(The following text has been taken from the FACTNET archive and made readable by Martin Hunt) RELIGION INC. The Church of Scientology Stewart Lamont The story of Scientology reads like the plot of a bizarre and sensational movie. A science-fiction writer founds a religion, makes millions of dollars in the process and then becomes a recluse. His followers, who dress in naval-style uniforms, engage in a cops and robbers game with the FBI and the American Inland Revenue Service which leads to Watergate style burglaries and multi- million dollar lawsuits for and against the cult. Smear campaigns are conducted against its enemies and accusations of brain-washing are levelled against the church by psychiatrists. A breakaway movement leads to purges and the break-up of families and hundreds of members are declared 'Suppressive Persons'. Then a young lieutenant of the cult leader takes over amid accusations that he has forged the documents which give him power over the cult's millions. The locations for this 'movie' are a former mansion of a maharaja in deepest Sussex, an ocean-going yacht where punishments akin to keel-hauling are ordered by the cult leader for those who disobey his whim; a sleepy Florida town which is taken over by the church; and sumptuous Los Angeles properties where movie celebrities are lionized by the cult. Behind it all is the guru, described by his estranged son as a sadist, a debauched devotee to occultism, and yet seen by his followers as a genius who discovered a religion that combines the ancient mysteries of the East with Western technology and psychotherapy. He is denounced by judges as a 'charlatan' and in 1980 he disappears with lawsuits pending against him and accusations by his followers that they are being persecuted for their religion. Incredible as this scenario is, it is the true story of Scientology and its founder Lafayette Ron Hubbard. Previous books have dealt with the early years of the cult, now Stewart Lamont gives the first full account of its controversial history in recent years, drawing on interviews with principal participants in the drama. He reveals the top-secret upper levels of the cult's teachings and discusses the allegations that Ron Hubbard possibly died several years before the 'official' announcement in 1986. This is the book of the movie that has already happened, but has yet to be made... RELIGION INC. The Church of Scientology '...falsehood must become exposed by truth - and truth, though fought, always in the end prevails.' L. RON HUBBARD, _My Philosophy, 1965_ RELIGION INC. The Church of Scientology Stewart Lamont HARRAP LONDON First published in Great Britain 1986 by HARRAP Ltd 19-23 Ludgate Hill, London EC4M 7PD Copyright (c) *Stewart Lamont* 1986 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior permission of Harrap Limited. ISBN O 245-54334-1 Printed and bound in Great Britain Contents Acknowledgements 9 Prologue 11 1 L. Ron Hubbard: Guru, God or Demon? 18 2 A Religious Technology 30 3 Life on the Ocean Wave 53 4 God's Admiralty 67 5 Gamekeepers and Poachers 89 6 Mindbenders and Faithbreakers: Scientology and Psychiatry 114 7 Cops and Robbers: Scientology and the Law 134 8 Battlefield Earth 153 Epilogue 163 Appendices 169 Glossary 184 Index 188 Illustrations *Unless otherwise stated, the photographs listed below are from the author's own collection* *Between pages 64 and 65* L. Ron Hubbard (*Frank Spencer Pictures*) Saint Hill Manor, Sussex London Scientology HQ in Tottenham Court Road Candacraig House, Scotland Robin Scott and family Municipal Buildings, Clearwater Author with an E-Meter Confidential folders in 'Flag HQ' Frank McCall with model of *Apollo* Frank McCall with ship's wheel Ron Hubbard and film crew (*Nik Wheeler/Sunday Times, London*) Hubbard on location (*Nik Wheeler/Sunday Times, London*) *Between pages 128 and 129* Los Angeles Scientology HQ Mrs Shirley Young and Mrs Susan Jones Dr. John G. Clark Michael Flynn David Mayo (*Nik Wheeler/Sunday Times, London*) Finance Police (*Nik Wheeler/Sunday Times, London*) A security guard (*Nik Wheeler/Sunday Times, London*) Golden Era Studios at Gilman Springs Heber Jentzsch at Golden Era Studios Aerial view of the clipper-ship at Gilman (*Nik Wheeler/Sunday Times, London*) The swimming-pool and clipper-ship at Gilman Author on board the clipper-ship TV documentary picture of Hubbard in 1973 (*Sunday Times, London*) Acknowledgements It may seem bizarre in the light of the conclusions at which this book arrives, that some of the people I have to thank most for help, infor- mation and co-operation in writing it, are officers of the Church of Scientology. My gratitude is nonetheless sincere and although I know that I may be accused of biting the hand that fed me, I should make it clear that it was my purpose to hear all shades of opinion both for and against Scientology with an open mind. After collecting and studying the evidence by interview, from documents and published material, the fact that I felt compelled to make adverse comments upon L. Ron Hubbard and his religion is, I believe, a reflection upon the content of that evidence rather than upon any bias or capricious ingratitude upon my part. I hope it does not sound too patronizing to say that I hope that many of the friendly people within the Church of Scien- tology (and there are many unaware of the true nature and practices of their church) may one day come to a similar decision when they view the evidence away from the glow of uncritical commitment. In particular, I would like to thank Mike Garside, the Director of Public Affairs of Scientology in the UK, who, along with his team at Saint Hill in East Grinstead, supplied me with material and allowed me access to Scientology organizations; Rich Haworth, then Director of Public Affairs at Flag HQ in Clearwater, Florida when I visited there in September 1984; Mrs Shirley Young and Mrs Susan Jones, who were my chaperons in Los Angeles; Mr Marshall Goldblatt for generous hospitality, and Rev Heber Jentzsch, President of the Church of Scientology International. Among the disaffected Scientologists and 'independents' I would particularly like to thank are: John Atack of East Grinstead; Robin Scott and his wife Adrienne at Candacraig, Strathdon; John 9 RELIGION INC. McMaster; Neville Chamberlain; 'Alyson'; and Gulliver Smithers. >From the opponents of Scientology I would like to single out the Clark family: Dr John Clark MD of Harvard Medical School, his wife Eleanor and daughter Cathy; Dr Michael Langone of the American Family Foundation; and Boston attorney, Michael Flynn. Other sources of material and assistance were the Editor of the *Sunday Times*, Andrew Neil, and Julian Browne of the Colour Magazine; Kevin Holland of Reader's Digest; Sarah Hogge for per- mission to use her study undertaken within the Religious Studies Department at Lancaster University; Peter Clarke of the Centre for New Religious Movements at King's College, London; Professor Roy Wallis and Dr Steve Bruce of the Department of Sociology at Queen's University, Belfast. Last, but most of all, I would like to thank my friend and agent, Andrew Hewson; and Simon Scott, Editorial Director of Harrap, for encouragement, advice and in the journalistic cliche, for 'doing the biz'. STEWART LAMONT 10 Prologue IT WASN'T a bad substitute for paradise: the rolling hills, the mani- cured landscape gardens, stitched into a lush patchwork by the long, straight, freshly painted white fences. The scrub which is a common feature of the hills south of Creston in Southern California had been meticulously cleared from the 160 acre ranch, designed originally for horse training. The quarter-mile track was still there, plus a grand- stand painted white and an observation tower. Wild life abounded and in the hothouse corn stalks grew alongside orchids. The tri-level ranch house sat atop a hill overlooking a lake. A satellite dish and pool were perched beneath a patio and sun porch. The lord of this manor might have been forgiven for thinking he had found heaven on earth. As the winter sun reached its highest point on Monday, 27 January 1986, two station-wagons turned slowly out of the ranch gates and drove up Donovan Road making for the port of San Luis Obispo, which lay a few miles away on the coast. There a boat was waiting to help the occupants perform their macabre and secret task. In the front seat of the lead car were two lawyers: Earle Cooley and John Peterson. Cooley was a tall man of vast bulk who had weighed in on the side of the Church of Scientology in several court cases before becoming one of its most influential members. He had once spent a few hours cooling off in the cells for contempt of court when he had defended his clients too zealously. The previous Friday he had dashed the hundred and fifty miles north from Los Angeles as soon as he had heard the news. He had spent the weekend with his assistant, John Peterson, who was driving the station-wagon, seeing that everything went exactly to plan. There had been no autopsy on the deceased. But the sheriff of San Luis Obispo County and the coroner had been 11 RELIGION INC. satisfied with the death certificates and the fingerprints and blood samples with which they had been furnished. They had managed to arrange a swift cremation that morning for the body. With the ashes scarcely cool, Cooley and Peterson and others were on their way to perform one final task before returning to Los Angeles to announce their secret to the world that very evening. The small silver urn Cooley held between his knees contained the remains of a giant among men - the man he admired above anybody else who had lived. Behind Cooley and Peterson sat a large man with greying hair, his tinted glasses concealing soft and tearful eyes. Heber Jentzsch was an emotional man. A man with a big heart. As well as his personal grief was his regret that he had never met the man whose remains occupied the urn, yet in the eyes of the world Jentzsch was the man who represented the deceased when he disappeared six years previously. Beside Jentzsch sat his wife Karen, a dark-skinned woman who had known their dead leader. Gossip had it that she had been a night-club hostess before Scientology had given her a new career, one in which she had gone quickly and ruthlessly to the top before her marriage to the President of the Church of Scientology International. The other station-wagon contained three people: two men and a woman. It drew ahead as they neared the jetty to meet the skipper of the large motor-boat which they had chartered for the morning. The man did not know that this was to be the 'Commodore's' last voyage or that the funeral he was to witness that morning in the gentle calm of a bay in the Pacific Ocean on the Californian coast was that of a man who had started his life's voyage as a Navy man in these very waters and ended it as a notorious recluse. Not for a moment did he suspect that the name of the bulky Caucasian whose ashes occupied the silver urn was Lafayette Ron Hubbard, science-fiction writer and founder of a religion which had millions of followers worldwide. Now only seven of those followers were present, as the sun glinted on the ocean around their small vessel, to say goodbye to Ron as they affectionately and devotedly knew him. There was a reason for the seclusion and the privacy. It was a very simple reason. Those millions of followers around the world did not know that Hubbard was dead. The seven secret mourners intended to keep it that way for at least a few more hours. The youngest of the seven, a slim youth in his early twenties with a drooping moustache, was dressed in black trousers and a white short- sleeved shirt. The insignia and epaulettes he wore were not from the United States Navy, but the badges of the Sea Organization, the elite 12 corps of Scientology. Commander David Miscavige opened a slim volume bound in maroon leather and began to read, his strong, deep voice trembling with emotion. '*The finely grist mill of time is spent in service such as yours*,' he began. '*We gained from Ron, who gave to us from his past the ability to live and fare against the tides and storms of fate. Its true we've lost his shoulder up against the wheel and lost as well his counsel and his strength. But lost them only for a while*.' As the blank verse from Scientology's book of ceremonies was read, two mourners stood with their heads bowed, looking into the water. Pat and Annie Broeker were husband and wife and the only two people, apart from Miscavige, who knew where and how Ron Hubbard had lived these past three years. Pat Broeker was well suited to such clandestine activities, He had a voracious appetite for spy stories, fictional and factual, and had the nickname within Scien- tology of '007'. He was in his mid thirties, a High School graduate who had attended college but had been no high flier. His succession of posts within Scientology had resulted in his being 'busted' from every one except the last, which was as a financial courier to Hubbard himself. That post proved to be providential in 1980 when Hubbard learned that the authorities were about to force him into court. He dis- appeared and Pat and Annie Broeker became his only link with the outside world. '*We do not tremble faced with death - we know that living is not breath. Prevail! Go, Ron, and take the life that offers now, and live in good expectancy that we will do our part*.' Annie Broeker let a tear glisten on her cheek. She was Pat Broeker's third wife. But in this marriage Annie was the dominant partner. Now in her late twenties, she had fifteen years of service in the Sea Org and despite being 'busted' in 1979 from her post as deputy commanding officer of the organization by Hubbard's wife, Mary Sue, with whom 'bad blood' still existed, she had survived. She was tough. 5' 6" in height, she stood 2" higher than Miscavige and above her husband in the pecking order. '*Your debts are paid. This chapter of thy life is shut. Go now, dear Ron, and live once more in happier time and place. Thank you, Ron. And now here lift up your eyes and say to him goodbye*.' David Miscavige was nearing the end of the funeral service written by Ron Hubbard, although seldom performed throughout the hundreds of Scientology churches scattered round the world. For twenty years now Ron had developed the doctrine of its 'religious technology' or 'tech' as he called it. He had administered it through memos and 13 RELIGION INC. bulletins from the Hubbard Communications Office. If the tech was Scientology's Bible, the HCOBs were its canon law. Neatly bound in green folders, they defined what to do, how to do it, and to whom to do it. Ron had even covered the present circumstances. The Press, those 'merchants of chaos', and the Government, stacked full of 'Suppressive Persons', would have a field-day when they realized that Ron had 'dropped the body', Miscavige reflected. They would move in for the kill. It would lead to severe strain on the orgs. Where would the leadership come from? They had always relied on Ron's word to settle policy matters. In recent years out- siders had been told that he had retired to devote himself to study and writing, but insiders knew that Ron was always there in memo or in spirit. Now they would not know where to turn. That was why David Miscavige had to keep his control. As Ron's protege he had the task of 'keeping the show on the road' and 'getting the stats up'. '*Come, friends, he is all right and he is gone. We have our work to do, and he has his. He will be welcome there*.' Miscavige raised his hand in a spontaneous salute to the leader to whom he was devoted. The ocean air was not suited to his asthma. His enemies called him the 'asthmatic dwarf' behind his back. Those who had felt the lash of his tongue usually changed it to 'poison dwarf'. Despite his youth and his size, Miscavige had a reputation for getting things done. He had learned from Ron that if a little hysterical screaming and shouting was necessary to achieve something, you didn't think twice - you shouted. He had used the technique to great effect at the Mission Holders' Conference in San Francisco in 1982. It had been a tense time. The grasp on power which the founding documents of the Religious Technology Center had granted to him and his colleagues was incomplete until he was seen to be in control. The next task had been to remove those who might challenge that authority. Ron could not help him. He had been incapacitated by a severe stroke, far worse than the one he had suffered in 1975. As Ron lay dying, David Miscavige knew that the Religious Technology Center was the only thing that could save Scientology. It protected him from prosecution, it safeguarded the tech and the orgs and it gave him the authority he needed to get the job done. The body had been properly certified and all formalities had been completed. The 'high crime' would have been to stand by and watch the enemies of Scientology destroy the organization that had nurtured him since he was a small child. He was not ashamed to look on Ron as a father figure. To his enemies Scientology was a 14 PROLOGUE cult, a con, a corporation marketing false religion. To David Miscavige, it was all he knew. What you have just read is mostly fictional. However, the characters are real. There *is* a ranch at San Luis Obispo in Southern California. L. Ron Hubbard mysteriously disappeared in 1980. The Religious Technology Center *does* own the Scientology trademarks which bring in millions of dollars per month worldwide. David Miscavige, a relatively inexperienced member of the full-time staff of the Church of Scientology, became within months its most influential figure. All that is documented and acknowledged. But six years after he disappeared and became a recluse, it was still not known whether Ron Hubbard was alive or dead. Then on Monday night, 27 January 1986, Earle Cooley, Chief Counsel for the Church of Scientology, and Heber Jentzsch, President of the Church of Scientology International, made their fateful announcement. Hubbard was 'officially' dead. They explained that he had left the bulk of his multi-million dollar estate to the Church of Scientology. They revealed that his body had been cremated and its ashes scattered. No post mortem had been carried out, and although the coroner of San Luis Obispo County had received blood specimens and fingerprints, speculation inevitably arose that Hubbard did not die in January 1986 but had been dead for over two years. During the past six years since he had disappeared immense changes had taken place in the leadership of the organization he founded. During that time his followers were encouraged to believe that he was still keeping a watchful eye on matters from his secret retreat, now revealed to have been a ranch near San Luis Obispo, 150 miles north west of Los Angeles. His followers continued to act as if he were still alive. He was away studying for another book, they said. He was entitled to his privacy, they argued, when asked why he did not come out of seclu- sion to answer the charges made against him. He was no longer in charge of Scientology, they protested, and could not be brought to court to justify some of the malpractices of those who were. His opponents took a different view. He was in hiding to avoid his crimes of tax avoidance, criminal conspiracy and fraud, they alleged. Far from his having retired from running Scientology, they produced documents which linked him to the burglary by his wife and nine others of Federal offices in 1977. He was laughing all the way to the bank, they said, as money continued to pour into the Scientology coffers in the early eighties. The banks were in Luxembourg and Switzerland. 15 RELIGION INC. There were others within Scientology who never lost their admira- tion for Hubbard. But in his absence several catastrophes befell the organization. His wife and her ten fellow conspirators were impris- oned. A cleansing of the Guardians' Office followed in which the Church of Scientology was forced to admit that many criminal acts had been done in its name. There was a purge. However, the new leaders - Miscavige prominent among them - were resented. Longstanding Scientologists with a string of qualifications from the church were 'busted' from their posts and they left to form an indepen- dent movement, but retained their devotion to the 'tech' (the doctrine and practices of Scientology) and their personal loyalty to Hubbard. They were declared 'Suppressive Persons' by the church, 'Declares' (effectively ex-communication orders imposing a ban on associating with their former friends within the official church) began to pour forth. A bitter battle ensued with both movements fighting to win con- verts, the official church from outside its own ranks, and thus to bring fresh money into the rapidly emptying coffers. The independents lowered their prices for courses in Scientology and were accused by the official church of 'squirrelling the tech' - as great a crime in their eyes as heresy was to medieval theologians. If the penalty stopped somewhat short of that advocated by Aquinas for counterfeiters of the faith, the animosity was no less than that which the Inquisition felt for its victims. The church which had campaigned so virulently against psychiatrists and governments for 'persecuting' it, found itself conducting a crusade against its own adherents. One result of this was that disaffected Scientologists began to cam- paign against the cult. They duplicated memos, disclosed confidential processes, vilified the official church and joined in lawsuits as prose- cution witnesses. What emerged was a mountain of testimony, much of it unfavourable to Scientology. Journalists seized on these revel- ations but until now the inside information has not been collected and published in book form. Another consequence was that the Church of Scientology realized that it had either to reform its ways or be subject to wholesale attack in the courts and in the media. I have benefited from this more open policy in that I have had the co-operation of the Church of Scientology in writing this book. I have also had the advantage of talking at length to dissident Scientologists, former members of the church who now repudiate it utterly, and the two men whom Scientology regards as its public enemies numbers one and two: Boston attorney Michael Flynn and Harvard psychiatrist Dr John Clark. 16 PROLOGUE Faced with friendliness and co-operation from all these irrecon- cilable sources, my task was made more difficult, not easier. I origin- ally wanted to write a book telling the story without offending anyone, but the more written material and personal evidence I gathered, the more I became convinced that despite my good inten- tions and those of many Scientologists, I could not avoid the verdict that Scientology does more harm than good and that its founder Ron Hubbard was more of an evil genius than an idol with feet of clay. 17 1 L. Ron Hubbard: Guru, God or Demon? IT WAS Mr Justice Latey in the Royal Courts of Justice on 23 July 1984 who made the most swingeing public attack on L. Ron Hubbard's credibility yet mounted. He was trying a custody case involving a ten- year-old boy and an eight-year-old girl. Their mother had left Scien- tology and contended that if the children remained with their father they would be brought up as Scientologists and severely damaged. The teachings and practices of Scientology became an issue in the trial, as did the character and conduct of its founder, Lafayette Ron Hubbard. Mr Justice Latey described Hubbard variously in the course of his judgement as a 'charlatan and worse'; 'a cynical liar'; 'grimly reminiscent of Hitler'; and his church as 'corrupt, sinister and dangerous'. On the other hand, Hubbard's followers saw him as a unique spiritual teacher who had an insight into the mysteries of life, a guru who had been a prolific science-fiction writer (with claims of over twenty-three million books sold) and teacher, pouring forth articles, memoranda and books on the subject of Dianetics, which he transformed into the religion of Scientology. Where there is such a sharp divergence over a person it is usual to turn to the published facts as any historian would. This is where Hubbard achieves a unique distinction among controversial figures. Not even the facts about him are beyond dispute. That he was born on 13 March 1911 in Tilden, Nebraska, is about the only agreed fact. Thereafter the claims Hubbard made for himself in submitting material to reference works (or the claims that were made on his behalf by his zealous admirers) part company with the facts. Even a little detail such as the claim that he grew up on a ranch owned by his grand- parents in Montana is completely untrue. His exploits as an explorer or as a young boy travelling extensively in the Far East, sitting at the 18 L. RON HUBBARD: GURU, GOD, OR DEMON? feet of gurus, are as fictional as any of his later sci-fi stories. The picture of a romantic adventurer invented by Hubbard for himself is forgiveable in a teller of stories as a harmless vanity, but when his academic record is claimed as some kind of authority for his views, or his war record touted as evidence of his courage and moral integrity, and then both are shown to be a tissue of lies, then one begins to suspect that Hubbard was more of a pathological liar than a dreamer. The 'doctorate' from Sequoia University is nothing more than a $20 mail order effort. The nuclear physics course ('the first of its kind ever') that he attended while gaining his civil engineering degree at George Washington University was one of the courses he registered for while there for ONE term - and he failed it, gaining an overall grade of 'D'. The exploits of Hubbard as an explorer and pioneer of geological surveys of Puerto Rico are fictitious. His career as a 'Barnstormer' pilot before the war must have been severely handicapped by the fact that he never possessed a licence to fly powered aircraft, only a glider licence. All these claims and more have been subjected to extensive research - none more so than Hubbard's war record in the US Navy. He claimed to be a much-decorated war hero who commanded a corvette and during hostilities was crippled and wounded. The only true fact is that he was in the Navy. The rest is pure fiction. It was the discovery that Hubbard's war record was bogus which sparked off the defection of researcher Gerry Armstrong from Scien- tology. He had been assigned to assist writer Omar Garrison in preparing a biography of Hubbard and kept some of the documents as proof to protect himself. It was in the court case to win them back in 1984 that Scientology scored its biggest own goal. The case was presided over by Judge Paul Breckenridge in California Superior Court (Los Angeles County) and was brought by Hubbard's wife, Mary Sue. At first it looked as if the defence documents tracing Hubbard's naval career were to prove damning. When Hubbard was briefly in command of an escort vessel USS PC-815 in the spring of 1943, he ordered its guns to be fired on an uninhabited island in neutral terri- torial waters off Mexico. He was summoned to a court martial and removed from command. In 1945 he was hospitalized - not from war wounds, but on psychiatric grounds. Documents testifying to his unfitness for command were introduced. Then the Scientologists brought out their star witness, Captain Thomas Moulton, who testified that he had known Hubbard at submarine school in 1942. 