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They
purchased
the Ft. Harrison Hotel and a former bank building in the downtown
area under the name United Churches of Florida to hide Scientology's
connection and set into motion a plan to take over the city; a plan
Hubbard labeled Project
Normandy. Scientology's Guardian's Office (since renamed the Office of Special Affairs) set about infiltrating the government, the media and any other group they felt might stand in the way of Scientology's goal. Their goal simply was to make Clearwater the first Scientology City. It was only after the FBI raided Scientology's headquarters in Los Angeles and Washington, DC in 1979 that the citizens of Clearwater discovered just how far Scientology would go to eliminate their "enemies." Good men such as Mayor Gabe Cazares were targeted with vicious campaigns meant, as Hubbard would put it, to ruin them utterly. In 1982, the city held a week's worth of hearings on Scientology. The people of Clearwater were shocked to hear the testimony from people who had been in Scientology or attacked by Scientology including author Paulette Cooper and L. Ron Hubbard's own son. Those hearings can now be seen in their entirety on our website. Unfortunately, the city found themselves unable to fight Scientology's mounting lawsuits and over the years have resigned themselves to the fact that Scientology is there to stay. Even the Clearwater Police Department, which once spent decades investigating complaints about the cult, now allows its officer to work for them. The police report directly to the Office of Special Affairs. Scientology now dominates the otherwise dormant downtown and seems to set much of the agenda, directly or indirectly. The streets of downtown Clearwater are filled with uniformed Sea Org members trooping from building to building, earning poverty wages while servicing Scientology's wealthy public members who travel to Clearwater from around the world upper level courses unavailable anywhere else.
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