Article 37492 of alt.religion.scientology: Path: news.cybercom.net!usenet.eel.ufl.edu!tank.news.pipex.net!pipex!news.sprintlink.net!EU.net!sun4nl!xs4all!utopia.hacktic.nl!not-for-mail From: nobody@REPLAY.COM (Anonymous) Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology Subject: DOC: 1978 L.A. Times series [1/6] 21K Date: 1 Oct 1995 22:21:02 +0100 Organization: RePLaY aND CoMPaNY UnLimited Lines: 410 Sender: replay@utopia.hacktic.nl Message-ID: <44n0nu$s6m@utopia.hacktic.nl> NNTP-Posting-Host: utopia.hacktic.nl XComm: Replay may or may not approve of the content of this posting XComm: Report misuse of this automated service to Los Angeles Times, August 27, 1978 Scientology: A Long Trail of Controversy By Robert Gillette and Robert Rawitch On May 14, 1951, Lafayette Ronald Hubbard wrote to the U.S. attorney general to plead for help in fending off a Communist conspiracy, dedicated, he averred, to destroying him. "When, when, when," he wrote, "will we have a roundup?" Rambling through seven single-spaced typewritten pages, the letter was, to all appearances, the heartfelt cry of a troubled man. A successful science fiction writer in the 1940s, L. Ron Hubbard, as he signed himself, had gone on to bigger things. He had "discovered" (not invented, he insisted) dianetics, an amalgam of Freudian psychology and computer terminology which he propounded as the answer to human aberration, emotional anxiety, psychosomatic illness and the common cold. His book, "Dianetics -- The Modern Science of Mental Health," had been an instant success in May of 1950, and Hubbard had poured the proceeds from his best-seller into the formation of the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation with branches in Elizabeth, N.J.; Chicago; Washington, D.C.; New York, Los Angeles and Honolulu. Only a year later, state medical authorities in New Jersey were investigating him on suspicion of conducting a medical school without a license, his foundation was on the verge of bankruptcy, his second marriage was in shambles and he suspected his wife and many of his associates of Communist activities. "The Communist Party have in the past year wiped out a half-a-million dollar operation for me, have cost me my health and have considerably retarded material of interest to the United States Government," Hubbard said in the letter, which the FBI released in 1977 under provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. Church spokesmen in Los Angeles were shown a copy of the letter by Times reporters in early August and have not challenged its authenticity. Russians, moreover, were trying to lure him to the Soviet Union to acquire his secrets of brainwashing while at the same time trying to destroy dianetics, "an American Science," Hubbard said. And there were mysterious attacks, three in all, each while he slept. The most severe, Hubbard wrote, occurred in February, 1951, in his apartment on N. Rossmore St. in Los Angeles. "About two or three o'clock in the morning, the apartment was entered, I was knocked out, had a needle thrust into my heart to give it a jet of air to produce a coronary thrombosis and was given an electric shock with a 110-volt current. All this is very blurred to me. I had no witnesses." It was not the first such communication the Justice Department had received from Hubbard and it would not be the last. Four years later, the FBI made the notation "appears mental" on one of his missives and ceased acknowledging them. Whatever the FBI may think of him, it is unlikely that the FBI or anyone else outside Hubbard's small circle of loyal followers quite anticipated his capacity for rebounding from misfortune. Twenty-seven years later, the 67-year-old Hubbard stands venerated by several hundred thousand followers in the United States, Europe and scattered parts of Africa and Asia as the founding patriarch of the Church of Scientology. From a faddish metaphysical cult in the early 1950s, Hubbardian dianetics became Hubbardian Scientology and in 1954 began to assume the mantle of a new religion. Since the early 1960s, Scientology under the guidance of Hubbard and his third wife, Mary Sue, has metamorphosed into an elaborate Orwellian theocracy of imposing international scale, influence and wealth. In the intervening years Hubbard's expanding organization has left a trail of controversy across four continents as medical authorities attacked Scientology's therapeutic claims and governments resisted its efforts to gain the special protections that Western society accords to religious organizations -- notably, tax-exempt status. Scientology in turn lashed back at its critics with vitriolic combativeness. "Don't ever defend. Always attack ... Only attacks resolve threats," Hubbard advised his expanding worldwide organization in a policy laid down Aug. 15, 1960. "If attacked ... always find or manufacture enough threat against them to cause them to sue for peace." "People who attack Scientology are criminals," Hubbard wrote in later church documents. "Politician A stands up on his hind legs in a parliament and brays for condemnation of Scientology. When we look him over we find crimes -- embezzled funds, moral lapses, a thirst for young boys -- sordid stuff." Accusations, in the late 1960s and early 1970s by orthodox psychologists and psychiatrists, that Scientology represented a detriment to community mental health and involved unscrupulous business practices prompted formal government inquiries in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, England and South Africa. The practice of Scientology was banned in much of Australia from 1965 until 1973, when the organization won recognition as a church. Britain in 1968 banned the entry of foreign nationals, including Hubbard and his wife, for the purpose of studying Scientology. Last March, a French court convicted Hubbard and two associates in absentia of fraudulent medical practice and set a fine equivalent to $7,000. Through it all, Hubbard has remained an enigmatic, reclusive figure, insulated by his church from the tribulations of the world, isolated from most of his followers, preoccupied with churning out doctrinal texts, policy directives and tape-recorded sermons that his spokesmen estimate exceed a cumulative total of 25 million words. Since the British ban was instituted in 1968, Hubbard has been barred from what Scientologists term the "Mother Church," a 20-room mansion on a 57- acre estate at East Grinstead, Sussex. Saint Hill Manor, as the estate was known in the days when the Maharajah of Jaipur owned it, has, since 1959, been the international headquarters of the Church of Scientology. In lieu of British residence, Hubbard spent much of his time until last year aboard his 3,280-ton converted ferry, the Apollo, plying the Atlantic and Mediterranean in the company of a Scientology elite called the Sea Org, whose members customarily sign a "billion-year contract" swearing fealty to "Ron". Church spokesmen say the Sea Org now has its headquarters on land (at a $2.8 million center purchased in 1975 at Clearwater, Fla.), that the Apollo was sold 14 months ago, and that Hubbard is currently "traveling in the United States and Europe" looking for a permanent place to settle in his retirement years. Reliable, independent estimates of Scientology's following do not exist. Although the numbers are undoubtedly large, figures provided by the church itself are often inconsistent and sometimes appear inflated. Spokesmen for Scientology, for example, often assert that theirs is "the world's fastest-growing religion." Hubbard himself said in 1964 that his followers were "in the millions" and were doubling in number every six months -- a rate at which the membership of Scientology would have exceeded the entire world's population before the end of 1969. At various times and places in the past two years, Scientology spokesmen have put the organization's adherents at between 4.5 million and 15 million. The church currently claims 3.5 million in the United States and another 1 million abroad, but acknowledges that these figures include everyone who has either taken one Scientology counseling course or bought two of its books. When pressed for the number of people consistently involved in Scientology in the United States, spokesmen have -- for the past two years -- put forward the figure of 600,000. Whatever the precise numbers, Scientology plainly appeals to thousands of people here and abroad who, as church officials point out, would not continue investing in its counseling if they felt it were of no benefit. Testimonials from such celebrity-participants as former '49er quarterback John Brodie and actor John Travolta have helped enhance Scientology's public image. And there is no reason to believe that Scientology's parishioners have been cognizant of, much less a party to, the controversial activities of the church's worldwide Guardian Office. The grassroots organization of Scientology consists of churches in large urban areas supplemented by more numerous missions (formerly called "franchises") that are often small storefront operations. To non-members, perhaps the most familiar distinguishing characteristic of Scientology is the organization's aggressive sidewalk recruitment appeal to take a "free personality test." An organizational list that the California headquarters church in Los Angeles filed in a federal court proceeding on May 10, 1977, enumerates 16 churches and 72 smaller missions in the United States and an additional 33 churches and 47 missions in 16 other countries. According to an attractive book published by the California organization and entitled, "Scientology: A World Religion Emerges in the Space Age," all of these entities are "autonomous corporations operated on a separate basis but united by a theological bond of common doctrine, practice and belief." Although the book does not say so, the principal churches of Scientology around the world are also united with the Mother Church in England by the electronic bond of telex. Saint Hill Manor both as an advanced training school and as command center for the Hubbard Communications Office, an incorporated administrative body from which emanates a steady stream of doctrinal, internal management and fiscal policy directives complete with coded marginalia and security classifications that give them more the ambience of State Department cables to embassies overseas than ecclesiastic communications. Among material the FBI seized from the church, for example, is a Sept. 17, 1976, document listing 18 pages concerning codes and security classifications for "various communications." Saint Hill is also world headquarters for the Guardian Office, a secretive, parallel administrative structure that extends into the principal churches abroad. In a policy letter from the Hubbard Communications Office dated May 20, 1970, and transmitted to churches overseas, Mary Sue Hubbard explained that the Guardian Office's purview would include such sensitive matters as liaison with news media and government agencies as well as "Special Guardian relations," "Opposition Group relations," and "Troublesome relations." Federal investigators and former church officials have said that the Guardian Office's responsibilities include intelligence gathering and covert operations against those whom the church regards as its enemies, or "suppressive persons" or "squirrel groups," in Scientology's terms. While communiques flow out from Saint Hill Manor, money flows in. Of each church's and mission's gross receipts, 10% is tithed to world headquarters. The church does not provide a public accounting of its expenditures, except to say that L. Ron Hubbard lives largely on royalties from his works including his 1950 "Dianetics," now in its 26th printing. Although the essentials of dianetics have become the doctrine of Scientology, the church appears to consider the book itself obsolete. Indeed, the California branch said in 1974 that "the obsolescence of early dianetics is extremely well-known among Scientologists." The book's obsolescence has not deterred the Church of Scientology from promoting its sale, however. Last May the church launched a $650,000 national television and magazine advertising campaign in 21 cities to push sales of the 28-year-old book, which costs $2 in paperback. A similar campaign in Los Angeles last year helped sell 100,000, a fifth of all those sold in the United States in 1977. George Chelekis, a Scientology publicist in New York, said the church is also spending another $125,000 this year to promote a "revised version" of Hubbard's 1958 book, "Have You Lived Before This Life?" Data on the Church of Scientology's worldwide finances are as elusive as its membership figures. But the organization's practice of buying multimillion-dollar properties with hard cash suggests, along with other evidence, a robust financial condition. In January of 1974, for example, the Church of Scientology paid $1.1 million for a former Jesuit novitiate and 805 acres of land near Salem, Ore. In December, 1975, the church bought an old hotel and nearby bank building near Clearwater, Fla., for conversion to an administrative and training center, and paid in excess of $2.3 million by a check drawn on a Luxembourg bank. In June, 1976, the California church paid $5.5 million in cash for a disused Cedars of Lebanon hospital in Los Angeles which now serves as Scientology's North American headquarters. A variety of internal church documents, which were not intended for publication, suggest a phenomenal income growth during the 1970s -- and in turn help explain the urgency with which the church has sought to protect its assets with the tax-exempt status of a religious organization. One such document, a mimeographed "Order of the Day," circulated April 9, 1973, aboard Hubbard's flagship Apollo, states that the worldwide organization's gross annual income grew from 390,666 British pounds (about $1 million at prevailing rates) in 1966-67 to $8.5 million in 1972-73. The document projected 1974 gross income at the equivalent of $24 million. Former church officials have estimated the church's annual gross income worldwide at $100 million or more. Most of Scientology's income derives from the fees or "fixed donations" that its churches and missions charge for the organization's novel form of psychological counseling or "auditing" that constitutes Scientology's main ecclesiastical activity. Parishioners are expected to spend sums ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars for auditing courses that promise to relieve anxieties, expand one's self-esteem and "awareness," enhance the intellect and open the way to self-determination and "total freedom." These promises are founded upon Hubbard's conception of the human mind and its foibles and he began to elucidate on them in his 1950 book on dianetics. Hubbard wrote that the source of all human aberration and most illness was a primitive subconscious he called the "reactive mind." This, he said, was a "memory bin" of painful traumatic experiences recorded in the form of "engrams." As the root of all evil, engrams interfered with the workings of an unerringly rational, computerlike "analytical mind." In a theme of prenatal violence that weaves through the book, Hubbard said repeatedly that many engrams date from one's days in the womb. "Mama gets hysterical, baby gets an engram. Papa hits mama, baby gets an engram ... and so it goes." Only by dredging up painful experiences and guilt feelings during auditing could one identify and banish accumulated engrams and achieve the exalted, purely rational state of "clear." Had he gone no further, Hubbard's treatise on dianetics might have been remembered as an imaginative recasting of Freudian psychology and perhaps as a forerunner of assertiveness training. But Hubbard proclaimed an array of medical fringe benefits for "clears" that put him on a collision course with medical authorities up to and including the federal Food and Drug Administration. "The