The
                   SCIENTOLOGY STORY

                 Newkirk Herald-Journal Extra
                             Special Report
                            Paid Supplement
   Reprinted With Permission From The Los Angeles Times

                                 Defining The Theology...
    The Religion Abounds in Galactic Tales; Deepest Secrets Known to Few

By Joel Sappell and
Robert W. Welkos
(c) 1990, Los Angeles Times

What is Scientology?
Not even the vast majority of Scientologists can fully answer the question.
In the Church of Scientology, there is no one book that comprehensively
sets forth the religion's beliefs in the fashion of, say, the Bible or the
Koran.

Rather, Scientology's theology is scattered among the voluminous writings
and tape-recorded discourses of the late science fiction writer L. Ron
Hubbard, who founded the religion in the early 1950s.

Piece by piece, his teachings are revealed to church members through a
progression of sometimes secret courses that take years to complete and
cost tens of thousands of dollars. Out of a membership estimated by the
church to be 6.5 million, only a tiny fraction have climbed to the upper
reaches. In fact, according to a Scientology publication earlier this year,
fewer than 900 members have completed the church's highest course,
nicknamed "Truth Revealed."

While Hubbard's "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health" typically
is one of the first books read by church members, its relationship to
Scientology is like that of a grade school to a university.
What Scientologists learn in their courses is never publicly discussed by
the church, which is trying to shake its cultish image and establish itself
as a mainstream religion. For to the uninitiated, Hubbard's theology would
resemble pure science fiction, complete with galactic battles,
interplanetary civilizations and tyrants who roam the universe.

Here, based on court records, church documents and Hubbard lectures that
span the past four decades, is a rare look at portions of Scientology's
theology and the cosmological musings of the man who wrote it.
Central to Scientology is a belief in an immortal soul, or "thetan," that
passes from one body to the next through countless reincarnations spanning
trillions of years.

Together and collectively, thetans created the universe - all the stars and
planets, every plant and animal. To function within their creation, thetans
built bodies for themselves of wildly varying appearances, the human form
being just one.

But each thetan is vulnerable to painful experiences that can diminish its
powers and create emotional and physical problems in the individual it
inhabits. The goal of Scientology is to purge these experiences from the
thetan, making it again omnipotent and returning spiritual and bodily
health to its host.

The painful experiences are called "engrams." Hubbard said some happen by
accident - from ancient planetary wars, for example - while others are
intentionally inflicted by other thetans who have gone bad and want power.
In Scientology, these engrams are called "implants."

According to Hubbard, the bad thetans through the eons have electronically
implanted other thetans with information intended to confuse them and make
them forget the powers they inherently possess - kind of a brainwashing
procedure.

While Hubbard was not always precise about the origins of the implants, he
was very clear about the impact.
"Implants," Hubbard said, "result in all varieties of illness, apathy,
degradation, neurosis and insanity and are the principal cause of these in
man."

Hubbard identified numerous implants that he said have occurred through the
ages and that are addressed during Scientology courses aimed at
neutralizing their harmful effects.

Hubbard maintained, for example, that the concept of a Christian heaven is
the product of two implants dating back more than 43 trillion years.
Heaven, he said, is a "false dream" and a "very painful lie" intended to
direct thetans toward a non-existent goal and convince them they have only
one life.

In reality, Hubbard said, there is no heaven and there was no Christ.
"The [implanted] symbol of a crucified Christ is very apt indeed," Hubbard
said. "It's the symbol of a thetan betrayed."

Hubbard said that one of the worst implants happens after a person dies.
While Hubbard's story of this implant may seem outlandish to some, he
advanced it as a factual account of reincarnation.

"Of all the nasty, mean and vicious implants that have ever been invented,
this one is it," he declared during a lecture in the 1950s. "And it's been
going on for thousands of years."

Hubbard said that when a person dies, his or her thetan goes to a "landing
station" on Venus, where it is programmed with lies about its past life and
its next life. The lies include a promise that it will be returned to Earth
by being lovingly shunted into the body of a newborn baby.

Not so, said Hubbard, who described the thetan's re-entry this way:
"What actually happens to you, you're simply capsuled and dumped in the
gulf of lower California. Splash. The hell with ya. And you're on your own,
man. If you can get out of that, and through that, and wander around
through the cities and find some girl who looks like she is going to get
married or have a baby or something like that, you're all set. And if you
can find the maternity ward to a hospital or something, you're OK.
"And you just eventually just pick up a baby."

But Hubbard offered his followers an easy way to outwit the implant:
Scientologists should simply select a location other than Venus to go "when
they kick the bucket."

Another notorious implant led Hubbard to construct an entire course for
Scientologists who want to be rid of it.

Shrouded in mystery and kept in locked cabinets at select church locations,
the course is called Operating Thetan III, billed by the church as "the
final secret of the catastrophe which laid waste to this sector of the
galaxy." It is taught only to the most advanced church members, at fees
ranging to $6,000.

Hubbard told his followers that while unlocking the secret, he "became very
ill, almost lost this body and somehow or another brought it off and
obtained the material and was able to live through it."

Here's what he said he learned:
Seventy-five million years ago a tyrant named Xenu (pronounced Zee-new)
ruled the Galactic Confederation, an alliance of 76 planets, including
Earth, then called Teegeeack.

To control overpopulation and solidify his power, Xenu instructed his loyal
officers to capture beings of all shapes and sizes from the various
planets, freeze them in a compound of alcohol and glycol and fly them by
the billions to Earth in planes resembling DC-8s. Some of the beings were
captured after they were duped into showing up for a phony tax
investigation.

The beings were deposited or chained near 10 volcanoes scattered around the
planet. After hydrogen bombs were dropped on them, their thetans were
captured by Xenu's forces and implanted with sexual perversion, religion
and other notions to obscure their memory of what Xenu had done.
Soon after, a revolt erupted. Xenu was imprisoned in a wire cage within a
mountain, where he remains today.

But the damage was done.

During the last 75 million years, these implanted thetans have affixed
themselves by the thousands to people on Earth. Called "body thetans," they
overwhelm the main thetan who resides within a person, causing confusion
and internal conflict.

In the Operating Thetan III course, Scientologists are taught to scan their
bodies for "pressure points," indicating the presence of these bad thetans.
Using techniques prescribed by Hubbard, church members make telepathic
contact with these thetans and remind them of Xenu's treachery. With that,
Hubbard said, the thetans detach themselves.

Hubbard first unveiled his Scientology theories during a series of often
breathless lectures he delivered in Wichita, Kan., Phoenix and Philadelphia
in 1952.

His talks were sprinkled with tales of interplanetary adventures he said he
had experienced during earlier lives.

There was the time, for instance, that Hubbard said he was resting in a
peaceful valley on a barren planet in some remote galaxy, and decided to
spruce up the place. He said he "fixed up a lake" and "managed to coax into
existence a few vines."

Then, "all of a sudden - zoop boom - and there was a spaceship," Hubbard
recalled, saying "I got pretty mad about the whole thing."

"I remember bringing a thunderstorm," Hubbard said. "Moved it over the
ship. ... And then [I] let them have it."

Hubbard told associates that he had been many people before being born as
Lafayette Ronald Hubbard on March 13, 1911, in Tilden, Neb. One of them was
Cecil Rhodes, the British-born diamond king of southern Africa. Another,
according to a former aide, was a marshal to Joan of Arc.

After Hubbard's death in 1986, a Scientology publication described him as
"the original musician," who 3 million years ago invented music while going
by the name "Arpen Polo." The publication noted that "he wrote his first
song a bit after the first tick of time."

Hubbard realized that his accounts of past lives, implants and
extraterrestrial creatures might sound suspect to outsiders. So he
counseled his disciples to keep mum.

"Don't start walking around and telling people about space opera because
they're not going to believe you," he said, "and they're going to say,
`Well, that's just Hubbard.' "

----------------------


                             About This Section

The Newkirk Herald Journal today reprints a multi-part series on the Church
of Scientology, the controversial organization founded by the late author
L. Ron Hubbard. This special report was researched and written by Joel
Sappell and Robert W. Welkos, staff writers at the Los Angeles Times.

The series was published by the Los Angeles Times in July of this year, and
has also been published by the St. Petersburg, (Fla.) Times.
Los Angeles, Ca., and Clearwater, Fl., both have large Scientology
installations, but neither city has a Scientology controlled organization
as large as the 167 acre unlicensed and uncertified Narconon facility
currently operating on Chilocco Indian School land. For that reason, the
series deserves publication in this area. The Newkirk Herald Journal
appreciates the co-operation of the management of the Los Angeles Times to
whom we are indebted for both the copy and the permission to reprint it.
Since its creation nearly four decades ago, Scientology has grown into a
worldwide movement that, in recent months, has spent millions of dollars
promoting its founder and his self-help book, "Dianetics: The Modern
Science of Mental Health."

In the past five years alone, more than 20 of Hubbard's fiction and
nonfictionbooks have become national best-sellers - most of them achieving
that status after his death in January, 1986.

Scientology executives estimate the church's membership to be more than 6.5
million, although some former members believe the actual number is smaller.
Scientology's largest stronghold is in Hollywood, the organization's
management nerve center. The church is also a major presence in Clearwater,
Fl., where Scientologists from around the world go for training.

No other contemporary religion has endured a more turbulent past or a more
sustained assault on its existence than the Church of Scientology. It has
weathered crises that would have crippled, if not destroyed, other
fledgling religious movements - testimony to the group's determination to
survive.

Eleven of its top leaders - including Hubbard's wife - were jailed for
burglarizing the U.S. Justice Department and other federal agencies in the
1970s. Within the church, there have been widespread purges and defections.
Some former members have filed lawsuits accusing the church of intimidating
its critics, breaking up families and using high-pressure sales techniques
to separate large sums of money from its followers.

In 1986, Scientology paid an estimated $5 million to settle more than 20 of
the suits, without admitting wrongdoing. In exchange, the plaintiffs agreed
never again to criticize Scientology or Hubbard and to have their lawsuits
forever sealed from the public view.

Through all this, the church has persevered, dismissing its critics in
government, psychiatry and the media as "criminals" and "anti-religion"
demagogues who have conspired to persecute Scientology.

Today, the Scientology movement is writing a new chapter in its history,
one that has attracted a new generation of supporters and detractors.

Through official church programs and a network of groups run by Scientology
followers, the movement is reaching into American society as never before
to gain legitimacy and new members.

The apparent intent is to position Hubbard as a sort of 20th-Century
Renaissance man, lending new credibility to his Scientology teachings.
Among other things, church members are disseminating his writings in
schools across the U.S., assisted by groups that seldom publicize their
Scientology connections.

Scientology followers also have established a number of successful
consulting firms that sell Hubbard's management techniques to health care
professionals and businessmen. In the process, many are steered into the
church.

And Scientologists are the driving force behind two organizations active in
the scientific community. The organizations have been busy trying to sell
government agencies and the public on a chemical detoxification treatment
developed by Hubbard.

There is little question that, although Hubbard is gone, Scientology is
here to stay - and doing its best to meet his expectations. "The world is
ours," he once told his adherents. "Own it."

-------------------

              L. Ron Hubbard: A Religion of a Man's Imagining

                                  The Mind
                                   Behind
                                The Religion
             A Path From 'Pulp Fiction' To 'Sacred Scriptures'

By Joel Sappell and
Robert W. Welkos
(c) 1990, Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES - It was a triumph of galactic proportions: Science fiction
writer L. Ron Hubbard had discarded the body that bound him to the physical
universe and was off to the next phase of his spiritual exploration - "on a
planet a galaxy away."

"Hip, hip, hurray!" thousands of Scientologists thundered inside the
Hollywood Palladium, where they had just been told of this remarkable feat.
"Hip, hip, hurray! Hip, hip, hurray!" they continued to chant, gazing at a
large photograph of Hubbard, creator of their religion and author of the
best-selling "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health."
Earlier that day, the Church of Scientology had summoned the faithful
throughout Los Angeles to a "big and exciting event" at the Palladium. They
were told nothing more, just to be there.

As evening fell, thousands arrived, most decked out in the spit-and-polish
mock Navy uniforms that are symbolic of the organization's paramilitary
structure.

The excited assemblage was about to learn that their beloved leader, a man
who dubbed himself "The Commodore," had died. Yet, death was never
mentioned.

Instead, the Scientologists were told that Hubbard had finished his
spiritual research on this planet, charting a precise path for man to
achieve immortality. And now it was on to bigger challenges somewhere
beyond the stars.

His body had "become an impediment to the work he now must do outside of
its confines," the awe-struck crowd was informed. "The fact that he ...
willingly discarded the body after it was no longer useful to him signifies
his ultimate success: the conquest of life that he embarked upon half a
century ago."

The death certificate would show that Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, 74, who had
not been seen publicly for nearly six years, died on Jan. 24, 1986, of a
stroke on his ranch outside San Luis Obispo, Calif.

But to Scientologists, the man they affectionately called "Ron" had
ascended.

The glorification of L. Ron Hubbard that brisk January night was not
surprising. Over more than three decades he had skillfully transformed
himself from a writer of pulp fiction to a writer of "sacred scriptures."
Along the way, he made a fortune and achieved his dream of fame.
"I have high hopes of smashing my name into history so violently that it
will take a legendary form, even if all the books are destroyed," Hubbard
wrote to the first of his three wives in 1938, more than a decade before he
created Scientology.

"That goal," he said, "is the real goal as far as I am concerned."
From the ground up, Hubbard built an international empire that started as a
collection of mental therapy centers and became one of the world's most
controversial and secretive religions.

The intensity, combativeness and salesmanship that distinguish Scientology
from other religions can be traced directly to Hubbard. For, even in death,
the man and his creation are inseparable.

He wrote millions of words in scores of books instructing his followers on
everything from how to market Scientology to how to fend off critics. His
prolific and sometimes rambling discourses constitute the gospel of
Scientology, its structure and its soul. Deviations are punishable.
Through his writings, Hubbard fortified his clannish organization with a
powerful intolerance of criticism and a fierce will to endure and prosper.
He wrote a Code of Honor that urged his followers to "never desert a group
to which you owe your support" and "never fear to hurt another in a just
cause."

He transmitted to his followers his suspicious view of the world - one
populated, he insisted, by madmen bent on Scientology's destruction.
His flaring temper and searing intensity are deeply branded into the church
and reflected in the behavior of his faithful, who shout at adversaries and
even at each other. As one former high-ranking member put it: "He made
swearing cool."

Hubbard's followers say his teachings have helped thousands kick drugs and
allowed countless others to lead fuller lives through courses that improve
communication skills, build self-confidence and increase an individual's
ability to take control of his or her life.

He was, they say, "the greatest humanitarian in history."

But there was another side to this imaginative and intelligent man. And to
understand Scientology, one must begin with L. Ron Hubbard.
In the late 1940s, Hubbard was broke and in debt. A struggling writer of
science fiction and fantasy, he was forced to sell his typewriter for
$28.50 to get by.

"I can still see Ron three-steps-at-a-time running up the stairs in around
1949 in order to borrow $30 from me to get out of town because he had a
wife after him for alimony," recalled his former literary agent, Forrest J.
Ackerman.

At one point, Hubbard was reduced to begging the Veterans Administration to
let him keep a $51 overpayment of benefits. "I am nearly penniless," wrote
Hubbard, a former Navy lieutenant.

Hubbard was mentally troubled, too. In late 1947, he asked the Veterans
Administration to help him get psychiatric treatment.

"Toward the end of my [military] service," Hubbard wrote to the VA, "I
avoided out of pride any mental examinations, hoping that time would
balance a mind which I had every reason to suppose was seriously affected.
"I cannot account for nor rise above long periods of moroseness and
suicidal inclinations, and have newly come to realize that I must first
triumph above this before I can hope to rehabilitate myself at all."
In his most private moments, Hubbard wrote bizarre statements to himself in
notebooks that would surface four decades later in Los Angeles County
Superior Court.

"All men are your slaves," he wrote in one.

"You can be merciless whenever your will is crossed and you have the right
to be merciless," he wrote in another.

Hubbard was troubled, restless and adrift in those little known years of
his life. But he never lost confidence in his ability as a writer. He had
made a living with words in the past and he could do it again.

Before the financial and emotional problems that consumed him in the 1940s,
Hubbard had achieved moderate success writing for a variety of dime-store
pulp magazines. He specialized in shoot'em-up adventures, Westerns,
mysteries, war stories and science fiction.

His output, if not the writing itself, was spectacular. Using such
pseudonyms as Winchester Remington Colt and Rene LaFayette, he sometimes
filled up entire issues virtually by himself. Hubbard's life then was like
a page from one of his adventure stories. He panned for gold in Puerto Rico
and charted waterways in Alaska. He was a master sailor and glider pilot,
with a reported penchant for eye-catching maneuvers.

Although Hubbard's health and writing career foundered after the war, he
remained a virtual factory of ideas. And his biggest was about to be born. 
Hubbard had long been fascinated with mental phenomena and the mysteries of
life.

He was an expert in hypnotism. During a 1948 gathering of science fiction
buffs in Los Angeles, he hypnotized many of those in attendance, convincing
one young man that he was cradling a tiny kangaroo in his hands.

Hubbard sometimes spoke of having visions.

His former literary agent, Ackerman, said Hubbard once told of dying on an
operating table. And here, according to Ackerman, is what Hubbard said
followed:

"He arose in spirit form and looked at the body he no longer inhabited. ...
In the distance he saw a great ornate gate. ... The gate opened of its own
accord and he drifted through. There, spread out, was an intellectual
smorgasbord, the answers to everything that ever puzzled the mind of man.
He was absorbing all this fantabulous information. ... Then he felt like a
long umbilical cord pulling him back. And a voice was saying, 'No, not
yet.' "

Hubbard, according to Ackerman, said he returned to life and feverishly
wrote his recollections. He said Hubbard later tried to sell the manuscript
but failed, claiming that "whoever read it (a) went insane, or (b)
committed suicide."

Hubbard's intense curiosity about the mind's power led him into a
friendship in 1946 with rocket fuel scientist John Whiteside Parsons.
Parsons was a protege of British satanist Aleister Crowley and leader of a
black magic group modeled after Crowley's infamous occult lodge in England.
Hubbard also admired Crowley, and in a 1952 lecture described him as "my
very good friend."

Parsons and Hubbard lived in an aging mansion on South Orange Grove Avenue
in Pasadena, Calif. The estate was home to an odd mix of Bohemian artists,
writers, scientists and occultists. A small domed temple supported by six
stone columns stood in the back yard.

Hubbard met his second wife, Sara Northrup, at the mansion. Although she
was Parsons' lover at the time, Hubbard was undeterred. He married Northrup
before divorcing his first wife.

Long before the 1960s counterculture, some residents of the estate smoked
marijuana and embraced a philosophy of promiscuous, ritualistic sex.
"The neighbors began protesting when the rituals called for a naked
pregnant woman to jump nine times through fire in the yard," recalled
science fiction author L. Sprague de Camp, who knew both Hubbard and
Parsons.

