Let's Sell These People a Piece of Blue Sky: Hubbard, Dianetics and Scientology (47 page)

The Order directed that an agent be placed in the US
Attorney’s Office in Washington, DC. Any Federal agency which was in litigation
with the Church, or was planning litigation, would report to the US Attorney’s
Office. An agent was also to be placed in the US Attorney’s Office in Los
Angeles. The Order continued:

Place a separate agent into the IRS Office of International
Operations (OIO) (as this office has a case preparation or investigative action
going on LRH personally for income tax evasion or something similar) ... Obtain
their files on LRH/MSH [the Hubbards] and Scientology and monitor the line
continuously of other actions against LRH/MSH ... Continue to monitor tightly
the DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration] DC, IRS DC and LA, the Coast Guard.

Back in Washington, Meisner started his compliance with the
Order. The internal procedures of the GO required that all major actions be
“okayed” in writing by a senior. These Orders, and Meisner’s responses to them,
were reported step by step through the hierarchy to Mary Sue Hubbard, the
Controller. Mary Sue Hubbard was living with her husband at this time, and no
doubt informed him of Meisner’s spectacular offensive against the United States
Government.

Meisner and Silver performed a series of burglaries on the
Justice Department. They took documents from the offices of Paul Figley and
Jeffrey Axelrad in the Civil Division’s Information and Privacy Unit. Figley
had been assigned to the defense of the Freedom of Information Act suits brought
against government agencies by the Church of Scientology.

Meisner and Silver went into the Justice Department library
using Silver’s IRS identification card. They waited until after office hours,
and went into Figley’s office. As ever they used the nearest photocopier. On
two occasions they stayed in the building until 10:00 PM, copying files on
Scientology, and every Interpol document they could find. Further burglaries of
Figley’s office were committed by Silver, with GO agents Joseph Alesi and Richard
Kimmel.

On Saturday, January 17, 1976, Don Alverzo again flew to
Washington. The next evening, accompanied by Silver and Meisner, he entered the
main IRS building, using Silver’s IRS identification. They went up to the third
floor where Lewis Hubbard’s office and Zuravin’s file office were Silver stood
guard while Alverzo tried to pick the lock on Hubbard’s door. Meisner worked on
Zuravin’s door. Their GO training, the so-called “Breaking and Entering Hat,”
did not serve them well. After about an hour and a half, the exasperated
Meisner forced Zuravin’s door. The three went into the office, stole the
remaining “exempt” documents from Zuravin’s index, and took them to a photocopier
on another floor. After a while Meisner and Alverzo left Silver to the copying
and returned to Hubbard’s office. Eventually Alverzo managed to force the latch
with a strip of cardboard. They took all the files which had not previously
been copied. The party left at two in the morning with a one foot stack of documents.
Alverzo returned to Los Angeles the next day.

At the beginning of February, Meisner again flew to Los
Angeles for a conference. There were representatives from the Guardian’s Office
Legal and Finance Bureaus at the meeting, as well as Church accountant Martin
Greenberg. The meeting discussed IRS strategy with regard to the Scientology
audit, as revealed in the stolen documents. Meisner was instructed to look out
for any documents dealing with the Religious Research Foundation, a front
through which Scientology monies were paid to Hubbard. Mary Sue’s Office was
informed.

In Washington, Meisner relayed his instructions to Silver.
The offices of the Exempt Organizations Division were to be monitored for
files. The GO wanted advance warning in case there was an adverse ruling on
Scientology’s current attempt to regain tax-exempt status. They wanted to know
before it was finalized, so they could prepare their next line of defense.

Meisner had ordered Sharon Thomas to leave the US Coast
Guard, and find a job at the Department of Justice. After initial difficulties,
she finally managed to do this, and started work there on February 29, 1976.

Silver had to be slightly more inventive than usual to get
into Joseph Tedesco’s suite of offices. During the day, Silver removed the knob
from a door which led into the suite, and disabled the lock. The door was not
normally in use, so the ploy went unnoticed. That night Silver returned and
carried out his usual procedure.

