Let's Sell These People a Piece of Blue Sky: Hubbard, Dianetics and Scientology (60 page)

Along with Hubbard, Robertson was sure that US government
agencies had infiltrated Scientology. Robertson further believed that Hubbard
was dead, and that the government agencies, using Miscavige as their dupe, had
succeeded in their take-over of the Church. Robertson also believed that
Hubbard was the embodiment of one “Elron Elray,” and had returned to the
Mothership of the Galactic Patrol, from whence he was sending telepathic
directives to Robertson about the Markabian invasion of the Earth. At the
meeting Robertson made no mention of these peculiar notions, and was successful
in galvanizing British Independents into action.
¹⁰

Soon there were independent centers in Switzerland, New Zealand,
Denmark, Germany, and Italy. In fact, they sprang up wherever there were
Scientology Orgs. Along with this came an increasing availability of
information about Hubbard and his organizations, as former Hubbard aides spoke
out.

The first direct contact between Mayo’s group and European
Independents came at a meeting in Spain, in November 1983. Harvey Haber arrived
late, having been detained and thoroughly searched by Spanish Customs. Someone
had told them he was a narcotics dealer. After the meeting, Harvey flew on to
England.

Haber had been a senior Hubbard aide, and had many startling
experiences to relate. He and Donna, his wife, joined staff at the Flag Land
Base, in Clearwater. Donna carelessly left a packet of tampons leaning against
a small light in their bathroom. The packet was smoldering when someone
discovered it. An executive decided that Donna was a “security risk.” She was
immediately assigned to the Rehabilitation Project Force. Harvey was told he
would never be given a bed as long as he was in the Sea Org (for a billion
years, presumably). That evening, as he prepared to sleep in the garage, he
heard his wife’s laughter drifting toward him. On investigation, he found that
she was trampling down the contents of a huge garbage bin, looking for pieces
of wood, having been ordered quite literally to make her own bed. At that
moment Harvey grasped the surreal nature of the Sea Organization, and started
laughing too.

1.
   
Warrant to Search, 1 March 1983, p.32ff.

2.
   
ibid
, p.36f.

3.
   
Flag Conditions Order 6577-1 “Writ of Expulsion Confirmed”, 24 February
1983.

4.
   
Author’s interview with Neville Chamberlin, the subject of the order.

5.
   
Sea Org Executive Directive 2192 International “Re: List of Declared
Suppressive Persons”, 27 January 1983.

6.
   
For example, the “Dane Tops” letter in the US; the “Mr. Andrews” and
“ESO” letters in the UK.

7.
   
“An open letter to all Scientologists from David Mayo”, 1983.

8.
   
John Nelson, tape 13 August 1983; author’s interview with Haber,
November 1983.

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

10.
 
Author’s
interviews with Bill Robertson, 1983 & 1984; Robertson’s “Sector Operations
Bulletins”; no mention was made of the Markabians at the October 1983, East
Grinstead meeting. A video tape of the meeting exists, including a startling
appearance by former Deputy Guardian, David Gaiman.

Chapter Thirty-Four

“A squirrel is doing something entirely
different. He doesn’t understand any of the principles so he makes up a bunch
of them to fulfill his ignorance and voices them off on a pc [Preclear] and
gets no place.”

—L.
Ron Hubbard,
Dianetics and Scientology Technical Dictionary

The major obstacle to the continuance of Scientology outside
the Church was that the Independents did not have all of the so-called
“confidential” materials. They had the OT levels up to NOTs (which was listed
as “new OT5”), but not NOTs itself. The NOTs issues are held by the Advanced
Organizations of the Church of Scientology. That is to say there are copies at
Saint Hill in England; at Los Angeles; at Clearwater, in Florida; and at
Copenhagen, in Denmark.

Former Sea Org executive Robin Scott observed the increasing
autocracy of the Church, and made grand plans to save Scientology. While most
Independent Centers were run from front-rooms on a shoestring, Scott purchased
a baronial mansion near Aberdeen, the breathtaking Candacraig House set in over
20 acres with two lakes. It came to be known as “the castle.”

