Operation Freakout - Harassment

Harassment

Cooper was seen as a high-priority target by the Church’s Guardian’s Office, which acted as a combination of intelligence agency, legal office and public relations bureau for the Church. 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) directing that he find out information about Paulette Cooper so that she could be “handled”. 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”.

Cooper counter-sued on March 30, 1972, demanding $15.4 million in damages for the ongoing harassment. However, the Church stepped up the harassment, for instance painting her name and phone number on street walls so that she would receive obscene phone calls, and subscribing her to pornographic mailing lists. She also received anonymous death threats and her neighbors received letters claiming that she had a venereal disease.

In December 1972, a woman ostensibly soliciting funds for United Farm Workers stole a quantity of stationery from Cooper’s apartment. A few days later, the New York Church of Scientology “received” two anonymous bomb threats. The following May, Cooper was indicted for making the bomb threats and arraigned for a Federal grand jury. The threats had been written on her stationery, which was marked with her fingerprints.

The charges were eventually dropped in 1975 with the filing of a Nolle prosequi order by the local US Attorney’s office, but it was not until the fall of 1977 that the FBI discovered that the bomb threats had been staged by the Guardian’s Office. 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. She was arraigned for the crime.”

The Church sued Cooper again in 1975 in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia in 1976.

The Church itself was reported to have 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.