19 RELIGION INC. Unfortunately for the plaintiffs, under cross-examination Captain Moulton related that Hubbard had told him how he was involved in the first action in the Second World War at Pearl Harbour and how his destroyer had gone down with all hands save himself. Hit in the kidneys, Hubbard had crawled ashore and subsequently sailed to Australia. Captain Moulton's testimony not only stressed his cred- ulity but exposed yet another well-spring in the abundantly irrigated fields which had been sown with Hubbard's lies. The difficulty Hubbard had in urinating at the time he knew Moulton was not the result of a war wound. Documents in Hubbard's handwriting produced in court showed he had contracted gonorrhoea after sex with a lady named Fern. In the British case, Justice Latey poured scorn on another claim that Hubbard was sent by US Naval Intelligence to break up a black magic ring in California: 'He was not. He was himself a member of that occult group and practised ritual sexual magic in it.' Thus the picture of Hubbard as a romancer and purveyor of flim- flam gives way to a darker portrait of a pathological liar distorting the truth about himself for personal gain. His application for a disability pension for a war wound that never existed was cynically undertaken. Armstrong's attorney Michael Flynn tells of a document which relates how Hubbard declared he was going into the hearing for the pension and 'convince the Feds I'm disabled and then I'm gonna laugh at them'. 'This is the mindset which created Scientology, a man who is making these fraudulent claims about himself,' says Flynn. It was in 1946 that Hubbard was first involved with Aleister Crowley's black magic movement, the Ordo Templi Orientis (Order of the Oriental Temple). The Church of Scientology claims that Hubbard was working as an undercover policeman for the Los Angeles Police Department when he infiltrated a black-magic ring in Pasadena at that time. It was run by Dr Jack Parsons, a top rocket scientist who was a disciple of Crowley. In this instance the facts are not in dispute: Hubbard ran off to Florida with a lady named Betty in a yacht belonging to Parsons and with $10,000 of his money. Soon afterwards the ring broke up. Hubbard's devotees hold this up as a successful undercover operation, but in the absence of official acknowledgement by the authorities of Hubbard acting as their agent, many may choose to believe that it was a case of one scoundrel ripping off another. The Church of Scientology was successful in obtaining a retraction by *The Sunday Times* in 1969 and in winning an action in 1971 20 L. RON HUBBARD: GURU, GOD, OR DEMON? against the author John Symonds and publishers of *The Great Beast*, a biography of Crowley, which alleged that Hubbard's new religion was derived from black magic. There is no evidence that Hubbard con- tinued his occult practices through the time that he was in charge of the cult in the sixties and seventies, but there is evidence linking him with Crowley's beliefs. First, there is the *Penthouse* interview of June 1983 with Hubbard's son Ronald (nicknamed 'Nibs'), who broke with him in 1959. There are some grounds for doubting Hubbard Jr. as a reliable witness. As we shall see in a later chapter, he has at different times retracted some of his allegations against his father, but in this interview he stated: 'When Crowley died in 1954, my father thought he should wear the cloak of the beast and become the most powerful being in the universe ...What a lot of people don't realize is that Scientology is black magic ...spread out over a long time period. To perform black magic generally takes a few hours or, at most, a few weeks, but in Scien- tology it's stretched out over a lifetime and so you don't see it. Black magic is the inner core of Scientology - and is probably the only part of Scientology that really works.' The fact that Nibs Hubbard (or Ronald DeWolf as he is now known) still conducts courses in techniques derived from Scientology, for fees, perhaps undermines the credibility of these allegations. His analysis of the dependency of Scientology on black magic is perhaps tinged by his deep animosity towards his father. But the 'mindset' of an occultist, who uses ritual to acquire power and dominance over others, is totally consistent with Hubbard's psychological profile. In his Philadelphia lectures in 1952 he makes the link himself in his own words: 'The magical cults of the 8th-12th centuries in the Middle East were fascinating; the only modern work that has anything to do with them is a trifle wild in spots but is a fascinating work in itself, and that's written by Aleister Crowley - the late Aleister Crowley - my very good friend...Crowley exhumed a lot of the data from these old magic cults and he handles cause and effect quite a bit. Cause and effect is handled according to a ritual...Now a magician - getting back to cause and effect and Aleister's work - a magician postulates what his goal will be before he starts to accomplish what he is doing.'1 Ron Hubbard was never openly a magician but in cause and effect through Scientology he created rituals and held millions spellbound through the power of his will. How he came to discover the means to 1 (PDC Lecture 18) 21 RELIGION INC. do it is a fascinating story. Like Mae West's 'Come up and see me sometime', or Bogart's 'Play it again, Sam', or Cagney's 'You dirty rat', the saying attributed to Hubbard regarding the profit to be made out of starting a new religion, was probably never made by him. Scien- tologists have drawn attention to a letter of Eric Blair (George Orwell: *Collected Essays*, Vol. 1, p. 304) which ironically suggests that the way to make a million is to start a new religion. Hubbard certainly achieved that, but before the chicken of Scientology came the egg of Dianetics. Dianetics means literally 'through the mind', although Hubbard defined it as 'through the soul': Since he did not complete even a fictitious course in Greek, the mistake is perhaps understandable. The bible of Dianetics is his book *Dianetics: the Modern Science of Mental Health* (DMSMH), published in 1950. This date has been adopted by the Church of Scientology as the *fons et origo* of its religion and you will sometimes see red-letter events designated 'A.D. 25', which means 1985 or 'after Dianetics 25', not *anno Domini*.1 It is uncertain how much of Dianetics was actually discovered by Hubbard. In the late forties he was writing science-fiction stories and spent some time in California as a screenwriter. Whether or not he plagiarized the ideas in DMSMH became irrelevant after its publica- tion, when he became widely acknowledged as the authority on the subject. It defines the principal driving force in life as the will to sur- vive. This expresses itself through eight dynamics - the original four being: through self-preservation; through procreation; through family or race; through all mankind. Thus if you hear a Scientologist saying that someone is '2-D out-ethics' he means that they have been guilty of a sexual misdemeanour or unethical behaviour in the second dynamic. This org-speak is a feature of Scientology in which all terms are defined strictly and processes given technical names by Ron. Like the Red Queen, a word means what Ron says it means. Dianetics postulates the analytical mind which sets men apart from the animals and the 'reactive mind' which absorbs all experiences of pain and pleasure as individuals pass along the 'time-track' of life. Hubbard took an Eastern view that this time-track was cyclic through suc- cessive reincarnations. In the early years of Dianetics there were prac- titioners who violently disagreed with this. It led to some of the first splits within the Dianetics movement. 1 The first Church of Scientology org was opened in Los Angeles in 1954: the Founding Church of Scientology in Washington, DC in 1955. 22 L. RON HUBBARD: GURU, GOD, OR DEMON? The theory of Dianetics was developed by Hubbard through lec- tures and publications. Other dynamics were added. Number five dealt with the urge to survive as a life organism. Six was the urge to survive as part of the physical universe of MEST, which stood for Matter-Energy-Space-Time. Seven was the survival of the spirit or 'theta', as he called it. Thetans are spiritual beings who have realized their potential and are not held back by the handicap of 'engrams'. Up to this state a person is a 'preclear'. Engram-free, they become 'Clear' - a state akin to salvation, but different from the religious concept in that Clears could supposedly be made and measured, The contro- versial claim was made that Clears recovered from illness more quickly and suffered disease less often, a result which has, not surpris- ingly, never been borne out in proper scientific research. The eighth dynamic was survival as part of the supreme being, Scientology's nirvana. Two other dogmas are worth noting. First, the ARC triangle, which stands for Affinity-Reality-Communication. These are mutually related so that if communication is low then it follows that affinity and reality will be low. Secondly, there is the tone-scale invented by Hubbard, which ranges from 0.0 (dead), through grief at 0.5, sym- pathy at 0.9 and covert hostility at 1.1, to the ceiling of 4.0, which equals enthusiasm. Walking tall at 4.0, the individual would be a MEST clear, free from psychosomatic ills and nearly immune to bacteria. Hubbard extended his observations to declare that some political ideologies were higher on the tone-scale than others. Liberalism has a 'higher tone' than Fascism, which is superior to Communism. The preclear who cannot recall incidents in his present life while conscious, awake and 'in present time' (known as straight-wire pro- cessing), is badgered time and again with the same question until he remembers. Or various techniques can be used by the auditor, the person who is conducting the session with the preclear (often abbrevi- ated to pc). For example: 'The auditor asks the pc to run through a moment of sexual pleasure and then when his pc, who does not have to recount this moment aloud, appears to have settled into that moment, the auditor demands that the pc goes immediately to conception. The pc will normally do so...' (*Science of Survival* II, p. 173). Persistent cross-examination by the auditor can break down the resistance of the pc to confronting certain painful incidents or engrams in his or her past. The induction of Dianetic reverie heightens this quasi-influence of the auditor over the pc, but clearly in the right hands Dianetics 23 RELIGION INC. could be an effective form of releasing mental blocks and trauma. It was a tool that Hubbard was to develop into a complex system dominated by his strong and ugly personality, which has more than once been called paranoid and schizophrenic. With the publication of DMSMH in 1950, Hubbard had been lucky enough to acquire two influential figures to join the Board of Directors of the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation, which he set up in 1950. One was John W. Campbell, the editor of *Astounding Science Fiction*, which Hubbard had contributed an article on Dianetics in 1948. The other was a medical man, Dr Joseph Winter. When the initial interest waned and cash-flow to the Foundation became a problem, Don Purcell of Wichita, Kansas, stepped in to provide a cash injection in 1951. Purcell became President of the Foundation, with Hubbard as Chairman and Vice-President, and the Foundation was relocated in Wichita. However, in 1952 the Foundation went bankrupt and Hubbard sold his stock to Purcell along with all the copyrights, including DMSMH. There were many reasons for the fragmentation. The various scat- tered field groups jealously guarded their independence and did not acknowledge Hubbard as chief. His authoritarian style was a problem and this led to a split with John Campbell. Hubbard's espousal of occultism and his identification of 'past lives' as the source of many engrams did not please those, including Dr Winter, who wanted to see Dianetics accepted by the scientific community. It had been lumped together with psycho-analysis and hypnotism because of its stress on childhood trauma and its use of Dianetic 'reverie'. The battle was fierce, each group having its own journal (*Dianews, Dianotes*, etc), and several breakaway methodologies based on Dianetics were formed at this time, including Synergetics. Hubbard was faced with a problem in the early days of the HDRF. So far the state of 'Clear' had been much touted but there appeared to be no means of agreeing that Clears had been achieved. With characteristic initiative, Hubbard announced that his second wife, Sara Northrup, was one, but when she divorced him, making bitter accusations against him, the status of Clears and of the HDRFs suffered another blow. Roy Wallis, the sociologist who catalogued the rise of Scientology from its origins in Dianetics in his book *The Road to Total Freedom* (1976), accounts for the popularity of Dianetics in 1950 as a reason for its demise. Like the concept of a 'flying saucer' current at the time, 'Clear' became a Rorschach blot concept which could be all things to 24 L. RON HUBBARD: GURU, GOD, OR DEMON? all people. They could impose their aspirations upon it. Simply by reading DMSMH they could start auditing one another and, unlike other psychotherapies, it did not insist on professional training or standards for its practitioners, whose claims about their competence could not be verified. In *Marginal Medicine* (1976) Wallis argues that when Hubbard came to found Scientology, he profited from these lessons. 'Scientology was organized from the outset in a highly cen- tralized and authoritarian fashion and was practised on a professional basis. Its theory and method were only gradually revealed to those who displayed commitment to Hubbard and practised its techniques in a pure and unalloyed fashion. A rigorous method of social control emerged and it was made clear to all followers that Hubbard was the sole source of new knowledge and of interpretation of existing knowledge.' However, in 1952 the phoenix had yet to arise from the ashes of the HDRF in Wichita. Hubbard took himself off literally to the town of Phoenix, Arizona, and opened a centre there in March 1952. He trav- elled in September of that year to England to lecture in London and returned again in January to find interest in his theories increasing. In between these visits he delivered the famous Philadelphia Doctorate Lectures (1-19 December 1952). These are still for sale on cassette by the Church of Scientology at over $2000 for the set and include Hubbard's notorious reference to the R2-45 process for exteriorisation. In plain language, it means that someone can be released from their body by shooting them with a Colt '45, which Ron proceeded to demonstrate by firing a revolver into the floor of the podium. Hubbard then 'invented' the term Scientology. Whether or not he borrowed the term is immaterial. He has made it all his own, one of the few achievements which is undisputed. He defined it as 'the science of knowing how to know' and differentiated it from Dianetics, which he explained as derived from through (*dia*) the soul (*nous*). 'Dianetics addresses the body. Scientology addresses the thetan [spirit]...Thus Dianetics is used to knock out and erase illnesses, unwanted sen- sations, misemotion, somatics, pain, etc. Scientology and its grades are *never* used for such things. Scientology is used to increase spiritual freedom, intelligence, ability, to produce immortality.' (*What is Scientology?*, p. 209) In Phoenix, Hubbard began HASI (Hubbard Association of Scien- tologists, which later gained the suffix International) and waged war on Purcell in Wichita, accusing him of profiteering from Dianetics. In late 1954 Purcell switched his support to the splinter group 25 RELIGION INC. Synergetics and Hubbard had a lucky break. Anxious to free himself from Hubbard's lawsuits, Purcell gave Hubbard back the copyrights of the Dianetics material. Ron now had the opportunity to have his Scientology cake and to eat Dianetics for breakfast. He took it. In the next chapter we shall see how the tools of Dianetics became the trappings of a religion. One of the most important of these tools had hardly been used by the Dianetics movement. This was the E-Meter which had been developed by Volney G. Mathison in 1959. Although there is very little that Scientologists do not attribute to the apparently limitless genius of Hubbard, they do agree that Mathison produced the device which with minor modifications has now been renamed the 'Hubbard Electrometer'. Hubbard's original specification was for a device that was capable 'of measuring the rapid shifts in density of a body under the influence of thought and measuring them well enough to give an auditor a deep and marvellous insight into the mind of his preclear'. The instrument which fulfilled these great expec- tations was a form of galvanometer which operated on the principle of the wheatstone bridge so beloved of school physics labs. It was wired up to two tin cans such as those used to hold baby food or frozen orange juice. The terminals are held, one in each hand, by the preclear and thus measure the conductivity (or conversely the resistance) of the skin of the hands. Obviously this will be affected by pressure, but operators attempt to stabilize the reading for each preclear (the 'body reading') and then look for significant swings in the galvanometer needle. This is also the principle on which the lie detector works and when used to ask a preclear about his 'overts' (wrongdoing), it functions precisely in this manner. A complex terminology was developed by Hubbard to interpret the readings of the needle. It was a cocktail of slang and pseudo-science: 'theta bop' (steady dance of the needle); 'stage four' (needle goes up an inch or two, sticks, falls to the right and repeats this action); 'rock slam' (needle goes back and forth in jerky fashion); 'floating' (the goal of the auditing session when the needle floats free over a wide area unaffected by questions or commands). Scientologists usually demonstrate the working of the E-Meter by asking a subject to hold the cans, then pinching him or her on the back of the hand. This will usually cause a deflection of the needle, since it is a painful experience. When the needle has settled, the auditor then asks the subject, 'Recall that pinch'. The needle will then deflect in the same way as in the original pinch, but probably with less intensity. This test is said to demonstrate Hubbard's view of the reactive mind 26 L. RON HUBBARD: GURU, GOD, OR DEMON? - that all painful experiences on the time-track are stored until re- leased by auditing. Wallis reviews some of the scientific work done to test this hypothesis. In one test a pc was given sodium pentathol and while he was unconscious a passage from a physics textbook was read and pain administered. Six months of subsequent auditing sessions failed to produce recall by the 'reactive mind' of the incident. The area of auditing is intensely personal. Two common questions are: 'What are you willing to tell me about?' and 'What are you willing to tell me about it?' Clearly guilt and sensitivity are being looked for by the E-Meter as voraciously as the diviner's rod hunts for water. Per- sistent questioning will follow 'withholds' (matters about which the pc would rather not give a straight answer). Auditing can thus be seen as a cousin of techniques such as psycho-analysis (where childhood ex- periences, particularly of sexuality, are tapped) and of psycho- therapy. We shall see in a later chapter how this has led to accusations of brain-washing and manipulation, some of which are no more justified against the Scientologists than against any other religion. But in its early days the E-Meter ran into formidable opposition from the medical establishment in the US. It is against the law in the USA to diagnose and treat disease unless as a properly qualified medical prac- titioner. Dianetics had been attacked from its inception by represen- tatives of the American Medical Association (AMA). Dr Morris Fishbein was widely quoted in 1950 when he called it yet another 'mind-healing cult'. Omar Garrison catalogues the antagonism towards Scientology by the AMA in his book *The Hidden Story of Scientology* (1974), which is largely sympathetic to the Church of Scientology and is sometimes sold in its bookshops. He contends that the AMA at one point con- sidered planting a spy in Scientology's Founding Church in Washington and that black propaganda was spread by the AMA about Hubbard, particularly that he had received psychiatric treat- ment. Both these charges are somewhat ironic in that such black propaganda became one of the officially sanctioned tactics of Scien- tology, and evidence introduced in 1984 in the Armstrong case sup- ports the contention that Hubbard was subject to psychiatric treat- ment on demobilisation from the Navy. However, it was the E-Meter that gave the authorities their greatest chance in the fifties of acting against Hubbard's organization. Garrison quotes Oliver Field of the AMA's Bureau of Investigation writing to an Ohio scientist opposed to Hubbard: 'We notice in copies of correspondence you enclosed that Dr Milstead of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has 27 RELIGION INC. indicated that an investigation is going forward so far as the device of the E-Meter is concerned and perhaps that activity is the only im- mediate hope of achieving any interference with the activities of the Scientologists.' The FDA already had an agent within the Washington church. His reports were eventually to lead to a raid on the church on 4 January 1963 by US marshals, in which Scientology files and E-Meters were seized. The Scientologists were outraged. A protracted legal battle ensued with the Church of Scientology contending that what was involved was not simply an attack on itself as a religious movement but upon the First Amendment to the US Constitution which guarantees freedom of religion. In the course of its submissions it con- tended that the E-Meter was a religious artefact and if it was held to be an instrument of healing then this would also have to apply to the mass wafers, candles and holy water of Roman Catholicism. What was important here in the development of Scientology into a religion was that if the E-Meter was judged to be a religious artefact then a religion had been created in which spiritual progress could actually be measured and practised without recourse to providential grace from God. It could be assured by performing the correct techniques and by following a manual. It was truly a religious 'technology'. The 'truths' of religion had been rendered as quasi-scientific principles. Salvation was not something which came to those whom God chose, but was open to anyone who paid for an auditing course. That was, of course, blasphemy to orthodox religionists. It was the age-old heresy of gnosticism repackaged in a way to appeal to twentieth-century scien- tific man. The E-Meter was declared by Hubbard to be more infallible than any pope and was as immutable as any law of thermodynamics. 'It sees all, knows all. It is never wrong.' (*Electro-psychometric Auditing Operator's Manual*, p. 57) Right from its inception in the fifties the Church of Scientology had established a collision course with orthodox religion and medicine. It also acquired another enemy, the Inland Revenue Service, or IRS. Scientology had been incorporated on 21 July 1955 as a non-profit- making society and corporation. Like other churches in the USA it did not, therefore, have to pay taxes. In 1958 the IRS began to try to alter this state of affairs and to withdraw the tax-exempt status of Scien- tology. This hostility from Government agencies did much to estab- lish the paranoia about the State which was to lead Scientologists and their founder into many excesses in later years. Despite a growing net- work of churches throughout the US and a burgeoning income, it 28 L. RON HUBBARD: GURU, GOD, OR DEMON? also explains why Hubbard sought a new Mecca for his Dianetic dollars in the late fifties which was far from his enemies' influence. He found it in the rural splendour of Sussex, England, in the grandeur of a mansion which was once the domain of the Maharaja of Jaipur. 29 2 A Religious Technology SAINT HILL Manor nestles in the woodlands of Sussex, two miles from the town of East Grinstead. A gaudy board advertising Dianetics stands at the entrance gate, and the lodge exhibits a home-made notice proclaiming that its owners have nothing to do with Scientology. So the visitor must pass on through the gates where he will see a large car- park to his left and a notice proclaiming the Church of Scientology accompanied by the eight-pointed crucifix, which, like all the trademarks and utterances of L. Ron Hubbard, has been registered for copyright. Over to the right as the drive continues downhill, the visitor's eye is drawn to a large, one-storey complex built in the distinctive yellow sandstone of the area in the style of a castle. Over a verandah hangs the Reception sign and it is here that students from all over the world get their first glimpse of what was for fifteen years the headquarters of Hubbard's empire: a cramped bookshop (only works by Ron on sale), a tiny old-fashioned manual telephone exchange and everywhere on the walls pictures of Hubbard or posters carrying slogans from his works. To the rear of the 'castle' is the course-room where students hunch over desks, wearing earphones through which they listen to taped lectures by Ron Hubbard. Open in front of each of them is a dic- tionary, since a prime dictum is that no student should ever pass a word he or she does not understand. The dictionaries are special Scientology ones and include definitions of certain words which are used in a special way by Hubbard (e.g. 