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THE WEBSITE SCIENTOLOGY DOESN'T WANT YOU TO SEE A protester in Toronto promotes xenu.net, one of the Web's most prominent anti-Scientology sites (Photo: Joe Howell)

On the morning of February 10, Lisa McPherson's birthday, Clearwater is desolate again. A broken car horn wails incessantly somewhere in the distance.

Anonymous begins gathering at about 11 a.m. The Church has hired nine off-duty police officers to provide security at the march; there's an air of a high-noon showdown in the offing. The assembled Anons are surprisingly diverse. One protester I spoke to gave his name as "Wesley Crusher," the youngest crew member in Star Trek: The Next Generation, but the crowd extends beyond the usual hacker suspects—there's a schoolteacher, college and high school students, even a few fraternity types. Many are dressed in suits; all have some sort of bandanna or mask covering their faces. By 1 p.m., the appointed time of the march, close to 200 people have collected at a staging area near the library. Someone pulls out a birthday cake for Lisa McPherson, and, in a surprisingly earnest moment for an Internet-based assault force, the crowd sings "Happy Birthday." Dave, the young, self-appointed leader of the group, urges restraint. "Let's not burn down any buildings," he says. "I've got to say that 'cause I know some of you all are pyros. Xenu is watching you, so be careful."

You may have thought you were reading about Katie Holmes' Armani dress in Us Weekly, but to David Miscavige, coverage of Cruise's wedding "amounted to an intro lecture" to Hubbard's teachingsThe march turns out to be the largest protest against Scientology in the history of Clearwater. Old-hand anti-cult activists who come down to check it out are impressed. The signs read "Ron's gone but the con goes on" and "Honk if you hate Scientology." For the next two hours, a chorus of car horns continually blares.

"I think it's great to see people protesting," says one local woman who refuses to give her name. "I work for a company that's owned by Scientologists. I just got the job for money. I didn't know it would be creepy and weird."

Another local couple says they just came downtown for the afternoon, not to protest, and someone took a picture of their license plate as they parked. "We had no idea this was the epicenter of Scientology," the woman says. "Otherwise, we wouldn't have moved here."

The surveillance is in full effect as I make my way around downtown; young men in short-sleeve shirts, khakis, and sunglasses seem to emerge out of nowhere to snap your picture each time you walk past a Scientology building. They don't respond to questions or acknowledge your presence, they just stare at the camera's screen. I spot one woman walking down the street carrying an L. Ron Hubbard book and ask her what she makes of the crowd chanting "Cult! Cult! Cult!" "I don't have any thoughts whatsoever," she replies curtly.

The protest is peaceful, with no arrests or confrontations. According to Karin Pouw, 5,000 Scientologists were inside the Church buildings engaged in religious services without regard to the "terrorists" outside. As the picket line starts to dissolve, I make my way back to my car, down a deserted side street. I am the only one on the sidewalk. A white Japanese car drives past me; as I look over I see a blonde woman snap my picture from the passenger seat. I walk faster. Fumbling for my keys, I spot a brown car pulling out of the supermarket driveway, across from the lot where I've parked my car. The driver lifts up a digital camera, snaps a shot of me, and drives away.

According to Anonymous, the protests brought out a total of 6,000 protestors in more than 100 cities worldwide, including more than 500 each in London and Los Angeles. The group insists that the campaign will continue: On March 15, Hubbard's birthday, Anonymous is organizing mock birthday parties at Scientology centers worldwide. In April, it will launch Operation Reconnection to increase awareness of the disconnection policy. Anonymous member "Sarah" says the group is also organizing a letter-writing campaign designed to take aim at the Church's nonprofit religious classification. "We're sending letters to senators and congresspeople requesting that their tax-exempt status be looked at."

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FACE OFF Armed with signs and megaphones, Anonymous protesters chant "Cult! Cult! Cult!" (Photo: Sam Comen)
The Church of Scientology is not going away anytime soon. It still has hundreds of millions of dollars. It still has Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, assets that gave the Church, as Miscavige put it at a recent event, "16 daily hours of nonstop ... televised coverage and four full miles of press bringing word of LRH technology to 42 million people a week" during the tabloid extravaganza leading up the couple's 2006 wedding. You may have thought you were reading about Holmes' Armani dress in Us Weekly, but that's not what Miscavige saw: "While they may have headlined it wedding of the century," he said, the coverage really "amounted to an intro lecture" to Hubbard's teachings.

And Scientology isn't taking Anonymous' attacks lying down: A representative told the St. Petersburg Times that the Church would work to identify the protesters that gathered in Clearwater on February 10, because "any of them could be a security risk." "Sarah" says that one of her cohorts received a text message from an unidentified number bearing the message: "If you know what's good for you, you'll stop lying about Scientology. This is your last warning." The main website used by Anonymous for planning events has been dogged by denial of service attacks for weeks. And in mid-February, a new video purporting to be from Anonymous appeared on YouTube. It threatened to blow up a Scientology building in Los Angeles. Suspicious it could be a fair game tactic, Anonymous members immediately informed the FBI that it didn't come from them. YouTube removed the video, along with the original computer-narrated manifesto. (The latter video was eventually restored; the Church denies any role in getting it taken down.)

Still, the genie is out of the bottle. As Bruce Hines, a former OT VII who left the Church, says, "With all this publicity, very few people would go home after work and say, 'Oh, honey, I just found out about Scientology and I'm going to take this course.' The response would be, 'What? Are you crazy?'"

Click here to view the official response from the Church of Scientology.

This article is from the April issue of Radar Magazine. For a risk-free issue, click here

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