problem of psychosomatic illness is entirely encompassed by dianetics, and by dianetic technique such illness has been eradicated entirely in every case," he wrote. "Arthritis vanishes, myopia gets better, heart illness decreases, asthma disappears, stomachs function properly, and the whole catalog of ills goes away and stays away. "Clears," Hubbard added, "do not get colds." In a later publication he said that Scientology and the dianetic "therapy" if incorporated could "make the blind see again, the lame walk again, the ill recover and the sane saner." In the ensuing hue and cry from the medical profession, Hubbard's chain of dianetic foundations from New Jersey to California withered quickly. He briefly reestablished himself in Kansas, then retreated to Phoenix, where in 1954 he incorporated the Hubbard Academy of Scientology and then the Founding Church of Scientology in Washington, D.C., with branches in Los Angeles. Dianetics now reappeared, but under the banner of Scientology and embroidered with elements of Buddhism, Hinduism and the galactic wanderings of a migratory wraith called the "thetan." It was not the brain that harbored the obtrusive engrams, but the "thetan," or soul, Hubbard now held. Over the course of trillions of years (in contrast to the approximately 15 billion years astronomers assign to the age of the present universe) thetans had accumulated a weighty burden of engrams during successive reincarnations, and the challenge of purging them now seemed more formidable. Going "clear" became a more difficult, and expensive, endeavor. To help preclears disencumber themselves from eons of engrams, Hubbard in 1954 introduced the E-meter, a simple electronic device resembling a lie detector. It consists of a galvanometer in a wooden box, circuitry called a balanced Wheatstone bridge that is sensitive to small changes in skin resistance that might (or might not) be related to anxiety, and two metal cans wired to the device. The preclear clutches the cans while the interrogating auditor fires questions and watches for the needle to bobble about in the violent "theta bops" indicative of a sensitive engram. The Canadian inquiry into Scientology, conducted by the Ontario provincial government in 1968, observed that Hubbard, by reconstituting dianetics in the form of religious corporations, had realized a distinct advantage: "that the field of religion is much less restricted than the field of medicine." Hubbard's appreciation of this distinction is evidenced in a variety of internal memoranda, including a policy letter dispatched from Saint Hill Manor over his name to the Washington, New York and Los Angeles offices of Scientology on Oct. 29, 1962. Noting that the federal Food and Drug Administration was showing "interest" in the E-meter, Hubbard said that "Scientology 1970 is being planned on a religious organization basis throughout the world. "This will not upset the usual activities of any organization (within Scientology). It is entirely a matter for accountants and solicitors." The benefits of church status were demonstrated the following year, when the Food and Drug Administration raided the Founding Church of Scientology in Washington, D.C., and seized 100 E-meters and two tons of literature that the government said falsely branded E-meters as useful in treatment of ailments ranging from schizophrenia to radiation burns to polio and the common cold. The Church of Scientology fought the case in federal courts for 10 years, arguing that the FDA seizure had violated the constitutional protections afforded religious freedom. In a limited sense, Scientology won. Federal District Judge Gerhard Gesell ruled in 1971 that the church had advanced "extravagant false claims" that physical and mental illness could be cured through therapy involving the E-meter, and he said such claims were "quackery." But Gesell also said the church was entitled to First Amendment protection as a religion and could use the E-meters in religious counseling. In the interim, Scientology has retreated from claiming to cure psychosomatic or mental illness, and its publications now carry a disclaimer that the E-meter is not "intended or effective" for medical uses. The organization's literature now insists that Scientology's purpose is no more than to make the "able more able" and to treat ills of the spirit, not the mind and body. For these services, the church charges what it calls "fixed donations." An introductory course aimed at improving one's communications skills and bolstering self-confidence costs $75. Being audited all the way to clear can take two years and cost $5,000 to $10,000. Achieving the supreme state of "Operating Thetan" can cost thousands more, and according to the church's price lists, the cost of Scientological counseling is rising by 5% a month for an annual inflation rate of 60%. "What governments, people and even our orgs (organizations) can't get understood is that NO PRODUCTION-No Money," Hubbard explained in a Nov. 27, 1971, policy letter entitled "Money." "The staff member, as part of the org, may think his pay comes from mysterious places. It does not. It comes from his own personal production ... "It is up to Division 6 (the church's marketing division) to build up a DEMAND for the services and a volume of people who then demand the service. It does this with surveys of what the public will buy that the org can offer. It then makes the public aware of this by ads and contacts. The public comes in and pays ... That is really all there is to it." Article 37612 of alt.religion.scientology: Path: news.cybercom.net!usenet.eel.ufl.edu!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!news.nic.surfnet.nl!sun4nl!xs4all!utopia.hacktic.nl!not-for-mail From: nobody@REPLAY.COM (Anonymous) Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology Subject: DOC: 1978 L.A. Times series [2/6] 35K Date: 1 Oct 1995 22:21:13 +0100 Organization: RePLaY aND CoMPaNY UnLimited Lines: 700 Sender: replay@utopia.hacktic.nl Message-ID: <44n0o9$s6k@utopia.hacktic.nl> NNTP-Posting-Host: utopia.hacktic.nl XComm: Replay may or may not approve of the content of this posting XComm: Report misuse of this automated service to Los Angeles Times, August 27, 1978 Church Wages Propaganda on a World Scale "The DEFENSE of anything is *untenable*. The only way to defend anything is to ATTACK, and if you ever forget that, then you will lose every battle you are engaged in, whether it is in terms of personal conversations, public debate, or a court of law." -- L. Ron Hubbard By Robert Rawitch and Robert Gillette For more than a decade, the worldwide Church of Scientology, one of the burgeoning new religions of the 1960s and '70s, has conducted sophisticated intelligence and propaganda operations on an international scale against government agencies, private organizations and individual critics the church perceives as its enemies. The church's involvement in covert activities appears to extend well beyond federal agencies named in an indictment a Washington, D.C., federal grand jury handed down Aug. 15 against 11 members of the church hierarchy in the United States and Britain. The 11 were indicted in connection with an alleged conspiracy to steal government documents and burglarize the Internal Revenue Service, Justice Department and other federal agencies. The indictment also alleged a second separate conspiracy to obstruct justice through a coverup of the thefts. A three-month inquiry by The Times indicates that, in addition to federal agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service and the Justice Department, Scientologists obtained jobs in key offices of the American Medical Assn., the Council of Better Business Bureaus and the Los Angeles office of the California attorney general. The government's case in great measure resulted from the testimony of Michael Meisner, former head of Scientology's covert operations in Washington, D.C., who turned government informant in June, 1977. Spokesmen for the Church of Scientology's national center in Los Angeles have argued that such acts could be justified as a defense against what the church regards as persistent efforts by the United States and other nations to "harass" and "suppress" its members, growth and practices -- notably, in the United States, by the revocation of federal tax-exempt status for some churches in the 1960s. "Our church members do not claim their total innocence of some of the charges to be leveled against them," the church said in a news release issued in July in Los Angeles when it appeared that indictments were imminent. "What they do contend is that they did so in defense against a government bureaucracy which has consistently acted against the civil and human rights of the church and its members." An abundance of court records and the church's own internal memoranda and policy statements suggests that its main objectives have been to obtain information embarrassing to Scientology's critics, to root out "false" information about the church in government files, to gain advantage in its numerous legal battles with the government, and to discredit -- by "disinformation" if necessary -- agencies and private groups the church believes have worked to "suppress" Scientology. More than 90,000 pages of documents were seized by the FBI from Church of Scientology offices in simultaneous raids in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles on July 8, 1977. Half of the material has since been returned to the church. One document seized was an internal order stamped by the church as "secret" discussing "standard" actions to locate the government's "false and secret files" on Scientology, using "suitable guises" and "penetrations." The same document, dated March 27, 1976, and issued by the church's worldwide headquarters at an estate in Sussex, Eng., states that in approaching "vital targets" Scientologists should "use all possible lines of approach to obtain files, i.e. job penetration; janitor penetration; suitable guises utilizing covers, etc." Additional items listed among the FBI's inventory of seized materials include: -- A three-page confidential report inscribed, "Operation Cat -- major target: to plant grossly false information in governmental agencies" that is dated Sept. 16, 1975. A second document, undated, described the same way, bears the title, "Kitten IP44." -- A six-page memorandum dated Oct. 17, 1976, referring to an "MM Plan" which the FBI said concerned the furnishing of "disinformation to the FBI." -- A lock-picking kit. -- Credentials for an "International Press Service" and letterhead stationery and envelopes from United Press International. -- An internal church document identified as Guardian Order 1080 and dated May 3, 1975, dealing with "using suitable guise interviews," and a second, undated document entitled, "The Cover (Suitable Guises) in-person Interview." -- Other papers that appear to be related to the manufacture of false identification, including a blank certified copy of a birth certificate, an explanation of how to fill it out, a County Recorder's stamp, and an application for a Social Security number in the name of "Harold Warren Matzky" along with a document indicating that Matzky was dead. The FBI has not provided any further details on the documents. The church claims 4.5 million participants in 14 countries. Its annual gross income, derived mainly from training courses and a novel form of psychological counseling called auditing, has been estimated at more than $100 million. A major focus of Scientology's struggles with the federal and state governments alike has been the church's quest for tax-exempt status to shield what it acknowledges is a considerable income. In California, a 35-year-old secretary employed in the Los Angeles office of the state attorney general is awaiting trial on a charge of stealing files concerning Scientology from the office of a deputy attorney general who authorities said was handling a tax matter relating to the church. The secretary, Linda Polimeni of Los Angeles, was arrested last Sept. 12 after investigators told the grand jury they watched her after normal business hours copy an eight-page package of "both accurate and false information" on Scientology planted in the office of Dep. Atty. Gen. Patti Kitching. Miss Polimeni was apprehended after she allegedly took the copied papers out of the building in her purse. Investigators told the grand jury that entries in a diary she also carried in the purse linked her with Scientology, an affiliation the church has neither confirmed nor denied. In a second California incident last January, the city of San Diego fired a police lieutenant after he admitted seeking information on behalf of the Church of Scientology concerning Meisner, the Justice Department's principal informant in the current federal prosecution of 11 Scientologists. According to city Civil Service records, Lt. Warren M. Young "twice told a false story to FBI officers" about his reasons for inquiring whether Meisner had a criminal record. On further questioning, Young acknowledged that he was a member of the Church of Scientology and admitted that the church had asked him to inquire about Meisner the previous October. Meisner was then being held in protective custody by federal marshals at an undisclosed location. Beyond the allegations of burglary and bugging in the IRS and Justice Department specified in the Aug. 15 indictment, investigators believe that the Church of Scientology infiltrated the American Medical Assn. in 1975 and became the source of hundreds of embarrassing and widely publicized internal documents about the AMA's political activities. Newspapers -- led to believe that their anonymous source was a disgruntled doctor inspired by the disclosures of Watergate -- dubbed the informant "Sore Throat." But Asst. U.S. Atty. Raymond Banoun, who is in charge of the Scientology case, has said in Los Angeles federal court that documents seized by the FBI prove that "Sore Throat" was a Scientologist. There is also evidence that the church infiltrated the Washington, D.C., offices of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, a national coordinating body, in 1974 and 1975 and planned to do so in the St. Louis Better Business Bureau. There is no indication that the St. Louis plan was carried out. From March through August, 1975, fictitious documents circulated about the country on council stationery in a campaign purporting to show, among other things, that the national organization was in weak financial condition. The allegations in the federal indictment have focused attention in particular on the Church of Scientology's Guardian Office, an administrative unit represented in each of the 49 churches of Scientology in 14 countries. The Guardian Office is responsible for public relations, external legal affairs and, according to the FBI, for intelligence and covert operations as well. (Jane Kember, the Worldwide Guardian, or chief executive of the office at the "Mother Church" in Sussex, Eng., was among the 11 indicted Aug. 15.) In parallel with its covert responsibilities, the Guardian Office, which church spokesmen say employs about 250 staff in the 16 U.S. churches, has waged an aggressive open war against Scientology's critics and government agencies in the courts and in the press. Additionally, under the rubric of "social reform", the Church of Scientology has organized an extensive network of subsidiary groups that seek openly to investigate government agencies and private groups that the church considers corrupt or believes have investigated it or circulated false and derogatory information about Scientology. Bearing names such as American Citizens for Honesty in Government and the National Commission on Law Enforcement and Social Justice, these "gung ho groups," as church memoranda have called them, ally themselves with orthodox civil liberties and religious organizations but remain dominated by Scientologists, whose affiliation is not always