Inside Scientology

by Janet Reitman

  It was also the great teen adventure of a lifetime. On his good days, L. Ron Hubbard was "charming and funny," as DeDe said, as well as generous. "He was never inappropriate," said Gale, but he doted on the Messengers: sending them flowers on their birthdays and often buying them expensive gold and sapphire rings or earrings as Christmas presents. He considered himself their surrogate father—many felt he was closer to them than he was to his own four children by Mary Sue, who were also on the Apollo—and he also considered himself their tutor. As Reisdorf recalled, he was particularly fond of teaching them tactics for use on covert missions. "Once, in Curaçao, he decided to teach us how to 'lose tail,' as he called it. So he gave us drills to do, like having one or two Messengers follow a third, and then see if she could lose them in town." The girls spent the entire afternoon practicing escaping from one another, she said.

  Mary Sue Hubbard, the mother of four teenagers of her own, tried to take responsibility for the girls—sometimes at the behest of their parents—but it wasn't easy. "Some of the Messengers were pretty wild," Reisdorf said. "Our logbook always had notes as to where to find people. Like ... 'If you're looking for Jill she is currently sleeping with Allen.'"

  Eventually, Hubbard instituted a "no sex until marriage" rule (possibly at Mary Sue's insistence, DeDe thought) within the Sea Org. This toned things down a bit, though not much. The girls simply married their beaux. Hubbard did not oppose a teen marriage—indeed, he once informed his Messengers that anyone who got married would receive a promotion—but he insisted on approving the match. "He expected the guys we were dating to ask him for permission to marry us," said Reisdorf. Over the years at sea, there were numerous weddings on the ship, attended solely by the crew—even the Messengers' parents would not be allowed to attend, as the ship was always in a "secret" location. In 1974, one of Hubbard's favorite Messengers, Terry Gilham, was married to the Sea Org member Gerry Armstrong in a double wedding ceremony with friends and fellow shipmates Trudy Venter and Pat Broeker. Hubbard gave away the brides.

  "It was a bizarre scene," said Jeff Hawkins, who spent the summer and early fall of 1975 aboard the Apollo, designing Scientology's new brochures. It was the first time Jeff had been admitted to Hubbard's rarefied circle, and he was both mystified by the goings-on around him and also determined not to let his perplexity show. What Hubbard said in meetings dealt largely with promotion—after his television-watching sojourn in Queens, Hubbard believed that Scientology needed to use more visual imagery to attract the younger generation. To accomplish this, he established a Photo Shoot Org to take pictures for Scientology publications, using the teenage Messengers as models.

  For nine months, the crew of the Apollo sailed around the Caribbean, stopping at various ports to shoot photographs. As a public relations effort, the Apollo All-Stars held impromptu concerts on the docks. The group maintained its cover as the Operation and Transport Company. But the mysterious ship, its odd Commodore, young crew, and penchant for secrecy still raised suspicion at every island port in which it tried to dock. One Trinidadian newspaper, having heard a rumor that the Apollo was connected to the CIA, irresponsibly suggested that in addition to housing spies, the ship was also linked, in some nefarious way, to the gruesome Manson murders in Los Angeles.

  Over the summer and into the fall, Jeff began to sense a subtle change in tone aboard the ship. "I could see executives rushing around and hurrying into meetings, but people were silent about what was going on." When Jeff asked, he was told it was confidential. By autumn, the Apollo had sailed to the Bahamas. From there, a cadre of Sea Org officers disembarked and flew to the United States.

  The nearly decade-long voyage of the Commodore and his Sea Org was at an end. Flag had become too small to accommodate the number of Scientologists clamoring to do the OT levels and other exclusive courses. And the Sea Organization had grown—no longer based aboard ship only, it had offices all over the world. Scientology needed to return to terra firma and establish a land base. They would choose the sleepy Gulf Coast community of Clearwater, Florida, where at the end of 1975, the Scientologists quietly began to arrive.

