The Bare-Faced Messiah Interviews
Interview
with David Mayo,
Palo Alto, California, 28 August
1986
David Mayo spent 25 years in the Church
of Scientology, making him one of the most experienced
people to have served in that organisation; most do not
stay longer than 3 years. His long experience as auditor
to the most senior Scientologists, including L. Ron
Hubbard and his wife, gave him considerable status (as
shown in the 1980 advertisement on the left). Following
factional infighting in the early 1980s, he left (or
more accurately was expelled) in 1983 and was
subsequently denigrated as a "squirrel" par excellence.
He nonetheless remained loyal to Hubbard's tenets and
started an "Advanced Ability Center", using Hubbardian
techniques and derivatives thereof. The AAC now appears
to be defunct.
Mayo was interviewed in 1986 by
Russell Miller, the British writer and journalist, for
his unauthorised biography of Hubbard, Bare-Faced
Messiah. In the course of the interview, Mayo gave an
intriguing account of his experiences in Scientology,
the transcript of which follows
below.
Interview - 28 August 1986
My
first contact with Scientology was through a High School
teacher who loaned me some of the books. This was in
Auckland, New Zealand. I joined the org as
an
employee in late '59. I was a student at the time.
The org was in two parts, HASI [Hubbard Association of
Scientologists International] and HCO [Hubbard
Communications Office]. HCO was Hubbard's own office
within the org. I worked for HCO starting from end '59
and I started having correspondence with him. The lady
who had hired me, Betty Turnbull, was in charge of HCO
and her husband, Frank, was in charge of the HASI. LRH
was displeased with Frank and Hubbard started sending me
letters expressing displeasure and asked me to do an
investigation. They ended up quitting or were fired. He
accused them of being Communists and they were in the
org to try and destroy it and sabotage his plans.
I thought this org was supposed to be about
improving people and helping mankind and all of a
sudden, my opening correspondence with the founder was
about plots and Communists. He sent me handwritten
letters and telegrams and cables. It was quite a shock.
I just figured I couldn't understand these things. I
just tried to rationalise the paranoia, after all he was
a brilliant man and had written all these books. I had
to do a security check on Betty Turnbull and my
recommendation to LRH was that they weren't Communists
and had worked hard to try and keep it going. I said
they were perfectly OK and he fired them.
I
first met him at the beginning of '62 when I went to
Saint Hill to do the Briefing Course. He was friendly,
down to earth and quite personable most of the time,
though he would have occasional flare-ups. In later
years he changed dramatically. Then he was one of the
boys, would chat over breaks, insisted everyone called
him Ron. Deification had not yet begun. I finished the
course in late '62 and went back to Auckland until the
end of '67. I made one more trip back in '65 to Saint
Hill. Then at the end of '67 I transferred to the Sea
Org and to Va1encia where the Royal Scotman was in Jan
68.
The literature I'd received prior to going
was quite misleading. It described an OT base and talked
about a land base in some foreign country. It sounded
exotic and exciting, where LRH was going to be doing
upper level research and a few, select, highly trained
people were working with him and participating in it.
Instead, when I got to Valencia I got in a taxi and was
told to go to the port. The instructions were brief and
mysterious. I went to the port in a taxi and saw this
dirty rusty old cattle ferry tied up there. I kept
trying to tell the driver we'd made a mistake. He kept
insisting it was [correct]. I got out of the taxi, went
over to the ship and realised, "My God, this is the
place!"
LRH wasn't aboard at that time. He was
off doing the Mission Into Time cruise. He was off with
metal detectors, trying to find buried gold. The ship
was rusty and dirty and they were still chipping manure
out of the holds, trying to clean it up. It certainly
wasn't this exotic OT base! Within a few weeks LRH
arrived back and was extremely displeased with the Royal
Scotman. The Avon River came back into harbour and
everyone was very excited - they were going to see him.
He sent over half dozen Sea Org people in uniforms,
looking extremely stern, with clipboards. They were
under instructions not to talk, they just walked round
interrogating the crew and ended up telling everyone
that they were in various lower conditions. It was very
grim and unpleasant. After a few days LRH came over,
also extremely grim.
