PLAINTEXT OF "BARE-FACED MESSIAH: THE TRUE STORY OF L. RON HUBBARD"

This file is encoded with the ISO-8859-1 character set.
In particular, these non-ASCII characters appear:

Decimal  Hex  Octal
    163   a3   243   ""  British currency (pound sterling)
    189   bd   275   ""  fraction 1/2 (one half)
    201   c9   311   ""  capital E' (acute accent)
    231	  e7   347   ""  c, (c cedilla)
    233   e9   351   ""  e' (e with acute accent)
    239   ef   357   ""  i" (i with umlaut)
    241   f1   361   ""  n~ (n with tilde)
    252   fc   374   ""  u" (u with umlaut)

IN THIS FILE:

         Plaintext Errata

         Dust cover, front
         Dust cover, spine
         Dust cover, back
         Dust cover, front end flap
         Dust cover, back end flap

         Photographs

     i.  Title page
    ii.  "Also by" page
   iii.  Extended title page
    iv.  Copyright page
     v.  Dedication
    vi.  Contents
   vii.  List of illustrations
  viii.  (blank page)
  ix-x.  Author's note
         Preface
         Chapters 1-22
         Bibliography
         Index

[Plaintext Errata:]

*Bare-Faced Messiah* was separately published in the United Kingdom
(cloth and paperback), Canada, Australia, and the United States.  Each
publisher produced a distinct text -- usually by accident, but
sometimes intentionally, as was the case for the U.S. edition.

This plaintext hews closely to the version that Russell Miller regards
as definitive: the cloth edition published by Penguin subsidiary
Michael Joseph in the United Kingdom on 22 October 1987.  However, a
few trivial errors found in the cloth edition have been noted or
corrected.  The intentional alterations to the text of the U.K. cloth
edition are listed below.

ITALICS

  are indicated with *asterisks* around the italicized phrase.

FOOTNOTES

  In the U.K. edition, the chapter notes are collected on pp. 376-381.
  In this plaintext, they appear as footnotes at the bottom of each
  page.  Reference numbers are surrounded with square brackets.

CHAPTER 1

  Original paragraph from the U.K. edition (page 12):

    May did not have long to wait for the 'blessed event'.  She went
    into labour during the afternoon of _Sunday_ 10 March, ...

  In this plaintext:

    Because 10 March 1911 fell on a *Friday*, the correct weekday is
    reported.

CHAPTER 4

  Original paragraph from the U.K. edition (page 66):

    In 1934, with the country still in the stranglehold of the
    Depression, ... Frank Gruber, the only pulp writer resident when
    Ron arrived, accurately characterized his fellow _quests_ as
    `all-round no-goods and deadbeats'.

  In this plaintext:

    "guests" is spelled correctly.

CHAPTER 5

  Original paragraph from the U.K. edition (page 89):

    The `expedition' departed its Yukon Harbor `base' in July, with
    May, Marnie, Toilie and _Midge_ and their various children waving
    farewell from the quayside....

  In this plaintext:

    "Midgie" is the familiar name of Hubbard's aunt.

  Original paragraph from the U.K. edition (page 94):

    `He writes under six names in a diversity of fields from political
    economy to action fiction and if he would make at least one of his
    pen [top of page] names public he would have little _difficult_
    entering anywhere.  He has published many millions of words and
    some fourteen movies.

  In this plaintext:

    Because it is not clear whether "difficulty" was misquoted in the
    book or misspelled by Senator Ford, the author of the letter being
    quoted here, this spelling error was *not* corrected.

CHAPTER 12

  Original paragraph from the U.K. edition (page 202):

    The word Scientology was derived from the Latin *scio* ... twenty
    years earlier in 1934, a German scholar by the name of _Dr A
    Nordenholz_ had written an obscure work of philosophical
    speculation ...

  In this plaintext:

    A period follows the initial "A", in conformance with punctuation
    in the rest of the book.

CHAPTER 15

  Original paragraph from the U.K. edition (page 248):

    On 5 January, L. Ron Hubbard issued a statement from Saint Hill
    [top of page] Manor: `All I can make of this is that the United
    States Government ... has launched an attack upon religion and is
    seizing and burning books of philosophy ... Where will this end?
    Complete censorship?  A complete ignoring of the First Amendment?
    Are churches to be _attached_ and books burned as a normal course
    of action?'

  In this plaintext:

    Because it is not clear whether "attacked" was misquoted in the
    book or misspelled in Hubbard's quoted statement, this spelling
    error was *not* corrected.

  Original paragraph from the U.K. edition (page 250):

    At Saint Hill Manor, Hubbard at first professed himself to be
    pleased about the Australian inquiry and even hinted that it bad
    been set up at his instigation.  But it soon became evident that
    the inquiry was basically antagonistic to Scientology and when an
    invitation arrived from Melbourne _from him to appear_, he
    contrived to find compelling reasons to refuse.

  In this plaintext:

    "_for_ him to appear".

CHAPTER 16

  Original paragraph from the U.K. edition (page 266):

    It was important for Hubbard to be discovered in this dramatically
    debilitated condition at this time, ... Hubbard, it was said, was
    the `first person in millions of years' to map a precise route
    through the `Wall of Fire'.  Having done so, his OT power _has
    been increased_ to such an extent that he was at grave risk of
    accidental injury to his body; indeed, he had broken his back, a
    knee and an arm during the course of his research.

  In this plaintext:

    "_had_ been increased".

  Original paragraph from the U.K. edition (page 271):

    While Hubbard was fulminating against international conspiracies
    ... He immediately [top of page] instructed von Staden and _Pool_
    to start negotiating the purchase and to make arrangements for the
    *Royal Scotsman* ...

  In this plaintext:

    von Staden and _Pook_

CHAPTER 17

  Original paragraph from the U.K. edition (page 290):

    The harbourmaster quickly grasped the message, ... Appraised of
    this warm welcome, the Commodore began to look upon the island and
    the Greek people with particular favour, even to the extent of
    granting an interview ... on the subject of the recent _coup
    d'etat_ in Greece ...

  In this plaintext:

    "coup _d'tat_" (with acute accent, as elsewhere in the book)

CHAPTER 18

  Original paragraph from the U.K. edition (page 298):

    In frequent communiqus from the ship ... Out in the Atlantic,
    cruising on his flagship, the Commodore's _pre-occupatioon_ with
    Communist conspiracies ...

  In this plaintext:

    "pre-occupation" is spelled correctly.

  Original paragraph from the U.K. edition (page 302):

    From 1970 onwards, messengers attended Hubbard day and night, ...
    When he was asleep, _two messenger_ sat outside his state-room ...

  In this plaintext:

    "two messengers", plural

CHAPTER 19

  Original paragraph from the U.K. edition (page 321):

    To the relief of the entire crew, the Commodore was more or less
    recovered ... and the ship resumed its aimless wandering, this
    time on a triangular course _bettween_ Portugal, Madeira and the
    Canaries....

  In this plaintext:

    "between" is spelled correctly.

CHAPTER 20

  Original paragraph from the U.K. edition (page 342):

    Overland Avenue was a wide tree-lined street ... Special decoder
    equipment was installed to provide direct secure _communicatirons_
    with Clearwater and the Guardian's Office ...

  In this plaintext:

    "communications" is spelled correctly.