Scott attempted to acquire the NOTs materials through a
Saint Hill staff member, but failed miserably. His attempt only served to alert
Saint Hill, and tighten up their security. So Scott met with Morag Bellmaine
and Ron Lawley of the East Grinstead Independent Center, and in December 1983,
they mounted their own commando operation.
¹
They did not know that
David Mayo, who had written the original NOTs materials with Hubbard, was
already producing a new version. They could have saved themselves, and many
others, a great deal of trouble. The trio travelled to Denmark.

During the afternoon Scott went into the Advanced Org in
Copenhagen to see if anyone was there who knew either of his partners. Scott
pretended to be interested in paying a great deal of money for NOTs auditing,
so was treated like royalty, and given a guided tour. He memorized the lay-out
of the building, saw no-one he knew, and returned to brief Ron and Morag.

Late that evening, dressed to the gills in Sea Org uniform
(and with Bellmaine wearing the wrong cap-badge for her supposed rank), Lawley
and Bellmaine walked into the Copenhagen Advanced Organization. They had
carefully drilled the dismissive attitude of Sea Org missionaires, and demanded
to see the Commanding Officer. He arrived, quivering. Lawley said they were “on
mission” from the Religious Technology Center, and had come to investigate
serious “out-tech.” Here they had taken a chance as there might have been an
RTC mission there already. To their surprise the CO readily admitted to “gross
out-tech,” but said he had sent his Senior Case Supervisor to Florida for
retraining, and what more could he do? The bullying missionaires told him what
more. He could show them a NOTs pack, because they were sure there was
something wrong with the materials, so poor were Copenhagen’s results.

The Commanding Officer did not hesitate, rounding up every
available NOTs pack, and apologizing that two of his Auditors were still in
session with theirs. Lawley and Bellmaine found themselves in a private room,
with over 30 NOTs packs. They loaded two into a brief case, and their feet
didn’t touch the ground until they had left Denmark.

George Orwell’s fated 1984 began for Scientologists with a
taped message from Ron Hubbard, the first in a year. It was called “Today and
Tomorrow: The Proof,” and retailed to Church members at $22 per cassette.
Hundreds were sent free of charge to Independents (paid for by “donations” from
Church members, in fact). The tape was a departure from the usual Hubbard
procedure. The talk was scripted, and there were interruptions throughout,
where Hubbard was asked questions, given answers, even corrected on some slight
underestimation of a statistic, or assured of the enthusiasm generated by his
recent bland issues. The statistics were very good, taken at face value, but
when Independent Jon Zegel cross-checked them, for his third taped talk, he
discovered several major inconsistencies. The talk was the longest eulogy ever
delivered by Hubbard about management:

The Church had some hard times a few years ago. For a very
long while, as you know, I have not been connected with active management of
the Church ... It took quite a while I’m told for the Church to sort itself out
... Scientology Churches are very vast and influential global organizations,
and there were people around whose claws itched to take them over and in a
perverted form exploit them for their own profit ... certain people infiltrated
the Legal department, the old Guardian’s Office, and set it up to lose left and
right, and get people in trouble. They also infiltrated top management. Being
off lines I was not involved with any of this ... At last a small hard-core
group of founding members, devoted on-Policy, in-Tech Scientologists who
suddenly understood what was happening, used their power as trustees and just
as it looked like the Churches were finished and about to fall into hostile
hands, they suddenly isolated the infiltrators and threw them out.

Hubbard showed none of his usual loud humor on the tape. He
sounded cheerful, but somehow the power was gone, if indeed it was Hubbard’s
voice. By this time the Messengers had very sophisticated sound equipment, and
some Independents insisted that a Fairlight voice synthesizer had been used to
generate a voice similar to Hubbard’s. The solution was probably far simpler:
the tape was processed with Hubbard’s “Clearsound,” a rather primitive
filtering system, which would have reduced the impingement of Hubbard’s gasping
breathing, giving the voice its slightly artificial feel. At the beginning of
1984, proof positive of Hubbard’s support of the CMO might have induced many
resignees to return. The tape simply was not enough.

The Advanced Ability Center East Grinstead came into being
in January 1984, in a loose alliance with Mayo’s group in Santa Barbara. In
February, Robin Scott opened Candacraig House, in Scotland, and it became the
third AAC. Independent Centers were springing up throughout the US and Europe.