I went into the large room
used as his office and didn't see him much, except when
he walked round ship once a day. He was extremely angry,
walking around yelling and barking orders at people. No
one knew what was the matter - they just tried to stay
clear of him.
Myself and others did question it
to some degree with people you thought you could really
trust. Expressing anything like that was an offence.
Most of the crew were very afraid that if they expressed
any disagreement or questioning of what was going on
that they would be kicked out of Scientology, which was
to most people at that time an untenable thing - you
could not consider that. Most people were terrified of
that. Hubbard ordered everyone to be put on the E-meter,
asking if you had any doubts or disagreements with use
of ethics. If the meter read, the person was to be put
in a condition of doubt and possibly expelled. That was
done in February '68.
The liability cruise was a
couple of months later. I was transferred to the Avon
River and the first advanced org was started on the
Royal Scotman in February or March '68. Before the
liability cruise, the advanced org transferred to
Alicante on land. I went from the Avon River to Alicante
and at some point the liability cruise happened. It was
in Alicante to May/June '68. Then the Avon River picked
us up (LRH was on the Scotman) and we went across the
Med to Tunisia and met the Royal Scotman there and then
I was transferred to the Scotman.
I used to see
him every day on the Scotman in February '68 when he did
his daily rounds. Then he went on to the Avon River and
within a few days I was transferred to the Avon River.
When we arrived in Bizerte in Tunisia, I worked as an
auditor on the Royal Scotman. In '62 he was very genial
and personable, very friendly. In '65 he was somewhat
sterner. In '68 he was angry nearly all the time. No one
really knew why. I think he had gotten into a lot of
trouble - though I didn't know this at the time - he was
both PTS [Potential Trouble Source - a threat] to
various governments, but primarily he had gotten himself
into so much hot water with different countries, he was
running out of places to go. He'd dodged paying taxes in
the US and bankrupted orgs in the US and skipped the
country; he ran afoul of the Home Office in England, I
don't believe there was a shred of truth in the
persecution of Scientology; then he went off to Rhodesia
and tried to overthrow Ian Smith, who was trying to
secede from the Commonwealth, and was kicked out of
Rhodesia; he was told his visa wouldn't be renewed in
England; he couldn't go back to the US because he was
wanted by the IRS. He had no country he thought he could
live in - that's why he started the Sea Org. We used to
check into which countries had extradition agreements
with the US and UK, and those that didn't, he didn't
want to live in - they were mainly Third World.
In mid 68 I was transferred to the advanced org
in Edinburgh to the end of 70 when I went back to ships.
From January 71 I was on the ships until the Sea Org
came ashore.
His behaviour varied. He was really
angry a lot in '68. In the early 70s it varied, he was
sick a lot. Sometimes he'd be bedridden and the place
was a lot quieter. In the mid to late 70s, he started
coming out of it and got pleasant again. Then it really
blew up in '81 - he regressed into irascibility. A
meeting was held in Clearwater [Florida] by a lot of
mission holders at Flag [Land Base, in Clearwater] and
they started complaining and protesting about the
management and were advocating reform. When Hubbard
learned of it he described it as mutiny and after that
he got much worse.
He withdrew more and more as
the years progressed.
On the ship I would often
be called into his office for a technical conference. I
had a lot of participation in research with him from '73
onwards. I did C-Sing [Case Supervising] his auditing
from '73 or so on.
He used to play Master
Mariner and he'd make an appearance on the bridge -
everyone would shake and quiver and usually heads would
roll. The helmsman would be worried he was not on
correct course, the navigator would have to know precise
position, and so on.
He did do a lot of research
and had a lot of other people doing writing and research
for him. A lot of his research was done in solo
auditing. He would try ideas out on himself and pass
them on to me to run on other people.
In Hemet
in 79 I'd watch TV with him and he'd reminisce. He
talked about time when he was a troubadour in the Blue
Mountains and went around, playing the guitar, singing
hill-billy songs and earned his living that way. I
didn't know whether it was true. I think he made it up
on the spur of the moment because I'd never heard that
before. He had a guitar there and sang some songs. He
could play to some degree, but he seemed pretty
amateurish. I think he made up the songs as he went
along, but they sounded like hill-billy songs. I was
auditing them, and had an apartment next to him.