made explicit in the groups' news releases. During the early to middle 1960s, the practices of Scientology -- both business and spiritual -- were subjected to official government inquiries in Australia, New Zealand, Britain and Canada. South Africa held an inquiry in 1972. Three Australian states restricted Scientology from 1965 to 1973, and Britain has, since 1968, banned the entry of foreign nationals seeking to study Scientology. Simultaneously, Scientology collided with the U.S. government. The Food and Drug Administration in 1963 began what was to be a 10-year legal battle with the church over charges of fraudulent medical practice. In 1968, the IRS revoked the tax-exempt status of the Founding Church of Scientology in Washington, alleging that Hubbard was personally profiting from his worldwide organization. The "Mother Church" of Scientology in Los Angeles lost its federal exemption in 1968. Fourteen other Scientology churches currently have tax exemptions. Church spokesmen have said Hubbard formally resigned his responsibilities in the church in 1966, although he has continued to produce a stream of doctrinal and policy communiques in his capacity as founder and "consultant." It was during this period of strife in the 1960s that Hubbard began to promulgate a series of policies for responding aggressively to criticism and investigation. One such policy letter, issued Aug. 15, 1960, asserts that "only attacks resolve threats" and advises that "if attacked on some vulnerable point by anyone or anything or any organization, always find or manufacture enough threat against them to cause them to sue for peace." A later elaboration, issued over Hubbard's name to the worldwide organization on Feb. 18, 1966, observed, "Groups that attack us are to say the least not sane. According to our technology, this means they have hidden areas and disreputable facts about them." A week later, still another policy letter continued: "Spot who is attacking us. Start investigating them promptly for FELONIES or worse using our own professionals, not outside agencies ... Start feeding lurid, blood sex crime actual evidence on the attackers to the press. *Don't ever* submit tamely to an investigation of us. Make it rough, rough on attackers all the way." In another confidential communique to administrative personnel of the church, Hubbard drew a distinction between the gathering of intelligence on the church's antagonists and its deterrent policy of "noisily investigating" them. "Remember, intelligence we get with a whisper. Investigation we do with a yell." Jeffrey Dubron, one of two church spokesmen whom The Times asked to respond to these and other policy statements during 11 hours of interviews, said that in the early to middle 1960s, "little by little it began to dawn on us that we were being had. Somebody was attacking us and making it look like a spontaneous thing. And that's when we started to look at who's doing this, where it's coming from, what we could do to protect ourselves." "We found out that the unthinkable was happening," Dubron contended. "The government of the United States of America ... was attempting to destroy our church." On March 1, 1966, two weeks after Hubbard issued his series of attack policy statements, the Church of Scientology established its Guardian Office, encompassing intelligence, legal and investigative functions. The scope of organizations of concern to the church in the medical and mental health field is suggested in part by a Feb. 28, 1972, letter from Hubbard that was among the materials the FBI seized from the church in Los Angeles on July 8, 1977. The letter, addressed to an individual named Brian who is otherwise not identified, "commends" him "for operations against AMA, FDA, WFMH, NAMH, APA and George Washington University," according to an inventory of seized items the FBI filed in Los Angeles federal court. The initials apparently represent the American Medical Assn., the Food and Drug Administration, the World Federation of Mental Health, and the National Assn. of Mental Health in Britain. The "APA" could be either the American Psychiatric Assn. or the American Psychological Assn., both of which maintain headquarters in Washington, D.C. Officials of both the American Psychiatric Assn. and the American Psychological Assn. declined to discuss any aspect of Scientology with The Times. According to the FBI inventory of seized materials, however, one item is a folder of 42 documents captioned, "American Psychological Association" with the added words "red box." Asst. U.S. Atty. Banoun said in Los Angeles federal court last June, in a hearing in which the church sought to retrieve the seized materials, that other church documents held by the FBI explained that the designation "red Box" was a code the church used to signify items that could potentially incriminate Scientologists in illegal acts. The reason for Hubbard's including George Washington University in a list of "operations" is unknown. Hubbard attended the university from 1930 to 1932, before dropping out while on probation, according to a copy of his transcript. In a publication last year, however, the church accused the department of psychiatry in the university's medical school of cooperating with the FDA in an investigation of the church. Over the years, the American Medical Assn. has been a particular focus of criticism from Scientology. The church contends that the AMA, during the 1950s and '60s, campaigned to discredit Scientology and that the AMA is responsible for much of what is wrong with American health care. In 1963, for example, Hubbard wrote in a widely circulated policy memorandum that: "Certain vested interests, mainly the American Medical Association, a private healing monopoly, wish to do all possible harm to the Scientology movement over the world in order to protect their huge medical-psychiatric income and desired monopoly which runs into the tens of billions annually." More recently, through one of its reform groups, the Committee on Public Health and Safety, the church said in 1976 that the AMA "in particular has created a virtual stranglehold on medical care through its monopolistic practices" and that the AMA has "direct responsibility for skyrocketing costs and decreasing quality of American medical care," a position that most health care analysts would find oversimplified. In June, 1975, the AMA was deeply embarrassed by the revelation of its internal documents by "Sore Throat." The documents detailed the AMA's political activities and financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry. Some of the documents dealt with the AMA's lobbying for nominees to federal appointments, and others described a secret effort on the association's part to defeat a 1970 generic drug bill that it publicly supported. Still other material, supplied by "Sore Throat," cast doubt on the AMA's assertion of independence from the pharmaceutical industry by disclosing that 27 of the nation's drug companies had given $851,000 to the AMA's political arm between 1962 and 1965. Spokesmen for the AMA declined to discuss this episode or any aspect of Scientology with Times reporters. Sources intimately familiar with the episode, however, said that copies of the documents came from the AMA's Chicago and Washington, D.C., offices. The sources said the AMA suspected involvement of the Church of Scientology -- in part because a private investigator the AMA hired found two Scientologists working in the AMA's Washington office as secretaries, one under an assumed name. In Chicago, AMA officials have acknowledged administering lie detector tests to four employees thought to have had access to the documents "Sore Throat" had disclosed. Among those tested was a secretary named Sherry Canavarro, who had joined the AMA four months earlier to work in the office of the executive vice president. Confidential minutes from meetings of the AMA board of directors were on one occasion found in her desk, and it was determined that she had spent four or five weekends at work with no specifically assigned task, the sources said. The AMA refused to discuss the polygraph results beyond its August, 1975, statement in which the association said everyone passed. However, her duties were later changed, and subsequently she resigned. In its July, 1977, affidavit the FBI said Miss Canavarro also used the names "Sherry Hermann" and "Sandy Cooper," and described her as the Pacific Secretary of the church's Guardian Office in the United States. On her job application to the AMA, sources said, she listed her husband, Mitchell Hermann, and as a local Chicago reference, Michael Meisner's mother. Hermann, who the FBI had said directed Scientology's covert activities in Washington, D.C., from Jan. 1, 1974, through March 1, 1975, was among the 11 persons indicted by a federal grand jury Aug. 15 on charges of burglarizing government offices. The federal grand jury indictment charged that Hermann, also known as "Mike Cooper," and two other "Scientology agents" bugged a high-level meeting of the IRS in Washington Nov. 1, 1974, in which the churches' tax- exempt status was discussed. Church spokesmen said they thought Miss Canavarro was "on leave" from their staff and added that she was "not interested" in discussing these allegations with reporters. No legal actions have been brought against Miss Canavarro in the matter. "Whoever 'Sore Throat' was should get a medal," Dubron, a church spokesman, said. He added, "I don't know who that person was." "If this person went in and lied to get a job in the AMA and exposed crimes and created change, should that person be prosecuted for his or her actions?" The AMA disclosures prompted investigations by congressional committees, the Post Office, the Federal Election Commission and the IRS but have resulted in no prosecutions against the AMA. Before her employment at the AMA, Miss Canavarro worked from 1972 through 1974 for the Council of Better Business Bureaus in Washington, D.C. She was assigned to the council's philanthropic advisory section, which dealt with tax exempt organizations. Internal publications of local bureaus have in the past questioned Scientology's recruitment approaches and discussed its penchant for bringing lawsuits against critics and, on occasion, against persons seeking refunds. Sources in the council said that in 1974 Miss Canavarro persuaded officials to open their files on Scientology to her husband Mitchell. The sources said she identified him as a freelance writer preparing a story critical of the church. Miss Canavarro resigned from the council on Dec. 31, 1974. The FBI inventory listed 15 seized items which relate to the Better Business Bureau. These included: -- A manila folder entitled "Operation Cut Throat" containing six documents "regarding infiltration and background information" on the St. Louis Better Business Bureau. -- A Xerox copy of a 1973 "confidential letter written on Council of Better Business Bureau letterhead." -- A "confidential report" on Scientology prepared by the Boston Better Business Bureau. Beginning March 14, 1975, the council was subjected to the first of four anonymous, phony mailings. In one instance, a fictitious financial statement purporting to show the organization to be in weak financial condition was mailed to corporate sponsors such as Sears and Montgomery Ward and is said to have inspired a flood of inquiries but caused no evident damage to the organization. Other mailings suggested an imminent merger with the United States Chamber of Commerce and purported to rank the performance of affiliated bureaus. An extensive internal investigation by the national council in 1975 turned up no suspects. A source within the council said that FBI agents recently questioned council officials about Miss Canavarro and a woman who worked as secretary to the council's vice president. The FBI has told the council both were Scientologists. The vice president's secretary came to the council March 17, 1975, three days after the first anonymous phony mailing and returned home to England in September of 1975, one month after the last mailing was circulated, the source said. She came under suspicion as responsible for at least one of the phony mailings, the source said, because in a letter written for the council she misspelled the council's attorney's name the same way it was misspelled in one of the false mailings. No charges were brought against her. Several European mental health organizations that clashed with Scientology in the late 1960s and the early 1970s experienced what the London Observer in a July, 1973, article called a "series of baffling mishaps" that included burglaries and anonymous mailings. The Observer, noting the clashes between the organizations and Scientology, reported that "the whole extraordinary sequence of events remains shrouded in mystery." "The Scientologists," the newspaper continued, "say they are as baffled as anyone." No Scientologists were charged in connection with any of the incidents. The World Federation of Mental Health reported in 1969 that its headquarters in Edinburgh, Scotland, had been burglarized and that a quantity of federation stationery was stolen along with a list of participants scheduled to attend an upcoming meeting in Washington, D.C. According to press accounts, participants -- prior to the meeting -- received letters directing them instead to Havana, Cuba. All the attendants but one were said to have been forewarned in time; a Dutch delegate reportedly flew to Havana. Two listings in the FBI inventory of materials seized from the church last year refer to a "16-volume file" of documents from the World Federation of Mental Health. According to the FBI, one 14-page document in the file is labeled, "'Strictly confidential' regarding the Mental Health Conference Project." Available evidence, however, does not indicate whether these materials were among those taken from the World Federation of Mental Health in the 1969 burglary. In June, 1973, a basement door of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in London was forced open and college offices were burglarized. A secretary, Natalie Cobbing, said the only items taken were some correspondence and a file of material on Scientology in Britain. She said it also appeared that someone had used a copying machine. On April 22, 1973, burglars forced their way into the Dutch Center for Mental Health at Utrecht, reportedly left valuables untouched but took files pertaining to Scientology. Justice authorities in Utrecht said that police stopped three young men in a car in a routine traffic check shortly after the break-in. The men -- identified by police only as two Dutch citizens and a "foreigner" -- said they were Scientologists. The missing files were on the back seat. No charges were brought in the case, but authorities declined to say why. The board of the Dutch Center is said to have received a letter from the chief officer at the Church of Scientology in Amsterdam declaring that the theft was "contrary to our morals and our goals" and stating that the individuals involved had previously been expelled from the church. Possibly the most acrimonious clash between Scientology and medicine occurred in Britain in the late 1960s in the form of a bitter attack on the National Assn. of Mental Health, a professional organization the church blamed in part for a 1968 ban the British government placed on the entry of foreign nationals seeking to study Scientology. The church attacked the association and its officers publicly, charging that it operated "psychiatric death camps." At one point, the association has said, its public relations director received a letter from the Church of Scientology's chief public relations officer that began: "Dear opposite number. How does it feel to be hit? The public sentiment against psychiatry has been bad for years. Lately it has worsened. I have a good idea that it will get much worse. Raping women patients, murdering inmates, castrating