Bob Dole had the right enemies

There’s not much I can say about the great man that hasn’t been said by almost everyone else, but I did come across this blog post from veteran Scientology foe Tony Ortega this morning - literally by accident. (I clicked on the wrong bookmark and went to Ortega’s blog by mistake.)

In 1976 and 1979, Dole called for informal hearings on cults in Congress. In 1976, it was at the request, he said, of some 14,000 Kansans who had signed petitions asking him to look into cult influences. Then, in 1979 he called for additional meetings after the horror of Jonestown the previous year.

The meetings seemed to alarm Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church the most, which got considerable coverage at the time for protesting Dole’s inquiries.

Less well known, however, is that Scientology targeted Dole for investigations to dig up “dirt” on him because he dared to raise questions about such groups.

We know this, thanks to dogged researcher R.M. Seibert, who found a remarkable letter in a collection of…