Let's Sell These People a Piece of Blue Sky: Hubbard, Dianetics and Scientology (24 page)

Hubbard's letter went on to describe another assault, which
supposedly took place in his apartment on February 23, between 2:00 and 3:00
a.m. Having been knocked unconscious, air was injected into his heart and he
was given an electric shock, in an attempt, according to Hubbard, to induce a
heart attack.

 The night following this supposed attack, Hubbard kidnapped
baby Alexis, and deposited her with a nursing agency. To avoid detection, he
called himself James Olsen.
¹⁸
He claimed his wife was suffering from
a “serious illness.” The same night, he also kidnapped Sara, with the help of
two of his lieutenants.
¹⁹
Hubbard wanted to have Sara examined by a
psychiatrist, but failing to find one, they ended up in Yuma, Arizona, after
driving through the night. After releasing Sara, Hubbard flew to Chicago. There
Hubbard found a psychologist who was willing to write a favorable report about
Hubbard's mental condition, refuting Sara's charge that he was a
paranoid-schizophrenic.
²⁰

In March, Hubbard wrote to the FBI denouncing 16 of his
former associates as Communists, a serious charge during these days of the anti-Communist
witch-hunts led by Senator McCarthy's House Un-American Activities Committee.
Hubbard even included people who were still working at the Foundations in his
accusations.
²¹
Two, Ross Lamereaux and Richard Halpern, were to
continue to be his staunch supporters for years to come. Ironically, Hubbard's
complaints about the executives running his organizations inevitably led to an
investigation by the FBI of those very organizations.

In the midst of these problems, Hubbard's first wife, Polly,
demanded the 42 months of support payments Hubbard had failed to pay since
their settlement. The bill, including interest and fees, came to $2,503.79.
²²

Hubbard had also failed to pay a debt to the National Bank
of Commerce, taken out in 1940, which with interest now came to $889.55.
Hubbard left a trail of unpaid bills, despite the fortune Dianetics had earned
him. During the eventual collapse of the Los Angeles Foundation, one of its
directors wrote “I am being flooded with personal bills for L. Ron Hubbard, going
back as far as 1948 and earlier.”
²³

In his secret report to the FBI Hubbard had said that Sara
and her boyfriend, Miles Hollister, were Communists. He also said Sara was a
drug addict. Hubbard offered a reward of $10,000 to anyone in Dianetics who could
resolve Sara's difficulties by Clearing her.
²⁴
She was suspended as
a trustee and officer of the California Foundation.
²⁵

Taking Alexis and Richard de Mille with him, Hubbard flew to
Florida, and from there to Cuba.
²⁶
He continued to drink heavily
while finishing the dictation of
Science of Survival
. In a letter to his
lieutenant in Los Angeles, Hubbard spoke of the enormous amount of money to be
made by insisting that every Dianeticist buy a psycho-galvanometer. The mark-up
would be sixty percent. There is no mention of any benefit to auditing from the
use of the psycho-galvanometer or “E-meter,” as it was later known.
²⁷

In her book,
Dianetics in Limbo
, Helen O'Brien wrote
²⁸
:
“The tidal wave of popular interest was over in a few months, although a ground
swell continued for a while. The book became unobtainable because of a legal
tangle involving the publisher. People began to see that although Dianetics
worked, in the sense that individuals could cooperate in amateur explorations
of buried memories, this resulted only occasionally in improved health and
enhanced abilities, in spite of Hubbard's confident predictions.”

By the end of 1950, Hubbard's world was collapsing, income
had dropped dramatically and the Foundations were unable to meet their payrolls
or their promotional expenditures.
²⁹
An attempt to start a new Foundation
in Kansas City failed.
³⁰
In January 1951, Parker C. Morgan, a lawyer
who had been a founding director of the Elizabeth Foundation, resigned. In March,
John Campbell followed suit.
³¹
He too complained of Hubbard's
authoritarian attitude.
³²
Thus four of the seven original directors
had resigned, and Sara Hubbard was suspended, leaving only Don Rogers and
Hubbard.

