The Unbreakable Miss Lovely: How the Church of Scientology tried to destroy Paulette Cooper

by Tony Ortega

  Very truly yours

  TOWER PUBLICATIONS, INC.

  Harry Shorten

  Paulette was bitterly disappointed. She was now on her own defending her book. Within a few months, however, she had an unlikely new source of income that would help her during years of legal battles with Scientology.

  In 1973, Maury Breecher was making only $12,000 a year as a public relations man for a hospital. But then his salary more than doubled – to $25,000 – when he landed a new job as an assignment editor at the National Enquirer in Boca Raton, Florida.

  If the Enquirer didn’t enjoy the best reputation as a supermarket tabloid, it paid much better than most newspapers, and freelancers knew it. Reporters were constantly trying to break into the Enquirer’s pages, and Breecher was one of its gatekeepers. His approval could guarantee a steady stream of income for any writer who regularly got pieces into the paper.

  Early in 1974, Maury was asked to speak to a gathering of the American Society of Journalists and Authors in New York, and Paulette Cooper and her best friend, Barbara Lewis, were in the crowd.

  He bombed. Not only was his speech uninspiring, the members of the ASJA generally considered themselves above the celebrity gossip in the pages of the Enquirer. Barbara hated what Maury had to say so much, she went up to him afterwards and gave him a piece of her mind.

  “You were awful,” she said to him.

  Paulette felt bad for him, apologized for Barbara, and mentioned to Maury that she’d written pieces for Cosmopolitan and other women’s magazines. She knew how much hard work went into those stories, and she assumed it was the same at the Enquirer, whatever people thought of it.

  Maury liked what she had to say, and asked Paulette to submit some of her work. When he liked what he saw, he then asked her to send in some ideas for stories.

  Usually, if a new writer sent in half a dozen ideas, Maury might find one that had some potential. But he was pleasantly surprised when more than half of the stories Paulette sent in seemed perfect for the paper.

  For many months Paulette had not been able to leave New York – a condition of her indictment – but Paulette’s parents had a winter home in Palm Beach near the Enquirer’s headquarters in Lantana, so she was happy to accept when the Enquirer offered to fly her to Florida for a three-week training session. Paulette not only enjoyed the work, she was surprised how much being in Florida and getting away from her New York troubles seemed to reinvigorate her.

  After she returned to New York, Breecher bought stories from Paulette regularly, paying her rates that were top dollar at that time, about $300 for a day’s work. And despite its reputation, the Enquirer did care about accuracy – all writers had to tape interviews and submit the tapes with their drafts for fact-checkers to confirm quotes.

  Paulette’s were always perfect. Maury soon began to rely on her as one of his best freelancers. And gradually, he and his fellow editors began to learn about Paulette’s experiences with the Church of Scientology.

  In the halls of American Media Inc., owner of the Enquirer, there was no love lost for Scientology. Many of the reporters were British, from a country where there seemed to be a greater awareness of Scientology, and one of the reporters had even been sued over a story he’d written about Hubbard. Before long, the editors of the newspaper were fully aware that the work they were providing Paulette was the only thing enabling her to carry on her fight against the numerous church lawsuits.

  When Paulette’s own supply of story ideas ran low, or when she was so distracted by legal work – depositions, interrogatories, and questions from her lawyers – that she didn’t have time to search for leads, Maury and his fellow editors canvassed the office for items she could work on just to keep her income steady. They knew full well that much of the money they were paying her was going to attorneys and depositions and the other numerous costs associated with her court fights.

  In part to keep the church from knowing where her money was coming from, Paulette rarely took bylines on her stories at the Enquirer. Most of the time, only she and the editors knew that she’d written a particular story. And although an internal Guardian’s Office document shows that by 1976 Scientology knew Paulette was working for the newspaper, none of the harassment she was going through in other parts of her life interrupted her work for the Enquirer. Before long, she was relying completely on the Enquirer to keep her afloat.

  In her first year with the newspaper, 1974, her total income from all sources was $15,434. Of that, $13,413 was from the Enquirer.