[Dust cover, front:]
["Russel Miller" is underlined]

                           _RUSSELL MILLER_
                              BARE-FACED
                               MESSIAH

                     [picture of L. Ron Hubbard]

                          THE TRUE STORY OF
                            L.RON HUBBARD

[Dust cover, spine:]

BARE-FACED
MESSIAH

RUSSELL MILLER

MICHAEL
JOSEPH

[Dust cover, back:]

         CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR RUSSELL MILLER'S PREVIOUS BOOKS

                   Bunny: The Real Story of Playboy

        `If you like a good story that has corporate intrigue,
        sex, power plays, triumphs and disasters - here's your
                stuff.  I ought to know.  I lived it.'
                       VICTOR LOWNES, *TATLER*

     `Miller tells this hypnotic tale with style, wit and irony'
                              *OBSERVER*

            `Brilliant, the best study of American success
          encapsulated in one sad shell-shocked shell since
                      Albert Goldman's *Elvis*'
                   JULIE BURCHILL *LITERARY REVIEW*

                          The House of Getty

         `Mr Miller has produced a most enjoyable account of
                            this monster'
                           *GLASGOW HERALD*

           `Russell Miller's account...is uncompromisingly
        direct, astringent in style and that kind of detailed
      factual reporting which needs no build-up for its impact'
                            *LLOYD'S LIST*

        `Professionally researched and entertainingly written'
                          *LITERARY REVIEW*

[bar code]

9 781550 130270

[Dust cover, front end flap:]

                                                              12.95

BARE-FACED MESSIAH tells, for the first time, the extraordinary story
of L. Ron Hubbard, a penniless science-fiction writer who founded the
Church of Scientology, became a millionaire prophet and convinced his
adoring followers that he alone could save the world.

In the words of his `official' biography, Hubbard was an explorer,
engineer, scientist, war hero and philosopher.  In the words of a
Californian judge, he was schizophrenic, paranoid and a pathological
liar.  What is not in dispute is that Hubbard was unquestionably one
of the most bizarre characters of the twentieth century.

His was a unique life.  While writing pulp science-fiction, he claimed
to have made discoveries about the workings of the human mind that
would enable cures to be found for everything from cancer to the
common cold.  He soon founded his own `church' and then rampaged
around the world variously pursued by the CIA, the FBI and outraged
governments.  He tried and failed to take control of at least one
continent and several countries.

For nearly ten years he sailed the oceans as the commodore of his own
private navy, served by nymphet messengers in hot-pants who dressed
and undressed him and were trained like robots to relay orders in his
tone of voice.

Back on shore in the US, he directed an operation aimed at
infiltrating government offices to launder their bulging files on the
Church of Scientology.

In 1980, fearing arrest, he disappeared.  He was never seen again.

Russell Miller, author of *The House of Getty*, has written the first
book to expose the myths surrounding the fascinating and mysterious
founder of the Church of Scientology.  Using all his skills as a top
investigative journalist, he reveals that the true life of L. Ron
Hubbard - a man of hypnotic charm and limitless imagination - is even
more astounding than the fiction.

Jacket photograph: Chris Yates

[Dust cover, back end flap:]

[picture of Russell Miller]

Russell Miller was born in East London and left school at sixteen.  He
was a Fleet Street reporter by the time he was twenty-one and became a
freelance writer nearly twenty years ago.  His work, notably for *The
Sunday Times*, is syndicated throughout the world.  He is the author
of *Bunny*, a widely-acclaimed biography of Hugh Hefner and, more
recently, the bestselling *The House of Getty*.  Married with four
children, he lives in the peace of the Chiltern Hills.

[Photographs:]
[Eight plates of photographs come between pp. 198 and 199]


[PLATE 1:]

[PHOTO: Abram Waterbury]

Abram Waterbury, L. Ron Hubbard's great-grandfather, playing the
fiddle carved with a negro's head that became part of the family
legend.

[PHOTO: Lafayette Waterbury with wife & child in horse-drawn buggy]

Ron's grandfather was supposed to have owned a quarter of the state of
Montana.  Here he is seen as he really was, a struggling veterinarian,
pictured with his wife and their first child (Ron's mother) at Tilden,
Nebraska, around the late 1880s.


[PLATE 2:]

[PHOTO: The Waterbury family]

Ledora May Waterbury, Ron's mother (left), with an unknown relative,
her sisters Toilie and Midgie and brother Ray photographed in their
home town of Helena, Montana.

[PHOTO: L. Ron Hubbard's parents]

Ron's long-suffering mother.  He remembered her sometimes with
affection, sometimes with deep dislike.  Harry Ross Hubbard in the
dress uniform of an officer of the US Navy.  Promotion eluded him and
debtors pursued him.


[PLATE 3:]

[PHOTO: Ron's birthplace]

The hospital in Tilden, Nebraska, where L. Ron Hubbard was born in
1911.  His aunt Toilie, who worked in the hospital, is second from the
right.

[PHOTO: A very young Ron]

Little Ron in a sailor hat.  One day he would be the self-appointed
commodore of his own private navy.

[PHOTO: 18-year-old Ron seated at typewriter]

The budding science-fiction writer poses at his typewriter during a
visit to his parents on the island of Guam in 1928.


[PLATE 4:]

[PHOTO: L. Ron `Flash' Hubbard, glider pilot]

Hubbard learned to fly a glider while at George Washington University.
He acquired the uniquely appropriate nickname of `Flash' and liked to
be described as a `daredevil speed pilot and parachute artist'.

[IMAGE: Cover of Astounding Science Fiction, May 1950]

Dianetics makes its inauspicious dbut, in the pages of a pulp science
fiction magazine.


[PLATE 5:]

[PHOTO: Barbara Kaye]

Between his second and third marriages, Ron dallied with his public
relations assistant, luscious Barbara Kaye.  She would soon conclude
that he was paranoid.

[PHOTO: de Mille and Kaye leaning on fence]

Richard de Mille and Barbara Kaye at the house in Palm Springs where
Hubbard plotted to kidnap his daughter Alexis.

[PHOTO: LRH and `Nibs' standing with two friends]

The portly Nibs (second from right) posing with his father and friends
in a London garden in the 1950s - the smiles would soon turn to tears
when father and son fell out.


[PLATE 6:]

[PHOTO: Hubbard peers intently at metered tomato plant]

Hubbard as `revolutionary horticultural scientist', proving that
plants can feel pain.  *(Rex Features Ltd)*

[PHOTO: Hubbard on the steps of Saint Hill]

Dr Hubbard, the `nuclear scientist', on the steps of Saint Hill, the
Georgian manor house he bought out of the proceeds of Dianetics.
*(Photo Source Limited)*

[PHOTO: Ron & Mary Sue with their four small children]

Hubbard as genial family man.  From the left Suzette (4), his wife
Mary Sue, Quentin (5), Arthur (1) and Diana (7).  All were to suffer
in various ways.  *(Photo Source Ltd)*


[PLATE 7:]

[PHOTO: Hubbard & Kemp seated at a table]

Hubbard with his friend Ray Kemp on a two-day trip to Ireland during
which he hoped to solve the `Irish problem'.

[PHOTO: Hubbard wearing flat-brimmed hat]

Hubbard believed he was a reincarnation of Cecil Rhodes and liked to
sport the kind of hat worn by the founder of Rhodesia.  Fortunately,
he did not know Rhodes was homosexual.

[PHOTO: Royal Scotman, moored at port]

Rare picture of the `mystery ship', the *Royal Scotman*, in which the
commodore sailed the Mediterranean.  *(Granada Television Ltd)*


[PLATE 8:]

[PHOTO: Teenagers Arthur and Doreen with rifles]

Arthur Hubbard and Doreen Smith, one of the messengers, playing with
fire in the Californian desert.  Like his father, Arthur collected
guns.

[PHOTO: Hubbard and crew with camera]

Hubbard directs a `photo-shoot' in Curaao, 1974.  Later, he would
progress to making movies in California.

[PHOTO: Sea Org awards ceremony]

Under a portrait of a benign L. Ron Hubbard, an officer of the Sea Org
hands out certificates at Gilman Hot Springs in 1981.  The founder of
Scientology had already gone to ground.

