Fair Game

by Steve Cannane

  The young Scientologist grew up in an Adelaide suburb where young boys routinely dodged projectiles aimed at the head. Down the road from the Rinders’, the Chappell brothers turned backyard cricket into a form of suburban warfare, with their cut-throat games providing a foundation for their future success as Test cricketers.

  The eldest of three children, Mike Rinder had his own youthful trials. His parents became Scientologists a few years after he was born. After Scientology was banned in South Australia, auditing became an undercover operation. Family legend has it that their collection of Hubbard’s books was hidden under the floorboards of the family home.

  Educated at the elite private school Kings College, Rinder sung hymns in the chapel each morning and recited the Lord’s Prayer. He kept his own beliefs to himself: ‘I gotta tell you when I was growing up it wasn’t something that was talked about. You didn’t publicly announce yourself as a Scientologist because it was like oh my God! You don’t wanna to say that.’4

  Rinder cruised through school, getting good grades without having to put too much work in. When he graduated from school in 1972, he turned down a full scholarship at Adelaide University. The 18-year-old had other goals. ‘From the time I was 10 or 12 years old I wanted to join the Sea Org and I wanted to work with Ron Hubbard,’ he says.5 He moved to Sydney and signed the billion-year Sea Org contract.

  After a few months working in the ‘Tours Org’, driving a Torana GTR between Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Perth, and selling Scientology services, he headed to Saint Hill in the UK to do his formal Sea Org training. Once qualified, he set off for Lisbon, where he boarded the Apollo. They were the first steps in a journey that would see Mike Rinder rise to the top of the Church of Scientology, becoming its international spokesman and the head of the feared Office of Special Affairs.

  In September 1973, Rinder was put to work doing menial tasks on the Apollo. He started off as a deckhand and a pinholer before becoming a messenger. Rinder had dreamed of meeting Hubbard as a child; now he was living and working with him on the same ship. One of their first interactions was physical. ‘I ran up the stairs and sort of ran into him and he started laughing and said never stop a busy man.’6 Rinder got to know Hubbard a lot better in the coming years as the Australian made his way up Scientology’s hierarchy:

  I don’t think there is anyone who has met the guy who doesn’t say that he was larger than life. He was a presence. He was someone that walked into the room and you knew he walked into the room. He was highly intelligent, astonishingly well read and claimed knowledge about so many things. He had a great sense of humour and he was very polite and concerned about the wellbeing of people around him. You hear some people tell stories about how he was like a madman, and I’ve seen him get upset with people and lose his temper. But that is not what defined him in my experience. In hindsight, and knowing what I now know, I saw what I wanted to see in him – but still, there is no doubt he was larger than life.7

  Mike Rinder didn’t know at the time, but Hubbard’s time on the high seas was drawing to a close. By 1974, Portugal was one of the few countries in the Mediterranean where the Apollo was still welcome, but that was about to change. On 25 April, members of the Portuguese military pulled off a coup, restoring democracy, ending conscription and halting the colonial wars being fought in Angola, Mozambique and Portuguese Guinea.

  The coup was organised by the Movimento das Forcas Armadas, or MFA, a group of left-wing military officers. The MFA were worried that the CIA was trying to undermine them.8 The rumours of CIA subversion reached as far as the remote port of Funchal, 1000 km from Lisbon. Graffiti appeared on the walls near the docks stating: ‘Apollo = CIA’.

  It didn’t help the Scientologists that they had told Portuguese port authorities that the Apollo was owned by a successful business consultancy.9 That little piece of deception was an attempt to shield Hubbard from the kind of scrutiny that lead to Hubbard’s ill-fated TV interview in Bizerte with Charlie Nairn.10 Hubbard’s medical adviser Jim Dincalci had made contacts among the locals in Funchal and was disturbed by what he found out. ‘It seemed to be common knowledge in Madeira that the ship was not what it was supposed to be and most people seemed to think it was a CIA spy ship.’11

  Dincalci had telexed Hubbard warning him not to dock anywhere in Madeira, but the Commodore had other plans. In early October, Hubbard brought the Apollo into Funchal Harbour. He wanted to stage free concerts promoting the ship’s band, the Apollo Stars.12 Hubbard got his rock concert, but not the type he was hoping for.

