Inside Scientology

by Janet Reitman

  "I am giving you this short talk because you might have wondered what I was doing," Hubbard began. What he'd been doing, as it turned out, was discovering whole new levels of existence. He explained that he had been researching the most extraordinary realm of consciousness, a realm he had only just discovered, known as "Operating Thetan." An "OT," Hubbard said, was the most enlightened being in the universe, capable of operating "totally independent of his body, whether he had one or didn't have one." No one prior to the birth of Scientology had ever achieved this exalted state. Now, however, select Scientologists would be able to learn the techniques that made this possible, through a series of auditing processes known as the "OT levels."

  Over the past year, Hubbard said, he'd been on a search for the deepest mysteries of the universe, a journey that took him through what he called the "Wall of Fire." The quest had been risky, and just that past winter, he said, he'd become very ill as a result of his efforts. And yet he managed to learn the truth and survived the experience, though barely. "The material involved ... is so vicious that it is carefully arranged to kill anyone if he discovers the exact truth of it," he warned. "I am very sure that I was the first one that ever did live through any attempt to attain that material."

  Hubbard didn't elaborate too much on the tape about what his adventures had entailed, nor what he had discovered. But he hinted that an incident of catastrophic proportions had occurred seventy-five million years ago, an event so traumatic that its residuals were still being felt on Earth to this day. His new OTs, represented initially by the Sea Org, would lead the charge to rehabilitate the planet against a small but powerful band of opponents.

  "Our enemies are less than twelve men," he said via "Ron's Journal '67." "They are members of the Bank of England, and other higher financial circles. They own and control newspaper chains, and they are all, oddly enough, directors in all the mental health groups in the world." Most of the world's leading heads of state, including Britain's prime minister, Harold Wilson, were, according to Hubbard, under the control of these individuals.

  The church now had private investigators in its employ, digging into the backgrounds of various bankers, journalists, and politicians. Scientologists would learn more about these activities, though only in vague references, as Hubbard issued many more directives pertaining to the battle ahead. "We are rolling up the heavy guns quietly and getting things exactly timed," he said in a letter to his staff on November 4, 1968. Several weeks later, Hubbard announced that he had isolated the enemy and was readying a counterattack.

  Then, on November 29, 1968, Hubbard made his most dramatic declaration to date in a memo to all staff, titled "The War." Hubbard revealed that the twelve individuals he had formerly referred to were merely a front for a much larger, more dangerous enemy: the World Federation of Mental Health. Hubbard often called it SMERSH, a reference to both the Stalin-era counterintelligence units of the Soviet army and the fictional nemesis of James Bond. This organization had been behind every attack on Dianetics and Scientology since 1950, Hubbard said. The Founder had begun to view psychiatrists as not simply suppressive but the ancient enemy of mankind, responsible for the enslavement of the human race. Psychiatry and the broader field of mental health, he explained, were chosen long ago as "a vehicle to undermine and destroy the West." But the Church of Scientology had stood in its way. Now, Hubbard said, Scientologists had "the goods" on SMERSH and intended to battle its forces worldwide, using every legal means at their disposal. "We don't stoop to murder and rough house. But man, the effectiveness of our means will become history," he wrote, though he never specified which tactics would be used. "It's a tough war. All wars are tough. It isn't over."

  War. That was pretty much the opposite of what Jeff Hawkins, pacifist, ex-hippie, onetime anti-war protestor, stood for. One of the reasons he'd joined Scientology was because of its doctrine of world peace. But those thoughts would come much later—years later. At the time, Hubbard's directive, his "battle plan," as his missives were often called, seemed thrilling—a cause! Few staff members had time to wonder about all the evildoers. A wave of panic now washed over the organizations. The future of the world was at stake and they, the Scientologists, weren't doing enough. They had to do more. "In all the broad Universe," Hubbard said, "there is no other hope for Man than ourselves."