He was ill in late '78, September, and I was
transferred to La Quinta when he was ill. He thought
there was going to be an FBI raid and in early 79 he
left La Quinta and ended up in an apartment complex in
Hemet. Later I was transferred to audit him on NOTs and
then he went on to doing Solo NOTs in mid '79.
After the Sea Org went ashore I went to Daytona.
LRH was there living in a separate building. We took
over a motel and he lived virtually next door, although
it was supposed to be a secret. None of us were supposed
to know where he was, but we used to see him. The Sea
Org had these big secrets, but from the balcony of our
motel you could look across to the hotel where he was
living. We were given a false reason, a weird reason,
that no one was to go to that hotel, even for a drink in
the bar, because they were SPs [Suppressive Persons]
there, so we should stay away. Nobody believed that, it
was too outlandish. Then he would come to the motel and
give us a lecture almost every day for a couple of
weeks. He would arrive in a car which we had seen drive
out of the motel, turn in the opposite direction and go
round the block and come to us. Some of messengers lived
with him; we used to see them come out of the hotel and
walk to our motel. We all used to pretend not to know
where he was.
Then we moved to Clearwater and
Hubbard lived in an apartment in Dunedin, 10-15 minutes'
drive away. It was still supposed to be secret. The crew
that went back and forth was sworn to secrecy. We got a
tailor to come in and make suits for him, and Hubbard
told him who he was, and the tailor told one of the
local newspapers.
Then he left and went to
California to La Quinta. After La Quinta he went to Lake
Paris briefly and then in early 79 he went to Hemet.
I was in Clearwater in September '78 and I was
told to go to La Quinta. He was very ill. Dr [Eugene]
Denk was there and trying to find out what was wrong
with him. He was very weak, had low blood pressure,
pulse rate, low temperature. He was lying on his back in
bed, almost in a coma for a week or two. He talked a
little but not very much. He talked very slowly and
quietly. I didn't know what was wrong with him. One of
the things established was that he had blood coagulation
problem, but that wasn't why he was in bed. Denk
prescribed anti-coagulant for his blood but that was to
prevent a stroke. He was in a Spanish-style bungalow at
La Quinta. He had an office in his bungalow, it was on a
property with other buildings. Mary Sue was in LA in
another secret location.
I was surprised and
shocked at his condition. It was a telex message
addressed to CMO [Commodore's Messenger Org] that
transferred me, but gave almost no info. It was
extremely urgent and said it was important that I was to
be put on the next plane to LA. It was top secret. I
didn't know what it was for, how long it was for. So I
grabbed a few clothes in my suitcase, I had 20 minutes
to get to the airport, and I wasn't allowed to tell
anyone I was going. I couldn't even see my wife. People
were supposed to pretend I hadn't gone anywhere. In LA I
was met at the airport by someone who knew me. I got in
the car at night, was driven to a parking lot and
switched cars - this happened 2-3 times in LA in case we
were being followed. Then in the last car I was
blindfolded and told that I wasn't allowed to know where
we were going. I'd asked everyone what it was about but
they said they didn't know. The last driver told me LRH
was sick and that's why I was there.
I was given
his PC [preclear] folders and told to solve it. I
started looking through folders and started auditing him
the next day and audited him from then on. Can auditing
cure illness? In the Scientological environment that
existed in La Quinta the answer would be 100% yes. For
legal reasons the answer was no. They deny it is
intended as a physical cure, whereas in the First Book
[Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, pub.
1950] Hubbard claimed it would cure everything from
diabetes to psychosomatic illness. Hubbard considered
the cause of illness to be some bad auditing he'd had
just prior, so the idea was to find out what had gone
wrong in the auditing and correct that - it would be a
spiritual cure. Denk said, when I arrived, that he
thought he was close to death; he didn't know whether to
move him to hospital. His concern was that the ride in
ambulance would finish him off. He was getting ready to
restart his heart with an electric pulse thing and
started moving some medical equipment in there.