Crowley biographers have written that Parsons and Hubbard practiced "sex
magic." As the biographers tell it, a robed Hubbard chanted incantations
while Parsons and his wife-to-be, Cameron, engaged in sexual intercourse
intended to produce a child with superior intellect and powers. The
ceremony was said to span 11 consecutive nights.

Hubbard and Parsons finally had a falling out over a sailboat sales venture
that ended in a court dispute between the two.

In later years, Hubbard tried to distance himself from his embarrassing
association with Parsons, who was a founder of a government rocket project
at the California Institute of Technology that later evolved into the famed
Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Parsons died in 1952 when a chemical explosion
ripped through his garage lab.

Hubbard insisted that he had been working undercover for Naval Intelligence
to break up black magic in America and to investigate links between the
occultists and prominent scientists at the Parsons mansion. Hubbard said
the mission was so successful that the house was razed and the black magic
group was dispersed.

But Parsons' widow, Cameron, disputed Hubbard's account in a brief
interview with the Los Angeles Times. She said the two men "liked each
other very much" and "felt they were ushering in a force that was going to
change things."

In early 1950, Hubbard published an intriguing article in a 25-cent
magazine called Astounding Science Fiction. In it, he said that he had
uncovered the source of man's problems.

The article grew into a book, written in one draft in just 30 days and
entitled "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health." It would become
the most important book of Hubbard's life.

The book's introduction declared that Hubbard had invented a new "mental
science," a feat more important perhaps than "the invention of the wheel,
the control of fire, the development of mathematics."

Hubbard himself said he had uncovered the source of, and the cure for,
virtually every ailment known to man. Dianetics, he said, could restore
withered limbs, mend broken bones, erase the wrinkles of age and
dramatically increase intelligence.

Not surprisingly, the nation's mental health professionals were
unimpressed.

Famed psychoanalyst Rollo May voiced the sentiments of many when he wrote
in The New York Times that "books like this do harm by their grandiose
promises to troubled persons and by their oversimplification of human
psychological problems."

But "Dianetics" was an instant best-seller when it hit the stands in May,
1950, and made Hubbard an overnight celebrity. Arthur Ceppos, who published
the book, said Hubbard spent his first royalties on a luxury Lincoln.
Hubbard had tapped the public's growing fascination with psychotherapy,
then largely accessible only to the affluent. "Dianetics," in fact, was
popularly dubbed "the poor man's psychotherapy" because it could be
practiced among friends for free.

In the book, Hubbard claimed to have discovered the previously unknown
"reactive mind," a depository for emotionally or physically painful events
in a person's life. These traumatic experiences, called "engrams," cause a
variety of psychosomatic illnesses, including migraine headaches, ulcers,
allergies, arthritis, poor vision and the common cold, Hubbard said.
The goal of dianetics, Hubbard said, is to purge these painful experiences
and create a "clear" individual who is able to realize his or her full
potential.

Catapulted from obscurity, Hubbard decided in the summer of 1950 to prove
in a big way that his new "science" was for real.

He appeared before a crowd of thousands at the Shrine Auditorium to unveil
the "world's first clear," a person he said had achieved a perfect memory.
Journalists from numerous newspapers and magazines were there to document
the event.

He placed on display one Sonya Bianca, a young Boston physics major. But
when Hubbard allowed the audience to question her, she performed dismally.
Someone, for example, told Hubbard to turn his back while the girl was
asked to describe the color of his tie. There was silence. The world's
first clear drew a blank.

"It was a tremendous embarrassment for Hubbard and his friends at the
time," recalled Arthur Jean Cox, a science fiction buff who attended the
presentation.

More problems were on the way for the man whose book promised miracles but
whose own life would move from one crisis to the next until his death.
He became embroiled, for instance, in a nasty divorce and child custody
battle that raised embarrassing questions about his mental stability.
His wife, Sara Northrup Hubbard, accused him of subjecting her to
"scientific torture experiments" and of suffering from "paranoid
schizophrenia" - allegations that she would later retract in a signed
statement but that would find their way into government files and continue
to haunt Hubbard.

She said in her suit that Hubbard had deprived her of sleep, beaten her and
suggested that she kill herself, "as divorce would hurt his reputation."
During the legal proceedings, Sara placed in the court record a letter she
had received from Hubbard's first wife.

"Ron is not normal," it said. "I had hoped you could straighten him out.
Your charges probably sound fantastic to the average person - but I've been
through it - the beatings, threats on my life, all the sadistic traits
which you charge - 12 years of it."

At one point in the marital dispute with Sara, Hubbard spirited their
1-year-old daughter, Alexis, to Cuba. From there, he wrote to Sara:
"I have been in the Cuban military hospital, and am being transferred to
the United States as a classified scientist immune from interference of all
kinds. ... My right side is paralyzed and getting more so.

"I hope my heart lasts. I may live a long time and again I may not. But
Dianetics will last ten thousand years - for the Army and Navy have it
now."

Hubbard, who had earlier accused his wife of infidelity and said she
suffered brain damage, closed his letter by threatening to cut his infant
daughter from his will.

"Alexis will get a fortune unless she goes to you, as she then would get
nothing," he wrote.

He also wrote a letter to the FBI at the height of the Red Scare accusing
Sara of possibly being a Communist, along with others whom he said had
infiltrated his dianetics movement.

The FBI, after interviewing Hubbard, dismissed him as a "mental case."
In one seven-page missive to the Department of Justice in 1951, he linked
Sara to alleged physical assaults on him. He said that on two separate
occasions he was punched in his sleep by unidentified intruders. And then
came the third attack.

"I was in my apartment on February 23rd, about two or three o'clock in the
morning when the apartment was entered, I was knocked out, had a needle
thrust into my heart to give it a jet of air to produce 'coronary
thrombosis' and was given an electric shock with a 110 volt current. This
is all very blurred to me. I had no witnesses. But only one person had
another key to that apartment and that was Sara."

After months of sniping at each other - and a counter divorce suit by
Hubbard in which he accused his wife of "gross neglect of duty and extreme
cruelty" - the couple ended their stormy marriage, with Sara obtaining
custody of the child. In later years, Hubbard would deny fathering the girl
and, as threatened, did not leave her a cent.

Not only was Hubbard's domestic life a shambles in 1951, his once-thriving
self-help movement was crumbling as public interest in his theories waned.
The foundations Hubbard had established to teach dianetics were in
financial ruin and his book had disappeared from The New York Times
best-seller list.

But the resilient self-promoter came up with something new. He called it
Scientology, and his metamorphosis from pop therapist to religious leader
was under way.

Scientology essentially gave a new twist to the Dianetics notion of painful
experiences that lodge in the "reactive mind." In Scientology, Hubbard held
that memories of such experiences also collect in a person's soul and date
back to past lives.

For many of Hubbard's early followers, Scientology was not believable, and
they broke with him. But others would soon take their place, conferring
upon Hubbard an almost saintly status.

But as Hubbard's renown and prosperity grew in the 1960s, so, too, did the
questions surrounding his finances and teachings. He was accused by various
governments - including the U.S. - of quackery, of brainwashing, of bilking
the gullible through high-pressure sales techniques.

In 1967, Hubbard took several hundred of his followers to sea to escape the
spreading hostility. But they found only temporary safe harbor from what
they believed had become an international conspiracy to persecute them.
Their three ships, led by a converted cattle ferry dubbed the "Apollo,"
were bounced from port to port in the Mediterranean and Caribbean by
governments that wrongly suspected the American skipper and his secretive,
clean-cut crew of being CIA operatives.

While anchored at the Portuguese island of Madeira, they were stoned by
townsfolk carrying torches and chanting anti-CIA slogans.

"They [were] throwing Molotov cocktails onto the boat but they weren't
lit," a crew member recalled. "Fortunately, this was not an experienced
mob."

The years at sea were a watershed for Hubbard and Scientology. He
instituted a Navy-style command structure that is evident today in the
military dress and snap-to behavior of the organization's staff members.
Hubbard named himself the "Commodore," and subordinates followed his orders
like Annapolis midshipmen.

As former Scientology ship officer Hana Eltringham Whitfield put it:
"Scientologists on the whole thought that Hubbard was like a god, that he
could command the waves to do what he wanted, that he was totally in
control of his life and consequences of his actions."





                            Staking A Claim To
                             Blood Brotherhood

(c) 1990, Los Angeles Times

As L. Ron Hubbard told it, he was 4 years old when a medicine man named
"Old Tom" made him a "blood brother" of the Blackfeet Indians of Montana,
providing the inspiration for the Scientology founder's first novel,
"Buckskin Brigades."

But one expert on the tribe doesn't buy Hubbard's account.

Historian Hugh Dempsey is associate director of the Glenbow Museum in
Calgary, Alberta. He has extensively researched the tribe, of which his
wife is a member.

He said that blood brothers are "an old Hollywood idea" and that the act
was "never done among the Blackfeet."

As for "Old Tom," Dempsey has informed doubts. For one thing, he said, the
name does not appear in a 1907 Blackfeet enrollment register containing the
names of hundreds of tribal members.

For another, "It's the kind of name, for that period [1915], that would
practically not exist among the Blackfeet," he said. "At that time,
Blackfeet did not have Christian names."

In 1985, church leaders produced a document that they say proves Hubbard
was not lying.

Typed on Blackfeet Nation stationery, it states: "To commemorate the
seventieth anniversary of L. Ron Hubbard becoming a blood brother of the
Blackfeet Nation. Tree Manyfeathers in a ceremony re-established L. Ron
Hubbard as a blood brother to the Blackfeet Tribe."

The document actually is meaningless because none of the three men who
signed it were authorized to take any action on the tribe's behalf,
according to Blackfeet Nation officials.

The document was created by Richard Mataisz, a Scientologist of fractional
Indian descent. Mataisz said in an interview he tried to prove that Hubbard
was a Blackfeet blood brother but came up empty-handed.

"It's not," he said, "something you go down to the courthouse and look up."
So Mataisz, using the name Tree Manyfeathers, said he held a private
ceremony, made Hubbard his own blood brother and, along with two other men,
signed the commemorative document.

"You should not give it [the document] very much credibility," said John
Yellow Kidney, former vice president of the tribe's executive committee. "I
don't."




                 Burglaries And Lies Paved A Path To Prison

        A Web Of Criminal Conspiracy To discredit The Church's Foes
              Resulted In 5-Year Sentences For 11 Defendants.

By Robert W. Welkos
and Joel Sappell
(c) 1990, Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES - It began with the title of a fairy tale - Snow White.
That was the benign code name Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard gave to an
ominous plan that would envelop his church in scandal and send its upper
echelon to prison, a plan rooted in his ever-deepening fears and
suspicions.

Snow White began in 1973 as an effort by Scientology through Freedom of
Information proceedings to purge government files of what Hubbard thought
was false information being circulated worldwide to discredit him and the
church. But the operation soon mushroomed into a massive criminal
conspiracy, executed by the church's legal and investigative arm, the
Guardian Office.

Under the direction of Hubbard's wife, Mary Sue, the Guardian Office
hatched one scheme after another to discredit and unnerve Scientology's
foes across the country. Guardian Office members were trained to lie, or in
their words, " to outflow false data effectively." They compiled enemy
lists and subjected those on the lists to smear campaigns and dirty tricks.
Their targets were in the government, the press, the medical profession,
wherever a potential threat surfaced.

The Guardian Office saved the worst for author Paulette Cooper of New York
City, whose scathing 1972 book, " The Scandal of Scientology," pushed her
to the top of the church's roster of enemies.

Among other things, Cooper was framed on criminal charges by Guardian
Office members, who obtained stationery she had touched and then used it to
forge bomb threats to the church in her name.

" You're like the Nazis or the Arabs - I'll bomb you, I'll kill you!"
warned one of the rambling letters.

The church reported the threat to the FBI and directed its agents to
Cooper, whose fingerprints matched those on the letter. Cooper was indicted
by a grand jury not only for the bomb threats, but for lying under oath
about her innocence.

Two years later, the author's reputation and psyche in tatters, prosecutors
dismissed the charges after she had spent nearly $20,000 in legal fees to
defend herself and $6,000 on psychiatric treatment.

It seemed that no plan against perceived enemies was too ambitious or
daring.

In Washington, Scientology spies penetrated such high-security agencies as
the Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue Service to find what
they had on Hubbard and the church.

In nighttime raids, they rifled files and photocopied mountains of
documents, many of which the church had unsuccessfully sought under the
federal Freedom of Information Act.

The thefts were inside jobs; the Guardian Office had planted one agent in
the IRS as a clerk typist and another in the Department of Justice as the
personal secretary of an assistant U.S. attorney who was handling Freedom
of Information lawsuits filed by Scientology.

So bold had they become that one Guardian Office operative slipped into an
IRS conference room and wired a bugging device into a wall socket before a
crucial meeting on Scientology was to be convened. The operative rigged the
device so he could eavesdrop over his car's FM radio.

The U.S. government was losing a war it did not even know it was fighting.
But that was about to change.

Two Scientologists used fake IRS credentials to gain access to government
agencies and then photocopied documents related to the church. Their
conspiracy was exposed when one of the suspects, after 11 months on the
lam, became worried about his plight and confessed to authorities,
prompting the FBI to launch one of the biggest raids in its history.
Armed with power saws, crowbars and bolt cutters, 134 agents burst into
three Scientology locations in Los Angeles and Washington.
They carted off eavesdropping equipment, burglar tools and 48,000 documents
detailing countless operations against " enemies" in public and private
life.

In the end, Hubbard's wife and the others were found guilty of charges of
conspiracy and burglary. The grand jury named Hubbard as an unindicted
co-conspirator; the seized Guardian Office files did not directly link him
to the crimes and he professed ignorance of them.

In a memorandum urging stiff sentences for the Scientologists, federal
prosecutors wrote:

"The crime committed by these defendants is of a breadth and scope
previously unheard of. No building, office, desk, or file was safe from
their snooping and prying. No individual or organization was free from
their despicable conspiratorial minds. The tools of their trade were
miniature transmitters, lock picks, secret codes, forged credentials and
any other device they found necessary to carry out their conspiratorial
schemes."

The 11 defendants were ordered to serve five years in federal prison. All
are now free.

Church leaders today maintain that this dark chapter in their religion's
history was the work of renegade members who, yes, broke the law but
believed they were justified because the government for two decades had
harassed and persecuted Scientology.

Boston attorney Earle C. Cooley, Scientology's national trial counsel, said
the present church management does not condone the criminal activities of
the old Guardian Office. He said that one of Hubbard's most important
dictums was to " maintain friendly relations with the environment and the
public."

"The question that I always have in my mind," Cooley said, " is for how
long a time is the church going to have to continue to pay the price for
what the (Guardian Office) did. ... Unfortunately, the church continues to
be confronted with it.

"And the ironic thing is that the people being confronted with it are the
people who wiped it out. And to the church, that's a very frustrating
thing."



                             The Final Days...
          Deep In Hiding, Hubbard Kept A Tight Grip On The Church

By Robert W. Welkos
and Joel Sappell
(c) 1990, Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES - Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard often said that man's most
basic drive is that of survival. And when it came to his own, he used
whatever was necessary - false identities, cover stories, deception.
There is no better illustration of this than the way he secretly controlled
the Church of Scientology while hiding from a world he viewed as
increasingly hostile.

Hubbard was last seen publicly in February 1980, in the desert community of
Hemet, Calif., a few miles from a high-security compound that houses
thechurch's movie and recording studio. His sudden departure fueled wild
and intense speculation.

The church said Hubbard went into seclusion to continue his Scientology
research and to resurrect his science fiction-writing career. But former
aides have said he dropped from sight to avoid subpoenas and government tax
agents probing allegations that he was skimming church funds.

Publications throughout the world ran stories about Hubbard's
disappearance. " Mystery of the Vanished Ruler" was the headline in Time
magazine.

In 1982, Hubbard's estranged son filed a probate petition trying to wrest
control of the Scientology empire. He argued that his father was either
dead or mentally incompetent and that his riches were being plundered by
Scientology executives.

The suit was dismissed after Hubbard, through an attorney, submitted an
affidavit with his fingerprints, saying that he was well and wanted to be
left alone.

No doubt, Hubbard would have chuckled with satisfaction over the
speculation surrounding his whereabouts. For he had always considered
himself a shrewd strategist and a master of the intelligence game,
endlessly calculating ways to outwit his foes.

Hubbard took with him only two people, a married couple named Pat and Anne
Broeker.

Pat Broeker, Hubbard's personal messenger at the time, had gone into hiding
with him once before and knew how to ensure his security. Broeker relished
cloak-and-dagger operations. His nickname among Hubbard's other messengers
was " 007."

Anne had been one of Hubbard's top aides for years. She was cool under
pressure and able to defuse Hubbard's volatile temper.

Hubbard and the Broekers spent their first several years together on the
move. For months, they traveled the Pacific Northwest in a motor home. They
lived in apartments in Newport Beach and other suburbs of Los Angeles.
Then, in the summer of 1983, they decided to settle down in a dusty ranch
town of Creston, Calif., population 270, where the hot, arid climate would
be kind to Hubbard's bursitis.

About 30 miles inland from San Luis Obispo, it was a perfect spot for a man
of notoriety to live in obscurity. In those parts, people don't ask a lot
of questions about someone else's business.

Hubbard and the Broekers concocted an elaborate set of phony names and
backgrounds to conceal their identities from the townsfolk. Pat and Anne
Broeker went by the names Mike and Lisa Mitchell. Hubbard became Lisa's
father,Jack, who impressed the locals as a chatty old man, charismatic but
sometimes gruff.

They purchased a 160-acre ranch known as the Whispering Winds for $700,000,
using 30 cashier's checks drawn on various California banks. Pat Broeker
told the sellers, Ed and Sherry Shahan, that he had recently inherited
millions of dollars and was looking to leave his home in Upstate New York
to raise livestock in California.

At the time, the Shahans were suspicious. As Ed Shahan recalled, " They
were having trouble deciding whose name to put the property in."
In less than three years, Hubbard poured an estimated $3 million into the
local economy as he redesigned the ranch to his exacting and elaborate
specifications.

He launched one project after another, some of them seemingly senseless,
according to local residents. He ordered the construction of a quarter-mile
horse-racing track with an observation tower. The track reportedly was
never used.

The 10-room ranch house was gutted and remodeled so many times that it went
virtually uninhabited during Hubbard's time there. He lived and worked in a
luxurious 40-foot Bluebird motor home parked near the stables.

All this was done without work permits, which meant that Hubbard and his
aides would not have to worry about nosy county inspectors.

Like Hubbard's aides in earlier years, the hired help saw extreme sides of
the man who was chauffeured around the property in a black Subaru pickup by
Anne Broeker.

Fencing contractor Jim Froelicher of Paso Robles remembers asking him for
advice on buying a camera. Several days later, Froelicher said, Hubbard
presented him with a 35mm camera as a gift.

