- bard was skimming millions of dollars from the church, laun- dering the money through dum- my corporations in Panama and slashing it in Swiss bank accounts. Moreover, church members stole IRS documents, lilctl false tax returns and ha- rassell Ihc agcqcy's cmph~yccs. Ily late 1985, wilh high-level de- fectors accusing Hubbard of having stolen as much as $200 milli{m from the church, the ~RS was socking an indictment of i lubbard tier tax fraud. Scien- I›~l~gy members "workcol day and night" shredding docu- n~ents the IRS sought, according to defector Aznaran, wllo took part in the schcmc. I lubbard, wht~ haiti bcc|l in hitling liar live years, tiled bcli}rc tim criminal case could be prosecuted. Today the church invents 'I'IN1E. NIAY ~, 19'11 5 Personality Test ;ost: Free \' Time required: an hour A true-false-maybe test to determine whether you need Scientology Everyone does Communications Courses Cost: $250 each Time required: a few weeks Several courses entail repetitive exercises (sitting on a chair for hours without twitching. speaking to people without displaying emotion) that help pacify and indoctrinate the customer. \ \ Regular Auditing, New Era Dianetics Grades 0-4 '\ Cost: $,500 an hour Cost: $,500 an hour ~ Time required: indefinite Time required: indefinite Auditing your fife (and prior lives) At graduation. you should be able to locate evil intentions and to communicate effectively, traumatic experiences that left make problems vanish and attai you with psychosomatic ills, freedom from the guilt of past At graduation, you have misdeeds and many attained the state of chosomatic ills. "clear." costly new services with all the zeal of its founder. Scientology doctrine warns that even adherents who are "cleared" of en- grams face grave spiritual dangers unless they are pushed to higher and more expen- sive levels. According to the church's latest price list, recruits--"raw meat," as Hub- bard called them--take auditing sessions that cost as much as $1,0UO an hour, or $12,500 for a 12V.,-I~our "intensive." Psychiatrists say these sessions can pro- duce a drugged-like, mind-controlled eu- phoria that keeps customers coming back for more. To pay their fees, ncwc~m~crs can earn commissio~s by recruiting new mem- bers, become auditors themselves (Misca- vige did so at age 12), or join the church staff and receive free counseling in ex- change for what their written contracts de- scribe as a "billion years" of labor. "Make sure that lots of bodies move through the shop," implored [tubbard in one cff his bul- letins to ollicials. "Make money. Make more money. Make others produce so as to make money... !towever yt}u get them in or why, just do it." Harriet Baker learned the hard way about Scientology's business of selling re- ligion. When Baker, 73, lost her husband to cancer. a Scient~31ogist turned up at her Los Angeles home peddling a $1,3110 auditing package to cure her grief. Some $15,000 later, the Scientologists discov- ered that her house was debt free. They arranged a $45,0Ut) mortg{~ge, which they pressured her to tap for more auditing until Baker's children helped their moth- er snap out of her daze. Lust June, Baker demanded a $27,{11}{1 refund for annsod services, prompting two cult members show up at her door unann<~unccd with an E-meter to interrogate her. Baker never got the money and, financi~tlly strapped, was forced to sell her house in September. Before Noah Lottick killed himself, he had paid more than $5,01)U for church counseling. His behavior had also become strange. }tc once remarked to his parents that his Scicntology mentors could actually read mintIs. When his father suf[crcd a ma- jor heart atlack. Noah insisted that it was pnrcly psychostm~atic. t:ivc days before hc jumped, Noah btsrst into his parents' home and demandeli to km~w x~hv thcv wcrc spreading "false rnmors" abtrnl him--a delusion that tinally prompted his father call a psychiatrist. !t ~'as t{}o late. "From N~>ah's friends at Dianctics" read the card that :lcct)111- pantell a bouquet of flowers at I.ottick's funeral. Yet no Scicnttth~gy stalT nrcm- bets bottlered to show up. A week earli- er, h~cal church ›~1ticials hall given tick's parents a red-carpet tour of their center. A cult leader told Noah's parents that their stm had been at the church just ht~urs hcl'~rc hc disappeared--but the church denied this story as soon as the body w~ts idcntiticd. Truc to torm, the cult cxcn haggled with tim Lotticks over $3,000 their son had paid for sc~'iccs he never used, insisting that Noah had in- tended it as a "donation." 