The Messengers who were looking after him
figured they had to get an auditor there. Paulette Cohen
had been auditing him but he got dissatisfied and upset
with her and wanted someone else. They wanted to get
Jeff Walker, and I was senior case supervisor at Flag
and they didn't think they could take me away. Jeff
Walker started on the route but Hubbard heard and said,
"no way, send Mayo," so they sent me. Walker arrived in
LA and was on his way back by the time I was on the way.
Initially I gave him assist auditing to help him
recover. We had several short sessions a day until he
recovered about a month later.
TAPE
2:
His personality was initially pretty much the
same, alternating between extreme violence and angry and
being quite cheerful and pleasant. On one occasion he
was in a good mood and decided I should have the use of
his private swimming pool. He yelled at one of the crew
members to get into a car, go into town and buy me some
swimming shorts. I was presented with them as gift from
him and was more or less ordered to swim in his pool. If
he bellowed an order to go to town, it had to be done
instantly.
He was trying to start in the movie
business and the org was called Cine, the Cine Org, and
they were supposed to make films. He was writing
scripts, but the crew could never do anything right. It
was a very, very violent period for the people working
for Cine. They'd have to stay up all day and night
trying to do something and him being dissatisfied. He
would walk around with electric bullhorn to yell orders
through, even if the person was only a few feet away.
He'd tell them to build the set, describe the set.
They'd build the set and were going to shoot. He'd
arrive, decided he didn't like it, scream that they had
altered it, he wanted it blue, not green! Some of the
crew would be sent to the RPF [labour force] and others
were running round quickly, trying to find blue paint.
Then he'd want to know why it was blue, not yellow.
One of the main reasons why he got sick, I
think, was that he had so many failures and so much
frustration and was so upset over the movies that that's
what he broke down and collapsed on. That seemed the
most highly charged area.
After he recovered and
got up, he never got back into movie making as much as
he had previously. He made me an actor in one of the
movies. Sometimes I'd have to do the same line over and
over again and it would never be right. Too loud, too
quiet, not intense, too intense, why aren't you doing it
enthusiastically? He might end up stamping off, away
from the set, and screaming that all was impossible, no
one would duplicate what he said. I'd be told to
practice a line and get it right for tomorrow. Everyone
was tiptoeing around, waiting for explosions.
One incident was quite dramatic and revelatory.
The crew were in a constant state of fear. Every order
that came from him, they would work in a frenzied state
to get it done, often through the night, not stopping
for meals, praying it would be right and they wouldn't
get into trouble. It was very hot area. The temperature
when I got there was frequently 120 to 130 degrees in
the hot desert. It was extremely dry and you can
dehydrate very easily. There was one period when things
had got very, very bad. Some of the crew thought it got
too serious and tried to lighten things up. They did a
little video recording intended as a joke, a little
humourous sketch that they thought would amuse him. The
theme was to do with something that happened day or two
earlier, a big upset. They re-enacted it as a little
skit to make it funny and sent him the video. He started
playing it and because they were being funny he took
offence and took it to mean they didn't take what he
said seriously, and were mocking him, ridiculing him,
making him subject of the joke. He sent them all to the
RPF. It was very, very heavy. They were assigned to the
RPF, never this, never that. There was a tremendous
explosion and a big committee of evidence [Scientology
trial] over it. I was standing outside his office
waiting for him when he was looking at the tape, then he
was going to see me. I never did get to see him. I heard
yelling and screaming and messengers running in and out
of the office. He was yelling that they were mocking
him. He was shouting at the TV. He sent messengers to
find the names of everyone involved. Then he thought
there might be people not involved but who knew about it
- then he wanted their names and sent them to the RPF as
well. I thought it was wise to slide off somewhere else
and wait for him to calm down. He had a local RPF; he
had them everywhere.
I stayed with him at La
Quinta until he moved to Hemet in the early part of '79,
I think March '79. It was because of the threat of an
FBI raid. He was screaming about it for days, before it
happened. There had been an FBI raid 3 years earlier,
but just before this he had heavily mistreated a couple,
Ernie Hartwell and his wife. They left and went back to
Vegas and subsequently a car showed up and someone was
taking photographs from it of the property. The GO
[Guardian's Office] got news relayed to Hubbard that the
Hartwells were talking to the FBI. Then the GO sent a
message that FBI were taking interest and that triggered
his departure.
