Fair Game

by Steve Cannane

  Mitchell was able to document Hubbard’s bizarre punishment rituals and uncover the story of a woman with two children who had tried to escape one of the ships. She had apparently run screaming down the gangway before she was restrained and returned.70 The reporter was unable to put any of the allegations to Hubbard, who had instructed the local police to keep the media away.

  But the Sunday Times journalist was a graduate of Sydney’s then boisterous tabloid newspaper culture and was not easily deterred. Staking out the dock one night, he saw what he described as ‘a rotund figure dressed in the preposterous white uniform of an admiral’71 climbing into a limousine. He followed the car to the local casino. Mitchell tried to get into the roulette room, but the doorman told him he did not meet the dress regulations. The journalist picked a spot at a bar with a view of the high rollers and waited. Two hours later Hubbard went to the men’s room and the intrepid Mitchell followed him in.

  As Hubbard stood at the urinal, Mitchell sidled up alongside him. As both men took a leak, the journalist turned to Scientology’s founder and asked for an interview. ‘Alex, you’re wasting your time,’ Hubbard responded. ‘I know where you’re coming from and it’s been very nice meeting you. Goodbye.’ Hubbard zipped up his fly and was on his way. Mitchell filed his Sea Org exposé from Corfu and would later break the story of Hubbard’s links to Aleister Crowley and occultism.72 His name was eventually placed on Scientology’s enemies list and he came under surveillance.73 ‘When I saw the list with my name on it,’ Mitchell says, ‘I was immensely proud. A Badge of Honour, I thought.’74

  By now the culture of abuse inside the Sea Org had further torn apart the Gillham family. After Peter Gillham Snr had reported excessive spending by Scientology executives, he was accused of planning to take money from the ship. As the banking officer on board, he was meant to carry around money in a briefcase. When he was asked to go and manually flush out toilets as punishment for a crime he did not commit, Gillham refused. As a result he was sent to the chain locker and declared a Suppressive Person. His daughters, Janis and Terri, were called in and told to write letters of disconnection to him. Just 11 and 13 years old, the two girls were crying their eyes out as they were forced to write the letters.75

  After Gillham had finished his punishment in the chain locker, he wrote to Hubbard to tell him that the Sea Org was not the right place for him. ‘He had been so knocked down,’ says Janis Gillham. ‘He came and saw Terri and me and told us he was leaving and he’d be in touch. He had thought it was just him that was in trouble.’76

  Peter Gillham Snr flew to Valencia where his son was in port. ‘I saw my dad getting out of a taxi and I went down the gangway to talk to him,’ recalls Peter Gillham Jnr. ‘He said he was leaving and going back to England because he had some stuff to take care of. He didn’t tell me what had happened. I said, “Well if you’re going back to England, how come we can’t too?”’77

  The 15-year-old boy just wanted his family to be together. But he didn’t get the answer he wanted. ‘Not at this time,’ his father said.78 Hubbard and Scientology’s intelligence division had other plans for Peter Gillham Snr.

  CHAPTER 11

  THE CHURCH OF SPYENTOLOGY

  AS A PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR, Rex Beaver was used to asking people uncomfortable questions. Now he was on the receiving end of an interrogation. ‘Are you a pervert?’ he was asked. ‘Are you or have you ever been a communist?’1 Beaver gripped his hands on a pair of tin cans attached to an E-Meter as the questions kept coming: ‘Are you a homosexual? Have you ever had unkind thoughts about L. Ron Hubbard?’

  It was the morning of 10 September 1968 and Beaver was being given one of Scientology’s notorious security checks at the organisation’s Sydney headquarters at 340 Pitt Street. Beaver was not a Scientologist. He had merely answered an advertisement in the previous day’s Daily Mirror that said, ‘Investigator – Services of Trained Personnel Required for Interesting Work’.2 Already things were getting interesting, and the work had not even started yet.

  After the security check was finished, and Beaver had let go of the cans on the E-Meter, he was asked another question by a member of Scientology’s feared Guardian’s Office. ‘Would you be worried if you had to get tough? Because you would have to get tough in the course of any employment with the Hubbard Association of Scientologists.’3 Beaver could get tough all right. He was awarded the Queen’s Commendation for bravery after he tackled a man armed with a shotgun who had been aiming it at police.4 The Scientologists would soon find out just how tough Rex Beaver could play it.