  Her stories included one about Richard Nixon and his college roommates breaking into a dean’s office at Duke University in 1936 to get an advance look at their grades. (NIXON’S BREAK IN... 36 YEARS BEFORE WATERGATE)

  Another story featured a boy of 13 whose brain tumor had left him blind and wheelchair-bound. (DYING BOY NEEDS TO KNOW YOU CARE). The boy received tens of thousands of letters because of Paulette’s article, and his mother wrote the paper to say it had made her son happy before he finally succumbed.

  Paulette bared all to get the scoop on Paradise Lakes in Land O’Lakes, Florida (THE NAKED TRUTH ABOUT LIFE IN A NUDIST CAMP), and she also handled many of the “Women’s Lib” stories for the newspaper. She developed a relationship with a psychologist who could make the case for, or against, the women’s movement, depending on what Paulette needed. Privately, Paulette referred to her as her “trained seal.” (HOW WOMEN’S LIB CAN HELP YOUR MARRIAGE…but also WOMEN’S LIB BUSTING UP MARRIAGES)

  She dabbled in a few health stories (20 MILLION AMERICANS SUFFER FROM PINWORMS), and everything in between, including:

  MAN WHO TRACES MISSING HEIRS FINDS SOME PEOPLE WON’T TAKE THE MONEY

  HOW TO ENJOY BEING A WOMAN -- WITH YOUR HUSBAND’S HELP

  WACKY THINGS THAT DON’T GET INTO GUINNESS BOOK OF WORLD RECORDS

  90% POLLED CAN’T THINK OF ONE ACCOMPLISHMENT BY CONGRESS IN THE LAST 10 YEARS

  TWICE AS MANY PEOPLE KNOW THEIR ASTROLOGICAL SIGN AS THEIR BLOOD TYPE

  Maury Breecher considered Paulette Cooper one of his best reporters, but he and the other editors at the Enquirer also knowingly kept her income healthy in order to help her from going under while she fought Scientology.

  The newspaper never publicly received credit for it.

  10

  Don Alverzo

  Len Zinberg was told to dress like a bum. It wasn’t really much of a stretch – like always, he had almost no money to his name. But he did as he was told and made himself look homeless.

  Then he was given a manila envelope that contained about 30 pages of material inside. It wasn’t his job to look at them, but he did anyway. They appeared to be pages from a diary written by a teenage girl. They contained complaints about “mom” and “dad” that seemed pretty typical for a girl that age. Also, there were some thoughts about sex and other embarrassing things. Len didn’t ask how the Guardian’s Office had obtained the pages. His job was simply to deliver them to Ted Cooper.

  It was March 1974, and Ted’s jewelry office was in a building in midtown Manhattan. Len went up the elevator to the 15th floor, and then approached the receptionist. He put the envelope down on her desk, and told her it was for “Mr. Crooper,” purposely mispronouncing it, just as he’d been told by the Guardian’s Office.

  He then immediately turned around, avoided the elevators, and found the stairs. He rapidly stepped down all 15 floors on his way out of the building.

  While the Guardian’s Office was still targeting Paulette, she was still targeting Scientology. She had already written a popular book on the subject, and she was writing about other subjects for the Enquirer, but whenever she could, she encouraged other journalists and publications to write about L. Ron Hubbard and his controversies.

  She continued to hear from people whose children had joined Scientology, or members who had decided to leave and wanted to talk to someone. Paulette became someone who connected them with newspaper reporters or magazine writers, urging them to make s
uch stories public.

  Early in 1974, Paulette helped a young reporter in St. Louis who wanted to learn more about Scientology and needed help finding people who could talk about it. Elaine Viets was only 24, but she was already tired of her job as a fashion reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She felt stuck in a “pink ghetto,” never getting to write serious news stories because of her age and her gender. Then, one day she heard from a handyman in her building who knew she worked for the newspaper.

  “If newspapers were so great, they’d help my girlfriend,” he said. He told her that his girlfriend had joined Scientology, and she’d gotten pregnant by an ethics officer who then wanted her to have an abortion. At the time, abortion was still illegal in Missouri, so Scientology had flown her to New York to have the procedure done. When the young woman later wanted to leave the church, she was told that if she did, they would tell her very Catholic mother about the abortion. For years, they had held it over her, keeping her from leaving.

