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Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise call in FBI after ‘death threats from anti-scientology group’


ReligionNewsBlog.com • Monday December 29, 2008

Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise call in FBI after ‘death threats from anti-scientology group’

Actor Tom Cruise and his wife Katie Holmes are living in fear after receiving death threats.

Sources close to the star, a leading Scientologist, say the threats are believed to have come from groups opposed to the religious organisation.

The Mail on Sunday can reveal that security has been stepped up around Cruise, 46, Holmes, 30, and their two-year-old daughter Suri.

The couple now live at separate locations and move around in bomb-proof vehicles.

Other protesters have been angered by Cruise’s portrayal of Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg – who was at the centre of the 1944 plot by Nazi officers to assassinate Adolf Hitler – in the film Valkyrie.

Last week Cruise attended the Los Angeles premiere of the movie, which was targeted by protesters from the anti-Scientology group Anonymous. He has been forced to increase security around his family since then.

‘The threats are perceived to be so great that the FBI has been alerted,’ said a source.
[...]

- Source: Katie and Tom call in FBI after ‘death threats from anti-scientology group’, Mail on Sunday (UK), Dec. 28, 2008 — Summarized by Religion News Blog

Then again…

Three things should be kept in mind when reading the above story:

1) Publicity — any publicity — is always helpful just around the time a movie is released

2) When Scientology is involved, skepticism is the best approach. Here is how the cult tried to frame one former Scientologist-turned-critic (as confirmed at the time in documents seized by the FBI):

A Church of Scientology document seized by the FBI in 1977 detailed a plan titled “Operation Freakout”. Its objective was to “get P.C., (American author, Paulette Cooper) incarcerated in a mental institution or jail or at least to hit her so hard that she drops her attacks.” The criminal conspiracy against Cooper actually began years earlier when she published “The Scandal of Scientology,” a book that was critical of Scientology.

They used dirty tactics to defame and intimidate Cooper, including a smear campaign and fabrication of bomb threats. A typewriter was used to print threats on paper stolen from Cooper by Scientology operatives. In 1973 (5 years after the bogus ‘cancellation’ of fair game law) she was indicted and arrested for a crime she didn’t commit – a crime entirely invented by the Church of Scientology. The government canceled the trial later that year, and the seizure of documents in 1977 finally exonerated Cooper.- Source: Scientology’s Unfair Gameoffsite, Newsblaze, May 12, 2008

Paulette Cooper relates her experiences in her article, Looking over my shoulder, The Inside Account of the Story That Almost Killed Meoffsite

3) Anonymous has spent much time and effort addressing the Church of Scientology’s record of hate, harassment and human rights abuses.

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