men, committing without real process of law -- the psychiatrist has been a very bad boy." The church's public relations directory, David Gaiman, led a mass effort by Scientology to join the association in late 1969. In one two-week period in November, 1969, the association was flooded with 215 membership applications, or roughly 20 times the normal number. Many of the applications contained postal money orders (for application fees) with consecutive serial numbers and bore identifying marks of a single post office around the corner from a Scientology bookstore, the association told a British court. In March, 1970, the court held the membership applications from the Scientologists could be rejected because of the detrimental effect it could have on the association's ability to receive funds from foundations and others. In June, 1972, the association was the target of an unsigned leaflet, circulated to its 2,000 members, purportedly from a disgruntled doctor, derogating the association's director and alleging squalid conditions at three centers the association ran for adolescents. In parallel with the covert activities that federal authorities ascribe to it, the Church's Guardian Office directs Scientology's open endeavors in the field of social reform. "Social reform has always been a routine activity of religious movements," a new publication of the church observes. "The American cleric has traditionally been in the fore of social change." The church's internal policy directives, however, offer a different perspective, discussing social reform activities primarily in the context of defending the church by attacking its critics publicly. Moreover, a literal reading of Hubbard's thoughts suggests that he also views social reform as a means by which the church might gain recognition as a religion in the eyes of the public. "Remember," Hubbard wrote in a 1966 policy order, "churches are looked upon as reform groups. Therefore we must act like a reform group." He continued: "The way to seize the initiative is to use our own professionals to investigate intensively parts of the society that may attack us. Get an ammunition locker full. Be sure of our facts. And then expose via the press. "If we do this right, the press, instead of trying to invent reasons to attack us, will start hanging around waiting for our next lurid scoop. We must convert from an attacked group to a reform group that attacks rotten spots in society." Hubbard concluded: "We should not limit ourselves to mental healing or our own line. We should look for zones to investigate and blow the lid off and become known as a mighty reform group. We object to slavery, oppression, torture, murder, perversion, crime, political sin, and anything that makes man unfree." Since the late 1960s, the Church of Scientology has established at least 10 social reform groups in the United States alone, most of which -- though not all -- are devoted either to investigating government agencies that have attacked Scientology or to exploring the flaws of Scientology's original nemesis, the mental health professions. Two exceptions to this investigative emphasis are the church's Apple School, which applies the principles of Scientology to elementary education, and Narconon, a nominally independent organization begun in 1966 to aid drug addicts and convicts. According to a recent church publication describing the duties of the Guardian Office, "Narconon utilizes the rehabilitation methods developed by American humanitarian and educator L. Ron Hubbard." Narconon has been praised in some cities and criticized in others. The Los Angeles City Council commended Narconon in a March, 1974, resolution as "remarkably successful." The Palo Alto City Council canceled its $38,000 contract with Narconon in January, 1977, citing as its reason a lack of community representation on the Narconon board of directors. City officials had also complained about Narconon's refusal to grant access to its files and questioned its effectiveness. On the basis of a thick collection of newspaper clippings the church has compiled, the Scientology reform group that seems to have caught the widest press and public attention is the National Commission on Law Enforcement and Social Justice, which has been looking into the international police organization Interpol. The commission has unearthed and widely publicized evidence that the Vienna- and Berlin-based organization, not surprisingly, was dominated by Nazis in the late 1930s and during World War II -- and also that Interpol's president from 1968 to 1972 had served in the Nazi SS. The commission also surveyed police officials across the United States and from Thailand to Israel, by mail, and concluded that in contrast to its romantic image Interpol is mainly a clerical clearinghouse for police information and is widely held in low esteem. The accuracy of the church's information has not, for the most part, been questioned. But its motivations and methods are open to debate. Kenneth J. Whitman, president of the Church of Scientology of California and the worldwide organization's chief U.S. spokesman, acknowledges that its investigation began after Interpol offended the church by "spreading false information about us in Germany ... We started to investigate because we assumed it was happening to more than us." Copies of correspondence the church mailed out as part of its survey, and subsequently made public, fail to identify the church as the sponsoring organization of the NCLE. The letters also say nothing to indicate that the "National Commission" is a private, not governmental, body. The importance the church placed on ferreting out information on Interpol appears to be signified in a secret "Guardian Programme Order" dated June 27, 1995, from Scientology headquarters in Sussex, Eng., the grand jury said in its indictment Aug. 15. The indictment said the order directs that Interpol documents relating to Scientology and L. Ron Hubbard "be obtained through infiltration of, or the placing of 'clandestine agents' in, the Interpol offices" of the U.S. Treasury Department. The FBI alleged in an affidavit that church operatives ultimately succeeded in stealing Interpol documents kept by the Justice Department. A further connection between the church's covert activities and its social reform groups is evidenced in a variety of secret church Guardian orders dealing with a covert program code-named "Snow White." Government authorities have alleged that "Snow White" denoted a covert campaign by the church to infiltrate the IRS, in part to gain advantage in its quest for tax exemption. According to a "Guardian Programme Order" dated March 27, 1976, the mission of Snow White also encompassed the purging of "false and secret files" relating to Scientology in government agencies and thereby to permit Hubbard and his flagship Apollo greater freedom of movement among the ports of the world. The order contains no reference to social reform. Last April, nine months after the FBI had seized church papers that included secret Snow White program orders, the church turned its covert operation into a social reform group. A church news release on April 29 announced that Snow White would be transformed into a nationwide organization called American Citizens for Honesty in Government. In the news release, national church spokesman Arthur J. Maren said Snow White's purpose is and always has been "political reform" and "defense of individual liberty." It had been kept confidential, Maren said, "as we didn't want to embarrass government officials." One of American Citizens' first publications is a cartoon booklet reviewing congressional inquiries into improprieties of U.S. intelligence agencies. It bears the title, "Nightmare USA: What U.S. Government Agencies have Done to the American Dream." The church's spokesmen argue that the means and motivations of Scientology's social reform efforts are of secondary importance -- that launching an investigation in self-defense does not preclude objective analysis. "We have a duty to defend ourselves," spokesman Jeffrey Dubron says. "But we are a religion, and we have a duty to others as well ... If our motives had been purely self-serving, they would have manifested themselves that way. "I'm happy to let the work and product of our social reform movement stand on its own merits." Article 37490 of alt.religion.scientology: Path: news.cybercom.net!usenet.eel.ufl.edu!tank.news.pipex.net!pipex!howland.reston.ans.net!news.nic.surfnet.nl!sun4nl!xs4all!utopia.hacktic.nl!not-for-mail From: nobody@REPLAY.COM (Anonymous) Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology Subject: DOC: 1978 L.A. Times series [3/6] 7K Date: 1 Oct 1995 22:13:16 +0100 Organization: RePLaY aND CoMPaNY UnLimited Lines: 148 Sender: replay@utopia.hacktic.nl Message-ID: <44n09c$s4c@utopia.hacktic.nl> NNTP-Posting-Host: utopia.hacktic.nl XComm: Replay may or may not approve of the content of this posting XComm: Report misuse of this automated service to Los Angeles Times, August 27, 1978 Scientology's L. Ron Hubbard ... Official Biographies Seem Larger Than Life By Robert Gillette Like the Romanesque bronze busts of L. Ron Hubbard displayed in churches of Scientology, the official biographies of Scientology's founder seem larger than life. Born in Tilden, Neb., on March 13, 1911, to Navy Comdr. Harry Ross Hubbard and his wife, Dora May, he is said to have spent his early childhood on the Montana cattle ranch of his maternal grandfather, "where long days were spent riding, breaking broncos, hunting coyotes and taking his first steps as an explorer." Hubbard could "ride before he could walk," learned to read and write by the age of 3 1/2, became the nation's youngest Eagle Scout at 12, and found himself accepted as blood brother of the Blackfoot Indians -- the subject of his first novel, "Buckskin Brigades." Between the ages of 14 and 18, when most youths his age would have attended high school, Hubbard traveled Asia with his father studying Eastern religions, according to church biographers. His encounters included, Hubbard himself later wrote, a magician whose ancestors served in the court of Kublai Khan and a Hindu who could hypnotize cats. A biographical sketch published in 1976 by the principal U.S. Church of Scientology, in Los Angeles, said that he returned to the United States at the age of 19 and went on to graduate in mathematics and engineering from George Washington University's Columbia College, having taken "one of the first courses ever offered in what is now called nuclear physics." A more recent, and conflicting, sketch provided by the church explains that his enrollment at George Washington in 1930 (at age 19) was preceded by a period of "intense study" in two Washington, D.C., preparatory schools. It does not say that he graduated, however. Later, Hubbard claimed a D.D. (Doctorate of Divinity) and a Ph.D. He described himself in a 1951 letter to the FBI as "basically, a scientist in the field of atomic and molecular phenomena. At least, that was my course in college." A transcript of Hubbard's brief career at George Washington, which became part of the public record in a 1967 federal tax proceeding against the church, shows that Hubbard did enroll in 1930 but failed calculus and beginning German, earned D grades in chemistry and ended his freshman year on probation. The record shows that in his sophomore year he took a physics course that embraced atomic and molecular subjects but failed it and dropped out at the end of the year. The Ph.D. was an honorary degree awarded in 1950 by an unaccredited Los Angeles institution called Sequoia University. There is no record of his having earned a D.D. Asked to explain these discrepancies, a Los Angeles spokesman for Scientology said only that "The church does not stand or fall on Mr. Hubbard's academic record." His red hair and his restless energy earned Hubbard the nickname "Flash" in the 1930s as he developed a reputation as adventurer, mariner, barnstormer, author and explorer, his biographers say. His works include romantic adventure ("Hurtling Wings") and science fiction ("Final Blackout" and "Typewriter in the Sky"). "Hubbard was one of the first writers to switch to an electric typewriter in order to keep pace with his own fertile imagination," one biographical statement from the church asserts. In addition to all his other activities, he is said to have found time to lead expeditions to Alaska and the Caribbean before the war. Hubbard's war record is obscure. One recent church statement says that he was commissioned by the Navy before the war, at its outbreak was ordered to the Philippines and served later "in both the North Atlantic and North Pacific and rose to command a squadron." He was said to have been "seriously injured at the end of the war" and "so critically injured that he had twice been pronounced dead." Another statement says that "in 1944, crippled and blinded, he found himself in Oak Knoll Naval Hospital" in Oakland where he spent nearly a year. By 1947 he recovered fully. Hubbard himself has written that he was among the first beneficiaries of therapeutic techniques he would later call dianetics. "Blinded with injured optic nerves, and lame with physical injuries to hip and back at the end of World War II, I faced an almost nonexistent future ... I yet worked my way back to fitness and strength in less than two years, using only what I knew and could determine about Man and his relationship to the universe." A Navy spokesman confirmed that Hubbard had risen to the rank of lieutenant during World War II, but said that his service record did not show that he received a Purple Heart, a medal routinely given for injuries in wartime. A Navy spokesman also said in response to an inquiry from The Times: "A review of L. Ron Hubbard's medical record by BuMed (the Navy Bureau of Medicine) does not indicate he was treated for any injuries sustained during his military career." The spokesman added that this did not rule out the possibility that Hubbard had received medical treatment during "sick call" but noted that such treatment would have been for ambulatory, not bedridden, patients. In 1949 Hubbard told a science fiction writers' meeting in Newark, N.J., that "Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wanted to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion." Church spokesmen have not denied that Hubbard made the remark but insist that it was meant in jest. Missing from Hubbard's biographies is a clear explanation for the deep antipathy he developed, and began expressing in the late 1940s, for the mental health professions, particularly psychiatry. This antipathy also pervades the doctrine of the church, its social reform activities and its publications. "There are people who suppress," Hubbard wrote in a 1969 statement that the church continues to circulate. "Such want position in order to kill. Such as Genghis Khan, Adolf Hitler, psychiatrists, psychopathic criminals, want power only to destroy." His own personal encounters appear to have played a role in shaping this attitude. Hubbard has indicated in his writings that he observed people under psychiatric care while at Oak Knoll Hospital. In an interview he gave to the FBI on March 7, 1951, according to the FBI's internal memo summarizing the conversation, Hubbard "advised that he had recently been psychoanalyzed in Chicago and was found to be quite normal with the exception of his current marital difficulties." In the memo, which the FBI released recently under the Freedom of Information Act, the agent writing the summary said this was "an apparent attempt to give credence to his statements" that Communists had infiltrated his Dianetic Research Foundation. Hubbard rarely has appeared in public in the last decade. His last known public appearance was in Clearwater, Fla., in 1976, as the church was establishing a new training center there. Time magazine described him as "portly, in apparent good health" and "flamboyant and