Silver also stole files relating to the American Medical
Association’s tax-exemption, as ammunition for Scientology’s long standing
battle against the AMA.

At the beginning of March, Meisner decided to refine the GO
operation. He and Silver went into the main IRS building, again using Silver’s
legitimate card, in his real name, Gerald Wolfe. They went to the IRS
Identification Room on the first floor, and forced the door. While Meisner read
the instruction booklet for the photo equipment, Silver typed two fictitious
names for himself, and two for Meisner, onto cards. They then used the photo
equipment to put their faces to the names. Meisner selected numbers from the
log of previously issued cards. During the next few months, false
identification cards were made for four other GO agents.

In March 1976, Mary Sue Hubbard approved a Program written
by Cindy Raymond, for the collection of what were termed “non-FOI data” - i.e.
documents not available through the Freedom of Information Act. Raymond, who
was the GO Collections Officer US, planned to infiltrate no less than 136 government
agencies! She also ordered Meisner to obtain material relating to proposed
amendments of the Freedom of Information Act.

In April, Meisner and Silver returned to the Justice
Department. Meisner used an identification card made out to “John M. Foster,”
while Silver used his own genuine IRS card, which later proved to be a crucial
mistake. They burgled the office of Deputy Attorney General of the United
States, Harold Tyler, and copied memoranda which the Justice Department was
about to send to Congress outlining its position on proposed amendments to the
FOIA. The office door was forced to gain entry.

A few days later, Cindy Raymond wrote to Meisner explaining
that the Justice Department had just conducted an investigation of the Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA). The distribution of the “DeFeo Report” was
designated “severely limited.” The Church had just lost an FOIA case against
the DEA. Raymond told Meisner to steal the DeFeo Report. Meisner knew where to
go, having noticed the Report during his last raid.

Meisner put “Operation Chaos Leak” into action. The DeFeo Report
was highly critical of the DEA, so leaking it would create adverse press. The
GO believed a scandal might help to color the judge’s view in their appeal
against the DEA decision. Half of the DeFeo Report was given to the
Village
Voice
in New York by Meisner, who pretended to be a disaffected Justice
Department employee.

Meisner had been ordered to obtain all files relating to Ron
and Mary Sue Hubbard from the Office of International Operations of the IRS
(OIO). Silver and Meisner, the latter using his “Foster” identification,
entered the OIO building, and went to the tenth floor to burgle the office of
Thomas Crate. The door was locked. One of the cleaning ladies told a security guard
there were two suspicious characters on the tenth floor. Silver and Meisner
fobbed the guard off with their IRS identification cards. The cleaning lady
then opened Crate’s office for them. By this time, Meisner had nerves of steel.

They found more documents in a locked cabinet belonging to
Crate’s superior, Howard Rosen. They could not find a photocopying machine in
the OIO building, so took the files to the main IRS building, and copied them
there.

During the next few months, Sharon Thomas stole files from
the Information and Privacy Unit of the Department of Justice relating to
pending Scientology initiated FOIA suits. Files relating to the Church’s FOIA
suit against the Energy Research and Development Administration were also
stolen. The Interpol Liaison Office was raided, and the safe broken into. The
material stolen included Interpol files on terrorism. Meisner had been
instructed to take all and any Interpol files, so that material obtained could
be used to show Interpol’s “criminality.” Several thousand pages of Interpol
documents were taken.

In a chambers hearing of a Scientology FOIA case, Judge Hart
asked Justice Department attorney Nathan Dodell whether he had considered
taking L. Ron Hubbard’s deposition. The Scientologists’ attorney, Walter Birkell,
reported back. In the panic, Meisner was ordered to check Dodell’s office to
see what he was planning. He was also ordered to find information which could
be used to remove Judge Hart from the case. Safeguarding Hubbard, even from an
appearance, was the GO’s top priority.

Early in May, Silver and Meisner reconnoitered the United
States Courthouse building. They went first to the Bar Association library, on
the same floor as Dodell’s office. They found the nearest photocopy machines,
and then went to Dodell’s office. The door was locked, and the tool they
usually used failed to lift the latch. For once, they left a mission
incomplete.

