Blog: Journalists Beware of Scientology Inc Spy - 2011-02-15

Journalists Beware of Scientology Inc Spy February 15, 2011, Marty Rathbun, Moving On Up a Little Higher

---

Jason Beghe phoned me to catch up with hurricane aftermath news. He told me that shortly after the New Yorker story ran a John Connolly, who represents himself as a Vanity Fair regular contributor, phoned Jason. Connolly tried to pump Jason for anything he knew about the New Yorker's investigation. A covert investigation of the author Lawrence Wright. While doing so Connolly attempted to drive a wedge between Jason on the one side and Mike Rinder and I on the other. Since Jason didn't just fall off the turnip truck Connolly did, hard.

John Connolly has been a Church of Scientology Office of Special Affairs informant for nearly two decades. He has infiltrated several journalists doing stories on Scientology during that time, posing as a like-minded investigative journalist working on a Scientology story. Journalists have apparently either not compared notes, or simply not noticed that Connolly hasn't delivered on a Scientology story in the twenty years he says he's been working on one. Connolly was originally recruited by Eugene Martin Ingram.

Here is an excerpt from a document authored by then-DCO External OSA INT (currently CO OSA INT - and at all times since the early eighties to the present Intelligence Chief OSA Int effectively) Linda Hamel. The document is dated, coincidentally, 14 February 2006 - five years ago, today. It reports on Connolly's spy work against the author of the unauthorized biography of Tom Cruise, UK journalist Andrew Morton.