  Viets wanted to tell the young woman’s story. She convinced her editors to let her turn it into a major project about all aspects of Scientology with the help of the paper’s religion writer. She then looked up Paulette, and with her help found people like Nan McLean and her son, John, who had spent time on the yacht Apollo with L. Ron Hubbard.

  Elaine’s series was the first glimpse for the public of what life aboard the Apollo was like. “McLean describes Hubbard as about 65 years old, short and fat, weighing about 250 pounds. He has no teeth and is often sick. He is given to wild mood swings. ‘Hubbard has the best of everything possible aboard a ship,’ McLean said. ‘He has cars, three motorcycles, a stereo system, the best food and clothing, a cook, a valet and a private suite of rooms.’ His wife Mary Sue and some of his children, Diana and her husband, [Jonathan] Horwich, Quentin, 19, Suzette, 17, and Arthur, 13, live on the Apollo.”

  McLean said that since he had left the church, his home near Toronto had been picketed by protestors who one day held a “funeral” for the lost souls of the family, and carried a coffin through local streets.

  In the final installment of the Post-Dispatch series, Viets discussed Scientology’s reputation for spying on people and harassing them. Paulette was mentioned. Elaine reported that the church denied it took part in any covert activities.

  The series was a huge success and was nominated for a Pulitzer. After it came out, Elaine Viets continued to do hard news and didn’t have to go back to the fashion pages.

  Two months later, the Church of Scientology sued the Post-Dispatch for Elaine’s series. And despite its public denial that it spied on enemies or took part in covert operations, it sent spies to infiltrate the office of the attorneys representing the Post-Dispatch.

  One of them was a man named Merrell Vannier, 26, a Scientologist at the St. Louis church who had become a volunteer for the Guardian’s Office a short time before. Vannier had been asked to help a more senior agent named Don Alverzo from Los Angeles.

  “Don Alverzo” was not the man’s real identity. The name was from a 1940s-era radio announcer’s test that was popularized by Jerry Lewis: “One hen; two ducks; three squawking geese; four Limerick oysters; five corpulent porpoises; six pairs of Don Alverzo’s tweezers; seven thousand Macedonians in full battle array; eight brass monkeys from the ancient, sacred scripts of Egypt; nine apathetic, sympathetic, diabetic old men on roller skates with a marked propensity towards procrastination and sloth; ten lyrical, spherical, diabolical denizens of the deep who haul stall around the corner of the quo of the quay of the quivery, all at the same time.”

  Merrell didn’t know Alverzo’s real name. No one at B-I seemed to. But Merrell’s impression was that in the GO’s spy division, no one was more experienced or skilled than Alverzo. He only knew that Alverzo said he had flown helicopter missions in Vietnam, and he had apparently made his mark for the GO earlier, in an operation in New York. But Merrell didn’t know the details.

  Alverzo’s first idea was to have Merrell (who, besides spying for Scientology, was also taking a break after three semesters in law school) apply for a clerking job at the building where the newspaper’s attorneys worked. After an interview, however, Merrell thought his cover had been blown. Then Alverzo noticed that the building had advertised for a night janitor. So Merrell used a different name, applied for it, and got the job.

  Merrell would go into the building at 10 pm and leave at 6 in the morning. He cleaned offices all night, and brought back information about the layout of the offices and who worked where. He told Alverzo that he could go anywhere he wanted, but there was one office in the building he couldn’t get into—and it was where the lawyers for the newspaper worked.

  “Find out where the key is,” Alverzo told him.

  Merrell asked around, and learned that there was a door key in a small shack on top of the building. He spent some time getting to know the maintenance man who worked there, and asked him why he wasn’t asked to clean that one locked office.

  “They have their own cleaners, and they unlock it only for them,” he was told.

  Merrell reported that information to Alverzo.

  “You have to get me that key so I can copy it. Just figure out when he takes his break,” Alverzo told him.