I think he left in a motor home
with Mike and Kima Douglas. They drove to Lake Elsinore,
a resort area not far away. They stayed there for a
month or so and then went to Hemet. While they were in
Lake Elsinore everyone moved from La Quinta to Gilman
Hot Springs and in April '79 I was transferred from
Gilman to Hemet. It was off Florida St - there were two
main streets, one State and one Florida. Sunny something
was an apartment building behind an acupuncture clinic.
We had to take circuitous routes to and from the
apartment. I had to continue auditing him.
The
reason they sent me there? He didn't want too many
people at Hemet - he was still worried about an FBI
raid. I was told he had had a cancer removed from his
cheek [actually his forehead], a tumour, and as result
of that I was sent to audit him, initially for day or
two at a time, then after about a week I moved into the
apartments. I stayed there until after he left in
February 1980. I went back home to New Zealand in
February '80 for a week, and it was during that week he
departed with the two Broekers [Annie and Pat].
The inner circle at Hemet was Pat and Annie
Broeker, Clarice Rousseau, Mike and Kima - there until
they blew [defected] - Warwick and Annie Allcock,
Merrill [Mayo] and me, his cook, Sinar Parinan, a
cleaning girl called Juanita; all Sea Org members. We
had about five or six apartments.
In Hemet on a
typical day he would wake up late in the morning, it
would vary. It was usually about 11 or 12, sometimes 2-3
in the afternoon, sometimes 8-9 in the morning. He'd get
up in the morning and take a nap in the afternoon for
3-4 hours and work lot of the night. He'd do office work
after he got up, managing orgs, looking through telexes
and compliance reports and sent out new orders, some
dictated to messengers or by telex. Then he might have
auditing session, then he did more admin handling. He
would spend several hours a day doing what he called
music or recording. He would either play music and
record it or mix tapes of his, his taped lectures. He
used to do lot of mixing tapes. He had somewhere there,
a recording engineer called Steve, who was supposed to
be mixing tapes, but Hubbard was never satisfied. He'd
spend hours doing that each day. He'd watch a couple of
movies, watch a bit of TV, maybe read a book.
In
summer, sometimes in the winter if it was a good day,
but not much in hot weather, he'd go out in the
afternoon taking photographs. It was a great palaver,
with half dozen people involved, one or two getting
cameras and film. He had to have all his cameras and
accessories, all the different types of film -
everything possible that he might need. It all had to be
refrigerated and carried in cooler packs. They drove him
in a special van that had to be cleaned immediately
before he got into it, the minute before he got in. It
had special air conditioning and air filters. He would
lie in a bed in the back, on a couch-bed. People would
stake out the outside, posted at vantage points to make
sure no one was around. He'd be whisked down and into
the back of the van. He'd be dressed in a weird
disguise. One was a baseball cap with false hair sewn
into it, one had long black shoulder length hair, one
had brown hair. He used caps and wigs. His clothes were
very different from what he normally wore. They'd even
go as far as putting make up on his face. One time he
put actors' plasticine on his skin and face and had
other rubber and plastic gadgets to stick in his cheeks
and change his face shape. Sometimes he wore them. He
had various names; people with him normally called him
Uncle. He had a different shore story [alibi] - the most
frequent one was that they were geothermal engineers,
looking for geothermal activity. The van had smoked
windows and curtains. Hemet is in the country, you can
drive a matter of a mile or so and be in the country. A
lot of the time he would drive up into the San Jacinto
Mountains, get out and walk around. There was a stream
there he liked to photograph and then he'd sell his
photos to orgs to use in posters and advertising. I
think he charged outlandish sums, one was $5,000 for one
usage of one photo. It was a way of getting money from
non-profit orgs. Messengers would usually accompany him.
Someone would drive a cook out with fresh sandwiches and
cold drinks.
