Office of Special Affairs

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The structural levels of the OSA.

The Office of Special Affairs ( OSA for short ; German  Office for Special Affairs ) is a network within the Scientology organization entrusted with legal and intelligence tasks . It is particularly used to suppress and monitor critics of the Church of Scientology .

history

Emergence

Resistance to Scientology arose as early as the 1950s . In defense of his church, L. Ron Hubbard advocated the establishment of an intelligence service . This should monitor critics, but also followers of Scientology. On the basis of this proposal, the Department of Government Affairs was founded in 1960 . This department relieved the Scientology communities of tax and legal matters. At the same time, the Department of Government Affairs should also try to actively influence US government affairs . In 1961 the Department of Government Affairs was merged into the newly established Department of Special Affairs . The Public Investigation Section formed in 1966 also recruited numerous professional investigators to spy on critics.

Guardian Office (1966-1983)

In 1966 the Department of Government Affairs and the Public Investigation Section were merged under the umbrella of the Guardian Office (GO) . The main headquarters of this organization was in Saint Hill Manor ( East Grinstead ) near London . This organization was headed by the so-called Guard . As of 1966, this was Mary Sue Hubbard , Hubbard's third wife. In 1969 she was replaced by Jane Kember . For Mary Sue Hubbard, a position above the guard was created with the controller . During the 1970s, opponents of Scientology were increasingly persecuted by the Guardian Office and state institutions were partially infiltrated. After searches of Scientology churches and the conviction of Mary Sue Hubbard, a new generation was established around David Miscavige at the top of Scientology. Miscavige founded the Religious Technology Center in Los Angeles in 1982 .

Office of Special Affairs from 1983

Scientology viewed the Guardian Office scandals as aberrations of individual members. In order to polish up the image of Scientology, the Guardian Office was dissolved and the Office of Special Affairs (OSA) was founded as a successor organization. The main headquarters of this organization is the Religious Technology Center . There have been no major scandals since then. However, Scientology dropouts point out that the Office of Special Affairs has adopted the methods of the Guardian Office . The implementation of various actions would be more professional. According to the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Baden-Württemberg, the main task of the OSA is to fight critics with the help of secret service means.

structure

The predecessor organization Guardian Office consisted of six departments: service office, information department, press and public office, legal office, finance department and office for social coordination. The intelligence organization was the information department. It consisted of a subdivision for data collection and another office for internal security and member monitoring. The division was taken over by the Office of Special Affairs, only the finance department was outsourced. The Office of Special Affairs has a hierarchical structure , from headquarters in Los Angeles to local representations. The country departments are not subordinate to the respective national organization, but to the headquarters around David Miscavige in the USA . The German representation of the OSA is located in Munich and is called Department of Special Affairs (DSA) . The KVPM is interlinked with the DSA .

Methods

Scientology always rejects the term intelligence service for the Office of Special Affairs. It is only used to collect data to defend Scientology against its critics. This Overt Data Collection has been operated by Scientology from the start. Above all, media reports on Scientology are collected, evaluated, archived and cross-referenced. Events by opponents of Scientology are also specifically attended. In addition, Scientology made use of the Covert Data Collection , especially in the 1970s . Critics are systematically spied on using semi-legal methods. The spectrum of OSA activities ranges from searching through household rubbish to alleged interviews with critics. The training programs for OSA candidates also show that the OSA is not just a purely defensive organization. Modern methods of the secret services (investigations, infiltration, etc.) are discussed. Mandatory reading for OSA agents are also The Art of War by Sun Tzu and On War by the Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz .

Since the 1960s, various targeted operations have been carried out against critics. One of the bases for this was the Fair Game Act (1965) formulated by Hubbard . After that, particularly aggressive opponents are declared outlawed from Scientology's point of view . The law was allegedly withdrawn shortly afterwards due to the poor PR , but this only applied to the name and not to the practices formulated in the law per se. Nowadays leading Scientologists deny that this requirement of the founder is still applied, dropouts and critics, however, report that the fair game law is still being applied.

Operation Snow White was also started by Hubbard . Thereafter, Scientologists should infiltrate government and judicial authorities. The 1977 raids revealed that Scientologists had infiltrated access to secured areas of the US Department of Justice and police stations in Canada .

Operations performed

  • Most famous is the persecution of Paulette Cooper , who wrote the book called The Scandal of Scientology in 1971 . With Operation Freakout , the Guardian Office tried to eliminate Cooper from society and to decompose, in particular by faking a crime with subsequent conviction or by intimidation and humiliation in order to obtain the admission of Cooper to a psychiatric hospital .
  • In 1976, two Scientologists with forged papers were arrested at the US Department of Justice . This was the start of an extensive investigation by the FBI . It turned out that the U.S. tax authorities were being monitored by the Guardian Office . This was particularly explosive because this authority had to decide whether Scientology is a bona fide religion and is therefore entitled to tax exemption. Numerous confidential government documents, burglar tools, and electrical monitoring devices were found at headquarters in Los Angeles and Washington in 1977. Leading members were then charged, among other things, with forming a criminal organization.
  • The most famous dropout from Scientology is Gerald Armstrong . He describes, among other things, Scientology prison camps in which he was incarcerated in the mid-1970s for “disobedience”. After his departure in 1981 he was covered by lawsuits by Scientology. Eventually he was banned from speaking publicly about Scientology under threat of a US $ 650,000 fine. Today he works as a consultant for Scientology dropouts, but according to his own information he is still monitored around the clock by OSA.
  • Since the early 1980s, the US tax authorities became one of the main targets of the OSA. Officials were shadowed, cases of corruption uncovered and the whole agency showered with lawsuits. This year-long "battle" was won in 1993, because the office obtained exemption from sales tax . This judgment should set a kind of precedent for all other states to recognize Scientology as a religion. In contrast, Scientology is still not classified as a religion in Germany , which is why the OSA started some campaigns in which the non-recognition of the religious status was compared with the persecution of Jews in the Third Reich.

literature

  • Robert Vaughn Young: Empire of Evil . In: Der Spiegel . No. 39 , 1995 ( online - via Scientology prison camps, Operation Snow White, and the Scientology campaign against Germany).
  • Ruin the opponent . In: Der Spiegel . No. 12 , 1997 ( online - about the 1993 sales tax exemption).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ OSA report from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Baden-Württemberg. Archived from the original on August 24, 2013 ; Retrieved August 26, 2013 .