The Unbreakable Miss Lovely: How the Church of Scientology tried to destroy Paulette Cooper

by Tony Ortega

  After the spectacular success of Dianetics in the summer of 1950, the craze it created gradually died down, and by the next year, Hubbard was bankrupt and had lost the right to use the word “Dianetics” to a creditor. In 1952, he regrouped, went to Phoenix, Arizona, and started over, this time calling his movement “Scientology.” He asked his son to join him there to become an instructor and help him rise from the ashes. Nibs, only 18 and not yet graduated from high school, was thrilled. He found him self thrust into the role of prince to his father the king, and he could not have been happier. Nibs had students, he had money, and he was getting laid.

  In December 1952, he went with his father to Philadelphia, where Hubbard put on a special set of lectures he called a “congress” (Nibs said his father would do this whenever he needed extra cash), and was on hand when federal marshals showed up to serve Hubbard with a subpoena. His followers got into a scuffle with the marshals, and the incident only fed Hubbard’s growing paranoia about government agents and being drawn into litigation or criminal prosecutions.

  The next year, Nibs wrote, his father began thinking seriously of a strategy that he believed would insulate him and Scientology from such meddling. “I have always found it interesting that my father turned Scientology into a religion, for I had never known him to be a religious man, attend a Church or even talk of God....What I think really interested Dad...was that calling his group a religion gave him more latitude in regard to corporate structure, made it harder for people and groups to try to get him to curb his activities and gave him tax exemption.”

  “Perhaps we could call it a Spiritual Guidance Center,” L. Ron Hubbard wrote to one of his most loyal followers, a woman named Helen O’Brien, in a letter dated April 10, 1953. Admitting that Scientology “couldn’t get worse public opinion,” and as a result, fewer customers, Hubbard figured it was time to start a new direction. “I await your reaction on the religion angle.”

  On December 18, 1953 in Camden, New Jersey, Nibs, his wife, his father, and a few others signed the papers to create three corporate entities: The Church of Scientology, the Church of American Science, and the Church of Spiritual Engineering. Hubbard said that he had specifically chosen the word “church” and its Christian connotation for recruiting purposes. In February, another Church of Scientology was founded in Los Angeles, and soon became the mother church of the organization. Religion was good for business, and Nibs watched his father become a rich man. By 1972, he estimated, his father had $7 million stashed away, much of it in greenbacks in shoe boxes because his father didn’t trust banks.

  Nibs himself was making less and less money. As Scientology grew, his father put in more controls so that more money flowed to the top, but there was less for others. His income dropped to about $20 a week, not enough to support his own growing family.

  On November 23, 1959, Nibs walked away from the DC org while his father was in Melbourne. After a few months, Nibs started getting threatening messages, including, “NIBS THE FOUNDING CHURCH IS ISSUING A WARRANT FOR YOUR ARREST...YOU HAD BETTER GET A LAYWER QUICK. DR. HUBBARD.” For the next three years, Nibs made money doing private Scientology auditing—it was the only “profession” he knew.

  Nibs described an L. Ron Hubbard who came off as a con man cynically manipulating people who were gullible enough to fall for ideas about past lives and mental science he had tossed off without much consideration or research: “I remember when I was 7 to 10 years old, Dad used to tell Katy and I long bedtime stories which he obviously made up on the spur of the moment. These same stories with little variation later emerged in various books and writings of his as facts about our past lives or present situations.”

  In 1952, Nibs said, he helped work on the bizarre book A History of Man, which supposedly described the 76-trillion-year evolution of human beings. “He just wrote the book off the top of his head as he had done in his earlier science fiction and other stories,” Nibs wrote.

  But over time, he said, as Scientology grew, his father actually came to believe in his creation. “I don’t think it’s the money that keeps him in Scientology now. He is totally dedicated to his stated goals. I think he completely believes in himself, what he’s doing, and where he’s going.”

  Nibs himself was finished with his father’s invention. After giving up auditing in 1962, he had helped the FDA and the IRS with their investigations, and had testified in litigation. And now he’d written his father’s story with one of his father’s biggest enemies, Paulette Cooper.

  Besides working on “A Look Inside Scientology” together, Paulette and Nibs also talked about Robert Kaufman, who wasn’t handling things well. Months earlier, when Maurice Girodias first announced in the trade press that he was going to publish Kaufman’s book Inside Scientology, a man named James Meisler from the local Scientology office – the org at the Hotel Martinique – called Kaufman, saying he was “a reverend” in the church and he demanded to see Kaufman’s manuscript. (A couple of years earlier, Scientology staff members had suddenly started wearing clerical collars and crosses as Hubbard tried to get the church recognized as such for tax reasons and so Scientology staff, as ‘ministers,’ could avoid being depleted by the draft.) Meisler told Kaufman that he wanted to make corrections to the manuscript before it was published. Kaufman refused, and Meisler responded ominously, “It’s your neck. We’ve got you covered on all fronts.”