[Page i.  Title page:]

                         *Bare-Faced Messiah*

[Page ii.  "Also by" page:]

                       *Also by Russell Miller*
                   BUNNY, THE REAL STORY OF PLAYBOY
                          THE HOUSE OF GETTY

[Page iii.  Extended title page:]

                         *Bare-Faced Messiah*

                           THE TRUE STORY OF
                            L. RON HUBBARD

                            Russell Miller

                          [publisher's logo]

                            MICHAEL JOSEPH
                                LONDON

[Page iv.  Copyright page:]

                               MICHAEL JOSEPH

                             Penguin Books Ltd
         27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ (Publishing and Editorial)
       Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England (Distribution and Warehouse)
  Viking Penguin Inc., 40 West 23rd Street, New York, New York 10010, USA
         Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 2801 John Street, Markham, Ontario, Canada L3R 1B4
   Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand

                   First published in Great Britain 1987

                        Copyright (c) Russell Miller

 All rights reserved.  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved
        above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
   in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form
           or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
   recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both
          the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book

                       Typeset in 11/12pt Imprint by
                     Goodfellow & Egan Ltd., Cambridge
                        Printed in Great Britain by
                     Richard Clay Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk

             *British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data*

                  Miller, Russell
                   Bare-faced Messiah: the true story of
                   L. Ron Hubbard.
                   1. Hubbard, L. Ron  2. Church of Scientology
                   ----Biography
                   I. Title
                   299'.936'0924    BP605.S2

                   ISBN 0-7181-2764-1

[Page v.  Dedication:]

                *This book is dedicated to all those*
                 *Scientologists who had the courage*
                  *to face the truth and speak out*

[Page vi.  Contents:]

                            *Contents*

    List of illustrations                                      vii
    Author's note                                               ix
    Introduction                                                 1
    Preface                                                      2
 1  A Dubious Prodigy                                            7
 2  Whither did he Wander?                                      26
 3  Explorer Manqu                                             40
 4  Blood and Thunder                                           59
 5  Science Fictions                                            76
 6  The Hero Who Never Was                                      95
 7  Black Magic and Betty                                      112
 8  The Mystery of the Missing Research                        131
 9  The Strange Dbut of Dianetics                             147
10  Commies, Kidnaps and Chaos                                 163
11  Bankrolling and Bankruptcy                                 186
12  Phoenix Rising                                             202
13  Apostle of the Main Chance                                 220
14  Lord of the Manor                                          233
15  Visits to Heaven                                           247
16  Launching the Sea Org                                      263
17  In Search of Past Lives                                    279
18  Messengers of God                                          297
19  Atlantic Crossing                                          313
20  Running Aground                                            333
21  Making Movies                                              348
22  Missing, Presumed Dead                                     365
    Notes                                                      376
    Bibliography                                               382
    Index                                                      384

[Page vii.  List of illustrations:]

                       *List of Illustrations*

 1  Abram Waterbury, L. Ron Hubbard's great-grandfather.
 2  Ron's grandparents with their first child at Tilden, Nebraska, in
    the late 1880s.
 3  Ron's mother, her brother and sisters, and an unknown relative.
 4  Ron's long-suffering mother.
 5  Ron's father, Harry Ross Hubbard, in the dress uniform of an
    officer of the US Navy.
 6  The hospital in Tilden, Nebraska, where L. Ron Hubbard was
    born in 1911.
 7  Little Ron in a sailor hat.
 8  L. Ron Hubbard photographed during a visit to his parents on
    the island of Guam in 1928.
 9  L. Ron Hubbard at George Washington University.
10  The science fiction magazine in which Dianetics made its
    inauspicious dbut.
11  Hubbard's public relations assistant, Barbara Kaye.
12  Richard de Mille and Barbara Kaye.
13  L. Ron Hubbard with his son, Nibs, and friends in London in
    the 1950s.
14  Hubbard as `revolutionary horticultural scientist'
    (*Rex Features Ltd*).
15  Hubbard as `nuclear scientist' (*Photo Source Ltd*).
16  Hubbard with his wife and family (*Photo Source Ltd*).
17  Hubbard and Ray Kemp in Ireland.
18  Hubbard posing as Cecil Rhodes.
19  The *Royal Scotman* (*Granada Television Ltd*).
20  Arthur Hubbard and Doreen Smith.
21  Hubbard directs a `photo-shoot' in Curaao in 1974.
22  An officer of the Sea Org at Gilman Hot Springs in 1981.

Copyright owners are indicated in brackets; all photographs not
credited are from private sources.

[Page viii.  (blank page)]

                           *Author's Note*

  I would like to be able to thank the officials of the Church of
Scientology for their help in compiling this biography, but I am
unable to do so because the price of their co-operation was effective
control of the manuscript and it was a price I was unwilling to pay.
Thereafter the Church did its best to dissuade people who knew Hubbard
from speaking to me and constantly threatened litigation.  Scientology
lawyers in New York and Los Angeles made it clear in frequent letters
that they expected me to libel and defame L. Ron Hubbard.  When I
protested that in thirty years as a journalist and writer I had never
been accused of libel, I was apparently investigated and a letter was
written to my publishers in New York alleging that my claim was
`simply not accurate'.  It was, and is.

  This book could not have been written without the assistance of the
many former Scientologists who were prepared to give freely of their
time to talk about their experiences, notwithstanding considerable
risks.  Some of them are named in the narrative, but there were many
others who provided background information and to them all I pay
tribute.  I was deeply impressed by their integrity, intelligence and
courage.

  This book could also not have been written without the existence of
the Freedom of Information Act in the United States, which may give
pause for thought to those who care about the truth yet are opposing
the introduction of similar legislation in Britain.

  A special word of thanks is due to Jon Atack, a former Scientologist
resident in East Grinstead, who has assembled one of the most
comprehensive archives about Scientology and its founder and
generously made his files available to me.  I would also like to thank
George Hay and John Symonds in London; Lydia and Jimmy Hicks in
Washington DC; David and Milo Weaver in San Francisco; Connie and Phil
Winberry in Seattle; Skip Davis in Newport, Rhode Island; Diane Lewis
in Wichita; Arthur Jean Cox, Lawrence Kristiansen and Boris de Sidis
in Los Angeles; Ron Newman in Woodside, California; Ron Howard of
George Washington University; Sue Lindsay of the *Rocky Mountain
News*, Denver; Dave Walters of the

                          -- end page ix --

Montana Historical Society; and the ever helpful staff of the Library
of Congress.  Too many people to name patiently replied to queries by
mail and searched their records for the answers to innumerable obscure
questions.  Their contribution to the whole picture was invaluable.

  My editor, Jennie Davies, polished the manuscript with her usual
skill and diligence, despite the demands of her newly-born twins.  My
wife, Renate, read every chapter as it was written and always offered
constructive advice.  She had to put up with my long absences abroad
while I was tracking down the truth about L. Ron Hubbard and then
endure the misery of living with an obsessive author through the long
months of writing.  I could never thank her enough for her patience,
love and support.

    Russell Miller,
    Buckinghamshire,
    England

                           -- end page x --

                            *Introduction*

  For more than forty years, the Church of Scientology has vigorously
promoted an image of its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, as a romantic
adventurer and philosopher whose early life fortuitously prepared him,
in the manner of Jesus Christ, for his declared mission to save the
world.  The glorification of `Ron', superman and saviour, required a
cavalier disregard for facts: thus it is that every biography of
Hubbard published by the church is interwoven with lies, half-truths
and ludicrous embellishments.  The wondrous irony of this deception is
that the true story of L. Ron Hubbard is much more bizarre, much more
improbable, than any of the lies.

                           -- end page 1 --

                              *Preface*

                       *The Revelation of Ron*

  It was a scene that could have been ripped from the yellowing pages
of the pulp science fiction that L. Ron Hubbard wrote in the Thirties
...

  A strangely alien group of young people who believe they are
immortal set up a secret base in an abandoned health spa in the desert
in southern California.  Fearful of outsiders, they suspect they have
been discovered by the FBI.  In a panic, they begin to destroy any
documents that might incriminate their leader.  It is essential they
protect him, for they believe he alone can save the world.

  Searching through the top floor of a derelict hotel, one of their
number discovers a stack of battered cardboard boxes and begins
pulling out faded photographs, dog-eared manuscripts, diaries written
in a childish scrawl and school reports.  There are twenty-one boxes
in all, each stuffed with memorabilia, even baby clothes.

  The young man rummaging through the boxes is ecstatic.  He is
certain he has made a discovery of profound significance, for all the
material documents the early life of his leader At last, he thinks, it
will be possible to refute all the lies spread by their enemies.  At
last it will be possible to prove to the world, beyond doubt, that his
leader really is a genius and miracle worker ...