In February, Independents received the first mailings from
the anonymous “Stamp Out the Squirrels Committee,” postmarked Los Angeles. The
letters were headed with the design of a badge distributed within the Church,
depicting a gleeful cartoon squirrel, rubbing its paws together, in a red
circle, with a red bar across it. The anonymous letters carried this logo, with
the legend “Trademark Religious Technology Center” printed beneath it.

The principal target of these scandal sheets was David Mayo.
Mayo and his staff were attacked in 15 newsletters dated from February to April
1984. Of the suggestion that Mayo might be able to release the long-awaited
Operating Thetan levels above OT7, the second letter said this: “Obviously he
doesn’t care about people’s spiritual freedom, so what is his motivation in
making this false promise - money?” Mayo’s group were charging about a fifth of
the Church price.

Mayo and his staff were pilloried unrelentingly. Of course
this character assassination convinced many members that the Church really had
gone crazy. Most of the letters were couched in such elaborate Scientologese
that they are difficult to comprehend without a sizeable glossary.

The first letter said, “Rumor in the field has it that the
clientele now frequenting the Mayo Clinic [i.e. the AAC] has regressed from the
‘colorful’ to the ‘bizarre’.” From the second letter: “The numbers of disillusioned’s
[sic] who have failed to find the ‘Holy Grail’ at Mayo’s are growing in
alarming numbers. Many are now saying they wished they’d listened to and
duplicated [understood] ‘The Story of a Squirrel’. The more fortunate one’s
[sic] are applying Ron’s tech and are on the road to getting their cases
unsnarled.”

The attack on the AAC did not stop at venomous libels. The
AAC’s offices were watched constantly by private investigators. Mayo was
followed day and night. Listening devices were quite openly aimed at the
windows of counseling rooms. A Religious Technology Center “mission” was
permanently posted to observe and interfere with the AAC.

In England, in January 1984, four health professionals,
three of them medical doctors, resigned from the Church and mailed their joint
resignation broadly to Scientologists. A copy found its way to the national
Daily
Mail
newspaper.

There had been a tacit agreement between the Church and the
Independents that Scientology’s dirty linen was best kept out of public view.
Journalist Peter Sheridan broke through that agreement. Sheridan interviewed a
father whose three teenage children had “disconnected” from him. The children’s
mother, who had remarried, was a Sea Org member. The youngest child, aged 13,
had written a disconnection letter to his father. Sheridan had also spoken to
an Independent whose children had been expelled from Greenfields, the East
Grinstead school run on Scientology principles. On February 11, the
Daily
Mail
carried a full-page article titled “We disconnect you!” or in its
northern issue, “The Disconnection Terror.”

The Office of Special Affairs had retained not only many of
the old Guardian’s Office staff, but many of the old tricks too. Robin Scott,
who had helped extract the NOTs materials from the Advanced Org in Denmark, was
phoned by a prospective customer inviting him to Sweden. His air fare would be
paid. Scott boarded a plane which stopped at Copenhagen on March 13, Hubbard’s
birthday. He was apprehended at Copenhagen airport. Sea Org members accompanied
the arresting officers, and took photographs of the whole affair.

During the course of Scott’s incarceration, an opinion was
sought on the authenticity of Hubbard’s signature on the documents transferring
his Scientology trademarks to the Religious Technology Center. These had been
examined by an American expert at Michael Flynn’s request in May 1983. The
expert had stated that the signatures “were not written by the individual
represented” in the specimen signatures provided. A signed letter dating from
the 1950s, definitely written by Hubbard, was given to a Scandinavian expert,
who said there was “a probability amounting almost to certainty” that the RTC
signatures were
not
Hubbard’s. She added that this is the most definite
statement given by handwriting experts.

Diane Voegeding, who had formerly been the Commanding
Officer of the CMO, came to Scott’s aid by giving an affidavit that questioned
the CMO’s right to the trademarks. Voegeding said that David Miscavige was in
fact the Notary Public responsible for Hubbard’s legal documents, and that
Miscavige illicitly kept a book of undated Hubbard signatures.