The shocking story behind one of
the most dangerous "religious cults" in America today.
In the late 1940s, pulp
writer L. Ron Hubbard declared, "Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous.
If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be
to start his own religion."
Hubard did start his own religion, calling
it the "Church of Scientology," and it has grown into an enterprise today
grossing an estimated $100 million a year worldwide.His churches have paid
him a percentage of their gross, usually ten percent, and stashed untold
riches away in bank accounts in Switzerland and elsewhere under his and
his wife's control. Surrounded by aides who cater to his every whim, he
reportedly lives on church-owned property, formerly a resort, in Southern
California.
Scientology is one of the oldest, wealthiest - and
most dangerous - of the major "new religions" or cults operating in America
today. Some of its fanatic operatives have engaged in burglary, espionage,
kidnapping and smear campaigns to further their goals. Says Assistant U.S.
Attorney Raymond Banoun, who directed a massive investigation that resulted
in conspiracy or theft convictions of nine top Scientology officials in
Washington, D.C., last October: "The evidence presented to the court shows
brazen criminal campaigns against private and public organizations and
individuals. The Scientology officials hid behind claims of religious liberty
while inflicting injuries upon every element of society."
Sci-Fi Fantasy
In 1950, Hubbard, then 39, published Dianetics:
The Modern Science of Mental Health. In 1954 he founded the first Church
of Scientology in Washington, D.C. By 1978 the organization claimed 38
U.S. churches, with 41 more abroad, and 172 "missions" and 5,437,000 members
worldwide. These claims are highly doubtful; critical observers have estimated
a hard core of around 3000 full-time staff and no more than 30,000 adherents
in the United States.
Even so, Hubbard may live more regally than did
the Maharajah of Jaipur, whose 30-room mansion and 57-acre estate in England
Hubbard bought in the late 1950s as "world headquarters" for his growing
movement. His retinue includes young women, known officially as "messengers,"
who light his ever-present cigarettes and catch the ashes. They record
every word he says, including his frequent obscene outbursts of rage. They
help him out of bed in the morning, run his shower, dress him. They scrub
his office for a daily "white glove" inspection and rinse his laundry in
13 fresh waters. (Former members say he erupts volcanically if he sniffs
soap on his clothes.)
Hubbard attracts and holds his worshipful followers
by his amazing capacity to spin out an endless science-fiction fantasy
in which he is the supreme leader of a chosen elite. He tells them he is
a nuclear physicist who was severely wounded while serving with the U.S.
Navy in World War II. "Taken crippled and blinded" to a Naval hospital,
he claims to have "worked his way back to fitness and full perception in
less than two years." In the process, he developed the "research" that
led him to discover "Dianetics" and Scientology, the answers to most of
mankind's ills.
The truth is something else. Hubbard did take a
college course in molecular and atomic physics, which he flunked. He served
in the Navy, but Navy records do not indicate he saw combat or was ever
wounded. He was discharged and later given a 40-percent disability pension
because of an ulcer, arthritis and other ailments. About this time he was
petitioning the Veterans Administration for psychiatric care to treat "long
periods of moroseness and suicidal inclinations." He was also arrested
for petty theft in connection with checks. When he wrote to the FBI that
communist spies were after him, an agent attached a note to one of his
letters: "Make 'appears mental' card."
"Robot-like"
Since Dianetics, Hubbard's bizarre "philosophy" has
expanded into a 25-million-word collection of books, articles and tape-recorded
lectures. Hubbard claims to have traced human existence back 74 trillion
years, suggesting it began on Venus. Today's earthlings are material manifestations
of eternal spirits who are reincarnated time and again over the eons. But,
Hubbard claims, our earthly troubles often result from ghostly mental images
which he calls "engrams" - painful experiences either in this life or in
former incarnations.
Hubbard's original book created a sensation; he
claimed to have "cleared" 270 cases of engrams, thus greatly increasing
the subjects' I.Q.s and curing them of assorted ills from arthritis to
heart troubles. later Hubbard said that Scientology eradicated cancer and
was the only specific cure for atomic-bomb burns.
To detect engrams, Hubbard adopted a battery-powered
galvanometer with a needle dial wired to two empty tin cans. Charging $150
an hour, a Scientology "minister" audits a subject by having him grip the
tin cans and answer detailed questions about his present or past lives.
The needle's gyrations supposedly detect the engrams. By causing the subject
to "confront" the engrams, the minister claims to "clear his memory bin,"
thus raising both body and mind to a superhuman state of "total freedom."