  Thus was the stage set for the inexorable unmasking of L. Ron
Hubbard, the saviour who never was.

                              * * * * *

Gerry Armstrong, the man kneeling in the dust on the top floor of the
old Del Sol Hotel at Gilman Hot Springs that afternoon in January
1980, had been a dedicated member of the Church of Scientology for
more than a decade.  He was logging in Canada when a friend introduced
him to Scientology in 1969 and he was immediately swept away by its
heady promise of superhuman powers and immortality.  During his years
as a Scientologist, he had twice been sentenced to long periods in the
Rehabilitation Project Force, the cult's own Orwellian prison; he had
been constantly humiliated and his marriage had been destroyed, yet he
remained totally convinced that L. Ron Hubbard was the greatest man
who ever lived.

                           -- end page 2 --

  The dauntless loyalty Hubbard inspired among his followers was
tantamount to a form of mind control.  Scientology flourished in the
post-war era of protest and uncertainty when young people were
searching for a sense of belonging or meaning to their lives.  Hubbard
offered both, promised answers and nurtured an inner-group feeling of
exclusiveness which separated Scientologists from the real world.
Comforted by a sense of esoteric knowledge, of exaltation and
self-absorption, they were ready to follow Ron through the very gates
of Hell if need be.

  At the time Armstrong discovered the treasure trove of memorabilia
at Gilman Hot Springs, Hubbard had been in hiding for years.  His
location was known only as `X', but Armstrong knew that it was
possible to get a message to him and he petitioned for permission to
begin researching an official biography, forcefully arguing that it
would prepare the ground for `universal acceptance' of Scientology.
He saw it as the forerunner of a major motion picture based on
Hubbard's life and the eventual establishment of an archive in an
L. Ron Hubbard Museum.

  By then Hubbard was nearly seventy years old and bad lived so long
in a world of phantasmagoria that he was unable to distinguish between
fact and his own fantastic fiction.  He believed he was the teenage
explorer, swashbuckling hero, sage and philosopher his biographies
said he was.  It was perhaps too late for him to comprehend that his
life, in reality, far outstripped the fabricated version.  He made the
leap from penniless science-fiction writer to millionaire guru and
prophet in a single, effortless bound; he led a private navy across
the oceans of the world for nearly a decade; he came close to taking
over control of several countries; he was worshipped by thousands of
his followers around the world and was detested and feared by most
governments.  He was a story-spinning maverick whose singular life
eclipsed even his own far-fetched stories.  Yet he clung tenaciously
to the fiction and when Armstrong's petition to research his biography
arrived at his hide-out that January in 1980, he unhesitatingly gave
his approval.

  Armstrong had no experience as an archivist or researcher, but he
was intelligent, industrious, honest and enthusiastic.  He moved all
the relevant documentation from Gilman Hot Springs to the Scientology
headquarters in Los Angeles, where it filled six filing cabinets, and
began cataloguing and indexing the material, making copies of
everything and reverently preserving the originals in plastic
envelopes, acutely aware of their historical importance.

  Not long after he had started work, posters appeared in Scientology
offices announcing the private screening of a 1940 Warner Brothers
movie, *The Dive Bomber*, for which Hubbard had written the
screenplay.  Every Scientologist knew that Ron had been a successful

                           -- end page 3 --

Hollywood screenwriter before the war and the screening was to raise
funds for the defence of the eleven Scientologists, including
Hubbard's wife, who had been indicted in Washington on conspiracy
charges.  Armstrong decided to help by finding out a little more about
Ron's contribution to the film, but at the library of the Academy of
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles he was puzzled to
discover that two other writers had been credited with the screenplay
of *The Dive Bomber*.

  Armstrong remonstrated with the librarian, then sent a memo to Ron
to tell him about the mistake in the Academy records.  Hubbard replied
with a cheery note explaining that Warner Brothers had been in such a
hurry to distribute the movie that it was already in the can before it
was realized that his name had been left off the credits.  He was busy
at that time, closing up his posh apartment on Riverside Drive in New
York and getting ready to go to war, so he just told the studio to
mail the cheque to him at the Explorers Club.  After the war, he used
the money to take a holiday in the Caribbean.

  It was an explanation with which Armstrong was perfectly satisfied
except for one niggling worry: like all Scientologists, he had been
told that Ron was blind and crippled at the end of the war and that he
had only been able to make a recovery because of the power of his
mind.  Clearly, Armstrong mused, he would not have taken the holiday
until after his recovery.  In an attempt to fit together the
chronology of events, Armstrong made an application under the Freedom
of Information Act for Hubbard's US Navy records.

  Scientologists were enormously proud of the fact that the founder of
their church was a much-decorated war hero who had served in all five
theaters and was wounded several times; indeed he was the first US
casualty of the war in the Pacific.  It was then, with a sense of
mounting disbelief and dismay, that Armstrong leafed through Hubbard's
records after they had arrived from Washington.  He went from one
document to another, searching in vain for an explanation, still
refusing to believe the evidence of his own eyes: the record seemed to
indicate that Hubbard, far from being a hero, was an incompetent,
malingering coward who had done his best to avoid seeing action.

  Armstrong would not believe it.  He set the documents aside and
resolved to start his research at the beginning, in Montana, where
Hubbard had grown up on his grandfather's huge cattle ranch.  But he
could find no trace of any property owned by the family, except a
little house in the middle of Helena.  Neither could he discover any
documentation covering Hubbard's teenage wanderings through China.  In
Washington DC, where Hubbard was supposed to have graduated in
mathematics and engineering from George Washington University, the
record showed he dropped out after two years because

                           -- end page 4 --

of poor grades.  And of Hubbard's fabled expeditions as an explorer
there was similarly no sign.

  `I was finding contradiction after contradiction,' Armstrong said.
`I kept trying to justify them, kept thinking that I would find
another document that would explain everything.  But I didn't.  I
slowly came to realize that the guy had consistently lied about
himself.'

  By the summer of 1981, Armstrong had assembled more than 250,000
pages of documentation about the founder of the Church of Scientology,
but despite the gaping holes appearing in Hubbard's credibility, he
remained intensely loyal.  `My approach was, OK, now we know he's
human and tells lies.  What we've got to do is clear up the lies so
that all the good he has done for the world will be accepted.  I
thought the only way we could exist as an organisation was to let the
truth stand.  After all, the truth was equally as fascinating as the
lies.'

  Armstrong's pleas to clear up the lies fell on deaf ears.  Since
Hubbard had gone into seclusion, the Church of Scientology had been
taken over by young militants known as `messengers'.  When Hubbard was
the commodore of his own navy, the messengers were little nymphets in
hot pants and halter tops who ran errands for him and competed with
each other to find ways of pleasing him.  Eventually they helped him
dress and undress, performed little domestic tasks like washing his
hair and smearing rejuvenating cream on his fleshy features, and even
followed him around with an ashtray to catch the falling ash from his
cigarettes.  As the commodore became more and more paranoid, beset by
imagined traitors and enemies, the messengers became more and more
powerful.

  In November 1981 Armstrong presented a written report to the
messengers, listing the false claims made about Hubbard and putting
forward a powerful argument as to why they should be corrected.  `If
we present inaccuracies, hyperbole or downright lies as fact or
truth,' he wrote, `it doesn't matter what slant we give them; if
disproved, the man will look, to outsiders at least, like a charlatan
...'

  The messengers' response was to order Armstrong to be `security
checked' -- interrogated as a potential traitor.  Armstrong refused.
In the spring of 1982, Gerald Armstrong was accused of eighteen
different `crimes' and `high crimes' against the Church of
Scientology, including theft, false pretences and promulgating false
information about the church and its founder.  He was declared to be a
`suppressive person' and `fair game', which meant he could be
`tricked, cheated, lied to, sued or destroyed' by his former friends
in Scientology.