  By the beginning of 1969, Scientologists around the world were dedicated to fighting Hubbard's war on psychiatry. In Britain, where L. Ron Hubbard had been declared an "undesirable alien" and his movement denounced in Parliament as a "pseudo-philosophical cult," Scientologists began to picket the London offices of national mental health organizations, carrying banners that said BUY YOUR MEAT FROM A PSYCHIATRIST and PSYCHIATRISTS MAIM AND KILL. In Edinburgh, Jeff and his Pubs colleagues conducted a late-night raid of what they were told was the local headquarters of the World Federation of Mental Health. "We rushed through the building, putting up lurid posters depicting psychiatrists as leering death's-head skulls, terrorizing innocent citizens," he said. "It seemed like a college prank."

  But Hubbard's goals were deadly serious. As early as 1960, Hubbard had been considering how Scientology might take over society. "We are masters of IQ and ability," he wrote in a policy letter titled "The Special Zone Plan." "We have know-how. Any of us could select out a zone of life in which we are interested and then, entering it, bring order and victory to it." A housewife, for example, might take over her local garden club, and then, using Scientology's communications technology, could begin to present various Hubbardian ideas on marriage and child rearing. A junior executive might use the same techniques and "if only as 'an able person' he would rapidly expand a zone of control, to say nothing of his personal standing in the company." Hubbard also advised that the same techniques could be used in a more sophisticated sphere, such as government. "Don't bother to get elected," he instructed. "Get a job on the secretarial staff [of a politician] or [be] the bodyguard, use any talent one has to get a place close in." From that trusted post, he argued, Scientologists could wield tremendous power.

  Hubbard also had instructed his troops how to do battle. "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," he instructed in one policy letter. "Don't ever defend, always attack. Don't ever do nothing. Unexpected attacks in the rear of the enemy's front ranks work best."

  Now, in a memo to his wife written on December 2, 1969, Hubbard laid out the purpose of his war: "To take over absolutely the field of mental healing on this planet in all forms." That was not the original purpose of Scientology, he noted. "The original purpose was to clear Earth." But the various battles Scientology had engaged in over the years had led him to the inevitable conclusion that the enemy, psychiatry and its many front groups, would have to be eradicated.

  Mary Sue Hubbard received in this missive her appointment as Chief Guardian and Controller of the Church of Scientology, reflecting her leadership of a special organ of the church known as the Guardian's Office. Created by Hubbard in 1966, its job was to enforce church policy and "safeguard Scientology orgs, Scientologists, and Scientology," as Hubbard put it. Guardians held the highest posts on Scientology's board of directors. They ran its legal apparatus, its finance office, and its public relations and social outreach bureaus, which targeted such areas of concern as drug and criminal rehabilitation, education reform, and "eradicating mental health abuse"; the latter was handled by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, an advocacy group formed by the Guardian's Office in 1969. The Guardian's Office also ran a highly sophisticated intelligence operation that collected and maintained files on Scientology's growing list of enemies. Its guiding principle was attack. Under Mary Sue's leadership (though always, it was understood, with the approval of her husband), the Guardian's Office filed dozens of libel suits against media outlets that had run negative stories about Scientology; gathered intelligence on members of various state, local,
and national governments; and launched myriad propaganda campaigns and attacks on psychiatrists and psychiatric organizations.

  Hubbard directed his war through written proclamation; his operatives carried it out. On March 26, 1969, for example, the leader issued an order, titled "Zones of Action," instructing his followers to "invade the territory of Smersh" and "purify the mental health field." Several months later, the Guardian's Office, acting on Hubbard's orders, initiated a strategy to take over England's National Association of Mental Health. The plan was fairly simple: Scientologists, seeing that NAMH membership was open to the public, began joining the organization in large numbers—in October 1969, the NAMH, after receiving no more than 10 or 15 membership applications per month, suddenly saw the number jump to 227. By November, there were 302 new members. The organization's annual meeting, in which it elected new leaders, was scheduled for November 12, 1969; suddenly, there came a flurry of nominations from the new members, suggesting eight of their own for positions on the council.

