Church of Scientology Versus Trey Parker and Matt Stone?

Whoa!  This is some gnarly shit!

Allow me to enlighten you with a little backstory first because this isn't just one of my brain dead Lindsay Lohan posts...that's right.  We're getting all religulous up in here today.

So, more or less this story begins and ends with Mark "Marty" Rathbun - he was a high-ranking Scientology guy who "defected" (their word not mine) in 2004.  After he left the church he started a blog in 2009 and has been releasing insider info ever since. 

Now, I know these guys are fucking nuts (no offense to anyone) because of the way that the religion is run.  They have policies for "retaliation and spying operations" for fuck's sakes.  I mean, whatever happened to praise and worship?  Not to sound completely naive but isn't that what most churches are for?  Well, when they got their asses in a knot about a stupidly awesome ep of South Park ("Stuck in the Closet") in 2006 it was always speculated that they launched into a bunch of shady games to eff with Parker and Stone's lives (something they try to do to people who bash them or defect from the church sometimes.)  

Though it was never clear exactly what happened this sheds some light on the issue.  

So let's get to the story, a couple of days ago Marty Rathbun's blog leaked out the following internal memo in full form complete with intro and parenthetical (Ha!  I had to look up how to spell that) explanation.

From Marty's blog:

"In ’06 the creators of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, became targets of Corporate Scientology’s OSA. Operations were run in an attempt to silence Parker and Stone.  While Corporate Scientology was ultimately unsuccessful, left behind an instructive data trail during their efforts.

16 April 2006 Report by Commanding Officer Office of Special Affairs (Corporate Scientology harassment agency, also known as OSA)(Parenthetical notations added)
Re: South Park
Eric Sherman (then-corporate Scientologist writer), who is good friends with Lloyd Kaufman (independent film maker), contacted him about South Park. Kaufman knows Trey Parker and Matt Stone and has been friends with them for years. As regards their attack on Scientology, Kaufman felt that this is the same thing they do to everyone. He said that they consider that what they do is satire and that they attack anyone or any group without any regard for who they are or what they are. They love it when they get some reaction. This week they created a new flap when they were going to show a picture of the prophet Mohammed but were censored from doing so by Comedy Central. (This  was covered in the press – Comedy Central was criticized for being hypocritical, i.e., they allowed South Park to show Jesus defecating on an American flag and George Bush, but not to show an image of Mohammed. This upset Christians in particular the Catholic League.)
To find a direct line into Stone and Parker some of their friends have been identified. One is Matthew Prager, who has been a friend since 1991. He worked with them as a writer on a show called, “That’s My Bush” which Parker and Stone created. Prager said he worked in executive positions at Disney, MTV and finally, at HBO, before shedding his tie for blue jeans at “That’s My Bush.”
Another is John Stamos who is best friends with Matt Stone. Apparently his ex-wife, Rebecca Romijn, is also good friends with Stone. Rebecca is a former supermodel and currently has her own TV show.  In 2000’s X-Men, she had her first major movie role as Mystique and returned to the role in the 2003 sequel. 
David Goodman is another friend of Parker and Stone. He was in college with them and has co-written some of the South Park episodes with them.
These connections are being PRC’d.  (PRC = Public Records Check –an intense collection of every public record available on the target)
There are some strings that will be pulled on the PRC on Stone. Otherwise the special collections (covert information gathering such as trash collection, purchased phone records, hacked airline reservations, purchased bank records) will be debugged in order to get some viable strings that can be pulled.

It is clear that this investigation is not going anywhere and DCOE (D/Commanding Officer External OSA) is getting it debugged."

Whaaa???  LEAVE UNCLE JESSE OUT OF THIS!!!  The church has responded but I'm not going to go into the rest of this mess because it's just so huge but here's the link to Marty Rathbun's blog and here's the link to the retaliation response from the church.  Interesting stuff if you're into that type of thing. 

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