Sometimes they would go to a
shopping mall and he would walk round in disguise. He
would buy odd things, he came back once with a bunch of
little plastic animals. There was a mall in Hemet but I
believe he mostly went to San Bernardino. He'd bought a
shopping mall somewhere in California and I suppose he
wanted to find ways of making it more profitable. Or
maybe he just wanted to see what a mall was like.
TROUBADOUR STORY. He called me up to his
apartment. I went in there to see what he wanted. He
told me to sit down and started reminiscing. The next
thing, he gets out his guitar. Another time he had the
TV going and he asked me what TV programme I was
interested in. I didn't know what was on TV, never got
time to watch it - I wondered at first if he was
checking up on me to see if I'd been watching TV. He
went flicking from channel to channel. He didn't seem to
like too many and would watch 5-l0 minutes and try
another. He would spend the evening watching snippets of
TV. The troubadour story wasn't particularly convincing.
Usually he was just full of orders and work, he would
usually give me a rapid string of things to do and
wanted them done very quickly. When he was talking about
his hill- billy days, quite frankly for me it was a
moment's respite from work, I didn't care if it was true
or not. I wasn't going to argue. After he finished the
story we all clapped - there were two messengers there -
no one wore uniform at Hemet. He had already done some
singing when I arrived. I sat on the floor at his feet
along with the two messengers. He'd finished the song
and the two girls clapped so I joined in. Then he'd tell
a little bit about the mountains of Tennessee, then sing
another song. They were strange songs, but had a
hill-billy ring. Mostly they rhymed. but one didn't and
it sounded like some strange tuneless prose. It crossed
my mind at time he was ad-libbing.
When I went
back to NZ I didn't know that the day [of Ron going into
seclusion] was coming close. He was always worried about
raids. There were buzzers and warning systems all over
the place, and a back escape route. We were drilled what
to do if anyone came to the door that could be a marshal
or process servers or FBI agents. They had a buzzer
system, one where he could push a button by his bed and
a buzzer and red light would come on. It was linked
between apartments. You could ring it from another
entrance. The entrance to the apartment where the
messengers stayed had a buzzer that would sound in his
bedroom. If someone pushed the button it would wake him
and the other messengers. At the front entrance to the
apartments onto the street, there was also a back way
through a door into the parking garage. You could get
into a vehicle there that went onto a different street.
A vehicle was kept in readiness always. Also in La
Quinta, we always had one or two escape vehicles ready.
We were drilled what to do if someone came to the door.
First, don't answer the door if it looked like someone
suspicious. If you were asked anything about LRH or
where he was, or what was your name - we were all given
aliases, mine was Dan Majors, it had to be similar
sounding and similarly spelled so if later challenged
for giving false name could accuse person you had given
it to of misduplicating [mistaking] it. You were trained
to sign so that it would look little similar to D. Mayo.
You were never to reveal anything about Hubbard or your
correct name. You had to sound the alarm if you could,
but your main duty was to delay or, if possible, get rid
of the caller. But you were at least to delay until the
alarm could be raised and LRH could be got out of the
building. You could hear one in living quarters and saw
the red light go on. We were supposed to drill and at
the same time be acting normal in the apartment complex.
We were supposed not to attract any attention to
ourselves.
TAPE 3:
We tried not to
think about his behaviour because it wasn't rational,
but to even consider it wasn't rational would have been
a discreditable thought about LRH and you couldn't allow
yourself that. The Jo'burg Sec Check - one of misdeeds
on it was, "Have you ever had any unkind thoughts about
LRH?", and you could get into very serious trouble if
you had. So you tried hard not to.
At time I
thought, this is an anomaly, but he is also a genius and
has done so much for mankind that I was in awe of, so it
was like these other things in apparent contradiction,
but who am I to judge? If he has faults they are
minuscule compared to his other deeds.