Longtime Creston resident Ed Lindquist, on the other hand, said painters
dropped by the local tavern at lunch to talk about how the " old man" was
acting eccentric. They said he had them paint the walls again and again
because they " weren't white enough," according to Lindquist.

Scientology officials insist that Hubbard was in fine mental and physical
health during his years in seclusion. Most of his days, they say, were
spent reading, writing and enjoying the ranch's beauty and livestock, which
included llamas and buffalo.

But Hubbard was doing much more, according to former aides. Even in hiding,
they say, he kept a close watch and a tight grip on the church he built -
as he had for decades.

As early as 1966, Hubbard claimed to have relinquished managerial control
of the church. But ex-Scientologists and several court rulings have held
that this was a maneuver to shield Hubbard from potential legal actions and
accountability for the group's activities.

Over the years, efforts to conceal Hubbard's ties to the church were
extensive and extreme.

In 1980, for example, a massive shredding operation was undertaken at the
church's desert compound outside Palm Springs after Scientology officials
received an erroneous tip of an imminent FBI raid, according to a former
aide.

" Anything that indicated that L. Ron Hubbard controlled the church or was
engaged in management was to be shredded," recalled Hubbard's former public
relations officer, Laurel Sullivan.

For more than two days, Sullivan said, roughly 200 Scientologists crammed
thousands of documents into a huge shredder nicknamed " Jaws." Documents
too valuable to destroy, she added, were buried in the ground or under
floorboards.

In his self-imposed exile, Hubbard continued to reign over Scientology with
almost paranoid secrecy.

He relayed his orders in writing or on tape cassettes to Pat Broeker, who
then passed them to a ranking Scientologist named David Miscavige, the man
responsible for seeing that church executives complied.

Hubbard's communiques travelled a circuitous route in the darkness of
night, changing hands from Broeker to Miscavige at designated sites
throughout Southern California. To mask the author's identity, the missives
were signed with codes that carried the weight of Hubbard's signature.
Sometimes Broeker himself appeared from parts unknown to personally deliver
Hubbard's instructions to church executives.

From his secret seat of power in the oak-studded hills above San Luis
Obispo, Hubbard also made sure that he would not be severed from the riches
of his Scientology empire, high-level church defectors would later tell
government investigators.

They alleged that Hubbard skimmed millions of dollars from church coffers
while he was in hiding - carrying on a tradition that the Internal Revenue
Service said he began practically at Scientology's inception about 30 years
ago. Hubbard and his aides had always denied the allegations, and accused
the IRS of waging a campaign against the church and its founder.

While Hubbard was underground, the IRS launched a criminal investigation of
his finances. But the investigation would soon be without a target, and
ultimately abandoned.

By late 1985, Hubbard's directives to underlings had tapered off. At age
74, he no longer resembled the robust and natty man whose dated photographs
fill Scientology's promotional literature. Living in isolation, separated
from his devoted followers, he had let himself go.

His thin gray hair, with streaks of the old red, hung without sheen to his
shoulders. He had grown a stringy, unkempt beard and mustache. His round
face was now sunken and his ruddy complexion had turned pasty. He was an
old man and he was nearing death.

On or about Jan. 17, 1986, Hubbard suffered a " cerebral vascular
accident," commonly known as a stroke. Caring for him was Gene Denk, a
Scientologist doctor and Hubbard's physician for eight years.

There was little Denk could do for Hubbard in those final days -the stroke
was debilitating. He was bedridden and his speech was badly impaired.
One week later, at 8 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 24, Hubbard died.
Throughout the night, according to neighbor Robert Whaley, heavy traffic
inexplicably moved in and out of the ranch. Whaley, a retired advertising
executive, said that he was kept awake by headlights shining through his
windows.

For more than 11 hours, Hubbard's body remained in the motor home where he
died. Scientology attorney Earle Cooley had ordered that Hubbard not be
touched until he arrived by car from Los Angeles with another Scientology
lawyer.

The next morning, Cooley telephoned Reis Chapel, a San Luis Obispo
mortuary, and arranged to have the body cremated. With Cooley present,
Hubbard was transported to the mortuary.

Once chapel officials learned who Hubbard was, however, they became
concerned about the church's rush to cremate him. They contacted the San
Luis Obispo County coroner, who halted the cremation until the body could
be examined and blood tests performed.

When then-Deputy Coroner Don Hines arrived, Cooley presented him with a
certificate that Hubbard had signed just four days before his death. It
stated that, for religious reasons, he wanted no autopsy.

Cooley also produced a will that Hubbard had signed the day before he died,
directing that his body be promptly cremated and that his vast wealth be
distributed according to the provisions of a confidential trust he had
established. His once-ornate trademark signature was little more than a
scrawl.

After the blood tests and examination revealed no foul play, coroner Hines
approved the cremation. With Cooley's consent, he also photographed the
body and lifted fingerprints as a way to later confirm that it was the
reclusive Hubbard and not a hoax.

Within hours, Hubbard's ashes were scattered at sea by the Broekers and
Miscavige.

Two days after Hubbard's death, Pat Broeker stood before a
standing-room-only crowd of Scientologists at the Hollywood Palladium. It
was his first public appearance in six years, and he had just broken the
news of Hubbard's passing.
The cheers were deafening.

Broeker announced that Hubbard had made a conscious decision to " sever all
ties" to this world so he could continue his Scientology research in spirit
form - testimony to the power of the man and his teachings.

He " laid down in his bed and he left," Broeker said. " And that was it."
Hubbard left behind an organization that would continue to function as
though he were still alive. His millions of words - the lifeblood of
Scientology - have now been computerized for wisdom and instructions at the
touch of a button.

In Scientology, he was - and always will be - the " Source."


------------------


                 Church Scriptures Get High-Tech Protection

By Robert W. Welkos
and Joel Sappell
(c) 1990, Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES - Scientology is determined that the words of L. Ron Hubbard
shall live forever.

Using state-of-the art technology, the movement has spent more than $15
million to protect Hubbard's original writings, tape-recorded lectures and
filmed treatises from natural and man-made calamities, including nuclear
holocaust. The effort illustrates two fundamental truths about the
Scientology movement: It believes in its future and it never does anything
halfheartedly. In charge of the preservation task is the Church of
Spiritual Technology, which functions as archivist for Hubbard's works.
It has a staff - but no congregation - and its fiscal 1987 income was $503
million, according to court documents filed by the church.
The organization has purchased rural land in New Mexico, Northern
California and Southern California's San Bernardino Mountains to store the
Hubbard gospel.

According to Church of Spiritual Technology documents, the New Mexico site
has a 670-foot tunnel with two deep vaults at the end. The tunnel is
protected with thick concrete and has four doors with "maintenance-free
lives of 1,000 years." Three of the doors purportedly will be "nuclear
blast resistant."

All this to house mere copies of the original works, which include 500,000
pages of Hubbard writings, 6,500 reels of tape and 42 films. The originals
themselves are being kept under tight security on a sprawling Scientology
complex near Lake Arrowhead, Calif.

While details of the facility are sketchy, a San Bernardino County
sheriff's deputy, who requested anonymity, said the group had burrowed a
huge tunnel into a mountainside.

At the Lake Arrowhead repository, sophisticated methods are being used to
prepare Hubbard's works for the bomb-proof vaults. Here, according to
Scientology officials and documents, is the process:

First, the original writings are chemically treated to rid the paper of
acid that causes deterioration. Next, they are placed in plastic envelopes
that church officials say will last 1,000 years.

From there, they are packaged in titanium "time capsules" filled with argon
gas to further aid preservation.

Hubbard's writings also are being etched onto stainless steel plates with a
strong acid. Scientology officials said the plates are so durable that they
can be sprayed with salt water for 1,000 years and not deteriorate.
As for Hubbard's taped lectures, they are being re-recorded onto special
"pure gold" compact discs encased in glass that, according to Scientology
archvists, are "designed to last at least 1,000 years with no deterioration
of sound quality."


------------------


       Scientology Markets Its Gospel With High-Pressure Sales Pitch

By Joel Sappell and
Robert W. Welkos
(c) 1990, Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES - Behind the religious trappings, the Church of Scientology is
run like a lean, no-nonsense business in which potential members are called
"prospects," "raw meat" and "bodies in the shop."

Its governing financial policy, written by the late Scientology founder L.
Ron Hubbard, is simple and direct: "MAKE MONEY, MAKE MORE MONEY, MAKE
OTHERS PRODUCE SO AS TO MAKE MONEY."

The organization uses sophisticated sales tactics to sell a seemingly
endless progression of expensive courses, each serving as a prerequisite
for the next. Known collectively as "The Bridge," the courses promise
salvation, higher intelligence, superhuman powers and even possible
survival from nuclear fallout - for those who can pay.
Church tenets mandate that parishioners purchase Scientology goods and
services under Hubbard's "doctrine of exchange." A person must learn to
give, he said, as well as receive.

For its programs and books, the church charges "fixed donations" that range
from $50 for an elementary course in improving communication skills to more
than $13,000 for Hubbard's secret teachings on the origins of the universe
and the genesis of mankind's ills.

The church currently is offering a "limited time only" deal on a select
package of Hubbard courses, which represent a small portion of The Bridge.
If bought individually, those courses would cost $55,455. The sale price:
$33,399.50.

As a promotional flyer for the discount observes, "YOU SAVE $22,055.50."
To complete Hubbard's progression of courses, a Scientologist could
conceivably spend a lifetime and more than $400,000. Although few if any
have doled out that much, the high cost of enlightenment in Scientology has
left many deeply in debt to family, friends and banks.

Ask former church member Marie Culloden of Manhattan Beach, Calif., who
describes herself as a "recovering Scientologist."

"I'm trying to recover my mortgaged home," says Culloden, who spent 20
years in Scientology and obtained three mortgages totaling more than
$80,000 to buy courses.

The Scientology Bridge is always under construction, keeping the Supreme
Answer one step away from church members - a potent sales strategy devised
by Hubbard to keep the money flowing, critics contend.

New courses continually are added, each of which is said to be crucial for
spiritual progress, each heavily promoted.

Church members are warned that unless they keep purchasing Scientology
services, misery and sickness may befall them. For the true believer, this
is a powerful incentive to keep buying whatever the group is selling.
Through the mail, Scientologists are bombarded with glossy, colorful
brochures announcing the latest courses and discounts. Letters and
postcards sound the dire warning, "Urgent! Urgent! Your future is at risk!
... It is time to ACT! NOW! ... You must buy now!"

By far the most expensive service offered by Scientology is "auditing" - a
kind of confessional during which an individual reveals intimate and
traumatic details of his life while his responses are monitored on a lie
detector-type device known as the E-meter.

The purpose is to unburden a person of painful experiences, or "engrams,"
that block his spiritual growth, a process that can span hundreds of hours.
Auditing is purchased in 12-hour chunks costing anywhere between $3,000 and
$11,000 each, depending on where it is bought.

Even Scientology's critics concede that auditing often helps people feel
better by allowing them to air troubling aspects of their lives - much like
a Catholic confessional or psychotherapy - and keeps them coming back for
more.

The church makes no apologies for the methods it uses to raise funds and
spread the gospel of its founder. Scientology spokesmen said in interviews
that it takes money to cover overhead expenses and to finance the church's
worldwide expansion, as it does for any religion.

"You can't do it on bread and butter," said one.

Church leaders will not discuss Scientology's gross income or net worth.
But they contend that Scientologists who pay for spiritual programs are no
different from, say, Mormons who tithe 10 percent of their income for
admittance to the temple, or from Jews who buy tickets to High Holiday
services or from Christians who rent church pews.

"The fact of the matter is that the parishioners of the Church of
Scientology have felt and continue to feel that they get full value for
their donations," said Scientology lawyer Earle C. Cooley.

Many Scientologists say that Hubbard's teachings have resurrected their
lives, some of which were marred by drugs, personal traumas, self doubts or
a sense of alienation. They say that, through the church, they have gained
confidence and learned to lead ethical lives and take responsibility for
themselves, while working to create a better world.

Scientology "works," they say, and for that, no price is too high.

"It takes money," acknowledged Scientologist Sheri Scott. "It took money
for my father to buy his Cadillac. I wish he'd sell the damn thing and give
me the money [for Scientology].... I have never felt cheated at all."
"I'm not glued to the sky or anything. I'm a very normal person," she
added. "I just wish more people would take a look, would read [about
Scientology], before they decide we're cuckoo."

While other religions increasingly advertise and market themselves, none
approaches the Church of Scientology's commercial zeal and sophistication.
Its tactics come directly from Hubbard, who wrote entire treatises on how
to create a market for, and sell, Scientology.

He borrowed generously from a 1971 book called "Big League Sales Closing
Techniques." Touted as the "selling secrets of a supersalesman," the book
was written by former car dealer Les Dane, who has conducted popular
seminars at Scientology headquarters in Florida.

Hubbard said that Scientology must be marketed through the "art of hard
sell," meaning an "insistence that people buy." He said that, "regardless
of who the person is or what he is, the motto is, `Always sell
something....' "

Hubbard contended that such high-pressure tactics are imperative because a
person's spiritual well being is at stake.

Among other things, he directed his followers to: "rob the person of every
opportunity to say `No.' "; "help prospects work through financial stops
impeding a sale"; "make the prospect think it was his idea to make the
purchase"; utilize the two man "tag team" approach, and "overcome and
rapidly handle any attempted prospect backout."

One of the most important techniques in selling Scientology, Hubbard said,
is to create mystery.

"If we tell him there is something to know and don't tell him what it is,
we will zip people into" the organization, Hubbard wrote. "And one can keep
doing this to a person - shuttle them along using mystery."

Frequently, a person's first contact with Scientology comes when he is
approached by a staff member on the street and offered a free personality
test, or receives a lengthy questionnaire in the mail.

Using charts and graphs, the idea is to convince a person that he has some
problem, or "ruin," that Scientology can fix, while assuaging concerns he
may have about the church. According to Hubbard, "if the job has been done
well, the person should be worried."

With that accomplished, the customer is pushed to buy services he is told
will improve his sorry condition and perhaps give him such powers as being
able to spiritually travel outside his body - or, in Scientology jargon, to
"exteriorize."

Former church member Andrew Lesco said he was told that he "would be able
to project my mind into drawers, someone's pocket, a wallet and I would be
able to tell what's inside ...."

Church members are required to write testimonials - "success stories" - as
they progress from one level to the next.

The testimonials regularly appear in Scientology publications. Usually
carrying only the authors' initials, they are used to promote courses
without the church itself assuming legal liability for promising results
that may not occur, according to ex-Scientologists. Here is an example:
"We were having trouble with the windshield wipers in our car. Sometimes
they would work and sometimes they wouldn't.... We were driving along, and
my husband was driving. I got to thinking about the windshield wipers, left
my body in the seat and took a look under the hood. I spotted the wires
that were shorting and caused them to weld themselves together, like they
were supposed to be. We haven't had any trouble with them since."
Scientology staffers who sell Hubbard's courses are called "registrars."
They earn commissions on their sales and are skilled at eliciting every
facet of an individual's finances, including bank accounts, stocks, cars,
houses, whatever can be converted to cash.
Like all Scientology staffers, a registrar's productivity is evaluated each
week. Performance is judged by how much money he or she brings in by
Thursday afternoon. And, in Scientology, declining or stagnant productivity
is not viewed benevolently, as former registrar Roger Barnes says he
learned.

"I remember being dragged across a desk by my tie because I hadn't made my
[sales quota]," said Barnes, who once toured the world selling Scientology
until he had a bitter break with the group.
Barnes and other ex-Scientologists say that this uncompromising push to
generate more money each week places intense pressure on registrars.
Another former Scientology salesman in Los Angeles said he and other
registrars would use a tactic called "crush regging." The technique, he
said, employed no elaborate sales talk. They repeated three words again and
again: "Sign the check. Sign the check."

"This made the person feel so harassed," he said, "that he would sign the
check because it was the only way he was going to get out of there."
A 1984 investigative report by Canadian authorities quoted a Toronto
registrar as saying that members of the public want to be "bled of their
money.... If they didn't, they would be staff members eligible for free
training."

The Canadian report also recounted a meeting during which Scientology
staffers chanted: "Go for the throat. Go for blood. Go for the bloody
throat."

Former Scientologist Donna Day of Ventura, Calif., said that church
registrars accused her of throwing away money on rent and on food for her
cats and dogs - "degraded beings," they called her pets. They said the
money should be going to the church.

"I was so upset, I finally left the house with them sitting in it," said
Day, who sued the church to get back $25,000 she said she had spent on
Scientology.

Several years ago, church members persuaded a Florida woman to turn over a
worker's compensation settlement she received after the
death of her husband, Larry M. Wheaton, who left behind two children, ages
3 and 7. He was the pilot of an Air Florida jet that plunged into the
Potomac River after it had departed National Airport in Washington, D.C.,
in 1982.

The Wheatons were longtime church members.

Joanne Wheaton gave nearly $150,000 to the church and almost as much to a
private business controlled by Scientologists. But the deal was blocked
when a lawsuit was brought by an attorney appointed by the court to protect
the children's interests.

The suit claimed that the Scientologists had disregarded the future welfare
and financial security of the Wheaton family by taking money that was
supposed to be used solely for the support of the children and their
mother.

After protracted discussions, the money was refunded and the Scientologists
who negotiated the deal were expelled by the church for their role in the
affair.

For years, one of Scientology's top promoters was Larry Wollersheim. He
traveled the country inspiring others to follow him across Hubbard's
Bridge. Then he became disenchanted with the movement.

In 1980, he filed a Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit, accusing the church
of subjecting him to psychologically damaging practices and of driving him
to the brink of insanity and financial ruin after he had a falling out with
the group.

Three years ago, a jury awarded him $30 million. The award was recently
reduced to $2.5 million.

During the litigation, Wollersheim filed a 200-page affidavit in which he
offered this analysis of what keeps Scientologists hooked:

"Fear and hope are totally indoctrinated into the cult [Scientology]
member. He hopes that he will receive the miraculous and ridiculous claims
made directly, indirectly and by rumor by the sect and its members.

"He is afraid of the peer pressure for not proceeding up the prescribed
program. He is intimidated and afraid of being accused of being a
dilettante. He is afraid that if he doesn't do it now before the world ends
or collapses he may never get the chance. He is afraid if he doesn't claim
he received gains and write a success testimonial he will be shunned....

"How many people could stand up to that kind of pressure and stand before a
group of applauding people and say: 'Hey, it really wasn't good.'?"
Wollersheim said that the courses provide only a temporary euphoria.

"Then you're sold the next mystery and the next solution.... I've seen
people sell their homes, stocks, inheritances and everything they own
chasing their hopes for a fleeting, subjective euphoria. I have never
witnessed a greater preying on the hopes and fears of others than has been
carefully engineered by the cult's leader."


