Let's Sell These People a Piece of Blue Sky: Hubbard, Dianetics and Scientology (57 page)

But all of this was just a warm up. The International
Finance Dictator took the stage, and came right to the heart of the matter. He
did not mince words:

All right now, collectively you guys are in some
weird lower [Ethics] condition. By association if no other reason you have
allowed the Missions to go squirrel and I mean squirrel ... right now you guys
are CI [Counter Intention] on my lines, maybe one exception in this room, but I
doubt it, because you guys are sitting on public, you’re ripping off the Orgs,
you’re doing all manner of crazy things...

Now some of the guys you see standing around here
are International Finance Police and their job is to go out and find this stuff
[crimes against the Church] and if you guys are guilty of it, you’ve just had
it...

The old routine here was you got Scientology justice
procedures applied to you when you did something wrong. Well you guys are a separate
corporation from the Church and when you rip-off or steal from the org, or
bribe people it’s a corporate crime and you can be real sure that you’re going
to all end up in the slammer.

The International Finance Dictator then told the Mission
Holders they were going to pay $75 a head for the privilege of having been
shouted at, and ordered them to donate five percent of their net income to a
campaign to promote
Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health
. He
added: “if I hear one person in this room who is not coughing up five percent
minimum you’ve got an investigation coming your way because you’ve got other
crimes.”

The Dictator then explained how his International Finance
Police were going to raise money. He did not tell the Mission Holders why vast
sums were needed, and perhaps he did not know.

Do you have any idea about the penalties for taking
public off the Orgs’ lines – it’s $10,000 a head per policy. If you rip-off a
staff member or have a staff member working in your Mission at the same time
he’s employed by an org you pay for the entirety of his training/processing
[counseling] plus a $2,000 fine...

If we will pull this thing together and get these nuts
off the line and actually do Dianetics and Scientology you can go anyplace you
want to go. Right now there is so much criminality floating through this
mission network I don’t want to hear about it. IF you come clean we’ll work out
some reparations for all the rip-offs that you’ve done in the past and
straighten the record. If you don’t want to come clean, forget it. If you’ve
done stuff in the past and you come clean now we’ll give you the benefit of the
doubt ... You don’t come clean tonight and I find out something after this,
man, you’ve had it.

The Mission Holders were ordered to write up their “overts”
(transgressions), not an unusual procedure for staff in Scientology Orgs. They
were then subjected to the largest multiple Security Check ever witnessed in
Scientology. The interrogators sat behind their E-meters at a row of tables,
and the Mission Holders sat in rows facing them, confessing their “crimes.”

Although the International Finance Dictator’s gave
assurances that if they “came clean” it would be easier for them, it is hard to
see how it could have been made more difficult. After the Sec Check Dictator
Reynolds took the platform again, and gave examples of the “reparations” the
Church demanded. The best established Mission chain, the Church of Scientology
Mission of Davis, or COSMOD, was to pay “millions of dollars.” Wimbush’s former
Mission had been assessed for a quarter of million dollars for the last few
months alone. The Missions in these two chains were to be visited first,
followed by every other Scientology Mission in the world.

Missions were allowed to train people only to a certain
level. Beyond that level, trainee Auditors would have to go to a Church Org. It
was alleged that Missions had taken to “delivering” some of these prohibited
courses, thus invading the exclusive domain of the Orgs.

Missions were only allowed to audit people on the levels
below Clear. Then they had to go to an Org, and on to one of the four Advanced
Orgs. The Missions were not allowed to audit Clears. It was alleged that they
had. And they were to be fined $10,000 for any Clear they had audited.

