Let's Sell These People a Piece of Blue Sky: Hubbard, Dianetics and Scientology (9 page)

At first I believed that my references to the violations of
Hubbard’s Policy Letters would suffice and that the Organization would automatically
correct itself. By this time I was not so sure. It was rumored that Scientology
had been taken over by young Sea Org members. I thought I was witnessing an
overreaction to some internal plot on the part of some of those who had been
“Declared.” But I was amazed at the genuine fear expressed by some
Scientologists I knew, who privately said it was pointless to complain.

In September 1983, I visited a friend who had been in
Scientology for 20 years. She showed me a letter from David Mayo
⁷
,
which had just been broadly circulated among Scientologists. Mayo had been the
“Senior Case Supervisor International,” and Hubbard’s heir apparent. Mayo had
been declared “Suppressive” earlier that year.
⁸
With the reintroduction
of Disconnection, Scientologists were not supposed to read his letter. Even so,
many did.

Mayo described his background in Scientology from his first
involvement in 1957. He had been a staff-member from that time, joining the Sea
Org in 1968, shortly after its inception. He had been trained by Hubbard
personally, and was one of a handful of top-grade “Class 12” Auditors. From the
early 1970s Mayo had supervised Hubbard’s own auditing. He had worked with
Hubbard on OT 5, 6 and 7 (NOTs and Solo NOTs) and was Hubbard’s Auditor in
1978. He was one of the very few people privy to the many as yet unreleased OT
levels.

Mayo claimed that Hubbard had appointed him his successor in
a “long and detailed letter” in April 1982. Hubbard had said he was going to
“drop the body” (his expression for dying). Mayo would be responsible for the
“Technology” of Scientology until Hubbard’s next incarnation.

Mayo wrote that a group of young Sea Org members had cut his
line to Hubbard who was in seclusion by this time, and that “after all my
efforts to rectify matters internally, I left in February 1983.” He had started
an independent Scientology group called the “Advanced Ability Center” in Santa
Barbara, California.

Mayo’s letter had a tremendous impact on me. My complaints
to the management were getting nowhere, so I decided to have a straight talk
with a Sea Org member I knew well, who had just returned from Scientology’s
Florida headquarters. He enthused about his experiences there and assured me
that Scientology management was in better shape than ever before. He had worked
briefly in the Ethics Office at the Florida “Flag Land Base” and, to my
surprise, said that resignations from the Church were pouring in. He said this
in an attempt to reassure me that the Church was aware of the situation. I was
far from reassured. I had only heard of one resignation, an Australian, John
Mace, who lived in East Grinstead. Pouring in?

How could David Mayo, who had worked so closely with Hubbard
for so many years, suddenly turn out to be “Suppressive”? Surely, Hubbard
should be pretty good at spotting Suppressives. Why had it taken him twenty
years to spot Mayo?

I asked my Sea Org friend to tell me who was actually
running Scientology as I had heard about a mysterious group called the
“Watchdog Committee” for some time. He said they ran the Church, but, although
he was a long-term Sea Org member, he had no idea who was on the Watchdog
Committee. Worse yet, he did not care. I grew heated and said I was not willing
to be ordered to Disconnect from friends, least of all by these anonymous
people. I wanted to know who they were. I told him that I would write to my
“Declared” friend if the reply I received from “Ron” was unsatisfactory. I had
followed “Policy” to the letter and my genuine grievances were being ignored. I
was unwilling to lose a close friend because of the whims of bureaucrats.

The following day I received my reply from “Ron.” It was as
evasive as the earlier replies. I was completely dismayed. Again my request had
been ignored. It did not matter that Hubbard’s published Policy was being
flaunted. I could do nothing more inside the Church: the “highest authority”
had denied my request. The next day I wrote to my Declared friend, who had been
a senior Church executive and expressed my lack of confidence in the new
management. I asked him what was really going on.

A few days later I received a copy of a Church “Executive
Directive” called “The Story of a Squirrel: David Mayo.”
⁹
“Squirrel”
is one of the most disparaging terms in the Scientology vocabulary. It means
someone who alters Scientology in some way, the most heinous of crimes.
Squirrels are profiteers who pervert Scientology because of their inability to
correctly apply it.