----------------------


                           The New Man In Control

 A Protege Of L. Ron Hubbard Now Leads The Church, Wielding Power With The
                        Stern Approach Of His Mentor

By Joel Sappell and
Robert W. Welkos
(c) 1990, Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES - The Church of Scientology today is run by a high-school
dropout who grew up at the knee of the late L. Ron Hubbard and wields power
with the iron-fisted approach of his mentor. At 30, David Miscavige is
chairman of the board of an organization that sits atop the bureaucratic
labyrinth known as the Church of Scientology. This organization, the
Religious Technology Center, owns the trademarks that Scientology churches
need to operate, including the words Scientology and Dianetics. The
Religious Technology Center licenses the churches to use the trademarks and
can revoke permission if a church fails to perform properly. Therein rests
much, but not all, of Miscavige's power. He is the man in control, charting
a direction for the organization that is at once expansionist and combative
- in keeping with the dictates and personality of Hubbard, his role model.
He refused repeated requests to be interviewed for this report.

Church spokesmen say Miscavige is a tireless, no-nonsense leader who works
15-hour days and whose vision is guiding the church's foray into mainstream
society. " He has a tremendous ability to cut through bull and get to the
point," said one Scientology spokesman, who has worked closely with
Miscavige. " He's an initiator," said another. High-ranking former
Scientologists describe him as a ruthless infighter with a volatile temper.
They say he speaks in a gritty street parlance, punctuated with expletives.
One recalled the time that Miscavige became enraged with the performances
of Scientology staffers on a church record album. He propped its cover
against an embankment outside his Riverside County, Calif., office and shot
it repeatedly with a .45-caliber pistol, said the associate. To the public,
the Rev. Heber Jentzsch, president of the Church of Scientology
International, is portrayed as Scientology's top official. He appears
regularly at news conferences and on talk shows, and was one of a group of
Scientologists detained recently by Spanish officials investigating the
church. In reality, Jentzsch appears to be chiefly responsible for church
public relations. The real power is consolidated among a handful of
Scientologists, led by Miscavige, who keep low public profiles.

Miscavige's climb to prominence is a lesson in the origins and nature of
power in the church that Hubbard built. At the age of 14, with the blessing
of his Scientologist parents, Miscavige joined a cadre of trusted
youngsters called the " Commodore's messengers." In the beginning, they
merely ran Hubbard's errands. But as they emerged from adolescence, Hubbard
broadened their influence over even the highest-level church executives. In
time, the messengers controlled the communication lines to and from Hubbard
- a critical component of power in an organization that revered him as
almost saintly. When messengers spoke, they did so with Hubbard's
authority. Bad-mouthing a messenger, Hubbard said, was tantamount to
personally challenging him. When Hubbard went into hiding in 1980, he left
behind but did not forget Miscavige, one of his favorites. It was
Miscavige's job to ensure that Hubbard's orders, secretly relayed to him,
were followed by church executives. In effect, Miscavige became the sole
link between church leaders and Hubbard. Miscavige also was put in charge
of a profit-making firm called Author Services Inc., which was established
in 1981 to manage Hubbard's literary and financial affairs. The job further
enhanced Miscavige's reputation as having Hubbard's confidence.

Church defectors say Miscavige wasted no time flexing his new muscles.
Among other things, he spearheaded a purge in 1981 of upper-echelon
Scientology executives accused of subverting Hubbard's teachings and
plotting to seize control of the organization. He also cracked down on
owners of Scientology franchises, or missions, who pay the church roughly
10 percent of their gross income. At a 1982 church conference, Miscavige
accused the mission owners of cheating the " mother church." He and his
aides announced that " finance police" would audit the missions to ensure
that the church was getting its fair share of money. And the audits would
cost the missions $15,000 a day. In taking command of Scientology after
Hubbard's death, Miscavige survived a challenge from two other Hubbard
lieutenants once thought to be his likely successors: Pat and Anne Broeker,
who had been in hiding with Hubbard.

The power struggle was so intense at one point that even Hubbard's final
Scientology writings, revered as sacred scriptures, became the object of a
tug of war between Miscavige and Pat Broeker, who threatened to use them to
start his own church. Miscavige today has achieved exalted status within
the Scientology movement. He has personal aides who walk his dog, shine his
shoes and run his errands, according to Vicki Aznaran, a top Scientology
executive who left the church in 1987 after a falling-out. In his rare
public appearances, he is surrounded by respectful subordinates. And like
Hubbard, who was frequently referred to by his initials, David Miscavige is
called D.M.



-------------------


                        The Courting Of Celebrities

         Testimonials of the famous are prominent in the church's
          push for acceptability. John Travolta and Kirstie Alley
                        are the current headliners.

By Joel Sappell and Robert W. Welkos
(c) 1990, Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES - The Church of Scientology uses celebrity spokesmen to endorse
L. Ron Hubbard's teachings and give Scientology greater acceptability in
mainstream America.

As far back as 1955, Hubbard recognized the value of famous people to his
fledgling, off-beat church when he inaugurated "Project Celebrity."

According to Hubbard, Scientologists should target prominent individuals as
their "quarry" and bring them back like trophies for Scientology.
He listed the following people of that era as suitable prey: Edward R.
Murrow, Marlene Dietrich, Ernest Hemingway, Howard Hughes, Greta Garbo,
Walt Disney, Henry Luce, Billy Graham, Groucho Marx and others of similar
stature.

"If you bring one of them home you will get a small plaque as a reward,"
Hubbard wrote in a Scientology magazine more than three decades ago.
Although the effort died, the idea of using celebrities to promote and
defend Scientology survived - though perhaps not as grandly as Hubbard had
dreamed.

Today, the church's most famous celebrity is actor John Travolta, who
credits Hubbard's teachings with giving him confidence and direction.
"All I've had are benefits," said Travolta, a church member since 1975.

Another Scientology celebrity is actress Kirstie Alley, co-star of the
television series "Cheers." Last year, Alley and Travolta teamed up in the
blockbuster comedy film, "Look Who's Talking."

Alley is international spokeswoman for the Scientology movement's
controversial new drug and alcohol treatment center in Chilocco, Okla.,
which employs a rehabilitation regimen created years ago by Hubbard.
A former cocaine abuser, Alley has said she discovered Hubbard's Narconon
program in 1979 and that it "salvaged my life and began my acting career."
Alley also has become active in disseminating a new 47-page booklet on ways
to preserve the environment. The booklet, entitled "Cry Out," was named
after a Hubbard song and was produced by Author Services Inc., his literary
agency. Author Services is controlled by influential Scientologists.

In April, Alley provided nationwide exposure for the illustrated booklet -
which mentions Hubbard but not Scientology - when she unveiled it on the
popular Arsenio Hall Show. Since then, it has been distributed to prominent
environmental groups throughout the U.S.

Besides Alley and Travolta, the Scientology celebrity ranks also include:
jazz pianist Chick Corea; singer Al Jarreau; actress Karen Black; opera
star Julia Migenes; Priscilla Presley and her daughter Lisa Marie Presley,
and Nancy Cartwright, who is the voice behind Bart Simpson, the
wisecracking son on the animated TV hit, "The Simpsons."

U.S. Olympic gymnast Charles Lakes also is a prominent Scientologist.
After the 1988 Summer Games in Seoul, Lakes appeared on the cover of
Celebrity magazine, a Scientology publication that promotes church
celebrities. In an interview with the magazine, Lakes credited Dianetics
for his success and strength.

"I am by far the healthiest person on the team," he said. "They [other team
members] are actually resentful of me because I don't have to train as long
as they do."

Celebrities are considered so important to the movement's expansion that
the church created a special office to guide their careers and ensure their
"correct utilization" for Scientology.

The church has a special branch that ministers to prominent individuals,
providing them with first-class treatment. Its headquarters, called
Celebrity Centre International, is housed in a magnificent old turreted
mansion on Franklin Avenue, overlooking the Hollywood Freeway.

In 1988, the movement tried to associate itself with a non-Scientology
celebrity, race driver Mario Andretti, by sponsoring his car in the GTE
World Challenge of Tampa, Fla. But the plan backfired.
When Andretti saw seven Dianetics logo decals stripped across his Porsche,
he demanded that they be removed.

"It's not something I believe in, so I don't want to make it appear like
I'm endorsing it," he was quoted as saying.

For years, Scientology's biggest celebrity spokesman was former San
Francisco 49ers quarterback John Brodie.

Brodie said that when pain in his throwing arm threatened his career, he
applied Dianetics techniques and soon was "zipping the ball" again like a
young man.

Although he still admires Hubbard's teachings, Brodie said he gave up
promoting them after some of his friends in Scientology were expelled and
harassed during a power struggle with church management.

"There were many in the church I felt were treated unfairly," Brodie said.


----------------------


              Defectors Recount Lives Of Hard Work, Punishment

By Robert W. Welkos
and Joel Sappell
(c) 1990, Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES - Doris Braine says the transformation of her Patty Jo was
heartbreaking.

"It was," she said, "like my darling daughter had died."

Before Patty Jo went to work for the Church of Scientology at the age of
20, she had been "fun and pretty and a joy to be with," recalled her
72-year-old mother. "Suddenly, she became a totally different person,
shooting fire from her eyes."

There were those hateful looks, and the dozens of letters that Patty Jo
returned unopened. For two years, she would not even speak to her mother,
who had criticized Scientology and refused to hand over $2,000 for church
courses.

And Patty Jo had taken to calling Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard her
father.

"I would cry all the time," recalled Braine, a retired college dean. "I had
to psych myself up to go to work, be charming and do a good job. But all
day long I thought about her. I prayed my head off that someday she would
be able to get out of it.

"It took 15 years, but I think it was worth every prayer I said."

In 1982, Patricia Braine left Scientology, disillusioned with the church
and disappointed with herself for succumbing to an environment that, she
said, twisted her thinking and isolated her from a world she had hoped to
make better.

Scientology, she said, "promises you euphoria but ends up taking your body,
heart, mind, soul and family.... We were so brainwashed to believe that
what we were doing was good for mankind that we were willing to put up with
the worst conditions."

Over the years, defecting Scientologists have come forward with similar
accounts of how their lives and personalities were upended after they
joined the church's huge staff. They say the organization promised
spiritual liberation but delivered subjugation.

In interviews and public records, former staffers have said they were
alienated from society, stripped of familiar beliefs, punished for aberrant
behavior, rewarded for conformity and worked beyond exhaustion to meet
ever-escalating productivity quotas.

"Slave labor" is how Canadian authorities in 1984 described the Scientology
work force.

Worldwide, there are nearly 12,000 church staff members, many of whom are
in Los Angeles, one of the organization's largest strongholds. They have
kept Scientology afloat through a turbulent history that, arguably, would
have sunk any other newly emerging religion.

Day and night they labor single-mindedly at jobs ranging from the
meaningful to the menial. Some work in administrative areas such as
promotion, legal affairs, finance, public relations and fund raising.
Thousands of others deliver the church's religious programs. Still others
proselytize on city sidewalks, sell books and wash dishes.

Scientology spokesmen insist that the staff is treated well and not
exploited. They say that the detractors simply lacked the devotion to
advance the religion's aims and the morality to abide by its high ethical
standards.

Current staff members say that their lifestyle is no more unusual or harsh
than that of a monk. Joining the Scientology staff, they say, was the
supreme expression of their devotion to create, in Hubbard's words, "a
civilization without insanity, without criminals and without war, where the
able can prosper and honest beings can have rights."

The elite of Scientology's workers, at least 3,000 of them, belong to a
zealous faction known as the Sea Organization and are given room, board and
a small weekly allowance.

They sign contracts to serve Scientology in this and future lifetimes - for
a billion years. Their motto is: "We come back."

Dressed in mock navy uniforms adorned with ribbons, they bark orders with a
clipped, military cadence. They hold ranks such as captain, lieutenant and
ensign. Officers, including women, are addressed as "Sir."

Hubbard called himself "The Commodore," a reflection of his infatuation
with the U.S. Navy. "The Sea Org is a very tough outfit," he once said.
"It's no walk in the park.... We are short-tempered, but we do our job."
Scientology staffers enter a clannish world of authoritarian rules and
discipline based on Hubbard writings. His works govern every detail of the
operation, from how to disseminate his teachings to how to cook baby food.

When staffers observe transgressions of Hubbard's dictums, they are
required to inform on each other. The church says "knowledge reports" help
the organization correct problems and ensure a high standard of operation.
But critics contend that the practice works to stifle expressions of
discontent or doubts about the church, even between husbands and wives.
To break the group's rules or fall below work quotas can subject even top
Scientologists to grueling interrogations on a lie detector-type device
called the E-meter, and perhaps land them in the Rehabilitation Project
Force, or RPF.

The Rev. Ken Hoden, a church spokesman in Los Angeles, once described the
RPF like this: "You just do some grounds work for a few weeks. That's all."
Others, however, have called it in hindsight the most degrading ordeal of
their lives - although one that they believed at the time was leading them
to spiritual salvation.

RPFers, as they are called, are separated from their family and friends for
days, weeks, months or even longer. They cannot speak unless spoken to,
they run wherever they go and they wear armbands to denote their lowly
condition.

The RPF provides the church with a pool of labor to perform building
maintenance, pull weeds, haul garbage, clean toilets or do anything else
church executives deem necessary for redemption.

Former Sea Organization member Hana Eltringham Whitfield said in an
affidavit that she once saw an RPF work crew eating like "unkempt
convicts," digging their hands into a large communal pot of food because
there was no cutlery or plates.

"The Church of Scientology, which was dedicated to saving the planet from
insanity, had succeeded in turning these human beings into savages," said
Whitfield.

Bill Franks, the church's former international executive director, said
that he once lived in a crowded garage for seven months while assigned to
the RPF.

"We were indoctrinated on a continuous, daily basis that we were
suppressive people, that we were anti-social people, that we were
criminals," said Franks, who had a falling out with the church in the early
1980s. He was accused by senior Scientologists of engineering a coup to
wrest control of the church from them.

The Church of Scientology says that the RPF was established in 1974 so that
errant Sea Organization members would have a place to both work and study
Hubbard's writings without distractions or substantive duties.

But Hubbard's former public relations officer, Laurel Sullivan, testified
in a Scientology lawsuit that Hubbard told her the RPF was created because
"he wanted certain people segregated" whom he believed were "against him
and against his instructions and against Scientology."

In Scientology, a staff member is evaluated based on his or her
productivity. Hubbard made it clear in a 1964 directive that there is no
excuse - short of death - for missing work.

"If a staff member's breath can be detected on a mirror," Hubbard said, "he
or she can do his or her job."

Measuring weekly productivity, Hubbard said, eliminates personality
considerations from staff evaluations. Critics, however, say the system is
dehumanizing.

"There is no time for anything else, for compassion, for talking or going
out," said Travers Harris, who left the Sea Organization in 1986 after
nearly 14 years. "The only communication is about work. When work is
finished you are too tired [and] you have to go to bed."

Several years ago, some branches of the church initiated a pilot program to
boost productivity even higher.

Under the so-called Team Share Program, staffers who repeatedly failed in
their jobs could be exiled to cramped living quarters called "pigs
berthing" and fed only rice and beans. Those who kept their productivity up
would be afforded special privileges and the distinction of wearing a
silver star.

Staffers become so consumed by their jobs that their children sometimes get
lost in the shuffle, according to former staff members who had youngsters
and those who cared for them.

At best, they say, children see their parents one hour a day at dinner and
perhaps late in the evening. Sometimes, according to ex-staffers,
youngsters have gone for days without a visit from their parents, who
believe that their work for the group is transcendent.

In 1984, a British justice cited the case of a staff member who left her
job to seek medical help for a daughter who had broken her arm.
"She was directed to work all night as a penalty," the justice noted.
He recounted the case of another woman who refused to take a church job
that would have separated her from her daughter for two months.
"She was shouted at and abused because she put the care of her child
first," the justice wrote in connection with a child custody battle between
a father who was a Scientologist and a mother who had defected. The mother
was awarded custody.

Former staff members say that they tolerated the harsh conditions for many
reasons. They say they were captives both of their dreams of creating an
enlightened world through Scientology and of their fears of leaving the
organization.

Staff members are continuously told that there is no safe refuge for them
outside the group because society is a breeding ground for criminals, the
insane and people too ignorant to see that Scientology is the answer to
mankind's problems.

In the church, non-Scientologists are derisively called "wogs," defined by
Hubbard as "a common, ordinary, run-of-the-mill garden variety humanoid....
Somebody who isn't even trying."

A recruitment flyer for a school run by Scientologists exemplifies this
mind-set:

"If you turn your kids over to the enemy all day for 12-15 years, which
side do you think they will come out on?" the flyer asks rhetorically. The
enemy, in this case, is public education.

The organization's fear of hostile outside influences is so
institutionalized that potential staff members are grilled about whether
they are government agents or reporters or whether they harbor critical
thoughts of Hubbard. Their answers are monitored on the E-meter.

Security around church buildings is elaborate and sophisticated. Remote
cameras sweep the streets outside. Scientologists with walkie-talkies scout
the perimeters.

In time, the staff member's world orbits ever more tightly around one man -
Hubbard.

"You finally are to the point where you do not examine, logically,
Scientology," said former Scientologist Vicki Aznaran, who until two years
ago was one of the most powerful figures in the church and is now locked in
litigation with Scientology.

"You are cut off from anything that might give you another viewpoint," she
said.

Some stay because they fear calamity will befall them if they are denied
church courses they have been told are vital to spiritual and physical
stability.

Former Sea Organization member Janie Peterson, for one, once testified that
she was "so indoctrinated into Scientology that I felt ... I would die"
upon leaving.

Other former members said they felt trapped by the church's "freeloader
debt" policy.

Many Scientologists join the staff as a way to obtain the church's
expensive services for free. But should they leave before the expiration of
their employment contracts - ranging from two years to 1 billion years -
they must pay for the programs they had received at no cost. This
"freeloader debt" can reach thousands of dollars.

And on top of all this is the haunting fear that they will be ostracized by
family and friends for shunning the religion.

"For those like myself who had been in Scientology for years, Scientology
was our entire life, our friendships, our work, our home," said ex-Sea
Organization member Whitfield, who spent nearly two decades on the staff.
"The organization had made us grow so entirely dependent on it, it was
almost inconceivable to leave.

"After all, we had no job skills, no jobs and we believed we would be
immediately hit with thousands of dollars of freeloader debt."
Whitfield said that she, like others, defected after reaching the
conclusion that the church seemed "only interested in controlling" its
members.

"I have looked back and said to myself, 'What an indoctrinated fool I was.
What a fool.' "



------------------------


             Scientology Courts Power Brokers To Help Expansion

 From Politicians To The Leaders Of Business, The Courts and The Media, The
        Church Works To Win Allies To Smooth The Way For Expansion.

By Joel Sappell and
Robert W. Welkos
(c) 1990, Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES - To create a favorable environment for Scientology's
expansion, church executives are working to win allies among society's
power brokers and opinion leaders.

It is a theme expounded in church publications.

"We need to be able to approach the right people in order to get things
done," wrote Heber Jentzsch, president of the Church of Scientology
International, in the newspaper Scientology Today. "We need to find out how
to reach key people in the media, in government, in the control points of
society, the people who run things."