  `By then the whole thing for me had crumbled,' he said.  `I realized
I had been drawn into Scientology by a web of lies, by Machiavellian
mental control techniques and by fear.  The betrayal of trust began
with Hubbard's lies about himself.  His life was a continuing pattern
of

                           -- end page 5 --

fraudulent business practices, tax evasion, flight from creditors and
hiding from the law.

  `He was a mixture of Adolf Hitler, Charlie Chaplin and Baron
Munchausen.  In short, he was a con man.'

                           -- end page 6 --

                             *Chapter 1*

                         *A Dubious Prodigy*

  According to the colourful yarn spun for the benefit of his
followers, L. Ron Hubbard was descended on his mother's side from a
French nobleman, one Count de Loupe, who took part in the Norman
invasion of England in 1066; on his father's side, the Hubbards were
English settlers who had arrived in America in the nineteenth century.
It was altogether a distinguished naval family: both his maternal
great-grandfather, `Captain' I. C. DeWolfe, and his grandfather,
`Captain' Lafayette Waterbury, `helped make American naval
history',[1] while his father was `Commander' Harry Ross Hubbard, US
Navy.

  As his father was away at sea for lengthy periods, the story goes,
little Ron grew up on his wealthy grandfather's enormous cattle ranch
in Montana, said to cover a quarter of the state [approximately 35,000
square miles!].  His picturesque friends were frontiersmen, cowboys
and an Indian medicine man.  `L.  Ron Hubbard found the life of a
young rancher very enjoyable.  Long days were spent riding, breaking
broncos, hunting coyote and taking his first steps as an explorer.
For it was in Montana that he had his first encounter with another
culture the Blackfoot [Pikuni] Indians.  He became a blood brother of
the Pikuni and was later to write about them in his first published
novel, *Buckskin Brigades*.  When he was ten years old, in 1921, he
rejoined his family.  His father, alarmed at his apparent lack of
formal learning, immediately put him under intense instruction to make
up for the time he had "lost" in the wilds of Montana.  So it was that
by the time he was twelve years old, L. Ron Hubbard had already read a
goodly number of the world's greatest classics -- and his interest in
religion and philosophy was born.'[2]

                              * * * * *

Virtually none of this is true.  The real story of L. Ron Hubbard's
early life is considerably more prosaic and begins not on a cattle
ranch but in a succession of rented apartments necessarily modest
since his father was a struggling white-collar clerk drifting from job
to job.  His grandfather was neither a distinguished sea captain nor a
wealthy

__________
 1. *Oregon Journal*, 22 Apr 1943
 2. *Mission Into Time*, L. Ron Hubbard, 1973

                           -- end page 7 --

rancher but a small-time veterinarian who supplemented his income
renting out horses and buggies from a livery barn.  It is true,
however, that his name was Lafayette O. Waterbury.

  As far as anyone knew, the Waterburys came from the Catskills, the
dark-forested mountain range in New York State celebrated in the early
nineteenth century as the setting for Washington Irving's popular
short story about Rip Van Winkle -- a character only marginally more
fantastic than the Waterburys' most famous scion.

  Shortly before the turmoil of the Civil War divided the nation,
Abram Waterbury and his young wife, Margaret, left the Catskills to
join the thousands of hopeful settlers trekking west in covered wagons
to seek a better future.  By 1863 he had set up in business as a
veterinarian in Grand Rapids, Michigan and on 25 July 1864, Margaret
gave birth to a son whom they named Lafayette, perhaps after the town
in Indiana at which they had stopped on their journey before turning
north to Grand Rapids.

  Lafayette, undoubtedly thankful to be known to his friends as Lafe,
learned the veterinary trade from his father and married before he was
twenty.  His bride was twenty-one-year-old Ida Corinne DeWolfe, from
Hampshire, Illinois.  Diminutive in stature, Ida was a gentle,
intelligent, strong-willed young woman whose mother had died in
childbirth, with her eighth child, when Ida was sixteen.  John DeWolf,
her father, was a wealthy banker who clung to a fanciful family legend
about the origins of the DeWolfes in Europe.  Details and dates were
vague, but the essence of the story was that a courtier accompanying a
prince on a hunting expedition in France had somehow saved his master
from an attack by a wolf; in gratitude the prince had ennobled the
faithful courtier, bestowing upon him the title of Count de Loupe, a
name that was eventually anglicized to DeWolfe.  [No records exist to
support this story, either in Britain or France; Vice-Admiral Harry De
Wolf, twelfth-generation descendant of Balthazar De Wolf, the first De
Wolf in America, says he has never heard of Count de Loupe.[3]]

  DeWolfe offered the young couple the use of a farm he owned in
Nebraska on condition that Lafe would maintain and improve the
property.  It was at Burnett, a settlement on the Elkhorn river, one
hundred miles west of Omaha, which had recently been opened up by the
arrival of the Sioux City and Pacific Railroad.

  Burnett was an unremarkable cluster of log cabins, dug-outs and
ramshackle pine huts huddled in a lazy curve of the river and
surrounded by gently rolling prairie.  It might never have appeared on
any map had not the homesteaders persuaded the railroad to make a halt
nearby.  The first train arrived in 1879 and thereafter the town
developed around the railroad depot rather than the river; within a

__________
 3. Letter to author, 25 May 1986

                           -- end page 8 --

few years a general store, saloon and livery stable were in business.
The Davis House Hotel, opened in 1884, was considered the finest on
the whole Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley Railroad.

  By the time Lafe and Ida Waterbury arrived in Burnett, soon after
the opening of the hotel, Ida was heavy with child; a daughter, Ledora
May, was born in 1885.  During the next twenty years Ida would produce
seven more children and selflessly devote herself to the upbringing of
a happy, close and high-spirited family.

  For a couple of years Lafe worked his father-in-law's farm, but a
bitter family row developed when DeWolfe indicated his intention to
exclude his other children and leave the property solely to Ida and
Lafe.  Rather than be the cause of strife in the family, Lafe moved
out, opened a livery stable in town on Second Street and established
himself as a veterinarian.  His business was a success because he was
well-liked and respected in the area, particularly after playing a
starring role in a local domestic drama which briefly held the town
gossips in thrall.  Ida's sister, who had also moved to Burnett, woke
up one morning to discover that her husband had left her and taken
their infant son with him to New York.  Lafe immediately packed his
bags, set off for New York by train, tracked down the erring husband
and returned to Burnett in triumph, his nephew in his arms.

  When Ida gave birth to another daughter in 1886, it was a typically
warm-hearted gesture that prompted them to name the baby Toilie.  A
young man who used to hang around the livery stable had been engaged
to a girl called Toilie before he became mentally deranged; whenever
he felt `strange' he would always, for some reason, seek out Lafe and
find reassurance from his company.  When he learned that Ida and Lafe
had had another daughter, he shyly asked if they would call her
Toilie, after the sweetheart he knew he would never be able to marry.
Years later the irreverent Toilie would say `I'm nuts because I was
named by a crazy man' and shriek with laughter.

  Toilie was still a baby when hard times hit Burnett.  In January
1887 a catastrophic blizzard swept across the plains west of the
Mississippi, killing thousands of head of cattle; most of the local
ranchers were mined overnight.  The farmers fared no better, for that
terrible winter was followed by a succession of blistering summers
accompanied by plagues of grasshoppers which devastated the already
sparse crops.  But at a point when many of the despairing townsfolk
were talking about giving up the struggle against the unforgiving
elements, the climate suddenly improved and the detested grasshoppers
disappeared; unlike many small towns in the Nebraska prairie, Burnett
survived the crisis.

  By 1899 the local newspaper, the *Burnett Citizen*, was able to
report, as evidence of increasing prosperity, that Lafe Waterbury was

                           -- end page 9 --

among those who had built new dwelling houses in the town that year.
It was a fine, two-storey, wood-frame house on Elm Street, sheltered
at the front by two huge elm trees.  At the rear, beyond a stand of
willows, it overlooked prairie stretching away into hazy infinity;
deer and antelope often ventured within sight of the back yard and at
night the howls of coyotes made the children shiver in their beds.