  As Mike Rinder says:

  Funchal is a funny place because Madeira is a tiny island and it’s in the middle of the Atlantic, there’s nothing, and the people there go kinda stir crazy. There is this little section beside the port where there is a row of six cafes where everyone sits around and drinks beer, drinks coffee and talks endlessly. There was an infamous incident where a Dutch naval ship had been in port and some Dutch sailors came in and had been insulting some Portuguese woman so it ended up with a running battle through the streets of Funchal and this became the stuff of legend. So the ‘Apollo is CIA’ thing started when a bunch of these guys in the cafes stirred themselves up and said let’s go get rid of them. So they took a bunch of taxis and they filled the trunks up with stones and they drove the cabs to the docks where there’s 500 or 1000 people there who then started chanting ‘Apollo is CIA!’ and throwing stones.13

  The protestors meant business. The red Mini Clubman station wagon that Rinder had driven around the island was thrown off the wharf and into the harbour. The ropes that moored the Apollo to the docks had been cast off and the ship was now drifting. The crew was being bombarded with rocks. Peter Gillham Jnr witnessed the battle from the sun deck: ‘They started pelting us with river stones and then a bunch of the guys on deck got fire hoses out and started hosing them down and it became a bit of a free for all. A few people tried to board but not many. Most of them were content to stay on the dock and throw rocks. They also threw crew members’ motorcycles in the drink. I’m standing up there watching this all, going this is really crazy!’14

  Hubbard stormed onto the deck armed with a bullhorn, and began yelling at the mob, calling them communists and criminals.15 The locals returned fire. Kima Douglas, standing just a metre away from the Commodore, had her jaw broken by a rock. The Apollo pulled up anchor and headed to safer waters. The protestors’ attentions now shifted to Mike Rinder who was anchored in his apartment.

  The chants of ‘Apollo is CIA! You’re CIA!’ continued outside his apartment from late in the evening till early the following morning. Rinder endured an agonising night. Alone and lying on the floor in the dark he wondered who would come for him first? The protestors? Or the helicopter? By the time the army captain returned it was 5 am. There would be no dramatic rescue from the rooftop. The captain had not been able to secure a chopper, but he did have another plan. If Rinder let a delegation of the protestors into his office, which was connected to his living quarters, they could look through their files and find out for themselves whether they were CIA or not.

  The protestors eventually overtook the Scientology apartment. It was bedlam. ‘These people came in and start ripping the office apart,’ recalls Rinder, ‘turning the tables upside down and emptying everything.’16 They did not find the evidence of CIA infiltration they had been hoping for and the mob soon dissipated. After drawn-out negotiations with customs police, Rinder was eventually allowed to leave at about 9 am.

  A lifeboat from the Apollo was sent out to pick up the 19-year-old. ‘I was greatly relieved,’ says Rinder. ‘I had a lot of friends in Funchal and I had enjoyed living there, but by this time I knew it would never be the same and I could not stay.’ Rinder had survived the first of many dangerous missions on behalf of Scientology. He was happy to be reunited with the crew of the Apollo.

  With the latest crisis averted, Hubbard realised he had a much broader problem to tackle. The Apollo had been kicked out of ports in G
reece, Spain, Morocco and Portugal, while the French were investigating him for fraud. Hubbard decided it was time to take a new course. Much to the delight of all the Americans on board, the Apollo headed due west, bound for Charleston, South Carolina.

  As the Apollo cruised towards Charleston, a large reception committee was gathering on the docks. Included were agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration, US Customs, Immigration, Coast Guard, US Marshalls and the Internal Revenue Service.17 Federal agents planned to serve Hubbard with a subpoena related to a civil tax case in Honolulu.18 When a Scientologist onshore was blocked from entering the docks, he realised what was going on and the ship was alerted.19

  Janis Gillham was with Hubbard when the news came through.

