Let's Sell These People a Piece of Blue Sky: Hubbard, Dianetics and Scientology (51 page)

Hubbard had suffered a pulmonary embolism, a blood clot in
the artery to the lungs. Kima Douglas had once again saved his life. This time
she was unable to overrule his refusal to go to hospital, so, imitating the
doctors at Curaçao, she fed him a huge dose of his pills. He drifted into a
coma. Kima stripped an electric wire, with the desperate idea that he could be
shocked back to life. She stayed by him for 48 hours. Scientologist medical
doctor Eugene Denk was rushed from Los Angeles, blindfolded, to relieve her.
⁷

While Kima and Dr. Denk ministered to Hubbard’s physical
needs, Mayo devised an auditing program and set to work. He concluded that the
New Era Dianetic auditing had been to blame, and it was decided that Dianetics
should not be given Clears, because of its deleterious effect upon them. This was
not heartening to the thousands of Clears who had paid huge amounts for
hundreds of hours of Dianetics.

The procedures brought into being by Mayo and Hubbard became
known as New Era Dianetics for Operating Thetans, (“NED for OTs,” or, most
simply, “NOTs”). Mayo says that what they actually concentrated upon during the
auditing was misconceptions; somehow the emphasis changed to body thetans when
Hubbard helped Mayo rework his notes. Still, Mayo was made Senior Case
Supervisor International, an entirely new position, as a mark of Hubbard’s
gratitude.
⁸

While recovering, Hubbard approved the purchase of the
Massacre Canyon Inn resort complex at Gilman Hot Springs.
⁹
There
were several buildings, including a motel and a hotel, set in 520 acres and
including a 27 hole golf course.
¹⁰
The property was about 40 miles
from La Quinta, near the small town of Hemet. The purchase price was $2.7
million.
¹¹

At the end of 1978, the CMO Rehabilitation Project Force
started to prepare Gilman.
¹²
The CMO Special Unit, the channel
through which Hubbard managed Scientology, moved there the following February.
¹³
Mayo continued to audit Hubbard, and had to move in with the CMO.

Hubbard went even deeper into hiding for a few weeks in
March 1979, travelling with a CMO escort to nearby Lake Elsinore. In April he
moved to an apartment in Hemet, where he lived with about ten Messengers.
¹⁴
The security around him was extremely tight. Very few people knew his
whereabouts; by this time he was even hiding from the Guardian’s Office.

In February, Hubbard, at last recovering from his illness,
had turned his attention back to the worldwide Scientology scene. The CMO did a
statistical analysis for him. How many people were receiving auditing and
training? How much money was being made? How many new people were coming into
Scientology? Hubbard did not like what he saw. The number of active
Scientologists was diminishing, as was the amount of money being made. Students
were abandoning their courses and demanding refunds. The obvious reasons were
the 20-fold increase in prices since November 1976, and revelations in the
media about the Guardian’s Office.

Hubbard ignored the obvious however, and issued the “Change
the Civilization Eval[uation]” The Guardian’s Office had let him down, and so
had Sea Org management. The Commodore’s Messenger Organization had been
concerned with Hubbard’s personal welfare, and with his personal projects (the
films for instance). Now they seemed to him to be the remaining loyal unit of
his private army, and they were to enforce his will upon the renegades. Hubbard
reprimanded the CMO for issuing orders under their own title.
¹⁵
Hubbard must not be seen to be managing Scientology under any circumstances.
The pretense of his resignation from Church management in 1966 had to be
rigorously maintained. Otherwise he would be wide open to the extensive litigation
against Scientology. Worst of all he was implicated in the FBI case against his
wife, and her cohorts in the Guardian’s Office, and he too might be indicted.
He had already been named (along with 29 others) as an unindicted
co-conspirator.

The CMO were a latter-day Praetorian Guard, at first
protecting and serving the whims of their Emperor, but gradually becoming the
most powerful element in the hierarchy of command. Long the interface between
Hubbard and the rest of the Church, part of the CMO became the senior
management body: the Commodore’s Messenger Organization Inter-national, or CMO
Int. But as the Commodore’s Messenger Organization was quite obviously
connected to the Commodore, they had to find a new title. So the Watchdog
Committee (WDC) came into being, in April 1979.
¹⁶
It consisted
solely of the senior executives of CMO Int.

The function of WDC was to “put senior management back on
post.” This they did by absorbing all top management posts. The members of the
Watchdog Committee remained anonymous, and many Scientologists thought Hubbard
was in fact the mysterious Chairman WDC.

In July 1979, a member of CMO issued an order explaining
that although CMO was not a “management unit,” it had the “authority and
jurisdiction to investigate, intervene and by-pass and handle into any area of
Int[ernational] Management.”
¹⁷
Early in 1978, Hubbard had reinforced
their position by approving an order which made them answerable only to him,
and urging the compliance of all other Sea Org units with CMO orders.
¹⁸
The rule was basically obey first, ask questions later.

Hubbard’s orders grew progressively more wild. Gerald Armstrong
was in the CMO at Gilman
¹⁹
: “In the summer of 1979, on the orders of
Hubbard ... I became involved in a project to build Mr. Hubbard a completely
new house near Hemet. I was personally involved with the architectural plans
for this property and saw an order from Mr. Hubbard to have built around the
property a high-block wall with openings for gun emplacements.”

Amongst Hubbard’s requirements were that the house be “in a
non-black area, dust-free, defensible, with no surrounding higher areas, and
built on bedrock.”

To maintain security, Hubbard even stopped seeing his wife,
shortly before she changed her plea to an admission of guilt. They last saw
each other at Gilman in August 1979.
²⁰
Despite her years of
faithful service, and her willingness to take the rap for him, Hubbard cast her
off. Nonetheless, she retained control of the still powerful Guardian’s Office,
and was able to remove the Deputy Commanding Officer of the CMO for meddling in
GO affairs.

In September 1979, nine of the indicted GO executives and
staff, led by Mary Sue Hubbard, signed a stipulation of evidence admitting
their involvement in the break-ins, burglaries, thefts and buggings. By their
admissions they stopped further investigation into their numerous other
misdeeds. They also avoided a drawn out trial with the inevitable adverse
publicity. The 282-page stipulation revealed the story of the infiltration of
government agencies, in startling detail. In December the GO nine were
sentenced. Agent Sharon Thomas received the shortest prison term - six months.
The others, including Mary Sue Hubbard, were sentenced to four and five year
terms. They managed to stall the day by appealing the sentences.

With the pressure building, Hubbard issued an ominous
warning from his secret headquarters, “The Purification Rundown and Atomic
War.” The faithful were summoned to meetings in Orgs the world over to hear
Hubbard’s terrible message. Executives in full dress Sea Org uniform spoke to
groups of frightened Scientologists. The Bulletin began
²¹
: “I want
Scientologists to live through World War III.”

Hubbard went on to make it perfectly clear that he held out
very little hope for the world. There was going to be a nuclear war very, very
soon. He confidently asserted that “those who have a full and complete
Purification Rundown will survive where others not so fortunate won’t. And that
poses the interesting probability that only Scientologists will be functioning
in areas experiencing heavy fallout in an Atomic War.”

In fact, Hubbard’s “Personal Communicator” visited several
principal Sea Org executives and told them that if they did not raise Scientology’s
stats by 540 percent in six months, then the world would end. They did not, and
it did not, and in later re-issues
²²
the phrase quoted above was
changed to “those who have had a full and complete Purification Rundown
could
fare better than
others not so fortunate. And that poses the interesting
probability that only Scientologists will
have had the spiritual gain that
would enable them to function
in areas experiencing heavy fallout in an
Atomic War.”

At about the time that the “Purification Rundown and Atomic
War” was invoked in an effort to galvanize Scientologists into action; the GO
predicted an FBI raid on the Gilman complex. It seemed likely that

Hubbard would be indicted either by a New York grand jury investigating
Scientology harassment of author Paulette Cooper, or a Florida grand jury
investigating Scientology’s dealings in Clearwater.
²³

There was a panic at Gilman Hot Springs to remove any
material demonstrating Hubbard’s management of Scientology. A massive document
shredder was moved to Gilman Hot Springs. The crew affectionately called it
“Jaws.” Anything which connected Hubbard to the La Quinta or Gilman properties,
or to the Guardian’s Office; any order, or anything even resembling an order
from Hubbard had to go, and accordingly tens of thousands of documents were
shredded.
²⁴
The Messenger logs which were the painstaking record of
every verbal order given by the Commodore to his Messengers, were buried for
safe-keeping in the desert.
²⁵
These logs have never come under
public scrutiny.

Gerald Armstrong was the head of the Household Unit, which
was preparing a house on the Gilman property for Hubbard’s occupation. One of
Armstrong’s juniors was perplexed when she found a cache of boxes containing
faded Hubbard letters and the like. She asked Armstrong if this material should
be shredded. Armstrong was amazed and delighted to find 20 boxes packed with
old letters, diaries, photographs, even some of Hubbard’s baby clothes.
²⁶

At last an accurate and fully documented account of the
remarkable exploits of the Founder would be possible. The fabrications of
conspiring government agencies could be disproved once and for all. Armstrong
sent a request to Hubbard asking permission to establish an archive with this
material at its core. Hubbard granted the request.
²⁷
The process
eventually discredited Hubbard’s fictional autobiography for good.

Shortly thereafter, in February or March 1980
²⁸
Hubbard hightailed it out of his apartment in Hemet, with the two Messengers
who were “on Watch,” Pat and Annie Broeker. The Broekers had been in
Scientology for a long time. Annie had been a messenger on the ship. Hubbard disappeared
without trace. He probably left because of a strong possibility that he would
be subpoenaed by the Paulette Cooper grand jury in New York.
²⁹

Armstrong was busy with a series of projects, including the
Nobel Peace Prize Project which was intended to win the Prize for Hubbard’s
development of the Purification Rundown. Increasingly stringent measures were
taken to conceal Hubbard’s control of Scientology. Armstrong was also assigned
to “Mission Corporate Category Sort-Out” (MCCS). Members of the Guardian’s
Office Legal Bureau and of the L. Ron Hubbard Personal Office met with
Hubbard’s attorney to discuss strategy. They were trying to cover the tracks of
the Religious Research Foundation, and other dubious or downright illegal
schemes, which had poured Church of Scientology money into Hubbard’s private
accounts.
³⁰

MCCS started an eddy which would become a tidal wave,
sweeping away the majority of veteran Scientologists. The entire corporate
structure was to be changed in a desperate attempt to avoid the consequences of
Guardian’s Office activities, and the ensuing concerted legal action against
the corporate entity of which it was part, the Church of Scientology of
California, the corporate heads of which were GO executives.

Hubbard dabbled with a follow-up to the Purification
Rundown, called the Survival Rundown, but most of the work was done by his
Technical Compilations Unit at Gilman Hot Springs. After lengthy surveys, the
new Rundown was released with illustrations of an American Indian paddling a
canoe, or loosing an arrow at a buffalo. Unfortunate choices as examples of survival.
The “Purif” had been advertised with a waterfall, unintentionally suggesting an
ad for menthol cigarettes.

During the summer, Armstrong’s growing collection of
documents relating to the life and times of L. Ron Hubbard was appraised by a
Scientologist collector, who valued it at around $5 million.
³¹
MCCS
were toying with the idea of creating a Trust to legitimize some of the immense
payments being made to Hubbard.

On July 16, 1980, the GO, which had precious little to
celebrate, were able to rejoice with the news that the British government’s
peculiar use of the Aliens Act was finally over. After 12 years, foreign
Scientologists could once more enter Britain legally. However, the restrictions
on Hubbard’s re-entry were not lifted.
³²

Hubbard was beginning to let slip clues to the terrible
truth of the OT levels. He issued a Bulletin called “The Nature of a Being”
³³
in which he quite publicly, yet mystifyingly, declared that “a human being ...
is not a single unit being.” Plans were underway to film
Revolt in the Stars
,
volcanic eruptions and all.

Hubbard continued railing against psychiatry
³⁴
:

Almost every modern horror crime was committed by a known criminal
who had been in and out of the hands of psychiatrists and psychologists often
many times ... Spawned by an insanely militaristic government, psychiatry and
psychology find avid support from oppressive and domineering governments. The
employer of these people classifies, even in the most generous view, as
criminal ... The credence and power of psychiatry and psychology are waning. It
hit its zenith about 1960: then it seemed their word was law and that they
could harm, injure, and kill patients without restraint. The appearance of an
actual technology of the mind - Dianetics and Scientology - has played no small
part in acting as a restraint. At one time they were on their way to turning
every baby into a future robot for the manipulation of the state and every
society into a madhouse of crime and immorality.