'l'hc church has invented hundreds of goods alld sea'ices for which members are urgctl to give "donations." Are you having tr~ublc "mt~ving s~iftly up the Bridge"-- that is, advancing up the SICpI~KlClCr ol' en- lightenment? 'l'hen you can have yt}ur case reviewed for a more $1,25{) "donation." Want to know "why a thetan hangs on to the physical universe'?" Try 52 of Hub- bard's tape-recorded speeches from 1952, titled "Ron's Philadelphia Doctorate Course Lectures," for $2,525. Next: nine other series of the same sort. For the col- lector, gold-and-leather-bound editions of 22 of ttubbard's books (and bookends) on subjects ranging from Scicntology ethics to niclialicrn can be had i'or .itsst $1,900. 'li} gain inllucncc anti lure richer, m~rrc s{~phisticated followers, Scicntology has lalclv rcst~rtcd to a wiclc array {~f fr{rnt gr{~ups and tinancial seams. Among them: CONSULTING. Sterling Management Sys- tems, li~rmed in 1t)83. has been ranked in recent years by Itzc. magazine as one of Arncrica's fastest-growing private compa- nies (estimated 1988 rcvc~ucs: $20 mil- lion). Sterling rcgtdarly mails a free news- letter t~ m{~rc than 31}(UIII() Ircallh-carc professionals, moslly clcntists, prt~mising to increase their incorncs dramatically. The lirm ot[crs seminars and ct~urscs that typi- cally cost $1{),0UI). llut Slcrling's truc.airn is to h{~t~k custt~mcrs [t}r Scicntoh~gy. "'!he church has a rotten product, so they pack- age it as sorncthing else," says Peter Geor- giades, a Pittsburgh attorney who repre- sents Sterling victims. "lt's a kind {~f hail and switch." Stcrling's li~undcr, dentist Grcgt~ry I lughcs, is now under investiga- tion by California's Board of Dental Exam- incrs fi~r incompetence. Nine lawsuits arc pending against him ti~r malpracticc (seven 52 I INlli, NIAY (,, l~ltll Clear Certainty O.T.* 1-2 to After learning how your perceptions of the world and of people have changed s~nce going clear, you are taught about the ~deas that were implanted in man more than 75 million ,ears ago. O.T. 3-4 cost: $17, Time required: Scientology's "sacred scriptures': the story about the galactic ruler Xenu, the volcanic explosions on earth and the ~mptantations of the spirits (body thetans). This level also helps free you from the effects of drugs taken in past lives Rundown co,t: $2,800 Time required: 5 hours This course ascertains whether you are truly clear. If you are. you get the Sunshine Rundown. in which you are walked around town to reacqua~nt yourself with the world. . O.T. 5-7 110 cost: $25,600 , Time required: several months Finds and releases body thetans (B T s), or negative spiritual beings, that have been asleep o~ unconscious inside you for mfihons of years In his later days, Hubbard could be heard sereamong at his B.T.s O.T. 8 Cost: $11,140, plus accommodations Time required: a few weeks The ultimate answer to everything. There are no known defectors from O.T. 8, which is offered only aboard Scientology's yacht, but the "answer" is rumored .bard is God. QT. 9 texts are said to be written but not released. others have been settled), mostly li~r or- thodo;ltic work on children. Matly dentists who have unwittingly been drawn into the cult are filing or threatening lawsuits as well. Dentist Rob- eft Geary of Medina, Ohio, who entered a Sterling seminar in 1988, endured "the most extreme high-pressure sales tactics I have ever faced." Sterling officials told Gcary, 45, that their firm was not linked to Scientology, he says. But Gcary claims they cvcntn~lly convinced him that he and his wife I)~n~thy lind personal prt}blcn~s that required autliting. Over five monlhs, the Gcarys say, they spent $13(},000 for services, plus $5(},001} for "gold-embossed, investment- grade" books signed by Hub- bard. Gcary contends that Scicntol›~gists not only called his bank to increase his credit- card limit but also forged his signature on a $20,01X1 loan application. "It was insaim," hc recalls. "1 couldn't even get an accounting from them of what I was paying for." At one point, the Gearys claim, Scientologists held Dorothy hostage for two weeks in a mountain cabin, after which she was hospitalized for a ner- vous breakdown. Last October, Sterling broke some bad news to an- other clcntist, Gl{}vcr Rowe of Gadsden, Ala., and his wife Dee. 