Let's Sell These People a Piece of Blue Sky: Hubbard, Dianetics and Scientology (30 page)

24.
 
Technical
Bulletins
, vol.2, pp.309 & 311.

25.
 
Further,
Beria was executed that month, so could not have known about the Church of
Scientology, which was first registered only a day before his execution. Many
red herrings have been put forward with regard to this document. The University
where the lecture was supposedly delivered has never existed; Beria gave no
lectures in the time ascribed (and was only briefly in Moscow that year); the
bogus introduction in later editions purporting to be from an American
communist who attended such classes in Russia does not coincide with the
post-Dianetic or Scientology period (both are mentioned in the text). It is
horrifying that the text is upheld by right-wing groups as evidence of
totalitarian communism policies. The text does provide remarkable insight into
Hubbard’s own practices and intentions, however. See for example the section on
loyalty and compare this to the scapegoating practiced against critical former
members.

26.
 
Statement
from Henrietta de Wolfe (who typed the Manual) and author's interview with John
Sanborn (who heard Hubbard dictating it).

27.
 
p.60.

28.
 
Technical
Bulletins
, vol.2, p.353.

29.
 
ibid
,
pp.353-4.

30.
 
ibid
,
pp.354-5.

31.
 
Hubbard,
Volunteer Ministers Handbook
, p.77.

32.
 
Technical
Bulletins
, vol.2, p.378.

33.
 
ibid
,
p.564.

34.
 
ibid
,
vol.3, p.27.

35.
 
p.40.

36.
 
Wallis,
pp.128 & 190.

37.
 
HCOB
“The Purification Rundown and Atomic War”, 3 January 1980.

38.
 
Described
in Sir John Foster's report to the British government, paragraph 118.

39.
 
Donna
Reeve in CSC v. Armstrong, vol.24, p.4185.

40.
 
Hubbard,
Philadelphia Doctorate Course, lecture 21.

Chapter sixteen

“The least free person is the person who
cannot reveal his own acts and who protests the revelation of the improper acts
of others. On such people will be built a future political slavery.”

—L.
Ron Hubbard,
Honest People Have Rights Too
¹

Saint Hill, a sandstone, Georgian manor house, built in
1733, was an unlikely setting for the red-headed maverick from Montana. Upon
his arrival, Hubbard set up the Scientology World-Wide Management Control
Center
²
, though he told the East Grinstead newspapers he had retired
to England to do horticultural experiments and to work in theoretical physics.
He claimed to be treating plants with radioactivity.
³
Hubbard became
a regular contributor to
Garden News
, even demonstrating his
horticultural findings on English television.
⁴
His experiments
consisted in part of using an E-meter to measure a plant's response to threats
in its environment.
⁵
There is an amusing newspaper picture which
shows Hubbard gazing intently at a tomato, still on the vine, with two E-meter
crocodile clips and a nail jabbed into it.
⁶

With a typical lack of modesty Hubbard announced his horticultural
innovations to Scientologists, claiming, in the third person, that “Ron has
already created everbearing tomato plants and sweet corn plants sufficiently
impressive to startle British Newspapers into front page stories about this new
wizardry.” How Hubbard knew the tomatoes were “everbearing” after only a few
months is not known. Hubbard's stated purpose for this project was “to reform
the world food supply.”
⁷

At the end of the 1959 growing season, Hubbard introduced
“Security Checking.” The E-meter was now to be used to discover “overts”
committed by Scientologists.
⁸
An “overt” is basically a
transgression against a moral code. In later times Security Checking was
re-named “Integrity Processing” or “Confessional Auditing,” linking the procedure
to the Confessional of the Christian Church.
⁹
Rather than a simple
request to confess, the Preclear is asked a series of precise questions (often
several hundred), and must describe very exactly any overt discovered during
the process. The E-Meter is used throughout to try to ensure there are no
evasions. The Auditor carefully notes the details of any overt he has “pulled”
from the Preclear.