  After Beaver passed the security check, the Scientologists hired him to spy on a number of prominent Sydney figures including newspaper publisher Rupert Murdoch, journalist Anne Deveson, five psychiatrists, one clergyman and fourteen parliamentarians.5 The politicians targeted included: future Deputy Prime Minister Lionel Bowen; the next Premier of NSW, Tom Lewis; future Liberal leaders Peter Coleman and John Mason; and a Deputy Premier in the making, Jack Ferguson.6 It is unclear why these parliamentarians were targeted; only one on the hit list had been publicly critical of Scientology.

  Martin Bentley from the Guardian’s Office made it clear to Beaver what the first priority was: ‘Your assignment is RO Healey, Liberal member for Wakehurst. I want everything from his birth certificate to what he’s doing today.’7 Dick Healey had been asking questions about the Scientologists in parliament and Beaver was told they wanted him to dig up dirt on the MP. ‘Bentley said that any detrimental information I gathered about Mr Healey would be used to bring pressure to bear on him to stop him attacking Scientology in Parliament,’ Beaver said.8

  Rex Beaver didn’t think much of the Scientologists. ‘I thought they were a bunch of ratbags,’ he says. ‘I didn’t want to waste my time working for them.’9 The private investigator came up with a better idea. What if he played double agent? What if he took the job, pocketed the pay and fed information back to the politicians the Scientologists wanted him to spy on? Three days after the Scientologists had interrogated him, Beaver rang Dick Healey at his Forestville home. The Liberal MP and former ABC sports broadcaster was happy to work with the private investigator. He provided Beaver with personal details and access to his newspaper files to make it look like he was gathering information on him, in exchange for information about the inner workings of Scientology and the organisation’s use of private investigators on critics.

  Beaver was to be paid $60 a week plus expenses, and bonuses if he uncovered any dirt on his suspects.10 He reported back mundane personal details to Martin Bentley, but also fed him a fictional story that the Liberal MP was having an affair. ‘I asked Bentley if I could catch Dick Healey committing adultery just what would he want,’ Beaver wrote in a statutory declaration. ‘Bentley said just the photographs would do.’11 There’s little doubt what Bentley was planning to do with any photos that might come his way. As Hubbard wrote in his policy on how to deal with critics, ‘Start feeding lurid, blood, sex, crime, actual evidence on the attackers to the press.’12

  If the Scientologists wanted to get the tabloid press on side to run their lurid, blood, sex, crime stories, they weren’t exactly going the right way about it. When Beaver returned to Scientology’s head office he was shown a longer list of surveillance targets. He was asked to investigate Rupert Murdoch, the ambitious young publisher of Sydney’s most popular evening tabloid the Daily Mirror. Around this time, Murdoch was getting his first foothold into the lucrative English newspaper market as he began buying up shares in News of the World.13

  Rex Beaver took on the assignment and headed straight to the office of Brian Hogben, the editor of the Daily Mirror. The private investigator again offered to act as a double agent, spying on Murdoch for the Scientologists, while feeding information back to the newspaper for a future tabloid exposé. Hogben arranged for a meeting between Rex and Rupert Murdoch.

  ‘Rupert was rapt,’ says Beaver. ‘He even volunteered to have a photograph taken of himself emerging from
a motel with his secretary!’14 Beaver told Murdoch there was no need for mocked-up photos. All that was required was some personal details. Murdoch obliged, telling the investigator his home address, where his yacht was moored and giving him free access to the newspaper’s clippings library. Hogben loaned Beaver a special spy camera so he could take a photo of Scientology’s surveillance hit list, but the investigator could not get a clean shot of it, with so many Scientologists hustling their way through the office.15

  The surveillance operation expanded. Anne Deveson, who had produced a radio documentary on Scientology, was also investigated. ‘I got a call out of the blue from someone who said he was a police detective,’ recalls Deveson. ‘He said he’d heard the Scientologists were watching me and that I should be careful.’16 At the time, Deveson lived at Clareville on Sydney’s northern beaches, and was concerned someone could try and run her off the road at the Bilgola Bends, the winding and dangerous stretch of Barrenjoey Road that runs between the southern and northern headland of Bilgola beach.