authoritative" as he barked orders to a group of young people. Now 67, Hubbard is said by the church to be traveling in the United States and Europe looking for a place to settle for an active retirement. Article 37491 of alt.religion.scientology: Path: news.cybercom.net!usenet.eel.ufl.edu!tank.news.pipex.net!pipex!news.sprintlink.net!EU.net!sun4nl!xs4all!utopia.hacktic.nl!not-for-mail From: nobody@REPLAY.COM (Anonymous) Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology Subject: DOC: 1978 L.A. Times series [4/6] 31K Date: 1 Oct 1995 22:20:48 +0100 Organization: RePLaY aND CoMPaNY UnLimited Lines: 615 Sender: replay@utopia.hacktic.nl Message-ID: <44n0ng$s6t@utopia.hacktic.nl> NNTP-Posting-Host: utopia.hacktic.nl XComm: Replay may or may not approve of the content of this posting XComm: Report misuse of this automated service to Los Angeles Times, August 28, 1978 Scientology Critics Assail Aggressiveness of Church "If anyone is getting industrious trying to enturbulate (sic) or stop Scientology or its activities, I can make Captain Bligh look like a Sunday-school teacher. There is probably no limit on what I would do to safeguard Man's only road to freedom against persons who ... seek to stop Scientology or hurt Scientologists." -- L. Ron Hubbard, Aug. 15, 1967 By Robert Rawitch and Robert Gillette It was not the first time that private investigator Eual R. Harrow had interviewed jurors following a verdict, but in a 1974 Los Angeles case involving the Church of Scientology, Harrow said the jurors proved to be "the most difficult group I have ever encountered." The case was a civil suit, and the church had hired Harrow to find out why it had lost. The jury had awarded $300,000 in damages to former Scientologist L. Gene Allard in his suit in Los Angeles Superior Court against the church for malicious prosecution. "Many of the jury, especially the women members, were concerned for their safety, and felt that the church may try to do something to the members of the jury," Harrow said in a sworn affidavit. One juror said several of the others contemplated asking for protection, Harrow said. "It appeared that all the jurors were somewhat intimidated by the doctrine of the Church of Scientology," the investigator wrote. "Everyone I interviewed felt they were now 'fair game.'" Fair game is the name the church applied to a policy dictum first expressed by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard in 1965, and which he reaffirmed in a written policy communique to the worldwide church in 1967. The fair-game policy has been a central focus of Scientology's critics -- among them former Scientologists -- who contend that the church pursues individuals who offend it with the same combativeness it directs toward government agencies and private groups the church counts among its enemies. In a policy order dated Oct. 18, 1967, concerning a "suppressive person" (SP) or "enemy" of the church, Hubbard wrote: "SP Order. Fair Game. May be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed." Spokesmen for the church insist that the intent of the fair-game policy has been widely misunderstood by outsiders, and that it signified only that a "suppressive person" could be deprived of the special protections the church seeks to provide from a hostile society. Equally misunderstood, the church contends, is a controversial Hubbard dictum label "R2-45," which the church's enigmatic founder never has chosen to elaborate. The dictum comes from Hubbard's book "The Creation of Human Ability" and reads: "R2-45: An enormously effective process for exteriorization but its use is frowned upon by this society at this time." Exteriorization, in Scientology terminology, is the ability of the mind, or "thetan" to physically leave the body. A number of former Scientologists who are now critics of the church assert that R2-45 is meant to authorize killing its antagonists with a .45-calibre pistol. Church spokesman Jeffrey Dubron, of the principal American Church of Scientology in Los Angeles, says "it was only a joke." There is no evidence that R2-45 has ever been carried out, nor is there any indication Scientologists have ever, as a matter of policy, physically harmed anyone. There is, however, abundant evidence that the church has sought -- and to a significant extent succeeded -- to suppress criticism of Scientology, in part by simply promulgating policies such as fair game and R2-45 and also by the church's quickness to file civil and even criminal charges against its critics. In a 1955 publication by Hubbard still sold in the church's bookstores, he said the purpose of a lawsuit against those who make unauthorized use of Scientology materials "is to harass and discourage rather than to win." He also said in the same publication, "... We do not want Scientology to be reported in the press anywhere else than in the religious pages of newspapers ... Therefore, we should be very alert to sue for slander at the slightest chance so as to discourage the public presses from mentioning Scientology." Eight years later, a five-page policy letter put out by Hubbard entitled "press policies" suggests "We prefer no press because it slows our word- of-mouth amongst the people." As with its war on government agencies that the church perceives as hostile to it, Scientology's conflict with individual critics are the business of the church's Guardian Office, a legal, public relations and intelligence staff represented in each Scientology church in the United States and other countries. Directed from the organization's headquarters in Sussex, Eng., the Guardian Office is a world apart from the thousands of predominantly young people devoted to the church, and who feel that its form of counseling, called "auditing," has benefited them. Indeed, the Guardian Office poses what would seem to be the central paradox of Scientology: It is a sternly disciplinarian, combative -- and by the acknowledgement of church officials keenly litigious -- unit of a religious organization that says it seeks to "increase the spiritual, cultural, and moral values of man" and to ameliorate the "harsh demands of a modern society." According to various sources: -- A New York federal grand jury is currently trying to determine whether Scientologists framed Paulette Cooper, the author of a book critical of the church, by mailing two bomb threats to a Church of Scientology in New York containing clues pointing to Miss Cooper. A grand jury in 1973 initially charged Miss Cooper with mailing the threatening letters, but the charges were dismissed by the prosecutor two years later. -- The FBI in its July, 1977, search of Church of Scientology offices in Los Angeles and Washington seized documents indicating that two Scientologists staged a phony hit-and-run automobile accident involving a pedestrian in an effort to discredit Gabriel Cazares, a former mayor of Clearwater, Fla., and a vigorous critic of Scientology. -- The FBI also seized documents indicating unspecified "operations" planned by the church against Florida journalists critical of Scientology in 1976. The church was at that time establishing a $2.3 million center for its elite "Sea Organization" in the Clearwater area. The FBI also has alleged in an affidavit that one of the 11 Scientologists indicted by a federal grand jury Aug. 15 on charges of burglarizing federal offices intended to use fictitious Internal Revenue Service identification cards in an "operation" against one of the journalists, but decided instead to use the cards to gain entry to a U.S. Justice Department office. In litigating to curb its critics, the Church of Scientology has brought more than 100 civil lawsuits in the past decade in the United States and Canada alone -- most of them for libel -- against journalists, publishing companies, radio and television stations, libraries and outspoken individuals who criticize the church. Moreover, on at least four occasions the Church of Scientology or its members have lodged criminal charges against vocal critics. In each of the four known instances the charges were dismissed by a local prosecutor or a judge before the case was presented to a jury. The doctrinal writings and policy statements produced over the last 14 years by the church's 67-year-old founder, L. Ron Hubbard, have set Scientology's basic strategy in meeting attacks by government agencies, private groups and individuals. Among the earliest such statements is a formal "policy letter" issued on August 15, 1960, directing his followers to conduct themselves more forcefully. "If attacked on some vulnerable point," Hubbard wrote, "always find or manufacture enough threat against them to cause them to sue for peace." Six years later another policy directive over Hubbard's name exhorts Scientologists to investigate "noisily" individuals who attack the church. "You find out where he or she works or worked, doctor, dentist, friends, neighbors, anyone and phone 'em up and say, 'I am investigating Mr./Mrs. ... for criminal activities as he/she has been trying to prevent Man's freedom and is restricting my religious freedom and that of my friends and children, etc. ...' "You say now and then, 'I have already got some astounding facts,' etc. etc. (Use a generality) ... It doesn't matter if you don't get much info. Just be noisy -- it's very odd at first, but makes fantastic sense and works." A subsequent May 30, 1974, confidential Scientology board policy letter entitled "handling hostile contacts/dead agenting," incorporates part of the church's earlier policies regarding attacks and specifically attributes to Hubbard: "It is my specific intention that by the use of professional PR tactics any opposition be not only dulled but permanently eradicated. This takes data and planning before positive action can occur." At another point in the policy, to counter what Hubbard labeled the "black propaganda" of others against Scientology, the founder wrote: "If there will be a long-term threat, you are to immediately evaluate and originate a black PR campaign to destroy the person's repute and to discredit them so thoroughly that they will be ostracized." Scientology spokesman Kenneth Whitman said the 1974 policy had been rescinded, but church officials declined to produce any written documentation to that effect. According to court documents, L. Gene Allard believed that the Church of Scientology instigated criminal charges against him in 1969 in an effort to discredit him after he left the church with financial records which he later turned over to the Internal Revenue Service. Allard, an artist from Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., who was then 28 years old, had joined the church in 1969 in Texas. The same year he moved to Los Angeles, where he signed a symbolic "billion-year" contract of loyalty to the church and joined Scientology's elite management corps, the Sea Organization. Allard held the position of banking officer for the United States "Mother Church" in Los Angeles until June 8, 1969, when, he said in court testimony, he fled the church after a superior urged him to alter $1.25 million in receipts so as to make it appear that the money had been received by a tax-exempt portion of the church rather than a nonexempt entity. Soon after Allard fled, church officials called the police and accused him of stealing the equivalent of $27,713 in Swiss francs, along with unspecified records, from the church safe. Allard was subsequently arrested in Florida and jailed for 21 days before the Los Angeles district attorney's office dismissed grand theft charges against him "in the interest of justice." Expanding on the reasons for the dismissal, the prosecutor, in his recommendation filed in Superior Court, said church officials had been "evasive" in discussing the allegedly stolen Swiss francs. Allard did admit taking financial records from the safe that reflected income and disbursements by the church, but he said he turned those over to the IRS in Kansas City, which the prosecutor confirmed. The Los Angeles prosecutor also told the court he found Allard's contention that the charges were leveled at him by Scientology in an attempt to discredit him "plausible" and "well founded" because Allard might someday be a witness for the IRS in a case against the church. The 1974 trial of Allard's malicious prosecution suit against the church focused on whether he had been subjected to Scientology's fair-game policy and the church's contention the policy had been canceled. Attorneys for the church vigorously argued that the policy was irrelevant to Allard's suit and, failing that, tried to show that it had not been applied to Allard. Introduced into evidence was a policy order signed by Hubbard in 1968 which called a halt to declaring individuals fair game "because it is bad public relations." But the same policy stated it "does not cancel any policy on treatment or handling of any SP (suppressive person)," referring to being "tricked, sued, or lied to or destroyed." The jury May 31, 1974, found in favor of Allard and awarded him $50,000 general damages and $250,000 punitive damages. An appellate court -- which upheld the Superior Court verdict but reduced the amount of punitive damages assessed against the church to $50,000 -- observed that Superior Judge Parks Stillwell had given the church "almost the entire trial within which to produce evidence that the fair-game policy had been repealed." The appellate court said the church had "failed to do so." The California Supreme Court refused on July 15, 1976, to review the case. Allard was last reported by his attorney, W. Marshall Morgan, to be working as a woodcarver in San Diego County. Efforts by The Times to reach him for comment were unsuccessful. In a similar finding, the December, 1971, report of an official British inquiry into Scientology rejected the church's contention that the fair- game policy was "just a theoretical sanction." Sir John Foster, a member of Parliament who presided over the inquiry, wrote: "In at least one case which has come to my notice, a defector from Scientology who had risen through the ranks to a high position in the organization was declared fair-game over Mr. Hubbard's signature when he decided to dissociate himself. "Thereafter, members of the Scientology leadership were found writing to third parties to say that the defector had been 'excommunicated for theft and perversion.' "Another Scientologist, who had sued for the return of his auditing (counseling) fees, found himself the subject of a private prosecution for theft by the Scientology leadership. Fortunately for him, he was acquitted." The Church of Scientology has since circulated an affidavit bearing Hubbard's signature that disavows any harmful intent to the fair-game policy. The March 22, 1976, affidavit, which is not notarized, reads in part: "There was never any attempt or intent on my part by the writing of these policies (or any others for that fact), to authorize illegal or harassment-type acts against anyone." However, the inventory the FBI prepared of items it seized from the Church of Scientology in July, 1977, cites a nine-page document dated Jan. 26, 1976, which, according to the FBI's description, concerns "operations against enemies 'Sableman, Orsini, and Bob Snyder.'" Mark Sableman and Bette Orsini are reporters for the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times and Clearwater Sun who, in 1976, wrote a series of investigative stories on Scientology. Bob Snyder was at the time a talk show host on radio station WDCL in Dunedin, Fla., near Clearwater, where the Church of Scientology established a major new "advanced training" facility in late 1975. On his radio show, and on the lecture circuit in the metropolitan Tampa area, Snyder had been severely critical of the church, depicting Scientology as an "anti-God" influence that had moved surreptitiously into the community, misleading businessmen, news media, and local clergy as to its identity. The Church of Scientology had established