  As the British journalist C. H. Rolph pointed out in his 1973 book on the attempted takeover, Believe What You Like, the staff of the NAMH became suspicious when they noticed that all of the new membership applications had been mailed from either East Grinstead or a post office on Tottenham Court Road, the location of Scientology's London Org. Notifying the authorities, the group, just two days before the election, uncovered the scheme, which included a plan to elect the Scientologist David Gaiman, a member of the Guardian's Office, to the position of chairman. The Scientologists were subsequently asked to resign.*

  Hubbard was careful to portray psychiatry not just as "barbaric," but also as barbarism endorsed by the state. It was the state that stuck with Jeff—Hubbard rarely attacked psychiatry without linking it in one way or another to Western governments or institutions. This wasn't outrageous; it was simply revolutionary, Jeff thought. But the voice of Scientology became increasingly strident. Psychiatrists were rapists, killers. They were fascists—indeed, psychiatrists were behind Hitler's death camps. The nefarious SMERSH, and its agents throughout the Wog World (including, Hubbard believed, Time magazine, whose purpose, he once wrote, was to "cause riots and disaffection" ), needed to be destroyed. Only they, the Scientologists and L. Ron Hubbard, could do it.

  It was within this increasingly combative mentality that Jeff found himself working for Warrant Officer Doreen Casey, who'd come to Pubs, it seemed to him, to reinforce the fact that Hubbard's war was literal. A new code of discipline, known as "lower conditions," was introduced and enforced. Based on Hubbard's Conditions of Existence, it prescribed punishment for any misstep or question that ran counter to the goal of clearing the planet and fighting the enemy, and it could be markedly humiliating.

  A staff member who offended by, say, oversleeping was said to be in a condition of Liability, and made to wear blue overalls with a dirty gray rag tied around his arm. Someone who employed an unsuccessful sales strategy might be labeled an Enemy and would also have to wear overalls, with a heavy chain linked around her waist. Some of the worst offenders, a staffer who misspent church funds, for instance, were assigned a condition of Treason. As Jeff recalled, "These people were ushered into the elevator and taken to a small space at the bottom of the elevator shaft where they were imprisoned until they had come to their senses." To get out of any of these conditions required a member to evaluate his or her own thoughts, actions, and goals based on those of the greater group.

  "Basically, one rises up from the conditions by aligning oneself with group goals," Jeff said. "The inevitable conclusion is that one's friends are the group, one's own intentions and actions have been selfish and petty, and one has to 'get with the program.'" Then, to show renewed dedication, a member would be required to do a series of amends—scrubbing floors with a toothbrush was a common penance—which culminated with the humiliating act of petitioning each member of the group, individually, to be allowed to rejoin them.

  To Jeff, this wasn't Scientology, at least not the Scientology he had signed up for. It was hazing, something with which he, and many others, were unfamiliar. And yet he was invested in Scientology, dedicated to its cause. Hubbard, whose rich but gentle voice had the power to lull him into an almost hypnotic state, was his leader.

  So, unable to process the new discipline, Jeff dismissed it as an aberration: a punishment inflicted solely by Doreen Casey. In fact Casey represented a definitive new trend within the church. Though its members and low-ranking staffers like Jeff were ex-hippies and other free spirits, the Sea Organization operated on far more authoritarian principles. A failed war hero, Hubbard now commanded his own navy. And its staff, in turn, would soon command Scientology.

  Chapter 5

  Travels with the Commodore

  THE SMALL PROPELLER plane sailed over the Straits of Gibraltar like a shuddering tin can. On board, Jeff Hawkins closed his eyes. He practiced a technique Scientologists often used to make things happen: he created an image in his mind, a "postulate," of the plane landing safely on the ground. A few minutes later, it made a bumpy landing in Tangier. Then the plane took off once again, and an hour later finally set down in Casablanca. Jeff breathed a happy sigh. He had no idea where he was going, but at least he was now on solid ground.