'Having: to be able to touch or permeate or to direct the disposition of'). Presiding at a side table sits the Case Supervisor who assists and tests the students' familiarity with the study material. With its blackboards, posters and tables littered with books and teaching aids, the course-room resembles a school- 30 A RELIGIOUS TECHNOLOGY room. Around it are a honeycomb of auditing rooms where auditors and their preclears are closeted in private session. In my several visits over the past few years these have rarely been in use and the students working in the course-room have never numbered more than a couple of dozen. The 'stats crash' which hit the Church of Scientology in the wake of the expulsions and resignations of 1982-3 has hit Saint Hill harder than most. The castle complex was begun in the boom years when cash and people were pouring through the gates of Saint Hill. It was constructed largely by 'slave labour' and finished only in October 1985. The conscripted workers were members of the Rehabilitation Project Force or RPFers as they are known within Scientology. These are staff members who have gone 'out-ethics' - jargon for sins com- mitted. These might range from incompetence or dishonesty to sexual misdemeanours or uttering opinions subversive to Scientology. Their pay as staff members (usually not much more than bare subsistence level) is halved and they are given low rations while they are working their penance on the RPF. Within the castle is Ron's room: a study, it was set apart for the 'Commodore' should he ever return. Every Scientology org has one, kitted out with photographs of Ron, a desk and chair, some personal mementoes and a bust in bronze of the man himself. On the desk lies a white Navy cap. Hubbard never saw some of these offices but they were provided for him should he arrive and 'want a place of work'. He did, however, use the large office/shrine in the manor at Saint Hill when he went there in 1959. To reach the study, the visitor continues his journey down the drive, past the canteen unit, a shabby prefabricated building which resembles a greasy-spoon cafe inside. The appearance of the hut does not apparently belie the quality of the food. Former students at Saint Hill recall eating low-quality food while paying richly for courses, and in recent years a diet of rice and beans was fed to the troops when income dipped low. Strategically placed around the drive and wooded grounds are loudspeakers and occasionally Ron's voice will literally talk to the trees, booming forth one of his lectures in his distinctive style. Opposite the canteen is the conservatory known as the Pavilion where he really did talk to the plants, which were connected to E-Meters to study their reactions to events around them. Allegedly he produced some giant tomatoes by this method, but like many of the legends of Hubbard prowess, the tomatoes may have grown more in the telling. 31 RELIGION INC. The most distinctive room in the manor itself is not Ron's study but the Monkey Room - a large lounge surrounded completely by a mural painted by the artist John Spencer Churchill for a previous owner. In spring 1985 the room was restored by the Scientologist owners to its former glory and I attended the opening at which a bemused Mr Churchill made a polite speech surrounded by Scien- tologists and the monkeys of every species which had been painted anthropomorphically by the artist with particular personalities in mind. The grim statistics had been put aside for the day and as I sipped my half glass of champagne (perhaps this was to be my version of the RPF), I mused that it was appropriate that the shrine of Scientology, which had specialized in making monkeys out of so many people, should be graced by such a mural. The religious nature of Scientology is not very evident at Saint Hill. The chapel of this Mecca of the prophet Ron is scarcely used. On one visit I ran my finger along the pews in the chapel, which is no more than an outbuilding of brick bordering the Pavilion. It came up pretty grimy. Although 'ministers' of the Church of Scientology adopt the style 'Reverend' and occasionally wear dog-collars, attendance at services of worship is not obligatory or a regular part of the practice of Scientology. There is a religious service. Craig Mathieson, who runs the UK organization, told me: 'There are hymns and readings from Ron Hubbard and Saint John, stuff like that.' Craig is a Scot whose brother is highly placed in the Los Angeles org and whose 'second dynamic' abilities to attract ladies to his team at Saint Hill earned his apprentices the nickname of 'Craig's harem'. The overseer of the 'tech' for the US is Richard Reiss, an American whose sober manner gives him an air of a divinity don, which is the role he fulfils with regard to the doctrines of Scientology. Hubbard, he explained, is not God, but a spiritual being who discovered a system through which men and women could attain the status of gods (or thetans) through its tech- niques. When asked where that left the relationship of Scientology to Christianity, Richard Reiss replied with some understatement, 'Jesus Christ does not figure in the religious technology of Ron Hubbard.' That was an honest answer, for, as we shall see, there are several areas of complete incompatibility between Scientology and Christianity, despite the claim made by well-meaning Scientologists that many of their members are both. The Scientology cross is at first glance a crucifix with splintered ends. The eight points represent the eight life dynamics. There the resemblance ends. Christianity believes in a creator God. Scien- 32 tology, as we shall see later, believes in a sci-fi cosmology which teaches that the earth was invaded by clusters of 'body-thetans', akin to demons or astral spirits. Not all Scientologists are aware of this teaching until they reach the higher levels, but there is no doubt that this holy grail - of which I have seen a photocopy in Hubbard's hand- writing - comes nearer to pagan cosmologies than it does to the myths of Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism. Why, then, does the Church of Scientology persist with its quasi-Christian costumes, symbols and titles for its 'ministers'? Why does it conduct ceremonies parallel to the christenings, weddings and funerals of Christian churches? The cynical answer might be that thereby it can claim tax-exempt status as a religion. In a Christian culture the 'ministers' can command the status and respectability which accrues to ministers of religion, and attract interest as a moral force for good in the community. There is no doubt that many Scientology works are of the highest ethical nature. The booklet *The Way to Happiness* is a distillation of the ethical principles of the great religions, and it is a tribute to Hubbard that he could issue something so simple and popular which can be read by the man in the street when many of those religions are struggling to make themselves heard. The goal of 'clearing the planet', the equivalent of bringing in the Kingdom of God on earth (a world 'free of insanity, war and crime'), is altruistic. Many of the campaigns upon which Scientology has embarked are socially beneficial. Its members have campaigned against leubotomy surgery in psychiatry and take a radical approach to mental illness which has come into fashion long after they first espoused it. They work to eliminate drugs through the programme Narconon and there is evidence that many young people have been weaned away from drugs through this therapy. I met Nicky Hopkins, once a session keyboard man with the Rolling Stones, who gave Narconon the credit for his rehabilitation from drugs. In Hollywood a gentle and polite young man named Gary Wallman administered a 'touch assist' (trying to channel mental energy into a sick person by touching him) to me when I had a stomach upset. Afterwards he told me that he had been a 'long-haired, no-good who wanted to kill people'. Now he is a clean-shaven, well-mannered person with a black belt in karate and a job as a lighting electrician on the sets of Hollywood television series like 'Hart to Hart'. Stories like these cannot be thrown away. But the black belts must be set against the black record of Hubbard. Utilitarianism - the pur- suit of the greatest good of the greatest number - is a system of 33 RELIGION INC. evaluation which does not rate Scientology very highly. One analogy might be that poisonous popes and corrupt cardinals in the medieval church could still not prevent some spiritual luminaries from shining. Another analogy closer to our own time sees Hubbard as a Hitler who gave people a system, albeit an evil one, through which to channel their energies, and while not all the Germans who supported Hitler were evil, so there are benign Scientologists who work through Hubbard's system for a better world. At Saint Hill Manor in his vast study, Hubbard worked through the sixties improving the way in which his theories were put across. Emphasis was on standardized techniques, which were dubbed the technology. There was no greater sin than adulterating the 'tech' as it was called. This led him to pour forth a succession of memoranda defining processes and terms. These HCOBs (Hubbard Communica- tions Office Bulletins) were epistles added to the gospels of Dianetics and they soon became holy scriptures in themselves. Their style grew increasingly more authoritarian and idiosyncratic.1 While drug- taking is 'out-ethics' for Scientologists, smoking cigarettes is not. I have never encountered such a high proportion of cigarette smokers among younger people as I have in Scientology. It was suggested to me that this habit mimics the behaviour of Ron, their hero, who was a chain-smoker. It is almost as if nicotine is exempted because of the founder's little weakness for the weed. However, smoking is not allowed while 'in session', i.e. during auditing. Neither is alcohol permitted twenty-four hours prior to a session. 'Auditing,' declares Senior Technical Consultant (UK) Richard Reiss, 'is the heart of Scientology.' It is also the most expensive part. An E-Meter costs over $2,000 and a session of auditing in 1984 was $200 per hour. Scientology defends these prices on two grounds: auditing is cheap compared to alternative services of other 'profes- sionals' such as psychiatry; it is priceless and not obtainable elsewhere. This was one of the sensitive issues when the independent movement began in 1983 and started undercutting the official church's prices. It is worth saying something about the Church of Scientology's methods of recruiting members. Some recruits come through reading one of Hubbard's books (18 %). In recent years strenuous campaigns throughout the world have been undertaken to promote DMSMH in paperback, even selling it on the streets. Its cost is low and it contains 1 *see also pages 40 and 55-6* 34 A RELIGIOUS TECHNOLOGY information about where Dianetics is available at the local branch of the Church of Scientology. However, the Church of Scientology claims that the bulk of its recruits come through a friend or relative (34%) or by word of mouth (23%). Another method is to invite passers-by to undertake a personality test (10%). This consists of filling in a form and answering various questions. Those who have completed it are added to the church's mailing list and invited back to discuss how they can iron out 'one or two problem areas'. This will involve taking a Scientology course, usually the Student Hat (more of which in a moment). This costs a mere $35 and is within the pocket of most people. Pressure will be put on the student if he or she shows interest or competence. Little is said at this point about Scientology doctrines or rules or the authoritarian structure of the organization. Why should it be? It is perfectly reasonable that Scientologists should (a) promote what they believe in; (b) do it a little at a time, without force-feeding their converts. Sometimes opponents of Scientology argue as if its very existence is a crime. That only serves to prove the church's claim that it is suffering persecution. One must be careful to distinguish between the right to believe the earth is flat and the right to charge people large sums of money to jump off the edge. The potential member is usually invited to undertake more courses. If he has sufficient funds he will be advised that APs (advance payments) will enable him to purchase these courses now and take them tomorrow at today's prices. At this point the enthusiasm of the convert is mingled with vast ignorance. Knowledge only comes a little at a time. You cannot leapfrog up the 'Bridge', the name for the stepladder of courses which Hubbard wrote. You must go one step at a time. Each step costs a great deal of money (*see pages 164-5*). The Bridge is basically divided into two sections: (a) personal pro- gress and (b) training as an auditor. Personal progress is aimed first at the goal of 'Clear'. To reach 'Clear', several sub-levels are involved and after Clear the next steps are the OT levels. These are known as 'going OT', which stands for Operating Thetan. This training is only available residentially at a few centres and the costs begin to rise steeply. Pressure is also exercised on the smaller orgs to 'flow them up the Bridge'; in other words, to ensure a steady supply of paying customers for the advanced centres which are at Saint Hill, East Grinstead; Clearwater, Florida; Los Angeles; Copenhagen, Denmark; and Sydney, Australia. There are eight OT levels and some above, which Hubbard is said to have prepared but not 'released'. His habit of expanding the ladder with sub-sections and only issuing one step at a 35 RELIGION INC. time, or revamping certain courses in the manner of 'new improved' washing powder (as in the 'New Era Dianetics' material reissued in 1978), has guaranteed a steady flow of income over the years. Later we shall look at these OT levels, which are treated as if they were the holy grail itself. The other branch of the Bridge is to become an auditor. From the basic book auditor who acquires the ability to help others through the application of data contained in books of Dianetics and Scientology, the would-be auditor climbs through a dizzy series of grades until he or she reaches Class XII Auditor, by which time he or she will have joined the permanent staff of Scientology and the Sea Org, a uni- formed organization formed by Hubbard aboard his ship in 1967. Its members wear naval insignia and sign billion-year contracts binding them to Scientology in this and future lives. Each step as an auditor has an upper level at which the student acquires the ability to C/S (or case supervise) the level beneath. One of the consequences of the breakaway movement in 1983 was that many of the more qualified auditors were 'busted' from their posts when the Religious Technology Center assumed control, thus creating a dearth of people who could 'deliver the Bridge'. It is the policy of the Church of Scientology to offer refunds to all those who have made APs and do not wish to proceed up the Bridge. The severity of the 1982-3 purge - which was followed by mass defections - is shown by the figures produced by the law firm of Eberle & Jordan of Glendale, CA for the years 1983-4. Refunds total over $2,064,992, of which $1.5 million was outstanding in June 1984. Not all Scientologists pay the full price of the courses. If they join the staff they receive an allowance per week, free accommodation and are required to work for the church, but in recompense they receive free auditing. However, there is a catch. They must sign a 'freeloader bill', which obliges them if they leave the church at a future date to pay for all the courses they have received at the full rate. Not only has this resulted in freeloader bills of thousands of pounds being presented to former church members, but it clearly can, and has, been used as a means of suppressing dissent and enforcing conformity to church discipline. No one who is in two minds about leaving the only friends and contacts he has had for a decade would do so if he knew that he would immediately be bankrupted by court action the minute he strode out of the gates. Another way credit is extended to Scientologists is in the form of loans. One such scheme was operated by Lee Lawrence from 36 A RELIGIOUS TECHNOLOGY 38 Morton Road, East Grinstead. His purpose, he says in a letter out- lining the scheme, is to help Scientologists up the Bridge. 'I make loans only ABOVE L5,000. I believe that an able Scientologist can manage a smaller amount without borrowing from me.' The borrower who signed up with Mr Lawrence would have had to pay interest at the rate of 30% if he had taken out a loan in June 1982. Although by the following July Mr Lawrence was offering loans at 25%, it is worth noting that in the interim the Bank of England lending rate was as low as 9% (5 November 1982). Lawrence claims that the high interests are to enable him to cope with service price increases and any losses from default. However, he has his own scheme to cope with default. 'To discourage late payments I use a loan agreement which imposes heavy penalties for ANY late payments, even if only one day late, and I ascertain that no more than two thirds of the borrower's surplus income is required to make the monthly payments.' He adds that every loan agreement is checked and approved by the Church of Scientology officially. This means that the Church of Scientology cannot argue that the hardships arising from this scheme are outside its sphere of responsibility. Two loan agreements which I have examined, dated June 1982 and June 1983, quote interest rates of 30% and 25% respec- tively. In the former, penalties of L16 were imposed for late payment every month for the first year but were 'forgiven' until May 1983, when they climbed swiftly to a total of L100 alongside the monthly payment of L155. These sanctions are but one example of the control mechanisms under which the Scientologist comes should he deviate from what the church expects of him in behaviour. Squeezing individual Scientologists for as much as they can pay is justified by the Church of Scientology on the grounds that recruits are buying the unique gift of survival through future lives as a thetan. Giving away all one's possessions would be cheap at the price, runs the argument. That is indeed what many recruits do end up doing. One girl I spoke to spent L6,000 in six months on courses which never went beyond introductory level. She was already a graduate so she was not stupid and unable to learn the 'tech'. But she had the money, left to her on the death of her parents. To protect her, because her brother is still active in Scientology, I shall call her Alyson, but her story is worth telling in detail because it parallels so many others among the young, idealistic, middle-class white persons who constitute the typical recruits to Scientology. Alyson's experiences are in her own words, drawn from letters and conversations: 'Right now I wonder how I ever got involved, though I must admit 37 RELIGION INC. to a certain amount of vulnerability at the time due to the death of both my parents in 1979 (I was 26 years old at the time). The money I used on the advice of my older brother Simon, who is a Scientologist, was in- herited. I am a diabetic and nearly killed myself on the "Purification Rundown" (mega vitamins, running, sauna, to rid the body of drugs, radiation, etc). I struggled through various courses of auditing, the latter at the reduced rate of L56 per hour because I was a student, I witnessed and was subjected to some terrible incidents. I was pretty disillusioned very soon but they are an extremely clever and strong organization and they don't give up until you've spent every penny you have. I am an intelligent and moral person and have a B.Sc. degree, yet I was duped. 'After a few upsetting and disgraceful incidents I realized that in no way was I going to get value for my money. However, I soon learned that it was not easy to leave ("blow"). It was about six months after I first blew that they finally left me alone. There were endless phone-calls and one staff member arrived on my doorstep and proceeded to verb- ally abuse me. I returned his abuse and got rid of him but the incident left me shaking with anger and I reported the incident to Tottenham Court Road (the London Scientology HQ) and I received a letter and a phone-call of apology. I wrote to Ron Hubbard twice with a view to retrieving money I had spent (including L800 I had spent on an E-Meter I had never used). I thought of writing to a newspaper to expose them but I was held by fear of retribution, but now the years have passed and I am not afraid any more and would be glad of the opportunity of preventing someone else making the mistake I made.' That was part of Alyson's letter. She is a quiet and gentle girl. She loves her brother, but Scientology is a big part of his life. 'His wife is anti it, but he loves it, and after he's been to Saint Hill he feels as if he is walking on air. He says that he's had out-of-body experiences and after you go to OT III even if the Bomb is dropped you'll be immune. They only talk about that among themselves because they say the public couldn't handle it if it got out.' Alyson smiled ruefully when she recalled leaving. 'One day I just thought, "Well, it's only money anyway."'But her Face darkened as she recalled some of the nastier tactics which were used against her. 'They make you sign overt sheets (that's the things you've done wrong): I was in trouble because I used to smoke cannabis a little, and threaten you if you don't sign that nasty things like acci- dents can happen. This guy Steve that I knew at Tottenham Court Road, who was really nice, came round once and was very aggressive when I had left and threatened to use the overts against me.' 38 A RELIGIOUS TECHNOLOGY There are three points worth making at this stage about Alyson's story. In every org there is a sign exhorting Scientologists to 'write to Ron' with the boast 'all mail received by me will be answered by me'. Alyson, like thousands of others, was deafened by silence in reply to her letter to Ron. Secondly, there is the reluctance of the Church of Scientology to implement its refund policy despite the large sum she had been persuaded to put on account. Third, there is the sinister use of overts as blackmail. This is decidedly contrary to church policy but, as we shall see, it has happened and Mary Sue Hubbard admitted in the Armstrong trial that pc folders were used to cull incriminating material against defectors. This is equivalent to using the secrets of the confessional against Catholics and is also expressly forbidden in the codes of Scientology, yet was practised at the highest level by the wife of the founder. It was at the end of our meeting that Alyson made her most im- pressive strike against the Church of Scientology. She picked up two red-covered files which represented the records and materials of her L6,000 worth of processing. 'Here,' she said, and handed them to me, 'have them and see for yourself.' I protested that they represented L6,000 and six wasted months to her. 'No,' she said with a smile, 'they're of no use to me.' Alyson may be a sadder young woman after her brush with Scientology but she is a wiser one, knowing what true values are. It is worth looking at the kind of materials which Alyson was given for her L6,000. Step one is usually the 'Student Hat', which con- centrates mainly on study methods. One of the axioms of Hubbard has been much vaunted as an educational tool. This is the rule that a misunderstood word must not be passed until it is properly mastered. In HCOB of 10 March 1965, headed 'Words, Misunderstood Goofs', Hubbard writes: 'There's no hope for it, mate. You'll have to learn real English, not the 600-word basic English of the college kid, in which a few synonyms are substituted for all the big words.' This somewhat startling use of slang in praising the precise use and definition of words, is, like all the HCOBs, framed like a military directive and postscripted with the ever present 'Copyright (c) 1965 by L. Ron Hubbard. All rights reserved'. These are the three distinguishing features of the materials: (1) the authoritarian tone of the commands; (2) the idea that they are unique and technical/scientific/esoteric; (3) their distinctive style mixing slang with pseudo-technical terms and Scientology neologisms. For example, HCO Policy Letter relating to conduct of auditors, issued 39 RELIGION INC. on 19 April 1965, states: 'Any staff auditor who runs any process on any org pc that is not given in grade and level HCOBs may be charged by the Tech Sec or D of P with a misdemeanour.' In other words, you do everything according to the book written by Ron and woe betide you if you don't. This highly controlled system of behaviour is another axiom. Standard Tech delivered in a standard manner is how the Scientologist would describe it. Thus the HCOBs are not insights which Ron offers for development of the person but strict dicta which must be followed. In the 'Guide to Acceptable Behaviour for Students' contained in the HCO Policy Letter of 7 May 1969, there is a commandment to the effect that there shall be no other gods before Ron, viz: 'Do not engage in any rite, ceremony, practice, exercise, medication, diet, food therapy or any similar occult, mystical, religious, naturopathic, homeopathic, chiropractic treatment or any other healing or mental therapy while on course without the express permission of the D of T/Ethics Officer. Do not discuss your case, your auditor, your Super- visors, your classmates, L. Ron Hubbard, ORG personnel or the ORG with anyone. Take up any complaints with your supervisor.' Other commands forbid sexual promiscuity, especially adultery; or are of the school-rules variety about not dropping cigarette ends in wastepaper baskets. While many are ethically worthy they are presented overall in a manner which reduces the status of the 'student' to that of a schoolboy. Even the method by which concepts are represented by objects or plasticine and moved around a board by the student heightens the process of subjugation of the individual's rational powers. This is even more the case with the TRs (or Training Routines/Regimens). One of the first of these is 'Confronting'. The student and coach sit facing each other and stare directly into one another's eyes. Any blink, fidget or movement by the student is greeted with a cry of 'Flunk!' by the coach and they go back to the beginning. The idea is to 'train students to confront preclears in the absence of social tricks of con- versation and to overcome obsessive compulsions to be "interesting".' The end product, a zombie-like stare, is consonant with the passivity which Scientology demands of its followers towards the tech. A more colourful TR is 'Bullbaiting', which is designed to 'flatten any buttons' (areas which produce a reaction from the student). The coach is joined by others who will variously tease, insult, or shout at, the preclear who must keep a passive countenance. Tickling, making funny faces, absurd suggestions, these are all part of the game and if the pc laughs 40 A RELIGIOUS TECHNOLOGY then the baiters keep on and on until no reaction is produced and the pc's buttons are said to be flattened. Typical of the routines which are offered to apprentice Scien- tologists are the CCHs, which stand for Communication, Control and Havingness, which Hubbard developed in Washington in 1957. He wrote: 'The purpose of the CCHs is to bring the pc through incidents and into present time. It is the reversal of "mental" auditing in that it gets the pc's attention exterior to the bank and on present time.' Hubbard adds that the pc must be coaxed as firmly as possible but not too firmly lest he be unwilling to co-operate. But he adds, 'If you have to manhandle a pc, do so. But only to help him get the process flat. If you have to manhandle the pc you've already accumulated ARC breaks and given him losses and driven him out of session .' The CCHs are a series of robotic commands and actions: CCH 1 consists of the auditor telling the pc, 'Give me that hand' over and over again and replacing it in the pc's lap. CCH 2 is supposed to demonstrate that the pc has control over his body. The auditor com- mands him: 'You look at that wall. Thank you. You walk to that wall. Thank you. You touch that wall. Thank you. Turn around. Thank you.' Only these words are used and auditors are not meant to enter into dialogue with pcs during session. Pc remarks are met with stone- walling remarks such as 'I'm glad you told me that...OK. Is there anything else you want to tell me?...Fine. OK', and then the session is simply resumed without further comment. The robotic activity of the auditor cannot fail to have an effect on the pc, especially when CCH processes are repeated over and over again. CCH 3 and CCH 4 are designed to get the pc to mimic movements of the auditor's hands and to mirror movements of a book which the auditor holds and moves around. A further stage requires the pc to move his mind to the wall and in his imagination put one corner next to another. The idea is that the thetan is controlling his environment, not the other way around. Ashtrays and rag dolls are employed and the pc talks to them, giving them commands and moving the objects in response to his com- mands. For example, I was passing along a corridor in Clearwater, Florida, when I witnessed a man shouting at a chair and manhandling it. 