  Hubbard, Mary Sue, and a small retinue settled five miles north, in the town of Dunedin. As with everything about him, the Commodore's location was a closely guarded secret. Once or twice, however, Hubbard ventured out, appearing in Clearwater dressed in a beret and khaki safari uniform. Unaware of what Scientology would ultimately have in store for their town, few locals even recognized him.

  Chapter 6

  Over the Rainbow

  ON THE EVENING of May 21, 1976, two covert operatives from the Guardian's Office, Gerald Wolfe and Michael Meisner, both using forged government IDs, entered the U.S. Courthouse in Washington, D.C., intent on breaking into the office of Nathan Dodell, an assistant U.S. attorney who was investigating Scientology. After informing the security guard that they were there to do legal research, the pair signed the log at the front desk, took the elevator to the law library, and then exited through a back door and walked down the hall to Dodell's office, where they entered with a stolen key. The men made copies of six inches of government files pertaining to the investigation, returned the originals, then left.

  One week later, on the evening of May 28, Meisner and Wolfe returned to the same courthouse, and using the same tactic, removed and copied even more files from Dodell's office. On June 11, they attempted to do the same thing. But this time the night librarian, having noticed the men previously, had alerted authorities. Two FBI agents approached Meisner and Wolfe as they waited in the law library for a cleaning crew to vacate Dodell's office. Telling the agents that they were doing legal research, the men presented their identification and were allowed to leave. But Wolfe had mistakenly handed the FBI his actual identification card, resulting three weeks later in his arrest for use and possession of a forged government ID. By August, a grand jury investigation into the Wolfe case had turned up Meisner's name and connected him to the Church of Scientology.

  At a hidden location in Los Angeles, Meisner, at the urging of Mary Sue Hubbard, among others, agreed to turn himself in. But he was kept waiting for eight months while the Guardian's Office sought to concoct an appropriate cover story. By the spring of 1977, a frustrated Meisner threatened to leave California and return to Washington if the situation was not resolved. Instead, he was put under watch by Scientology guards on orders from his Guardian's Office superiors. In June 1977, a full year after the courthouse incident, Meisner managed to escape his captors and placed a call to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington, D.C., which phoned the FBI. He was later taken to Washington, where he agreed to plead guilty to a conspiracy felony. Then he told all to the grand jury. Two weeks later, on the morning of July 8, 1977, FBI agents raided the Church of Scientology's headquarters in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., and carted away close to fifty thousand incriminating documents. The government had uncovered Operation Snow White.

  Hubbard's quiet small-town life in Florida didn't last long. Still paranoid, he'd fled Clearwater in February 1976, leaving the fledgling Flag Land Base behind when the Guardian's Office discovered that a local reporter was closing in on Hubbard's true identity. Mary Sue and a core group of Messengers joined him and found him a new refuge about two hours east of Los Angeles, in the desert community of La Quinta. They called this sprawling $1.3 million ranch their Winter Headquarters, which was immediately given a code name: "W." The large, hacienda-style main house, known as Olives, served as a dormitory, while another house, called Palms, became the dining hall. Hubbard's home, known as Rifle, was a bit removed from the main property, across several open fields. Aside from his Messengers, Hubbard's disciples were not told where he went. The Messengers simply said that he'd gone "over the rainbow."

  Hubbard was now sixty-five, with thinning hair, an expanding belly, and a temperament that grew more bellicose by the day. But he had developed a new passion: the Commodore wanted to be a film director. At the ranch, Hubbard would eventually establi
sh the Cine Org to produce instructional films for students learning to be auditors. He strolled the grounds dressed in a cowboy hat and boots, shouting orders at his young assistants, who quickly learned to operate camera and lighting equipment.

  The Messengers had by now come to adopt Hubbard's mannerisms to a remarkable degree. "If Hubbard screamed at the Messenger when he issued his order, then the Messenger screamed at the person to whom the message was intended," one young Sea Org member, Sylvana Garritano, later recalled. "Some of the Messengers could duplicate Hubbard's voice almost perfectly." The longtime Scientologists who witnessed his behavior were appalled. "Hubbard had gotten to a point where he didn't have direct interactions or communications with anyone," said Alan Walter, who had watched the rise of the Messengers on board the Apollo between 1968 and 1975. "These kids became his voice."