Underscoring the campaign's breadth and determination, a pull-out
questionnaire entitled "Communication Lines to the World" was inserted in
the newspaper. It asked Scientologists to list their connections to people
in six areas:

POLITICS: "This would be political figures on a local, state or national
level, such as local city officials, mayors, governors, senators,
congressmen, and members of parliaments. It would also include government
agency officials and civil servants."

MEDIA: "This would be any media terminals that you know, such as owners
or proprietors of magazines, newswire services, newspapers or publishing
houses, TV and radio networks or stations and publishers and editors of any
type of news media."

LEGAL: "This would be any judges, law enforcement officials, lawyers,
barristers and so on."

FINANCIAL-CORPORATE: "This would be any members of the board or
presidents, vice presidents or other senior officials-executives with banks
or other financial institutions (such as savings and loan companies, credit
unions, etc.) financiers (this could be government or private industry)
stockbrokers, financial advisers and commodities brokers."

ENTERTAINMENT / CELEBRITIES: "This would be any producers or directors in
the stage, motion pictures or television; actors, artists, writers and any
opinion leaders in these areas."

OPINION LEADERS: "This would be anyone who is respected by or who
influences the opinion of individuals in the above categories."

While developing support in the secular community, Scientology has also
been working hard to gain support from mainstream religious figures.
Spearheading this effort is the Religious Freedom Crusade, a Scientology
group that has attracted officials of various faiths. The crusade's
rallying cry is that court actions brought against the Church of
Scientology by disaffected members or government agencies pose a
constitutional danger to all religions.

In 1988, Scientologists mustered a multi denominational coalition to push a
bill through the California Legislature requiring judicial approval before
religious groups or non-profit organizations can be sued for punitive
damages.

The Church of Scientology had a special interest in the legislation: It has
been ordered at least twice to pay huge punitive awards to
ex-Scientologists, although one award was reduced on appeal and the other
was set aside.

Scientologists not sure how to recruit religious allies got some tips in a
document provided to the Los Angeles Times by an ex-member, who said it was
distributed at a Scientology meeting in the mid-1980s.

The document suggested that Scientologists, after selecting an appropriate
church, should attend Sunday services and praise the minister: " 'Your
sermon was brilliant! Would you be willing to speak at our church?' (He'll
have a hard time refusing that one!)."

It advised them to establish good communication with the minister's wife
because "she can be an ally or an enemy and you want her support if
possible."

After the service, "make friends with other congregation members," the
document added. "... Circulate, but be sure to spend a few minutes with the
minister and to meet his wife and family. ... If you haven't gotten the
minister's phone number earlier, get it before you go."

Finally, the document urged, get the ministers to write a notarized
affidavit or letter stating that "Scientology is a bona fide religion."


-------------------------


                                Influence...
    Scientology Seeks Broader Role In Schools, Business, And Scientific
                                 Community

By Robert W. Welkos
and Joel Sappell
(c) 1990, Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES - Emerging from years of internal strife and public scandal,
the Scientology movement has embarked on a sweeping and sophisticated
campaign to gain new influence in America.

The goal is to refurbish the tarnished image of Scientology founder L. Ron
Hubbard and elevate him to the ranks of history's great humanitarians and
thinkers. By so doing, the church hopes to broaden the acceptability of
Hubbard's Scientology teachings and attract millions of new members.
The campaign relies on official church programs and a network of groups run
by Scientology followers. Here is a sampler of their activities:
-Scientologists are disseminating Hubbard's writings in public and private
school classrooms across the U.S., using groups that seldom publicize their
Scientology connections.

-In the business world, Scientologists have established highly successful
private consulting firms to promote Hubbard as a management expert, with a
goal of harvesting new, affluent members.

-Scientologists are the driving force behind two organizations active in
the scientific community. The organizations have been busy trying to sell
government agencies a chemical detoxification treatment developed by
Hubbard.

The Scientology movement's ambitious quest to assimilate into the American
mainstream comes less than a decade after the church seemed destined for
collapse, testifying to its remarkable determination to survive and grow.
In 1980, 11 top church leaders - including Hubbard's wife - were imprisoned
for bugging and burglarizing government offices as part of a shadowy
conspiracy to discredit the church's perceived enemies.

Today, Scientology executives insist that the organization is law-abiding,
that the offenders have been purged and that the church has now entered an
era in which harmony has replaced hostility.

But as the movement attempts to broaden its reach, evidence is mounting
that Hubbard's devotees are engaging in practices that, while not unlawful,
have begun to stir memories of its troubled past.


Scientology
and the Schools

The Scientology movement has launched a concerted campaign to gain a
foothold in the nation's schools by distributing to children millions of
copies of a booklet that Hubbard wrote on basic moral values.

The program is designed to win recognition for Hubbard as an educator and
moralist and, at the same time, introduce him to the nation's youth.
The pocket-size booklet, entitled "The Way to Happiness," is a compilation
of widely agreed upon values that Hubbard put into writing in 1981. Its 96
pages include such admonitions as "take care of yourself," "honor and help
your parents," "do not murder" and "be worthy of trust."

The booklet notes in small print that it was written by Hubbard as "an
individual and is not part of any religious doctrine."

But Scientology publications have called the campaign "the largest
dissemination project in Scientology history" and "the bridge between broad
society and Scientology."

Scientologists estimate that 3.5 million copies have been introduced into
4,500 elementary, junior high and senior high schools nationwide.
Altogether, more than 28 million copies have been translated into at least
14 languages and distributed throughout the world.

The booklet is distributed by the Concerned Businessmen's Association of
America, an organization not officially connected to the church but run by
Scientologists.

The Scientology connection is downplayed by the group. Its leader, Barbara
Ayash of Marina del Rey, a Los Angeles seaside community, said that she
launched the association after five of her children became involved with
drugs.

Her group runs a nationwide contest encouraging students to stay off drugs
by following the precepts in Hubbard's booklet. Participants in the "Set a
Good Example" contest must come up with projects using the booklet as their
guide. By focusing on the drug issue, the association has won the backing
of school officials and political figures unaware of its links to
Scientology.

In Louisiana, a junior high school distributed Hubbard's booklet to
students and then had them pledge in writing:

"I promise to do my best to learn, practice and use the 21 points of good
moral conduct contained in 'The Way to Happiness' book to improve myself,
set a good example for my friends, and to help my family, my community and
my country."

As an incentive to get campus administrators on board, the association
awards $5,000 to the winning elementary, junior high and senior high
schools.

At contest awards ceremonies, the winners and Hubbard's book share the
spotlight.

For example, during a ceremony at the Charleston, W. Va., civic center,
then-Gov. Arch Moore and other dignitaries were each presented a
leather-bound copy of "The Way To Happiness."

Scientology critics contend that the contest is being used to enlist new
church members, who, as the theory goes, may be so inspired by "The Way to
Happiness" that they will reach for Hubbard's other writings. They argue
that the booklet's distribution in public schools violates constitutional
mandates separating church and state.

But Ayash of the businessmen's association insists that her group has no
motive other than to help children lead better lives. "The Way to
Happiness," she said, shows them the path in simple, direct language.
For the most part, school officials whose campuses have participated in the
contest said they were unaware of Hubbard's Scientology connection or that
his followers were directing the contest. They said Scientology was not
openly promoted and they did not regret taking part.

But one California public school system recently banned the contest after
administrators conducted an investigation and learned that Hubbard was the
author of Scientology's doctrine.

For three years, students at El Capitan Middle School in Fresno
participated in the nationwide contest. In spring 1989, the students won
second place for organizing an anti-drug relay in which they passed each
other a symbolic "torch" - Hubbard's booklet.

Deluxe leather-bound copies were presented to mayors of the 15 cities along
the relay route.

Last fall, the contest's sponsors decided to accelerate their efforts in
Fresno County, urging the entire 5,000-student Central Unified School
District to participate, instead of just one school. But they ran up
against Geoff Garratt, the district's director of educational services and
personnel.

Garratt said that, while he was aware of Scientology, he had never heard of
Hubbard. He said he learned of the connection at the local library, where
he went to investigate Hubbard's background.

"The more I investigated," Garratt said, "I found it [the businessmen's
association] represented a very small self-interest group: Scientology."
Among other things, he said, he discovered that the association had the
same phone number and address as the local Dianetics center.

Garratt said he rejected the association's plea to expand the contest,
fearing that the booklet's distribution in the public schools might violate
constitutional prohibitions against mixing matters of church and state.
Garratt said that the association refused to consider the possibility of
holding the contest without Hubbard's booklet. "They said flat out,
'Without the book, there is no contest.' "

Scientologists also are attempting to install a Hubbard tutorial program in
public schools, using a church-affiliated organization called Applied
Scholastics.

Yellow posters advertising Applied Scholastics have appeared in storefront
windows throughout Los Angeles. They promise better learning skills but
make no mention of the church.

Applied Scholastics currently has plans to build a 1,000-acre campus, where
the organization would train educators to teach Hubbard's tutorial program.
A recent Applied Scholastics mailer predicted that the training center will
be a "model of real education for the world" and "create overwhelming
public popularity" for Hubbard.

Developed for students of Scientology, the Hubbard program is built upon an
elementary premise: learning difficulties arise when students read past
words they do not understand.

"The misunderstood word in a subject produces a vast panorama of mental
effects and is the prime factor involved in stupidity," Hubbard wrote in
1967. "This is a sweepingly fantastic discovery in the field of education."
The chief solution he propounds is simple: students must learn to use a
dictionary when they encounter an unfamiliar or confusing word.
In recent years, Applied Scholastics has targeted predominantly minority
schools, where many students tend to do poorly on standardized tests.
Applied Scholastics considers these schools fertile ground because campus
administrators are willing to try new approaches to improve scores.

The Compton (Calif.) Unified School District in 1987 and 1988 allowed the
Hubbard program to be tested with 80 students at Centennial Senior High
School. The program there was run by a substitute teacher named Frizell
Clegg, a Scientologist who was an Applied Scholastics consultant.
Clegg, who refused to be interviewed, was suspended from his teaching
duties in 1988 after he reportedly gave discourses on Scientology in a
history class. He no longer teaches at the school.

In applying for district financing, Clegg said that the educational program
was "developed by American writer and educator L. Ron Hubbard." Excluding
any reference to Hubbard's Scientology connection, he persuaded the board
to provide $5,000 to tutor 30 sophomores with low reading scores and to
conduct a parent workshop.

After the program grew to 50 students, Applied Scholastics submitted a
proposal increasing the number of students to 125 and the cost to $27,000.
District officials killed the program, believing that Applied Scholastics
was seeking to expand too quickly. Officials were also displeased that the
group, without district approval, was using its involvement with Centennial
to market the program elsewhere, according to Acting Superintendent Elisa
Sanchez.

In promotional literature, Applied Scholastics made claims of remarkable
success at Centennial High. While some parents said that the program helped
their children, Sanchez said the claims made by Applied Scholastics were
unsubstantiated.

Converting the
Business World

Scientology is using a network of private consulting firms to gain a
foothold in the U.S. business community.

The firms promise businessmen higher earnings but appear to be mainly
interested in recruiting new members for the church.

Although these profit-making firms operate independently of each other,
they sell the same product: Scientology founder Hubbard's methods for
running a profitable enterprise. The Church of Scientology has for years
employed these same methods - heavy marketing, high productivity and rigid
rules of employee conduct - to amass hundreds of millions of dollars for
itself.

Critics contend that the consulting firms are concealing their Scientology
links so they can attract to the church prosperous people who might
otherwise be put off by Scientology's controversial reputation.
The strategy appears to have proven effective.

A Scientology publication in 1987 reported that the consultant network
earned a combined $1.6 million a month selling Hubbard's management methods
to a variety of professionals, many of whom have reported improved incomes.
It also said that 50 to 75 businessmen were recruited monthly into the
church, where each week they spent a total of $250,000 on Scientology
courses.

Two of the movement's firms have been ranked by Inc. magazine as among the
fastest growing private businesses in America.

The consulting firms use seminars and mailers to attract health
professionals, salesmen, office supply dealers, marketing specialists and
others.

Those who have dealt with the firms describe the process this way:
Businessmen are drawn into Scientology after they have gained confidence in
Hubbard's non-religious management methods. They are often told that, to
achieve true business success, they should get their personal lives in
order. From there, the church takes over, encouraging them to purchase
spiritual enhancement courses and begin a process called "auditing."

During auditing, a person confesses his innermost thoughts while his
responses are monitored on a lie detector-type device known as the E-meter.
Auditing must be purchased in 12-hour chunks, costing between $3,000 and
$11,000 each, depending on where it is bought.

Spearheading all this is an arm of the church called World Institute of
Scientology Enterprises, or WISE.

In recent months, WISE has been encouraging Scientologists nationwide to
become consultants within their respective professions. The appeal is
simple: make money while disseminating your religion.

In the process, WISE profits, too. It trains and licenses the firms to sell
Hubbard's copyrighted "management and administrative technology." WISE
charges roughly $12,000 for its basic no-frills training course. For
consulting services, it charges $1,875 a day.

On top of this, the consulting firms that sell Hubbard's business methods
must pay WISE 13 percent of their annual gross income.

At the heart of Hubbard's business system is a concept he called
"management by statistics," which he said guarantees optimum office
efficiency. Scientology critics maintain, however, that it creates an
oppressive and regimented workplace environment.

An employee is judged solely upon his productivity, which is charted on a
graph each week. Sagging productivity could bring a rebuke from the boss.
Or it could lead to an employee's firing.

The management techniques promoted by the consulting firms are identical to
those used by the church, except that all Scientology references have been
deleted from the materials. The consultants even employ the most basic
instrument used by the church to recruit new members off the street - a
200-question personality test that purports to let people know if they have
ruinous personality flaws.

The consultants encourage businessmen and their employees to purchase
Scientology courses to remedy personality problems uncovered by the test.
One of the most successful consulting firms licensed by WISE is Sterling
Management Systems, which targets dentists and other health care
professionals. For the past two years, Inc. magazine has ranked it among
America's fastest-growing privately held businesses.

Sterling, based in Glendale, Calif., claims to be the "largest health care
management consulting group in the U.S."

A company spokesman said that the firm charges clients $10,000 for its
complete line of Hubbard courses and 30 hours of private consultation. The
spokesman said that Sterling has helped dentists increase their income an
average of $10,000 a month.

He insisted that the company has "no connection" to the church, but added:
"If people are interested in Scientology, we will make it available to
them."

Sterling publishes a tabloid called "Today's Professional, the Journal of
Successful Practice Management." Mailed free to 300,000 health care
professionals nationwide, it is filled with "management" articles by
Hubbard that are actually excerpts from Scientology's governing doctrines.
The company also holds nationwide seminars that, according to its
promotional literature, have been drawing 2,000 people a month.
Sterling Management was founded in 1983 by Scientologist Gregory K. Hughes,
at the time a prosperous dentist in Vacaville, Calif. Hughes holds seminars
across the country, offering himself as evidence that Hubbard's methods
work.

In promotional publications for Sterling, Hughes has said that his annual
income soared from $257,000 in 1979 to more than $1 million in 1985. In one
month alone, he has claimed to have seen 350 new patients.

Sterling's paper, Today's Professional, has boasted that "the techniques
that produced amazing results when applied to Greg's practice are being
applied all over the U.S."

But neither the paper's readers nor those who attend Hughes' seminars are
told that his dental office, which employed the high-volume Hubbard
techniques that he imparts to others, has been accused by former patients
of dental negligence and malpractice.

Hughes currently is under investigation by the California Board of Dental
Examiners. The board already has turned over some of its findings to the
state attorney general's office, which will determine whether action should
be taken against Hughes' dental license.

To date, there are more than 15 lawsuits are pending against Hughes and his
dental associates, alleging either negligence or malpractice. He has denied
the allegations.

Attorney E. Bradley Nelson is representing most of those who have sued
Hughes.

"It is my opinion," he said, "that the overall quality of care took second
place to the profit motive. ... I've never seen anything approaching this
volume of complaints against one dentist in such a short period of time."

In mid-1985, Hughes closed his office without warning to devote full time
to Sterling. He left behind a reputation so tarnished that he was unable to
sell his million-dollar-a-year practice, according to dentists in the area.
"He actually had to walk away," said Roger Abrew, co-chairman of the peer
review committee of the local dental society.

He also left behind patients with worse problems than they had before they
were treated by Hughes' office, according to Abrew and other dentists, who
have since been treating them. The dentists said that, based on their
examinations, Hughes' office performed both substandard and unnecessary
work.

"I think its kind of ironic to see a guy who did such a botched job of
dentistry teaching others," said dentist David C. Aronson, summing up the
sentiments of most of his colleagues in the small Northern California
community.

Hughes, who continues to conduct his "Winning With Dentistry" seminars,
refused to be interviewed for this story. But Frederick Bradley, an
attorney defending him in the lawsuits, suggested that the Vacaville
dentists may simply resent his client's success because their patients had
deserted them for Hughes.

Another firm once licensed by Scientology's WISE organization to sell
Hubbard's management techniques was Singer Consultants. Before it merged
with another management company, Singer was ranked as one of the nation's
fastest growing private businesses.

The company focused its training on America's chiropractors. It brought
hundreds of new members into the church and triggered a nationwide
controversy among chiropractors over its links to Scientology. In fact, a
chiropractic newspaper devoted almost an entire issue to letters praising
and condemning Singer Consultants, which was located in Clearwater, Fla.,
where Scientology is a major presence.

"We felt that there were young doctors who didn't know they were being
solicited to do something above and beyond the practice of their
profession," said Dynamic Chiropractic editor Donald M. Peterson,
explaining why his Huntington Beach, Calif.-based newspaper entered the
controversy.

Singer Consultants was headed by Scientologist David Singer, an
accomplished speaker and chiropractor who held nationwide seminars to pitch
Hubbard's business methods.

Two years ago, the company was absorbed into another management firm owned
by Scientologists.

Although Singer refused to be interviewed by the Los Angeles Times, he told
Dynamic Chiropractic: "Hubbard was a prolific writer and wrote on a
multitude of subjects. We do not, have not and will not make part of our
program the teaching of any religion."

Scientology
and Science

Hubbard was so proud of a detoxification treatment he developed - and so
hungry for plaudits - that he openly talked with his closest aides about
winning a Nobel Prize.

Although the man is gone, Scientologists are keeping the dream alive. They
have embarked upon a controversial plan to win recognition for Hubbard and
his treatment program in scientific and medical circles.

The treatment purports to purge drugs and toxins from a person's system
through a rigorous regimen of exercise, saunas and vitamins - a combination
intended to dislodge the poisons from fatty tissues and sweat them out.
Physicians affiliated with the regimen have touted it as a major
breakthrough, and a number of patients who have undergone the treatment say
theirhealth improved. But some health authorities dismiss Hubbard's program
as a medical fraud that preys upon public fear of toxins.

