A partial answer
This is an extract from a broader piece of writing I am doing about my life in the cult, it may give you some small insight.
Others can answer the question on 'ethics' more eloquently than I could hope to, I can best assist you by sharing my experience, I do hope this helps you.
I do not know anything about FBI or CIA connections, I understand that one of the Church of Spiritual Technology directors was formerly a high official with the IRS when Scn was getting its tax status 'sorted out'.
I can tell you this for sure though, it happened not long before Cruise recorded that stupid interview.
Alice, 19 years old and crippled
I am in the rather privileged position of getting to spend some time with Prof. Steven Kent of the University of Alberta; he is an unusually decent fellow.
We were discussing Gordon Melton’s 'expertise' - read whitewash - published circa 2001/2 - on an aspect of Scientology’s radical military wing, the Sea Organisation. They run their own prison or re-education’ camp, in theory it is not that different from the Cambodian Khmer Rouge system described graphically in David Putnam’s 1982 film The Killing Fields. The Scientology version is described as the RPF, Rehabilitation Project Force; one can be assigned to this at the whim of a certain cadre, Hubbard’s personal staff, or by an internal kangaroo court called a committee of evidence.
I don’t know if you ever read this, but if you did, you will see that it reads like the RPF is a happy 'boy-scouts camping' adventure with a dose of Trappist meditative theory thrown in for good measure. I happened to be around when this whole scam was being put together; I know all the RPFer's interviewed, I know them very well and I know the conditions they lived under. Well, the two weeks or so running up to Melton's 'free access' interview with the RPF, they were all treated like kings, fed, briefed, drilled, given little or no work details, loads of kip, the whole shebang. Gordon certainly got a very good impression of the set up, unfortunately his critical thinking faculties had been somewhat subverted, possibly by the various enticements on offer by a few people in the Office of Special Affairs - Scientology’s equivalent of the old KGB - and the L. Ron Hubbard Personal Public Relations office.
I have been talking a lot about my 20 year Sea Organisation experiences with Steve. Memories were stirred up of course, one in particular came to mind, the horrific account of a girl I knew quite well. Three years in the Sea Organisation, brought up in the cult from childhood, a very intelligent young woman, highly conversant with Hubbard’s counselling techniques, and working as a public relations officer for a front line operation. She had, like any healthy young woman or man would, slept with a person she was deeply attracted to, but of course in the sexually repressive cult, this carries a rather severe penalty.
Just twelve months or so after the Melton whitewash, Alice was assigned to the RPF. Her fiancé was sent to the RPF in another continent. Alice had some trouble with this, she decided to leave – One is not allowed to simply leave Scientology, one must ‘route out’ a process of extensive and intrusive vetting, ‘confessions’ – read interrogation – and signing of a number of non disclosure bonds.
Alice was assigned to an even harsher regime called the RPF's RPF, this being an even grimmer version of the program she was already on. Six months on, and subjected to a course of daily intensive interrogations, she was still there, she saw little hope of an end to the process and so decided to kill herself.
One afternoon I had just arrived back at Walsh Manor; I saw an ambulance, people in a tizz and running around. Alice had walked out of the RPF course room, gone to the workshop, found a tin of paint thinner, swallowed it and climbed up on top of the gym roof, a fifteen foot high structure surrounded by concrete. She jumped.
Alice lived, she is crippled for life, her lower intestine is ruined and she had to have colostomy. She was a very attractive energetic nineteen year old at the time. OSA instructed all concerned to say that she had fallen down the steps; so that there would be no health and safety enquiry, I don't know how they explained the paint thinner to the medics.
It all ended well, Alice was sent home, an invalid for life - but then, she is a DB is she not? - to be cared for by her mom, an OT V upstat Italian Scientologist and she is certainly not saying anything to sully the lily white image of the Sea Org.
There was no follow up by the authorities and Gordon Melton's rosy description of the RPF is still used internationally to show just what a wonderful organisation the Church of Scientology is.