Tract
Operation Snow White
A historical-documentary entry on the 1973–1977 Church of Scientology program to obtain and remove government-held documents critical of the church and its founder. The largest documented non-state infiltration of US federal agencies, established by the 1979 prosecutions and the seized internal records.
In 1977, the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation executed search warrants at offices of the Church of Scientology in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. The raids produced approximately 48,000 documents. Among them were a body of internal Church files describing a coordinated program — designated "Snow White" — to obtain documents held by U.S. and foreign government agencies which were critical of L. Ron Hubbard, the Church's founder, or of the Church itself, and to remove or correct them.
The program had been initiated in April 1973 by a directive of Hubbard's titled Guardian Order 732. It was carried out by the Guardian Office, the Church's intelligence and legal-affairs body, under the direction of Hubbard's wife, Mary Sue Hubbard. The methods documented in the seized files included the placement of Church members in clerical positions inside federal agencies, the unauthorized copying of agency files, the planting of listening devices, and the removal of materials regarded as adverse.
Eleven senior Church officials were indicted in August 1978 in the District of Columbia. Nine entered plea agreements in October 1979 and were sentenced to terms of up to five years. Two were extradited from the United Kingdom and convicted later. The Guardian Office itself was dissolved by the Church in 1983. The Church's subsequent stated position is that the operation was the unauthorized work of a small number of officials acting outside Church policy.
The full documentary record, principally the 282-page Stipulation of Evidence filed in the 1979 proceedings, is in the public domain and is the principal source for what follows. This entry is a historical reference treatment of the public record. It does not extend further argument about the Church beyond that record.