the advanced training center for its Sea Organization in the locally historic, 272-room Fort Harrison Hotel in Clearwater -- but did not initially disclose its ownership. The previous owner, Jack Tar Hotels, Inc., said only that it had sold the Fort Harrison building for $2.3 million to a company called Southern Land Development and Leasing Corp., which in turn was to lease the hotel to a newly formed organization called United Churches of Florida. Only after the mayor of Clearwater at the time, Gabriel Cazares, pressed publicly for more information about United Churches -- and asked in particular why a religious organization would restrict public access to the old hotel and post Mace-equipped security guards around the clock -- did Scientology church officials in Florida acknowledge that they were "95% owners" of both Southern Land and United Churches of Florida. Still later, the officials said the two groups were "wholly-owned subsidiaries" of the Church of Scientology. Asked in 1976 to explain why the church had not disclosed its role in the purchase of the hotel, national spokesman Arthur J. Maren said that, "Since the idea was to unite religions for community and social betterment, and not an idea to propagate Scientology, the less mention of any dominant religion the better." (The hotel complex and nearby bank building the church purchased for $500,000 now operate openly under the banner of Scientology.) In an affidavit the FBI prepared last year in support of a search warrant prior to seizing papers from the Church of Scientology, the bureau alleged that two church agents broke into an Internal Revenue Service office in Washington, in March, 1976, and made IRS credentials in fictitious names. "These credentials were initially made," the FBI alleged, "for use in a covert operation involving one Robert Snyder, a newscaster critical of the church." Instead of carrying out that operation, the FBI affidavit alleged, the credentials were used by two Scientologists to gain entry to the U.S. Courthouse in Washington, where the Justice Department kept files of government documents withheld from the Church of Scientology, under exemptions in the Freedom of Information Act. The FBI identified the Scientologists as Michael J. Meisner, the Washington church's covert operations chief who became a key government informant in the case, and Gerald Wolfe of Los Angeles, one of the 11 indicted by a federal grand jury. The FBI said it intercepted Wolfe and Meisner at the U.S. Courthouse on June 11, 1976. In February, 1976, after the church threatened to sue the radio station for Snyder's caustic remarks about Scientology, the small station fired Snyder, then rehired him a month later to host a noncontroversial music show. The same month church officials obtained a criminal complaint for trespassing against Snyder, alleging that he had driven at a high rate of speed into the courtyard of a church facility shouting obscenities. Snyder confirmed that he and his wife had driven onto the premises to gather information about Scientology, but denied the other accusations. A city judge dismissed the charges ruling that no "willful trespass" had been proven. Mark Sableman, a reporter with the Clearwater Sun who had written stories critical of Scientology, was the target of an apparent attempt in May, 1976, to discredit him professionally in the eyes of the Florida Legislature, which Sableman was then covering. A rough draft of a fictitious news story under his name was circulated anonymously among legislators alleging that 19 of them were linked to the Mafia and gambling interests and were involved in bribery, blackmail and illegal financial transactions. The Clearwater Sun denied at the time that Sableman was working on any such story and added in a published disclaimer that two documents circulated with the fake draft, which the newspaper did not describe, were apparently obtained by burglarizing the reporter's Tallahassee hotel room. According to one account, documents seized from the Church of Scientology in July, 1977, show Scientologists circulated the fictitious news story. In February, 1976, shortly after the church had bought the Clearwater Hotel and the city's mayor, among others, had stirred a local furor over Scientology's role, the Church sued Cazares for $1 million -- alleging libel, slander and infringement of its members' constitutional right to freedom of religion. Cazares and his wife then countersued the church, alleging that a "fact sheet" on his background that Scientologists had circulated had libeled him. (The Cazareses later dropped their suit, they said, in order to concentrate their resources on defending against the church suit, which a federal judge in Tampa dismissed last month. A hearing is yet to be held to determine whether the Church of Scientology should be compelled to pay the Cazares' legal fees, which his attorney estimates at between $40,000 and $70,000.) On March 14 and 15, 1976, Cazares attended a national mayors' conference in Washington, D.C. Shortly thereafter, while Cazares was running unsuccessfully for Congress, an anonymous letter signed only "Sharon T." circulated in Clearwater alleging that the mayor had been riding in a car in Washington that struck a pedestrian and that Cazares had failed to report the accident. Last April, the Washington Post reported that documents the FBI seized from the church showed that two Scientologists had staged a fake hit-and-run accident involving Cazares in Washington's Rock Creek Park. A woman Scientology agent, said to have been driving a car in which Cazares was riding, reportedly "struck" a second Scientologist posing as a pedestrian, sped away and urged the mayor not to report the "accident." The Church of Scientology subsequently subpoenaed the Post reporter and entered the story into court records as part of a contention that the government had leaked documents prejudicial to the church. Cazares, who is now a stockbroker in the Clearwater area, has acknowledged renting a car and driving it in Washington on March 14, 1976, but has said he drove alone. Inquiries to the Washington police by Florida news media at the time the anonymous letter from "Sharon T" circulated, disclosed 19 hit-and-run accidents in the metropolitan area on March 14, none involving a pedestrian. Although he turned the letter over to the FBI, Cazares declined to discuss the incident further with The Times. Spokesmen for the Church of Scientology have denied involvement in any such episode or in circulating the letter from "Sharon T." One church spokesman said, "It sounds like the plot of a movie." In pleadings filed in the Los Angeles federal court, Asst. U. S. Atty. Raymond Banoun, the prosecutor in the case of 11 church officials indicted Aug. 15, said earlier this year that federal grand juries in Tampa and New York are investigating Scientology, but he would comment no further. The New York grand jury, according to a reliable source, is attempting to determine whether the church or its officials were involved in framing freelance author Paulette Cooper on criminal charges lodged against her on May 17, 1973. Miss Cooper, who wrote a 1971 book entitled, "The Scandal of Scientology," was charged two years later with two counts of mailing bomb threats to a prominent official of the church in New York and one count of perjury for denying to a grand jury that she sent the notes. J. A. Meisler, then a public-relations official in the New York Church of Scientology, has said in a signed statement that after he received the two typewritten bomb threats he gave the FBI a list of persons "who might bear me a grudge or be critical or opposed to" Scientology. Los Angeles church spokesmen confirmed that her name was one of those given to the FBI. One of the notes bore a single fingerprint of Miss Cooper, and the wording of both contains clues pointing to her. One note, for example, refers to "books closing in on me" -- Miss Cooper has written several other books and numerous magazine articles -- and also contains the words, "My tongue is swollen -- I hurt -- my operation." Miss Cooper had a minor tongue anomaly which she says developed as a result of childhood malnutrition when she lived in an orphanage. Shortly before the Church of Scientology reported receiving the notes in late 1972, Miss Cooper also had undergone major surgery for an unrelated problem and mentioned it in a television interview. In the months after she was charged with federal offenses relating to the mailing of the notes, Miss Cooper has said she spent more than $20,000 for legal fees and an additional $6,000 for psychiatric treatment of severe mental depression. On one occasion, she has said, she attempted suicide. In 1975, two years after her indictment, authorities dismissed the charges against Miss Cooper. Three weeks ago, Miss Cooper filed a $20 million damage suit against the church in New York. In the suit, she said that FBI agents advised her in October of 1977 of evidence that the Church of Scientology "had caused her stationery to be stolen, had written the two bomb threat letters on it, had caused them to be sent to it (the church) and had called in the FBI and blamed her." In her civil suit, Paulette Cooper refers to a manila folder entitled "PC Freakout" that was among truckloads of documents the FBI seized from the Church of Scientology, following a search July 8, 1977. The only available description of the folder is contained in the FBI's extensive inventory of materials it seized. The FBI said it contained two documents that concerned "getting PC incarcerated in a mental institution or jail." The FBI has informed Miss Cooper that the initials "PC" refer to her. The FBI inventory of seized documents contains more than a dozen references in all to "PC" and "Paulette Cooper," including a three-page document dated May 18, 1972, discussing "intelligence operations against Paulette Cooper" and a manila folder with "handwritten notes from P. Cooper's diary." In addition to alleging that the church framed her on the criminal charges, Miss Cooper's suit alleges that the Church also stole her diary; sent false and malicious, but anonymous letters to acquaintances; made threatening phone calls to her; stole information about her from the offices of her lawyer and doctor and mailed it to her and spied on her. Jonathon Lubell, New York attorney for the church, declined to comment on the nature of Miss Cooper's suit other than to state he was confident Scientology would be "vindicated." Cooper's 1971 book also resulted in a major legal battle with the church, which filed eight libel suits against her in California, New York and Canada as well as in Australia and Great Britain, where Miss Cooper says the book was never distributed. Tower Publications, Inc., publisher of "The Scandal of Scientology," withdrew the book from the market shortly after the suits were filed against Miss Cooper and the company. Stating that fighting the suits was not worth the probable cost in legal fees, Tower paid the church $500 in a 1973 settlement and wrote a brief apology for "any difficulties caused to the Church of Scientology as a result of any half-truths or misstatements of fact in the book ..." On Dec. 5, 1976, five of the lawsuits were settled on the eve of a Superior Court trial in Los Angeles pertaining to one of them. The church paid what Miss Cooper's attorney described as a "substantial sum" for her legal expenses. She in turn signed a statement that said in part that in the five years since publication of the book she had learned that a number of passages in it were "erroneous or at the very least misleading" and agreed not to discuss the book publicly. In still another suit, which the church filed against Miss Cooper this year, it accused her of breaking a clause in the settlement agreement under which she was to refrain from public discussion of Scientology and her book. The church filed the suit after a newspaper story last April described her conflict with Scientology, although the story said she was traveling in Europe and could not be reached for comment. Her attorney, in responding to this suit, said she signed the 1976 agreement "under duress" from the church and that it was therefore "unlawful and unenforceable." Jeffrey Dubron, a church spokesman in Los Angeles, characterized Miss Cooper as "someone who is out for money and found a sensational way to get it." "All I'm saying," Dubron said, "is look at her book, look at this (the 15-page statement she signed concerning disputed passages in the book) ... and then ask us why we sued, and why, when you talk about Paulette Cooper's credibility, you find we have fairly deaf ears." Forty miles north of Toronto, in the small community of Sutton, Ontario, a 55-year-old housewife named Nan McLean has been an equally vocal critic of Scientology, and her conflicts with the church have been intense. Mrs. McLean joined Scientology in 1969 and for several years worked full time at one of the church's counseling "franchises" -- now called missions -- in Toronto. Before she left in the fall of 1972 she had brought her husband, two sons, and daughter-in-law into the church. One son, John, now 26, dropped out of high school in his senior year to join Scientology and spent nearly two years aboard the church's flagship, the 3,280-ton yacht Apollo. But when the McLeans became disenchanted with Scientology and sought refunds for some of the counseling courses they had taken, conflict erupted with the church -- and escalated as the McLeans began publicly criticizing the church in new articles and on radio and television. In a little more than five years, the Church of Scientology has filed nearly a dozen lawsuits -- most of them for libel -- against various members of the family in the United States and Canada, instigated criminal charges alleging harassing phone calls from the McLeans, and conducted a mock funeral for the family down the main street of Sutton. A judge dismissed the criminal charges after testimony that three of the calls actually were placed by Scientologists to the McLeans. On April 25, 1974, a Canadian court ordered the church "not to carry on public demonstrations against" Mrs. McLean, distribute literature describing her as a "lost soul," or otherwise refer to her previous association with Scientology. Mrs. McLean in turn was ordered to cease impugning Scientology on radio and television until a church suit against her (to reclaim a $1,300 refund it paid her) is resolved. Amid these legal battles, two Toronto men were arrested on April 17, 1974, in what police said was an aborted attempt to break into an attorney's office. The office was that of Nan McLean's attorney. The following day a court hearing was scheduled in one of the suits the Church of Scientology had brought against her. The two men later pleaded guilty to possession of burglary tools and were sentenced to two years probation. Although a police search of their apartment found material on Scientology, neither man acknowledged affiliation with the church during interviews with police or with probation officials. Asst. Crown Atty. Brian McIntyre, in a letter to Mrs. McLean dated Nov. 3, 1975, said a police investigation revealed that both men were members of the Church of Scientology. There is no evidence the men were acting at the direction of the church. Article 37611 of alt.religion.scientology: Path: news.cybercom.net!usenet.eel.ufl.edu!