In the Church of Scientology, the treatment is called the "purification
rundown." Church members are told it is a religious program that, for about
$2,000, will purify the body and spirit. In the secular arena, however,
Scientologists are promoting it exclusively as a medical treatment with no
spiritual underpinnings. In that context, it is simply called the "Hubbard
Method."

The treatment is being aggressively pushed in the non-Scientology world by
two organizations that sometimes work alone and sometimes in tandem. They
have no formal church ties but both are controlled by church members.
Seeking customers and credibility, the two groups have targeted government
and private workers nationwide who are exposed to hazardous substances in
their jobs. They have pressed public agencies to endorse the method,
lobbied unions to recommend it and written articles in trade journals that
seem to be little more than advertisements for the treatment.

One of these groups is the Los Angeles-based Foundation for Advancements in
Science and Education. The non-profit foundation has forged links with
scientists across the country to gain legitimacy for itself and, thus, for
Hubbard's detox method.

Among its key functionaries is a toxicologist for the Environmental
Protection Agency, whose advocacy of the treatment has raised
conflict-of-interest questions.

Building credentials and allies, the foundation has channeled tens of
thousands of dollars in grants to educators and researchers studying
toxicological hazards, most of whom were unaware of the organization's ties
to the Scientology movement.

In 1986, for example, the foundation gave $10,000 to the Los Angeles County
Health Department for a study of potentially harmful radon gas. County
officials say that they were not apprised of the organization's links with
the Scientology movement.

Bill Franks was instrumental in creating the foundation in 1981 when he
served as the Church of Scientology's executive director, a post from which
he was later ousted in a power struggle. Franks described the foundation in
an interview as a Scientology "front group."

"The concept," he said, "was to get some scientific recognition" for
Hubbard's treatment without overtly linking it to the church.
Buttressing Franks' account, the foundation's original incorporation papers
state that its purpose was to "research the efficacy of and promote the use
of the works of L. Ron Hubbard in the solving of social problems; and to
scientifically research and provide public information and education
concerning the efficacy of other programs."

The document was later amended, however, to remove Hubbard's name,
obscuring the foundation's ties to the Scientology movement and its founder
in official records.

Hubbard's name, however, continues to appear regularly in the foundation's
slick newsletter. In the latest edition, for instance, three different
articles advocate the "Hubbard method" as an effective therapy for chemical
and drug detoxification.

A fourth article did not mention Hubbard by name, but reported favorably on
Narconon, his drug and alcohol rehabilitation program, which is run by
Scientologists.

The other organization in the outreach effort is HealthMed Clinic, which
administers Hubbard's treatment from offices in Los Angeles and Sacramento,
Calif., and is run by Scientologists.

An independent medical consultant in Maryland who reviewed the program for
the city of Shreveport, La., dismissed Hubbard's treatment as "quackery."
The foundation and HealthMed have attempted to create an impression that
they are linked only by a shared concern over toxic hazards. In reality,
however, they operate symbiotically.

The foundation, for its part, tries to scientifically validate the Hubbard
method through studies and articles by individuals who either are
Scientologists or hold foundation positions. HealthMed then uses the
foundation's credibility, writings and connections to get customers for the
treatment.

According to state corporate records, the foundation also holds stock in
HealthMed. Moreover, the foundation's vice president, Scientologist Jack
Dirmann, has served as HealthMed's administrator.

In 1986, four doctors with the California Department of Health Services
accused HealthMed of making "false medical claims" and of "taking advantage
of the fears of workers and the public and about toxic chemicals and their
potential health effects, including cancer." The doctors also criticized
the foundation for supporting "scientifically questionable" research.
The state physicians, who evaluate potential toxic hazards in the
workplace, leveled the accusations in a letter that triggered an
investigation by the state Board of Medical Quality Assurance. That probe
was concluded last year without a finding of whether the detox treatment
works. Investigators said that they were stymied by HealthMed's refusal to
provide patient records and by a lack of complaints from those who had
undergone the regimen.

The four physicians who prompted the investigation said that they decided
to study the Hubbard treatment after receiving calls from union
representatives, public agencies and individual workers throughout the
state who had been solicited by the clinics. Among them were the California
Highway Patrol, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers,
Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and the Los Angeles County Fire and Sheriff's
departments.

"It was the accumulation of these calls that led us to say, 'Hey, this is
going on all over the state. Let's look into it,' " recalled Gideon Letz,
one of the doctors.

The foundation and HealthMed have worked particularly hard to tap one large
pool of potential clients: firefighters. The Hubbard method has been
pitched to them as a cure for exposure to a carcinogen sometimes
encountered during fires. Known as PCBs, the now-banned chemical compound
was once widely used to insulate transformers.

City officials in Shreveport, La., said they paid HealthMed $80,000 - and
were ready to spend a lot more - until they hired a consultant, who
denounced the treatments as unnecessary and worthless.

What happened in Shreveport is a case study of how the foundation and
HealthMed have worked together to draw customers through methods that
critics contend are exploitative.

In April 1987, dozens of Shreveport firemen were exposed to PCBs when they
responded to an early morning transformer explosion at the Louisiana State
University Medical Center. In the aftermath, some began to complain of
headaches, dizziness, skin rashes, memory loss and other symptoms that they
attributed to the exposure.

Blood and tissue tests by the university medical center showed no abnormal
levels of PCBs in their systems. But the firemen wondered if the university
was trying to protect itself from liability because the explosion had
occurred there.

Searching for alternatives, one of the firemen came across an article in
Fire Engineering magazine. Headlined "Chemical Exposure in Firefighting:
associate for the Foundation for Advancements in Science and Education."
Lionelli discussed the frightening consequences of chemical exposure and
then got to the point. He said that the foundation had found an effective
detoxification technique developed by "the late American researcher L. Ron
Hubbard" and delivered by HealthMed Clinic.

The article did not mention another of Hubbard's notable developments -
Scientology.

The firemen contacted HealthMed, and, before long, were sold on the
program. They went next to Howard Foggin, then the city's medical claims
officer, and gave him HealthMed literature and a Washington, D.C., phone
number the clinic had provided them. It was for the office of EPA
toxicologist William Marcus.

Marcus, a non-Scientologist, is a senior adviser to the foundation. But it
is his authoritative position with the EPA's office of drinking water that
helps impress potential HealthMed clients.

When Shreveport officials called Marcus, he vouched for HealthMed. The EPA
had spoken, or so the city's claims manager thought back then.
"All he told me was, it seemed I had no alternative but to send those
people to Los Angeles" for HealthMed's treatment, Foggin said, adding: "I
felt I had to get moving on it fast."

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Marcus acknowledged that he
recommended HealthMed, but he denied any conflict of interest.
"They called me and I talked to them," Marcus said. "I told them that
basically there was no other game in town. ... I think L. Ron Hubbard is a
bona fide genius."

Marcus said he receives only travel-related expenses for the foundation
work.

His boss, Michael Cook, said he is satisfied that Marcus did not act
improperly. He said that Marcus has insisted "he made it clear that he was
not speaking as an EPA employee. Certainly that is what we would hope and
expect he [would] do."

In all, HealthMed brought about 20 Shreveport firefighters to Los Angeles
to treat what the clinic described as high levels of PCBs in their blood
and fatty tissues. For the most part, the firemen returned home saying that
they felt better.

Although city officials had learned of Hubbard's Scientology connection,
they were unconcerned.

Then, as HealthMed's bills mounted, two private insurance carriers for
Shreveport suggested that city officials hire an independent analyst to
review the treatment before doling out more money. The city agreed and
commissioned a study by National Medical Advisory Service Inc., of
Bethesda, Md.

The report, prepared by Dr. Ronald E. Gots, was an indictment of
HealthMed's professionalism and ethics. The bottom line:
"The treatment in California preyed upon the fears of concerned workers,
but served no rational medical function. ... Moreover, the program itself,
developed not by physicians or scientists, but by the founder of the Church
of Scientology, has no recognized value in the established medical and
scientific community. It is quackery."

Gots' 1987 report ended the city's involvement with HealthMed.
"I think we were misled," lamented city finance director Jim Keyes.
"Somebody should have laid everything out on the table."
Neither HealthMed nor the foundation would return phone calls from The
Times.


-----------------------------------------


          Books: Costly Strategy Continues To Turn Out Bestsellers

By Robert W. Welkos
and Joel Sappell
(c) 1990, Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES - Call it one of the most remarkable success stories in modern
publishing history.

Since late 1985, at least 20 books by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard
have become bestsellers.

In March of 1988, nearly four decades after its initial publication,
Hubbard's "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health" was No. 1 on
virtually every best-seller list in the country - including The New York
Times.

Ten hardcover science fiction novels Hubbard completed before his death
four years ago also became best sellers, four of them simultaneously on
some lists.

The selling of L. Ron Hubbard was envisioned, planned and executed by
members of the Church of Scientology, who say that worldwide sales of
Hubbard's books have topped 93 million. The sales have been fueled by a
radio and TV advertising blitz virtually unprecedented in book circles, and
has put on the map a Los Angeles publishing firm that eight years ago did
not even exist.

In some cases, sales of Hubbard's books apparently got an extra boost from
Scientology followers and employees of the publishing firm. Showing up at
major book outlets like B. Dalton and Walden books, they purchased armloads
of Hubbard's works, according to former employees.

As a writer, Hubbard was extremely prolific. He wrote short stories. He
wrote books. He wrote screenplays. And, for more than 30 years, he wrote
thousands of directives and scores of personal improvement courses that
form the doctrine of Scientology.

The promotion of Hubbard's books is part of a costly and calculated
campaign by the movement to gain respect, influence and, ultimately, new
members. In the process, Hubbard's followers hope to refurbish his
controversial image and position him as one of the world's great
humanitarians and thinkers.

Hubbard's writings have become a means by which to spread his name in a
society that often equates celebrity with credibility. It is not with
whimsy that the church often calls its spiritual father "New York Times
best-selling author L. Ron Hubbard."

The church once summed up the strategy in a letter recruiting
Scientologists for Hubbard's public relations team, an operation that
thrives despite his death. Sign up now, the letter urged, and "make Ron the
most acclaimed and widely known author of all time."

But apparently Hubbard's followers have not trusted sales of Hubbard's
books entirely to the fickle winds of the marketplace.
Sheldon McArthur, former manager of B. Dalton Booksellers on Hollywood
Boulevard in Los Angeles, said, "Whenever the sales seem to slacken and a
[Hubbard] book goes off the best sellers list, give it a week and we'll get
these people coming in buying 50 to 100 to 200 copies at a crack - cash
only."

After Hubbard's first novel, a Western adventure called "Buckskin
Brigades," was re-released in 1987, the book "just sat there," recalled
McArthur, whose store was across from a Scientology center.
"Then, in one week, it was gone," he said. "We started getting calls
asking, 'You got 'Buckskin Brigades?' " I said, 'Sure, we got them.' 'You
got a hundred of them?' 'Sure,' I said, 'here's a case.' "

Gary Hamel, B. Dalton's former manager at Santa Monica Place, a mall in the
Los Angeles beach suburb of Santa Monica, had similar experiences. He said
that "10 people would come in at a time and buy quantities of them and they
would pay cash."

Hamel also speculated that some copies of a Hubbard science fiction novel
were sold more than once.

He said that while he was working at the B. Dalton in Hollywood, some books
shipped by Hubbard's publishing house arrived with B. Dalton price stickers
already on them. He said this indicated to him that the books had been
purchased at one of the chain's outlets, then returned to the publishing
house and shipped out for resale before anyone thought to remove the
stickers.

"We would order more books and ... they'd come back with our sticker as if
they were bought by the publisher," Hamel said.

Hubbard's U.S. publisher is Bridge Publications Inc., founded and
controlled by Scientologists - something that Bridge does not publicize.
Company officials refused to be interviewed about book sales or any facet
of the firm's operations.

But former employees alleged in interviews with the Los Angeles Times that
Bridge encouraged and, at times, bankrolled the book-buying scheme.
Mike Gonzales, a non-church member who worked in accounts receivable, said
that one supervisor gave him hundreds of dollars for weekend forays into
bookstores.

In one month alone, he said, he bought and returned to Bridge 43 books in
Hubbard's "Mission Earth" science fiction series. And, according to
Gonzales, he was not alone.

"We had 15 to 20 people going all over L.A," he said.

During a shopping spree at B. Dalton in the Glendale Galleria, a Glendale,
Calif., shopping center, Gonzales said, he bumped into three Bridge
co-workers.

"There we were, four people in line buying 'Buckskin Brigades,' and [the
clerk] blurted out, 'You know why they do that? To get on the best sellers
list!' "

Corinda Carford, who was Bridge's sales manager for the East Coast, said
she was instructed by two superiors to go to bookstores and buy Hubbard's
books if sales were sluggish.

"They would tell me to go and count the books and ... if it looks like
they're not selling, go and buy some books," Carford recalled. She said she
was troubled by the request and bought only four copies of one Hubbard
paperback.

Carford said that Bridge executives also asked her in late 1988 and again
in early 1989 to obtain the names of bookstores whose sales are the basis
for The New York Times best-seller list.

"It happened more than once," she said. " ... My orders for the week were
to find the New York Times' reporting stores anywhere in the East so they
could send people into the stores to buy [Hubbard's] books."

Carford said she questioned several bookstore operators but they refused to
cooperate.

"That is confidential information," she said.

Carford said she left Bridge after a pay dispute and now works for another
publishing firm.

Another former Bridge employee, salesman Tom Fudge, said a supervisor once
handed him a list of booksellers purportedly monitored by The New York
Times. He said he was instructed to promise each one that Hubbard's books
would "sell well" if they stocked more copies.

"I was told that they [Bridge] had Scientologists who would go out to
specific stores and buy copies of the books," Fudge said.

An attorney who represents Bridge and Scientology denied that the
publishing firm possessed a list of bookstores The New York Times uses to
determine best sellers.

"The list does not exist," insisted Boston lawyer Earle Cooley, who
characterized the former employees as "disgruntled" and "antagonistic"
toward Bridge and Scientology.

Adam Clymer, a New York Times executive, said the newspaper had examined
the sales patterns of Hubbard's books. In a two-year span, Hubbard logged
14 consecutive books on The New York Times list.

Clymer said that, although the books had been sold in sufficient numbers to
justify their best-seller status, "we don't know to whom they were sold."
He said that the newspaper uncovered no instances in which vast quantities
of books were being sold to single individuals.

Science fiction and self-improvement books have always been big sellers in
America, and Hubbard's works have long had a strong following.
But Bridge learned quickly that to make him a best-selling author in the
1980s, it had to aggressively market his writings, especially within the
bookselling industry.

As part of its campaign Bridge has purchased full-page ads on the cover of
Publishers Weekly, an important trade magazine.

For a time, the firm was enticing book distributors to place large orders
by offering them free television sets and VCRs.

Marcia Dursi, director of book operations for ARA Services in Maryland,
which distributes paperbacks to supermarkets and airports, said she was
offered a TV for the employee lunchroom.

"I don't have to be bribed," Dursi said she responded.

Former Bridge consultant Robert Erdmann said that, although other
publishers offer incentives, he stopped the practice at Bridge because "it
could be perceived as influence peddling."

Erdmann, a non-Scientologist, was an industry veteran hired by Bridge to
help make inroads in the competitive publishing world.

Because the Scientologists at Bridge "did what we told them to do," Erdmann
said, "Dianetics" is no longer "the passion fruit of the Pacific that
people in the Midwest are afraid to eat."

When it was first published in 1950, "Dianetics" rode best-seller lists for
several months before sales dwindled. But it has remained the bedrock -
"Book One" - of Hubbard's Scientology movement.

In "Dianetics," Hubbard said that memories of painful physical and
emotional experiences accumulate in a specific region of the mind, causing
illness and mental problems. Hubbard said that, once those experiences have
been purged through cathartic procedures he developed, a person can achieve
superior health and intelligence.

So revered is the book that Hubbard scrapped the conventional calendar and
renumbered the years beginning with the date of its publication. To
Scientologists, 1990 is "40 AD" (After Dianetics).

From the outset, the Scientology movement has made the book the centerpiece
of its campaign to generate broad interest in Hubbard's writings.

In the last few years, millions of dollars have been spent on "Dianetics"
advertising to reach a targeted audience of young professionals who want to
improve their lives and careers.

The ads have appeared on television, radio, billboards and bus stops.
"Dianetics" has been a sponsor of the California Angels and Los Angeles
Rams games on radio. Race cars in world-class competitions like the
Indianapolis 500 have sported "Dianetics" decals. In New York City
recently, 160 billboards promoting Hubbard were purchased in subway
stations.

Next month, in what may be the Scientology movement's biggest promotion yet
for the book, Dianetics will be a sponsor of Turner Broadcasting System's
1990 Goodwill Games, an Olympics-style event bringing together 2,500
athletes from more than 50 countries for two weeks in Seattle.

Among other things, there will be Dianetics commercials during the
internationally televised competition and Dianetics signboards at sporting
venues. Goodwill Games spokesman Bob Dickinson said that Dianetics and 12
other sponsors - including Pepsi, Sony and Anheuser-Busch - have paid "lots
and lots of money" for the exposure, but he would not provide a specific
figure.

"It is safe to say it is in excess of several million dollars," Dickinson
said.

Word of the sponsorship has triggered more than 100 complaints from
disaffected Scientologists and critics of the church to TBS, the
Atlanta-based cable network owned by media entrepreneur Ted Turner. Most
have accused the network of providing a global forum for the Church of
Scientology.

But Dickinson said that Dianetics, not Scientology, is the event's sponsor
and that "we really don't make any value judgment in terms of the product
of the sponsors. They have a right to advertise." He added that Dianetics
for years has been buying air time on TBS.

Although Dianetics advertisements never mention Scientology, the book's
promotion is a key component of the church's efforts to win new converts.
Scientology literature calls the strategy the "Dianetics route." The idea
is to attract readers to Dianetics seminars and then enroll them in
Scientology courses.

Given the success of the Dianetics campaign, Bridge now seems confident
that the public will clamor for Hubbard's Scientology writings.

Hubbard books that for decades had no audience outside Scientology are
scheduled to be mass-marketed into the next century, complete with costly
promotional campaigns as big as that for "Dianetics."

One of them, Hubbard's 1955 "Fundamentals of Thought," has "Scientology"
splashed across its cover, the first test of whether Hubbard's image has
been so greatly improved that the public is finally ready to accept his
religion.

Even long-forgotten science fiction that Hubbard wrote back in the 1930s
will be dusted off, dressed in eye-grabbing covers and pushed as though it
were written today.

In recent months, billboards have appeared along Los Angeles freeways and
such well-traveled thoroughfares as Sunset Boulevard.

With the sea as a backdrop, they show a smiling Hubbard of earlier years,
the wind tousling his red hair. Below his robust image is the phrase: "22
national bestsellers and more to come. ..."

The selling of the late L. Ron Hubbard has only begun.


---------------------


            A Lawyer Learns What It's Like To Fight Scientology

         Joseph Yanny represented the movement until a falling out.
         Now he says lengthy litigation and mysterious harassment
                 indicate he's become 'Public Enemy No. 1.'

