In the 1950s and 1960s, a HASI (short for Hubbard Association of Scientologists International) was an organization where people would go for Scientology training, auditing, books, tapes, and e-meters.
As one former member put it, Scientology had become the "McDonald's hamburger chain of religion," increasingly adopting the mass-production and marketing aspects of American Commerce.
[4]: 161 It was short-lived, as the Internal Revenue Service stripped CSC of its tax exempt status and all the other Scientology corporations related to it.
[4]: 161 As Hugh Urban wrote, "The complex corporate structure of Scientology helped make it perhaps the most lucrative and powerful new religion in the United States from the 1970s onward.
... Scientology's corporate structure was also closely tied to the obsessions with secrecy, surveillance, and information control that characterized the cold war period as a whole.