'li:sts showed that unless they signed up for auditing, Glovcr's practice would fail, and Dee would s~m~cday abuse their child. TIm next month the Rowcs tlcw to Glendale, Calif., where they shuttled daily from a local hotel to a Dh, netics center. "We thought they were brilliant people because they seemed to know so much about us," recalls Dec. "Then wc realized our hotel room must have been bugged." After boiling from the center, $23,000 poorer, the Rowcs say, they were chased repeatedly by Scionsolo- gists on foot and in cars. Dentists aren't the only ~mcs at risk. Scicnlology als~ makes pitches to chiropractors, podiatrists and veterinarians. HARRIET BAKER, 73, LOST HER HOUSE after Scientologists learned it was debt free and arranged a $45,000 mortgage, which they pressured her to tap to pay for auditing. They had approached her after her husband died to help "cure" her grief. When she couldn't repay the mortgage, she had to sell. PUBLIC INFLUENCE. One fronl, the Way to ilappincss Formdalton, has distributed to children in thousands of the nalion's public schools more than 3.5 million copies of a booklet 1tubbard wrote on morality. The church calls the scheme "the largest dissemination project in Scientology histo- ry." Applied Scholastics is tile name of still another front, which is attempting to in- stall a Hubbard tutorial program in public schools, primarily those populated by mi- norities. The group also plans a 1,000-acre campus, where it will train educators to teach various Hubbard methods. The dis- ingenuously named Citizens Commission on Human Rights is a Scien- tology group at war with psy- chintry, its primary competi- tor. The commission typically issues reports aimed at dis- t~ ?, crediting particular psychia- I~ i Crisis and the field in general. The CCI~R iS also behind an all-out war against Eli Lilly, the maker of Prozac, the nation's top-selling anti- depression drug. Despite scant evidence, the group's members~who call them- selves "psychbusters"--claim that Prozac drives people to murder or suicide. Through mass mailings, appearances on talk shows and fieavy lob- bying, CCHR has hurt drug sales and helped spark dozens of lawsuits against Lilly. Another Scientology- linked group, the Concerned 'l'11%11i, N1AY 6. 1~;91 53 Special Reiii)rt Businessmen's Association of America, holds antidrug contests and awards $5,000 grants to schools as a way to recruit stu- dents and curry favor with education olfi- cials. West Virginia Senator John D. Rockefeller IV unwittingly commended the CBAA in 1987 on the Senate floor. Last August author Alex Haley was the keynote speaker at its annual awards banquet in Los Angeles. Says Haley: "I didn't know much about that group going in. I'm a Methodist." Ignorance about Scientology can be cmbarrassing: two months ago, Illi- nois Governor Jim Edgar, noting that Scient~h~gy's fountlet "has solved the ab- errations of the human mind," prochimed March 13 "L. Ron Hubbard Day." |te re- scinded the proclamati{m in late March, once hc learned who l lubbard really was. HEALTH CARE. }tcalthMed, a chain of clin- ics run by Scientologists, promotes a gruel- ing and excessive system of saunas~ exercise and vitamins designed by Hubbard to purify the body. Experts denounce the regime as quackery and potentially harmful, yet HealthMed solicits unions and public agen- cies for contracts. The chain is plugged heavily in a new book, Diet fi~r a l'oisot~ed Pla~wt, by journalist David Steinman, who concludes that scores of common foods (among them: peanuts, bluefish, peaches and cottage cheese) are