Meet John Blosser, Scientology’s new shill, who is targeting Graham Berry

[John Blosser, dulcimer enthusiast and Scientology’s man of the moment]

A few days ago at Facebook, attorney Graham Berry notified his friends that he appears to be the target of a new “noisy investigation” by the Church of Scientology.

Even better, Berry also mentioned that he was the subject of Scientology “Fair Game” in an official court document in the Valerie Haney lawsuit, and as you can imagine, Scientology’s attorneys are not happy about it!

Oh, Graham. Giving Scientology heartburn for more than 30 years now.

But let us back up a bit and tell you about a man named John Blosser.

In 2021, we first learned that Blosser was asking questions about us, and in an unusual way: We heard from an old friend in Kansas City who told us that Blosser had reached out to him, asking about our tenure there. From 2003 to 2005 we enjoyed a great job as the managing editor of The Pitch, a fun and feisty alt-weekly newspaper. We wrote about local politics and other matters, and never about Scientology: There just wasn’t enough Scientology in KC to pay attention to. We also got to know a local TV reporter who did some great investigative work. We hadn’t heard from him in quite a few years when he contacted us to let us know that Blosser was asking questions about us.

Why would a reporter be looking up people we knew almost 20 years ago, and in a city where we didn’t write at all about Scientology, and why would that person not be calling us directly? Yeah, we’ve been here before. It was a classic Scientology “noisy investigation,” and we soon started hearing from some others that this reporter was contacting them.

Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard explained to his followers in 1966 that they should use noisy investigations to harass and intimidate the church’s enemies:

You find out where he or she works or worked, doctor, dentist, friends, neighbours, anyone, and 'phone 'em up and say, 'I am investigating Mr/Mrs .......... for criminal activities as he/she has been trying to prevent Man's freedom and is restricting my religious freedom and that of my friends and children, etc

The ideas is, you call people close to the target without actually calling the target themselves, knowing that it will get back to them they they’re being investigated. Scientology wants it to get back to them, which explains why Hubbard called it a “noisy investigation.”

After we heard that Blosser was asking about us, we learned that he had been a National Enquirer reporter who lost his job after the newspaper had to pay a huge settlement when a story he worked on turned out to be defamatory and untrue. You can read about it in this Daily News report which says that the Enquirer piece made some claims about a friend of Philip Seymour Hoffman who supposedly had given an interview about the actor’s death. The friend said he hadn’t talked to anyone, and sued the paper.

Then, in 2022, we learned that Blosser had moved on from us to another target: Leah Remini and Mike Rinder. Mike told us that Blosser was calling their former colleagues who had worked on the Scientology and the Aftermath television series.

“He actually contacted the family members of people who worked on the show!” Mike said. “Scientology operatives are constantly trying to find people who will say what horrible, rotten people Leah and I were to work with. They might have found someone who didn't do their job and ended up leaving the production team who would say something negative, but they may have even struck out on that  The core team we worked with — producers, camera, lighting, research, editors and many others remain our friends and are very loyal and hate everything about Scientology.”

After comparing notes with Mike, we realized that Blosser is the new Jim Lynch, a formerly legitimate journalist who had become Scientology’s shill, investigating each of us at different times. Lynch died at 59 of cancer in 2013.

And now, Scientology’s new shill has turned his attention on Graham Berry, who started getting messages from people about receiving strange phone calls about him.

“A ‘journalist’ just called asking me questions about you which I basically skirted around or said ‘no comment’ until I could figure out what he was getting at. Then he started asking if I or anyone else ever felt sexually threatened by you, after which I said no, of course not, this call is over. He said he was just trying to get information for a story he’s working on for his clients, which struck me as odd. A journalist with ‘clients.’ I said goodbye and hung up. Unfortunately, I didn’t get his name, sorry.”

Another friend did get the name.

“Someone from South Florida called me today about a lawsuit, someone named John Blosser? Asking about rent payment, our relationship, if you hit on people, who the money was going to… wanted to make sure you knew because he seems to be digging and implying negative of you. Wanted to let you know.”