  I was on watch with LRH when he was called down to the radio room, because Jane Kember was on the phone and he was like, what? Why is she calling? And here we are, we had just crossed into US waters and Jane is on the phone saying do not enter American waters, there’s narcotics agents and the IRS on the docks waiting for you to come in.20

  Hubbard argued the toss with his wife about whether they should go ashore. Hubbard was full of bravado; Mary Sue feared he would be arrested.21 ‘Everyone could hear them screaming at each other for about two hours,’ recalled Hana Eltringham. ‘She was adamant that we should not go ashore. She said he would be indicted 10 or 15 times and it would be the end of him and she wasn’t going have it.’22

  With the Apollo around 8 km23 offshore, the ship turned around and headed towards the Bahamas. It was a deflating moment for the crew. They had been looking forward to returning to the US and now they faced the prospect of cruising the high seas indefinitely in a ship that had become overcrowded. ‘It was like the black hole of Calcutta,’ says Mike Rinder. ‘The bunks were six high in an 8-foot bulkhead. To fit everyone in people were sleeping outside in the lifeboats.’24

  The mood was not helped by the punishment regime that Hubbard had instituted earlier that year. In January, Hubbard issued Flag Order 3434, creating the Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF).25 Sea Org members entered the RPF if they were discovered to have ‘evil intentions’ against Hubbard or his technology, displayed poor personality indicators, were caught up in ‘trouble making’, or had not met satisfactory production levels.26

  The punishments on the RPF were harsh. Those undergoing rehabilitation were forced to wear black boiler suits, given leftovers for dinner and ordered to run everywhere. They had no free time and were segregated from the rest of the Sea Org. Once put on the RPF, Sea Org members were not allowed to initiate conversations and were forced to do the worst jobs, such as cleaning out the ship’s bilges.27 Gerry Armstrong recalls being forced to sleep in ‘a roach-infested, filthy and unventilated cargo hold’.28 Sea Org members could be sent to the RPF for real or imagined indiscretions.29 As a result, the RPF created a culture of fear and unchallenged obedience to Hubbard. At one point, around a third of the ship was undergoing rehabilitation.30

  Janis Gillham was witness to the conversation that led to the creation of the RPF. Hubbard was talking to his public relations aide Laurel Sullivan and to Ken Urquhart, a young musician who at the time had the title of LRH Personal Communicator.

  I remember standing on the deck with Ken Urquhart, Laurel Sullivan and LRH and he was talking to Ken about setting up a rehabilitation force and Laurel and Ken were throwing in different ideas and I’m standing there thinking this is nuts! And that’s how it came about. Ken went away and wrote up the order and it was implemented right away.31

  By the end of 1975, Hubbard made the decision to move the Sea Org ashore. Scientologists from the Apollo were sent to the US to scope out a place ripe for a Scientology takeover.32 They found a seaside town in Florida with the perfect name: Clearwater. The small city was a virtual retirement village with over a third of its 100,000 residents over the age of 65.33 Buildings in the town centre were run down and up for sale. In October 1975, Southern Land Sales and Development Corporation bought the 11-storey Fort Harrison Hotel for US$2.3 million in cash.34 A few days later, the same company bought the old Bank of Clearwater building down the road for US$550,000.35

  Local reporters began scrutinising the land deals. It turned out Southern Land Sales and Development Corporation, a company no-one had heard of, was leasing the buildings to the United Churches of Florida, a religious group no-one had heard of. Both were front groups for Scientology.

  While the purchases were done undercover, the renovations were not. The sight of a group of serious-looking young men and women in naval uniforms scrubbing old buildings raised the suspicions of local mayor, Gabriel Cazares. ‘I am discomfited by the increasing visibility of security personnel, armed with billy clubs and mace, employed by the United Churches of Florida,’ he said in a public statement. ‘I am unable to understand why this degree of security is required by a religious organization.’36

  Gabriel Cazares was a man who never shirked a fight. The son of Mexican immigrants, he was a record-breaking middle-distance runner before joining the Air Army Forces. After making the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, he retired from the military, becoming a stockbroker and moving to Clearwater. As a Democrat in a Republican city, Cazares was schooled in political hand-to-hand combat. He would call on every bit of that resilience in his battles with Scientology.