  Soon after that, Kaufman was approached by a man named Larry Tepper who said he was thinking of leaving Scientology and could Kaufman help him make up his mind? Kaufman somehow decided it was a good idea to loan Tepper the first hundred pages or so of his unpublished book. Days later, photocopied versions of the pages – with marked changes – showed up at Olympia Press, mailed from Scientology’s Los Angeles offices. (Later, the rest of the pages were stolen from Olympia’s offices, and also were returned with “corrections.”)

  Kaufman’s guard was down in part because he was concentrating so hard on a piano recital he was giving that spring at Little Carnegie Playhouse, next door to the great hall itself. The day before the recital, someone identifying himself as Robert Kauf-man called the Little Carnegie and cancelled the performance, saying that he had a funeral to attend. When the audience arrived for Kaufman’s show, they found the doors locked and no one in the box office. Many went home. When Kaufman arrived, he got someone from Carnegie Hall next door to open up the doors. Angry at the prank, Kaufman still gave his performance, but a critic with the New York Times noted that he played too “aggressively.”

  Paulette was alarmed by the recital incident. She knew that Kaufman had been hospitalized when he first returned from England. She knew how much the recital meant to him as he tried to get his musical career back to what it had been. If the church was behind the prank – could it really be that cruel?

  By now, she was even more determined to get word out about Scientology’s practices and the way it retaliated against critics. Over the late summer and into the fall of 1972, she, Nibs, Kauf-man, and a man named Bernie Green made multiple appearances on local radio and television shows.

  Bernard and Barbara Green lived on the Upper West Side, and in their West End Avenue apartment they had run something they called the “International Awareness Center.” Bernie Green had joined Scientology in 1953, and his center was a licensed franchise that introduced people to Scientology before sending them on to the Hotel Martinique for additional training. But then in 1969, the church had cut off Green’s license and, he claimed, had spread libelous information about him. He sued with the help of a former Scientologist and attorney named John Seffern, who Paulette was also getting to know well.

  The Greens lost their libel suit, but they were now helping to spread information about Scientology, and Bernie gladly joined Paulette and Kaufman in their media rounds. During one local television show on October 25, Scientology’s minister James Meisler was also a guest with Paulette and Green and Kaufman. When Paulette was asked a question, Meisler shouted, “Are you
going to plug your book again, Paulette?”

  It embarrassed her, and she not only didn’t mention her book but didn’t even say her own name. She did refer to “Mr. Meisler’s snide comments.”

  But Kaufman spoke up when she was finished. “By the way, that was Paulette Cooper, author of The Scandal of Scientology, and although she’s only five-foot-two and 90 pounds, she’s holy terror to the Scientologists, who are absolutely petrified of her.”

  It was a satisfying moment, and she felt good as they walked out of the building after the program had finished.

  But outside, the Guardian’s Office was waiting.

  While Paulette continued to warn the public about Scientology, the church stepped up its harassment campaign against her. In the summer and fall of 1972, journalists received phone calls from Scientologists, saying they had “shocking” information about Paulette that was going to ruin her lawsuit against the church. Paulette knew that L. Ron Hubbard had written instructions for how to smear an enemy, and pretending to have “shocking” news about them was one of its main tenets.

  In a 1966 “executive letter” Hubbard had published for Scientologists, he laid out How to Do a Noisy Investigation: “You find out where he or she works…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….It doesn’t matter if you don’t get much info. Just be NOISY…”

  A man that Paulette had figured out was hiding his affiliation with the church called her repeatedly, peppering her with questions. For some reason, he was particularly curious if she had any pets. In fact, Paulette had a Yorkie she called Tiki and a Chinchilla Persian cat named Bubby. When Bob Kaufman came over and went with her on a trip to the pet store, they realized they were being followed.

  A few days later, a man who worked at a mental health hospital contacted Paulette after reading her book. They met to talk, and as she left a restaurant she spotted a man making a very bad job of trying to hide the fact that he was tailing her.

  Paulette was surprised when one day she heard from James Meisler, the minister at the New York org, who called and left a message. When she called him back, he told her “I just wanted to know what Paulette Cooper was really like.” He offered to meet, but she told him it was a ridiculous idea. She couldn’t stand him and she knew he felt the same way. He told her that he didn’t want to meet because of the lawsuits that had already been filed.

  “I just want to know what made you write your book,” he said.

  Sure he did, Paulette thought. In their libel suit, the church needed to prove that she had “malice,” for the church. Anything she said to Meisler the church might use against her. She turned down his offer to meet, and instead laid into him for harassing Robert Kaufman. He denied it. “You trapped him in a restaurant, threatened him, stole his manuscript, tried to injunct it in Boston, you’re injuncting it now in New York, and you’ve sued him, and you don’t call that harassment?” she said.

  “That’s our legal department. We didn’t harass him,” Meisler told her.

  He asked her if she’d ever taken courses in Scientology in New York or Washington. She told him that she’d never hidden the fact that she’d taken a weekend class at the New York org. Based on other things that Paulette had written, Meisler told her they had something in common: a dislike for what went on in mental hospitals. But she still refused when he asked to meet. Signing off, he said, “Thanks for the info.”

  That didn’t sit well with her. She wondered for days if she’d said something she shouldn’t have.