If you know about Graham Berry’s history, you’ll recognize what Blosser is doing. We first wrote about Berry in 1999, and even then he had been a thorn in Scientology’s side for almost a decade. In one memorable early legal maneuver, he had process servers chase down Scientology celebrities at a Winter Wonderland event in Hollywood.

More recently, we’ve documented how successful Berry has been getting money back for some older Scientologists. Berry is so intimidating to the church, at one point Scientology attorney Kendrick Moxon chased him down at the Stanley Mosk courthouse in Los Angeles and threw a $10,000 check at him, demanding that he take it for his client to end a case. Berry refused, and got his client a lot more money than that.

And now, Berry has stepped up his involvement in Valerie Haney’s lawsuit, and as we’ve been telling you, Scientology is hopping mad about it.

So naturally, they’re reaching back into their same old playbook.

In our 1999 story, we explained that because Berry is gay, the famously homophobic church had sent out a disgraced former cop to pretend he was on an active police investigation into sexual accusations about Berry. And now, more than 20 years later, Scientology is doing the same thing again, this time sending out a disgraced former reporter to ask Berry’s friends if they’ve felt “sexually threatened” by him.

It’s classic stuff. And Berry wanted the court to know about it.

On March 15, there was a hearing in Valerie Haney’s lawsuit, which has been forced by the court into Scientology’s version of “religious arbitration.” In the hearing, we learned that Scientology now has all three arbitrators in place, and Judge Gail Killefer has given the two sides six months to accomplish the arbitration and come back to her with its results.

In the meantime, Scientology had filed for sanctions against Haney because they were livid that Berry had gotten so involved, and had put some things into a court document (like a declaration by Mike Rinder), that they found “improper, unreliable, or inadmissible.” They asked the court to sanction Berry for his filing to the tune of $107,832.50.

Berry answered that motion for sanctions with his own broadside, but then, during the March 15 hearing, he made a remarkable concession. If you were reading our contemporary notes of the meeting, you remember what he did: Since the arbitration was set and there was nothing else to argue about in court, he offered to take back the document that had so enraged Scientology if they would drop the request for sanctions.

The judge was clearly in favor of this, and asked both sides to make the submissions necessary to accomplish it. Berry then filed a motion to withdraw his previous submission. But in it, he also happened to mention that he’s now the subject of a Scientology Fair Game attack, and attached the messages about Blosser that he’d received from his friends.

Hoo boy. Scientology attorneys William Forman and Matthew Hinks have blown a gasket over it.

While the Request purports to withdraw the offending submissions to avoid Defendants’ sanctions motion, it contains improper argument and irrelevant and inadmissible material. For instance, the Request argues that “sanctions would have been unauthorized” and Defendants’ “Sanctions Motion would have been subject to a potential cross-motion for sanctions.” Yet, the entire purpose of the submission should be to avoid adjudication of the sanctions motion, and not attempt to litigate it. The Request further claims that Defendant is currently engaged in “Fair Game” activity against Graham Berry…

As a result, the Scientology attorneys are not taking back their motion for sanctions and have asked that it be heard on June 20 as originally scheduled.

When we saw that Berry had put Blosser’s name in an official court document, we figured it was about time to go public with what we knew about him, and do what he never did while he was investigating us: We gave him a call.

The Bunker: Is it true that you’re writing for Freedom magazine?

John Blosser: I have.

The Bunker: Are you working on an article for Freedom about Graham Berry?

Blosser: Yes.

The Bunker: How’s the pay at Scientology?

Blosser: I’m not going to answer that.

The Bunker: I guess you had a problem at the Enquirer?

Blosser: No, not really. Wasn’t my problem.

The Bunker: Working for the Church of Scientology. Isn’t that the bottom of the barrel?

Blosser: I decline to answer.

Well, we thanked him for taking our call. And we are happy finally to name him and warn others that if John Blosser calls, he’s working for the Church of Scientology. What a legacy.

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Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in history

Avast, Ye Mateys: Snapshots from Scientology’s years at sea

Overheard in the Freezone: Indie Hubbardism, one thought at a time

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