  The Waterburys certainly needed the space offered by their new home,
for by now May and Toilie had been joined by Ida Irene (called Midgie
by the family because she was so small), a brother Ray, and two more
sisters, Louise and Hope.  Another two girls, Margaret and June, would
follow in 1903 and 1905.  Lafe and Ida doted on their children,
thoroughly enjoyed their company and liked nothing more than when the
house was full of noise and laughter.  Ida was determined that her
children would have a happier upbringing than her own -- she never
forgot being constantly beaten at school for writing with her left
hand -- and as a consequence the Waterburys were unusually relaxed
parents for their time, encouraging their offspring to attend church
on Sundays, for example, but caring little which church they attended.
Surprisingly, there was considerable choice.  For a small town with a
population of less than a thousand people, Burnett was an excessively
God-fearing community and supported four thriving churches -- Baptist,
Lutheran, Methodist and Catholic.

  Lafe and Ida always claimed they were too busy to go to church
themselves, although Lafe openly declared, to his children, his
ambivalence towards religion: `Some of the finest men I have ever
known were preachers,' he liked to say, `and some of the biggest
hypocrites I have ever known were preachers.'  He was a large, bluff
man with an irrepressible sense of humour, a talent for mimicry and a
hint of the showman about him: he often used to announce his intention
to put all his children on the stage.  In the evenings, when he had
had a drink or two, he would sit on the porch and play his fiddle,
which had a negro's head carved at the end of the shaft.

  Tutored by Lafe, who was considered to be one of the best horsemen
in Madison County, all the children learned to ride almost as soon as
they could walk and each of them was allocated a pony from the
Waterbury livery stable.  Also quartered with the horses was the
family cow, Star, who obligingly provided them every day with as much
milk as they could drink.

  In 1902, because of confusion with a similarly-named town nearby,
the good folk of Burnett decided to change the name of their town to
Tilden, thereby commemorating an unsuccessful presidential candidate,
Samuel J. Tilden, who had contested the 1876 election won by
Rutherford B. Hayes.  May was the first of the Waterbury children to
graduate, in 1904, from Tilden High School.  Tall, outspoken and

                          -- end page 10 --

independent, she was an unashamed feminist -- she was outraged when
she read in the newspaper that a policeman in New York had arrested a
woman for smoking in the street and thrilled to learn that deaf and
blind Helen Keller had graduated from Radcliffe College the same year
she graduated from Tilden.  It surprised no one in the family when May
announced that she wanted a career, declaring her belief that there
must be more to life than caring for a husband and bearing children.
Accordingly, and with the blessing of her parents, she set off for
Omaha to train as a teacher.  But by the time she had qualified as a
high school and institute teacher, certificate of Nebraska, she was
writing letters home about a young sailor she had met called `Hub'.

  Harry Ross Hubbard was not a descendent of a long line of Hubbards
but an orphan.  Born Henry August Wilson on 31 August 1886 at Fayette,
Iowa, his mother had died when he was a baby and he had been adopted
by a Mr and Mrs James Hubbard, farmers in Frederiksburg, Iowa, who
changed his name to Harry Ross Hubbard.

  At school, Harry was not a high flier.  He briefly attended a
business college at Norma Springs, Iowa, but dropped out when he
realized he had little chance of a degree.  On 1 September 1904, the
day after his eighteenth birthday, he joined the United States Navy as
an enlisted man.  While serving as a yeoman on the *USS Pennsylvania*,
he began writing `romantic tales' of Navy life for newspapers back
home, earning useful extra income.  He was posted to the US Navy
recruiting office in Omaha in 1906 when he met May Waterbury and it
was not long before her plans for an independent career were more or
less forgotten.  They married on 25 April 1909, and by the summer of
1910 May was pregnant; her husband, now discharged from the Navy, had
found work as a commercial teller in the advertising department of the
*Omaha World Herald* newspaper.

  The Waterburys, meanwhile, had left Tilden and moved to Durant in
south-east Oklahoma, close to the border with Texas.  Lafe had seen
the first Model T. Ford trundle cautiously through the main street of
Tilden and realized that his livery stable faced an uncertain future;
when a close friend in Durant suggested to him that the warmer climate
in the south would be better for all the family, he talked it over
with Ida and they decided to go, making the eight hundred-mile trip by
railroad.  Ray, then sixteen, travelled with Star and the horses and
fed and watered the animals during the journey.

  Only Toilie stayed behind in Tilden.  She was twenty-three and
working as a nurse and secretary for Dr Stuart Campbell, who had
opened a small hospital in a wood-frame house on Oak Street, just a
block away from the Waterbury family home.  Toilie was reluctant to
give up her job and her parents readily accepted her decision not to
go with them to Oklahoma.

                          -- end page 11 --

  Campbell, who had set up a practice in Tilden in 1900, had delivered
Ida Waterbury's two youngest children, but it was the fact that Toilie
was working for him that persuaded May to return to Tilden to give
birth to her first child.  With only a little more than a year between
them, May and Toilie had always been close, walking to and from school
arm in arm, sharing a bedroom and incessantly giggling together over
childhood secrets.

  Toilie was waiting at the railroad depot in Tilden at the end of
February 1911 when May, helped by a solicitous Hub, heaved herself
down from the train.  Although Tilden was still no more than four dirt
streets running north to south, intersected by four more running
east-west, May noticed plenty of changes in the short time she had
been away -- four grain elevators had been built, three saloons and
two pool halls had opened, Mrs Mayes was competing with the Botsford
sisters in the millinery trade and there was even a new `opera house'
-- true, it had yet to stage its first opera, but the road shows were
always popular, particularly since Alexander's Ragtime Band had set
the nation's feet tapping.

  May did not have long to wait for the `blessed event'.  She went
into labour during the afternoon of Friday 10 March, and Toilie
arranged for her to be admitted immediately to Dr Campbell's hospital.
At one minute past two o'clock the following morning, she was
delivered of a son.  She and Hub had already decided that if it was a
boy, he would be named Lafayette Ronald Hubbard.

                                 -*-

Ida and Lafe Waterbury did not see their first grandchild until
Christmas 1911, when Hub, May and the baby arrived to spend the
holiday with them in Durant.  Lafe, who had been out treating a
neighbour's horse, burst into the house, threw his hat on the floor
and leaned over the crib to shake his grandson's hand.  Baby Ron
smiled obligingly and Lafe whooped with pleasure, trumpeting at his
wife: `Look, the little son of a bitch knows me already.'

  The biggest surprise for the family was that Ron had a startling
thatch of fluffy orange hair.  Hub was dark-haired and the Waterburys
had no more than a hint of auburn in their colouring -- nothing like
the impish little carrot-top who gurgled happily as he was passed from
one lap to another.  Seven-year-old Margaret, known in the family as
Marnie, spoke for everyone when she proclaimed her new nephew to be
`cute as a bug's ear'.

  During that Christmas May told her parents that Hub had got a new
job on a newspaper in Kalispell, Montana, and that they would be
moving there from Omaha in the New Year.  She was hopeful that it
would prove to be a step up for them.

  In the spring of 1912, May began writing long and enthusiastic

                          -- end page 12 --

letters from Kalispell.  Perhaps missing the family, she often hinted
that they might consider joining her and Hub in Montana.  Kalispell
was a fine, modern city, she wrote, with paved streets, electric
lighting and many fine houses.  The surrounding Flathead Valley was
famous for its fruit and at blossom time the orchards of apples,
peaches, pears, cherries and plums had to be seen to be believed.  One
Kalispell farmer, Fred Whiteside, was so confident about the quality
of his fruit that he boasted he would give $1000 to anyone finding a
worm in one of his apples.

  May's letters gave her parents much to think about, for they both
recognized that the move to Oklahoma had not been a success.  When
they first arrived in Durant, Lafe bought a livery barn on the
outskirts of town and for several months the whole family lived in the
hayloft above the animals.  They built a cookhouse on the property so
they had somewhere to eat their meals and then started on a house.

  None of the children minded the privations in the least -- indeed,
they rather enjoyed thinking of themselves as true pioneers -- but
Lafe found the humid summers very debilitating.  It made May's
description of the blossom in Montana all the more enticing.