Campbell's resignation followed close on the heels of an
investigation by the New Jersey Medical Association, which filed a case against
the Elizabeth Foundation for teaching medicine without a license.
³³
Hubbard was not only claiming all sorts of cures, he was also experimenting on
“Preclears” with drugs, especially benzedrine.
^{34, 35}
In a lecture in
June 1950, Hubbard had admitted to having been a phenobarbital addict.
³⁵
He also spoke knowledgeably about the effects of sodium amytal, ACTH (a
hormone), opium, marijuana and sodium pentathol.

New directors were appointed in Elizabeth and fought a
losing battle to keep the Foundation solvent. Sara, who despite her husband's
promised reward was supposedly “Clear” already, brought a divorce suit in Los
Angeles.
³⁶
She was desperate for the return of her one-year-old
daughter. She alleged that Hubbard had subjected her to “scientific torture
experiments,” that their marriage was bigamous, that she had medical evidence
that Hubbard was a “paranoid schizophrenic” and that he had kidnapped their
daughter.

Sara Northrup Hubbard's original complaint against her
husband has mysteriously disappeared from the microfilm records of the Los Angeles
County Courthouse. Fortunately, copies are still in existence. Among the
alleged torture experiments was this:

“Hubbard systematically prevented plaintiff from sleeping
continuously for a period of over four days, and then in her agony, furnished
her with a supply of sleeping pills, all resulting in a nearness to the shadow
of death ... plaintiff became numb and lost consciousness, and was thereafter
taken by said Hubbard to the Hollywood Leland Hospital, where she was kept
under a vigilant guard from friend and family, under an assumed name for five
days.”

Sara claimed that such “experiments” were frequent during
the course of their marriage. She also claimed that Hubbard had many times
physically abused her, once strangling her so violently that the eustachian
tube of her left ear had ruptured, impairing her hearing. Hubbard had allegedly
asked her to commit suicide “if she really loved him,” because although he
wanted to leave her, he feared a divorce would damage his reputation.
Eventually, Hubbard decided Sara was in league with his enemies - the American
Medical and Psychiatric Associations and the Communists. He quite usually leveled
similar charges against anyone who criticized him.

In his May 14 letter to the FBI, Hubbard again attacked Sara
as an agent of the Communist peril. He claimed he had discovered, and could
undo, the techniques used by the Russians to obtain confessions. He said that
whenever he made an overture to the Defense Department offering them his own
techniques of psychological warfare, his organizations were harassed.

He pleaded for the removal of the Communist elements who had
obviously infiltrated even the Defense Department.

Hubbard went on to accuse Sara's father of being a criminal,
and her half- sister of being insane. He said she was sexually promiscuous, and
suggested that she had ruined Jack Parsons' life. Hubbard claimed that Sara had
been on intimate terms with scientists working on the first atomic bomb, and
suggested that she might yield under FBI questioning. What she might yield is
unclear.

Despite remarkable income, the Foundations foundered. The
Los Angeles HDRF went down with a retired Rear Admiral at the helm.
³⁷
In April 1951, Hubbard resigned from the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation.

Hubbard had risen from a penny-a-word science fiction writer
to the leadership of America's largest self-improvement group. Now, after only
a few months, the Foundations were more or less bankrupt, thousands of
followers were disillusioned, and Hubbard's private life was splashed all over
the newspapers. It was time to cut and run. For a less resourceful or a less
fortunate man, this would have been the end. For Hubbard, it was just another
of many new beginnings. The head of the Omega Oil Company, Don Purcell, an
ardent Hubbard admirer who had been an early visitor to the Elizabeth
Foundation, saved the day.

1.
   
p.388.

2.
   
Hubbard,
Research & Discovery
, vol.3, p.8.

3.
   
Gardner,
Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science
, p.270; Evans,
Cults of Unreason, p.49.

4.
   
Hubbard,
Research & Discovery
, vol.3, pp.20-24.

5.
   
Hubbard,
Research & Discovery
, vol.1, p.696.

6.
   
Wallis, p.71.

7.
   
O'Brien,
Dianetics in Limbo
, pp.26f.

8.
   
in a letter to the author.

9.
   
A.E. van Vogt in a letter to the author.

10.
 
Wallis,
p.89.

11.
 
Hubbard,
Technical Bulletins
, vol.1, p.280.

12.
 
p.168.

13.
 
Miller
interview with Barbara Klowden, Los Angeles 28 July and 5 August, 1986.

