Operation Snow White

 Operation Snow White (low-level deep event,  theft,  crime,  forgery,  fraud)

Date	1960 - 1979
Location	Hollywood,  United States,  Canada,  Australia,  Canada,  Europe,  UK
Perpetrators	Church of Scientology, Mary Sue Hubbard, Cindy Raymond, Gerald Bennett Wolfe, Henning Heldt, Duke Snider, Gregory Willardson, Richard Weigand, Mitchell Herman, Sharon Thomas, Jane Kember, and Mo Budlong, L. Ron Hubbard.
Description	Religious cult breaks into 100s of international government buildings to remove their own names, is not banned.

How Scientology Got 5,000 Secret Agents in the Government - Half as Interesting channel.

Operation Snow White was the codename for the plan by the Church of Scientology during the 1970s to purge unfavourable records about Scientology and its founder, L. Ron Hubbard. This project included a series of thefts from 136 government (intelligence) agencies, foreign embassies and consulates, as well as private organisations critical of Scientology, in more than 30 countries. Although some of the investigation (or the clean up of double agents) by the FBI has been deleted or is still sealed due to J. Edgar Hoover's COINTELPRO and the fact the CIA subjected some church members to deadly MKUltra black projects, the raid of the FBI upon discovering the conspiracy became the largest in US history at the time.

Origin

Established in the 1950s, Scientology was created initially to be a form of therapy called Dianetics by a science fiction author named L. Ron Hubbard. After the organization was sued and he lost all of his money, Hubbard decided to turn his ideas into a religion called the Church of Scientology. The teachings are based on the idea that all humans have an immortal spirit that lives in a physical body until it dies then moves on to the next one.

The FBI investigation revealed one of the largest infiltrations in US history. In 1967, the IRS rescinded Scientology's tax exemption. The government found that the organization provided Hubbard with business advantages, primarily through real estate. Thus was born Operation Snow White under the direction of the Scientology Guardian Bureau. Hubbard's own plan called for "the removal and correction of erroneous Scientology files." So that the agents according to Hubbard, like all other religions, had to hide unflattering beliefs, which were false memories implanted by the alien god Xenu."

Operation

Two agents who helped spearhead Operation Snow White were Michael Meisner and Gerald Wolfe, who got jobs as typists at the DC IRS office in 1973. The department that they specifically worked in was the one that dealt with religious tax exemptions. Their handler appeared to be Cindy Raymond (Collections Officer in the US Information Bureau of the GO - The Church's de facto led intelligence agency) in Los Angeles, California. Raymond send a "directive" to Michael Meisner (Assistant Guardian for Information, Washington D.C) ordering him to recruit a loyal Scientologist to be placed as a covert agent at Internal Revenue Service in Washington, D.C. The agent is to obtain employment with the Internal Revenue Service for the purpose of taking from that agency all documents which dealt with Scientology, including those concerning pending litigation initiated by Scientology against the United States Government. A number of Scientologists were interviewed as prospective agents. However, none are found to be suitable at first. Wolfe was then selected.

They started copying files to give to the church, but they worked their way up to forgery, falsifying documentation, and breaking into government buildings to steal more documents. After most raids, Meisner was kidnapped and locked up by his own church, cause of the scale of the operation, and the fact they did not trust him to rat. Meisner managed to escape 3 months later and went straight to the FBI with everything he knew. 156 agents raided the LA office of Scientology and found over 48,000 documents finding high-tech spy equipment to frame a journalist who had written exposés on the Church, fabricated bomb threats and more on i.e the mayor of Clearwater, Florida, including for murder as well and weird stuff including getting the government to organise a press conference with a cat. Documents found stated that an agent bugged an IRS meeting, infiltrated Interpol, the National Institute of Mental Health, U.S. Department of the Treasury, the IND, the office of the US Attorney, Office of International Operations, the Coast Guard Intelligence Agency, the DEA, the American Medical Association, and hundreds of other agencies in over 30 countries. The database revealed over 5000 agents were currently working for these agencies as cover.

FBI Raid

Operation Snow White - Plan sight Prod.

The FBI raided Church of Scientology locations in Los Angeles, Hollywood and Washington, D.C. The Los Angeles raid involved 156 FBI agents in a 16 hour raid, the biggest ever at the time. Some agents fled to the UK for political asylum. The plan revealed that Sir John Foster (the leader of the official UK Government inquiry into Scientology) and Lord Balniel and the National Association for Mental Health and World Federation for Mental Health were also targets along with the Australian and Canadian health Organization. The Church argued they were better than 10 years ago as many celebrities were members now including Tom Cruise and John Travolta and said everything was taken illegally. The US Supreme Court refused to reveal the church allegations of CIA or FBI infiltration and refused to take the case and let the lower court of the US government give over 10 people jail sentences.

Jail

11 high-ranking members of Scientology were indicted on 28 charges. Five of the Scientologists were sentenced to four years in jail, with four of the convicted being taken immediately. Three of the other four not taken at instant faced a fine of $10,000 and five years in jail. The fourth was fined $1,000 and sent to jail for six months. Upon release Mary Sue Hubbard was given five years of probation and community service. By the 1990s, all agents of the church were released.

Cover up

The Church called the whole operation since 1990 a "set up" and just stealing some "printed files", and said that all 5,000 members were purged from the church.

FBI & DEA

Several agencies reviewed their hiring process. The FBI revealed through a FOIA request that the DEA suspected some of their agents were double agents for the Church and reviewed their hiring process upon receiving a tip. Academic research by the Ohio State University revealed the FBI had dozens of agents in the church, placing questions who scammed who.

A FBI declassified report on double agents in the DEA and possibly FBI. File can be accessed via official document on the FBI Vault listed below.

Hollywood

Tom Cruise was reported to have put pressure on District of Columbia Court of Appeals employee Scooter Libby, the same that later became high ranking member in the State Department and right hand man as US Chief of Staff of US Vice President Dick Cheney to drop some charges. Why Penelope Cruz was present is not fully clear apart from being Cruise's girlfriend.

CIA

Like the CIA, Wikiscanner revealed the Church tried to purge records of Wikipedia. The CIA's possible involvement is not clear, but some outlets like the Washington Post report the CIA was waging a war in their early days against the Church as the Church had an usual amount of info on the Agency. Hubbard was a staunch supporter of South Africa's Apartheid regime, and became a prominent target of the agency for communism.

Scientology appears to have some CIA officers as double agents as they consistently were able to leak info that caused outlets such as the Washington Post to report on MK Ultra operations, including one where they revealed the CIA early on urged to conduct MK Ultra programs to delete the memory of Church members, including one operation where "the CIA may have conducted open-air tests of whooping cough bacteria in Florida in the mid-1950s, when state medical records show a whooping cough outbreak killed 12 persons", according to a Church of Scientology analysis of agency records. This was after officially records show the CIA top brass came together and concluded "deadly force" against the agency was deemed too much. CIA officer Miles Copeland argued in 2019 the Church was controlled by the CIA (after Hubbard offered his services to the FBI in the 1950s), and, "continues to be an ongoing continuous agreement".

Official documents

FBI Files - https://vault.fbi.gov/church-of-scientology

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