  It was 1971 and Jeff, who had risen in the ranks of the Publications Org, had been summoned to attend a special training course for would-be Scientology executives aboard Hubbard's flagship, the Royal Scotsman—now renamed the Apollo. Exactly where the ship was sailing, Jeff didn't know. In Copenhagen, where Pubs had relocated to handle the dissemination of Scientology materials across Europe, Jeff had been given a plane ticket and told to fly to Madrid. There he was met by a Sea Org official working for a cover organization, the Operation and Transport Company, who put him on a plane bound for Casablanca. "When you land, get on a bus for a town called Safi," the official said.

  Jeff waited for a bus on the crowded streets of Casablanca and finally found one headed for Safi, a seaport several hours away. After an uncomfortable journey, he arrived and made his way toward the docks. There he saw it: a gleaming white ship.

  "Welcome aboard!" David Ziff, Jeff's old boss at Pubs, shouted from the gangplank. Jeff hadn't seen Ziff in three years. Back then he'd looked like a rumpled college professor. Now he was a spit-polished, stand-at-attention officer of the Sea Org, dressed in crisp military whites. "Welcome to Flag!" he said, referring to the ship, a three-story, 3,278-ton behemoth that, in a former life, had served as an Irish cattle ferry and then as a troop transport during World War II. Now it housed offices, dining facilities, cabins, and a Telex room. At the top were two large white stacks, each engraved with the letters LRH in elaborate gold script.

  Jeff Hawkins may have hated Sea Org Warrant Officer Doreen Casey, but he had overwhelming respect for the Sea Organization as a whole. They were the "aristocracy of Scientology," as Hubbard described them, who'd signed contracts for one billion years of service, pledging their lives—current and future—to the Cause. Their motto, "We Come Back," signified eternal vigilance.

  Originally called the Sea Project, the group was staffed with volunteers; most were recruited at Saint Hill. One of them, Neville Chamberlin, was a young British Scientologist who'd grown up around Hubbard—his mother had been one of earliest clients at Scientology's London Org, where Hubbard spent a great deal of time. Chamberlin had begun working at Saint Hill shortly after finishing high school, in the mid-1960s. One day in November 1966, a notice appeared on the Saint Hill bulletin board, asking for volunteers with naval or seagoing experience. Within the hour, the notice was taken down, and those who had seen it, including Chamberlin, were sworn to secrecy. "We began to notice certain staff members disappearing from their posts," recalled Chamberlin. "It was all very hush-hush." Finally, in April 1967, Chamberlin was recruited to join this "confidential project." He was told he'd need a valid passport and should pack a suitcase. Soon after, he and nineteen other Scientologists left Saint Hill for the nort
hern seaport of Hull, where they set sail aboard a 414-foot trawler, the Avon River, for Las Palmas in the Canary Islands. Two other ships, the Royal Scotsman and the Enchanter, would follow.

  Despite the call for volunteers with experience at sea, few in the Sea Project knew much about ships, which may explain why Hubbard hired professional seamen to sail the boat from England to the Canary Islands. The Avon River had a particularly arduous journey—its skipper, Captain John Jones, would later recall the trip as the strangest excursion of his life. The sole navigational guide allowed on board was a sailing manual written by Hubbard, called the "Org Book," which banned the use of advanced navigational technology like radar and insisted the ships plot their course using radio frequencies. "My crew were sixteen men and four women Scientologists who wouldn't know a trawler from a tramcar. But they intended to sail this tub four thousand miles in accordance with the 'Org Book,'" Jones later told a reporter from the London Sunday Mirror. "We tried these methods. Getting out of Hull we bumped the dock. Then, using the 'Org Book' navigation system based on radio beams from the BBC and other stations, we [sailed only a few miles down the coast] before the navigator admitted he was lost. I stuck to my watch and sextant, so at least I knew where we were."

  Chamberlin and the rest of the Avon River's crew arrived in Las Palmas several weeks later. To conceal the fact that they were Scientologists, Hubbard had incorporated the Hubbard Explorational Company Ltd. before he left England, and now ordered his Sea Project to explain to anyone who asked that they were members of a team of archaeologists. With this as their cover, Chamberlin and the crew of the Avon River set to work giving the ship a major overhaul, converting cargo holds into bunks and offices, blasting away rust, and slapping on several coats of fresh white paint.