Misconceptions (continued)
Wasn’t there a long battle between the Church of Scientology and the Internal Revenue Service of the United States?
The battle with the Internal Revenue Service was finally and favorably resolved on October 1, 1993. On that day, the IRS issued letters recognizing the Church of Scientology International and its related churches and organizations—all 150 of them—as tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
This ruling marked the end of a 40-year war between the Church and the IRS. The IRS’s determination followed the most intensive scrutiny in the agency’s history of any organization applying for tax exemption and included a meticulous review of Church activities and financial records. During this examination, an enormous amount of false information that IRS officials had been operating on in relation to the Church was addressed and corrected. Once the facts were established, the IRS came to the only possible conclusion.
- The religion of Scientology is a bona fide religion;
- Churches of Scientology and their related charitable and educational institutions are operated exclusively for recognized religious purposes.
- Churches of Scientology and their related charitable and educational institutions operate for the benefit of the public interest rather than for the interests of private individuals;
- No part of the net earnings of Churches of Scientology and their related charitable and educational institutions inures for the benefit of any individual or noncharitable entity;
- The Churches of Scientology do not violate any public policy.
What was the Guardian’s Office and does it still exist?
The Guardian’s Office, known as the GO, was initially created in 1966 as a unit to deal with the Church’s legal and external affairs. It no longer exists. It was permanently disbanded in the early 1980s by current Church management.
The GO had been infiltrated and set to up fail in its mission to protect the Church. It was influenced to abandon its original mandate and established itself as an independent, autonomous unit, answerable to nobody. It was isolated not only from the mainstream activity and management of the Church, but even from the Founder of the religion. Some GO executives actually tried to gain exclusive control over Church corporate and financial affairs.
The first warning that all was not well with the Guardian’s Office came in the late 1970s. Representatives of Church management realized that the GO no longer had the best interests of the Church and its Founder at heart. The GO’s management of the Church’s external affairs was notably deficient and many parishioners and staff began to suspect that matters for which the GO was responsible were not being dealt with in accordance with the teachings of Mr. Hubbard. In fact, by this time, the Guardian’s Office had abandoned any pretense of following the principles described in Mr. Hubbard’s writings.
It subsequently came to light that a handful of GO staff members had been influenced to adopt an “anything goes” approach in dealing with government discrimination against the Church. The dupes infiltrated and burglarized several U.S. government offices to obtain copies of files maintained and circulated about the Church. Obviously such activity was illegal and directly violated Mr. Hubbard’s policies.
However, while such illegal conduct was afoot, the GO managed to keep its operations secret from Church management, staff and membership. Its autonomy shielded it from accountability. Most Scientologists were altogether unaware of GO clandestine activities.
Even the government prosecutor in the later criminal case that arose from this illegal conduct testified that only a handful of people in the GO had engaged in or even knew about these illegal acts. The rest, including thousands of staff and millions of parishioners, had no involvement or knowledge of such unlawful activities.
When the GO’s criminal activities were discovered by those who today form the core of the Church’s leadership, the GO was disbanded, no small feat since it was the GO officials who held corporate control. Its functions were completely reorganized and brought under the control of the Church’s ecclesiastical management officers. Many of the GO staff were not involved in any of the unlawful activities and, wanting to conduct their affairs in accordance with the Founder’s teachings, abandoned their former GO leaders. They then gave their full support to Church management in the clean out and disbanding of the GO. Those who participated in or knew of the GO’s illegal conduct in any way were removed from Church staff and forever banned from future Church employment.
Sadly, there were also some people in the Church, but outside of the GO itself, who sympathized with the GO because of their own agendas to achieve autonomy and gain control of the Church’s finances. In some cases, it was the Scriptures themselves they wanted to pervert for their own ends. Given these people had proven themselves to be avowed enemies of L. Ron Hubbard and the religion, they were excommunicated.
Today, some of these same people, no longer part of the Church, are loudly and bitterly critical of the Church’s current management. It is these few apostates who are most often the ones who spread vitriol in the media about Scientology and Church leaders. When they make allegations of wrongdoing, they are referring to the acts of the GO, of which many of them were either a part or in sympathy with. They fail to mention their involvement or the fact that they were kicked out of the Church because of their GO involvement—or the fact that the very people they now try to tarnish with their allegations are the very people who permanently rid the Church of those who committed or supported such misdeeds.