Let's Sell These People a Piece of Blue Sky: Hubbard, Dianetics and Scientology (56 page)

Hubbard mocks medical doctors, and most Scientologists
believe that all physical maladies have a mental or spiritual cause, and can be
relieved through auditing. OTs believe that by ridding themselves of Body
Thetans they will also rid themselves of disease. They avoid seeking proper
medical advice, which means they are often too late. Hubbard made specific
claims that his techniques had cured both cancer and leukemia.
⁴³

On May 10, 1982, the Scientologists were scheduled to start
presenting witnesses to rebut the earlier testimony to the Clearwater City
Commission. Instead their lawyer questioned the legality of the proceedings,
and, quite typically, tried to impugn Flynn’s character. He criticized the
dramatic way in which witnesses had given evidence
⁴⁴
as if people
whose lives had been ruined should retain their composure at all costs. He
complained that he had not been allowed to cross-examine witnesses, though he
failed to note that the questions had been asked by the Commission itself, and
not by Michael Flynn.

It was an empty show. The Scientologists were too late. The
evidence of their appalling past had been broadcast on local TV. No argument
regarding legal technicalities would erase from the viewers’ minds the
heartrending accounts given by the witnesses.

Even so, the Commission was not established to pronounce judgment,
simply to investigate and make recommendations for possible future action.
Despite the blaze of publicity in Florida, Scientology’s young rulers were
faced with other, more urgent problems.

1.
   
Complaint in Flynn v. Hubbard, Massachusetts District Court, case
no.83-2642-C.

2.
   
Clearwater Hearings, vol.1, p.5.

3.
   
ibid
, vol.2, p.193.

4.
   
ibid
, vol.3, pp.5-6; also
ibid
, vol.4, p.98.

5.
   
ibid
, vol.3, p.21.

6.
   
Author’s interviews with two former Messengers.

7.
   
Clearwater Hearings, vol.3, pp.47-8, 50.

8.
   
ibid
, p.91.

9.
   
ibid
, p.134.

10.
 
ibid
,
p.157.

11.
 
ibid
,
p.158.

12.
 
ibid
,
p.169.

13.
 
ibid
,
vol.4, p.10.

14.
 
ibid
,
p.55.

15.
 
ibid
,
p.13.

16.
 
ibid
,
p.76.

17.
 
ibid
,
p.122.

18.
 
ibid
,
p.122-3.

19.
 
ibid
,
p.166.

20.
 
ibid
,
p.169.

21.
 
ibid
,
pp.177f.

22.
 
ibid
,
p.183.

23.
 
ibid
,
p.193.

24.
 
ibid
,
p.197.

25.
 
ibid
,
pp.198f.

26.
 
ibid
,
pp.200f.

27.
 
Hubbard,
Creation of Human Ability
, glossary.

28.
 
Clearwater
Hearings, vol.4, pp.201f.

29.
 
ibid
,
pp.291-5.

30.
 
ibid
,
pp.317-8.

31.
 
ibid
,
pp.321-2.

32.
 
ibid
,
p.325.

33.
 
ibid
,
p.324.

34.
 
ibid
,
p.325.

35.
 
ibid
,
pp.326-7.

36.
 
ibid
,
p.328.

37.
 
ibid
,
pp.330 & 334.

38.
 
ibid
,
pp.331-2, 338-9.

39.
 
HCOPL
“Penalties for Lower Conditions”, 18 October 1967, issue IV.

40.
 
Clearwater
Hearings, vol.4, pp.334 & 340.

41.
 
ibid
,
p.344.

42.
 
ibid
,
pp.399f.

43.
 
Hubbard,
Scientology: A History of Man
, p.20; Hubbard, Technical Bulletins,
vol.1, p.337.

44.
 
ibid
,
vol.5, p.10.

PART seven

“Harass these persons in any possible
way.”