The Scientology auditor also carefully records any
intimate revelations, including sexual or criminal activities or marital
or family troubles. According to the church's own documents and defectors'
affidavits, such records are filed for blackmail purposes, against any
member (or member's family) who becomes a "potential trouble source" by
threatening to defect, go to the authorities, or generate hostile publicity.
Of course, new prospects are never asked to swallow
the whole ridiculous story at first gulp; they get it in time-release capsules.
The process transforms them into what one who went through it calls a "robot-like"
state.
Split Personalities
Typical was the experience of 17-year-old honors
graduate who was invited by an acquaintance - actually a [Scientologist]
- to take a "communications course." (The church advertises that these
"field-staff members" get ten-percent commissions on all money their recruits
pay.) Unknowingly, Julie hooked herself onto a mind-scrambling conveyor
belt of hypnotic "training routines" developed by Hubbard. The recruit,
cynically referred to as "raw meat," sits knee to knee with a "coach" for
hours, her eyes closed. Next she sits, eyes open, for hours. Then the coach
tries to find "emotional buttons." Hours of command drills follow: "Lift
that chair." "Move that chair." "Sit in that chair."
AS Margaret Thaler Singer, a University of California
psychologist who interviewed Julie and over 400 former members of cults,
observes, "These routines can split the personality into a severe, dissociated
state, and the recruits are hooked before they realize what is happening."
Julie found that the next step, auditing, continued
to erase the boundary between reality and fantasy. In this phase, Julie
exhausted all $3000 of her collegs savings. Then she was told she could
take college-level courses while going "on staff" and working full time
to recruit and process new raw meat. She ended up working 60 to 80 hours
a week, at a maximum salary of $7.50. She had now reached the "robot-like"
state.
Julie felt superior, one of the chosen elite of
the universe. She was one of the faithful who are promised they will "go
with Ron to the next planet." Thus, they are conditioned to the "us against
them" outlook that characterizes so much religious and political fanaticism.
Julie Christofferson was among the lucky, however.
After nine months, her parents removed her from the cult and snapped her
out of her zombie-like trance. Last August, a Portland, Ore., jury found
the church's conduct so fraudulent and outrageous that it awarded her $2,067,000.20
in damages.
Doctrine and Dollars
Less fortunate was Anne Rosenblum, who spent nearly
six years in Scientology. During her last 15 months she was in the church's
punishment unit, the "Rehabilitation Project Force." There, prisoners are
guarded constantly, never left alone or allowed to speak to any outsider
without permission. They eat leftovers, sleep on the floor, and fill their
days with strenuous physical and menial labor, classroom study of Ron's
works and grueling auditing to detect "crimes against Ron" in "this or
past lives."
As defectors have attested, subjects become hysterical
and psychotic in their auditing. Then they are locked in osolation. Not
surprisingly, suicides occur. Last January in Clearwater, FL., for example,
a Scientology member hurled herself into the bay and drowned.
Through the years, Hubbard has continually added
new grades and "levels" of belief. The "clearing course" costs $3812, but
to get to the highest level, the devotee shells out $14,295. Hubbard has
punctuated his policy letters to staff with exhortations to MAKE MONEY,
MAKE MORE MONEY, MAKE OTHER PEOPLE PRODUCE SO AS TO MAKE MONEY. When numbers
of recruits and receipts fall off, Hubbard orders staffers onto a diet
of rice and beans.
But revenues appear to hve been consistently high.
In 1974 the church spent $1.1 million for an old Jesuit novitiate in Oregon.
In 1976 the IRS turned up $2.86 million in cash aboard Hubbard's 320-foot
flagship Apollo. Moving secretly, the church paid another $8 million
for a hotel and other properties in Clearwater, FL. A top Hubbard lieutenant
who recently defected has attested that the Clearwater organization alone
last year was grossing as high as $1 million per week.
Dirty Tricks
In 1966 Hubbard created his own "intelligence" organization,
called the "Guardian Office" (GO). He had convinced himself that a "central
agency" was behind attacks against Scientology, and his suspicion focused
on the World Federation for Mental Health. "Psychiatry and the KGB operate
in direct collusion," he declared. He seemed to think they worked through
the FBI, CIA, various newspapers and other groups. He named his third wife,
Mary Sue Hubbard, to direct his own counter-attack from the Los Angeles
headquarters. She defined the GO's objective: "To sweep aside opposition
into which Scientology can expand."