'Don't worry about that,' said my companion. 'He's completing one of our training processes.' Talking to ashtrays goes on for a long time and supposedly reaches the point at which the pc so penetrates the 'reality' with his mind that intention and thought are father to the action itself. Full-grown 'thetans', then, control their surroundings, not the other way round. 41 RELIGION INC. A Religious Studies student at Lancaster University named Sarah Hogge undertook the CCH course as a non-Scientologist. The Church of Scientology had previously been wary of writers and journalists taking courses and writing reports. It argues that it is impossible to observe and to submit properly to the training regimen. However, it allowed Sarah to make her study, and her tape-recorded sessions and observations make interesting reading to which both she and the Church of Scientology have allowed me access. We join Sarah Hogge (S.H.) and the auditor (A.) on her introduction to CCHs. 'Whilst on the E-Meter I was asked to define every single word that was used. This included words such as "and", "you" and "that". If I hesitated too long, or got something wrong, the misunderstood word and all possible meanings was read out from the dictionary and I had to define it for each meaning and write sentences using it. The whole process took about two hours and I hated it. It gave me a splitting headache. 'Sessions one and two. During these early sessions I didn't exper- ience strong negative reactions to the auditing. My reactions were more of amazement. I found it difficult to take seriously what was happening. I was being subjected to extremely monotonous processes ...the auditor with a straight face, and for such a long time. Many thoughts passed through my mind - how the auditor sounded like a robot - how ugly he was close to - how they were trying to "brain- wash" me - how much longer would I have to be in the room doing the same thing over and over again. I also kept having uncontrollable fits of laughter at how ridiculous the situation was. The auditing hadn't really started having a deep-down effect on me at this stage. I wasn't yet vulnerable. A. You look at that wall. S.H. [*uncontrollable laughter*] A. OK. What's happened? S.H. I just think you're so funny. A. Thanks for telling me. We'll carry on....You look at that wall. S.H. [*more laughter*] A. You look at that wail. 'This illustrates the way in which the individual is suppressed during the sessions. If a comment or question is raised it is acknowledged by the auditor with "OK" or "Thanks for telling me" and the commands begin again. Commands are run virtually all the time. It is not 42 A RELIGIOUS TECHNOLOGY possible to get answers from the auditor about what is happening during a session. (The Church of Scientology would acknowledge that this is correct. Standard Tech means that the exact programme laid down by Hubbard must be followed.) If physical pain or discomfort develops it is not possible to take a break or talk about it. The idea is to carry on with what brought it about in the first place. A. Give me that hand. S.H. I've got a headache. A. OK. Thanks for telling me about it, but the best thing to do is to carry on and you let me know how it goes. Give me that hand. 'CCH 1 was then repeated four times before: S.H. I was thinking that it's only the best thing to carry on for you, 'cos I've got the headache and you haven't. A. Right. You see, what happens is that in Dianetics and Scien- tology processes there's a rule that what turns it on turns it off. So if the process has turned this on, then if we just go on, then you should find it will go. Give me that hand. 'CCH 1 was then repeated another six times, CCH 2 four times, then I came out with the source of my headache: S.H. That's what gives me a headache. That wall. A. Right. Thanks for telling me. 'After going through CCH 2 another ten times the headache went away, only to come back and I was told that I could take only a half- hour break instead of the usual hour. I suddenly became really frightened. I was afraid that any more of these sessions would break me down and that I would become "brain-washed". S.H. I want to tell you that I don't find it frustrating any more and that I did before and that it doesn't give me a headache any more.... A. OK. That's good. Thanks for telling me.' Sarah was now having disturbed nights of sleep. She asked some of the friendlier students at Saint Hill what the 'cognition' was which she was supposed to experience because if she could reach it, then her sessions would be at an end. Mostly they said, 'Oh yes, we felt like that too. Don't worry, you'll get it. It's really great.' Their laughter from 'the other side of the fence', as Sarah puts it, triggered her next stage 43 RELIGION INC. of reaction - rage. She became rebellious. In the next session she told her auditor that she wondered what it was like to be in prison. Shortly afterwards he terminated the session. Sarah became even more antagonistic towards the auditing when she was told that she had to complete this until the desired result was achieved, before she would be allowed to move onto the practical side of the TR course. It was as if she was being forced to take auditing, which she felt was more likely to break down her resistance, before she could get what she wanted. The TRs were the carrot and the auditing the stick. She was put on an E-Meter, which has often been compared to a lie detector, and asked the question which had been put to her at every session, viz: 'What are your feelings about Scientology?' She said that while there were good points there were also bad ones and that she felt Scientology did not really attract her. From then on, Sarah Hogge was kept waiting for long periods of time. The appointments set up with officials to sort out her 'problem' were not kept. She suspected the bureaucracy was being used against her. Eventually the Ethics Officer told her that she was PTS, a Potential Trouble Source, someone who is hostile to Scientology. She finally left frustrated and confused, realizing that the processes had set up tensions within her that under- mined her objectivity. 'The more sessions I had the more emotional and unbalanced I became...I either cried or felt like crying a lot. I felt that I was the victim of something that was beyond my control.' The Church of Scientology would argue that it is impossible to be audited and simultaneously to observe the process without destroying the effect. This is probably a valid point, but it does not remove the unease which these repetitive drills must cause in anyone who is familiar with methods of mind control. As we shall see in Chapter 6, psychiatrists argue that while auditing is not strictly the same as hyp- nosis and auditors use 'cancellation' statements at the end of a session, the end effect can be very similar. Flattening the 'buttons', constant repetition of apparently meaningless actions, the authoritarian con- text in which the sessions take place, all contribute to this picture. The cycle of emotions through which Sarah Hogge moved is one in which curiosity does not kill the cat but ensures that it eventually ends up eating out of the hand that feeds it. Biting that hand is not tolerated ...It does not breed zombies but it ensures control. Doubts, dissents, distaste for any part of the 'tech', are firmly and systematically suppressed. Alyson was recommended to have the Purification Rundown, a 44 A RELIGIOUS TECHNOLOGY programme which prescribes a diet of vitamins and sauna baths. A glossy booklet (*Purification: An Illustrated Answer to Drugs, Bridge Publications*, 1984) makes the claim that many people have experi- enced the effects of radiation sickness during the sauna stage and past sunburns have reappeared, only to vanish for ever as they churned their way through the course. However, the booklet insists that the exact prescriptions must be followed and of course these are only available to those who pay for the course (cost L1,284 inc VAT). The Purification Rundown was developed by Hubbard allegedly after studying all the latest literature on vitamins and callisthenics. There is nothing revolutionary about using vitamins, exercise and healthy pursuits to improve health, but it casts doubt on the bona fide of Scien- tology, whose proclaimed purpose is to help the unhealthy and the addict achieve a better life, that it only spreads such knowledge at a cost. Critics point out that the programme has not been shown to be any more efficacious than simple diet and exercise and its claims are bogus. In some cases (like that of diabetic Alyson), it can lead to actual harm because it makes the patient conform to the system, not the other way round. There is also the system of 'assists': touch assist; contact assist; and Dianetic assist. These are used on 'somatics' or illness in the body which can be affected by treating the mind. Pain can be diverted by using the touch assist. A finger is placed on the spot where pain is felt and repeated questions: 'Can you feel my finger? Thank you' are made until the pain is lessened. It is an imaginative process. Contact assist means taking the person physically back to the spot where an injury occurred. An electric-shock victim is asked to grasp the spot where he received the shock (current now switched off, of course) and this results in a discharge of the 'engram' which he received from the incident. Dianetic assist is running the person through the incident on an E-Meter. I do not doubt that these psychosomatic processes often result in a placebo effect. In other words, if the patients think they are getting better, they do improve - and I would not wish to quarrel with that. But in the 1974 HCOB on the subject, there are pieces of nonsense such as this: 'There is a balance of the nerve energy on the body of 12 nerve channels going up and down the spine. The type of energy in the body travels at 10ft. a second. The energy from a shock will make a standing wave in the body. The brain is a shock cushion, that is all. It absorbs the shock from large amount of energy. The neuron-synapse is a disconnection.' It is redolent of the quackery and the pseudo-science which gurus perpetrate on gullible followers. One 45 RELIGION INC. cannot help feeling that Hubbard's megalomania was such that he could not humble himself to accept the advances in science achieved by others more competent than himself. The science-fiction writer had to invent his own system in which he always carried off the Nobel Prize. By far the most sinister of Scientology exercises are given to those further up the Bridge, who are asked to devise tactics to use in response to enemies of the church. The basic theories and TRs of the 'Student Hat' have been turned into a bond between the individual and the Church of Scientology which demands that they respond to attacks on Scientology with ruthless counter-attacks. The infamous 'Fair Game' doctrine, which declared that enemies of Scientology could be 'tricked, cheated, lied to, sued or destroyed', was but one manifestation of this. Typical of the Church of Scientology's attitude to outside criticism was the HCO Policy Letter of 25 February 1966 which described how to react to attacks on Scientology by feeding counter 'black propaganda' about the attackers to the Press. There is also the HCO *Manual of justice* written by Hubbard which outlines procedures to be used in dealing with the media or enemies and includes the spine-chilling phrase: 'There are men dead because they attacked us - for instance, Dr Joe Winter. He simply realized what he did and died. There are men bankrupt because they attacked Us...' The same booklet outlines the procedure to be followed for the 'entheta' Press who write hostile articles. 'Hire a private detective of a national-type firm to investigate the *writer*, not the magazine, and get any criminal or Communist background the man has....Have your lawyers or solicitors write the magazine threatening a suit. (Hardly ever permit a real suit - they're more of a nuisance to you than they are worth)...Use the data you got from the detective at long last to write the author of the article a very tantalizing letter. Don't give him your data...Just tell him you know something very interesting about him and wouldn't he like to come in and talk about it. (If he comes ask him to sign a confession of collusion and slander - people at that level often will, just to commit suicide - and publish it in a paid ad in a paper if you get it.) Chances are he won't arrive, but he'll sure shudder into silence.' This version of 'an eye for an eye' written by Hubbard has the distinction of incorporating a malevolent mixture of blackmail and vindictiveness. No wonder that someone from the Church of Scientology has written 'Confidential - for HCO personnel only' on my copy of the manual. It is hardly a work to which a religious organization might normally wish to lay claim. * * * 46 A RELIGIOUS TECHNOLOGY Far from the imposing manor of Saint Hill, in the midst of the Grampian Mountains in Scotland lies an equally, if not more, striking country house set in acres of woodland with walled gardens and exten- sive lawns stretching out in front of the imposing spired facade of the main building, which is nothing less than a castle in the Scottish baronian style. This is Candacraig House, Strathdon, built and furn- ished with riches from the Far East. Until recently it was the head- quarters of a counter movement within Scientology. Its main purpose was to attract students who would study the upper levels of Scien- tology outside the church organization. The charges were cheaper and although those running the Advanced Ability Center, as they called it, believed in Hubbard's technology, they had broken with the Church of Scientology. They were 'squirrels' - people who had chosen to follow modified 'tech'. The moving spirit behind the Center was a businessman in his mid- thirties, Robin Scott, a history graduate of Oxford University who had come across Scientology as an undergraduate and joined the staff of the Church of Scientology in 1973. He met his attractive wife Adrienne in the Sea Organization and they have three vivacious children. But in 1978 he protested about the way some things were being done at Saint Hill. He was summoned for a 'Sec-Check', a com- pulsory session on an E-Meter to check his 'security' rating. The needle showed 'rock slam' and proved to his interrogators that he was harbouring hostile thoughts. The 'Sec-Check' involves a long list of questions including 'Do you harbour any hostile thoughts towards the Church of Scientology? L. Ron Hubbard? Your org?' A needle reaction on these questions is tantamount to a confession of guilt, Robin Scott was required to sign a confession of his 'crimes'. He became a travel courier and was presented with a 'freeloader bill' of L40,000 for the auditing he had received while a staff member. However, Robin Scott requested a 'Comm Ev' or Committee of Evidence, which is like a court martial conducted by the Church of Scientology to review discipline cases, and he was reinstated. Three years later he left for good and together with his wife was declared a 'Suppressive Person' or one who seeks to damage Scientology. The Scotts decided that they wanted to fulfil the ideals of Scien- tology as they still saw them and bought Candacraig. Robin Scott had several business interests and even if Candacraig was only charging a fraction of official Church of Scientology rates he thought that the books would balance. He found, however, that the confession he had made after the Sec-Check was being used against him. This was one 47 RELIGION INC. of the reasons which had made Adrienne Scott want to leave when she worked in the personnel department at Saint Hill. She had been asked then to go through files which might contain admissions of drug offences, homosexuality or even felonies and to 'get the dirt' on other members of the church. When she refused, she had been labelled a 'non-compliant junior'. A lawsuit was taken out by the Church of Scientology against Robin Scott in an attempt to shut down Candacraig as an Advanced Ability Center. One factor stopped Candacraig taking off. It lacked the written materials of the highest levels of the OT courses. This was when Robin Scott made what in retrospect he now considers was a big mistake. He resolved along with others to steal them. Knowing that he and his group would be well-known at Saint Hill and instantly recognized as SPs, they planned their coup at a high-ranking Church of Scientology establishment in Europe, in Copenhagen. Early on the morning of 9 December 1983, Robin Scott picked up Morag Bellmaine and Ron Lawley in East Grinstead and set off for Copenhagen in his Volvo. They drove to the Scientology Advanced Organization for Europe and Africa (designated AOSH EU & AF in the paramilitary terminology of the Church of Scientology) at number 6 Jernbanegade. Lawley and Bellmaine emerged from the car dressed in the Sea Organization Class A uniform, wearing the insignia of senior officials of the Church of Scientology. (They left Robin Scott in the car with its engine running.) They presented themselves as missionaires from the Religious Technology Center (RTC) and told the Copenhagen officials that they had come to check on standards of technical delivery of Scientology counselling at the org. They were given a private room where, upon request, the 'New Era Dianetics for OTs' materials were delivered to them. Morag Bellmaine put these in her handbag and they hurried out of the org and drove off in Robin Scott's Volvo. Back at Candacraig, in the converted stables block, the Scotts con- structed the classrooms which they hoped would become a purified Saint Hill to replace Hubbard's HQ. But in March the following year, the Church of Scientology played a cunning card. A man telephoned Robin Scott saying that he was wealthy and interested in pursuing upper levels of counselling. He was en route through Europe. Could they perhaps meet at Coperhagen airport? Robin Scott agreed. But when his plane touched down on Danish soil, the police, together with the officials from AOSH EU & AF, were waiting. They identified him and he was arrested and taken to the cells accused of theft. It had 48 A RELIGIOUS TECHNOLOGY been a clever set-up and the Danish police had co-operated because theft was involved, although subsequently the Danish court took a different view of the value of the materials which the Church of Scien- tology had claimed were worth over a quarter of a million dollars. Robin Scott served a short jail sentence of one month and returned, much chastened, to Candacraig. Candacraig attracted clients who were accommodated in the sump- tuous state rooms with four-poster beds installed by the Wallace family from whom Scott bought the house for L110,000. It was more luxurious than the rice-and-beans regime at Saint Hill, but the Scotts were specializing in up-market clientele. Scott continued to run his business in Aberdeen, which specialized in drilling concrete. The locals were suspicious and in August 1984 the Lonach Highlanders, in celebrating one of the colourful festivals of Deeside, gave Candacraig a wide berth, refusing to stop there for a traditional Wallace dram (or toast) because of the Scientology connection. But it was not being misunderstood by the locals which worried Scott most. The flow of clients was diminishing, as was his fervour for the tech of Ron Hubbard. He resolved to sell Candacraig and close down the centre. When I called in the summer of 1985 the course-rooms were empty and the Scott family were preparing to leave. Robin Scott was by now deeply disillusioned with even the upper-level materials which had caused him so much hassle. He now regarded them as 'mainly fraudulent and harmful'. They were surrounded by hype and mystique within Scientology. They were supposed to contain the secrets of the universe, and to be so explosive that anyone reading them without being properly prepared could die! This shroud of mystery served several purposes. It was a superb marketing gimmick. The OT aspirant felt he was getting something really special. Secondly, the build-up to these revelations created an atmosphere of credulity and conspiratorial secrecy which was a disincentive to anyone who might want to cry that they were simply hokum and that 'Emperor Ron' had no clothes. Third, even if after going OT the students had doubts about the validity of the material, the vows of secrecy ensured that an objective analysis of the material was not possible. Robin Scott decided to lift the veil of secrecy and to go public. 