  Merrell worked on the maintenance man, sharing smokes with him until he trusted Merrell to go into the shack and grab a cigarette even if he wasn’t around. Then, Merrell waited for the right time to grab the key when his new friend was on a break. After he obtained it, Merrell ran down to meet Alverzo in the alley behind the building, and Alverzo dashed to get the key copied. Merrell got it back in place only 20 minutes after he’d taken it.

  With a copy of the key, Merrell now began entering the locked office at night and mapped it out, bringing to Alverzo its layout and location of files. Then, after they’d studied it, they set a date to begin taking out documents.

  Over three nights, Merrell unlocked the door, Alverzo and another agent entered the offices, locked the door behind them, and then copied documents while Merrell stood outside keeping watch. Merrell’s heart would race, but he noticed that Alverzo was usually smiling. He seemed unflappable.

  After the operation, Alverzo told him that the documents turned out to be very important, providing the church new information about battles it had been engaged in even back to the 1950s.

  “You made your bones, kid. You’re in,” he told Merrell. In New York, Paulette Cooper began to hold up her end of the bargain she had made with prosecutors, who put off her trial on the bomb threat letters. She started making regular weekly trips to Hastings-on-Hudson, a Westchester County town north of New York City, where Herbert Benglesdorf had an office.

  Benglesdorf was on the faculty of the New York Medical College at Metropolitan Hospital, and since 1962 he’d been certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. At Paulette’s request, Benglesdorf took no notes of their sessions, and he soon came to appreciate why she wanted it that way. Although her motivation to see him might have been about her legal situation, she took the sessions seriously. And Benglesdorf took her problems seriously. Of which there were many.

  She worried that the harassment or another scheme to get her arrested might start up again, and she was depressed about how her career had been affected. She had been eating a little better, but she still had little interest in the things other people seemed to care about. Benglesdorf thought her account of what had happened – the harassment, the indictment, the surveillance, the phone tapping – was credible, if some of her fears seemed exaggerated.

  She was, in other words, a perfectly normal woman under extraordinary stress produced by matters out of her control.

  She told him about her history with men. About Bob Straus, and about how he had drifted away while she was under indictment. In July 1974, when Paulette turned 32, she couldn’t help thinking about what might have happened if she’d stayed together with Bob. Maybe it wasn’t too late, she wondered.

  She called him
and left a message. His letter in response surprised and devastated her. For the first time, she learned that Bob had also been targeted with anonymous smear letters which threatened his career as a prosecutor. They had been mailed to his bosses, and contained information he assumed only Paulette knew. “I can come to no conclusion other than that you wrote that letter and the bomb threats,” he wrote to her. “I never want to hear of you or from you again,” he added.

  Reading that, she wept. She had always believed he was one of the few people who had never doubted her innocence. And now he was accusing her of sending the bomb threats. She was stunned.

  Benglesdorf talked her through it. Over time, as her mandatory year seeing Benglesdorf progressed, she came to rely on him more and more. She told him about her work at the Enquirer. She told him about her adventures with other men. Less and less, she talked about what had brought her to him.

  At first, she had resented being forced to get therapy. But as with her experiences earlier, with Stanley Cath in Massachusetts, Paulette enjoyed therapy, and she came to rely on Benglesdorf’s counsel. Particularly, it turned out, when a new drama in her life began to emerge. One that had nothing to do with a church or books or spies or the FBI.

  It was about a new man that Paulette had fallen in love with.

  Four months after the St. Louis break-in, on October 30, 1974, Don Alverzo flew to Washington D.C. to meet for the first time with a man named Michael Meisner. Meisner was the top Scientology spy in the nation’s capital. His title was Assistant Guardian for Information in the District of Columbia (AG I DC). Also present at the meeting at the Guardian’s Office at 2125 S Street, NW, were GO operatives Mitchell Hermann and Bruce Ullman.

  Alverzo had flown out from Los Angeles carrying with him several pieces of equipment. One of them was a multiple electronic outlet, the kind of thing you plugged into the wall socket so you could then plug in more items. Alverzo explained that the object actually concealed a bugging device. It could pick up the conversation in a room and broadcast it over a weak radio signal to a receiver nearby.