Boston Skeptics in the Pub - Tony Ortega

In 1971, a New York magazine freelancer named Paulette Cooper published The Scandal of Scientology, one of the first books to give the public a view into this secretive organization. She nearly paid for it with her life. What even Paulette didn't know at the time was the extent that Scientology and its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, would go to destroy someone it perceived as an enemy. By 1973, Paulette had been framed in an elaborate plot involving fake bomb-threat letters, and she faced 15 years in federal prison if convicted. Newly unearthed documents show that by that time, Scientology had kept her under tight surveillance for several years and proposed many ways to destroy her reputation and life. She was finally exonerated after the FBI raided Scientology in 1977 and found many of those documents, which referred to her by the code name "Miss Lovely." Eleven top Scientology officials went to prison after that raid, but more than 30 years later, Scientology is still around -- and so is Paulette.

In his new, and first, book, The Unbreakable Miss Lovely, journalist Tony Ortega tells Paulette's story in full for the first time, with eyewitness accounts and new documents which describe the full extent of her ordeal -- and her continued fight against a group now seriously in decline. The book also describes her childhood survival of the Holocaust, and her much calmer life in Florida today with her husband Paul, as well as the latest developments in the controversies facing Scientology today.

Tony Ortega is the executive editor at TheLipTV, former executive editor of The Raw Story, and former editor-in-chief of The Village Voice. In March, he appeared in Alex Gibney's documentary, Going Clear, on HBO. The "Daily Beast" and the "Orange County Weekly" have written about Tony's book and about his appearance (with Paulette Cooper) at the Center for Inquiry in May of this year.

Join us for the next Skeptics in the Pub on Monday, August 24 at 7pm on the 3rd floor of the historic Hong Kong restaurant in Harvard Square to learn more about Scientology and The Unbreakable Miss Lovely.

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