It was a peculiar situation. As Commander Lesevre observed,
the Church Orgs were often rather scruffy. Their income was low, and their
staff pay very poor, usually well below the poverty level, as members of
religious organizations are not protected by minimum wage laws. Of course, the
lion’s share of the income was going to Hubbard. The Mission Holders were
willing to invest profits back into their Missions, and were not subject to a
constant round of Sea Org missionaires, so their operation was far more
efficient. The Missions were almost invariably more attractive environments, and
more of their income went to the staff. Consequently, the Missions attracted
the best qualified Scientologists as staff. It was not unusual to find Class 8
Auditors in the Missions. They had received the equivalent of two years
full-time training in Scientology counseling procedures, everything up to and
including OT3. Orgs would often struggle along with a single Class 4 auditor,
who had received only a few months training. The Missions were generally far
more financially successful than the Church’s Orgs, but they were restricted in
the services they could deliver, because the Sea Org controlled the levels
beyond Clear.

Finance Dictator Reynolds, having informed the Mission
Holders of the fines, told them that the International Finance Police would be
sending out “verification missions,” at a cost of $15,000 per day, payable by
the Mission Holder at the start of each new day.

It is difficult to convey the force with which these tirades
were delivered. A tape does exist, and, gloating over their achievement, the
young rulers even published a carefully censored and reworded transcript. They
wanted Scientologists to make no mistake about how “tough and ruthless,” their
new masters were. This transcript was crucial in my decision to leave the
Church. Further, I used it very successfully to persuade others to leave.

1.
   
Interview in Copenhagen Corner, issue 11; see also Jocelyn Armstrong in
CSC v. Armstrong, vol.21, p.3689, and Gerald Armstrong in
ibid
, vol.10,
p.1651.

2.
   
Wimbush tape, 1984.

3.
   
Sea Org Executive Directive “The Flow Up the Bridge - the US Mission Holders
Conference - San Francisco 1982”, 7 November 1982. A tape also exists of the proceedings
and was consulted in the preparation of this chapter. The transcript sanitizes
the actual conference and is vital to anyone wishing to show the lack of
corporate integrity in the cult’s operations – Scientology is a monolithic corporation
and the corporate changes were clearly made by a handful of CMO Int officials
under the direction of David Miscavige (see also Miscavige’s Declaration of
February 1994 in the Fishman case).

Chapter Thirty-Two

“I myself believe that the tendency
towards obedience is one of the most sinister of human traits.”

—Anthony
Storr,
Feet of Clay

Over the years the Mission Holders had learned to be wary of
the Sea Org. They had watched the pageant of faces alternately screaming and
smiling; seen the little tyrants rise and fall. In the past, Hubbard had
stepped in and put a few “heads on pikes.” The Mission Holders also knew that
expulsion from the Church of Scientology would effectively ruin their Missions,
so all they could do was knuckle under and wait. Lambasted by the leaders of
the new order, surrounded by scowling members of the International Finance
Police, the Mission Holders tried to stay cool. This time, however, waiting it
out would not work. The situation did not blow over, and the usual horrified
Hubbard edict denying all knowledge, did not appear either.

Martin Samuels was a legend amongst Scientologists. He ran a
chain of five Missions. The Church’s magazine
Center
, devoted to the
Mission network, was always heavy with praise for Samuels. A 1975 issue says
that in a single year
3,000
new people started the Communication Course
in Samuels’ Missions. His Missions usually came out at the top in the quarterly
Mission statistics, even taken individually. In
Center
23 Martin Samuels
was “Particularly COMMENDED” for his “brilliant application.” Out of the 50
listed, his Sacramento, Portland and Davis Missions were the top three in the
Center
“Award of Merit” contest for that quarter.

In the early 1970s Samuels started the Delphian Project. It
began as a center for research into Alternative Energy, but a school, the
Delphian Foundation, was established up for the children of Project staff. The
school used Hubbard’s “Study Technology.” It soon it generated interest from
other Scientologists, so the school became Delphi’s main activity. By the time
of the Mission Holders’ Conference Samuels had 12 schools, with over 600
pupils.