—L.
Ron Hubbard, HCO Executive Letter,
Amprinistics
,

27
September 1965

Chapter Thirty-One

“Men never do evil so completely and
cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”

—Blaise
Pascal

From the early 1950s, Hubbard had been trying out various
franchise schemes. In return for a substantial licensing fee, the purchase of a
large quantity of books, E-meters and Hubbard tapes, and the payment of 10
percent of their gross income, new Scientology Centers would be franchised.
From 1953, when the Philadelphia Center was taken over, successful Centers were
periodically absorbed as assets by Hubbard.

In the 1960s, Hubbard created a new scheme. The same rules
applied, including the tithe, and in return the Franchises (also called Centers
or Missions) had the right to give introductory courses and auditing,
eventually constituting about the first third of Hubbard’s “Bridge.” They would
have to send their graduates onto the Orgs for higher level services. They were
to adhere to the Policies and the Technology of Scientology, but were not as
tightly controlled as the Orgs. Having paid their dues, the Mission Holders
could keep the remaining profits. Some of them created very lucrative
businesses.

During 1982, Scientology Missions International, which
oversaw the activities of Missions, issued new contracts to Mission Holders. In
the words of Mission Holder Bent Corydon, “we were quickly confronted with new
articles to sign, which would essentially take away all our legal autonomy as a
separate corporation. All our corporate books were removed ... About a month
after most of us had signed these articles we were called to the Mission
Holders’ Conference.”
¹

The CMO, using their new corporate guises, were going to put
the mutineers in their place. The Guardian’s Office had quietly intimidated
individuals in private, but the CMO were going to confront a whole group of
Scientologists in a noisy showdown. They were going to put aside the mask of
friendliness, showing their true faces. The iron fist was on public display
with no pretense at a kid glove. The Mission Holders were summoned to the San
Francisco Hilton on October 17, 1982.

Before the meeting began, Mission Holder Gary Smith, who was
sitting at the back with his wife and four-year-old daughter, was ordered to
move to the unoccupied front row. He refused and was declared Suppressive on
the spot.

During 1981, Kingsley Wimbush and his Missions had become
the talk of the Scientology world. The major Mission, Steven’s Creek Boulevard,
in San Jose, was making so much money Wimbush did not know what to do with it.
It could take in over $100,000 in a week, outperforming the combined incomes of
most of the other eighty or so Missions. Before the 1982 Conference, Wimbush
had been declared Suppressive, allegedly for being the author of a “squirrel”
counseling procedure, “de-dinging.” This “squirrel” procedure had in fact been
enthusiastically distributed around the world by the Church itself. Wimbush had
been doing everything within his power to appease the new rulers and regain his
former status. So on the morning of October 17, when a Sea Org member rolled up
on his doorstep, and told him he had a few minutes to ready himself for the
journey to San Francisco, he had jumped at the chance. He thought that he would
be exonerated at last. He had no idea that he was being taken there just to be
part of a degrading spectacle.
²

The aisles were lined with unsmiling Sea Org Ethics Officers
watching the audience closely, and carrying clipboards to take note of the
least sign of dissent. The Master of Ceremonies was 22-year-old David
Miscavige, a Sea Org “Commander,” and, unbeknownst to the attendees, Chairman
of the Board of Author Services Incorporated. At the beginning of the harangue,
the Mission Holders were told that the trademarks were now in the hands of the
Religious Technology Center (RTC). Larry Heller, who was introduced as the Church’s
Attorney, had this to say
³
:

RTC has a right to send a mission directly to the individual
Mission Holders to determine whether the trademarks are being properly used by
you. This mission may review your books, your records, and interview your
personnel... ¬¬RTC ... has the right to immediately suspend any utilization by
the individual Missions of those trademarks. The word “immediate” is the key
word here. There need not be a hearing in order for there to be a suspension.
RTC will order that you no longer use the trademarks and you must stop or be
subject to civil penalties and ultimately criminal prosecution.