'It is high time the whole fraud perpetrated by Ron Hubbard and the Church of Scientology was more fully and clearly exposed. Although I don't welcome the personal attacks on me that will un- doubtedly follow, I consider it well worthwhile if we can get this 49 RELIGION INC. whole sordid affair out in the public knowledge, so that vulnerable people will no longer be exploited by the vicious and unpleasant monster that Ron Hubbard created with his organization - little wonder he ended up in hiding,' Scott now says. I was delighted that he chose me to be one of the first to see behind the curtain and felt no sense of impending doom as I descended from my baronial bedroom with its four-poster bed to the study where I was to be shown the infamous OT documents. Indeed, when I read the first page of OT III in Hubbard's own writing, the overwhelming temp- tation was to giggle. OT I and OT II are regarded as preparatory actions for OT III (the 'Wall of Fire', a past trauma so horrendous that anyone trying to absorb it without Ron's guiding light would die of pneumonia). Robin Scott calls OT II 'about a hundred pages of gobbeldy gook', so I started with OT III. It reads like science-fiction cosmology. Seventy-five million years ago there was a galactic confederation consisting of seventy-six planets which had an over-population problem. The head of the confederation was named Xenu and he resolved that he would entice the entire population of the confederacy to Earth (called Teegeeach) and blow them up. He did this by popping nuclear bombs into twenty volcanoes and wiped them out. The individual spirits or thetans were thus deprived of their bodies and were collected, frozen in a substance like antifreeze, and packaged in boxes known as clusters. Thus there are billions of disembodied thetans and clusters hanging around earth, too severely shaken up by this incident to control a physical body by themselves, so they cling to life by parasiting on human beings. However, these Body Thetans (BTs) and clusters cause undesirable mental and physical conditions in the human being to which they cling and the route to well-being and happiness lies in removing them. This is achieved by auditing a person back down the 'time-track' to the moment these psychic limpets attached themselves, and then discharging them. This can be a lengthy process and Robin Scott told me of one wealthy man he knew who had worked his way through a million dollars in buying 600 hours of auditing. Contacting the BTs is done telepathically and they are then guided back down the time-track to the moment seventy-five million years ago when Xenu vaporized them, which is known as Incident 2. The principle is the same as in auditing an 'engram' out of a preclear. The auditor commands the person to 'recall that incident' and leads him through it, supposedly discharging the trauma associated with it. Once through Incident 2 the BT can roam off and pick up a body 50 A RELIGIOUS TECHNOLOGY to resume the karmic cycle of reincarnations like the rest of us. The idea was that the OT and the BT mutually benefited and it was whispered that OTs derived all kinds of psychic powers once they had shaken off the BTs. They could levitate, have out-of-body experiences at will and were free from any manner of ailment, including vulnerability to atomic radiation. I say whisper because when ques- tioned about these claims, Church of Scientology officials will politely tell you that this might have happened to some as a by-product but it is not the aim, nor a necessary by-product, of going OT. Of course, Incident 2 raises the question of what constituted Incident 1. This is the very beginning of the Universe itself which had been vouchsafed to Ron in a revelation. It, too, created trauma and the reason offered for the lack of total success with BTs was that they needed to be taken further back down the time-track to Incident 1, which is dated four quadrillion years ago. Here in Hubbard's words is Incident 1: 'Loud snap. Waves of light. Chariot comes out, blows horn, comes close. Shattering series of snaps, Cherub fades back (retreats). Blackness dumped on thetan.' This is the creation of the world according to Hubbard, the Big Bang which ended for me not with a whimper but with a giggle that anyone could sit down and buy this sci-fi fantasy for thousands of dollars. Scott explains the gullibility of intelligent people like himself as being due to success in using the earlier parts of the technology ('wins' or 'gains', as they are known), so that the critical faculty is dimmed as one gets higher up the Bridge. But there were many who were paying through the nose for this counselling and who were not getting 'wins'. They sometimes had to worry about money with which to continue auditing and such worries were not supposed to afflict OTs. Before doubts about OT III and above began to spread, in 1978 Hubbard issued 'New Era Dianetics for OTs' which was like many a brand of washing-powder - the 'new improved' version was launched amid much hype and trumpeting (no cherubs presumably). Like the launch of a commercial product, the effect was to re-stimulate sales. These new levels were known as NOTs and were nothing, admits Robin Scott, but a revamped version of OT III'. There were apparently more subtle layers of BTs and of clusters and these new procedures were designed to cope with them. A Solo NOTs level was introduced for several thousand more dollars, which enabled the person to work away at his clusters (with a case supervisor in the background to check whether he ought to be doing more). By 1985 only one person had reached OT VIII. 51 RELIGION INC. If the levels up to 'Clear' are easier to understand as a form of psychotherapy rather than as a religion, the OT levels reveal Scien- tology as a religion with a cosmology, albeit a strange one which sounds like the product of a science-fiction writer, which is, of course, what Ron Hubbard was. But there are other more sinister elements. There is the appeal to the age-old gnostic heresy: i.e. you make spiritual progress by working (or, in the case of the Church of Scien- tology, buying) your way up a ladder and can look down on those beneath. There is the occultist element. What can BTs and clusters be but demons? Imperfection in the individual is ascribed to the influence of these psychic forces, which then require to be 'exorcized'. This lays the basis of dissociation of personality and occult practices which are the very opposite of religion, which works for a whole, integrated per- sonality. Just as Scientology's doctrines of 'Fair Game' and 'Suppressive Persons' sprang out of the paranoia of Ron Hubbard, so we must look to his schizoid personality for the creation of such a theology. The top-secret materials have also been the subject of controversy since I got my peep into Creation according to Hubbard. In November 1985, the OT materials were introduced into court as part of a civil case brought by former Church of Scientologist Larry Wollersheim against the church. Although Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Alfred Margolis allowed the evidence, 1,500 Scientologists crammed the court buildings, the *Los Angeles Times* reported, to ensure that the materials were not subject to public scrutiny. The Scientologists' attorney argued that unsealing the documents 'amounts to the biggest threat to this religion so far'. Although the court resealed the documents after the evidence had been heard, the *Los Angeles Times* published a similar account to the one I have given (although, perhaps because of differences in reading Hubbard's spidery writing, they call the Confederation ruler Xemu, not Xenu). So far, none of the dire con- sequences of catching pneumonia have befallen those who were exposed 'illicitly' to the OT materials. I hope after reading this chapter, you will remain just as exempt from the curse. 52 3 Life on the Ocean Wave I PUSHED open the door of the decaying block of flats not far from Waterloo Station. The narrow hallway opened onto a room littered with papers and letters and ashtrays filled with cigarette ends. The summer afternoon air was stale and sour and the room was filthy. In the corner stood a single bed with a grubby white quilt. Sitting on it, clutching a large vodka and orange juice, was Scientology's very first 'Clear'. 'This place is just a dump,' said John McMaster. His voice had a theatrical ring about it. His hair was white and his face blotchy around the bright eyes which studied me intently. His hand swept to a chair where he bade me be seated. The man who had once been called 'the magician of the E-Meter' and the first 'Pope of Scientology' by Hubbard himself, is now a frail and emaciated figure. Clutching the vodka and orange, he sipped as he talked, travelling back down the time-track to the days as a young medical student in South Africa when his stepmother first introduced him to Scientology. 'It wasn't a religion then,' he said with some distaste. 'My stepmother used it as a weapon. I told her it was just a tool. That's what it is, a tool.' The tensions grew with his stepmother as John McMaster quit medical school and learned more about how to work the E-Meter. His father reluctantly bought him a one-way ticket to Saint Hill where John excelled as an auditor without ever meeting Hubbard. Then in March 1965 Hubbard offered him a key post. The next two years were boom ones for Saint Hill. With only six staff in early 1965 and a turnover of L1,490 per week, McMaster helped boost this sevenfold within a year. On St Valentine's Day 1966 Hubbard issued a promulgation that the world's first Scientology 'Clear' had been achieved. McMaster was in Los Angeles at the time 53 RELIGION INC. and was recalled to Saint Hill to undergo checks to ascertain if he really had passed the test. Hubbard's previous announcements of Dianetics 'Clears' had proved to be somewhat premature and did not stand up to scrutiny. But McMaster passed. On 9 March 1966 Anton James wrote to Hubbard, 'Dear Ron, It's with the greatest joy and happiness that I have to report to you that John McMaster has passed the "Clear" check and no doubt exists that he has erased his bank completely and it's gone. There is no meter reaction at all ...his presence in the environment brings about a calmness and safety .' McMaster became a legend among the devoted followers of the 'tech'. The incarnate Clear's speaking style charmed thousands and his touch on the E-Meter brought people like author William Burroughs to be audited by him. Hubbard charged L2,500 for pro- cessing, with L50 for fifty hours with McMaster, who was receiving L4 per week. Then he upped it to L250 as McMaster's prowess grew. While he was enjoying the limelight and the success, McMaster didn't look too carefully at Hubbard's flaws. But in the sixties Hubbard was anxious to expand Scientology into Africa. Barred from South Africa, although there were Scientology centres there, he fixed on Rhodesia, and the Boomiehills Hotel. McMaster remembers a heavy-handed attempt by Hubbard to influence Prime Minister Ian Smith while he was living in Alexander Park in Salisbury. Ron had his chauffeur drive him out in his yellow Pontiac with two bottles of pink champagne, which he had to leave with the butler because Mrs Smith would not receive him. 'There are things like protocol, you know, just general decency,' says McMaster. 'You don't just barge in on somebody like a tramp steamer mis- docking. All these nuances of understanding, I began to realize, he didn't have.' With some distaste John McMaster adds, 'He told me Ian Smith was going to be shot because he was a "Suppressive". I now have no comment. But the real reason that Hubbard was kicked out of Rhodesia was that his cheques bounced.' In the mid-sixties doors started closing in the Scientologists' faces all over the world. Whether it was from accident or design, most of the Church of Scientology target areas were in the old British Commonwealth - Australia, New Zealand, South Africa. The first door to slam was in Victoria where, in 1965, a Board of Inquiry persuaded the State legislature to pass the Psychological Practices Act which effectively outlawed Scientology in Victoria. Within half 54 LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE an hour,1 Australian police had raided the Melbourne org and con- fiscated some 4,000 documents, personal files and books. It was now punishable by a fine of $400 to use an E-Meter unless a trained psychologist and it became a criminal offence to receive or teach Scientology materials. The newspaper headlines at the time in Australia are a tele- grammatic way of conveying the charges in the report which had been prepared by Mr Kevin Anderson QC.2 Scientology was variously held out as 'perverted', 'a form of blackmail', 'caused delusions', 'exploited anxiety', 'a menace', 'product of an unsound mind'. This last charge referred to the diagnosis of Hubbard from a distance by Dr E. Cunningham Crax, chairman of Victoria's Mental Health Authority, who gave evidence to the Board of Inquiry that Hubbard was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. One cannot help feeling sympathy for Scientology, which seemed to be condemned without a proper hear- ing, if one reads the account of the episode in Garrison's *The Hidden Story of Scientology*, He tells how Hubbard had volunteered to testify to the Board if they paid his expenses, but it is difficult to accept the bona fide of this when one reads that Garrison congratulated Hubbard on his good sense in failing to turn up in person when the Australian legal profession began discussing whether he could be charged with fraud. The South African government was considering holding a similar Inquiry into Scientology in 1966 and McMaster was dispatched by Hubbard to trouble-shoot. The Inquiry was not held until 1969, by which time a banning order had been brought in the UK preventing leaders of Scientology from entering Britain. (It remained in force until 1980, although a report by Sir John Foster to Parliament written in 1970 and published in 1971, recommended the ban be lifted.)3 To summarize, the mid-sixties were a turning point for Scientology. As it expanded into Anglo-Saxon corners of the globe, it met increas- ing hostility from governments and the medical profession. The reaction to this from Hubbard was increased paranoia and a series of poisonous and authoritarian HCOBs poured from his pen: 26 AUGUST 1965: The Ethics E-Meter check allowed the Ethics Officer (whose office and function had been introduced in May and June respectively) 'at any time (to) call in any staff member 1 on 7 December 1965. 2,3 *See pages 63-4* 55 RELIGION INC. and do an Ethics E-Meter check...no question is asked...the EO records the position of the tone arm and the needle'. 5 AUGUST 1965: The main characteristics of a Suppressive Person (SP) were defined and in December the 'handling' of the PTS and the suppressive group was outlined. 6 MARCH 1966: Rewards and Penalties. How to handle Personnel and ethics matters. 27 SEPTEMBER 1966: The 'anti-social personality', the 'anti- Scientologist'. On and on they came, Hubbard's pen as prolific in defining, attacking, demanding as it had always been in churning out science-fiction. By September 1967 he had even defined a state of 'non-existence' for those who ran foul of his tyrannical paranoia. 'Must wear old clothes. May not bathe. Women must not wear make-up or have hair-dos. Men may not shave. No lunch-hour is given and such persons are not ex- pected to leave the premises. Lowest pay with no bonuses.' On 1 October 1967 'Uses of Orgs' declared, 'There are two uses to which an org can be put: (1) To forward the advance of self and all dynamics towards total survival. (2) To use the great power and control of an org to defend oneself.' This was followed on 16 October by 'How to Detect SPs as an Administrator' and on 18 October by 'Penalties for Lower Conditions'. These included 'Suspension of pay and a dirty grey rag on left arm, and day and night confinement to org premises. TREASON: Black mark on left cheek.' An enemy of Scientology became by definition a 'Suppressive Person' and thus was 'Fair Game': 'May be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologists.' The Church of Scientology points out that Fair Game was cancelled by Hubbard in 1968, but it should be noted that he did this because it was causing adverse public relations, not because it was undesirable, and he added that it did not cancel any policy on the treatment or handling of a SP. In other words, business as before - and the 'business', dirty tricks, spreading false information about critics, blackmail and threats - had been pretty busy and grisly until that point. If someone was in contact with a Suppressive Person they were required to 'disconnect' from them by writing a letter, At one time it was accepted practice to publish letters of disconnection in the *Auditor* magazine, and Wallis quotes one disquieting example of a member of a family writing such a letter: 56 LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE I, Heath Douglas Creer, do swear that I disavow and thoroughly disassociate myself from any covertly or overtly planned association with J. Roscoe Creer and Isabel Hodge Creer or anyone demonstrably guilty of SP acts as described in HC Policy Letters March '65. I understand that any breach of the above pledge will result in me being declared a Suppressive Person. *Signed*, H.D. Creer. It was little wonder that Scientology acquired a reputation for being destructive of family bonds. What is probably more accurate is that Scientology is no more destructive of family connections than it is of relationships in general. What is more subtle is that once a person has made his whole life centre round the Church of Scientology, then being 'declared' (which is the verb for becoming a SP), poses a terrible threat of losing friends, job, home and perhaps family all at once. It is a chillingly effective tool for bringing dissenting voices into line. 'Out-ethics' are graded from errors to high crimes. The latter were more concerned with treason against the org itself, but ethics orders were issued holus bolus for the most trivial incidents. Failure to comply escalated the penalties and the non-conformist could soon find himself facing a Sec-Check prior to a Committee of Evidence (Comm Ev). Among the questions asked on Sec-Checks were: 'Are you a pervert? Are you guilty of any major crimes in this lifetime? Have you been sent here knowingly to injure Scientology? Are you, or have you ever been, a Communist? Those familiar with the McCarthy witch- hunts of the early fifties will recognize the last question. But it should also be remembered that not only was the interviewee in a stressful situation but he or she was on meter and the E-Meter, as we have seen, has been compared in function closely to that of a lie-detector. In other words, a Sec-Check was a form of interrogation. McMaster, who had been given the role of Scientology's unofficial ambassador to the United Nations, a grandiose gesture in keeping with Hubbard's pretensions, was appointed Pope of Scientology in August 1966, an event he recalls with derision. 'When Hubbard said to me, "I'm declaring you the first Pope", I thought he was joking. For me it was *never* a church. I did wear a ministerial collar at the UN and they'd say to me, "Oh, hello, Father McMaster - who would you like to see today?" and there was no problem. I was completely trusted.' Not by Hubbard, however, Even McMaster was removed from his post 57 RELIGION INC. in September 1967, put in a state of 'non-existence' and forced to retrain. In March 1985, McMaster had the satisfaction of returning to the stage where he was once lionized as a 'world-famous spiritual lecturer'. His audience was a new generation of Scientologists who had broken with the church. But McMaster is unaffected by this revived adula- tion. He returned to his shabby flat in Waterloo just as disenchanted with Scientology as the day in 1969 when he walked out on Hubbard, the man he had come to call Hitler: 'He was savage. He would just turn on people like he was a lion and we were the cubs. I had long since passed his tech but he had to be the greatest. The stuff I developed back then, they're now selling - but I don't want anything to do with being a guru or a prop for their status. I've been asked by these "opinion leaders", who are just another bunch of little Hitlers, to come in and give them credibility. They all want to be more important than anyone else.' He waves his hand dismissively and pours another drink. The aftertaste of Scientology is bitter. John McMaster was one of the group who left Saint Hill in the mid- sixties when Scientology took to sea. The official reason given was that Hubbard had relinquished his post as Executive Director and turned over the orgs to his proteges after giving them all those HCOBs which told them everything they would need to run an org, including when to scratch their noses. His reason was that as a 'master mariner' he felt the call to go down to the sea again and had acquired a sailing yacht and also a converted channel ferry (*The Royal Scotsman*), which was renamed the *Apollo*. Another retrospective reason advanced by the Scientologists for the move to ships was that these provided the ideal training environment for the budding 'Clears'. A more cynical view would discern that things were hotting up for Hubbard, with the possibility of governments moving against him for fraud and tax evasion. A life on the ocean-wave was a life free from restraint. Surrounded by his willing helpers, Hubbard's megalomania grew. The Commodore's Messenger Organization was set up from a corps of nubile young girls who would run errands around the ship for Hubbard. They were treated with great respect - an insult to them was an insult to Hubbard himself. He instituted a special task-force known as the Sea Organization. Its members signed 'billion-year con- tracts' to serve the org and Ron (presumably in this life and those to come) and dressed in naval-style uniforms with berets to match Ron's. They smoked cigarettes incessantly, just as Ron did. They talked 58 LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE org-speak as Ron wrote it down. And they policed one another for 'out- ethics'. Packed into the *Apollo* were five hundred of these shock troops, under the command of the 'Commodore'. If Hubbard had never tasted action during the war, he was surely determined to see some in the seaborne years that lay ahead. Life on board the *Apollo* was a bizarre mixture of an educational cruise, being on the *Bounty* with Captain Bligh, and a version of the movie farce 'Carry on Cruising'. An inexperienced crew on a large ship can wreak havoc and the *Apollo* was no exception. Bungled navi- gation, incompetent and ill-trained youngsters cooped up together, it was potentially a recipe for disaster. Ron solved the problem by making his crew into slaves. Crews mutiny, but not slaves. Penalties were draconian. 'Chain-lockering' was introduced by Hubbard as a punishment. McMaster remembers once being asked by the Master at Arms to come and help her, He pulled up the wedge from the chain-locker, a dank and unhealthy part of the ship into which offenders were flung without food as a punish- ment. Out crawled a little girl who turned out to be a deaf-mute who had been unable to write her name and had incurred the Commodore's wrath. The bilges were another favourite punishment cell (known as 'in the tanking'). Another penalty was being made to climb the dizzy heights to the crow's nest and stay there for a whole watch. But by far the most used (and abused) of the bully-boy tactics was 'overboarding' - Captain Hubbard's version of walking the plank. It originated in Melila when Dutchman Otto Roos, then Senior Auditor, had let a line slip as the *Apollo* was making a botched berthing. Roos is now a rich businessman. His macho manner and tough-guy approach meant that he was rarely on the side of those who were bullied. He discovered the traumatic effects of overboarding on some and declares that he ordered it stopped forthwith. But it didn't prevent McMaster being put over- board four times. The fifth and last time was on 5 November 1969. It was the last straw and when he went ashore he vowed to quit. A young lady chaplain had come to fetch McMaster from the hold because Hubbard wanted to present him with something on the poop deck to 'honour all he had done'. He says he knew right away it was a Judas kiss and Hubbard accused him of betrayal. His daughter Diana 1 (who occupied a senior position on *Apollo*) read out a list of 'high crimes' which McMaster says were all lies, and then eight burly Scientologists flung him overboard. He broke his shoulder in the fall. 1 One of Hubbard's seven children by his three marriages. (The daughter of Mary Sue.) 59 RELIGION INC. Otto Roos has written a diary of those years on board ship. It is peppered with org-speak, but it is a fascinating insight into the period which is now idealized by Scientologists as a golden period when Ron was developing his higher tech and sailing around the Mediterranean discovering archaeological sites where he had lived in his past lives. Extracts from Roos' diary have been widely circulated among the independent movement, since he is now among the Suppressive Persons and 'squirrels'. Here are some extracts from the Flying Dutchman's log: 'I was not all innocent and sweetness and light. Far from it. I had decided there were only two kinds of people there: those who got into the tanks and those who put them in, and that I was not going to get in, no way!...Having myself as a child experienced the atrocities of war, when many of my friends hadn't, I wasn't going down into those tanks. Rusty old tanks, way below in the ship, filthy bilge water, no air except via oxygen tubes, and hardly sitting height, in which sinners were put from 24 hours to a week, day and night, to hammer rust off the insides with Masters of Arms checking outside to hear if the hammering con- tinued, and occasional food out of a bucket. This was like the concentration camps of my childhood days.... 'I would also have refused the crow's nest, which meant spend- ing 4 hours in the nest and 4 hours on deck, alternating for some 84 hours. The nest, a tiny bucket at the top of the mast, too small to sit or lie in, gets cold at night. One of our SPs (named O'Keefe) had a fear of heights and virtually had to be winched up there and down again every 4 hours. 'The severe "unreasonability" started in earnest in September '67 when Non-Existence included no right to food, and Ray Thacker, huddled in a corner, would be avoided by all and occasionally thrown a crust of bread.... 'The Flag Orders at the time (instructions from HQ) usually dealt in "smashing THEM" (our "enemies") and smashing them we did, if not our enemies at least ourselves and most of our port relations. 'To say that LRH could not have known about this, can only be answered by "How could he not have?" on a little ship and holding all the comm. lines, after *originating* the policies. One walks around on a ship and looks. LRH has never been renowned for an inability to look. 60 LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE '...There was continued data about SMERSH (from James Bond books), the "Enemy", bankers, psychiatrists, newspapers, port officials, etc. Port flaps were all "their" doing. Our unreasonable (and very often unseamanlike and very unpro- fessional) methods had "nothing to do with it".... 'The billion-year contract was signed of our "free will' (and some Swedes, who objected, were immediately "beached" [sent away], "never to be given upper-level materials", and "declared"). "Beaching" I have seen many times and it did not im- prove port relations. A beachee, put ashore with his passport and no money (except his Sea Org "pay" sometimes) to make his way home, would go to his Consulate for help and have some explaining to do. Another way to bring on the "enemy". 'Nobody ever *dared* say anything about these things and risk losing his OT levels for "making the Commodore wrong". 'Our lives were completely mapped out 24 hours a day, *per- sonal* lives exactly prescribed, especially 2D [relations with the opposite sex]...The day started with "Musters", sing-songing KSW, followed by a mantra of "LRH, LRH, LRH", after which work, work, work, for little or no pay...' Roos was by now a Class XII auditor, the top rank, and was auditing Hubbard himself, a dangerous task which proved his undoing.1 The Commodore had some bad readings on the meter which were duly noted by Roos, but Hubbard would not accept these. The relationship which had flourished with LRH calling Otto up to his cabin to bounce ideas off him, deteriorated rapidly. Hubbard yelled and screamed to see his folders (which is not allowed). When Roos refused, Hubbard sent some 'hefty guys' to collect them and became even more agitated when he saw some meter-reads which did not fit in with either his 'tech' or his self-image. When Mary Sue Hubbard declared that LRH did not 'have such reads', Roos knew his number was up. MSH had previously been an ally and had ripped up the results of several 'Comm Evs' called on Roos for his sexual activities. He had been astute in avoiding super- vision up to this point. Apart from LRH/MSH he had no seniors and only once had fallen foul of Hubbard when he refused a posting to run the new advanced org in Scotland and was put on pot-scrubbing duties as a penance. McMaster was the great 'tech man' and was not a senior post holder. He therefore had no hold over Roos either. Indeed, 1 The auditing of members of LRH's family was case supervised by Ron himself. 