14.
 
Letter
to the author from a board member of the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation.

15.
 
Wallis,
p.71; see also “A Brief Survey of Research Projects and Preliminary Results -
Dianetic Processing”, published in January 1951 by the Hubbard Dianetic
Research Foundation.

16.
 
see
Hubbard letter to Klowdan, 21 October 1951.

17.
 
Hubbard
letter to FBI, 14 May 1951. Used in evidence in New Era v. Miller, in
Australia.

18.
 
Note
on Westwood Nurses Registry notepaper, signed James Olsen, 24 February 1951.
Handwritten letter from Hubbard to Frank Dessler, granting him the right to
“remove ... from wherever she may be, Miss Alexis Valerie Hubbard”, 24 February
1951. Note on Westwood Nurses Registry notepaper, by Dessler “I ... have been
authorized by Hubbard, alias James Olsen to have Vincent J. McGonigel Transport
[sic] Alexis Hubbard alias Jane Marie Olsen to L. Ron Hubbard...”, 28 February
1951; see also handwritten Hubbard letter about Dessler, headed “To whom it may
concern”, preserved by Dessler.

19.
 
Miller
interview with Richard de Mille, Santa Barbara, 25 July 1986.

20.
 
Sara
Northrup Hubbard v. L. Ron Hubbard, Superior Court, Los Angeles, divorce
complaint no.D414498.

21.
 
Letter
of 3 March 1951, also FBI memo of 7 March 1951; see also handwritten draft of
this letter, preserved by Frank Dessler.

22.
 
Letter
from Ronald E. Danielson, lawyer, to Hubbard, 5 March 1951. Preserved by Dessler.

23.
 
Dessler
letter to Jack Maloney, 3 April 1951; Dessler letter to Don Purcell, 4 April
1951.

24.
 
Hubbard
telegram to Dessler, March 1951.

25.
 
Minutes
of the Board of Directors, The Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation of
California, Inc., 11 March 1951. Preserved by Dessler.

26.
 
Miller
interview with de Mille; Hubbard telegram to Dessler 29 March 1951.

27.
 
Hubbard
letter to Dessler, 27 March 1951.

28.
 
p.vii.

29.
 
Letter
from Lamar Willian Dye, lawyer, to Frank Dessler, 8 February 1951. Dessler
letter to Jack Maloney, 26 February 1951. Dessler letter to Hubbard, 9 March
1951. John Maloney open letter, “A Factual Report of the Hubbard Dianetic
Foundation” 23 February 1952.

30.
 
Dessler
letter to Jack Maloney, 20 December 1950. Dessler to Hubbard, 29 January 1951.
Letter to Dessler from attorney L.W. Dye, 8 February 1051.

31.
 
Wallis,
p.50.

32.
 
Wallis,
p.78.

33.
 
John
Maloney, “A Factual Report of the Hubbard Dianetic Foundation”, 23 February
1952.

40.
 
3Dianetics: The
Modern Science of Mental Health,
p.363; Winter,
A Doctor’s Report on Dianetics.

34.
 
Hubbard,
Research & Discovery
, vol.1, p.124.

35.
 
see
20; Los Angeles 24 April 1951.

36.
 
van
Vogt in IDS newsletter no.2.

Chapter thirteen

“Liberty for wolves is death for sheep.”

—Isiah
Berlin

Don Purcell was a self-made millionaire. He offered Hubbard
funds and new premises in Wichita, Kansas. He also offered to pay the debts of
the original Foundation, without realizing what he was letting himself in for.
The paltry assets of the Elizabeth Foundation, some second-hand furniture, and
a lot of files, were moved to Wichita.
¹
The remaining Foundations
were closed. Hubbard, who had been in Cuba for about a month, was in poor
health, as his ulcer was flaring up.
^{2, 3}
Purcell sent a plane and a
nurse to bring Hubbard and Alexis back to the United States. They arrived in mid-April.
The use of the name “Dianetics” was assigned to the new Wichita Foundation, and
it was to retain the rights of Hubbard books that it published. Purcell was the
President, and Hubbard the Vice-President and Chairman of the Board. A few days
after his return to the U.S. Sara, not knowing his whereabouts, filed for
divorce.