By Robert W. Welkos
and Joel Sappell
(c) 1990, Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES - Los Angeles attorney Joseph Yanny was driving through rural
Ohio in the pre-dawn hours in 1988 when he was pulled over by police, who
had received a tip that he was carrying a cache of cocaine and guns in his
rental car.

A telephone caller had supplied authorities in Ohio with Yanny's name, the
car's description and license number, and the route he would be traveling
to his sister's house after a rock concert by one of his clients, the
Grateful Dead.

Yanny was frisked and the vehicle was searched. No drugs or firearms were
found, and he was released.

Police later concluded that the tipster had given a false name, leading
them to speculate that Yanny had been set up for harassment.
And Yanny, though he can't prove it, is certain he knows by whom: his
former client, the Church of Scientology.

"I am," he said with some pride, "probably Public Enemy No. 1 as far as
they are concerned."

Today, Yanny and Scientology are locked in bitter litigation. Their dispute
illustrates how battles with the Church of Scientology often degenerate
into nasty, costly wars of retribution and endurance.

Yanny worked for the church from 1983 to 1987, earning, by his estimate,
$1.8 million in legal fees.

His chief job was to represent Scientology in a suit it brought against a
former top church executive accused of conspiring to steal the church's
secret teachings. In 1986, Yanny scored a major victory for the church
during a pretrial hearing.

But then Yanny and Scientology had a falling out. He says he severed ties
because he disagreed with the tactics the group uses against its critics.
Scientology says Yanny was dismissed because his performance was
"inadequate." They call him an "anti-church demagogue."

Scientology lawyers sued Yanny, accusing him of switching allegiances and
of violating the canons of his profession. They say he fed confidential
church information to former members locked in legal battles with
Scientology. He denies the accusation.

They further accused him of submitting "extremely inflated" bills and of
working while intoxicated, an allegation that was subsequently dropped.
Since the litigation began, Yanny says, he and his friends have been the
target of harassment.

He says that his Century City Los Angeles law firm was burglarized four
times and that Scientology-related documents turned up missing; that he has
been spied upon by a church "plant" working as a secretary in his office;
and that private investigators have camped outside his Hermosa Beach
residence and shadowed him when he left.

Jon J. Gaw, a Riverside, Calif.-area private investigator who has handled a
number of Scientology-related probes in recent years, said in a deposition
that he used as many as "seven or eight" investigators to conduct
surveillance of Yanny between June 1988 and March 1989. Two of his
operatives took up residence on a nearby street, Gaw said, and tailed Yanny
whenever he ventured outside.

Gaw said he later learned that private detectives for another agency hired
by Scientology lawyers had been spying on Yanny at the same time. That
agency employed a woman to live next door to him.

The woman, Michelle Washburn, said in a deposition that she was hired by Al
Bei, a former Los Angeles police officer who has worked as a private
investigator on Scientology-related cases.

She said that Bei instructed her to take notes on Yanny's "comings and
goings." She also sat by her window photographing everyone who visited him.
She said she regularly gave Bei the film and her notes. Bei declined to
comment.

In Bellaire, Ohio, police who searched Yanny's rental car for drugs and
guns later discovered that a team of out-of-state private investigators in
four vehicles had been tailing the attorney.

Police Capt. Robert Wallace said that one of the private detectives he
questioned initially tried to mislead officers, claiming that the
detectives were there to subpoena someone in a neighboring town.
Wallace said that the private detective then said he had been hired to
follow Yanny by Williams & Connelly, a prominent Washington, D.C., law firm
that represents Scientology on tax issues. An attorney who handles
Scientology matters at the firm declined comment when questioned by the Los
Angeles Times recently. In a published report in late 1988, however, he
said that he had no knowledge of the episode.

Yanny, for his part, is pursuing a strategy that is reminiscent of the
take-no-prisoners tactics of the church.

He and his anti-Scientology allies have submitted sworn court declarations
designed to discredit the church.

Earlier this year, a Los Angeles County Superior Court jury agreed that
Yanny had not submitted inflated bills to the church and awarded him
$154,000 in damages. The judge who presided over the case is now weighing
whether Yanny should be allowed to assist individuals in litigation against
his former client, the church.

Yanny said that he initially agreed to be one of Scientology's lawyers
because he thought the controversial church was being denied its day in
court.

"There came a point where I was rudely awakened that Scientology wanted
their day in court," Yanny said, "but they wanted to assure nobody else got
them."


---------------------

             Suits, Protests Fuel A Campaign Against Psychiatry

     As part of its strategy, the movement created a nationwide uproar
         over the drug Ritalin, used to treat hyperactive children.

By Joel Sappell and
Robert W. Welkos
(c) 1990, Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES - In recent years, a national debate flared over Ritalin, a
drug used for more than three decades to treat hyperactivity in children.
Across the country, multimillion-dollar lawsuits were filed by parents who
contended that their children had been harmed by the drug.

Major news organizations, including the Los Angeles Times, devoted
extensive coverage to whether youngsters were being turned into emotionally
disturbed addicts by psychiatrists and pediatricians who prescribed
Ritalin.

Protests were staged at psychiatric conferences, with airplanes trailing
banners that read, "Psychs, Stop Drugging Our Kids," and children on the
ground carrying placards that pleaded, "Love Me, Don't Drug Me."

In 1988, the clamor reached a point where 12 U.S. congressmen demanded
answers from the Food and Drug Administration and three other federal
agencies about the safety of Ritalin. The FDA assured the legislators that
the drug is was "safe and effective if it is used as recommended."

The Ritalin controversy seemed to emerge out of nowhere. It frightened
parents, put doctors on the defensive and suddenly called into question the
judgment of school administrators who authorized the drug's use to calm
disruptive, hyperactive children.

The uproar over Ritalin was triggered almost single-handedly by the
Scientology movement.

In its fight against Ritalin, Scientology was pursuing a broader agenda.
For years, it has been attempting to discredit the psychiatric profession,
which has long been critical of the self-help techniques developed by the
late L. Ron Hubbard and practiced by the church.

The church has spelled out the strategy in its newspaper, "Scientology
Today."

"While alerting parents and teachers to the dangers of Ritalin," the
newspaper stated, "the real target of the campaign is the psychiatric
profession itself. ... And as public awareness continues to increase, we
will no doubt begin to see the blame for all drug abuse and related crime
move onto the correct target - psychiatry."

The contempt Scientologists hold for the psychiatric profession is rooted
in Hubbard's writings, which constitute the church's doctrines. He once
wrote, for example, that if psychiatrists "had the power to torture and
kill everyone, they would do so. ... Recognize them for what they are;
psychotic criminals - and handle them accordingly."

Hubbard's hatred of psychiatry dated back to the 1950 publication of his
best-selling book "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health." It was
immediately criticized by prominent mental health professionals as a
worthless form of psychotherapy.

Hubbard used his church as a pulpit to attack psychiatrists as evil people,
bent on enslaving mankind through drugs, electroshock therapy and
lobotomies. He convinced his followers that psychiatrists were also intent
on destroying their religion.

A church spokesman said that psychiatrists are were "busy attempting to
destroy Scientology because if Scientology has its voice heard, it will
most assuredly remove them from the positions of power that they occupy in
our society."

Scientologists call Ritalin a "chemical straitjacket" leading to
delinquency, violence and even suicide. They claim that it is being used to
indiscriminately drug hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren each day.
Medical professionals say that the Scientology claims cannot be supported
and are causing undue panic.

Known generically as methylphenidate hydrochloride, Ritalin is intended for
youngsters afflicted with "attention deficit disorder," more commonly known
as hyperactivity. It is a central nervous system stimulant that,
paradoxically, produces calmer behavior in young people. The government
classifies it as a controlled substance.

FDA statistics show that between 600,000 and 700,000 people (70 percent of
them children or adolescents) are being treated with Ritalin. Between 1980
and 1987, the latest period for which statistics are available, the FDA
received 492 complaints of serious problems resulting from the drug. The
agency said this level number of complaints indicates the drug is safe.

Medical experts agree that some doctors may be too quick to prescribe
Ritalin as the sole treatment for problems that warrant a more moderate or
creative approach. But, they add, the drug itself is not to blame.

Scientologists have waged their war against Ritalin and psychiatry through
the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a Los Angeles-based non-profit
organization formed by the church in 1969 to investigate mental health
abuses.

Its members often wear shirts reading "Psychiatry Kills" and
"Psychbusters." They have recently broadened their campaign against
psychiatric drugs to include Prozac, the nation's top selling
anti-depressant, with 1989 sales estimated at $350 million.

Throughout the world, the commission has consistently fought against
electroshock therapy and lobotomies, practices that Scientologists believe
are barbarous and should be banned.

In the United States, the commission has encouraged parents to file
lawsuits against doctors who have prescribed Ritalin to their children and
then has provided nationwide publicity for the suits.

The commission's president is veteran Scientologist Dennis Clarke. Although
he is not a doctor, Clarke has positioned himself as the country's most
quoted Ritalin expert. In public appearances, Clarke cites a litany of
alarming statistics, some of which are exaggerated, unsubstantiated or
impossible to verify.

Some medical experts agree that the use of Ritalin in the schools has grown
dramatically over the last two decades, but not to the level claimed by
Clarke.

For example, Clarke has maintained that in Minneapolis, 20 percent of
children under 10 attending mostly white schools in 1987 were on Ritalin
and the percentage was double that in predominantly black schools.
"If they are saying that is the statistic in Minneapolis, they are lying,"
said Vi Blosberg, manager of health services in the 39,000-student
district. She said that fewer than 1 percent of students districtwide were
taking Ritalin or other drugs used to control hyperactivity during the year
in question.

Using its statistics, the Citizens Commission in late 1987 lobbied the
congressional Republican Study Committee to push Congress for an
investigation of Ritalin.

Its campaign attracted the attention of Rep. Cass Ballenger, R-N.C., who is
on the House Education and Labor Committee.

Ballenger's legislative director, Ashley McArthur, said that she met with
the Citizens Commission because the statistics about Ritalin abuse "caught
our attention." She said that Ballenger and 11 congressional colleagues
sent letters to four federal agencies, including the FDA, requesting
reports on Ritalin usage and safety.

McArthur said she later learned that Scientologists were behind the
Citizens Commission and that some of the information they provided did not
"add up."

"Once we knew their whole organization was run by Scientologists, it put a
whole different perspective on it," McArthur said. "I think they'll try to
use any group they can."

A recent Scientology publication said that the anti-Ritalin effort was "one
of [the commission's] major campaigns in the 1980s."

"Hundreds of newspaper articles and countless hours of radio and television
shows on this issue resulted in thousands of parents around the world
contacting [the commission] to learn more about the damage psychiatrists
are creating on today's children," the article stated.

"The campaign against Ritalin brought wide acceptance of the fact that [the
commission] and the Scientologists are the ones effectively doing something
about the problems of psychiatric drugging," the publication added.


---------------------


                               Feud With IRS

                         Neither Side Blinks - Yet

Among its many adversaries, the Church of Scientology's longest-running
feud has been with the Internal Revenue Service. So far, neither combatant
has blinked. Over the past three decades, the IRS has revoked the
tax-exempt status of various Scientology organizations, accusing them of
operating in a commercial manner and of financially benefiting private
individuals. From the late 1960s through mid-1970s, IRS agents classified
Scientology as a "tax resister" and "subversive," a characterization later
deemed improper by a judge.

In 1984, the IRS's Los Angeles office launched a far-ranging criminal
investigation into allegations by high-level Scientology defectors that the
movement's founder, L. Ron Hubbard, had skimmed millions of dollars from
the church.

The probe was dropped after Hubbard's death in 1986. A Justice Department
source told The Times that, with the primary target gone, the point was
moot. But church executives say the IRS had no case because the allegations
were untrue.

Scientology, for its part, has brought numerous lawsuits against the IRS,
accusing the agency of everything from harassment to illegally withholding
public records. In the 1970s, overzealous Scientologists went so far as to
bug an IRS office in Washington, D.C. - a crime that led to their
imprisonment.

More recently, through a group called the National Coalition of IRS
Whistleblowers, Scientologists have embarrassed the very branch within the
agency that initiated the criminal investigation of Hubbard.

The coalition, founded in the mid-1980s by the Church of Scientology's
Freedom magazine, helped fuel a 1989 congressional inquiry into alleged
wrongdoing by the former chief of the IRS's Criminal Investigations
Division in Los Angeles and other agency officials.

Based on public records and leaked IRS memos, the coalition disclosed that
the former Los Angeles supervisor and several colleagues bought peoperty
from an El Monte firm being audited by the IRS. Soon after, the audit was
dropped with a finding that the firm owed no money. The supervisor has
denied acting improperly.

The whistle-blowers coalition, whose members also include past and present
IRS employees, provided the information to a House subcommittee, which was
investigating the IRS at the time. The allegations received nationwide
exposure during later hearings by the subcommittee, prompting a promise
from IRS Commissioner Fred T. Goldberg, Jr. to toughen ethical standards in
the agency.

The coalition's spokeswoman, Scientologist Lisa Lashaway, also appeared on
NBC's "Today" show with a subcommittee member, where the two criticized the
conduct of the IRS unit.

Although Scientologists do much of the legwork for the coalition, its
president and chief point man is retired IRS agent Paul Des Fosses, a
non-Scientologist who left the IRS in 1984 after a stormy relationship with
the agency.

"They've given us a lot of support," DesFosses said of the Scientologists
in a recent interview. "That's understandable because people who are under
attack by the IRS are suddenly very concerned with IRS abuse."

Despite his close working relationship with Scientology, DesFosses said
church members never told him that Hubbard was under criminal investigation
by the IRS when they offered to organize and assist his whistle-blowers
group.

"No, I wasn't aware of it," DesFosses said when informed by The Times. "I
would be very surprised to learn that."

(Ed Note: In late 1993, the IRS exonerated many of the Scientology
Organizations with which it had been feuding for years, even some in which
the court system, on whose docket the cases were already placed, later
agreed that the IRS' position was correct.

-ROBERT W. WELKOS and JOEL SAPPELL


--------------



                                Squirrels...
                    When The Doctrine Leaves Scientology

By Robert W. Welkos
and Joel Sappell
(c) 1990, Los Angeles Times

The Church of Scientology hates "squirrels."

That is the scornful word L. Ron Hubbard used to describe non-church
members who offer his teachings, sometimes at cut-rate prices. Most are
ex-Scientologists who say that they believe in Hubbard's gospel but left
the church because its hierarchy was too oppressive.

"We call them squirrels," Hubbard once wrote, "because they are so nutty."
Hubbard contended that only church members are were qualified to administer
his self-improvement-type courses. Outsiders, he said, inevitably misapply
misapplied the teachings, wreaking spiritual harm on their subjects.

But those who have launched "independent" Scientology-style centers say
that Hubbard concocted this as an excuse to eliminate competition so he
could charge exorbitant prices for his courses.

As far back as 1965, Hubbard demonstrated his disdain for breakaway groups,
ordering his followers to "tear up" the meetings of one such organization
and "harass these persons in any possible way."

The intolerance still exists.

In 1988, the California Association of Dianetic Auditors - the oldest
Scientology splinter group in existence - said that it uncovered a scheme
by more than 100 Scientologists to secretly infiltrate the association and
seize control of its board of directors.

The association's then-vice president, Jana Moreillon, said that she
discovered the infiltration after scanning some Scientology publications.
There, she found the names of many of her group's newest members listed
among Scientologists who had just completed church training.

Moreillon said the association eventually purged or denied membership to
116 suspected Scientologists.

In recent years, a shadowy group of church members dubbed the "Minutemen"
crashed meetings of independent Scientologists. They heckled speakers,
screamed obscenities and threw eggs. Los Angeles police officers had to be
summoned by the owner of a Chinatown restaurant to evict militant
Scientologists who disrupted a fund-raising dinner held there by breakaway
church members.

The church has denied any direct involvement in the raids. But a former top
Scientology official said in a recent court declaration that the harassment
campaign was ordered by church executives.


---------------------


                             The 'Org Board'...
                      Hubbard's Plan For Improving On
                      '80Trillion Years' Of Management

By Robert W. Welkos and Joel Sappell
(c) 1990, Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES - A key element of the management techniques that
Scientologists sell to businessmen is L. Ron Hubbard's "organizational
board."

Used also by the Church of Scientology, the "Org Board" divides an
organization into seven divisions - executive, personnel, sales, finance,
training, marketing and qualifications. Each division's duties are spelled
out, along with the basis for evaluating employee performance.

In describing the Org Board's virtues, Scientology consultants omit
Hubbard's colorful account of its origins - an account reminiscent of one
of his science fiction tales.

During a 1965 lecture to Scientologists in England, Hubbard said that his
board is a refined version of one that was used for "80 trillion years" by
an "old galactic civilization."

Hubbard said that the civilization died (he did not say when) because its
organizational board lacked one division that he incorporated into his
modern-day version.

Declared Hubbard: "We don't want these temporary fly-by-night affairs!"



------------------


                                Escalante...
             Foundation Funds Assist Celebrated School Teacher

By Robert W. Welkos and Joel Sappell
(c) 1990, Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES - The Scientology movement's Foundation for Advancements in
Science and Education has befriended one of America's most celebrated
teachers, Jaime Escalante of Garfield High School.

Escalante is the East Los Angeles teacher profiled in the hit 1988 film
"Stand and Deliver," which chronicled his success in teaching advanced
calculus to barrio students.

During the last few years, the foundation has provided Escalante with tens
of thousands of dollars for computers, audiovisual aids, tutors and
scholarships. In addition, the foundation has solicited contributions from
major corporations to help Escalante's Garfield High mathematics program
grow in size and sophistication.

In fact, the foundation has been Escalante's primary benefactor.
He is now teaming up with the foundation to develop a series of 12
educational videos for distribution by the Public Broadcasting System.
Called "Futures," the series is intended to motivate students by showing
them the relevancy of math in the workplace. The foundation's president
will be the executive producer, while Escalante will be host of the series.
Escalante says he was unaware of the foundation's links to Scientology.

"No, no," he said, "they [foundation officials] never mentioned that name."
But, he added, it makes no difference.

"From my point of view," he said, "I really don't mind what they are. The
only thing I care about is that they help my students, my kids. That's my
main goal."

The foundation, for its part, has not been reticent about publicizing its
support of Escalante. Its promotional literature regularly includes
photographs of Escalante in his classroom or standing side-by-side with
beaming foundation executives.


-----------------

   Attack: Scientology Takes Offensive Against An Array Of Suspected Foes

By Joel Sappell and
Robert W. Welkos
(c) 1990, Los Angeles Times

"Never treat a war like a skirmish. Treat all skirmishes like wars."
- L. Ron Hubbard

LOS ANGELES - The Church of Scientology does not turn the other cheek.
Ministers mingle with private detectives. "Sacred scriptures" counsel the
virtues of combativeness. Parishioners double as paralegals for litigious
church attorneys.