61 RELIGION INC. the two men could not have been more different - the fey and thespian McMaster and the tough, macho Dutch ex-merchant seaman. There was no love lost between the two and McMaster even alleges that at one time Hubbard ordered Roos to kill McMaster. But they both paint a picture of the voyages of the *Apollo* which make it sound like a concentration camp afloat. Roos left with only $100 in his pocket and made a fortune in business. His verdict on Hubbard: 'His great tragedy is that he finally penalized himself horribly by denying himself the only thing that could have saved him: his own creation - auditing.' McMaster is more jaundiced. When he left Scientology he was forcibly subjected to a Sec-Check before he threatened to call the police. He told his interro- gaters: You will never see me again. The World's First Real Clear has a right to think, doesn't he?' Indeed he does, but as McMaster finished his tale of those early years, I could not resist the conclusion that he was also the World's First Victim of Scientology. The roll of honour of the fleet of the Church of Scientology is a glossy magazine, *High Winds*, the journal of the Sea Organization. It has a running series of 'tales from the early days of the Sea Org'. These are exploits in which the Commodore features largely. In one, he grabs the wheel and steers the *Apollo* through a jagged reef off Sicily onto which pirates are trying to lure passing ships. In another, the yacht *Enchanter* (later renamed *Diana*) is being blown in a shrieking storm onto rocks when Hubbard barks at a young sailor to climb the top- mast and rig the sail while he guides the yacht clear. I heard another story fresh from the lips of an old salt, Frank Macall, in Clearwater. He was a carpenter and second mate on the *Apollo* but served on the two other yachts - *Diana* and *Athena* (originally called *The Avon River*). Frank Macall had been in the Royal Navy when he came across Hubbard in 1966 when LRH had quit Rhodesia and was advertising in London for volunteers 'to go on an adventure'. 'He didn't tell me it was for life,' laughs Macall behind twinkling sea-blue eyes that are the acceptable face of the Sea Org. Now he works on models in the workshop at the Flag HQ in Clear- water which will adorn an exhibition celebrating the org's former life on the ocean wave. His first voyage was to discover former lives of a different kind. *Enchanter* set off in 1966 on what Hubbard called 'Mission into Time', an attempt to trace his own past lives. 'We went to one volcanic island,' says Frank Macall, 'and LRH told me what to expect up the 62 LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE end of a volcanic track, but I found nothing where he said. Then on the other side I saw a little blockhouse and he reminded me how we were both there in 1682 when I was gunner's mate on his ship and he was Captain of a Portuguese man of war. Suddenly I found I had *deja vu* and could point out all the landmarks and knew every nook and cranny of the place.' Macall remembers Hubbard as a man of many moods. 'He could dramatize them: pound the desk in fury or anoint my eyes as he did once when they were sore after welding. I'm not a worshipper or a handclapper but if there's anyone in this base with respect for LRH, it's me. Once I had spent twenty-four hours working on an engine. LRH was standing drumming his fingers, then he pushed me aside and in three or four minutes he had it working and we upped anchor. He called it "Bypass-handle" and afterwards he explained it to us.' As Macall talked, surrounded by all the mementoes of the voyages - the model of the *Apollo*, its ship's wheel and bell - he explained why he had stayed the course in Scientology. 'If it didn't work, I wouldn't have anything to do with it, 'cos I'm a nuts and bolts man. It's the most decent, purposeful, full of integrity thing I've come across and if you comply with its laws you live in harmony with the environ- ment. There are only a few of us old-stagers around here. We're happy to let go of the LRH thing and let him slip away.' It was hard to recon- cile these tales of an old sailor with the memoirs of Roos and McMaster. Frank Macall was a gentle man whom I could not imagine thrusting deaf-mutes down into the bilges. But his view was from below decks, the gunner who looked up to his captain from 1682 onwards. Roos and McMaster had a better view from high on the bridge and had further to fall. As mentioned earlier, the mid-sixties was a period of great fluctuation in the fortunes of the Church of Scientology. While *Apollo* was at sea, governments began to take notice of the Anderson Report of 1965 in Victoria, Australia. It was unambiguous in its denunciation of Scien- tology: 'Scientology is evil; its techniques evil; its practice a serious threat to the community, medically, morally, socially, and its adherents sadly deluded and mentally ill. The principles and practice of Scientology are contrary to accepted principles and practices of medicine and science and constitute a grave danger to...the mental health of the community. Scientology is a grave threat to family and home life.' You can't say much stronger than that. Perhaps the Church of Scientology deserves sympathy for this verdict which appears to 63 RELIGION INC. be a case for the prosecution rather than an objective assessment. It would certainly agree that the Anderson Report influenced other governments to act who might not have done so without a clear-cut condemnation. The Minister of Health in Britain, Mr Kenneth Robinson, addressed the House of Commons in the following terms in July 1968: 'The Government is satisfied, having reviewed all the available evidence, that Scientology is socially harmful. It alienates members of families from each other and attributes squalid and disgraceful motives to all who oppose it; its authoritarian principles and practices are a poten- tial menace to the personality and well-being of those so deluded as to become its followers; above all, its methods can be a danger to the health of those who submit to them.' Mr Robinson went on to announce a ban on Scientology students entering the UK. In 1968 acts were passed in South and Western Australia. In 1969 the South African government instituted a Commission of Inquiry into Scientology, and in the USA the FDA won a decision ordering the destruction of the E-Meters seized in 1963, while in the same year, 1969, the tax-exempt status of the Church of Scientology in Washington DC was revoked. Only in New Zealand was there any comfort for Hubbard and his crew when the Commission of Inquiry reported in mild tones in 1969 recommending no legislation provided Scientology kept its nose clean. The Church of Scientology responded by modifying some of its penalties for 'lower conditions'. Then it won an appeal on the FDA case in 1969 when the E-Meter was judged to be a religious artefact and as long as E-Meters were labelled as ineffective in treating illness they were permissible. In 1971 the Foster Report in Britain modified the tone of previous criticism by declaring it would be contrary to the best traditions of the Anglo-Saxon legal system to ban Scientology as in Australia. Although the British ban on foreign Scientologists working in the UK remained in force until 1980 and Scientology did not win final recognition as a religion (and therefore zero payroll tax) in Australia until 1983 by a decision of the High Court, the intense heat was off in 1970. Not so on the high seas, however, for by 1970 the ship- board operation was turning sour. The *Apollo* was meeting with a less than ecstatic reception at the Mediterranean ports at which she docked. Hubbard was interested in establishing another centre to rival Saint 1 revoked by stiffer penances in HCOPL dated 16 November 1971. 64 [1st set of plates: 8 pages; 12 photos] 1 An early picture of L. Ron Hubbard 2 *Above:* Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead, Sussex with castle complex, designed by L. Ron Hubbard, on the left 3 *Left:* London HQ of the Church of Scientology in Tottenham Court Road 4 *Above:* Candacraig House, Strathdon, Scotland 5 *Below:* Robin Scott, his wife Adrienne and their family 6 *Above:* View of Municipal Buildings, Clearwater, from the Penthouse at the Fort Harrison Hotel, with Bay of Tampa in background 7 *Below:* The author examining an E-Meter at Flag HQ 8 *Right:* Room stocked with confidential pc folders in 'Flag HQ' (Fort Harrison Hotel, Clearwater) 9, 10 *Above and left:* 'Old salt', Frank McCall, remembering past voyages with a model of *Apollo* and ship's wheel 11 *Right:* Hubbard and film crew working in Southern California in the late seventies. The youth directly below Hubbard is David Miscavige 12 Hubbard on location [end of 1st set of plates] LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE Hill, but the British ban prevented it being in the UK. He was con- victed *in absentia* of fraud in France. The IRS were following their suc- cess in wiping out the tax-exempt status of the rounding Church of Scientology in Washington DC by looking into the affairs of the Church of Scientology (California Corporation) which was a thriving centre and one through which funds were channelled to the *Apollo*. The other areas in which the orgs were strong, as we have just seen, were subject to government interference. Hubbard did two things: (1) To handle the money, he set up the RRF (Religious Research Foun- dation) in Luxemburg with bank accounts there. Money was chan- nelled there, especially the income from non-US nationals and then onto the *Apollo*. Those who imagine that Hubbard's resignation as Executive Director and 'Supreme Commander' in 1966 was anything other than a cosmetic gesture were deluding themselves. LRH was very much in charge and that meant especially of the money. (In a later chapter we shall look at this highly important factor in Scien- tology.) (2) Hubbard then looked around the Mediterranean for a Mecca and intuitively he turned for Greece, from whence the very names of his ships were derived. It was hoped to establish a 'University of Philosophy' in Corfu, but the project blew up in the church's face when unjustified claims of Greek government support were made. The Scientologists claim that their enemies in the USA and Britain tainted them with black propaganda. A less polite version is that the Church of Scientology could not resist pulling a few dirty tricks and the Greeks saw through its methods. The Sea Org fleet was ordered out of Corfu ignominiously in March 1970 halfway through a refit. The next prospect was Tangier in Morocco. The Sea Org fleet stayed in the Western Mediterranean, also sailing to Portugal, the Canaries and Spain in this period. The *Apollo* went into dry dock in Lisbon in 1972 and on 3 December 1972 Hubbard and his wife were given twenty-four hours to leave Tangier. They flew to Lisbon but there Hubbard was advised that he could be extradited to France following the fraud case brought in his absence, so he flew back to the United States and went into hiding with his medical officer Jim Dincalci in an apartment in the suburb of Queens, NY City. Hubbard was not in good health but managed to work on several 'Operations' to get back at the Enemy, among them 'Operation Snow White' (*see p. 79*). He returned to the *Apollo* in September 1973 and she sailed mainly in the East Atlantic. In October 1974 the *Apollo* sailed into Madeira off the Canary Islands where the 'Apollo Allstars' planned to take part in a rock 65 RELIGION INC. festival. But the plan went horribly wrong. A crowd stormed the ship believing that she was part of a cover operation for the CIA, and the *Apollo* was forced to put to sea, with one crew member killed in the fracas. The ship crossed the Atlantic and arrived off South Carolina, but could not berth because the FBI were waiting. She went on to Nassau, then Curacao, where in 1975 Hubbard suffered a stroke and was taken ashore to the Hilton Hotel in Cabana. The West Indies were not happy to receive the *Apollo*. The worldwide reputation of the Church of Scientology was bad enough but unstable governments of small islands needed a boat-load of Scientologists pouring ashore like they needed a hole in the head. Jim Jones found Guyana as a home for his deadly cult, but for Hubbard there was to be no bolt-hole. It was then that he devised a better plan. He would take over a whole town in his own country, the United States. 66 4 Gods Admiralty THE CENTRE Of Florida's Suncoast is the beautiful bay which stretches out from the town of Tampa. On its southern branch is St Petersburg where I once watched the most lurid sunset I have ever seen flood the sky with colour. Hours earlier a storm in the Gulf of Mexico had been signposted by a 'twister' which moved menacingly across the horizon. On the north of the bay of Tampa is the sleepy town of Clearwater. In 1975 its mainly retired community, many of whom were Baptists, were feeling a chill wind of recession in the tourist trade. The splendid Fort Harrison Hotel run by the Jack Tar organization was for sale in the downtown area around the waterfront overlooking the municipal buildings which administered the town - incorporated under a Home Rule Charter of the State of Florida. A block away was the former Bank of Clearwater building which was also for sale. Another few blocks away was the Sandcastle Motel, which was also feeling the pinch. On 27 October 1975, the Fort Harrison Hotel was purchased by Southern Land Sales and Development Corporation for $2.3 million hard cash, and a few days later the corporation acquired the bank building for $550,000. Then a spokesman for the United Churches of Florida stepped up to say that his organization was to be leased the buildings to hold ecumenical seminars for laymen of all faiths. Jack Tar Hotels were still puzzled when they were not even given a telephone number by the mysterious Southern Land Sales organiza- tion. They were soon to discover that both it and United Churches of Florida were fronts for the Church of Scientology. Part of the plan in acquiring the new headquarters in Florida was to provide a 'dormant Corp' into which the assets and cash of the Church of Scientology of California could be siphoned off should they be 67 RELIGION INC. seized or wiped out by the IRS in California, which still controlled the purse-strings. Another purpose was to provide a 'Flag Land Base' which would take over the functions of the harassed *Apollo*. There was another policy which was the brain-child of the new Guardians' Office. This was to establish the credibility of United Churches with opinion leaders in the local community. A directive ordered Scientologists to 'locate opinion leaders - then their enemies. the dirt, scandal, vested interests, crimes of the enemies...then turn this information over to UC who will approach the opinion leader and get his agreement to look into a specific subject....UC then discovers the scandal and turns it over to the opinion leader for his use.' An actual example was given of an enemy of one mayor who was a secret child-molester in the local park: the UC would demand a 'clean up the park campaign' which would just happen to disclose this dirt. This information would then be handed to the mayor on a plate. With friends like that, you might ask, what opinion leader needed enemies? This ploy rebounded rather badly on the Church of Scientology. Clearwater's Mayor, Gabriel Cazares, was none too impressed by the secrecy of the 'United Churches' operation. 'I am discomfited by the increasing visibility of security personnel armed with billyclubs and mace, employed by the United Churches of Florida,' said the Mayor. 'I am unable to understand why this degree of security is required by a religious organization.' On 28 January 1976, Arthur J. Maren of the Church of Scientology arrived in Clearwater and announced that the church was the real buyer of the Fort Harrison Hotel. The Church of Scientology did not wish to overshadow the good intentions of the United Churches, said Mr Maren. A public meeting was held at which the Church of Scien- tology outlined its high moral principles. But concealed behind this velvet voice was the steely intention to silence Mayor Cazares. On 6 February, just over a week after Maren came to town, a $1 million lawsuit was filed against the Mayor for libel, slander and violation of the church's civil rights. It didn't stop there. Behind the scenes a memo was circulating among Scientologists. It read: 'SITUATION: set of entheta (unfavourable) articles connection UC and LRH breaking now in Flag area papers. WHY: Unhandled enemies; possible plant and out-security. HANDLED: Collections and ops underway on reporters Orsini, Sableman and Snyder (radio broadcaster). Results of ops not in yet...' The operations consisted of smear-tactics against the journalists who had been investigating the Church of Scientology. 'Operation 68 GOD'S ADMIRALTY Bunny Bust' directed against reporter Bette Orsini of the *St Petersburg Times* consisted of planting allegations that her husband was involved in fraud activities in the charity for which he worked. There was no substance in these allegations. Indeed, they had the opposite effect. The newspapers filed a suit to prevent the church from harassing their reporters and strengthened their resolve to expose as much of the Church of Scientology's activities as possible. It was not until several years later that the documents emerged which showed conclusively that the smear-campaigns were authorized and directed by the Church of Scientology; otherwise they might have been explained as over- zealous conduct by paranoid Scientologists coming ashore from the *Apollo*, which had landed at Daytona Beach. Another suggestion was that dirt might be procured on the Chairman of the *St Petersburg Times* by tapping his servants. But the most vicious campaign was that directed at Mayor Cazares. The first step in the campaign was a letter which purported to be from one of the Mayor's supporters and was sent to downtown businesses, especially the Jewish ones. 'God bless the Mayor' it began and went on to congratulate Cazares on his stand against Scientology, concluding: 'What we should do is make sure no more undesirables move into Clearwater. We kept the Miami Jews from turning beautiful Clearwater into Miami Beach. The blacks are decent and know their place...' That was just for starters. The next ploy was to infiltrate a forged document into a Mexican licence bureau which would 'prove' that Cazares was bigamously married to his present wife. Mrs Cazares was thus drawn into the tangled web. 'We'd been married twenty-nine years. Suddenly I was getting all kinds of mysterious phone-calls: girls calling "Is Gabe there?", telling me there's something personal between "he and me". Asking me if I knew where - "Do you know where Gabe is now?" - Things like that, you know.' There was no end to the attempts to silence Gabriel's horn. In February 1976 the possibility of trawling Cazares' school records was being looked into. A few weeks later they schemed to present him as pro-Castro to the many Cuban exiles who live in Florida. The darkest operation yet was mounted in March 1976 when the Mayor went to Washington for a national conference of mayors. He was met by Joseph Alesi posing as a reporter and was introduced to Sharon Thomas who offered to show him Washington. As Cazares and Thomas were driving along, she hit a pedestrian (Church of Scien- tology agent Mike Meisner who feigned injury) and drove on. Follow- ing the hit-and-run 'accident', a church memo gleefully recorded 'I 69 RELIGION INC. should think the Mayor's political days are at an end'. That was a very real possibility, for Cazares was by this time a Democratic candidate for the congressional seat held by Republican representative Bill Young. Over lunch, Young's administrative assistant was offered informa- tion which could damage Cazares' campaign by a Church of Scien- tology PR official. He refused the offer. So on 12 July, 'Operation Keller' went into action to 'create havoc and political decay for Cazares', Fake letters from 'Sharon T.' were mailed to political leaders in Pinellas County stating that Cazares had been involved in a hit-and- run accident in Washington. Cazares asked the FBI to investigate. Meanwhile, Young received a letter saying that the 'Sharon T.' letter was really authorized by the Cazares campaign in an attempt to impli- cate him in dirty tricks. Let us just recap that sequence since it almost defies credibility. The Guardians' Office of Scientology faked a hit- and-run accident implicating Cazares and leaked this information to his opponents, then wrote to these opponents double-bluffing them into thinking that Cazares had faked it in order to discredit them. Iago was a goody-goody compared to this lot. In October, church agent Dick Weigand reported to his boss, Mo Budlong: 'A recent poll conducted by the *Clearwater Sun* received phoney responses from the public, generated covertly, which showed that his (Cazares') opponent had a crushing lead on him.' On 3 November 1976 a triumphant memo from Joe Lisa to Duke Snider recorded that Cazares had been defeated in the congressional race as a result of Guardian Order 398 - an operation to create strife between Cazares and the city commission; to place a church agent in his cam- paign organization to cause problems ('spreading rumours in his camp'). It was not the first nor the last time that infiltration had been prac- tised by the Church of Scientology. Meisner was currently running agent 'Silver' (alias Gerald Bennett Wolfe) who had been employed as a clerk-typist at the Inland Revenue Service (IRS) since 1974. *Femme fatale* Sharon Thomas had got a job at the Justice Department in January 1976 at Meisner's instigation. Back at 'Flag' in Clearwater, there was also a plant in the *Clearwater Sun* newspaper office: June Byrne who had been undercover at the AMA (American Medical Association) and now was feeding the church daily reports on the anti- Scientology activities of the paper. On 17 March 1976 she reported that Assistant City Editor Tom Coat was taking a Scientology course at the Tampa mission under cover as a freelance photographer. Coat 70 GOD'S ADMIRALTY was exposed by the church who issued a Press release and followed it with a $250,000 lawsuit against Coat and the *Sun*. June Byrne duly reported that Coat had heard about the lawsuit on his car radio and had appeared in the office in a state of severe shock. All this activity by the Guardians' Office did not win respectability for the Church of Scientology; nor did it win the war of words. But if it did not achieve a truce, it was at least partly effective in securing a ceasefire from many of the church's opponents. Broadcaster [Job Snyder of the WDCL radio station was fired after a $5 million lawsuit was threatened against the station for anti-Scientology broadcasts he was making. The station reinstated him but with a proviso that he did not discuss Scientology on the air. The church's libel action against Cazares was dismissed by Judge Ben Krentzmann in Tampa in the spring of 1977 and it later dropped two other lawsuits and Cazares withdrew *his* suit against the church. The *Clearwater Sun* had planned a book on Scientology but this did not appear. The *St Petersburg Times* did not pursue its lawsuit in order to protect the slender financial resources of the Easter Seal Society, the charity for which reporter Bette Orsini's husband worked, which would have been drawn into the case. However, the *St Petersburg Times* did publish a 25c booklet which details most of the events which have just been described. They were able to do so when many of the 48,149 internal Church of Scientology documents which were seized in an FBI raid in 1977 on the Washington org, were made public and nine senior Scientologists were sent to jail. Books about Scientology have a greater permanency than newspaper articles and therefore it should not come as a surprise that vigorous smear-campaigns have been conducted against the authors of such investigations. The first book to run foul of the church was *The Scandal of Scientology* by journalist Paulette Cooper, which was written in 1971. To try to silence her, the Church of Scientology cooked up a scheme to steal some of her stationery and make it appear that she had sent them two bomb threats. One of the forgeries read: 'James, this is the last time I'm warning you. I don't know why I'm doing this but you're all out to get me and I'll give you one week before Scientology is an exploding volcano. I'll knock you out if my friends won't.' The Scientologists themselves then called in the police and as a result Paulette Cooper was arrested and indicted on three counts, facing up to fifteen years in jail if convicted. She told the '60 Minutes' television programme in April 1980: 'The whole ordeal fighting these 71 RELIGION INC. charges took eight months. I t cost me $19,000 in legal fees. I went into such a depression. I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't write. I went down to 83 pounds. Finally I took and passed a sodium pentothal - or truth serum - test and the Government dropped the charges against me in 1975.' Further tactics were to write her phone number and obscene graffiti on walls in New York City where she lives, and put her name on pornographic mailing lists. When the Clearwater scandal broke and she was booked to appear in Florida at broadcaster Snyder's invitation, the church decided to 'handle' its old nemesis in a new operation entitled 'Freakout'. Its goal was 'to get P.C. incarcerated in a mental institution or jail or at least hit her so hard that she drops her attacks'. Phase one involved telephone threats to Arab consulates by a voice impersonator (Ms Cooper is Jewish). Phase two, sending a threatening letter along the old bomb-hoax lines to such a consulate. Phase three, an imper- sonator would publicly threaten the President and Henry Kissinger while another Scientologist would tip off the authorities. Phase four, agents who had ingratiated themselves with Cooper (she at one time apparently had a relationship with a Church of Scientology man who was acting as an undercover agent) would help assess the success of the plan and if necessary notepaper bearing her fingerprints would be typed over with a bomb threat to Kissinger. 