  Ida had been deeply disturbed by an incident that occurred soon
after they moved into their new house.  A negro raped a white woman in
the town and while a posse was out looking for him, a rumour took hold
that there was going to be a negro uprising, causing something
approaching panic, particularly in remote outlying areas.  At
nightfall.  Lafe and Ray took guns and went out on horses to protect
the approaches to their property, while the girls waited behind barred
windows, watching flares bounce through the night and listening to the
rattle of cartwheels as farmers shepherded their families into the
safety of the town.

  Although there was no uprising, both Ida and Lafe were concerned
that there might be a `next time' and they did not want to feel that
their safety depended on their willingness to protect themselves with
guns.  In the fall of 1912, the Waterburys once again sold their
house, packed up their belongings and loaded their livestock on to
railcars, this time bound for Kalispell, Montana, 1500 miles to the
north-west.  Long delays at railheads, while waiting with their
freight cars to be picked up by north-bound trains, added days to the
journey and it was a week before they were hooked on to a Great
Northern Railway train labouring across the Rocky Mountains through
the spectacular passes that led to Kalispell.

  The family reunion was the happiest of occasions and no one received
more attention than Ron, who had learned to take his first faltering
steps.  `He was very much the love child of the whole family,' said
Marnie.  `He was adored by everyone.  I can still see that mop of red
hair running around.'

                          -- end page 13 --

  Lafe found a small house in Orchard Park, a short walk from May and
Hub's home and only a block from the fairground, where he hoped to
find work as a veterinarian.  With only two bedrooms, it was not
nearly big enough for the Waterbury tribe, but it had a barn that
would accommodate all the horses and still leave enough room for the
long-suffering and widely-travelled Star.  Marnie and June, the two
youngest children, were given one of the bedrooms and Lafe built a big
wood-frame tent in the yard for the other four: inside, it was divided
by a canvas screen -- Ray slept on a bunk on one side and Midgie,
Louise and Hope were on the other.  They had a stove to keep them warm
in the winter and were perfectly content.  On summer evenings, Marnie
and June often heard their older sisters whispering and tittering in
the tent and sometimes they crept outside to join them and share the
cherries they stole almost every night from a neighbouring garden.

  The Waterburys were happy in Kalispell: Ida and Lafe made no secret
of the pleasure they took in being able to see their grandson every
day; Midgie met her future husband, Bob, in the town; and Ray
developed an impressive talent for training horses.  Under his careful
tuition, the family ponies learned tricks like counting by pawing the
ground with a hoof and stealing handkerchiefs from his pocket.  The
Waterbury `show horses', ridden by the Waterbury children, became a
popular feature in the town parades and they always competed in the
races at the fairground.

  Baby Ron remained the centre of the family's attention and the star
of the Waterbury photograph albums -- Ron perched in an apple tree,
Ron with Liberty Bill, their English bull terrier, on the porch of the
Kalispell house, Ron trying to measure the back yard with a tape.
Having clearly inherited something of his grandfather's showmanship,
Ron thoroughly enjoyed being in the family spotlight.

  Lafe was walking down Kalispell's main street one day with Marnie
and Ron when he bumped into Samuel Stewart, the governor of Montana,
whom he had met several times.  `Hey Sam,' he said, `I'd like you to
meet my little grandson, Ron.'  Stewart stooped, solemnly shook hands
with the boy and stood chatting to Lafe for a few minutes.  After he
had gone, Marnie, who had been neither introduced nor acknowledged,
turned furiously on her father and snapped, `Why didn't you introduce
me?  Don't I matter?'  Lafe had the grace to apologize, but Marnie
could see by his broad grin that he was not in the least repentant.

  As well as being favoured so shamelessly, Ron could always count on
the support of his many aunts in any family dispute.  While he was
learning to talk, he would frequently drive his mother to distraction
by running round the house repeating the same, usually meaningless,

                          -- end page 14 --

word over and over again.  One afternoon at the Waterbury home, the
word was `eskobiddle'.  May, at the end of her patience, finally
shouted at him: `If you say that once more I'm going to go and wash
your mouth out with soap.'

  Ron looked coolly at her and smiled slowly.  `Eskobiddle!'  he
yelled at the top of his voice.  May immediately dragged him off and
carried out her threat.  A few minutes later, Ida heard shrieks coming
from the back yard and discovered Midgie and Louise holding May down
and washing her mouth with soap to avenge their precious nephew.

  Less than twelve months after the Waterburys arrived in Kalispell,
May broke the news that she and Hub were going to move on; Hub was
having problems with his job on the newspaper and had been offered a
position as resident manager of the Family Theater in the state
capital, Helena.  Ida and Lafe were naturally upset but, as May said,
Helena was only two hundred miles away and it was also on the Great
Northern Railroad, so they would be able to visit each other
frequently.

  Nevertheless, it would not be the same, both doting grandparents
gloomily concluded, as having little Ronald in and out of the house
almost every day.

                                 -*-

Helena in 1913 was a pleasant city of Victorian brick and stone
buildings encircled by the Rocky Mountains, whose snow-dusted peaks
stippled with pines provided a scenic backdrop in every direction.
The Capital Building, with its massive copper dome and fluted doric
columns, eloquently proclaimed its status as the first city of
Montana, as did the construction of the neo-Gothic St Helena
Cathedral, which was nearing completion on Warren Street.  Electric
streetcars clanked along the brick-paved main street, once a twisting
mountain defile known as Last Chance Gulch in commemoration of the
four prospectors who had unexpectedly struck gold there in 1864 and
subsequently rounded the city.

  The Family Theater, at 21 Last Chance Gulch, occupied part of a
handsome red-brick terrace with an ornate stone coping, but it
suffered somewhat from its position, since it was in the heart of the
city's red-light district and could not have been more inappropriately
named.  Respectable families arriving for the evening performance were
required to avert their eyes from the colourful ladies leaning out of
the windows of the brothels on each side of the theater, although it
was not unknown for the occasional father to slip out after the show
had started and return before the final curtain, curiously flushed.

  Harry Hubbard's duties were to sell tickets during the day, collect
them at the door as patrons arrived, maintain order if necessary
during the show and lock up at the end of the evening.  Although his
title was

                          -- end page 15 --

resident manager, he chose not to live at the theater and rented a
rickety little wooden house, not much better than a shack, on Henry
Street, on the far side of the railroad track.  May hated it and soon
found a small apartment on the top floor of a house at 15 Rodney
Street, closer to the theater and in a better part of town.

  Travelling road shows, sometimes comprising not much more than a
singer, pianist and a comedian, were the staple fare of the Family
Theater.  Ron was often allowed to see the show and he would sit with
his mother in the darkened auditorium completely enthralled, no matter
what the act.  Years later he would recall sitting in a box at the age
of two wearing his father's hat and applauding with such enthusiasm
that the audience began cheering him rather than the cast.  He claimed
the players took twelve curtain calls before they realized what was
happening.[4]

  When the Waterburys paid a visit to Helena, Hub arranged for them to
see the show, made sure they had the best seats in the house and
solemnly stood at the door of the theater to collect their tickets as
they filed in.  Not long after their return to Kalispell, May heard
that her father had slipped on a banana skin, fallen and broken his
arm.  She did not worry overmuch at first, even when her mother wrote
to say that the arm had not been set properly and had had to be
re-broken.  Indeed, her worries were rather closer to home, for Harry
had been told by the owner of the Family Theater that unless the
audiences improved the theater might have to close.

  The news from abroad was also giving cause for concern, despite
Woodrow Wilson's promise to keep America out of the war threatening to
engulf Europe.  On Sunday 2 August 1914, headlines in the *Helena
Independent* announced that Germany had declared war on Russia and a
despatch from London confirmed: `The die is cast ... Europe is to be
plunged into a general war.'  Closer to home, rival unions in the
copper mines at Butte, only sixty miles from Helena, were also at war.
When the Miners' Union Hall was dynamited, Governor Stewart declared
martial law and sent in the National Guard to keep order.