“The Story of a Squirrel” was written by Mayo’s replacement,
the new Senior Case Supervisor International, Ray Mithoff. It is full of fatuous
statements, many of which were attributed to Hubbard:

Mayo was simply a bird-dog. The definition of a bird-dog is:
“Somebody sent in by an enemy to mess things up.” (LRH) [sic] ... The actual situation
is that you had a bird dog right in the middle of the control room: David Mayo.
He was sabotaging execs [executives] by wrecking their cases [destroying their
psychological well-being] None of this was by accident or incompetence. Of all
the crazy, cock-eyed sabotage I’ve ever seen, man, he was at it. He was not
doing Dianetics and Scientology. He was just calling it that and using the
patter. His obvious intention was to wreck all cases of persons who could help
others.

What shocked me most was the carping tone of the issue. It
seemed to be the product of a deranged mind. It gave me the distinct idea that
the faceless “Watchdog Committee” was a self-interested power group, intent
upon destroying the Church, and all that I thought the Church stood for.

I was suffering from a severe bout of influenza and went to
Saint Hill for a counseling “assist.” Instead, I was interrogated about my - at
that time - non-existent, connections with people who had resigned from the
Church of Scientology, most especially John Mace.

The following afternoon I was summoned to Saint Hill. Having
denied all of the supposed connections, and bearing in mind my physical
condition, I expected to receive counseling. To my surprise, I was subjected to
an Ethics interview. I sat there for over an hour, with a raging temperature,
trying to keep my distance so that no-one would catch the virus, and besieged
by a series of half-smiling, half-menacing justifications of the excesses of
Scientology management. All the Ethics Officer unwittingly persuaded me to do
was to ignore the taboo, and ask questions of those who might know: the
“Suppressives.”

The next day I phoned John Mace. The Church was clearly
frightened of him and its insistent criticism determined me to hear his story.
Mace said I would probably be “Declared” for seeing him. I did not care, I
wanted to know the truth and to assert my right to communicate with whomsoever
I chose. Mace probably thought I was a Church agent. He said later that several
copies of tapes had disappeared during visits from people ostensibly upset with
the Church. The tapes were by various Declared Scientologists and described
events leading up to an alleged take-over by Miscavige and his cronies.

I listened to tapes and read newsletters and resignations
that had been passing from hand to hand in the Scientology world. The message
was clear. The Church had been taken over. Hubbard was dead or incapacitated.
The new rulers were fanatics intent on completely taking over all power within
the Church. To do this they had “Declared” about 1,000 people.

When John Mace left for Australia a few weeks later, I found
myself at the center of the burgeoning English Independent Scientology
movement. I helped to establish the first Independent group to deliver
auditing, but mostly concentrated on finding out what had caused the schism and
on persuading people either to make their complaints against the Church
thoroughly known, or to leave and help to create an Independent movement.

People I had known for years suddenly stopped talking to me.
I came under pressure from the Church’s new Guardian’s Office, redubbed the
“Office of Special Affairs.” I was followed by Private Investigators, who
snapped photos of me in the street. I became the target of a whispering
campaign. A Scientologist who once worked for me called my friends and
acquaintances and told them lies about me; for example, claiming that I had
undergone electric shock treatment.

For months, I was inundated with calls and visits by
frightened and confused Scientologists. I devoted all of my time to helping
them escape the clutches and some of the conditioning of the Church. Then, in
November 1983, a friend left me 700 pages of material relating to Hubbard and
the Church.

In that mass of documents were affidavits by former members
of Hubbard’s personal staff; affidavits by ex-Guardian’s Office staff about
their criminal activities; and 100 pages about Hubbard’s past including his
college reports, an abstract of his Naval record and letters answering
enquiries about his supposed achievements. Each and every Hubbard claim about
his past seemed to have been false.

