[Plaintext version 1.0, August 18, 1998]
ÿ 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
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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.
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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
--
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Mr. Hamra said, "The Church of Scientology now had a database
of information on every subscriber which included names, credit
card info., credit reports, telephone info., computer info.,
who had referred them to Earthlink and who were their previous
ISP providers." Mr. Hamra told me about the "other Earthlink
building" which was next door on New York Avenue in Pasadena.
Mr. Hamra told me that the other building was high security and
is where Earthlink and the Church of Scientology did all the
monitoring of the internet. - DECLARATION OF ROBERT J. CIPRIANO.
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