VERY EARLY ONE MORNING in July 1977, the FBI, having been tipped off about Operation Snow White, carried out raids on Scientology offices in Los Angeles and Washington, DC, carting off nearly fifty thousand documents. One of the files was titled “Operation Freakout.” It concerned the treatment of Paulette Cooper, the journalist who had published an exposé of Scientology, The Scandal of Scientology, six years earlier. After having been indicted for perjury and making bomb threats against Scientology, Cooper had gone into a deep depression. She stopped eating. At one point, she weighed just eighty-three pounds. She considered suicide. Finally, she persuaded a doctor to give her sodium pentothal, or “truth serum, ” and question her under the anesthesia. The government was sufficiently impressed that the prosecutor dropped the case against her, but her reputation was ruined, she was broke, and her health was uncertain. The day after the FBI raid on the Scientology headquarters, Cooper was flying back from Africa, on assignment for a travel magazine, when she read a story in the International Herald Tribune about the raid. One of the files the federal agents discovered was titled “Operation Freakout.” The goal of the operation was to get Cooper “incarcerated in a mental institution or jail. . Lawrence Wright
About This Quote

The journalist Paulette Cooper was an investigative journalist who wrote an exposé of the Church of Scientology in the 1970s. This exposé was called The Scandal of Scientology. The Church sued her for libel, but she won the case. Then, during the trial, Cooper stopped eating because she was under a lot of pressure.

Before she could be found not guilty, she had to get a second opinion from a doctor who gave her sodium pentothal or truth serum so that she could get a proper opinion on whether or not she should get a not guilty verdict from the court. The doctor did this so that he could have an accurate account of what happened during her trial and he wanted to document it for a book that he wanted to write about her. This way, he could have a true account of what happened to Paulette Cooper during her trial and also have concrete evidence of what happened to Paulette Cooper during her trial.

His purpose in going through with this was so that he could have a true account of what happened to Paulette Cooper during her trial and also have concrete evidence of what happened to Paulette Cooper during her trial. In the end, it is important for people to know what happens when someone gets a trial for something they believe in because it will give them the idea on how they should handle themselves if they ever get in a similar situation with their faith or religion.

Source: Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, And The Prison Of Belief

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