Operation Freakout

Operation Freakout, also known as Operation PC Freakout, was a Church of Scientology covert plan intended to have the U.S. author and journalist Paulette Cooper imprisoned or committed to a psychiatric hospital. 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. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) discovered documentary evidence of the plot and the preceding campaign of harassment during an investigation into the Church of Scientology in 1977, eventually leading to the church compensating Cooper in an out-of-court settlement.

On June 11, 1976, two Scientology agents were caught in the act of attempted burglary at a courthouse in Washington, D.C., as part of an operation to purge unfavorable records about Scientology and its founder, L. Ron Hubbard. The Guardian's Office was preoccupied for the next year with attempts to hush up the scandal. The church sought to bring a quick end to the dispute with Cooper in December 1976 when it proposed to settle with her, on condition that she was not to republish or comment on The Scandal of Scientology and agree to assign the book's copyright to the Church of Scientology of California. On July 8, 1977, the FBI raided Scientology offices in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., seizing over 48,000 documents. 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. The documents were later released to the public, enabling Cooper and the world at large to learn about the details of Operation Freakout. Although in the end nobody was indicted for the harassment of Cooper, the wider campaign of criminal activity was successfully prosecuted by the United States Government. Nine persons were indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of theft, burglary, conspiracy, and other crimes. With the exception of two of them, the defendants agreed to uncontested stipulation of the evidence. All of the defendants were imprisoned, serving up to four years in jail. They were tried, convicted and sentenced in the same courthouse that their agents had been caught robbing.