When Scientology tried to sway coverage with Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner

[Karen#1]

TONY ORTEGA
Excerpt:

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[Wenner and Hunter S. Thompson in 1996]
Among the documents that Mike Rinder took with him when he escaped from Scientology in 2007 are transcripts of various secretly-recorded phone calls that were made by Rinder and other Office of Special Affairs figures.

If you were on the phone with Scientology’s OSA, you can be sure there’s a transcript of the call somewhere.

One in particular we ran across and found really interesting. We think you will too.

It was August 2005, the year that was such a spectacular failure for Scientology leader David Miscavige as he tried to use his best pal Tom Cruise as an outspoken ambassador for the church.

Cruise had fired his longtime publicist, Pat Kingsley, and replaced her with his own sister, LeAnne DeVette, as he set out to be more vocal and even pushy with his views about Scientology. One result was his disastrous interview with Matt Lauer on the Today show in June.

What was going on with Cruise and Scientology? That’s what Janet Reitman, a writer at Rolling Stone, decided to find out that July.

By August, the highest levels of Scientology were panicking about what Reitman’s story was going to turn out to be.

So they had Cruise call Jann Wenner, Rolling Stone’s founder, to ask him to have a phone conversation with Rinder and DeVette.

We have the transcript of that call.

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When Scientology tried to sway coverage with Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner

Among the documents that Mike Rinder took with him when he escaped from Scientology in 2007 are transcripts of various secretly-recorded phone calls that were made by Rinder and other Office of Special Affairs figures.

tonyortega.substack.com

 

[I M Dex]

Back around 1990, after I left NY org staff and was working in the printing industry, I got a call from someone in OSA asking if I could find out for them where the composition/prepress location was for Time Magazine. I was not yet too disaffected to refuse to help, and I had the contacts to find out such things, which I did, and relayed that information. What I didn't know at the time was that the devastating Time cover story "The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power" about Scientology was in production. They must have been trying to find a way to get the text beforehand to try to block and/or "dead agent" the story, but that area was guarded like Fort Knox.