In theory, Security Checking could be applied either as a
Confessional, in which case the replies obtained were said to be confidential,
or during the course of an investigation, in which case they were not. In
practice, the Confessional has proved to be a double-edged procedure, sometimes
giving genuine relief, but always harboring the potential future use of the
material as blackmail. An enthusiastic convert is willing to expose even his
most tortured secret. Should he become disillusioned by Church practices, he
will keep quiet for fear that his confession will be disclosed.

Hubbard's oldest child, L. Ron Hubbard, Jr., or “Nibs,” had
been a leading light
¹⁰
in Scientology since 1952, when, at the age
of 18, he became Executive Director of the Washington Scientology Church. He
was even one of the handful of people who had given “Advanced Clinical Courses”
in Scientology. His father had described him as “one of the best auditors in
the business.”
¹¹
In November, 1959, Hubbard senior ordered that the
staffs of all Scientology Orgs be given an E-meter check. On November 23, Nibs
left the Washington Org, and the Church of Scientology. Hubbard said his son
was unable to “face an E-meter,” and issued a Bulletin saying the cause of all
“departures, sudden and relatively unexplained” was unconfessed overts.
¹²
According to Nibs, his departure from the Church was actually due to inadequate
remuneration.

Nibs later suggested that his father needed to confess his
overts, and for many years Nibs was his father's most outspoken opponent. Hubbard
senior disowned Nibs completely in 1983. Nibs accepted a financial settlement
from the Scientologists after his father's death in 1986, agreeing not to make
further comment.

The idea that unrevealed transgressions cause departures
from the Church is now deeply embedded in Scientology theory. No-one who leaves
has a chance to explain his departure. Scientologists are sure that the person
must have “overts” against Scientology, therefore nothing a former member says
can be trusted, so it is not worth listening to them.

In March 1960,
Have You Lived Before This Life?
A
Scientific Survey was published. The book is a jumble of Scientology auditing
sessions, where Preclears related fragments of their “past life” experiences.
No attempt was made to verify any of the incidents. Freudians would have a
field day with the contents.
¹³

That month, in an internal memo to his press officer,
Hubbard also commented on the public image he wished to create for himself. In
every press release it was to be made clear that he was an atomic scientist, a
researcher, rather than a spiritualist or a psychiatrist.
¹⁴

Hubbard's major research at the time was into “Security
Checking,” and he was looking for applications for this new “technology.” Hubbard
saw potential political uses, and sent a Bulletin to all South African Auditors
called “Interrogation (How to read an E-Meter on a silent subject),” which
reads in part
¹⁵
:

When the subject placed on a meter will not talk but can be
made to hold the cans (or can be held while the cans are strapped to the soles
or placed under the armpit ...) [sic], it is still possible to obtain full information
from the subject.

This interrogation was recommended for tracing the true
leaders of riots:

The end product is the discovery of a terrorist, usually paid,
usually a criminal, often trained abroad. Given a dozen people from a riot or
strike, you can find the instigator ... Thousands are trained every year in
Moscow in the ungentle art of making slave states. Don't be surprised if you
wind up with a white.

In April 1960, the Bulletin “Concerning the Campaign for the
Presidency” was published recommending that Richard M. Nixon “be prevented at
all costs from becoming president.” Hubbard blamed Nixon for a distinctly
unfriendly visit to the Washington Scientology Church by “two members of the
United States Secret Service,” which had upset Mary Sue Hubbard.
¹⁶

Scientologists were offered shares in the “Hubbard
Association of Scientologists Limited,” registered in England, for £25 each
that June. When the HASI Ltd failed to obtain non-profit status in England, the
shares were bought back, for a shilling each and a life-membership in Scientology
which was later cancelled.
¹⁷

Also in June, the “Special Zone Plan - The Scientologists
Role in Life” was promulgated by Hubbard. It recommended that Scientologists
who were not on Church staff achieve influence in the society at large, by
taking positions next to the high and mighty. “Don't bother to get elected. Get
a job on the secretarial staff or the bodyguard,” Hubbard advised.
¹⁸

The secretary or bodyguard would then use Scientology to
transform the organization they had joined. These Scientologists would be part
of a network, reporting back to the project's administrator,
¹⁹
as
Hubbard put it, “If we were revolutionaries this HCO Bulletin would be a very
dangerous document.”