Attorney Heller was the only speaker not dripping with braid
and campaign ribbons. The new leaders had strutted onto the podium, puffed up
with the self-importance of their paramilitary titles, and looking like the new
rulers of a tin-pot dictatorship. But the comic elements were lost in all the
shouting. Of the new Mission articles “Warrant Officer” Lyman Spurlock, the
Corporate Affairs Director of the Church of Scientology, said the following:

From now on all Missions will be corporations. There’s [sic]
very good reasons for this. A lot of you may know that you just recently
received new corporate papers, let’s see some nods, okay. These new corporate
papers are designed to make the whole structure impregnable, especially as
regards to the IRS [Internal Revenue Service] ... RTC is a very formidable
group of Sea Org members who have the toughness to see that the Tech is
standardly applied.

“Commander” David Miscavige, the Master of Ceremonies, gave
a fervent, if bizarre, guarantee: “The [new] corporate structure assures
Scientology being around for eternity.”

“Commander” Steve Marlowe, the Inspector General of the Religious
Technology Center, was next in line to browbeat the Mission Holders: “We are a
religion and this religion is what is going to save mankind. Get the idea? 30
years from now, someone squirrels Scientology and starts calling it Scientology
because there’s a lot of money to be made ... Suddenly you have factions,
schisms, and all kinds of very horrible things - they will never occur to this
Church, never ... you have a new breed of management in the Church. They’re
tough, they’re ruthless ... They don’t get muscled around by the IRS or by
crazy loony’s ... you’re playing with the winning team.” (“The IRS” was edited
from the CMO’s published transcript of the meeting).

Ironically, the Conference itself precipitated a schism. The
Inspector General next accused the Mission Holders of “ripping-off” public from
the Orgs, the major theme of the meeting: “This management means business.
There are ecclesiastical concerns, there are secular concerns. Violations will
be prosecuted
without a doubt
[emphasis in original] and we’re just not
here to threaten you or whatever. This is your salvation too. You just take a
look at the viewpoint that someone would have behind bars looking out at the
rest of Scientology. Not too sweet. We’re not going to get stepped on ... The
Inspector General Network exists within RTC. They have tremendous information
lines. They have resources that enable them to get down to the very lowest
echelon of the field. And quite frankly things will get found out about.”

“Commander” Norman Starkey, one of only two veteran Sea Org
members to be accepted into the CMO, then took his place at the rostrum and
announced that the legal battles of both the Commodore and the Church were
almost over. This was far from the truth. Starkey went on to berate the
Scientology Church’s most effective critic, attorney Michael Flynn, at great
length. Starkey asserted that former Mission Holder Brown McKee, who had spoken
at the Clearwater Hearings, was in Flynn’s hire. Of McKee, he said:

He will never, ever, ever and I promise you, for any life
time, ever again get on any E-meter [changed to “auditing” in transcript] or
ever have a chance to get out of his trap. And those who are on OT3 knows [sic]
what that means! That means dying and dying and dying and dying again. Forever,
for eternity.

If he had bothered to check, Starkey would have found that
McKee had completed his OT3 years before. However, it gives a glimpse of the
weight Scientologists attach to their savior Hubbard’s “Tech.”

“Captain” Guillaume Lesevre had flown over from Europe to become
the new Executive Director International only days before the Conference. He
complained that although Missions were sending their public to the relatively
plush Flag Land Base, in Clearwater, they were not sending them into their
local Orgs. He found practice unreasonable. Simply because an Org was “dirty”
was not reason enough not to send well-heeled new public to it.

Lesevre accused those who had written books about Scientology,
on sale throughout the Church, of “trying to make money out of the [sic] L. Ron
Hubbard’s technology,” although most of these books were copyrighted in
Hubbard’s name, and published by his own Scientology Publications
Organizations.

Then Lesevre issued a quota to each Mission. The US Missions
were to send a total of 348 people to Orgs during the following
week
.
There was a real threat that if they failed to meet these quotas, which were
very high, something unpleasant, would happen to them. Furthermore, the quotas
would be increased each week.