There
were other things I became aware of. Some was
information which he revealed during sessions when I was
auditing him. Outside of sessions I became aware of
other things; there were times when a messenger would
arrive with a suitcase full of money, wads of hundred
dollar bills. I've been in his room on 3-4 occasions at
least when a messenger has come in with a suitcase of
money, both at Hemet and Rifle [La Quinta]. He would ask
to see it. She'd open it and he'd gloat over the money
for a bit and have her close it and put it in his
bedroom. He didn't really spend much of it, so I guess
it was getaway money. Some of it was being spent, but
not the amount brought in. He went out and bought a very
fancy camera. They were buying gemstones which he had in
his safe. One was a topaz, really huge. He'd go out and
look at them in jewellery shops and either buy them
himself or send someone to buy them for him. Warwick
Allcock would buy for him. He was buying them as a hedge
against inflation, he thought the dollar was going down.
He kept the lot in a safe in his closet, there was
another safe in Pat Broeker's room. He'd always said and
written that he's never received a penny from
Scientolofy, every statement saying he wasn't collecting
large amounts of money. I saw these suitcases arrive and
knew it wasn't true. I didn't mind the idea of him
having money or being rich, I thought he'd done
tremendous wonders and should be well paid for it. But
why does he lie about it?
He wouldn't let anyone
take a photo of him in those years because he was
getting older and insisted on using photos when he was
younger. If anyone took a photo of him it was
confiscated. That was part of the false PR; he was very
concerned than none of the public ever know. I had
argument with him about his credibility. I said that
what would affect his credibility was when someone
discovered that something he had stated about himself
was false. That would have far worse effect on his
credibility.
He was very concerned if
Scientology knew about the cancer / tumour it would ruin
his credibility. He thought it would affect the tech and
processes he put out.
In auditing there were
things he revealed about himself and his past, things
that he had done. There were absolute contradictions of
his biography and reputation. Revealing things like that
was not a great risk to him because I had a duty to keep
such things confidential. and I was well trusted as a
loyal subject. Had it even entered my mind I would have
been kicked out of Scientology and that would have been
a serious penalty. Also there was a risk, if I revealed
my information, of severe harassment, if not even killed
by the GO. I had also audited Mary Sue and supervised
both of their auditing; I have read their folders. A lot
of the top people in the GO talked to me about things
that weighed on their conscience.
It wasn't just
what I discovered. I didn't care where he was born or
what he had done in the war, it didn't mean a thing to
me. I wasn't a loyal member of Scientology because he
had an illustrious war record. What worried me was when
I saw things he did and statements he made that showed
his intentions were different from what they appeared to
be. I began to realise he wasn't acting for the public
good or for the benefit of mankind, it worked partly
that way and he may have started out like that, but in
later years, in his own words, he had "an insatiable
lust for power and money".
He told me he was
obsessed by "an insatiable lust for power and money". He
said it very emphatically. He thought it wasn't possible
to get enough. He didn't say it as if it was a fault,
just his frustration that he couldn't get enough.
This was at Hemet, one of the times he was
having a sort of one way conversation and he commented
on the price of gold that day, I forget whether it was
up or down, then he started talking about gold and
money. I thought, "My God, that's right." One tended to
try and not believe it.
During Mary Sue's trial
[in 1980] he became very, very upset and angry towards
Mary Sue. He called me in and talked about her and he
sent me to do something with her and try to persuade her
into a different course of action. What he was really
concerned about was that he, rightly or wrongly, had
decided that Mary Sue was likely to reveal during the
case that a lot of these actions that they were being
tried for, that he had ordered them. His position was
that he knew nothing about it - he not only knew all
about it, but he ordered it. Some [orders] were even in
his own handwriting. He was worried that Mary Sue might
reveal his knowledge and he sent me to "cramming action"
to get the idea across that she should look out for his
interests. I wasn't supposed to tell her he was worried
that she would rat on him. She kept asking me, "What was
he worried about?" I thought, "My God, I can't tell
her." She was already upset and under strain. I just
said he thought it would be a good idea (this was while
we were at Hemet). She'd already been in jail once. In
conversation between Hubbard and me before I went, he
said he'd divorce her to "sever any connection with
her". I was shocked, I remember afterwards thinking, how
did he think a divorce would make him any less culpable?
Later I heard Pat Broeker saying that Hubbard was
talking about divorcing Mary Sue to put himself at a
distance from the GO's actions.