The Special Zone Plan was absorbed into a new Church “Department
of Government Affairs” within weeks of its inception. In the Policy Letter
²⁰
announcing this move Hubbard said “The goal of the Department is to bring the
government and hostile philosophies or societies into a state of complete
compliance with the goals of Scientology. This is done by high level ability to
control and in its absence by low level ability to overwhelm. Introvert such
agencies. Control such agencies.”

Hubbard not only defined the sinister and covert objective
of the Department of Government Affairs, but also delineated the policy Scientology
has rigorously followed to this day toward any perceived threat: “Only attacks
resolve threats ... If attacked on some vulnerable point by anyone or anything
or any organization, always find or manufacture enough threat against them to
sue for peace ... Don't ever defend. Always attack.”

During a visit in October 1960, Hubbard again gave his
observations on the situation in South Africa: “There is no native problem. The
native worker gets more than white workers do in England! ... The South African
government is not a police state. It's easier on people than the United States
government!”
²¹

Scientology made the headlines in England when headmistress
Sheila Hoad was accused of giving “Death Lessons” to her young pupils. For 20
minutes a day, her small prep school students were asked, among other things,
to close their eyes and imagine they were dying, and then imagine they had
turned to dust and ashes. After the story went to the press, Miss Hoad
resigned.
²²

In the Spring of 1961, Hubbard expanded his Special Zone
Plan, by introducing the Department of Official Affairs, “the equivalent of a
Ministry of Propaganda and Security.” The Department was to create “Heavy
influence through our own and similarly minded groups on the public and
official mind,” and “A filed knowingness [sic] about the activities of friends
and enemies.”
²³

On March 24, Hubbard launched the Saint Hill Special
Briefing Course (or, inevitably, “SHSBC”). Students arrived from all over the
world to hear him lecture on new techniques in the Saint Hill chapel. One
“technical breakthrough” followed another, and eventually the Briefing Course
came to consist of over 300 taped lectures (most delivered during this period).
All of Hubbard's recorded lectures, perhaps as many as 3000 of them,
²⁴
have more recently been designated “religious scriptures” by his Church. Even
the most dedicated of Scientologists cannot have heard them all, but about 600
tapes are still used in courses.

Hubbard was a remarkable lecturer. A woman close to him in
the 1950s, who thought he was fraud even then, says he was a hypnotic speaker.
He raced from one idea to another, illustrating his talks with embroidered
stories from his life (and sometimes his previous lives). He effused good
humor, and spoke with apparent ease, usually without notes. There is nothing
dry or academic about his lectures. He was an accomplished comedian, especially
if you knew the “in” jokes, many about his pet hate, psychiatry.

On April 7, 1961, Hubbard published the “Johannesburg
Security Check,” which he described as the “roughest security check in Scientology.”
An amended form is still in use, and referred to by Scientologists as the
“Jo'burg.”
²⁵

The security check began with a series of nonsense
questions, such as, “Are you on the moon?,” and “Am I an ostrich?,” to ensure
that the recipient's E-meter response was normal. Then there were a hundred
questions. They covered sexual activities thoroughly, with questions such as:

Have you ever committed adultery?

Have you ever practiced Homosexuality?

Have you ever slept with a member of a race of another
color?

Senator Joseph McCarthy and his House Un-American Activities
Committee were long gone, but Hubbard was still inflamed with anti-Communist
fervor, and the sec-check was interspersed with questions about Communism, such
as: