Let's Sell These People a Piece of Blue Sky: Hubbard, Dianetics and Scientology (54 page)

The Mission Holders demanded the presence of the Watchdog
Committee. Mission Holder Bent Corydon, whose Riverside Mission had just been
returned to him, has joked that the Mission Holders were quite ready to fly out
to Gilman Hot Springs, and explain matters to the WDC “with baseball bats.”
Before this could happen, representatives of the WDC arrived to quell the
“Mutiny.”
²²

Senior Case Supervisor International David Mayo was there,
and rather lamely started giving a pep talk on new “Technical” research. Mayo
did not get very far. Norman Starkey, who had arrived with the WDC, and was
actually in charge of the Church’s new non-GO legal bureau, tried to read a
Hubbard article about tolerance and forgiveness called “What is Greatness?” He
did not get very far either. David Miscavige looked on, as the meeting broke up
into smaller groups, with the Mission Holders trying to explain their actions
to the WDC representatives. Their attempts were unsuccessful.

Unbeknownst to most of those at the meeting, there really
was a plan to wrest control from the Watchdog Committee. A small group of
Scientologists, including a few Mission Holders and veteran Sea Org members,
took part in this plot. It fell apart when one of their number reported their
secret discussions.

Hubbard was given the CMO account of events, and started to
send dispatches to senior executives at Gilman describing the Mission Holders’
“mutiny,” and an infiltration by enemy agents. Hubbard raged about Don Purcell
and the early days, when “vested interests” had tried to wrest Dianetics from
his control.
²³

Swift action was taken to counter the “mutiny.” On December
23, 1981, a Policy Letter was issued entitled “International Watchdog
Committee.” Perhaps only a few people noticed that it was not signed by L. Ron
Hubbard, but by the International Watchdog Committee. It stated, quite simply:
“The International Watchdog Committee is the most senior body for management in
the Church of Scientology International.”

Four days later, Executive Director International “for life”
Bill Franks was replaced. The coup was very nearly complete. In the midst of
this frantic activity, a redefinition of the revered state of Clear was issued
over Hubbard’s name. All earlier definitions involving perfect recall, a
complete absence of psychosomatic ailments and the like, although true were no
longer valid. The new definition was a wonderful piece of circular reasoning,
beautifully self-perpetuating in its illogic
²⁴
: “A Clear is a being
who no longer has his own reactive mind.”

If one accepts the hypothesis of the reactive mind, then a
Clear does not have it. The definition does however imply that he could have
the reactive minds of others (body thetans?), and be as incapable as ever. No
scientific experiment could defeat this new definition. Dianetics would
continue to pretend itself a science, but remain beyond verification. It could
neither be proven nor disproven, having been put squarely into the realm of
faith.

1.
   
HCOPL “Executive Director International”, 11 December 1980.

2.
   
Author’s correspondence with DeDe Voegeding.

3.
   
Author’s interviews with former Watchdog Committee members, and a former
Executive Director International.

4.
   
Mary Sue Hubbard in CSC v. Armstrong, vol.6, pp.823 & 863; Laurel
Sullivan in
ibid
, vol.19a, pp.3108-9; author’s interview with Harvey
Haber, November 1983.

5.
   
Vorm in CSC v. Armstrong, vol.4, p.557.

6.
   
Sullivan in
ibid
, vol.19a, pp.3144f.

7.
   
Author’s interviews with Voegeding and John Nelson.

8.
   
Author’s interview with former GO executive.

9.
   
PAC Base Order 323, 26 July 1981.

10.
 
Author’s
interview with a member of the mission; also Peter Greene tape, 23 June 1982.

11.
 
Author’s
interviews with former CMO executive and with a senior GO official who suffered
the program; also David Gaiman public talk, October 1983.

12.
 
Author’s
interview with former GO Legal staff member.

13.
 
David
Mayo letter to “Mark”, dated 8 December 1983.

14.
 
Incorporation
papers.

15.
 
see
13.

16.
 
Peter
Greene tape, 23 June 1982.

17.
 
see
16; also Complaint in Martin Samuels v. Hubbard, Circuit Court, Oregon State,
Multnomah County, case no.A8311 07227; author’s interview with Bent Corydon.
Corydon allegedly received two million dollars in settlement.

18.
 
Centre
issue 19.

19.
 
Articles
of Incorporation.

20.
 
Litt
in CSC v. Armstrong, vol.28, p.4734.

21.
 
Brown
McKee in Clearwater Hearings, vol.4, pp.397ff.

22.
 
Bent
Corydon tape, July 1983.

23.
 
see
13.

24.
 
HCOB
“The State of Clear”, 14 December 1981.

Chapter Thirty

“There must be discussion to show how
experience is to be interpreted. Wrong opinions and practices gradually yield
to fact and argument; but facts and arguments, to produce any effect on the
mind, must be brought before it.”

—John
Stuart Mill,
On Liberty

In 1979, attorney Michael Flynn was approached by a former
Scientologist who wanted her money back. She told him that if he took the case,
he would receive a letter giving unsavory details of her past. He did not
believe her, but sure enough the letter arrived. Flynn became interested in the
Church of Scientology, and his interest increased markedly when someone put
water in the gas tank of his plane. He and his son had a fortunate escape.
Flynn suspected Scientology, and started taking on more and more clients with litigation
against Scientology.
¹

The town of Clearwater, Florida was increasingly worried by
the Scientology presence. The
St Petersburg Times
had won a Pulitzer
Prize for its coverage of Guardian’s Office dirty tricks. The courts had made
the documentation used in the FBI case available; The
St Petersburg Times
,
and Clearwater’s own Sun newspaper, had publicized several Guardian’s Office
operations. The Clearwater City Commissioners, headed by a new mayor,
approached Michael Flynn, by now an expert on Scientology, to help them in
their investigation of Scientology.

Public Hearings were held in Clearwater in May 1982. Flynn
was to present witnesses and evidence regarding Scientology for a week, and
then the Church would be given the same time for its reply. Religious issues
were not in question. The City Commissioner James Berfield opened the Hearings
with a statement of intent
²
:

The purpose of these public hearings is to investigate alleged
violation of criminal and civil laws, and the alleged violation of fundamental
rights by the Church of Scientology, an organization which now conducts extensive
activities within our city. The purpose of the investigation is to determine
whether there is a need for legislation to correct the alleged violations. It
is not our purpose to interfere with any of the beliefs, doctrines, tenets, or
activities of Scientology which arguably fall within the ambit of religious
belief or activity in the broadest legal interpretation. It is not our purpose
to conduct a witch hunt and receive testimony, documents, or any other type of
evidence which is not reasonably related to significant, vital areas of
municipal concern.

The Clearwater Hearings were locally televised. Scientologists
were warned not to watch them. Eddie Walters, who had been a Class VIII Auditor
and case supervisor, and a member of the Las Vegas GO, set the stage with a
broad account of Scientology and its underhanded dealings. Then Hubbard’s
estranged son, Nibs, took the stand. He painted his father as a complete
con-man, a sinister black magician whose insights were the result of horrendous
drug abuse.

Lori Taverna spoke of some of her experiences. She had
joined

Scientology in 1965, completed all of the available OT
levels, and become a Class VIII Auditor. She abandoned her business and her
family when “NOTs” was released in 1978 to become a Sea Org NOTs Auditor. A
year at Flag, in Clearwater, slowly disabused her of the world-saving mission
of Scientology. She returned to Los Angeles ill and confused, and after 16
years of involvement, gradually drifted out of the Scientology fold. She
described the last scene of her withdrawal
³
:

A particular friend came over to the house - she had just
received her NOTs auditing - and she came in and she said how wonderful she was
feeling, that she went to a restaurant, she was eating a hamburger, and all of
a sudden the hamburger started screaming at her, and then the walls started
screaming. And then she said tears came out of her eyes because she felt so
sorry for the other people in the restaurant because they didn’t know what she
knew.

Casey Kelly had been Director of Income at the Flag Land
Base. He testified that income there had averaged $400-500,000 per week. In a
good week they could take $1 million. The highest income Kelly remembered was
$2,300,000.
⁴

Kelly spoke of a time when Church staff were forbidden to
have children because there was insufficient room in the Flag Land Base
nursery.
⁵
Former Messengers have said that children were completely
prohibited at Gilman Hot Springs as well. Abortions were common.
⁶

Kelly complained about the CMO unit at Flag, the youngest of
whom were 10-year-olds. He described them as a “small army”: “most of the
younger ones don’t have positions of vast authority, but if one of them had
told me what to do, I would have said, ‘Yes, sir’.” When asked what happened if
someone annoyed one of these child Messengers, Kelly said: “You’ll find
yourself in a blue tee shirt scrubbing a garage usually.” In other words on the
Rehabilitation Project Force, living in the garage at Flag.
⁷

Rosie Pace was introduced to Scientology by her sister, Lori
Taverna, when she was 13.
⁸
She joined the Church, and her formal
education ended. The Board of Education accepted representations made by the
Scientologists that Pace needed counseling. At 14, Pace became an Auditor, and
began a career which culminated in her working at the Flag Land Base, in Clearwater,
as a NOTs Auditor. After 16 years in Scientology she said of its curative
claims: “I have never seen someone be cured of an illness.”
⁹

David Ray was at the Flag Land Base cleaning the rooms of
paying public: “Well, if your statistics are up, every two weeks you’re
supposed to have twenty-four hours off, called liberty... I would keep asking
them for time off because I was working, oh, anywhere from eighteen to twenty
hours a day... And they wouldn’t give it to me.”
¹⁰

Ray went on to express his profound resentment at the
treatment he had received: “the thing that really kills me about this whole ...
operation is ... by the questions they ask and the things they do, they open
you up to your innermost personal self ... you’re extremely vulnerable ... They
pick you up and they’ll raise you so high you feel like you’re on top of the
world and, then, they’ll drop you and they’ll let you feel like a bottomless
pit ... And those are the kinds of terror and searing emotions that go through
a person’s mind when they’re there ... They want to leave; they want to help
themselves. You get physically tired. Sometimes you don’t even have time to
take a shower. Ninety percent of the people that walk around there just - they
stink.”
¹¹

Ray inevitably ended up on the Rehabilitation Project Force.
His account of it was horrifying. The RPF lived on a diet of leftovers including
wilted lettuce which was beginning to rot, and cheese with mold all over it.
One day, they were given French fries, and while eating them Ray discovered
that one of the potatoes was in fact a fried palmetto bug. From that point on,
he used his weekly pay of $9.60 to buy cookies from a health food store. It was
all he could afford.
¹²

The Hartwells talked about their bizarre experiences making
movies with Hubbard in the California desert. George Meister told of the tragic
death of his daughter aboard the
Apollo
in 1971, and the disgraceful
treatment he received thereafter.

Lavenda van Schaik, Flynn’s first Scientology litigant,
claimed that her Confessional folders had been “culled,” and a list of her deepest
secrets sent to the press.
¹³
She was persistently harassed by the
Guardian’s Office, whose Op against her was codenamed “Shake and Bake.”
¹⁴
Before leaving Scientology, she had been to the Flag Land Base, and found a
serious outbreak of hepatitis there, which was not reported to the authorities.
¹⁵
An affidavit by one of the victims of this outbreak was read into the record.
¹⁶

Janie Peterson, who had belonged to the Guardian’s Office,
testified about her departure from Scientology: “I was terrified to even
discuss the possibility of leaving Scientology with my own husband. I was
afraid that he would stay in Scientology. I was afraid that he would write me
up to the Guardian’s Office and that they would then come and take me away
somewhere because I had so much information.”
¹⁷

Scientology had driven such a wedge between Peterson and her
husband that she did not realize that he was also contemplating leaving.
Neither dared tell the other. After leaving, she received a series of phone
calls where the caller would hang-up when the phone was answered. Then she
found a note in her car saying simply, “Watch it.” Then a note in her mailbox
saying, “Die.” In the middle of the night, she would hear a knock on her door,
and open it to find no-one there.
¹⁸