Lafayette Ronald Hubbard was an American author and the founder of Scientology. A prolific writer of pulp science fiction and fantasy novels in his early career, in 1950 he authored Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health and established organizations to promote and practice Dianetics techniques. Hubbard created Scientology in 1952 after losing the intellectual rights to his literature on Dianetics in bankruptcy. He would lead the Church of Scientology – variously described as a cult, a new religious movement, or a business – until his death in 1986.
The Stargate Project was a secret U.S. Army unit established in 1977 at Fort Meade, Maryland, by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and SRI International to investigate the potential for psychic phenomena in military and domestic intelligence applications. The project, and its precursors and sister projects, originally went by various code names – 'Gondola Wish', 'Stargate', 'Grill Flame', 'Center Lane', 'Project CF', 'Sun Streak', and 'Scanate' – until 1991 when they were consolidated and rechristened as the "Stargate Project".
Leroy Fletcher Prouty served as Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President John F. Kennedy. A colonel in the United States Air Force, he retired from military service to become a bank executive. He subsequently became a critic of U.S. foreign policy, particularly the covert activities of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which he believed was working on behalf of a secret world elite.
Bare-Faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard is a posthumous biography of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard by British journalist Russell Miller. First published in the United Kingdom on 26 October 1987, the book takes a critical perspective, challenging the Church of Scientology's account of Hubbard's life and work. It quotes extensively from official documents acquired using the Freedom of Information Act and from Hubbard's personal papers, which were obtained via a defector from Scientology. It was also published in Australia, Canada and the United States.
Freedom is a magazine published by the Church of Scientology since 1968. The magazine describes its focus as "Investigative Reporting in the Public Interest." A frequent topic is psychiatry, which Scientology strongly opposes.
CounterSpy was an American magazine that published articles on covert operations, especially those undertaken by the American government. It was the official Bulletin of the Committee for Action/Research on the Intelligence Community (CARIC). CounterSpy published 32 issues between 1973 and 1984 from its headquarters in Washington DC.
Ali's Smile: Naked Scientology is a collection of essays and a short story by American Beat writer William S. Burroughs (1914–1997). First published in 1971 as the short story "Ali's Smile", the book eventually contained a group of previously published newspaper articles as well, all of which address Scientology. Burroughs had been interested in Scientology throughout the 1960s, believing that its methods might help combat a controlling society. He joined the Church of Scientology later in the decade. However, he became disenchanted with the authoritarian nature of the organization. In 1970 Burroughs had published a "considered statement" on Scientology's methods because he felt they were significant enough to warrant commentary. These pieces were later gathered together into Ali's Smile: Naked Scientology, which religious studies scholar Hugh B. Urban describes as a "nonscholarly popular exposé of Scientology". Burroughs's texts argue that while some of Scientology's therapies are worthwhile, the dogmatic nature of the group and its secrecy are harmful.
Gallery is an adult sex magazine published by Magna Publishing Group. It is one of the more popular "skin" magazines that arose on the Playboy magazine pattern in the 1970s.
Lucien Emile "Lou" Conein was a French-American citizen, noted U.S. Army officer and OSS/CIA operative. Conein is best known for his instrumental role in the November 1963 coup against Ngô Đình Diệm and Diệm's assassination by serving as Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.'s liaison officer with the coup plotters and delivering $42,000 of the known cash disbursements.
Genesis is a men's pornographic magazine which began publication in 1973. It exclusively features female stars of the adult film industry. Branding itself as "The Home of Porn's Hottest Stars", Genesis features pictorials, exclusive columns by adult film stars, interviews, feature articles, movie reviews and news. It is published by the Magna Publishing Group, which also publishes Swank, Gent, Velvet, and many other popular men's magazines.
Victor Leo Marchetti Jr. was a special assistant to the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency who later became a prominent critic of the United States Intelligence Community and the Israel lobby in the United States.
JFK: The CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy (ISBN 978-0806517728) is a book by L. Fletcher Prouty who was a Washington insider for nearly 20 years. It was first published in 1992.
John D. Marks is the founder and former president of Search for Common Ground (SFCG), a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., that focuses on international conflict management programming. Marks now acts as a senior adviser to SFCG. He is also a former foreign service officer of the U.S. Department of State, and he co-authored the 1974 book The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence with Victor Marchetti.
James Richard Hougan is an American author, investigative reporter and documentary film producer.
The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1969), by Sam Greenlee, is the fictional story of Dan Freeman, the first black CIA officer, and of the CIA's history of training persons and political groups who later used their specialised training in gathering intelligence, political subversion, and guerrilla warfare against the CIA. The novel has been characterised as "part thriller, part satire and part social commentary". As described by The New Yorker, the title "alludes to the conspicuous deployment of the agency's one black officer to display its phony integration".
The Road to Total Freedom: A Sociological Analysis of Scientology is a non-fiction book about Scientology by sociologist Roy Wallis. Originally published in 1976 by Heinemann, it was republished in 1977 by Columbia University Press. The original manuscript was the product of Wallis's doctoral research at Oxford under the tutelage of Bryan Wilson. Wallis, after a review of the original manuscript by Scientology leaders, made edits to about 100 passages before publication.
Harold Weisberg served as an Office of Strategic Services officer during World War II, a U.S. Senate staff member and investigative reporter, an investigator for the Senate Committee on Civil Liberties, and a U.S. State Department intelligence analyst who devoted 40 years of his life to researching and writing about the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King. He wrote ten self-published and published books and approximately thirty-five unpublished books related to the details for those assassinations, mostly with respect to Kennedy's assassination.
Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War is a 1999 book by Frances Stonor Saunders. The book discusses the mid-20th century Central Intelligence Agency efforts to infiltrate and co-opt artistic movements using funds that were mostly channelled through the Congress for Cultural Freedom and the Ford Foundation. The aim of these efforts was to combat the political influence of the Soviet Union and expand American political influence. Saunders concluded that by entangling the state in "free" artistic expression, the CIA undermined America's moral position in comparison to the Soviet Union. In Dissent Jeffrey C. Isaac wrote that the book is a "widely discussed retrospective on post-Second World War liberalism that raises important questions about the relationships between intellectuals and political power."
Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion, and Promoting Terrorism is a 2015 non-fiction book about disinformation tactics and history rooted in information warfare. It was written by former general in the Securitate, the secret police of Socialist Republic of Romania, Ion Mihai Pacepa, and law professor Ronald J. Rychlak. It was published in 2013 along with a companion film, Disinformation: The Secret Strategy to Destroy the West.
Hiwar was an Arabic magazine published in Beirut between 1962 and 1967. The magazine was established and financed by the CIA during the cultural Cold War, under the cover of a front organization, the Congress for Cultural Freedom.