dangerous. Mining Money in Vancouver One source of funds for the Los Angeles-based church is the notorious, self-regulated stock exchange in Vancouver, British Columbia, often called the scam capital of the world. The exchange's 2,300 penny-stock listings account for $4 billion in annual trading. Local journalists and insiders claim the vast majority range from total washouts to outright frauds. Two Scientologists who operate there are Kenneth Gerbino and Michael Baybak, 20-year church veterans from Beverly Hills who are major donors to the cult. Gerbino, 45, is a money manager, marketmaker and publisher of a national financial newsletter. He has boasted in Scientol- ogy journals that he owes all his stock- picking success to L. Ron Hubbard. That's not saying much: Gerbino's newsletter picks since 1985 have cumu- latively returned 24%, while the Dow Jones industrial average has more than doubled. Nevertheless Gerbino's short- term gains can be stupendous. A survey last October found Gerbino to be the only manager who made money in the third quarter of 1990, thanks to gold and other resource stocks. For the first quarter of 1991, Gerbino was dead last. Baybak, 49, who runs a public relations company staffed with Scientologists, apparently has no ethics problem with engineering a hostile takeover of a firm he is hired to promote. Neither man agreed to be inter- viewed for this story, yet both threat- ened legal action through attorneys. "What these guys do is take over com- panies, hype the stock, sell their shares, and then there's nothing left," says John Campbell, a former securities lawyer who was a director of mining company Athena Gold until Baybak and Gcrbint~ t~k it over. The pattern has become familiar. The pair prtm~otcd a mining venture called Skylark Resources, whose stock traded at nearly $4 a share in 1987. The outfit soon crashed, and the stock is around 2›. NETI Technologies, a software company, was trumpeted in the press as "the next Xerox" and in 1984 rose to a market value of $120 million with Baybak's help. The company, which later collapsed, was delisted two months ago by the Vancouver exchange. Baybak appeared in 1989 at the helm of Wall Street Ven- tures, a start-up that announced it owned 35 tons of rare Mid- dle Eastern postage stamps--worth $100 million--and was buying the world's largest collection of southern Arabian ATHENA GOLD'S WILLIAM JORDAN Cult members got cheap stock, then ran him out of the company stamps (worth $350 million). Steven C. Rockefeller Jr. of the oil family and former hockey star Denis Potvin joined the company in top posts, but both say they quit when they real- ized the stamps were virtually worthless. "The stamps were created by sand-dune nations to exploit collectors," says Mi- chael Laurence, editor of Lit~n's Stamp News, America's larg- est stamp journal. After the stock topped $6, it began a steady descent, with Baybak unloading his shares along the way. To- day it trades at 18›. Athena Gold, the current object of Baybak's and Ger- bino's attentions, was fotmded by en- trepreneur William Jordan. He turned to an established Vancouver broker in 1987 to help tinance the company, a 4,500-acre mining property near Reno. The broker promised to raise more than $3 million and soon brought Bay- bak and Gerbino into the deal. Jordan never got most of the money, but the cult members ended up with a good deal of cheap stock and options. Next they elected directors who were friend- ly to them and set in motion a series of complex maneuvers to block Jordan from voting stock he controlled and to run him out of the company. "I've been an honest policeman all my life and I've seen the worst kinds of crimes, and this ranks high," says former Athena shareholder Thomas Clark, a 20-year veteran of Reno's police force who has teamed up with Jordan to try to get the gold mine back. "They stole this man's property." With Baybak as chairman, the two Scicntologists and their stalls are pro- moting Athena, not always accurately. A loiter t~ sharcht~ldcrs with tim It)t)(} 111111ual report claims Placer l)t~lnc, oue of America's largest gold-miuing lirms, has committed at