The GO training program included instructions in
how to make an anonymous death threat to a journalist, smear an antagonistic
clergyman, forge phony newspaper clips, plan and execute burglaries. Public-relations
spokesmen were drilled on how to lie to the press - "to outflow false data
effectively." A favorite dirty trick: making anonymous phone calls to the
IRS, accusing enemies of income-tax cheating and thereby inducing the IRS
to audit them. Big targets were organizations that investigated Scientology
or published unfavorable articles about it - newspapers, Forbes
magazine, the American Medical Association, Better Business Bureau and
American Psychiatric Association.
Individuals were also targeted. In 1971 Paulette
Cooper, a New York free-lance writer, published a book called The Scandal
of Scientology. The church responded with an elaborate campaign of
litigation, theft, defamation and malicious prosecution. She got death-threatening
phone calls. According to church documents later revealed, this campaign
was aimed at "getting P.C. incarcerated in a mental institution or in jail."
It came incredibly close. Miss Cooper and her publisher
were sued in several U.S. cities and foreign countries. In order to call
off the Scientology legal war, her publisher agreed to withdraw the book.
"It just wasn't worth the legal expenses," he explained.
The worst thrust, Miss Cooper says, came after a
Scientology agent stole some of her stationery, faked bomb-threat letters
and framed her. She was indicted by a federal grand jury on a charge of
making bomb threats. She went through two years of torment until she volunteered
to take a Sodium Pentothal "truth" test. Only after she passed did the
government drop the charges. Defending herself cost her $28,000.
Counterattack
In 1976 the FBI discovered that two Scientology agents
were using forged credentials to rummage through a Justice Department office
at night, and thereby uncovered the tip of a widespread espionage operation
in Washington. One agent, Michael Meisner, after nearly a year as a fugitive,
offered to cooperate with the government. Meisner said that in 1974 Scientology
had mounted an all-out attack on U.S. government agencies the church thought
were interfering with its operations. He himself supervised Washington
operations. With another agent, he broke into the IRS photographic-identification
room and forged the credentials that they used to enter various government
buildings, steal and copy keys left carelessly on desks, pick locks, and
steal and copy government files.
With Meisner's testimony, the FBI obtained search
warrants and, on July 8, 1977, raided Scientology headquarters in Washington
and Los Angeles. Agents in Los Angeles seized 23,000 documents , many stolen
from the U.S. government, plus burglar tools and electronic-surveillance
equipment. The scope of the espionage operation was staggering. In a Justice
Department agency, a Scientology employee-plant actually worked in a vault
containing top-secret CIA and defense documents. Other Scientologists entered
on nights and weekends and ransacked offices, including the Deputy Attorney
General's, stealing highly secret papers and copying them on government
copiers.
On October 26, 1979, nine high Scientology officials
stood before a federal judge and were found guilty of theft or conspiracy
charges arising from their plot against the government. Heading the list
was Mary Sue Hubbard, 48, who had supervised the operation. Hubbard himself
and 24 other Scientologists were named as unindicted co-conspirators.
Since the convictions, many former Scientologists
have come forward to tell stories they had previously kept secret for fear
of Hubbard's Guardians. In Boston, attorney Michael Flynn has filed a $200-million
federal class-action suit for fraud, outrageous conduct and breach of contract
on behalf of a former Scientologist and others, who have been abused by
the cult.
But Hubbard and his Scientologists have not been
deterred. After last fall's convictions, they issued an appeal for volunteers
for the Guardian counterattack, "to ferret out those who want to stop Scientology."
The lessons of Hubbard's Church of Scientology are
many. As history demonstrates, when a fanatical individual employing powerful
communication skills gathers an entourage of followers, infects them with
his own delusion, persuades them that the outside world is hostile and
they alone can save the world, and exacts blind obedience, the collective
may break the fabric of civilized restraints and descend into terrifying
crimes. Convictions, seized church documents, stipulated evidence and defectors'
affidavits demonstrate that Scientologists have already indulged in burglary,
espionage, blackmail, kidnapping, false imprisonment, and conspiracies
to steal government documents and to obstruct justice; some have committed
suicide. The parents of a teen-age girl, after following her into Hubbard's
entourage for several weeks, issued an urgent appeal last January to help
prevent "what we believe could be another mass murder or suicide."
Above all, the 20th-century record of leader-cults
demonstrates that such collectives need watching. Nothing in our legal
tradition requires us to shut our eyes to a racket religion simply because
it masquerades and claims immunity under our First Amendment. As the late
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson pointed out, the Constitution
is not a suicide pact.
[Article taken from Reader's Digest, May, 1980]
Scientology's Internet Wars
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