  But though the Messengers were closely involved with Hubbard, it was the Guardian's Office that had become the most powerful entity in the Church of Scientology, other than Hubbard himself. Based at Saint Hill, but with eleven hundred staff members all over the world, this extremely sophisticated branch stood outside the official chain of command, as a watchdog.

  Scientologists hoping to join the Guardian's Office went through a rigorous screening process, not unlike what an applicant to work for the CIA might endure. A typical background check would include a review of the aspirant's activities and friendships as well as those of his or her parents, grandparents, and other relatives and friends. All of this material was then compiled in secret dossiers, which made the Guardians especially vulnerable. Though any Scientologist, staff or public, could be subject to internal investigation, these dossiers gave the church particularly sensitive material that could be used against any Guardian who stepped out of line; stringent loyalty was the only line of defense. If staff members rebelled, they might be followed, their phone might be tapped, or their family harassed with threatening phone calls. "It freaked you out," says one former official. "You had no idea what they were going to do, except that you knew that you would be hunted down."

  This kind of harassment fell under a Scientology policy known as "Fair Game." Originally written by Hubbard in 1965, the "Fair Game Law," as Hubbard called it, instructed Scientologists on how to handle Suppressive Persons, both within and outside the church. "A truly Suppressive Person or Group has no rights of any kind, and actions taken against them are not punishable," Hubbard wrote. He later explained that such enemies "may be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed."

  In 1968 Hubbard, concerned over the increasing international scrutiny of Scientology and its policies, issued an order to cancel Fair Game, stating that the phrase itself "causes bad public relations." But Hubbard did not ban the practice of Fair Game, which was implicit in his directions for how to treat journalists, judges, hostile lawyers, government agencies, psychiatrists, and myriad other forces that were, by Hubbard's definition, suppressive to Scientology.

  To gather information on various targets, the Guardian's Office maintained a clandestine army of informants, both Scientologists and private investigators, all over the world. They were often "regular people you would never suspect, so they were never detected," recalled one former Guardian, and they often worked for free, performing tasks ranging from attending meetings of anti-Scientology groups to asking neighbors or friends about the person they were investigating. A special intelligence unit with the Guardian's Office Bureau of Information, known as Branch One, was charged with digging up sensitive material pertaining to the IRS, various psychiatric groups, and government agencies such as the FBI and the CIA. "If you wanted to apprentice in clandestine activities, that was the place to do it," recalled the former operative. "These guys were masters at deception."

  Branch One was a self-contained cell that very few Scientologists, including other Guardian's Office officials, were aware of. It was headed by a longtime Scientology official named Jane Kember, a "fanatical Scientologist," as the writer Jon Atack described her, who served as the Deputy Guardian for Intelligence, working directly under Mary Sue Hubbard. Under Kember's direction, but with the blessing of Mary Sue (and, it is generally believed, that of L. Ron Hubbard), Branch One used illegal tactics to perpetrate what would later be revealed as the largest program of domestic espionage in U.S. history: Operation Snow White.

  The scope of this operation, which was intended to "cleanse" Scientology of its negative image by purging any critical documents about the church or its founder, was enormous. Beginning in 1973, Branch One planted Scientology operatives inside the Internal Revenue Service, the FBI, the U.S. Justice Department, the Better Business Bureau, the American Medical Association, and many other local and federal agencies.* There they stole and copied tens of thousands of document files in hopes of gleaning information that could be used to threaten, or silence, opponents of the church. Guardian's Office operatives launched smear campaigns, bugged government offices, and engaged in breaking and entering. For these illegal acts, members received commendations, Scientology's equivalent of military medals. They penetrated anti-cult organizations and had even made moves to infiltrate U.S. military organizations, such as the Coast Guard. Though experienced agents of the Guardian's Office carried out the more sophisticated operations, many young Scientologists, believing they were protecting their religion from persecution, were pressed into service. "We were religious zealots, militants, in our viewpoint," recalls one former Guardian. "Our perspective was 'This is my religion, and I will do anything to help it survive, even kill for it.'"

