The Bare-faced Messiah
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday November 21, 1987
LAFAYETTE Ron Hubbard is dead - but his works live on. Like so much in his bizarre life, there is uncertainty about exactly when the founder of Scientology died, but there is no uncertainty about the continuing sales push which has his fictional writings selling over 5,000 hardcover copies a year in Australia alone. His first non-fiction work, the book which started the whole cult, Dianetics - The Modern Science of Mental Health, still sells up to 500 copies a week in Australia, according to Church sources.
There is no uncertainty in the minds of Scientologists that their religion is a significant contribution to the welfare of mankind. Nor is there uncertainty in the recently published and distinctly non-laudatory accounts of Hubbard's life and his Church written by critics of the Church of Scientology
Russell Miller's Bare-Faced Messiah (to be published in Australia on December 14 by Penguin. $34.95) gives the game away in its title, as does Stewart Lamont's Religion Inc - The Church of Scientology (published by Harrap. Not available in Australia). Both men are respected journalists who claim that they approached their subject with open minds but were, inexorably, convinced by the facts available that Hubbard was a paranoid charlatan.
As Miller concludes:
"There are those who still believe that Hubbard will soon be entering another body ... prior to resuming his position as the head of Scientology.
"There are those who still believe that, for all his faults, Hubbard made a significant contribution to helping his fellow man.
"And there are those who now believe, sadly, that they were the unwitting victims of one of the most successful and colourful confidence tricksters of the 20th century."
Not surprisingly, the Church rejects these attacks on its founder. In Sydney this week, the spokeswoman for the Church, Jane Witta, said that much of Miller's information came from a disaffected member, Gerry Armstrong, who had joined the Church in 1969 as "a government plant".
"I've read his (Hubbard's) writings and what he says makes so much sense that it's unbelievable to say this man is paranoid," she said. Her opinion was echoed by Jan Eastgate, head of the Church's Citizens Committee on Human Rights: "The allegations against Mr Hubbard are so bizarre that I reject them."
Maybe, but no more bizarre than many of Hubbard's own claims. He claimed, for instance, to have visited heaven twice:
Visitors arrived in a small town, with an old-fashioned corner bank, inside which was a flight of marble stairs leading up to the Pearly Gates. "The gates are well done," Hubbard wrote. "An avenue of saints leads up to them. The gate pillars are surmounted by marble angels. The entering grounds are very well kept, laid out like the bush gardens in Pasadena, so often seen in the movies."
But as Miller reports, on his second visit, a trillion years later, Hubbard noticed "marked changes". "The place is shabby," he complained. "The vegetation is gone. The pillars are scruffy ... A sign on one side says 'This is Heaven'. The right has a sign 'Hell' with an arrow ... Plain wire fencing encloses the place. There is a sentry box beside and outside the right pillar... "
All this would be harmlessly amusing were it not for the more sinister claims made against the Church.
Both Miller and Lamont document cases of harassment against critics of the Church and its disaffected members. Miller says that while he was preparing the book he was threatened, followed by private detectives and harassed by Scientologists. Several months ago, he said, Scientologists told police he was responsible for the death of a London detective and he found himself under investigation.
Two months before his book was due to be published, the Church sought an injunction to prevent publication on the ground that material in it was in breach of copyright.
Lamont's book quotes a chilling Manual of Justice written by Hubbard which outlines the unpleasant methods used to deal with critics:
"There are men dead because they attacked us ... There are men bankrupt because they attacked us." A hostile press can be silenced:
"Hire a private detective ... to investigate the writer, not the magazine, and get any criminal or Communist background the man has. Have your lawyers or solicitors write (to) the magazine threatening a suit ... Use the data you got from the detective to write the author of the article a very tantalising letter .. tell him you know something very interesting about him ... If he comes (to see you) ask him to sign a confession of collusion and slander ... publish it in a paid ad in a paper if you get it. Chances are he won't arrive but he'll sure shudder into silence."
None of this, naturally, is manifest in the literature available from Scientology's NSW headquarters at 201 Castlereagh Street, which simply has a noticeboard outside announcing "Positions Vacant".
According to Jane Witta, the Church's 100,000 "active parishioners" in Australia believe in a Supreme Being, in spirituality, and in the study of man's relationship with himself and with the Supreme Being. A glossy American brochure, with pictures of smiling, wholesome-as-apple-pie young folk, is produced to "answer your questions".
CRITICISMS of L. Ron and of Scientology are attributed variously to"government plants", the hostility of the drug industry (Scientology from the beginning has vigorously opposed the drug and surgical treatment of the mentally ill), and the hostility of the CIA and/or FBI.
The latter certainly had voluminous files on the organisation - but the first contact, as Miller's book makes clear, came from L. Ron himself.
On May 16, 1940, he wrote to the FBI: "Gentlemen, May I bring to your attention an individual whose Nazi activities, in time of national emergency if not at present, might constitute him a menace to the state?" This luckless individual, Miller says, was a German steward at the Knickerbocker Hotel in New York. L. Ron accused him of being anti-American, an illegal immigrant and"definitely fifth column".
"My interest in this is impersonal," he said loftily, "though possibly shaded by the feeling of dislike which he always inspires in me."
In 1951, he wrote again to the FBI to provide the names and descriptions of 15 "known or suspected" Communists within his organisation. Heading the list was his wife:
"Sara Northrup (Hubbard) .. 25 years of age, 5'10", 140lbs. Suspected only. Had been friendly with many Communists. Currently intimate with them but evidently under coercion. Drug addiction set in Fall 1950. Nothing of this known to me until a few weeks ago. Separation papers being filed and divorce applied for."
It is intriguing, in the light of this and later correspondence with the FBI initiated by Hubbard, to find the agency listed as a chief persecutor of the Church in a document headed "History of Attacks on Scientology".
This claims "an international web of conspiracy (which) included the creation and dissemination of false reports, infiltration by undercover agents and acts of harassment that were originated by nearly every US government agency".
Its lengthy summary of acts of harassment, however, must be suspect, given the cases of propaganda used by the Church in the past.
Lamont says the Church is now spending enormous amounts on litigation, including fighting class actions brought by disaffected members. "They are being forced into levels of spending in California said to run at $1.5 million a month," he claims.
That the Church is extremely wealthy is not in doubt. Miller claims Hubbard was drawing $1 million a week in the early 80s but, he says, the Church is "a cryptic maze of ad hoc corporations", which makes tracing the source of funds extremely difficult.
Scientologists (and Stewart Lamont) hotly dispute Miller's contention that Hubbard ever said that "the best way to make a million dollars is to start a religion" (attributing it instead to a quote from George Orwell).
But Miller also quotes from an equally cynical letter Hubbard wrote to an assistant, Helen O'Brien, in April 1953. In this he discussed the possibility of setting up "Spiritual Guidance Centres":
"They could make 'real money', he noted, if each clinic could count on 10 or 15 pre-clears (trainees) a week, each paying $500 for 24 hours of auditing(the Scientology 'confessional'). He had clearly previously discussed the prospect of converting Scientology into a religion. 'I await your opinion on the religion angle,' he wrote."
None of this, of course, seems to faze the many sincere devotees of Scientology. They have their own answer, in the words of L. Ron himself, quoted to me by Jan Eastgate:
"If something's true for you - then it's true."
© 1987 Sydney Morning Herald