  A few weeks later, someone claiming to be from a credit bureau called the superintendent of her building and asked, “Who pays Paulette Cooper’s rent? And how is it paid?” (Paulette had not applied for any new credit in about a year.) When the superintendent refused to answer, Paulette’s landlord then received a call from someone claiming to be from a credit bureau who wanted to know if Paulette’s rent was paid by her father. Ted Cooper, the person lied, had been writing bad checks and they wanted to warn the landlord.

  Paulette also heard from Bill, the guy who, four years earlier, had told her he was Jesus Christ and set her on her exploration of Scientology. He called and said he’d been contacted by a man name Maren who wanted to know if he realized he was featured in Paulette’s book. (In the introduction to The Scandal of Scientology, she had described the scene when Bill told her he was God, but she hadn’t named him.) He was sent copies of the pages from the book where the story appeared, apparently to soften him up.

  Bill said “Maren”—presumably Arte Maren, the church’s public relations man—called again, and read him a list of questions about Paulette’s private habits, including her sexual preferences. Bill refused to answer, and then told Paulette about it.

  On September 7, 1972, Deputy Guardian Terry Milner wrote an update of his activities to Mo Budlong, another high-ranking executive in the Guardian’s Office who worked directly under Jane Kember.

  “SITUATION: Michael Sanders, ex-IRS Attorney in attack against Church, connected with Kaufman, Cooper and Nibs in PT [present time],” the memo began. Sanders was the Justice Department employee who had helped Paulette search through Scientology documents seized in the 1964 FDA investigation. Milner’s memo indicated that two Scientology agents had infiltrated Sanders’ office so copies of the church documents could be obtained.

  “SITUATION: Paulette Cooper still at large.”

  Milner noted that the GO was now looking into a local prosecutor that Paulette had been dating, a man named Bob Straus. The operatives had obtained a Dunn & Bradstreet report about him. Milner had also obtained Paulette’s transcript from City College, where she’d done her master’s degree, and was looking to get information about her brief time at Columbia University’s Teachers College. The memo indicated that transcripts of two of the radio shows Paulette had been on with Nibs had already been sent to WorldWide – GO headquarters in Los Angeles.

  A month later, on October 10, Milner sent Budlong another report about Paulette, stating that “Paulette Cooper still actively attacking Scientology.” Under the heading “Why,” it offered the explanation that her “continuing existance [sic] can be traced back to ineffective Bureau IV actions to handle early on.”

  The Guardian’s Office Bureau IV handled legal matters – Milner was explaining that by now, the lawsuit against Paulette should have “handled” her and made her go away. Since that hadn’t worked, Milner now said he was directing New York personnel to “attack her in as many ways as possible.” The first attack – exposing her sex life – had not worked. So now, Milner’s spies were investigating and “attempting commitment procedures in line with the targets on Operation Dynamite.” The effort against Paulette Cooper now had a name – Operation Dynamite – and its aim was to have her committed. Committed to what, the memo didn’t say.

  Milner’s memo also indicated that the Guardian’s Office knew that Michael Sanders had called Paulette twice since May – and didn’t say whether one or both phones were tapped – but the operatives who had infiltrated Sanders’ office had been unable to find a file on Paulette. They weren’t giving up yet, the memo said.

  But neither was Paulette. Another Milner memo, from November 6, showed that the Guardian’s Office was getting fairly frantic as Paulette continued to make media appearances with Nibs and Kaufman. “Paulette Cooper continues as a source of trouble for the church,” Milner wrote. “Right pressure has not been brought to bear on her.”

  Milner suggested they might try an operation that would spread negative information about a diamond buyer’s exchange used by her father and her uncle, Joe Cooper (his name was actually Lou). “Plans are to leak information about diamond syndicate in such a fashion that leak traces back from Joe Cooper to Ted Cooper to Paulette, thus cutting one of P.C.’s financial supports,” th
e memo said. If they could ruin Ted Cooper, they could stop his daughter.

  Milner indicated that a Guardian’s Office operative had also tried to get Ted Cooper in trouble with the IRS by saying that the jeweler was not reporting thousands of dollars in income. Milner also reported that on October 25, a GO employee had managed to fluster Paulette by taking photographs of her outside a television studio after she and Kaufman and Bernie Green had taped the show mentioned earlier. When Paulette asked the man if he worked for the church and he didn’t answer, she yelled out “He is one of them!” Green then put a magazine in front of the man’s camera and Paulette told him, “When the pictures come out in Freedom you’ll be sued for invasion of privacy.” (Freedom was the name of Scientology’s propaganda magazine.)

  “Such a big effect for so little work,” Milner wanly noted.

  The memo indicated that the Guardian’s Office had even gone so far as to have some of Paulette’s handwriting analyzed. “For use in future operations,” it said.

  But Milner’s November 6 memo also showed that the Guardian’s Office was becoming just as concerned about Nibs. In a cryptic note, Milner indicated that three boxes of “material” had been received from Nibs, and that “Nibs has never gotten the motivator he sought.” The language was subtle, but the memo hinted that Nibs had switched sides or had been working as a double agent all along.