A few days later, Silver phoned Meisner from Dodell’s
office. No doubt in hushed tones, he excitedly told his superior that a
secretary had left her keys on the desk. Silver and Meisner found a locksmith,
who made copies of the keys for them. Once again GO operatives had waltzed
through the security system of a US Government agency.

On the evening of May 21, Silver and Meisner presented
themselves at the US Courthouse, showing the security guard their fake IRS credentials.
They were given permission to do legal research in the Bar Association Library.
They went up to the third floor, and signed the log. Putting a few books out on
a table at the back of the library, they left through the back door, which led
into the hallway outside Dodell’s office. Using the duplicate keys they entered
the office. With a flashlight they peered at the files on Scientology. After
copying about 1,000 pages, they returned the originals, and went back to the
library, leaving at about 11:00 PM. The documents were the Interpol files which
had been withheld from Scientology by the National Bureau of Interpol.

A week later, Silver and Meisner again went to do “research”
in the Bar Association Library. They had signed in as “John Foster,” and “W.
Haake” (perhaps an elaborate joke as Sir John Foster and F.W. Haack were both
critics of Scientology), and copied about 2,000 pages of documents relating to
Scientology, most from Washington, DC police files, and Food and Drug
Administration files. All were taken from Dodell’s office.

They were replacing the originals, when librarian Charles
Johnson stopped them. He asked if they had signed in, and told them not to come
back without the permission of a Chief librarian. Having braved this challenge,
they had to sneak back to Dodell’s office and replace the stolen originals.

N.B. The designation ‘MSH’ refers to the Stipulation of
Evidence signed by all of the defendants except for Mary Sue Hubbard in the GO
9 trial. This document is a confession by some of the perpetrators of the
crimes. Later claims that the cult was infiltrated and these crimes committed
by agents of either the FBI or the IRS are palpable nonsense. See the author’s
General Report and Scientology: Religion or intelligence agency? for a better
understanding of Hubbard’s direction of all of these events. The most telling
evidence is Hubbard’s lecture Ron’s Journal 1967 which included an admission that
his wife had hired former ‘intelligence agents’ to steal documents. This was
ten years before the FBI raids.

1.
   
p.8.

2.
   
The majority of this chapter is taken from the Stipulation of Evidence
in USA v. Mary Sue Hubbard et al., District Court, Washington, DC, criminal
case no. 78-401.

3.
   
USA v. Kember, sentencing memorandum, pp.17 & 19; author’s interview
with former B-1 executive.

4.
   
A function of Branch 5 in the original Guardian’s Office. See Hubbard
Executive Directive 149 International “Confidential - Branch 5 Project, Project
Squirrel”, 2 December 1966. This directive orders that squirrels be
investigated and asserts “It will be found uniformly ... that
anti-Scientologists have in their background this life [sic] crimes for which
they could be arrested.” Such crimes should be reported to the police, and
“when the person is arrested, one then sues the person for anti-Scientology
libels and slanders ... If we do the above ... we will successfully bring the
following facts [emphasis in original] into public consciousness: a) People who
attack Scientology are criminals. b) That if one attacks Scientology he gets
investigated for crimes. c) If one does not attack Scientology, despite not
being with it, one is safe.”

5.
   
Copy of Snow White program; Dincalci Debrief.

6.
   
Author’s interview with Kenneth Urquhart.

7.
   
Author’s interview with former B-1 executive, Brian Rubinek, who
directed the break-ins.

Chapter twenty-six

“Why should a man certain of immortality
think of his life at all?”

—Joseph
Conrad,
Under Western Eyes

Early in June 1976, the GO
issued “Project: Target Dodell.” Its purpose was to “render Dodell harmless,”
because he was doing too well in defending against the Scientology FOIA legal
suits. Meisner was ordered to steal files from Dodell’s office which could be
used to formulate an operation to remove him as an Assistant US Attorney. By
this time Meisner had requested and received written permission to use the Bar
Association Library.
¹