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!news.nic.surfnet.nl!sun4nl!xs4all!utopia.hacktic.nl!not-for-mail From: nobody@REPLAY.COM (Anonymous) Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology Subject: DOC: 1978 L.A. Times series [5/6] 23K Date: 1 Oct 1995 22:13:19 +0100 Organization: RePLaY aND CoMPaNY UnLimited Lines: 458 Sender: replay@utopia.hacktic.nl Message-ID: <44n09f$s4b@utopia.hacktic.nl> NNTP-Posting-Host: utopia.hacktic.nl XComm: Replay may or may not approve of the content of this posting XComm: Report misuse of this automated service to Los Angeles Times, August 29, 1978 Church Claims U.S. Campaign of Harassment By Robert Gillette and Robert Rawitch The Church of Scientology contends that for more than 20 years it has been the target of a systematic campaign by the United States government, together with "vested-interest pressure groups" such as the medical professions, to "suppress the church's spiritual practice and expansion." The church advances this accusation as the fundamental rationale for its aggressive policies of defense-by-attack against individual critics, private groups and government agencies perceived as "harassing" Scientology. Church spokesmen, moreover, expand upon the allegation of systematic persecution to suggest that the church's chronic state of conflict with the U.S. government, among others, symptomizes an erosion of democracy of the kind that presaged the rise of Fascism in Germany in the 1930s. "Genocide didn't begin with gas chambers, it began with the suppression of a single organization," Jeffrey A. Dubron, a spokesman for Scientology's principal United States church in Los Angeles, said repeatedly during interviews with two Times reporters. Heber C. Jentzsch, the church's chief West Coast spokesman, adds: "Religion is under attack. We're not alone ... It could result in vast devastation of an entire society if allowed to proliferate." In an effort to substantiate its charges of persecution, the church says it has filed more than 1,000 formal requests with federal agencies and nearly two dozen lawsuits under the Freedom of Information Act since 1973 -- and that by this means has amassed some 200,000 pages of internal government papers and correspondence from private citizens to government agencies that refer to Scientology. Yet a close examination of the papers the church has culled from this mass of material and made available to Times reporters as evidence fails to reveal any explicit or unambiguous expression of interest on the part of any federal agency to "suppress" or "harass" Scientology, alone or in collaboration with any other agency or private group. The documents do contain, as the church contends, abundant speculation and rumor about Scientology's motivations and activities, although the gossip in the government's files was usually labeled for what it was. Overall, the papers reflect widespread skepticism that Scientology was a bona fide religion. But at the same time, government agencies appeared disinclined to regard it as subversive or dangerous. As one informational memo circulated within the Central Intelligence Agency put it, L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology's founder, "appears to be a shrewd businessman who has parlayed his Scientology 'religion' into a multimillion-dollar business by taking advantage of that portion of society prone to fall for such gimmicks." The church considers this typical of the damaging false information that it says has plagued Scientology from its inception. Another CIA memo says, however, that the agency "has had no relationship with Hubbard or with the movement, nor is there any evidence available that would suggest political or subversive overtones." During 11 hours of interviews, Dubron and Jentzsch began with the position that the government agencies such as the FBI and CIA had engaged "systematic harassment" of the church, in large part by circulating false information about the church's beliefs and practices to other agencies and to foreign governments. As the evidence of intent was discussed, the two spokesmen shifted to a position that "individuals" in the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service and other agencies had acted on their own volition to suppress the church. Still later, Dubron asserted that papers obtained under the Freedom of Information Act "at the very least demonstrate gross incompetence" on the part of agencies handling matters relating to Scientology -- ranging from the church's requests for tax exemption to visa applications from foreign Scientologists. "We feel we will be able to prove intent (to harass)," Dubron said, adding in reference to the material obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, "we feel certain it is in there." If such evidence does not emerge, Dubron said, it may be that it is hidden in additional files the government has refused to surrender under exemption clauses in the act. Or, he said, federal officials may have destroyed such evidence to avoid embarrassment or never committed their intentions to paper in the first place. This hypothesis is not implausible, but it does run counter to the success that other controversial organizations have had in prying deeply embarrassing documents from federal agencies by means of the Freedom of Information Act. There are, for example, the volumes of documents brought to light beginning in 1974 that exposed a 15-year campaign by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to disrupt organizations ranging from the Communist Party to the Black Panthers to New Left groups opposed to the Vietnam war. In one such document, a May 10, 1968, memo from the FBI's "Cointelpro" campaign that conveyed the bureau's intentions unequivocally, the late director J. Edgar Hoover ordered his agents to "expose, disrupt or otherwise neutralize" the New Left movement. The FBI "must frustrate every effort of these groups and individuals to consolidate their forces or to recruit new or useful elements," Hoover wrote. The Church of Scientology, which includes the FBI on its list of agencies alleged to have harassed the church, does not appear on published lists of organizations the FBI targeted in its now-defunct Cointelpro campaign. More important, disclosure of the Cointelpro documents showed that in the 1950s and 1960s -- precisely when Scientologists say they were under concerted attack -- federal officials did commit to paper their intentions toward other groups, kept the paper and later surrendered it. The file of papers bearing on Scientology which the FBI has released under the Freedom of Information Act consists almost entirely of citizen inquiries about Scientology; responses from the FBI to the effect that as an investigative agency it could offer no comment; and internal memos on Scientology evidently written for the guidance of FBI offices in handling public inquiries. The memos consistently, from the 1950s into the 1970s, assert that the FBI has not investigated the Church of Scientology or its founder, Hubbard. Three inches thick, the FBI file covers 34 years, from 1940 through 1974. It begins with a May 16, 1940 letter from Hubbard himself to the FBI, in which Hubbard accuses the steward of the Knickerbocker Hotel in New York of Nazi sympathies. The FBI promptly opened a file listing Hubbard as an "informant," then closed it two weeks later after an FBI agent, seeking more information from Hubbard, found that he had moved from his apartment and left no forwarding address. Last year, the Church of Scientology published a paperback book containing what its spokesmen describe as the essence of available evidence for government harassment of the church. Entitled "The American Inquisition," the $5 book opens with a claim that in 1950 "the government was excited by the possibility of monopolizing L. Ron Hubbard's work and sought to force him into classified government service." "When Mr. Hubbard declined," the book continues, "the government threatened him -- and the war between Scientology and the government was on." It was, by all indications, a peculiar war. The next year saw Hubbard visiting FBI offices on March 7, 1951, to discuss his then current marital difficulties, pass along the names of associates he believed to be Communists, and advertise dianetics -- his theory of the human mind's operation -- as a means of combatting communism. The FBI's summary of the interview, released under the Freedom of Information Act, notes that Hubbard "declined to elaborate on how this might be done." By 1955, FBI memos indicate, the bureau had ceased acknowledging Hubbard's correspondence. According to the church's book, the next major incident occurred in the spring of 1958 when then Vice President Richard M. Nixon was alleged to have dispatched two U.S. Secret Service agents to the Founding Church of Scientology in Washington, D.C., to upbraid its staff for a slighting reference to Nixon that had appeared in the church's magazine Ability. "The agents further demanded that all copies of the Ability issue be recalled, that no further copies be issued, and that Nixon's name never again be mentioned in the church magazine," the book asserts. The Secret Service has told the church that it has no record of such a visit. The substantiation the church offered in its book is a letter written by a former Washington Scientologist 16 years later, in November, 1974. The letter says in part: "A rumor somewhat circulated through the organization that we had been visited by the Secret Service on behalf of Vice President Nixon," but the author leaves open the possibility that, "I am misidentifying it with other visits from the FDA or the IRS." Agents of the Food and Drug Administration did visit a Scientology office in the Washington, D.C. area in 1958. They seized 20,000 pills of a vitamin mixture the church called "dianezene." The FDA said the pills were misleadingly labeled "Special Anti-Radiation Compound" and were advertised as conferring protection against radioactivity. According to the FDA, the seizure was "uncontested" and the tablets were destroyed. Five years later -- in an action the church considers one of the leading government transgressions against it -- the FDA returned to seize 100 of Scientology's "E-meters" in Washington, charging that Scientologists were using the electronic devices (which resemble simple lie-detectors) in a counseling context that implied curative powers for illnesses. The church fought the FDA for the next 10 years and finally won the right to use its E-meters in religious counseling so long as it imputed no therapeutic value. But government documents the church made available to The Times appear to conflict with, rather than support, its view that the 1963 raid was part of a larger effort to suppress Scientology. In a 1968 letter to the British Ministry of Health, for example, the FDA said, "Our seizure action of the Hubbard E-meters was directed solely against the device, based on objectionable statements in various materials which served as labeling." The Church of Scientology also contends that it was included on the White House "enemies" list drawn up during the Nixon administration and that it has been the target of a vendetta by the Internal Revenue Service. "It is not insignificant that the Church of Scientology was one of the organizations named in the infamous Nixon 'enemies' list," Washington church vice president Kendrick L. Moxon said in a federal court affidavit filed May 6, 1976. But a review of the "enemies" list and associated memos that presidential counsel John Dean disclosed in June, 1973, reveals no mention of the church, its founder or its other officials among the more than 250 organizations and individuals singled out explicitly for retaliation by the IRS and other federal agencies. The church does appear on a list the IRS drew up in 1969 of organizations that -- the agency said in an attached memo -- "by their very nature can be expected to ignore or wilfully violate tax or firearm statutes." The memo makes no mention of "enemies" or any form of retaliation or harassment. The context is that of an effort to consolidate files and eliminate repetitive and overlapping field investigation on groups believed likely to evade tax laws. In the mid-1960s, the IRS revoked the tax-exempt status of two principal Scientology churches, in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. The California case is yet to be resolved, but in 1969 the U.S. Court of Claims upheld the IRS action in the Washington case, ruling that the church had "failed to prove," as the law requires, that no part of the church corporation's net earnings inured to the benefit of Hubbard, his wife or family. Suspicion within the Internal Revenue Service that the Church of Scientology and its numerous subsidiary organizations was actually a "profit-making scheme of a nonreligious nature" is reflected in an internal memo dated March 27, 1967. Based on unspecified "investigative information," the memo contends that since the early 1950s a "sizable amount of untaxed income has been going to Hubbard generally via one of the (his) controlled organizations, through English or Swiss banks." Discussing ways of taxing this income, the memo suggests imposing a 30% withholding tax on monies flowing out of the United States to Scientology groups abroad. But it notes that "this would net little tax and not reach the real tax target -- Hubbard." Jentzsch, the church's chief West Coast spokesman, said he took this remark to mean that "they don't care about the money -- they want to get Hubbard." One of the major themes weaving through Scientology's complaint of government harassment is that the FBI, among other agencies, deliberately circulated false and damaging information about the church and its founder within the U.S. government and also passed it along to other governments form Australia to Europe to Africa -- thereby coloring official attitudes toward Scientology around the world. "Well-poisoning," is the phrase that Kenneth J. Whitman, president of the Church of Scientology of California, uses. To support this view, the church compiled and gave to The Times several hundred pages of documents the U.S. government has turned over to the church. The papers include internal memos, correspondence, State Department cables and requests for information from several foreign governments including Canada and Britain. These papers, among others obtained independently, do demonstrate that the FBI -- having not investigated the church -- culled much of its information from uncomplimentary newspaper and magazine articles, distributed it freely to U.S. agencies and infrequently to foreign governments -- but not to the public. The papers also indicate that throughout the government, rumor and speculation linking Scientology to hypnosis and the use or smuggling of drugs were common. (The church has consistently denied any such associations and in January of 1976 federal drug officials said in a court proceeding there was no drug investigation under way.) It is impossible to tell, on the basis of papers the church has made available, whether, or to what extent, such gossip weighed against the church in its dealings with governments. There is no indication, however, that U.S. agencies (including the FBI) attached particular credence to the melange of rumor and news clippings circulated by the FBI -- or that they relied on such material as a basis for regulatory decisions affecting the church. A case in point is the so-called "Foley memorandum," which the church regards as one of the most egregious examples of damaging false information yet unearthed from government files by the Freedom of Information Act. Written by one Shirley Foley of the U.S. Labor Department in November, 1967, the memo is a nine-paragraph summary of a conversation with two IRS attorneys written for his files. When it was written -- and, the church says, distributed later to other federal agencies -- the Labor Department was considering whether to issue alien employment certificates routinely to foreign Scientology ministers under rules that apply to "bona fide" religious groups. The certificates were necessary for admission to the United States. The memo notes that the IRS had tentatively revoked the church's tax- exempt status in Washington, D.C., and California. It then makes passing reference, without elaboration, to "evidence" that the Church of Scientology makes wide use of LSD, uses electric shock in an initiation ceremony and that "members of several families" have