  "It was all very exciting, and also really confusing if you were a kid," recalled Nancy Many, who while a young staff member at the Boston Organization was trained in subterfuge by the Guardian's Office and then tasked with a number of "covert ops." Most involved getting herself hired for an administrative job at a government agency that collected information about Scientology. For example, Many worked for a year at the Boston Consumer Council, where, she said, her mission was steal and photocopy consumer complaints about the church, give them to her Guardian's Office handlers, and then replace the originals the following day. "I was nineteen or twenty, and though I knew what I was doing, I actually never thought it was illegal," she said. "I thought I was 'stealing Xerox paper,' as it had been explained to me. That's how naive I was."

  Many was also asked to take part in the campaign against the journalist Paulette Cooper, the author of a highly critical book, The Scandal of Scientology, published in 1971. It painted a scathing portrait of Scientology's recruitment practices, its auditing processes, and its battles against government oversight in both the United States and abroad, causing the church to sue Cooper for libel; over the course of the decade it filed at least eighteen other lawsuits against her (all of which have been settled). Church operatives tapped her phones, broke into her apartment, posted her number on bathroom walls, and handed out fliers to her neighbors, alleging that she was a prostitute. They also stole Cooper's stationery; then they framed her. Using her stationery, they sent several bomb threats to the New York Church of Scientology in 1973. As a result, Cooper was arrested and indicted on three counts of felony; she faced fifteen years in prison if convicted.

  "For months, my anxiety was so terrible I could taste it in my throat," Cooper later wrote. "I could barely write, and my bills, especially legal ones, kept mounting. I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. I smoked four packs of cigarettes a day, popped Valium like M&Ms, and drank too much vodka." Finally, in 1975, after Cooper took and passed a sodium amytal test (the "truth serum" test), the government decided not to pursue prosecution.

  That same year, Nancy Many, working in the Boston Organization's covert intelligence office, was asked to break into the office of Dr. Stanley Cath, Cooper's psychiatrist during her student years at Brandeis University, in order to steal Cooper's psychiatric files. When Many refused—she clearly understood that breaki
ng and entering was illegal, she said—another Scientologist in her office was tasked with the theft, which he committed with ease. About a week after this incident, Many said, the Boston Organization received a Telex from Hubbard, highly commending the Boston office for a job well done. "And that was the only thing we did," she said. "So anybody who says that LRH did not know what was going on—forget it. There was nothing else we had done to deserve a 'very well done' from Hubbard himself, except breaking and entering."

  In 1976, Scientologists planned what they hoped would be their final offensive against Cooper, a five-point scheme known as Operation Freakout, intended to get the writer "incarcerated in a mental institution or jail," as the mission stated. Its central intent was to frame Cooper, who is Jewish, as the perpetrator of bomb threats against two Arab consulates as well as against Henry Kissinger and the president of the United States, Gerald Ford. Once again, Scientologists conspired to acquire a piece of paper with Cooper's fingerprints on it, similar to their tactic in using her stolen stationery. "One night, I was at this reporter's hangout in New York when someone came up to me and handed me a piece of paper, with a joke that wasn't funny," Cooper told me. "I couldn't figure out what that was all about and handed it back to him and continued joking with the other reporters. When I came home, I suddenly realized the guy who'd given me the paper had been wearing gloves indoors. And I just began shaking. The only reason he would have had to approach me like that with that piece of paper was to get my fingerprints again."

  Fortunately for Cooper, Operation Freakout was never fully enacted, for by the summer of 1976, the Guardian's Office had become distracted by the apprehension of Meisner and Wolfe in Washington, D.C. By the following summer, the government had seized a huge cache of files from the church's headquarters in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., which revealed the full extent of Operation Snow White. Hubbard's name was not found on any of the documents. This, his aides knew, did not mean he was not involved: Hubbard had not only ordered Snow White, but he had also quite probably been aware of every aspect of the operation. Mary Sue, the "Controller," had always been careful to brief her husband verbally so as to prevent any documentation of his connection to sensitive Guardian's Office operations. Nonetheless, Hubbard worried that the FBI might come looking for him.