Mary Sue was in
LA when I went to see her. She had a house off
Mulholland Drive overlooking the valley, a fairly posh
area. There was a point earlier when she had been told
he was going to divorce her and she was extremely upset.
The fact that after all she had done for him and the
fact that there had been numerous opportunities to
betray him - she had already covered up for him - and
she had taken so much brunt, she couldn't even believe
he would think that was letting her face the music. That
had an eye-opening effect on me.
He could be
capable of incredible cruelty. On the ship there was an
old man on the Royal Scotman who he made push a peanut
round the decks with his nose. He had to get down on his
hands and knees, he had to go round the deck, quite a
long distance in a race with one or two others also in
trouble. The first one back got let off and the last one
got a double penalty. It was really tough on this old
guy, Charlie Reisdorf. The surface of the deck was very
rough wood, prone to splinter, so after pushing peanuts
with their noses, they all had raw, bleeding noses,
leaving a trail of blood behind them. I not only saw it
but the entire crew of the ship was mustered - a
mandatory attendance - we were required to watch this
punishment, to make an example of it for the rest of us.
Reisdorf was in his late 50s probably. His two daughters
were messengers, they were 11 or 12 at time and his wife
was there also. It was hard to say which was worse to
watch: this old guy with a bleeding nose or his wife and
kids sobbing and crying at being forced to watch this.
Hubbard was standing there calling the shots, yelling,
"Faster, Faster!". It was indignity, degradation and
breaking a person's will, and making people watch. It
was disgusting.
They used to have people locked
in the chain locker, including small children. It was
very dangerous because if the anchor started to slip and
start running out, it would turn a body into pulp in no
time at all. I saw children locked up in the chain
locker.
He had a birthday party on March 13
1968; there was a woman who he ordered locked in the
chain locker. During the party he had her brought out.
She was filthy, covered with dirt and rust, and had not
been allowed to wash or change clothes - she had been in
there a week. She was pretty dirty - he brought her out
to the party, he said he was giving her a reprieve and
permitting her to come to the party, as if that was a
nice gesture. She still wasn't allowed to wash or
change, so she was brought to the party and had to stay
and later she was returned [to the locker]. He said he
was giving her a reprieve but it was just flaunting her
degradation. It had looked like things were lightening
up a little, people thought maybe things were getting
better, then this happened and people were shocked and
it gave us a sinister chill. She was in a dress.
Why did people stand by? Another common reason
was that if a person doesn't make waves they hope to
rise up high enough in the org to get to a position of
authority, to the top of the org board and "I'll be able
to change it." A very high percentage of staff hoped
that one day they would be able to change it.
From time to time, Hubbard would cancel such
activities, like the chain locker, and blame it on
someone else. He said that no one was to be put into the
chain locker by his order or decree, and Baron Burez was
an evil monster for having chain lockered people. Baron
was a US crew member and went into disfavour. He would
start such pronouncements with, "It has just come to my
attention that..."
The length of time for
children would vary, but no one was there less than a
day. The average was a week or two. Three weeks was
about the maximum. Age didn't matter. The youngest kids
were 5, 6 or 7. Old, young, men, women, big, little; it
wouldn't matter because to Scientologists the being is
ageless so you don't think in terms of how young or old
someone is.
Reisdorf affair - if someone tried
to do something it would have been worse. Hubbard said
that maritime law prevailed, like in days of Hornblower,
when the captain of ship has the power of God Almighty.
He said under maritime law he had total power over
everyone on the vessel.
The idea of being
overboarded or beached was terrible. People were beached
in sometimes fairly hostile countries, like Algeria and
Tunis, Beached meant put ashore without passport or
money, just the clothes you stood in and you were on
your own. When I joined the Sea Org I often considered
returning to NZ but I was a little naive at the time -
the idea of being beached was very formidable. I didn't
know how to go about earning money and getting home. The
other part was being out of Scientology forever and cast
into alien world of "wogs".
Scientology can't be
run like the AA [Mayo's breakaway Advanced Ability
Center] because Hubbard didn't set it up to run that way
in his policy letters. In the early days some wits
described his first Dianetics book as "A Womb With a
View".
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