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Let’s go back to 1957: this guy was President, these guys were launching this thing, all
of these guys were starting to form this, this guy was doing a lot of this, to which
teens reacted like this, and, most importantly, this guy , who wrote this book, had just won
a massive victory thanks to these guys.
Such guy was, if you don’t know, Ron L Hubbard—a science fiction writer who wrote a book called
Dianetics, which became a best-seller, but instead of doing what most successful fiction
authors do and write a bad sequel or spin it off into a direct-to-video movie, Ron L
Hubbard decided to spin his book off into something much more profitable—a religion,
which he named the Church of Scientology.
Now, this year, 1957, was a big one for Ron because that’s when the IRS recognized Scientology
as a religion, thus granting the church tax-exempt status.
But then, in 1967, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked, if by “Fire Nation”
you mean “the IRS” and by “attacked” you mean “removed Scientology’s tax-exempt
status.”
The IRS claimed that the Church of Scientology wasn’t a religious nonprofit, but was engaged
in commercial activity to financially benefit Hubbard, most notably through real-estate
deals.
So, desperate to regain their tax-exempt status, the Church did the reasonable thing—stopped
profiting off their property, stopped funneling money to Hubbard, and started a less-exploitative,
more charitable…
I’m just kidding, they sent spies to infiltrate the US government.
The plan was called Operation Snow White, and it was run by the totally-not-suspicious-sounding,
“Scientology Guardian’s Office,” which was created in 1966 to do the totally-not-suspicious-sounding
job of, “protecting the interests of Scientology.”
Operation Snow White specifically can trace its roots to Guardian Order 732, written by
Ron Hubbard, which called for the, “removal and correction of erroneous Scientology files,”
which was code for files that say true but unflattering things about Scientology, like
for example that they believe all of the world’s non-Scientology religions are false memories
planted in humans by Xenu the alien god.
You know, normal religion stuff.
While there were thousands of agents, the two best-known were these guys, Gerald Wolfe
and Michael Meisner.
In 1973, Wolfe and Meisner got jobs as clerk-typists at the DC IRS office, in the division that
dealt with religious tax exemptions.
They started off by illegally copying files from the office and funneling them to the
church, but soon graduated to big-boy crimes like forgery and breaking and entering, which
they did by making fake high-level IRS ID cards, then sneaking into the Office of International
Operations and the federal courthouse in DC to steal more documents.
On both occasions, they were questioned by suspicious observers—once by a janitor,
once by a librarian, and even once the FBI, who the librarian had called—but by the
grace of Xenu the alien god, they managed to talk their way out of it using a combination
of fake ID badges, cover stories, and being white.
Eventually, though, it turned out that turning your fake religion into a secretive, exploitative,
mafia-like crime cult wasn’t the type of smooth-sailing, no-drawbacks plan that you’d
expect.
Soon, the Guardian Office got worried that Agent Meisner would go to the police, and
so just like any normal church would, they locked him up in a secret facility in California
and put him under 24-7 surveillance.
But, it turns out that spies tend to be good at escaping, and after three months, Meisner
eluded his captors, called the FBI, turned himself in, and told them everything, which
led to the biggest FBI raid in US history, when 156 agents descended on Scientology’s
Los Angeles Office, and in addition to finding e-meters and sci-fi books they also found
48,000 incriminating documents, bugs, fake passes, lock picks, secret codes—basically
everything you’d find in James Bond’s suitcase, except instead of being owned by
a secret agent, they were owned by a pretend church that teaches people that humans are
ancient aliens living inside of bodies that were evolved from clams.
The materials recovered in the raid revealed a ton more insane details about Operation
Snow White—that an agent successfully bugged an IRS office where they discussed the Church’s
tax-exempt status, that they’d gotten agents into the US Coast Guard Intelligence Agency,
the DEA, and the American Medical Association, and even that Operation Snow White had branches
in over 30 countries, with code names like Project Apple for France, Project Mirror for
Portugal, and Project Witch for the UK, because what’s an international criminal conspiracy
without adorable matching nicknames.
Later court documents suggested that across all of these projects, the Church of Scientology—a
pretend church based on a sci-fi book—likely had as many as 5,000 secret agents infiltrating
governments and organizations around the world, which is definitely bad, but is also admittedly
an impressive use of science fiction.
After all, Star Trek got turned into a so-so movie franchise, Dianetics got turned into
one of the largest international government infiltrations in world history.
The raid also showed that the Guardian office was additionally behind an enormous number
of other bizarre conspiracies, including an attempt to trick the government into organizing
a press conference held by a cat, and a plot to frame the mayor of Clearwater, Florida
for murder, but thanks to the raid, those plots were foiled and all Scientology does
these days is hold dozens of people in an illegal prison camp and make John Travolta
do even weirder stuff than he did before.
Speaking of things that may or may not be a tax scam, Tom Scott has a new game show.
It’s called Money and I am on it.
Over five rounds, Tom subjects me, Mia Mulder, Sophie Ward, Rohin Francis, and Mike Boyd
to five games, and then at the end something happens.
Sounds great, right?
Well, like all great things, it’s available exclusively on Nebula—home to my and plenty
of other educational creator’s big, ambitious projects.
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platform home to thousands of fascinating documentaries and non-fiction shows.
By signing up at CuriosityStream.com/HAI, you’ll get access to both for a year for
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