Officially, CST's corporate raison d'etre is to act as copyright holder of L. Ron Hubbard's vast collection of published and unpublished works, findings, random ruminations and "research" known within scientology as "the Tech."
Beyond this seemingly straightforward mandate, however, is another, more mysterious responsibility. It is the CST that is charged with ensuring the "survival of the tech," into the millennium and beyond, through a painstaking archiving project that will see Hubbard's every written utterance immortalized on titanium plates, and stored in underground vaults that -- according to CoS legend -- will withstand even a nuclear blast. This preservation project, virtually unknown to all but the upper ranks of COS officials, operates in strict secrecy, in remote locations throughout the Southwestern United States.
Although it is the Religious Technology Centre that takes on the day-to-day job of enforcing copyright, and policing the use of the tech, when it comes down to it, even RTC - widely considered t be the most powerful organization in the CoS hierarchy - derives the bulk of its powers from its agreements with CST. On paper, at least, the CST may be the ultimate authority - the power behind the throne from which current RTC Chairman of the Board David Miscavige rules the corporate, spiritual and fiscal roost. .
With assets that totalled more than $500 million (US) at the time of the IRS settlement agreement in 1993, it is clear that the CST is, at the very least, more than just a paper tiger. Conspiracy theories abound as to its real purpose, from the prosaic suggestion that it acts as a slush fund and money launderomat for illicit funds collected by the CoS that go straight into the pockets of the top executives, to the radical claim that it is not scientologists, but the U.S. government, in the body of the Internal Revenue Service, that really controls the 'tech', and thus, the church. Whatever the answer may be, the questions, then, are worth asking, if only to separate the facts from fiction.