least $25.5 million to develop the mine. That's news to I'lacer Dome. "There is no pre-commitment," says Placer executive Cole McFarland. "We're not going to spend that money unless survey results justify the expenditure." Baybak's lirm represented Western Resource Technol- ogies, a }louston oil-and-gas company, but got the boot in Oc- tolder. Laughs Steven McGuire, president of Western Re- source: "His is a p.r. firm in need ofa p.r. firm." But McGuire cannot laugh too freely. Baybak and other Scientologists, in- cluding the estate of L. Ron Hubbard, still control huge bl{~cks of Iris company's stock. --By Richard Behar 54 l INIE, M.,XY h, I~)~)1 Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop labeled the book "trash," and the Food and Drug Administration issued a paper in October that claims Steinman dis- torts his facts. "HealthMed is a gateway to Scientology, and Steinman's book is a sort- ing mechanism," says physician William Jarvis, who is head of the National Council Against ttealth Fraud. Steinman, who de- scribes Hubbard favorably as a "research- er," denies any ties to the church and con- tends, "1tealthMcd has no altiliation that I know of with Scicntology." DRUG TREATMENT, Hubbard's purifica- tion treatments arc the main- stay of Narconon, a Sciento- logy-run chain of 33 alcohol and drug rehabilitation cen- ters-some in prisons under the name "Crimimm"--in 12 countries. Narconon, a classic vehicle for drawing addicts into the cult, now plans to open what it calls the world's largest treatment center, a lAO0-bed facility on an Indian reservation near Newkirk, Okla. (pop. 2,401}). At a 1989 ceremony in Newkirk, the As- sociation for Better Living and Education presented Narconon a check for $20{),()1)1) and a study praising its work. The association turned out to be part of Scien- tology itself. Today the town is battling to keep out the cult, which has fought back through such tactics as send- ing private detectives to snoop on the mayor and the local newspaper publisher. FINANCIAL SCAMS, Three Florida Scientologists, includ- ing Ronatd Bernstein, a big contributor to the church's in- ternational "war chest," plead- ed guilty in March to using their rare-coin dealership as a money laundry. Other notori- ous activities by Scientologists include making the shady Vancouver stock exchange even shadier (see box) and plot- ting to plant operatives in the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and Export- Import Bank of the U.S. The alleged pur- pose of this scheme: to gain inside informa- tion on which countries are going to be denied credit sO that Scientology-linked traders can make illicit profits by taking "short" positions in those countries' currencies. In the stock market the practice of "shorting" involves borrowing shares of publicly traded companies in the hope that the price will go down before the stocks must be bought on the market and re- turned to the lender. The Feshbach broth- ers of Palo Alto, Calif.--Kurt, Joseph and Ntatthew--havc hcc~m~c the leading ~hort sellers in the [J.S., with more than $500 million under management. The Fesh- baths command a stall of about 6U em- ployees and claim to have carned better re- turns than the l)t~w Jones industrial average ft~r m~st t}f the 198(}s. And, they say, they owe it all to the teachings of Scicntology, ~vhose "war chest" litis re- ceived more Illall $1 million from the family. ]'he Feshbact~s illst) embrace the church's tactics; the brothers are the ter- rors of the stock exchanges. In congressio- nal hearings in 1989, the heads of several THE ROWE FAMILY SPENT $23,000 on Dianetics treatment. Uke many dentists, Glover Rowe was drawn in by Sterling Management, which does not publicize its ties to Scientology. companies claimed that Fcshbach opera- tires h~,vc spread i'also informattire to gov- ernment agencies and posed in various guises~such as a Securities and Exchange Commission tdlicial--in an ctfort tt~ dis- credit their conlpa~lics and drive I[Ic stocks down. Michael Russell, who ran a chain of business journals, testified that a Fcshbach employee called his bankers and interfered with his loans. S