Cult Awareness Network
The Cult Awareness Network (or CAN) was formerly a United States clearing-house for the provision of information on cults and purported cults. Subsequently forced into bankruptcy by legal action, it then became effectively a subsidiary organization of Scientology. Today the organization is seen as little more than a front group for Scientology, as it exclusively promotes Scientology's point of view regarding "cults" and "deprogrammers."
CAN was founded in the wake of the Jonestown mass suicide, and it collected information on many controversial organizations and religious movements.
In 1991, Time magazine reported:
- According to the Cult Awareness Network, whose 23 chapters monitor more than 200 "mind control" cults, no group prompts more telephone pleas for help than does Scientology. Says Cynthia Kisser, the network's Chicago-based executive director: "Scientology is quite likely the most ruthless, the most classically terroristic, the most litigious and the most lucrative cult the country has ever seen. No cult extracts more money from its members.'" (Time, May 6, 1991, "Scientology: The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power.")
Around this time, the Church of Scientology struck back. In