Scientology Missions report various performance statistics
to the Church every week. The Mission income figures are listed and distributed
to Mission Holders to show which are most successful. For the first week of
September 1982, just before the Conference, the total income of the 80 or so
Missions throughout the world was $808,435. For the US Missions it was
$643,737, and Samuels’ Missions made up $172,825 of that. Which is to say they
represented over a quarter of the US Missions income and over a fifth of the
World-wide income. Incidentally, Kingsley Wimbush’s major Mission made $154,101
that week. So between them Samuels and Wimbush accounted for more than half of
the US Missions income. Ten percent of this was paid straight to the Church.

But at the end of the Mission Holders’ Conference Samuels
spoke out. On top of their normal 10 percent tithe to the Scientology Church,
the Mission Holders had been ordered to pay 5 percent for a promotional
campaign to Bridge Publications. Samuels explained that he could not pay the
additional tithe. His Missions were non-profit, tax-exempt corporations, and
Bridge had been separated from the Church and made into a for-profit
corporation, and such donations would be illegal. Samuels was taken into a side
room by eight members of the International Finance Police, and given a “Gang
Sec-check.” He was threatened with a “Suppressive declare” if he did not make
“personal payments to L. Ron Hubbard.” So he handed over $20,000 and a $10,000
wrist watch to a Finance Policeman.
¹
Samuels access to his Missions’
bank accounts was frozen. His wife was warned that she would have to
“disconnect” from him if he was declared Suppressive. He was ordered to Flag,
in Florida, to undergo more Security Checks, for which he had to pay $300 an
hour.

Within a month Martin Samuels had paid $40,000 to the
Scientology Church. This still was not enough, and he was ordered to the International
Finance Police Ethics Officer at Flag. At the meeting, Samuels was told he had
been declared Suppressive, and shown the confession of a Scientology executive
who had admitted to being a transvestite with homosexual tendencies. Samuels
claims that he was ordered to
publicly
confess to “acts that were
similarly degrading.” Otherwise the Church would file both civil and criminal
prosecutions against him that would keep him “tied up in court forever.” He was
also warned that he would be watched and the Church would “keep tabs on him
forever.”

Samuels refused to demean himself by signing a fictitious
confession, even though his Missions were now in the hands of the Church, and
he had surrendered control of his personal accounts. The Scientologists now
launched their campaign in earnest. Samuels’ wife, family, business associates
and friends were told he had stolen funds from his Missions, and that he was
“insane” and an enemy of the Church of Scientology.

The Suppressive declare was published, and Samuels’ wife
left him, taking the children with her. She “disconnected” and started divorce
proceedings. His children were told he was a “criminal and would probably be
going to jail in the near future.” Scientologist business associates and
friends were ordered to disconnect from him or be declared Suppressive
themselves. Even Samuels’ stock-broker, who was a Scientologist, was ordered to
disconnect, and refused to take instructions to sell stock. As he had been
declared, Samuels was told he must leave his sister’s house, where he was
staying, or she too would be declared Suppressive.

In a few weeks Samuels had lost the business he had built up
over 13 years, with an annual turn-over of millions of dollars. His 17 year marriage
was destroyed, and he was deprived of his possessions. Samuels felt like a
college kid again, rolling up penniless on his parents door-step. He responded
by filing a law-suit against Hubbard in 1983, claiming damages of $72 million.
A jury awarded $30 million, and the Scientologists appealed the decision. The
case was finally settled in 1986 with an out of court payment of $500,000 to
Samuels.
²

There were very few of the big Mission Holders left. Amongst
them was Bent Corydon, who held the franchise for Riverside, in southern
California. Soon after the Conference, in October 1982, the Finance Police
arrived. They demanded, and were paid, $15,000 for their first day. Then they
demanded, and were paid, $15,000 for their second day. At this point Corydon
ran out of ready money.
³

Corydon wanted to stay in the Church. He had built the
Mission up from nothing, lost it in the 1970s, and finally fought his way back,
only to discover that the reserves of nearly a million dollars that he had
built up were gone. He could not face losing the Riverside Mission again. In
desperation he took his attorney’s advice to sell the valuable Mission building
to himself before it was seized in lieu of some trumped up “fine.”