  After Mayor Cazares claimed Clearwater was being taken over by Scientologists, the church filed a US$1 million suit against him for libel, slander and violation of civil rights.37 Scientologists began trawling through public records in an attempt to dig up dirt on Cazares.38 When that failed to uncover anything, the Guardian’s Office cooked up a bizarre fake hit-and-run accident.

  When Gabriel Cazares attended a Mayor’s Conference in Washington, DC, a Scientologist posing as a journalist asked him for an interview. Cazares agreed. After the interview, a friend of the ‘journalist’ offered to show the Mayor the sights of the capital. The ‘friend’, Sharon Thomas, happened to be an agent from the Guardian’s Office. As she was driving the Mayor through the streets of the nation’s capital, Thomas ran into a pedestrian. The ‘pedestrian’ was Michael Meisner, a fellow agent with the Guardian’s Office. Thomas drove away without stopping.39

  The Scientologists were sure this incident would implicate Cazares and finish his political career. Dick Weigand, a senior agent with the Guardian’s Office, filed a report the following day that stated: ‘I should think that the Mayor’s political days are at an end.’40 But Mayor Cazares survived the attempted framing unscathed. When his political opponent Bill Young was offered the potentially compromising information on Cazares, he refused to use it.41 The failed scheme was a part of a trend of increasingly wacky behaviour coming out of the Guardian’s Office. Michael Meisner, the ‘victim’ of the fake hit-and-run, was at the centre of a reckless operation that would see Mary Sue Hubbard end up in jail.

  On 28 April 1973, Hubbard issued a secret order titled ‘Snow White Program’. At the time, he was concerned about the growing number of countries who were denying him entry.42 Hubbard believed he was a victim of false intelligence reports spread by American and English authorities and issued an order that he wanted ‘all false and secret files of the nations of operating areas brought to view and legally expunged’.43 It wasn’t long before illegal means were used to expunge secret files. Hubbard tasked the Guardian’s Office, under the stewardship of his wife Mary Sue, to achieve his order.

  In the US, the Guardian’s Office infiltrated an extraordinary range of government departments, foreign embassies, private companies, media organisations and medical associations. The Justice, Treasury and Labor Departments were all targeted, as was the Drug Enforcement Administration.44 But the agency penetrated to the highest degree was the Internal Revenue Service, the department responsible for tax collection and tax law enforcement.

  Michael Meisner was in his third year of a degree at the University of Illinois when a friend introduced him to Scientology.45 Within months he’d dropped out of col
lege and joined the staff at the Urbana Church of Scientology in Illinois. He trained as an auditor and course supervisor before being recruited to the Guardian’s Office in May 1973.46 Meisner was placed in the intelligence bureau in Washington, DC. He was told his role would include locating, removing and rendering harmless all enemies of Scientology and that this would require infiltration, covert operations and the theft of documents.47

  In mid-1974, Meisner was instructed to recruit a loyal Scientologist to be placed undercover at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in Washington, DC. The recruitment process proved futile, so one of Meisner’s superiors, Cindy Raymond, sent Gerald Wolfe, codenamed ‘Silver’, to do the job. Wolfe successfully infiltrated the IRS on 18 November 1974, when he was employed as a clerk and typist.48

  Wolfe’s strike rate was extraordinary. In the first five months of 1975, he stole and copied around 30,000 pages of documents,49 a pile of information that stretched ten feet high.50 The more he stole, the more the Guardian’s Office wanted. In May 1975, under instruction from Meisner, Wolfe infiltrated the Tax Division Offices of the Department of Justice over a period of three weekends, pilfering 12 files’ worth of notes from departmental attorneys dealing with the trial and pre-trial strategies for upcoming Scientology court cases.

  In June, Meisner kickstarted ‘Project Beetle Clean-up’, an operation designed to obtain all of the IRS files in the Washington, DC office relating to Scientology and Hubbard. The IRS was about to audit the Church of Scientology of California. Wolfe, who had added lock-picking and breakin artist to his duties of clerk/typist, managed to ransack the office of the Chief Counsel of the IRS and steal his files and notes.