Operation Freakout

The plan, undertaken in 1976 following years of church-initiated lawsuits and covert harassment, was meant to eliminate the perceived threat that Cooper posed to the church and obtain revenge for her publication in 1971 of a highly critical book, The Scandal of Scientology.

Cooper, a freelance journalist and author, had begun researching Scientology in 1968 and wrote a critical article on the church for the British magazine Queen (now Harper's Bazaar) in 1969.

[2][3] Undeterred, Cooper expanded her article into a full-length book, The Scandal of Scientology: A chilling examination of the nature, beliefs and practices of the "now religion"; it was published by Tower Publications, Inc. of New York in the summer of 1971.

As early as February 29, 1972, the church's third most senior official, Jane Kember, sent a directive to Terry Milner, the Deputy Guardian for Intelligence United States (DGIUS), instructing him to collect information about Paulette Cooper so that she could be "handled".

[5] In response, Milner ordered his subordinates to "attack her in as many ways as possible" and undertake "wide-scale exposure of PC's sex life", a plan which was named Operation Daniel.

[5] A contemporary memorandum sent between two Guardian's Office staff noted on a list of jobs successfully accomplished: "Conspired to entrap Mrs. Lovely into being arrested for a felony which she did not commit.

[10][11][12] The church itself imported Cooper's books into foreign countries for the express purpose of suing her in jurisdictions where the libel laws were stricter than in the United States.

Guardian's Office staff member Bruce Raymond noted in an internal memo: "This additional channel [the sixth plan] should really have put her away.

The Guardian's Office was preoccupied for the next year with attempts to hush up the scandal, even going to the lengths of kidnapping Meisner and holding him incommunicado to prevent him from testifying.

They revealed the extent to which the Church had committed "criminal campaigns of vilification, burglaries and thefts [...] against private and public individuals and organizations", as the U.S. Government prosecutor put it.

Mary Sue Hubbard, Jane Kember, Henning Heldt, Morris Budlong, Duke Snider, Dick Weigand, Greg Willardson, Mitchell Hermann and Cindy Raymond were indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of theft, burglary, conspiracy, and other crimes.