'Operation Freakout', however, didn't get off the ground. Although she appeared in the television programme in 1980 and at the Clear- water hearing instigated by attorney Michael Flynn, Cooper eventu- ally signed a truce with Scientology and was offered a settlement (*see pages 142-3*). For some of the campaigners, the hassle, the wounds, the possibility that justice may not be done, makes them back off. Sparkling Clearwater has not forgotten the day the Scientologists came to town. Those initial years when the cargo of frenzied 'Clears' came pouring ashore and began their covert operations against anyone who stood in their way, gave way to a period when the focus of church activity shifted to the West coast. Hubbard was present in Clearwater during the 'United Churches of Florida' ploy, staying at a condominium in Dunedin. He was worried about his health and had with him two personal physicians, Jim Dincalci, who had accom- panied him to Washington DC in March 1976, and Kima Douglas. There is no reason to suppose he was not fully aware of all the opera- tions being conducted against opponents. His wife, Mary Sue Hubbard, was responsible for instigating many of them and, as we shall see shortly, her appetite for dirty tricks was not confined to 72 GOD'S ADMIRALTY Clearwater. When the LRH entourage moved away and the local opposition had passed its peak in 1976, Clearwater was still nominally the HQ of Scientology in the USA. It was here that the highest levels of the 'tech' were delivered and therefore it was here that the *creme de la creme* of Scientology's aspiring thetans came to be trained and put through their paces. They stayed in the Fort Harrison with their families or in the Sandcastle Motel and when Hubbard released the 'New Era Dianetics' courses in 1978, it was regarded as the 'top tech terminal'. This event, incidentally, was known as The Year of Technical Breakthroughs, and in org-speak as 'NOTS A.D.28'. My own visit to Flag, as Clearwater is known, took place in a calmer climate. Young families played around in the courtyard of new accommodation at the rear of the Fort Harrison. The auditing rooms buzzed with activity and echoed to accents from all round the globe. Upstairs in the Fort Harrison a careful restoration had taken place of the Crystal Ballroom once used by citizens of Clearwater for big func- tions and high-school graduations. In a careful piece of fence-mending the Scientologists had not only restored it but had opened it to public hire for functions. And a good job they have made too. The Robert Adam style elliptical room with its pink carpet woven in Ulster at $32 per square yard is justifiably the pride and joy of Karen Valles who showed me round. There was an exhibition on show of work by artists who were Scientologists and much among it that would have no trouble in competing among the best in an open exhibition. The posters of Gottfried Helnwein impressed me greatly and Karen was at pains to point out that HCOBs on the subject of art were used in foster- ing creativity, 'What LRH did was to lay out "importances" which make it much easier to grasp the appropriate art form.' I mumbled polite assent and we went up to the penthouse which was being re- furbished. It overlooks the City Hall in Clearwater, Mayor Cazares' old perch. His successor, Mayor (Mrs) Kathy Kelly, enjoys a less hostile relationship with the Church of Scientology but it is still not without its prickly areas. In September 1984. in the week in which I visited Clearwater, the city had just announced proposed regulations which would clear the downtown area of tax-exempt organizations - among which the Church of Scientology, as a religious foundation, numbered significantly. Eight of Scientology's ten properties in the town were in that area. It would have moved the ground literally from under the Church's feet in Florida. A spokesman for Clearwater City denied 73 RELIGION INC. that the proposal was aimed specifically at the Church of Scientology. He said that Clearwater needed tax dollars to develop downtown and that these were not forthcoming from tax-exempt organizations. It was not the first time the city had moved to rid itself of the Scien- tologists. In spring 1982 it invited Boston attorney Michael Flynn, scourge of Scientology in the United States, to present a series of hear- ings on the church. For five days a series of witnesses, including Cazares, Paulette Cooper and Hubbard's estranged son Ronald (alias DeWolf), testified to the blacker side of the Church of Scientology. The church declined to participate since it argued it could not cross- examine the witnesses and could only put its case after Flynn had poisoned the ground. The five days were effectively used by Flynn and despite the cost of $160,000 for the hearings he left the Clearwater authority a blueprint with which to eradicate Scientology from its doorstep. The city began by putting pressure on the Church of Scientology to grant refunds to dissatisfied clients. But by far the most controversial move was the proposed Clearwater 'Charitable Solicitation Ordinance' which would enable the authorities to regulate the activ- ities of any such organization collecting more than $10,000 annually. Flag, one-time jewel in the Scientology crown, earned the Church of Scientology a thousand times that amount. The Scientologists appealed against the ordinance to the courts on the grounds that it violated the First Amendment to the US Constitution guaranteeing freedom of religion. Judge Jovachivech at first saw it that way too, but she changed her mind four months later and held that the proposed ordinance was indeed constitutional and advised both sides that they could appeal. That is where the case was in 1986 (along with many others involving the Church of Scientology and its opponents) in a legal limbo that drags on from year to year. Another move by the city administrators was to hold a referendum to approve a Bay Front Development which would gobble up the Sandcastle Motel. The city has not forgiven nor forgotten the events of 1976, despite vigorous efforts by officials of the Church of Scientology to make amends. As I walked from the Fort Harrison to the Sandcastle Motel with Public Affairs Director, former lawyer Richard ('Rich') Haworth, we stopped at a pedestrian crossing with no cars in sight. I was about to proceed but he waited quietly for the green light to show. He explained that he and other Scientologists now have to be extra diligent in observing the law, 'We live in a goldfish bowl here. If a Scientologist 74 GOD'S ADMIRALTY is walking down the street wearing socks of different colours, then somebody will notice.' As we swam up and down the Sandcastle Motel swimming-pool and youthful Scientologists resident for courses walked round, Rich Haworth explained to me why being a Scientologist was important to him. 'In the day that the button is to be pushed, it's important that the guy is a "Clear", then it will only be pushed in a way that is unavoidable. It's basically survival that we're talking about. I can do more for the survival of the planet by being here in the Church of Scientology Public Affairs Department than practising law. It's dying with your boots on rather than being a spectator. Spectatorism is ram- pant in the media and people adopt "I don't have an opinion" as a way of life. Flynn's products are destruction and death. He doesn't put anything in place of what he's destroying. Handling Flynn is counter- productive,' Rich Haworth continued. 'The main show is what is going to improve people and that is the show we're going to keep on the road. We have a number of improved people working in society to im- prove it. That's what we're about.' Would even arch-enemy Flynn be capable of redemption, I cheekily asked. 'Yes,' said Rich with a smile, 'but an individual's improvement depends on the overts he's committed and Flynn would have a long way to audit. Scientologists can pick themselves up by their bootstraps but if it weren't for the integrity of what LRH did we couldn't do that. One of the real tragedies of psychology is Situation Ethics and people get lost in a conflicting mass of ideas of what is right and wrong. Whereas LRH says if your action does the greatest good for the greatest number of Dynamics then it's right.' I seemed to recall that it was John Stuart Mill who said it, not Hubbard, and that it was called Utilitarianism. Back at lunch in the Fort Harrison (a rather indifferent selection of salads at high prices), I was introduced to two Class XII auditors, the top-rank supervisors of the 'tech'. They both had somewhat intense stares and as they seemed to use their eyeballs rather more than their tongues, lunch was not a coruscating display of wit and wisdom. The only drop of blood I managed to squeeze out of these stony stares was from John Eastment, who has a masters degree in Electrical Engineer- ing. What were the kind of things that auditing could solve, I asked, and was told that if there was a marital problem it could be chased back to source. Example? Bloop, bloop went the eyes. Apparently if the wife had burnt the toast and her husband had shouted at her, that could be an engram that was choking the relationship. It would have 75 RELIGION INC. to be audited out. We finished lunch with me reflecting that it was no wonder that people ran up so many hours of costly auditing trying to get a little back-chat from Class XII auditors. On the way out of the Fort Harrison I was permitted to peek into a room where the personal folders are kept, containing all the secrets disclosed during auditing. The confessions, the guilty responses squeezed out during 'Sec Checks' were all there. Security is very tight, Rich explained. No one but your personal auditor and case supervisor would be allowed to see the contents of one of these folders. 'The secrets of the auditing room are as sacrosanct as the secrets of the confession box.' In the evening it was time for a film-show in the Fort Harrison. A tape-slide presentation of the life of L. Ron Hubbard was showing and I was seated in the back row. Childhood pictures of Ron were shown as the legends about him were regailed by the narrator. 'I'm not like the other kids, not me, you bet at all,' he wrote in a song at the age of six- teen, ''cos my dad's a naval man.' As a Scout he met the President of the US, Calvin Coolidge, we were told, and was disappointed he had to go to the President and not the other way around. He noted that the President had a limp handshake. 'I was the only Scout to have made the President wince,' noted Ron in his diary, which is strangely the only document to have recorded the meeting. In Guam, when a youth in 1928, his red hair attracted stares from the natives. Then he was told that everyone who had red hair was made a king. He recorded himself in his diary as 'H.M. the Duke of Guam'. Such blatant immodesty was presented in such a way that the person already devoted to Hubbard would smile indulgently with the benefit of hindsight at these glimpses of destiny granted to the hero. The tape-slide show ended with Ron signing off in a somewhat final manner in a message recorded in Las Palmas in 1967: 'I have borne it too long alone....I need your help...Goodbye for now. I will see you at the line at the other end of the Bridge....' This message was made at a time when Ron was supposed to have relinquished control over Scientology. As we have seen, it was not so at that time. He was supposed to be in seclusion so that he could devote himself to writing and this is still the answer given to those who enquire why he dis- appeared from view in 1980. After the film-show I chatted to an old salt, Wally Burgess from Australia, who has been a Scientologist since 1954 and voyaged on the *Apollo*. He was tough, weatherbeaten and bald. The hour was late but he was there in uniform as if the Fort Harrison and 'Flag' were still at 76 GOD'S ADMIRALTY sea and he was on watch. The hooded eyes watched me shrewdly. 'The greatest single difficulty we have is in stating the man's [LRH] abilities in such a way that people will listen. He's such a smart fella,' said Wally the Aussie. 'We probably err in trying to pass on too much to the uninitiated. You've gotta approach it on a gradient that he can accept. When I began in 1954 I could never have accepted my present understanding of what he has achieved.' This all-will-be-revealed- when-you're-ready approach enhances the mystique for many. But it also explains why there are so many pleasant and apparently open people within Scientology. Breakfast at the Sandcastle Motel with Rich Haworth was memorable for three things. First, the splendid sensation of breakfasting alfresco overlooking the Clearwater harbour. Secondly, the waffles dripping with maple syrup which I ordered with my mixed grill. Third, the curious little note which came with the bill. It was a score-sheet for our attractive waitress. I did not have to mark her feminine attributes but her performance as a waitress out of ten. This, Rich Haworth ex- plained, was standard throughout Scientology. Everyone is assessed on their performance and it is a measure of their effectiveness in following the 'tech'. Mission holders and auditors are assessed on how many people they are 'flowing up the Bridge'. Their 'stats' can be written in dollars and figures, but a waitress needs another objective measure. My subjective assessment would be added to that of others and constitute her 'stats' for performance purposes. Rich gave her a score of ten. After such a breakfast could I do anything but follow his lead? However, when we then went up to my room I found an assess- ment sheet from the maid asking me to give her some stats. The room seemed tidy but, alas, the toilet remained unflushed. I jokingly remarked that it was good to find Scientological maids were as im- perfect as others. 'Tell her why,' said Rich earnestly. 'She'd appreciate that.' Whether or not my reminder about the toilet-bowl helped my room-maid to edge an inch further to the state of 'Clear', I have no idea, but I departed sparkling Clearwater with a flat feeling. My courteous host was within the week promoted from Public Affairs to an executive post at 'Flag', then within a month was trans- ferred to the Los Angeles HQ where his expertise as a lawyer would presumably come in handy since the Church of Scientology was rumoured to be spending in excess of $1.5 million a month in legal fees during 1984. As in the case of members of the armed services, he was given a posting. 77 RELIGION INC. Staff members in Scientology are like Navy personnel at sea. They are on call for duty at all hours without overtime and the hours are often long. A typical day is 9.15 a.m to 11 p.m. While every effort is made to post husbands and wives to the same org, they can spend months with several thousand miles between them as they fulfil their duties. While it is as hierarchical as the Navy on which it is modelled, the Sea Org could never be accused of transgressing Equal Rights for Women. Scientology is probably unique in the proportion of women in influential posts. Prime among them is Hubbard's wife, Mary Sue, who competed with her husband in the invention of bigger and better dirty tricks when she headed the Guardians' Office. Although Rich Haworth and his colleagues in Public Affairs presented a most acceptable face of Scientology, the documents do not lie. The documents in question were among the 48,149 removed from Church of Scientology premises in Los Angeles and Washington on 8 July 1977 by FBI agents. They showed an amazingly successful cam- paign to infiltrate government agencies, place disinformation and gather blackmail material on both enemies and on their own agents. In retrospect the arrests and convictions which followed have been por- trayed as the bringing to book of a few black sheep who had strayed in attempting to counteract false reports which the Government harboured in opposing Scientology. Nothing could be further from the truth. It was the Church of Scientology which was charged with in- serting false reports in these agencies. The eleven conspirators indicted were the top rank of the Guardians' Office, the senior people in admin- istering Hubbard's 'tech', and included his own wife. The blueprint for this campaign was written by Mary Sue Hubbard on 16 December 1969. It is Guardian Order (GO)121669. Here are some excerpts: 'MAJOR TARGET: To use any and all means to detect any in- filtration, double-agent or disaffected staff member, Scientologist or relatives of Scientologists and by any and all means to render null any harm such may have rendered Scientology....To establish intel- ligence files on all such persons...to make full use of all files on the organization to effect your major target. These include personnel files, Ethics files, dead files, central files, training files, PROCESSING FILES and requests for refunds' [my caps]. This document concludes: 'This is a continuing program on which projects will be issued from time to time.' It was signed MARY SUE HUBBARD. This was the foundation- stone on which the Operations against Cazares and the others were built. But once it had been operating for a few years, there were many things done in its furtherance which broke the law. 78 GOD'S ADMIRALTY Any evidence linking the Hubbards to these activities was potential dynamite. To counteract it, several 'Operations' were developed. The first of these, 'Operation Snow White', was prepared by Hubbard himself while in hiding in an apartment in Queens, NY City with Jim Dincalci in 1973 while he was feeling ill and keeping low from the possibility of extradition to face the French anti-Church of Scien- tology case. By 1977 there were three others. The first of these was an early-warning system which would alert the Guardians to any attempt to indict or file a suit against Hubbard personally and which would raise his 'level of personal security immediately very high', i.e. enable him to dodge the authorities. The early-warning system was to be activated by any of the various agents of the Guardians planted in various government agencies including the IRS. There was also 'Operation Bulldozer Leak' which was designed to use these same agents to spread the rumour that Hubbard was no longer in charge of or responsible for the doings of the Church of Scientology. But by far the biggest parcel of dynamite was the 'Red Box system' introduced on 25 March 1977. The Red Box in question was a container at all orgs which was to be removed by a designated person in the event of a raid. Red Box material was defined as: '(a) Proof that a Scientologist is involved in criminal activities; (b) anything illegal that incriminates MSH/LRH (the Hubbards).' Also included were details about any operations against government groups or persons, or which contained illegal activities and the details of confidential financial accounts Among those 48,149 documents was a lot of Red Box material. The events which led up to the FBI raid were straight out of the Watergate scenario and became known as 'Silvergate'. In 1976 the Church of Scientology had used its agent 'Silver' inside the IRS to obtain several intelligence flies on celebrities, politicians and big names. This originated in GO 1361 dated 4 January 1976, but it has never been made clear whether the purpose of gathering these files was to embarrass the IRS by making them public or to use them against the people concerned. Among the files stolen were those on California Governor Edmund Brown; Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley and his wife; singer Frank Sinatra and actor John Wayne, among others. The Deputy Guardian (Information) Dick Weigand sent the files to Deputy Guardian (US) Henning Heldt who returned them as they were 'too hot to have in my files'. In March 1976 Guardian agent Mike Meisner (fresh from being 'run over' by Sharon Thomas's car in Rock Creek Park, Washington), met agent Gerald Bennett Wolfe, who was undercover as 'Silver' in the 79 RELIGION INC. IRS building at 1111 Constitution Ave, Washington NY. They entered the building in the evening and flashed Wolfe's ID card at the security man. Inside, they forced open the door of the room used to produce ID cards. While Meisner thumbed through the book of instructions for the photographic machine, Wolfe typed fictitious names on four blank cards and they made themselves fake ID cards, two for each of them. Meisner took the false name of 'John Foster'. Then they vanished into the night. In April the two men returned to the office of Thomas Crate, an auditor who had tax records of LRH and MSH, but found the door locked and persuaded a suspicious cleaning lady to open it. She obliged on two other occasions while they photocopied the files before returning them to Crate's office. Meanwhile, Sharon Thomas was now in place in the Justice Depart- ment where she had obtained a job as secretary to attorney Paul Figley who dealt with Freedom of Information Act cases. (The Church of Scientology was currently pursuing an FOI lawsuit against the Energy Research and Development Administration and she was churning out photocopies of correspondence and other material to pass to her bosses in the GO.) The Guardians were pretty pleased with themselves. However, disaster struck on 11 June. Meisner and Wolfe were sitting in the library of the US Courthouse at the foot of Capitol Hill, waiting for the cleaners to vacate the office of Nathan Dodell, an old Church of Scientology foe whose personal file they were after in order to devise an operation to remove him as Assistant US Attorney for the District of Columbia. But a suspicious librarian summoned a couple of FBI agents and the two Guardians soon found themselves explaining to Special Agent Christine Hansen that they had been in the library to do legal research and to use the photocopy machine. Meisner asked if they were under arrest and when she said no, they left. Meisner flew to California the next day to report to the Guardians' Office who decided that a rescue operation should be mounted. The cover-up operation was planned in Los Angeles at the offices of the Guardians in Fifield Manor. After reading Meisner's report, Guardians Heldt and Snider were of the opinion that Wolfe and Meisner should be spirited away beyond the reach of the FBI. Then they would not have to face charges and the matter would be closed. Dick Weigand argued that, on the contrary, it would spur the FBI to look more closely into the affairs of the Guardians' Office. He put for- ward a plan which involved Wolfe's pleading guilty to possessing a false ID, and invented a false cover story. 'John Foster', Wolfe would 80 GOD'S ADMIRALTY say, was someone he had met for a few drinks in a bar and who offered to teach him how to undertake legal research. While pursuing this ploy, and under the influence of alcohol, they had seen the room in the Courthouse in which ID cards were made and had entered and made themselves the cards for a 'lark'. Since they had only met in the bar, Wolfe was unable to contact Foster again and did not know where he lived. Once Wolfe was given a minor sentence, Meisner could appear and plead guilty. That way the Church of Scientology would not be brought into matters at all. Thus on 14 June, Weigand's secretary Janet Finn came to Meisner's motel room in Los Angeles, cut his hair, dyed it, shaved off his moustache and arranged for him to have soft contact lenses fitted. Suitably disguised, he slipped undercover and moved into Weigand's apartment. Back in Washington, Wolfe made sure that any mention of Meisner in the Guardians' Orifice was removed from the files. Wolfe was arrested on 30 June by Christine Hansen and duly told his version of the cover story. On 28 July 1976 Wolfe appeared before a magistrate who bound him over for action by the Grand Jury. However, to the consternation of the Guardians, a few days later on 5 August a warrant was issued for the arrest of one Michael Meisner. Weigand was mystified how the FBI knew Meisner's true identity. He could only speculate in a report to Guardian supremo, Mary Sue Hubbard, that the FBI had located his former apartment house and shown his photo to a neighbour. He suggested several courses of action: further disguise for Meisner and the possibility of moving him out of the country. Mary Sue Hubbard replied: 'On getting him abroad, unless you have a good ID for him different than his own, it might be dangerous. He would better be "lost" in some large city where it would be difficult to find him.' Would it be possible to get Meisner an alibi she asked Weigand, in a letter dated 18 September. Weigand pointed out there would be difficulties. It would come down to 'our word against two FBI agents, cleaners and guards plus handwriting experts...fingerprint experts.' In a letter of 22 September, he favoured getting Meisner out of the country for five years until the statute of limitations had expired (an erroneous assumption as it turned out). He added ominously, 'There would be attempts to get him to turn or otherwise implicate us or others in various wrong-doings.' But Meisner was having none of it. He did not want to leave the country. He was becoming restive and missing his wife and children. Mary Sue Hubbard suggested a cold-blooded alternative which in- volved portraying Meisner as jealous of his wife's productivity 81 RELIGION INC. within the Church of Scientology, implying that he had organized the burglary in a fit of jealous pique. Clearly Meisner was expendable in an effort to avoid the Church of Scientology taking responsibility for agents acting under its instructions. A trail was also laid by the Guardians using one of their Scien- tologists who was a lieutenant in the San Diego Police Force. Lt. Warren Young requested information regarding the arrest-warrant for Meisner from the National Crime Information Center computer. When Special Agent Christine Hansen ordered an investigation into why San Diego were interested, Lt. Young informed the FBI that he had arrested Meisner the previous day on a traffic offence. Although in fact Meisner had never been to San Diego, the FBI were diverted by following the false trail and Weigand remarked with satisfaction that this 'can't help but help us, while dispersing their investigation'. But the FBI hounds were following several real scents as well as the false one. The Washington Church of Scientology was served with a Grand Jury subpoena for all the personnel records of Michael Meisner on 8 October. They began to burrow and the Grand Jury case dragged on through the winter months. The Guardians several times considered plans to turn Meisner in and hope for a light sentence and an end to the investigation. During this period Meisner had been moved around motels and lodgings under false names and the strain was beginning to tell. He began to threaten that unless the Wolfe case was settled soon he would surrender. In April 1977, Guardian Henning Heldt issued an order to restrain Meisner and to hold him against his will if he attempted to escape. The Guardians had moved from their role as protectors to one of captors. They had added kidnap to their crimes. On 1 May, Michael Meisner was told he was to be moved to another apartment. He refused and was bound, gagged and forced into a waiting car and taken to an apartment at 3219 Descanso Drive in Los Angles and kept there. Eventually in an attempt to relax his captors he agreed to co-operate. His guards were sufficiently relaxed by the end of a month and on 29 May he escaped in a cab and took a Greyhound bus to Las Vegas. From there he telephoned Jim Douglass at the Los Angeles HQ and a meeting was arranged for the next day. The Guardians pressured Meisner to return to Los Angeles and after a meal at Canter's Restaurant he was returned to Descanso Drive. Meanwhile, the scheduled appearance of agent Silver before the Grand Jury took place on 10 June in Washington, and 'Silvergate' moved into another level of criminality. During cross-examination 82 GOD'S ADMIRALTY Wolfe stated several facts he knew to be false and the following exchange took place: Q: Now did you know Mr Foster by any other name? Wolfe: No, I didn't. Q: You only knew him by John Foster? Wolfe: Right. He made these statements when he knew not only the full name and whereabouts of Michael Meisner but who was hiding him. When the news of Wolfe's Grand Jury appearance crossed to the coast where Meisner was being held, now at an apartment on South Verdugo in Glendale, he made his second attempt to 'blow', this time a successful one. He took two buses to a bowling-alley to evade pursuit and telephoned Assistant Attorney Garey Stark in Washington DC offering to surrender. Within two hours three FBI agents were at the bowling-alley and Meisner was soon on his way to Washington by plane. In order to lull the Guardians into a false sense of security, a letter was dispatched from Meisner (postmarked San Francisco) to Guardian Brian Andrus which stated that he was lying low for a couple of weeks because he needed time to be by himself. The steely response of the top Guardian Mary Sue Hubbard in a communique to Heldt was typical: 'I frankly would not waste Bur 1 resources looking for him but would instead utilize resources to figure out a way to defuse him should he turn traitor.' A week after Meisner had surrendered to the authorities, the strike against the Church of Scientology came suddenly and swiftly. At 6 a.m. on 8 July 1977, 134 FBI agents armed with search-warrants and sledgehammers broke into Fifield Manor, the Guardians' HQ in Los Angeles, and simultaneously into the Washington org. Their haul of documents formed the basis of the case which led a Grand Jury on 15 August to indict eleven Guardians - from Mary Sue Hubbard at the top to Sharon Thomas at agent level. Among the eleven were Henning Heldt, Duke Snider and Gerald Bennett Wolfe (alias 'Silver'). But two Guardian chiefs slipped through the net: Jane Kember, Head of the GO Worldwide, and her deputy, Morris ('Mo') Budlong, fled to England. It took two years to bring the verdict in on the other nine and the sentencing memorandum on the fugitives Kember and Budlong was dated 16 December 1980. During the period between arrest and sentencing, the Scientologists were appealing and wriggling to justify their actions. Kember and Budlong resisted extradition from England 83 RELIGION INC. and appealed to the House of Lords. Throughout the process they argued that the Guardians had been tempted into taking their actions because of a long-standing persecution of Scientology by government agencies. Their actions were part of a 'False Report Correction Program' which was to locate false charges against Scientology being held in government files and to eliminate or correct these. Many of these reports, the Church of Scientology contended, were originated by Interpol and spread through its network and unable to be checked or corrected. But the documents seized by the FBI told a very different and sordid story. Many of the documents detailed the special 'drills' used to train a Guardian. 