allegedly been "shot but not killed by unknown persons because they objected to their teen-age children becoming members." (Scientology spokesmen say categorically that the church has never condoned the use of drugs, does not shoot people and has no initiation ceremony. As one of the basic tenets of its doctrine, Scientology opposes the use of electroshock therapy by the mental health professions.) Church officials say that during the late 1960s and early '70s a number of foreign Scientology ministers were denied entry to the Unites States -- and that they are convinced the Foley memo was responsible. "You have one memo like this sent to 52 government agencies and it creates havoc for a religion," church spokesman Jeffrey Dubron said. "The Foley memo was sent to the Immigration and Naturalization Service to help in judging whether Scientologists should be let in. Scientologists were not let in. That's an exceedingly small logical jump to make." Missing from this deduction, however, is any evidence that the nine- paragraph memo did in fact contribute to the Labor Department's denial of alien employment certificates -- or, if it did, that the gossip in it was a deciding factor. Apart from a 1975 letter of retraction the church had demanded from the Labor Department, no other document in the mass of material the church supplied to The Times refers to Foley, his memo or the allegations in it. On the contrary, in subsequent letters to the Immigration and Naturalization Service -- written long before government officials had any reason to expect that such correspondence might be made public through a Freedom of Information Act -- the Labor Department explained that its denial of alien employment certification was based on two grounds: the IRS' revocation of some Scientology churches' tax exemption and the fact that the National Council of Churches did not include Scientology in its directory of some 200 "recognized" religious groups. In 1975, the Labor Department reviewed the status of the church, parts of which had by then won or regained tax-exempt status, and declared it to be a bona fide religious group. At the church's demand, the department also affirmed that the Foley memo was "irrelevant, unverified, and based on hearsay" and removed it from the files. On at least one occasion, one of Scientology's own public relations campaigns appears to have backfired on it, leading to what it now decries as false information in government files. The alleged falsehood, which crops up in a variety of government documents in the 1960s, is that Scientology involves the study of a "Russian textbook on brainwashing." One such memo, written by the security chief of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, in 1961, indicates that a Scientologist's security clearance had been denied partly on this ground. The church acknowledges circulating what it called a "Russian textbook of psychopolitics," in 1955 but insists that it did so as a "public service" and did not subscribe to its contents. This message appears to not have been universally understood, however, for the pamphlet's distribution evoked a number of letters from the public and from at least one U.S. senator (Strom Thurmond, a South Carolina Republican) to the FBI asking whether Hubbard, Scientology or his Dianetics Research Foundation had Communist ties. The FBI, according to internal bureau memos released recently under the Freedom of Information Act, looked the psychopolitics pamphlet over, declared it to be of "doubtful authenticity," and said it was "apparently a thinly veiled attack upon mental health programs along the line that such programs are part of the worldwide Communist conspiracy." The notion that communism and the mental health professions were somehow related appears to have coincided closely with Hubbard's own views, although he has not acknowledged writing the pamphlet. In July, 1955, however, in one of his letters to the FBI Hubbard averred that "attacks" upon his various organizations during the previous five years had "found psychiatry and Communist-connected personnel very much in evidence and both active with defamation and very unreasonable -- and unsuccessful -- attacks." The letter does not mention the pamphlet. But six months later in another letter to the FBI he enclosed a copy of it, along with a note that read in part: "This was compiled from Communist sources for use of our research department and people." "It may be that we will also use this in anti-Communist campaigns," Hubbard said. "We have been seriously hurt by Communists and communism and we see nothing wrong in our using their tactics against them." Six years later, in mid-1961, a new edition circulated around the country, but evidently not under Scientology's name. Among the letters of complaint received by the FBI was one from the Founding Church of Scientology in Washington, D.C., addressed to the late director Hoover. "Dear Mr. Hoover," the May 16, 1961, letter says. "Enclosed is some Communist literature received in the mail by us. Gads! How sickening!" The FBI concluded that it was the same Russian brainwashing text of doubtful authenticity that Hubbard had submitted in 1955. In a statement the Church of Scientology hand-delivered to The Times on Aug. 19, after having discussed at length with reporters its allegations of government harassment, Whitman, the church's principal national spokesman, said: "The FBI cast the first stone at us even as we were becoming a religion nearly three decades ago. "Now at last we can prove their intentions and their methods, and we can prove that our difficulties were part of a campaign of bloodless genocide." Whitman offered no new material to support his statement. Perhaps the most compelling explanation for Scientology's accusations of persecution -- and for the church's intensely combative responses -- appears in the December, 1971, report of an official British inquiry into the "practices and effects" of Scientology. The inquiry was conducted by Sir John Foster, a Conservative member of Parliament, three years after Britain had imposed a ban on foreign nationals seeking entry to study Scientology. Foster was not unsympathetic to the church, and recommended, in effect, that the ban be lifted (it was not). In his preface to a chapter entitled "Scientology and its Enemies," Foster wrote: "The reactions of individuals and groups to criticism varies from grateful acceptance, or amused tolerance, at one end of the scale to a sense of outrage and vindictive counterattack on the other. Perhaps unfortunately (especially for its adherents) Scientology falls at the hypersensitive end of the scale. "Judging from the documents, this would seem to have its origin in a personality trait of Mr. Hubbard, whose attitude to critics is one of extreme hostility." It could be said, Sir John concluded, that: "Anyone whose attitude to criticism is such as Mr. Hubbard displays in his writings cannot be too surprised if the world treats him with suspicion rather than affection." Article 37614 of alt.religion.scientology: Path: news.cybercom.net!usenet.eel.ufl.edu!spool.mu.edu!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!news.nic.surfnet.nl!sun4nl!xs4all!utopia.hacktic.nl!not-for-mail From: nobody@REPLAY.COM (Anonymous) Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology Subject: DOC: 1978 L.A. Times series [6/6] 8K Date: 1 Oct 1995 22:13:12 +0100 Organization: RePLaY aND CoMPaNY UnLimited Lines: 167 Sender: replay@utopia.hacktic.nl Message-ID: <44n098$s4d@utopia.hacktic.nl> NNTP-Posting-Host: utopia.hacktic.nl XComm: Replay may or may not approve of the content of this posting XComm: Report misuse of this automated service to Los Angeles Times, August 29, 1978 Scientology Flagship Shrouded in Mystery By Robert Gillette On June 25, 1971, a young Colorado woman named Susan Meister died in an apparent suicide aboard the Apollo, the 3,280-ton flagship of the Church of Scientology and for nearly a decade the personal yacht of the church's founder, L. Ron Hubbard. In mid-July that year, according to State Department correspondence obtained by The Times, Miss Meister's father traveled from Colorado to the Moroccan port of Safi, 125 miles south of Casablanca, where the Apollo was then moored, to inquire into his daughter's death. Meister is said to have questioned the explanation of the death proffered by the ship's officers, and indicated that he might seek an investigation of the Apollo. In turn -- according to a Nov. 11, 1971, letter from Assistant Secretary of State David M. Abshire to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee -- the Apollo's port captain threatened in the presence of the American vice consul from Casablanca, William J. Galbraith, that "he had enough material, including compromising photographs of Miss Meister, to smear Mr. Meister first." According to the Abshire letter, "Mr. Hubbard was apparently aboard the Apollo at the time of Mr. Meister's visit but declined to see him." Meister was said to have left Morocco the day before the threat was made. No such smear occurred, and according to a church acquaintance of Miss Meister's who has since renounced Scientology, any such threat would almost certainly have been an empty one. "There was no way that girl could have been involved in anything compromising. She was very quiet, very nice," said the acquaintance, who asked not to be identified. The State Department letter also says that the same officer who allegedly threatened to "smear" Miss Meister told Galbraith -- whom the officer had invited down from Casablanca -- that "his organization, backed by money and friends in high places, 'would cause a nosy vice consul severe problems'" and that in Safi, where the ship was well liked, "'Accidents could easily happen to people.'" The Apollo's two senior officers then filed a formal complaint with the U.S. government, alleging that Vice Consul Galbraith had threatened them by saying that he could "get the ship sunk ... by the CIA" or have it sabotaged "by getting a couple of bottles of Coca-Cola into the (engine) oil, or, even better, commercial diamond dust." Galbraith said these allegations, contained in a notarized statement, were a "complete fabrication." The incident at Safi appears to have marked a low point in a relationship between the Church of Scientology and American diplomatic outposts abroad that was generally characterized by mutual suspicion. The church, for its part, suspected U.S. diplomats and intelligence operatives of fomenting trouble for it around the world. Government officials in turn expressed bewilderment at the sometimes eccentric behavior of the Apollo crew and wondered, in correspondence and cables to Washington, whether the ship might be a cover for illicit activities ranging from drug running to white slavery. The 320-foot ship was purchased in the mid-1960s and sold about 14 months ago, according to church spokesmen. Built in 1937, it had once served as a freighter and a ferry. Under the command of "Commodore" Hubbard, as he ranked himself aboard the ship, it became the headquarters and training vessel of his "Sea Org," an elite management corps in the church. But over the years -- as the Apollo plied a generally triangular course from ports in Spain and Portugal, south to Morocco, west to Madeira and back to the Iberian coast -- the crew appears to have done its utmost to obscure its relationship with Scientology. Sailing under Panamanian registry, the ship's owner was listed as the Operation and Transport Corp., Ltd., a Panamanian company. OTC, the crew consistently told skeptical press and local officialdom at its ports of call, was a secular business management training firm whose clients could not be divulged. Adding to the aura of mystery, the ship transmitted coded radio messages to New York and points unknown and established land bases in Casablanca and Tangier, cities steeped in intrigue. The Apollo appears to have done little to dispel the air of mystery about it. In September, 1969, soon after the OTC established a land base at Tangier, the American consulate at Casablanca cabled an account of a visit aboard the ship, nothing that "all concerned have been completely perplexed by the vagueness of the replies" to such questions as why the ship was operated and what its crew was training to do. An Apollo brochure was said to explain that some 109 trainees aboard were learning "the art and the culture of navigation, the theory of which, when applied, demonstrates a very useful practice at sea." Although the Apollo was registered in Panama and owned by a Panamanian company, the Panamanian consul general had no better luck in eliciting information. He found, the U.S. cable said, that the Apollo was "in a very bad state of repair" and believed that "the lives of the crew had been in jeopardy while the vessel was at sea." "The Panamanian consul general has tried unsuccessfully to meet Commodore Hubbard, who has taken a suite at the El Mansour Hotel and has instructed the hotel personnel to refuse all telephone calls." "It is possible that Commodore Hubbard and his wife ... are philanthropists of some kind and/or eccentrics, but if one does not accept this as an explanation, there has to be some other 'gimmick' involved in this operation. What this gimmick might be is unknown here, although people in Casablanca have speculated variously from smuggling to drug traffic to a far-out religious cult." At times the Apollo and OTC appear to have deliberately teased the curiosity of diplomatic officials. From Tangier in February of 1971, American Consul General Howard D. Jones wrote to the U.S. legal attache in Madrid of a puzzling social encounter with someone from the OTC. "I recently met at a social function a young, American lady associated with this new enterprise," Jones wrote. "She introduced herself to an American standing with me in this way: 'I am Meredith Thomas. I am here with a Panamanian corporation, and that is all I can tell you.'" "The air of mystery on the good ship Apollo ... may not mask any illegal activity; still, I thought it worthwhile to check," Jones said. Fourteen months later, the U.S. consulate at Tangier dispatched a lengthy cable to Washington reflecting a mixture of bemusement and bewilderment at the semi-clandestine activities of Scientology in Morocco. The April 26, 1972, cable from Tangier said: "Little is known of the operations of (the) Operation and Transport Company here, and its officers are elusive about what it does. However, we presume that the Scientologists aboard the Apollo and in Tangier do whatever it is that Scientologists do elsewhere. "There have been rumors in town that the Apollo is involved in drug or white slave traffic. However, we doubt these reports ... "The stories about white slave traffic undoubtedly stem from the fact that included among the crew of the Apollo are a large number of strikingly beautiful young ladies. However, we are skeptical that a vessel that stands out like a sore thumb, in which considerable interest is bound to be generated, and with a crew numbering in the hundreds, would be a reasonable vehicle for smuggling or white slaving." On an extended cruise through the Caribbean in the summer of 1975, rumors of illicit or clandestine activity followed the Apollo from island to island like seagulls behind a fishing smack. In September, 1975, the American Embassy in Trinidad cabled in a local news roundup to Washington that the "controversial yacht Apollo seems to have worn out its welcome in Trinidad." Stories in a weekly tabloid called The Bomb connected the ship with Scientology, told the tory of a leading local Calypso singer named Lord Superior who had joined the church and then rejected it, and in the end "appear to have soured the previously enthusiastic attitude of Trinidadians toward the Apollo." The Bomb also speculated that the ship was linked to the CIA and Sharon Tate murders in Los Angeles. That led to a libel action by the Church of Scientology.