Spies and Scientologists: ASIO and a controversial minority religion in Cold War Australia, 1956–83

Bernard Doherty on Scientology Documentaries and Docuseries.

“…Following on from this article, I undertook extensive archival research in Australia on the earlier history of Scientology, examining it from a social, political, and legal perspective. These articles and book chapters have included extended historical analyses of the background and circumstances to anti‐Scientology legislation in three Australian states in the 1960s (2015a; 2017a; 2017b); the nature and extent of law enforcement surveillance of Scientology in Australia from the 1950s through to the 1980s (Doherty 2016); Scientology’s engagement with the Australian lawcourts (Doherty & Richardson 2019); and most recently the place of Scientology in the wider history of Australian “cult controversies” (Doherty 2020a). I have also written a forthcoming piece discussing some of the challenges which face scholars engaged in the study of Scientology based around an earlier blog post for the Religious Studies Project (Doherty 2018).…”