  Martin Bentley continued to provide more names to Rex Beaver. ‘He instructed me to check on Doctors William Barclay, AG Bennetts, Reverend Coughlin, Dr E Fischer, Dr Carl Radeski and Dr Scott Orr, also the Minister for Health Mr Jago,’ Beaver said.17 Harry Jago was hardly a crusader against Scientology. When asked in parliament by Dick Healey if there were any plans to ban Scientology in New South Wales, the Minister for Health responded that in that state there was ‘little incidence of the more unfavourable features of scientology’.18 That response did not make Jago immune from investigation. Bentley wanted Beaver to find out if the Minister for Health had ever visited a psychiatrist.19

  Harry Jago was one of 14 NSW parliamentarians placed on the list. Besides Dick Healey, none of them seemed to be speaking out against Scientology. Some had the same surnames as members of the NSW Association of Mental Health, which Bentley wanted investigated.20 Perhaps the Guardian’s Office considered the others to be influential politicians or future leaders who they should start building files on.

  With bonuses included, Rex Beaver was now pulling in over $100 a week to spy on critics or suspected critics of Scientology. But after a month of operating as a double agent, he pulled the pin. Rupert Murdoch was ready to run with the story. On 20 October 1968, the Sunday Mirror splashed its exposé on the front page with the headline: ‘Blackmail! Detective says cult hired him to spy on city MP – sensation expected’.21

  The Sunday Mirror reported that ‘A private detective revealed yesterday that he had been hired to get blackmail evidence to silence a member of state parliament.’ The story also mentioned the surveillance of Rupert Murdoch: ‘The scientologists have declared Mr Murdoch an official “enemy” since the Sunday Mirror challenged the cult: sue and be damned!’22

  Two days later, Dick Healey stood up in parliament and accused the Scientologists of ‘a wicked, deliberate plot to inhibit and intimidate members of Parliament’.23 Healey argued the Scientologists had breached parliamentary privilege. ‘This is a diabolical threat from an outside group who seek to prevent members in the free execution of their duties. Here is an organization, which now poses as a church and indulges in a kind of pernicious practice which is bordering on criminal.’24

  In ruling on the matter of privilege, the Speaker, Kevin Ellis, described the actions of the Scientologists as ‘repugnant’ and ‘abhorrent’ but said he could find no evidence that Martin Bentley had followed through with his plans to intimidate Dick Healey or any other members of parliament.25

  While Scientology’s Guardian’s Office had asked Rex Beaver to find out if Harry Jago had ever visited a psychiatrist, the Minister for Health stuck to his principles. He would not be motivated by anger, and had no plans to follow the Victorian example and outlaw the organisation. ‘I do not believe it is a function of parliament to exorcise false ideas and crazy beliefs,’ Jago stated.26

  The Sunday Mirror was not so forgiving. With the help of Rex Beaver they had secured a photo of Martin Bentley. The following Sunday, they ran the picture accompanied by the headline ‘This is the face of Scientology’.27 An accompanying editorial described Scientology as a ‘money-making racket which encourages fanatics and charges high fees for using harmful psychological practices on the sort of people most likely to be harmed by them’.28

  In attacking Scientology, the Sunday Mirror had also identified the organisation’s plans for a counter-attack: ‘Scientology’s latest ruse to beat any restrictive legislation is to declare itself a “church” and claim freedom of worship. As a “church” scientology hopes to stage a legal comeback in Victoria where it has been banned for several years.’29 The Mirror anticipated the tactics Peter Gillham was about to employ when he returned to Victoria the following month.