One of the affidavits was by Anne Rosenblum who joined the
Sea Org in June 1973
¹⁰
By the end of 1976, she was in the
“Commodore’s Messenger Organization.” The following spring she was finally assigned
to Hubbard’s personal retinue at his California hide-out. This is Rosenblum’s
description of Hubbard (she calls him “LRH”):

He had long reddish-greyish hair down past his
shoulders, rotting teeth, a really fat gut ... He didn’t look anything like his
pictures...

The Messengers went everywhere with LRH [Hubbard] We
chauffeured him, we followed him around carrying his ashtray and cigarette
lighter, and we also lit his cigarettes for him. LRH would explode if he had to
light his own cigarette.

I found LRH was very moody, and had a temper like a
volcano. He would yell at anybody for something he didn’t like, and he seemed
mad at one thing or another 50% of the time. He was a fanatic about dust and
laundry. The Messengers, at the time I was there, were also doing his laundry.
There was hardly a day that he wouldn’t scream about how someone used too much
soap in the laundry, and his shirts smelled like soap, or how terrible the soap
was that someone used (though it was the same soap used the day before), so
someone must have changed the soap ... I was petrified of doing the laundry.

He is also a fanatic about cleanliness. Even after his
office had just been dusted top to bottom, he would come in screaming about the
dust and how ‘you are all trying to kill me!’ That was one of his favorite
lines - like if dinner didn’t taste right – ‘You are trying to kill me!’

In another affidavit, former Hubbard aide Gerald Armstrong
alleged that Hubbard had received millions of dollars from Scientology, despite
his public protestations to the contrary.
¹¹

My idea of Hubbard as a compassionate philosopher-scientist,
a man of great honesty and integrity, was shaken to the core. Even so, for
several months I retained my belief in the “Technology,” or auditing
procedures, of Scientology. I started a newsletter called
Reconnection
,
which was read by thousands of Scientologists, but my belief was evaporating. I
finally realized that I had taken so much of this “Science” on trust.

By the summer of 1984, I had drifted away from the “Tech,”
but was still caught up in the quest for the truth about Hubbard and his organization.
What follows is the fruit of that quest.

1.
   
Sea Organization Executive Directive 2192 international “Re: List of
Declared Suppressive Persons”, 27 January 1983.

2.
   
HCOB “The Anti-Scientologist - The Anti-Social Personality”, 27
September 1966.

3.
   
HCOPL “Suppressive Acts - Suppression of Scientology and Scientologists
- The Fair Game Law”, 1 March 1965. However, in Church of Scientology of California
v. Armstrong, Donna Reeve testified that “disconnection” had been used by
Hubbard in the 1950s.

4.
   
HCOPL “Cancellation of disconnection”, 15 November 1968.

5.
   
Scientology Policy Directive 28 “Suppressive Act - Dealing with a
Suppressive Person”, 13 August 1982.

6.
   
HCOPL “Standing Orders” 18 December 1961; LRH Executive Directive 323
international “Your Letters to Ron”, 21 January 1981; LRH Executive Directive
346 international “The SO no. 1 Line”, 10 May 1982.

7.
   
“An Open Letter to all Scientologists from David Mayo”.

8.
   
Flag Conditions Order “Writ of Expulsion and Suppressive Person Declare
- David Mayo”, 2 March 1983.

9.
   
Sea Organization Executive Directive 2344 International “The Story of a
Squirrel: David Mayo”, 20 August 1983.

10.
 
Anne
Rosenblum affidavit, undated, pp.22, 26-27.

11.
 
Affidavit
of Gerald Armstrong, 19 October 1982, p.9.

PART two

Appoint Amongst you

Some small few

To tell about me lies

And invent wicked Things

And spread out infamy

Abroad and Within

And to stand before

Our altars

And insult and

Lie and tell

Evil rumors about us all.

—L.
Ron Hubbard,
Hymn of Asia

Chapter five

“To be free, a man must be honest with
himself and with his fellows”

—L.
Ron Hubbard,
Honest People Have Rights Too
¹

Novelists often elaborate their own mundane experience into
fictional adventures. Hubbard did not confine his creativity to his fictional
work. He reconstructed his entire past, exaggerating his background to fashion
a hero, a superhero, even. Although Hubbard wrote many imaginative stories, his
own past became his most elaborate work of fiction.