Consider the passage that a prominent Scientology minister selected from
the religion's scriptures, authored by the late L. Ron Hubbard, to inspire
the faithful during a gala church event.

"People attack Scientology," the minister quoted Hubbard as saying. "I
never forget it; always even the score."

The crowd cheered.

As far back as 1959, Hubbard warned that illness and even death can befall
those seeking to impede Scientology, known within the church as
"suppressive persons."

"Literally, it kills them," Hubbard wrote, "and if you don't believe me I
can show you the long death list."

He told the story of an electrician who bilked the organization. "Within a
few weeks," Hubbard said, "he contracted TB."

Scientology seems committed not only to fighting back, but to chilling
potential opposition. For years, the church has been accused of employing
psychological warfare, dirty tricks and harassment-by-lawsuit to silence
its adversaries.

The church has spent millions to investigate and sue writers, government
officials, disaffected ex-members and others loosely defined as "enemies."
Teams of private detectives have been dispatched to the far corners of the
world to spy on critics and rummage through their personal lives - and
trash cans - for information to discredit them.

During one investigation, headed by a former Los Angeles police sergeant,
the church paid tens of thousands of dollars to reputed organized crime
figures and con men for information linking a leading church opponent to a
crime that it turned out he did not commit.

Early last year, an American Scientologist was arrested in Spain for
possessing dossiers containing confidential information on a member of
Parliament and a Madrid judge who oversaw a fraud and tax evasion probe of
the church. The dossiers included personal bank records and family
photographs, according to press accounts.

Before a British author's critical biography of Hubbard was even released
two years ago in Europe, the church had him and his publisher tied up in a
London court for alleged copyright infringement. The writer speculated that
Scientology sympathizers had somehow managed to obtain pre-publication
proofs of the book.

Scientology spokesmen insist that the organization is doing nothing illegal
or unethical, and is merely exercising its constitutional rights with
vigor.

They argue that Scientology has been targeted by hostile government and
private forces - including the Internal Revenue Service, the FBI, the
press, psychiatrists and unscrupulous attorneys - that have persecuted the
church since its founding three decades ago.

As a matter of self-preservation, lamented Scientology attorney Earle C.
Cooley, the church has been forced to fight back and then has been unfairly
chastised for its aggressiveness.

"When we were attacked at Pearl Harbor we didn't just sit back and defend
there," Cooley declared. "We tried to get out on the offensive as quickly
as possible. ... To sit back and ward off the blows is ridiculous."

Underlying the church's aggressive response to criticism is a belief that
anyone who attacks Scientology is a criminal of some sort. "We do not find
critics of Scientology who do not have criminal pasts," Hubbard wrote back
in 1967. "Over and over we prove this."

When Scientology takes the offensive, L. Ron Hubbard's writings provide the
inspiration. Here is a sampling of what Hubbard wrote:

"The purpose of the [lawsuit] is to harass and discourage rather than
win."

"If attacked on some vulnerable point by anyone or anything or any
organization, always find or manufacture enough threat against them to
cause them to sue for peace.... Don't ever defend. Always attack."

"We do not want Scientology to be reported in the press, anywhere else
than on the religious pages of newspapers.... Therefore, we should be very
alert to sue for slander at the slightest chance so as to discourage the
public presses from mentioning Scientology."

"NEVER agree to an investigation of Scientology. Only agree to an
investigation of the attackers. ... Start feeding lurid, blood, sex crime,
actual evidence on the attack to the press. Don't ever tamely submit to an
investigation of us. Make it rough, rough on attackers all the way."

Obedience to these rules is not discretionary. They are scripture and, as
such, have guided a succession of church leaders in their responses to
perceived attacks.

Ironically, Hubbard's doctrinal dictums have often served only to escalate
conflicts and reinforce the cultish image that the church has been trying
to shake.

In the early 1970s, British lawmaker Sir John Foster offered a seemingly
timeless observation on Scientology in a report to his government.

He wrote that "anyone whose attitude is such as Mr. Hubbard displays in his
writings cannot be too surprised if the world treats him with suspicion
rather than affection."

Defeating its antagonists is considered so vital to the religion's survival
that the church has a unit whose mandate is to bring "hostile philosophies
or societies into a state of complete compliance with the goals of
Scientology."

Called the Office of Special Affairs, its duties include developing legal
strategy and countering outside threats.

Its predecessor was the Guardian Office, whose members became so
overzealous that Hubbard's wife and 10 other Scientologists were jailed for
bugging and burglarizing U.S. government agencies in the 1970s.

Now, Scientology spokesmen say, attorneys are hired to handle conflicts
with church adversaries to ensure that history does not repeat itself. The
attorneys, they say, employ private detectives to help prepare court cases
- a role that, in the past, would have been filled by Scientologists from
the Guardian Office.

But some former Scientologists contend that the private detectives have
simply replaced church members as agents of intimidation. The detectives
are especially valued because they insulate the church from deceptive and
potentially embarrassing investigative tactics that the church in fact
endorses, according to this view.

One of the first private detectives hired by the church was Richard Bast of
Washington, D.C.

In 1980, he investigated the sex life of U.S. District Judge James Richey,
who was presiding over the criminal trial of Hubbard's wife and the 10
other Scientologists. Richey had issued rulings unfavorable to them.

Bast's investigators found a prostitute at the Brentwood Holiday Inn in Los
Angeles who claimed that Richey had purchased her services while staying at
the hotel during trips to Los Angeles. Bast's men gave her a lie detector
test and videotaped her account.

That and other information obtained by Bast's investigators was leaked to
columnist Jack Anderson, and appeared in newspapers across the country.
Soon after, Richey resigned from the case, citing health reasons.

In 1982, Bast surfaced again, this time in Clearwater, Fla., where the
church's secretive methods of operating had stirred community anxiety.
Bast's detectives, posing as emissaries of a wealthy European
industrialist, lured some of the community's most prominent businessmen
aboard a luxurious yacht. Their pitch: the industrialist wanted to invest
$100 million in Clearwater's decaying downtown.

But there was a catch, recalled developer Alan Bomstein, one of the
businessmen being wooed. The emissaries said that their boss was dismayed
by the conflict between Clearwater and Scientology, and wanted the
businessmen to help quash a public inquiry into the church's activities.

When the businessmen refused, Bomstein said, the emissaries vanished. Two
years later, Bast revealed the deception in a court declaration. He said
the undercover operation was necessary to learn whether Clearwater's elite
were conspiring to run the church out of town.

More recently, Scientology investigations have been run by former Los
Angeles Police Department sergeant Eugene Ingram, who was fired by the
department in 1981 for allegedly running a house of prostitution and
alerting a drug dealer of a planned raid (In a later jury trial, Ingram was
acquitted of all criminal charges).

When he needs help, Ingram has sometimes turned to former LAPD colleagues.
Ex-officer Al Bei, for example, played a key role in a 1984 investigation
of David Mayo, an influential Scientology defector who had opened a rival
church near Santa Barbara. Scientologists believed that Mayo was using
stolen Hubbard teachings.

Bei and other investigators questioned local businessmen, handing out
business cards that said, "Special Agent, Task Force on White Collar
Crime."

Their questions suggested - falsely - that Mayo was linked to international
terrorism and drug smuggling, according to court records. At a local bank,
Bei tried without success to obtain Mayo's banking records and implied that
Mayo was engaged in money laundering, an executive of the bank said.

The investigators rented an office directly above Mayo's facility and
leaned from the windows to photograph everyone who entered.
Mayo eventually obtained a court order barring Ingram Investigations and
church members from going near Mayo or his facility. The judge said the
investigation amounted to "harassment."

On another occasion, Bei surfaced on a quiet residential street in Burbank,
Calif, where he questioned neighbors of two highly critical former
Scientologists, Fred and Valerie Stansfield. The Stansfields had
established a competing center in their home to provide Scientology
courses.

One of the neighbors said in a declaration that Bei attempted to "slander"
the Stansfields with such questions as: "Did you know that Valerie told
someone that she had pinworms two years ago?"

Los Angeles police officer Philip Rodriguez is another who has assisted
Ingram in Scientology investigations.

In late 1984, he provided Ingram with a letter on plain stationery saying
that Ingram was authorized to covertly videotape a hostile former member
suspected by church authorities of plotting illegal acts against the
church.

Although the letter was written without official police department
approval, Rodriguez's action lent an air of legitimacy to the
investigation. In fact, when church officials disclosed its results, they
described the operation as "LAPD sanctioned" - a characterization that
Police Chief Daryl F. Gates angrily disputed.

Rodriguez was suspended for six months for his role in the affair.

And when the clandestine videotapes were introduced in an Oregon court to
discredit testimony by the former member, the presiding judge said: "I
think they are devastating against the church. ... It [the investigation]
borders on entrapment more than it does on anything else."

Another former LAPD officer, Charles Stapleton, worked part time for Ingram
while teaching law at Los Angeles City College.

"Gene is a very thorough investigator," Stapleton said in an interview. "He
is determined to do the finest job he possibly can and he will employ
whatever methods or tactics are necessary to do that job."

Stapleton said he "bailed out" after Ingram asked him to tap telephones.
"Who's going to know?" he quoted Ingram as saying.

"I will know," Stapleton said he replied.

"I was told that if I didn't want to do it, he knew somebody who would,"
Stapleton said, adding that he did not know whether any telephones had, in
fact, been monitored.

Ingram denied ever asking Stapleton to tap telephones.

"I've never done it and I've never asked anyone to do it," Ingram said.
"It's just not worth it. It's a crime. You're going to get caught, so why
do it?"

Ingram also said that he had not harassed anyone during his probes. He
describes himself simply as "aggressive."

"People who claim that I have conducted an improper investigation against
them probably have so many things to hide," said Ingram.

Church lawyer Cooley backed the investigator, saying: "I know of no
impropriety that has ever been engaged in by Mr. Ingram or any other
[private investigator] for the church. Mr. Ingram has done nothing wrong."
Last year, Ingram and his colleagues surfaced in the small town of Newkirk,
Okla., to investigate city officials and the local newspaper publisher. The
publisher has been crusading against a controversial Scientology-backed
drug treatment program called Narconon.

At the core of the dispute is a contention by publisher Bob Lobsinger that
Narconon concealed its Scientology connection when it leased an abandoned
school outside town to build the "world's largest" drug rehabilitation
center.

Lobsinger's weekly newspaper has written about Scientology's troubled past,
and published internal documents on the drug program. In the process, he
has helped rally community opposition.

Fighting back, Scientology attorneys in September mailed an "open letter"
to many of Newkirk's 2,500 residents announcing that Ingram had been hired
to investigate Narconon's adversaries. The letter said that "a few local
individuals have sought to create intolerance by broadsiding the Churches
of Scientology in stridently uncomplimentary terms."

After arriving in town, Ingram tracked down the mayor's 12-year-old son at
the local public library, handed him a business card and told the boy to
have his father call, Lobsinger said. "It was just a subtle bit of
intimidation," he said. "It certainly did not do the mother much good. She
was very unnerved."

Lobsinger said that investigators also camped out at the local courthouse,
where they searched public records for "dirt" on prominent local citizens.
"They were checking up on the banker, the president of the school board,
the president of the Chamber of Commerce and, of course, the mayor and his
family, and me," Lobsinger said.

Newkirk Mayor Garry Bilger, who opposed the drug treatment program, said
that a man who he believed was a church member tried to coax him into
disclosing personal information. Bilger said the man showed up without an
appointment and claimed that he was helping his daughter with a report on
small-town government for a class at a nearby high school.

"He wanted to interview me and take pictures around the office but I didn't
allow that," the mayor recalled. "Finally, I said, 'Are you with
Scientology or Narconon?' He said, 'I don't know about those people.' But
he did, because he got outta there in a hurry."

Before the man left, he gave Bilger the name of his daughter. The mayor
then checked with the school system and was told that no such girl was
enrolled.

"They have a standard pattern," Bilger said of the Scientologists. "They
try to be very aggressive. They try to intimidate. This is not the kind of
atmosphere we need in the Newkirk community. ... This tells me they are far
from being harmless."

Scientology critics contend that one church writing, above all others, has
guided the organization and its operatives when they fight back. It is
called the Fair Game Law.

Written by Hubbard in the mid-1960s, it states that anyone who impedes
Scientology is "fair game" and can "be deprived of property or injured by
any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist.
May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed."

Church spokesmen maintain that Hubbard rescinded the policy three years
after it was written because its meaning had been twisted. What Hubbard
actually meant, according to the spokesmen, was that Scientology would not
protect ex-members from people in the outside world who try tried to trick,
sue or destroy them.

But various judges and juries have concluded that while the actual labeling
of persons as "fair game" was abandoned, the harassment continued unabated.
For example, a Los Angeles jury in 1986 said that Scientologists had
employed fair game tactics against disaffected member Larry Wollersheim,
driving him to the brink of financial and mental collapse. He was awarded
$30 million. In July, the state Court of Appeal reduced the amount to $2.5
million but refused to overturn the case.

Wrote Justice Earl Johnson Jr.: "Scientology leaders made the deliberate
decision to ruin Wollersheim economically and possibly psychologically. ...
Such conduct is too outrageous to be protected under the Constitution and
too unworthy to be privileged under the law of torts."

In a recent lawsuit, former Scientology attorney Joseph Yanny alleged that
the church and its agents had implemented or plotted a broad array of
fair-game measures against him and other critics, including intensive
surveillance and dirty tricks.

Earlier this year, a Los Angeles County Superior Court jury awarded Yanny
$154,000 in legal fees that he said the church had refused to pay.
Among other things, Yanny said in his lawsuit that he attended a 1987
meeting at which top church officials and three private detectives
discussed blackmailing Los Angeles attorney Charles O'Reilly, who won the
multimillion-dollar jury award for Wollersheim.

According to Yanny, the plan was to steal O'Reilly's medical records from
the Betty Ford Clinic near Palm Springs, then exchange them for a promise
from O'Reilly that he would "ease off" during the appeal process.
Yanny, who later had a bitter break with Scientology, said he objected and
the idea was dropped. The church denies such a discussion ever took place.
"There is not a scintilla of independent evidence that Yanny's counsel was
ever sought for any illegal or fraudulent purpose," church attorneys argued
in court papers.

Numerous other church detractors have said in court documents and
interviews that they, too, were victims of fair game tactics even after the
policy supposedly was abandoned.

John G. Clark, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard
Medical School, said he once criticized the church during testimony before
the Vermont Legislature. Scientology "agents" retaliated, Clark alleged in
a 1985 lawsuit, by trying to destroy his reputation and career.

He said in the lawsuit that they filed groundless complaints against him
with government agencies, posed as clients to infiltrate his office, dug
through his trash, implied that he slept with female patients and offered a
$25,000 reward for information that would put him in jail.

"My sin," Clark said in an interview, "was publicly saying this is a
dangerous and harmful cult. They did a good job of showing I'm right."
Scientologists, for their part, have described Clark as a "professional
deprogrammer," who in court cases has diagnosed members of religious sects
as mentally ill without conducting direct examinations of them. They have
branded his professional work as fraudulent and his psychiatric theories as
"childish and nonsensical."

In the words of one Scientology spokesman: "It's a crime that he's walking
on the street right now."

In 1988, the church paid Clark an undisclosed sum to drop his lawsuit. In
exchange for the money, Clark agreed never again to publicly criticize
Scientology.

On the opposite coast, psychiatrist Louis "Jolly" West, who formerly
directed the UCLA's Neuropsychiatric Institute at the University of
California, Los Angeles, said that he also has had felt the wrath of
Scientology.

West, an expert on thought-control techniques, said his problems began in
1980 after he published a psychiatric textbook that called Scientology a
cult.

West said that Scientology attempted to get him fired by writing letters to
university officials suggesting that he is was a CIA-backed fascist who has
had advocated genocide and castration of minorities to curb crime.
He said that Scientologists once managed to get inside a downtown Los
Angeles banquet room before guests arrived for a dinner celebrating the
Neuropsychiatric Institute's 25th anniversary. On each plate, West said,
was placed "an obscenely vicious diatribe" against him and the institute
-neatly tied with a pink ribbon.

So consumed are some Scientologists by their zeal to punish foes that they
have violated the confidentiality of one of the religion's most sacred
practices, according to a number of former members.

These former members accuse others in the church of culling confessional
folders for information that can be used to embarrass, discredit or
blackmail hostile defectors -a practice once called "repugnant and
outrageous" by a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge. Some of these
former members say they themselves took part in the practice.

The confidential folders contain the parishioners' most intimate secrets,
disclosed during one-on-one counseling sessions that are supposed to help
devotees unburden their spirits. The church retains the folders even after
a member leaves.

Last year, former church attorney Yanny said in a sworn declaration that he
was fed information from confessional folders to help him question former
members during pretrial proceedings. Yanny said he complained but was
informed by two Scientology executives that it was "standard practice."
Church executives have steadfastly denied that the confidentiality of the
folders has been breached. They maintain that "auditors" -Scientologists
who counsel other members -must abide by a code of conduct in which they
promise never to divulge secrets revealed to them "for punishment or
personal gain."

"And that trust," the code states, "is sacred and never to be betrayed."
Often, those who buck the church say their lives are suddenly troubled by
unexplained and untraceable events, ranging from hang-up telephone calls to
the mysterious deaths of pets.

Los Angeles attorney Leta Schlosser, for one, said someone developed "an
unusual interest" in her car trunk while she was part of the legal team in
the Wollersheim suit against Scientology. She said it was broken into at
least seven times.

She said her co-counsel, O'Reilly, discovered a tape recorder, wired to his
telephone line, hidden beneath some bushes outside his home.

Then there is the British author, Russell Miller. After his biography of
Hubbard was published, an anonymous caller to police implicated him in the
unsolved ax-slaying of a South London private eye.

Miller was interrogated by two detectives, who concluded that he was
innocent. Det. Sgt. Malcolm Davidson of Scotland Yard told the Los Angeles
Times that the caller "caused us to waste a lot of time investigating" and
"caused Mr. Miller some embarrassment."

There is no evidence that ties the church to any of these incidents, and
Scientology officials deny involvement in clandestine harassment or illegal
activities. They suggest that church foes may themselves be responsible as
part of an effort to discredit Scientology.

Today, the Scientology movement is engaged in a sweeping effort to gain
influence across a broad swath of society, from schools to businesses, in
hopes of winning converts and creating a hospitable environment for church
expansion.

And Hubbard's followers apparently consider his theology of combat an
important component.

In 1987, they elevated to high doctrine a warning he wrote two decades ago
in a Scientology newspaper, addressed to "people who seek to stop us."
"If you oppose Scientology we promptly look up - and will find and expose -
your crimes," he wrote. "If you leave us alone we will leave you alone.
It's very simple. Even a fool can grasp that.

"And don't underrate our ability to carry it out. - Those who try to make
life difficult for us are at once at risk."


-----------------------------

             Rev. Dennis L Erlich    * * the inFormer * *
                     <dennis.l.erlich@support.com>
                         <inForm@primenet.com>