'Intelligence Specialist Training Routine TR-L' trained the student 'how to outflow false data effectively' - in other words, how to lie. The student was supposed to initiate a falsehood upon which he or she would be interrogated. Blinking, looking away when answering or fumbling a response, were all greeted by 'flunk' from the coach and the exercise began over again until 'he/she can lie facilely'. The document gives an example: Q: Where do you come from? Student: I come from the Housewives' Committee on Drug Abuse. Q: But you said earlier that you were single? Student: Well, actually I was married but I am divorced. I have two kids in the suburbs where I'm a housewife. In fact, I'm a member of the PTA. Q: What town is that you live in? Student: West Brighton. Q: But there is no public school in West Brighton. Student: I know. I send my children to school in Brighton and that's where I'm a PTA member... Lying was only one of the Guardians' tricks. In a memo of 17 October 1971, Kathy Gregg outlines the twelve steps for a 'strike' ('gathering information on a covert basis'). In May 1974, Deputy Guardian Worldwide, Mo Budlong, had refined this into a manual of 'how a professional operates in stealing materials by infiltration or by straight breaking, entering and theft'. This included how to avoid leaving fingerprints and the use of lock-picking devices. In May 1975, the Guardians were concerned with the difference in law between 'breaking and entering' and 'unlawful entry' and one memo frankly states, 'a large proportion, if not the majority of our high- 84 GOD'S ADMIRALTY priority successful collections actions, fail into the category of second- degree burglary, which is a felony'. While the Guardians claimed that their activities were designed to remove false reports, the documents show otherwise. In a worldwide project dated 16 September 1975, David Gaiman, Deputy Guardian PR W/W, orders the planting of false information in US Security Agency computers 'to hold up American security to ridicule'. The project called for the use of plants to place the information, which would have involved a pedigree cat being placed on record and a sequence of events being planned which would lead to the cat holding a press conference. The plants in police departments, the IRS, and other government agencies made the Guardians' Office into an amateur espionage agency. Like conventional spies they also developed their escape hatches. 'Project Quaker' dated 9 November 1976 involved setting up a system of safe houses and ready passports so that Guardians wanted by the authorities for questioning could suddenly disappear in such a way that they could not be accused of fleeing prosecution. Since December 1975 there had already been developed an 'early-warning system' using the inside agents to alert the GO to any possible move by the authorities against Scientology and Hubbard in particular. Personal security on Hubbard would then be raised so that he might evade indictment. During the legal process against the eleven GO members, there was a constant fear that Hubbard himself would be implicated. He and his wife Mary Sue separated after the 8 July raid so that he could be distanced from proceedings. In the event, he remained an unindicted co-conspirator. By far the most sinister and nasty of the GO tricks were practised against those who had been subject to Scientology auditing and whose loyalty to the 'org' had to be ensured. These unsuspecting souls had perhaps imagined that the contents of their 'processing folders' were sacrosanct and (as was taught officially) would in no circumstances be revealed to anyone. They had reckoned without GO 121669 issued by Mary Sue Hubbard on 16 December 1969, which was concerned with the detection of double agents infiltrated into Scientology by the Government or with disaffected Scientologists who might supply information to the authorities. As quoted earlier, it included the following operating targets: 'To make full use of all files on the organization to effect your major target. These include personnel files, Ethics files, dead files, central files, training files, PROCESSING FILES and requests for refunds.' [my caps]. As we have seen, many of the 85 RELIGION INC. questions asked during auditing touch areas which are intensely per- sonal. 'Engrams', in popular language, might be described as 'hang- ups'. 'Overts' are acts about which one can be expected to feel guilty. Add to these the self-confessed crimes and guilty acts elicited during a 'Sec-Check' and you have the stuff of which emotional blackmail can be made. It was precisely to this area that the Guardians' attention was turned. Michael Meisner was audited sometimes for four hours per day during his eleven months as a fugitive and this information, detailing all his weak points, was found in the documents culled in the raid. That was just the tip of the iceberg. One file culled in January 1977 from the records of someone who was feeding information about the infiltration used by the GO contains many purple passages. His use of drugs, his *menage a trois* with his wife and another man in bed together and his forgery of a cheque are all detailed together with his sexual habits and his hang-ups about the size of his penis. His second wife's personal details are then detailed in a separate memo. Both this man (IH) and his wife (K) had given incriminating evidence to the IRS about Scientology and the GO officer summarizing his case concludes: 'This guy sure looks like a plant to me', adding ominously, 'There are a lot of strings to pull on this guy.' Where no files existed on their enemies, the Guardians would resort to other tricks. Smear-tactics were one of these and there are various drills to help their operatives execute a successful smear. 'Take into account effectiveness, security, legality, workability etc when making your decisions. Choose which basic plan is best', reads the instruction at the head of a sheet in which various scenarios are laid out. Options include calling the enemy's boss and telling him that the man is homosexual, harassing him with threatening phone calls in the middle of the night and spreading false rumours about him. One example con- cerns a teacher who got a Scientology grant cancelled and is causing trouble for the Church of Scientology. The options for dealing with her are as follows: '(1) Cleverly kidnap her and run reverse processes on her while implanting the phrase "I will never attack Scientology again. I love Scientology." (2) Get copies of the court records where she was found guilty of child-molesting and send a copy to the school principal, Board of Education and a few parents. (3) Send a male PSM in on her who, after she falls in love with him, will get her to move out of the country with him. (4) Pay ten of her students to write dirty phrases about her on the schoolroom blackboard.' These are the only options offered. (Reverse processes are implanting 'engrams' during 86 GOD'S ADMIRALTY auditing instead of removing them. It is strictly against the official ethics codes of Scientology and is equivalent to a psychotherapist implanting a neurosis in a patient for spite.) Other wild schemes involved connecting a bishop opposed to the Church of Scientology to pornographic activities, poisoning a newspaper editor or, more humanely, putting itching powder in his clothes while he is asleep or telling everyone that he is a Communist. It would all be laughable if it were not the case that these very tactics have been used against dozens of people unlucky enough to have acquired the title 'enemy of Scientology'. In the early 1970s, sociologist Roy Wallis was completing his research project on Scientology eventually published under the title *The Road to Total Freedom* when he became the victim of the Guardians' paranoia. Ironically the book is now accepted by the Public Affairs office of the Church of Scientology as reasonable and fair (they even loaned me a copy) but at the time an undercover agent was sent to Stirling University where Wallis then taught. Pos- ing as a student, he attempted to get Wallis to tell him if he was in- volved in the drug scene. Wallis recognized him from Saint Hill, so the student then changed his story, claiming to be a defector from the Church of Scientology. In 'The Moral Career of a Research Project' (published within *Doing Sociological Research* in 1977) Wallis describes what happened next: 'In the weeks following his visit a number of forged letters came to light, some of which were sup- posedly written by me. These letters sent to my university employers, colleagues and others, implicated me in a variety of acts from a homosexual love affair to spying for the drug squad. Because I had few enemies and because this attention followed so closely upon the receipt of my paper by the Church of Scientology organiza- tion, it did not seem too difficult to infer the source of these attempts to inconvenience me.' Writers, journalists, politicians, even judges sitting on cases invol- ving the Church of Scientology - no one was immune from the Guardians. The decade of the seventies had begun with the *Apollo* at sea and Hubbard riding high on the crest of a wave of expansion in orgs around the world. When he came ashore in Clearwater, the boom continued and the Guardians had the confidence to act as if they were an alternative CIA. But by the end of the seventies their crimes were beginning to catch up with them. In December 1979 the nine Guardians received sentences ranging from four to five years and had $10,000 fines imposed. Jane Kember and Mo Budlong were 87 RELIGION INC. to receive a similar sentence a year later when they were brought back from England to face the music. It is argued by the Church of Scientology that those responsible for the crimes of the Guardians have been purged from the leadership of the Church of Scientology and the GO has now been abolished. This is perfectly true. Jane Kember ascended the serpentine snake of the Church of Scientology's hierarchy and has descended the ladder of ignominy. She is living in East Grinstead, still a Scientologist but without any position of influence. Mary Sue Hubbard is out of prison and was 'busted' from her posts. On leaving prison, she lived apart from the husband in whose shadow she perpetrated so many of the Guardians' operations. Now a new breed of Young Turks are in charge, but as we shall see, the leopards have not changed their spots. 88 5 Gamekeepers and Poachers IN THE shimmering heat of the Southern Californian desert, a movie crew huddled around their camera. The director was slumped in his canvas-backed chair, his belly bulging out of the trousers held up by a single suspender slung across his shoulder. His long red hair, tinged with grey, was sticking out from under the cowboy hat that shaded his face from the sun. Beside him was a slim youth who was acting as cameraman for the scene which was about to be shot. 'You G-d-d--n, son of bitch,' yelled the director. 'More blood, you f-----g fool! Make it more gory!' Makeup assistant Dell Hartwell, a middle-aged woman who had followed her daughter into Scientology, obliged with more blood from the gallons they had made up by mixing Karo syrup and red food colouring. But it was impossible. The hot sun was drying the glutinous mixture so quickly that the actors' clothes were sticking firmly to their bodies. Once the director had ordered so much that the actors' clothes had literally to be cut off. But you didn't argue with the director. Especially when he was Lafayette Ron Hubbard. They were filming a movie called 'The Unfathomable Man'. It was an appropriate title for Hubbard himself, Mrs Hartwell mused: the founder of a religion who spoke the filthiest language she had heard, and she considered herself broad-minded. The young cameraman moved quietly about, doing the director's bidding. He had just arrived the month before (in February 1978) and was obviously totally devoted to Ron. He was watching and learning - learning that when Ron wanted something, he shouted. If he didn't get it right away he shouted harder. David Miscavige was barely twenty and was learning by example that if you wanted to get something done you screamed and then it usually *did* get done. He was one of the batch of youngsters from the Commodore's Messenger 89 RELIGION INC. Organization who had grown up aboard the *Apollo* and come ashore in Florida. There were others: the young girls who followed Hubbard everywhere, lighting the cigarette that was never out of his hand and even catching the ash when he dropped it. Hubbard was always dressed in the same outfit - the baggy pants, the cowboy hat and a bandana around his neck - but his clothes were washed and washed and washed again in a special soap. Ron was a stickler for ultra cleanliness and if the set was not clean when he walked on at 8 p.m. then there would be another screaming session. Day after day they worked on the film, and others, sometimes all through the night with scarcely a break. As often as not the films were never shown. Someone would screw something up and Ron would order the film shelved. Mrs Hartwell and her husband didn't last long. But others did. Miscavige, for instance, who went from strength to strength under the desert sun, as did several of the 'Young Turks' who formed the charmed circle around the leader. Those were energetic times. Hubbard was working hard on developments to the 'tech' of Scientology with David Mayo at his right-hand by day and then turn- ing to the films at night, when Miscavige became the king-pin. In the autumn of 1978 two big developments took place. The 'New Era Dianetics' breakthrough occurred in September and, a month later, David Mayo was appointed to the newly-created post of Senior Case Supervisor. Mayo was Hubbard's personal auditor from the latter days on the *Apollo* on. Ron once described Mayo as 'the best C/S (case supervisor) in the world.' Eventually Mayo was to suffer a similar fate to McMaster and be expelled ignominiously in the power struggle which was to develop around Hubbard. The second development in the autumn of 1978 was the purchase of more properties in the area. The film unit had been operating on a 140 acre ranch called Silver and had been using a nearby 10 acre ranch (Monroe) as a studio. Then in October 1978 a former golf and health resort at Gilman Hot Springs was purchased for $2.7 million in cash, along with Massacre Canyon Inn. Gilman was on Route 79, six miles south of Route 10 and about 100 miles south-east of Los Angeles. Hubbard himself lived in nearby Hemet from April 1979 and had a cancer operation on the front of his head shortly after moving there. Kima Douglas, one of his personal physicians, was with him and Mayo arrived to administer 'assists' to the Scientology guru. All mail to the personnel living in these Southern California complexes was channelled through the 'Flag Land Base' at Clearwater, creating a security screen around Hubbard's exact whereabouts. There were 90 GAMEKEEPERS AND POACHERS then four main centres of Scientology: Saint Hill in Sussex, England, which was barred to Hubbard and other leading Scientologists because of the British Government ban; Clearwater, the Flag Land Base at which many of the higher level courses were available; Los Angeles where the Guardians had their headquarters and where the Church of Scientology had acquired the former Mt. Sinai/Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, a huge blue building at 4833 Fountain Avenue, plus an up-market Celebrity Center to cater for the show-biz personalities who expressed an interest in taking Scientology courses. Finally, there was the enclave in Southern California, the ranches and the houses among which Hubbard moved like a dice beneath a series of upturned cups, it being a matter of guesswork where to find the elusive Commodore of the land-locked fleet. The security became increasingly necessary as the case against the eleven Guardians was built. In May 1979 the Watchdog Committee was formed with David Miscavige assuming a prominent role despite his tender years and junior rank in the hierarchy of Scientology and the Sea Org. In July, Norman Starkey, a South African who had served his apprenticeship on the *Apollo* in the CMO, announced that the CMO was not a management unit but had the authority to investi- gate, bypass and 'handle' any area of international management. The Sea Org monsters were beginning to stir and the days of the Guardians were drawing to a close. On 1 September the Watchdog Committee, composed entirely of young CMO types, announced that it had taken over senior management of the church. The power had moved to Southern California and was soon to pass into hidden hands. In December 1979, the Guardians were sentenced. In January 1980 Ron Hubbard was indicted by the Grand Jury in Tampa, Florida, and other indictments were pending elsewhere throughout the United States, including a lawsuit by a former CMO member, Tonja, who alleged she had been made into Hubbard's serf. The escape plan was sprung. Hubbard hurriedly left Hemet with Pat and Annie Broeker to begin his life as a recluse. Officially the news was that he had gone away to write the sequel to the magnum opus *Battlefield Earth*, which was already on its way to the publishers and would revive his career as a science-fiction writer. Behind the scenes it was perfectly clear that Hubbard was fleeing the courts and what they could do to him in the wake of the revelations from the Guardians' Office documents. Two other matters were on Hubbard's mind - money and mortality. He was approaching the lifespan of three score years and ten and had 91 RELIGION INC. not been in the best of health in the late seventies. 'Dropping the body' - in org-speak a term for death - might not be far away. Taking the tenets of Scientology at their face value, this would entail coming back again in a future life and thus it was logical that Hubbard would want to enjoy a leading role within the organization he had rounded when he came back from the dead. A giant among thetans could not be expected to work his way up, so there were to be trust funds set up so that Ron could again inherit his kingdom. His treasure on earth was assessed according to the use which the Church of Scientology had made of trademarks, copyrights and so forth. Remember that every little piece of paper which became a HCOB, every taped lecture, every slogan across the wall of an org building, all had the tiny subscript 'Copyright L. Ron Hubbard'. Ron was owed a lot: $85 million was the agreed sum. It is not easy to untangle the web of Church of Scientology finances. Scientology is a multi-national company for some purposes and just as opaque as any multi-national corporation to any prying eye which wishes to view a balance-sheet. It is in many countries a tax-exempt charity. Its personnel work for little or no reward and are required to maintain secrecy about org finances. Thus in the USA the IRS are extremely interested in finding out anything they can about Scien- tology finances and since they are one of the principal perceived enemies of Scientology every effort is made to thwart them. The IRS hunted Scientology thoughout the seventies with the Church of Scientology proving as wily as a fox in shifting its millions around and having as many lairs. The IRS had claimed as far back as 1972 that the Church of Scien- ology owed it $1 million in taxes for the years 1970-72. But testimony given in the Armstrong case in 1984 indicated that the real figure was much higher than this. In the years 1970-82 it was revealed that Hubbard had secretly diverted more than $100 million from the church into foreign bank-accounts which he controlled. Although he had supposedly cut his ties with the church on coming ashore in the mid-seventies, and received only a token consulting fee of $35,000 annually, he had actually been using 'shell' corporations to channel money to his overseas accounts. Laurel Sullivan left the Church of Scientology in 1981 after serving fifteen years, the last eight as Hubbard's personal public relations adviser. She admitted that from 1972-81 she was in charge of a secret operation to transfer money from church funds to Hubbard through a 'corporate shell', the Religious Research Foundation (RRF), incorporated in Liberia with 92 GAMEKEEPERS AND POACHERS accounts in banks in Lichtenstein and Luxemburg. When she left Scientology in 1981, said Mrs Sullivan, RRF's assets were between $200 million and $300 million, and at one point in the 1970s they totalled $330 million. Kima Douglas, Hubbard's personal medical officer until she left Scientology in 1980, testified that she had helped establish fourteen or fifteen foundations, including the RRF, and had couriered 'hundreds of thousands of dollars out of the United States' in violation of Federal laws requiring cash amounts of over $5,000 to be disclosed to customs officials. Hubbard's philosophy on money was defined by him in Policy Letters of 27 November and 3 December 1971. Exhorting his orgs to do better and make bigger profits, Hubbard wrote: 'Basically *money* is an idea backed by confidence...remember, *money* represents *things*. It is a substitute for goods and services. What governments, people and even our orgs can't get understood is that NO PRODUCTION = No Money...as it exists at this writing; the only real crime in the West is for a group to be without money. That finishes it. But with enough money it can defend itself and expand. Yet if you borrow money you become the property of bankers. If you make money you become the target of tax collectors.' As is clear from his writings elsewhere, Hubbard was paranoiac about both bankers and the taxmen of the IRS. Because the Church of Scientology does not publish accounts and does not officially acknowledge those foreign accounts which are 'Mr Hubbard's private affair', it is impossible to tell how much is still in them. But one thing is certain. Church income and assets had fallen drastically by the time Hubbard disappeared in 1980. The bad pub- licity generated by the trial of the Guardians' Office eleven had been felt through a chilly downdraught in statistics. There was a heavy run of demands for refunds at Saint Hill. The Guardians' Office itself was in disarray and the only option facing the Church of Scientology was to close it down and announce that it had chopped off the rotten branch. But it was the roots of Scientology that were feeling the drought of money. Back in 1964 Hubbard had decreed that 25 hours of auditing should equal three months' wages. This was subsequently reduced in 1965 because it was found to be too pricey. 250 hours of auditing to go 'Clear' was considered a minimum and that meant nearly three years' wages. So prices were trimmed back. But the temp- tation to squeeze captive customers was too great when the financial drought hit the orgs. Based on a formula outlined by Hubbard, an 93