  After Peter Gillham had said goodbye to his son in Valencia he returned to the UK. He found a country that was becoming increasingly hostile to Scientology. As had happened in Australia, critical reports in the media led to calls for action in parliament. Harold Wilson’s government was under increasing pressure to act. In July 1968, the Health Minister Kenneth Robinson made a special announcement to parliament:

  The Government are satisfied, having reviewed all the available evidence, that scientology is socially harmful. It alienates members of families from each other and attributes squalid and disgraceful motives to all who oppose it; its authoritarian principles and practice are a potential menace to the personality and wellbeing of those so deluded as to become its followers, above all, its methods can be a serious danger to the health of those who submit to them. There is evidence that children are now being indoctrinated.30

  The Minister admitted there was no existing law he could use to ‘prohibit the practice of scientology’,31 so instead he would set about taking action to curb its growth. The Aliens Act would be used to ban foreign nationals from coming to the UK to study or work at Saint Hill, and those already doing so would not have their visas renewed. Hubbard was being driven out of Britain. No longer could he enjoy the simple pleasure of having his butler serve up his afternoon Coke on a silver tray at his English manor.

  Hubbard telexed Saint Hill to protest that ‘England, once the light and hope of the world, has become a police state and can no longer be trusted’.32 The UK government announced it would be commissioning an inquiry into Scientology to be conducted by Sir John Foster. The Scientologists would call on Peter Gillham to do some investigations of his own. Jane Kember from the Guardian’s Office ordered him to return to Australia to lead the fight against the ban in Victoria.

  Peter Gillham arrived home in November 1968. ‘I am here to establish the organisation again in Victoria,’ he told Melbourne’s Sun newspaper, ‘and I defy the Government to stop me.’33 Premier Henry Bolte, outraged by Gillham’s impertinence, warned, ‘People who flouted the law would get their just desserts.’34 But Gillham was not intimidated by Victoria’s long-serving Premier, accusing Bolte of being ‘too frightened to order his police force to prosecute practising scientologists’.35

  His brief was not just about reviving Scientology in Victoria. Like Martin Bentley in NSW, Gillham was ordered to dig some dirt on high-profile critics: including the Victorian Minister for Health, Vance Dickie; the Opposition Leader in the Legislative Council, Jack Galbally; and the former head of the Scientology inquiry, Kevin Anderson QC.36 But a week after Gillham arrived home, Scientology suffered a further blow. The Liberal government in Western Australia became the second state in Australia to ban Scientology. The Health Minister Graham MacKinnon had described it as ‘an insidious cult’ and had urged a nationwide ban at a conference of health ministers in Darwin.37 When other states refused to act, he moved to have Scientology banned in WA. The legislation passed despite opposition from the Labor Party.38

  In the same week Scientology was banned in Western Australia, a parliamentary inquiry into its prohibition in South Australia was already underway. Premier Steele Hall had told parliament he considered the organisation to b
e a threat to mental health. ‘It is my opinion that the possible indoctrination of children with its pernicious theories and illusory goals is a definite threat to the future mental health and emotional stability of these young people,’ he said.39 Soon after the inquiry was completed, South Australia became the third state in Australia to ban Scientology.

  In Victoria, the authorities were coming to grips with the difficulties of implementing a ban on a belief system. The Scientologists were becoming increasingly defiant, holding open meetings and daring the police to arrest them. In October, a group of Scientologists invited the Minister for Health, police and members of the public to attend a ‘church service’ at the Noble Park home of Harry Baess.40 Four Russell Street detectives promptly raided Baess’s home, seizing a number of books, pamphlets and teaching manuals.41

  The raid underlined the problems facing the police. One Scientologist left the home with a suspicious bulge beneath his shirt. While the police suspected he was concealing an E-Meter, they did not have the power to apprehend or search him.42 There was also a broader problem with the law. The police found a large number of manuals and books on the premises, but how did they prove that the teaching of Scientology was actually taking place? As the Secretary of the Department of Health put it to the Minister: ‘This will probably always be the case when the police raid premises.’43

  The Scientologists were declaring publicly they would break the law, but the police could not find the evidence with which to charge them. It was like raiding an illegal casino and finding the roulette tables but no gambling taking place. Flaws in the Act meant the police struggled to get search warrants. The Attorney-General had to be satisfied that the premises contained ‘scientological records’ before he signed a warrant. When Ian Tampion advertised a Scientology meeting at his home in Hawthorn, Senior Detective Henderson, who was in charge of all Scientology investigations, was unable to enter the premises to gain evidence.44