The Guardian’s expose of Narconon is great — except for this puzzling issue

[Narconon Ojai and ABLE’s ED]

We want to thank all of the readers who sent us messages about this weekend’s terrific expose of the Narconon drug program in the Guardian*, which involved a nine-month investigation and publication on the newspaper’s front page.

Journalist Shanti Das did a superb job not only describing the risks of Narconon’s cold-duck approach to serious drug addiction, but also pointed out the glaring issues about the lack of regulation and oversight of the Narconon clinic in England.

Journalists have been exposing Narconon as a quack therapy for many years, and for that reason we wanted to bring up something about the Guardian’s otherwise excellent piece. We have a feeling this wasn’t Das’s choice, but for some reason legacy outfits like the Guardian make no mention of the decades, literally, of previous journalistic exposes of Narconon, and in this case it led to the one puzzling aspect of the resulting article: The odd way it handled the connection between Narconon and Scientology.

Readers of the Bunker know very well that there is no question about this. But the Guardian was puzzlingly circumspect about it, saying things like, “Scientology beliefs also appear to influence Narconon’s approach.”

Appear to influence?

We thought we would present some of the key evidence that Narconon is Scientology in case there are readers of the Guardian’s piece that are left wondering about it.

First, there are the former Scientology executives who are happy to tell you that even if Narconon was started by a prison inmate named William Benitez in 1966, Narconon was definitely part of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s “social coordination” program of the early 1970s, establishing a number of front groups whose mission is to carry Hubbard’s name into drug rehab (Narconon), school curricula (Applied Scholastics), prisons (Criminon), and business administration (WISE), particularly among dentists, veterinarians, and most especially chiropractors.

Narconon is, there is no question about it, a front group for the church of Scientology, and every single Narconon clinic in the world can only operate under a license of another of Scientology’s subsidiaries, the Association for Better Living and Education, or ABLE.

This is all well established in dozens of court cases and other documentation, and former Scientology executives such as Mike Rinder or Claire Headley are happy to say so for a publication like the Guardian.

And let’s go through some of the other things we have seen over the years that leave no doubt that Narconon is a creature of Scientology and not simply under its “influence.”

1. Luke Catton. At one point, Lucas Catton was the president of what was then the most important Narconon center in the world, Narconon Arrowhead in Oklahoma. In 2013, Luke went public with a book and an appearance on NBC’s Rock Center, explaining that Narconon of course is Scientology, from its rehab programs to its licensing to its control by ABLE and ultimately its subservience to Scientology leader David Miscavige. Luke has continued to speak out about this, putting out a new book in 2020, and there are few people were in a better place to describe how a Narconon outfit works, day in and day out.

[Luke Catton, left, with Scientology leader David Miscavige at Narconon Arrowhead]

2. David Miscavige. If Scientology is only an “influence” on Narconon, why does David Miscavige talk about it like it’s part of the Scientology organization in his annual speeches? And during those speeches, video graphics play behind him such as the one here, as he describes that Narconon clinics are part of the expansion that his “Ideal Org” program promises, with new churches and clinics spreading across the world.

Here, you can watch Miscavige himself describing Narconon as part of his expansion plans in this 2004 speech.

3. Marc Headley. It was Marc Headley who first told us that not only does ABLE control Narconon, but ABLE is staffed only with Scientology Sea Org members, the hardcore elite of the movement who have all signed billion-year contracts. Marc knew this because he was one of them, and he’d be happy to tell any journalist that yes, Narconon is controlled by a Scientology entity that is entirely staffed by Scientology’s ersatz navy.

4. Scientology announces changes at Narconon. One of the best single pieces of evidence that Narconon is fully under Scientology control is when they came out and said that they were making radical changes to it.

Don’t remember that? We sure do. It was 2015, and Narconon had been under serious attack for years following the deaths of several patients in this country. Attorneys smelled blood in the water, and dozens of lawsuits were filed around the US. We closely documented the changes we saw to Narconon’s overall management, and then in 2015, ABLE’s own executive director, who was a woman named Shannon Walker, then began personally showing up to open some new facilities then (including the celebrity drunk tank that they created out of Larry Hagman’s old estate in Ojai, California), making it very plain that ABLE had taken tighter control of the struggling network.

[ABLE’s executive director, taking over Narconon in 2015]

“I said it a year ago. He’s going to have to abandon Narconon as he knows it. The only thing he didn’t change was the name,” Mike Rinder told us then, referring to Scientology leader David Miscavige making wholesale changes that remain in place today in the US, where Narconon is only a shadow of what it was previously. At one point there were 21 clinics in the US, today there are only five.

And one of our favorite pieces of evidence, the plaque.

5. David Venemon. In 2019, a man named David Venemon came forward to reveal that he had been behind some of the biggest leaks of information out of Narconon, including a photo of a plaque given to Narconon Fresh Start owner Larry Trahant for helping to recruit so many patients to Scientology’s “Bridge” itself.

It was Venemon who had also smuggled out key scripts which demonstrated how Narconon fooled unsuspecting callers into sending their loved ones to Narconon centers with a lot of misinformation.

We were grateful to Venemon for having the fortitude to bring out so much information making it plain how Scientology controls Narconon, as have so many others.

There’s simply no excuse for news organizations today to hesitate pointing out this relationship, and we want to make sure these great exposes of the past are not forgotten.

[* For our British friends helpfully pointing out that the story appeared in their copies of the Observer on Sunday, we read it at its sister publication the Guardian’s website on Saturday, and we hope you can overlook our lack of familiarity with British publication branding.]

---

Want to help?

Please consider joining the Underground Bunker as a paid subscriber. Your $7 a month will go a long way to helping this news project stay independent, and you’ll get access to our special material for subscribers. Or, you can support the Underground Bunker with a Paypal contribution to bunkerfund@tonyortega.org, an account administered by the Bunker’s attorney, Scott Pilutik. And by request, this is our Venmo link, and for Zelle, please use (tonyo94 AT gmail).

---

Thank you for reading today’s story here at Substack. For the full picture of what’s happening today in the world of Scientology, please join the conversation at tonyortega.org, where we’ve been reporting daily on David Miscavige’s cabal since 2012. There you’ll find additional stories, and our popular regular daily features:

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

Past is Prologue: From this week in history at alt.religion.scientology

Random Howdy: Your daily dose of the Captain

Here’s the link for today’s post at tonyortega.org

And whatever you do, subscribe to this Substack so you get our breaking stories and daily features right to your email inbox every morning.

Paid subscribers get access to two special podcast series every week…

Up the Bridge: A weekly journey through Scientology’s actual “technology”

Group Therapy: Our round table of rowdy regulars on the week’s news