  It was in this turbulent climate that the Family Theater finally
closed its doors, for the audiences did not pick up.  Harry Hubbard
was once again obliged to look for work, but once again he was lucky
-- he was taken on as a book-keeper for the Ives-Smith Coal Company,
`dealers in Original Bear Creek, Roundup, Acme and Belt Coal', at 41
West Sixth Avenue.  May, meanwhile, found a cheaper apartment for the
family on the first floor of a shingled wood-frame house at 1109 Fifth
Avenue.

  Back in Kalispell, Lafe Waterbury was still having trouble with his
arm.  He was not the kind of man to complain about bad luck, but no

__________
 4. 1938 biography of L. Ron Hubbard by Arthur J. Burks, president of
    American Fiction Guild

                          -- end page 16 --

one could have blamed him had he done so.  His arm had to be set a
third time and just when it seemed it was beginning to heal he was
thrown to the ground by a horse he was examining.  He was never to
regain full strength in that arm and although he was only fifty years
old he knew he would not be able to continue working as a vet, with
all the pulling and pushing it involved.  Only the four youngest
Waterbury girls were still at home, but Lafe did not think he could
afford to retire, even if that had been his ambition.  (His taxable
assets were listed in the Kalispell City Directory at $1550, which
made him comfortably off, but not by any means rich.)  No prospects
presented themselves immediately in Kalispell and Lafe and Ida began
considering another move.  It somehow seemed natural, since they had
followed May to Kalispell, that they should now think about moving to
Helena.

  In the summer of 1915, Toilie, back home on a visit from the East,
drove her father to Helena in the family's Model T. Ford so that he
could take a look around.  They stayed, of course, with May and Hub in
their cramped apartment on Fifth Avenue and Lafe was delighted to have
the company of his four-year-old grandson every time he went for a
walk in town.

  Hub presumably talked to his father-in-law about his job and the two
men almost certainly discussed the ever-increasing demand for coal and
the business opportunities available in Helena.  As a bookkeeper, Hub
knew the figures, knew the profit Ives-Smith was making and knew the
strength of the market -- it was information that undoubtedly
influenced Lafe's decision to move his family to Helena and set up a
coal company of his own.

  The Waterburys arrived in 1916 and bought a house at 736 Fifth
Avenue, on the corner of Raleigh Street, just two blocks from May and
Hub's apartment.  Lafe considered himself very lucky to get the
property, for it was a sturdy two-storey house, built around the turn
of the century, with light and airy rooms, fine stained glass windows,
a wide covered porch and an unusual conical roof over a curved bay at
one corner.  It would quickly become known by everyone in the family,
with the greatest affection, as `the old brick'.

  The Waterbury girls had wept bitterly on leaving Kalispell, largely
because their father had insisted that Bird, the Indian pony on which
they had all learned to ride, was too old to make the journey and
would have to be left behind.  But their spirits soon lifted as they
ran excitedly from room to room in their new home and imagined
themselves as fashionable young ladies of substance.

  Fifth Avenue was not yet a paved road, but it was lined with
struggling saplings which offered the promise of respectability and,
more importantly, it was straddled to the east by the Capital
Building,

                          -- end page 17 --

a monumental edifice of such grandeur that the girls were all deeply
awed by its proximity.  To the west, Fifth Avenue appeared to plunge
directly into the forested green flanks of Mount Helena and just two
blocks south of `the old brick', Raleigh Street ended in grassy
hummocks which led up to the mountains and promised limitless
opportunities for play.  Marnie, then thirteen years old, could hardly
imagine a better place to be.

  Lafe rented a yard with a stable adjoining the Northern Pacific
railroad track where it crossed Montana Avenue and put up a sign
announcing that the Capital City Coal Company had opened for business.
It was very much a family affair, as listed in the Helena City
Directory for 1917: Lafayette O. Waterbury was president, Ray was
vice-president and Toilie (recalled from the East by her father --
`It's time to come home,' he told her, `I need you.')  was
secretary-treasurer.  Harry Ross Hubbard had also joined the fledgling
enterprise, but the only vacancy was in the lowly capacity of
teamster.

  On 2 January 1917 Ron was enrolled at the kindergarten at Central
School on Warren Street, just across from the new cathedral which,
with its twin spires and grey stone facade, towered reprovingly over
the city.  Most days he was walked to school by his aunts, Marnie and
June, who were at Helena High, opposite Central School.

  Ron, who was known to the neighbourhood kids as `brick' because of
his hair, would later claim that while still at kindergarten he used
the `lumberjack fighting' he had learned from his grandfather to deal
with a gang of bullies who were terrorizing children on their way to
and from the school.  But one of Ron's closest childhood friends,
Andrew Richardson, has no recollection of him protecting local
children from bullies.  `He never protected nobody,' said Richardson.
`It was all bullshit.  Old Hubbard was the greatest con artist who
ever lived.'[5]

                                 -*-

Although the war in Europe, with its unbelievable casualty toll, was
filling plenty of columns in the *Independent*, local news, as always,
received quite as much prominence as despatches from foreign
correspondents.  Suffragettes figured prominently in many of the
headlines and after the women's suffrage amendment was narrowly
approved in the Montana legislature, the victorious women celebrated
by electing one of their leaders, Jeanette Rankin, to a seat in the US
Congress.  Women voters also helped push through a bill to ban the
sale of alcohol as the Prohibition lobby gained ground across the
nation.

  Even the news, in February 1917, that Germany had declared its
intention to engage in unrestricted submarine warfare did not fully
hit home until the following month when it was learned that German

__________
 5. Interview with Andrew Richardson, Helena, Montana

                          -- end page 18 --

submarines had attacked and sunk three US merchant ships in the
Atlantic.  On 6 April, the United States declared war on Germany;
Congresswoman Rankin was one of only a handful of dissenters voting
against the war resolution.

  Mobilization began at once in Helena at Fort Harrison, headquarters
of the 2nd Regiment, but the wave of patriotic fervour that swept the
state brought in its wake a sinister backlash in the form of
witchhunts for `traitors' and `subversives'.  In August, self-styled
vigilantes in Butte dragged labour leader Frank Little from his
rooming house and hanged him from a railroad trestle on the edge of
town.  His `crime' was that he was leader of the Industrial Workers of
the World, a radical group viewed as seditious.

  Although selective draft mustered more than seven thousand troops in
Montana by the beginning of August, Harry Hubbard felt, as an
ex-serviceman, that he should not wait to be drafted.  He had served
for four years in the US Navy and his country needed trained seamen.
Yes, he had family responsibilities, but he was also an American.  He
knew his duty and May knew she could not, and should not, stop him.
On 10 October, Hub kissed her goodbye, hugged his six-year-old son and
left Helena for the Navy Recruiting Station at Salt Lake City, Utah,
to re-enlist for a four-year term in the US Navy.  Two weeks later,
little Ron and his mother joined the crowds lining Last Chance Gulch
to watch Montana's 163rd Infantry march out of town on their way to
join the fighting in Europe.  Ron thought they were just `swell'.

  After Hub had gone, May and Ron moved into `the old brick' with the
rest of the family and May found a job as a clerk with the State
Bureau of Child and Animal Protection in the Capital Building.  If
little Ron experienced any sense of loss from the absence of his
father, it was certainly alleviated by the intense warmth and
sociability of the Waterbury family.  He had grandparents who
considered he could do no wrong, a loving mother and an assorted array
of adoring aunts who liked nothing more than to spend time playing
with him.

  It was inevitable that he would be spoiled with all the attention,
but he was also a rewarding child, exceptionally imaginative and
adventurous, always filling his time with original ideas and games.
`He was very quick, always coming up with ideas no one else had
thought of,' said Marnie.  `He'd grab a couple of beer bottles and use
them as binoculars or he would write little plays and draw the scenery
and everything.  Whatever he started he finished: when he made up his
mind he was going to do something, you could be sure he would see it
through.'

  Hub wrote home frequently and made it clear that he was enjoying
being back in the service, the war notwithstanding.  He had been
selected for training as an Assistant Paymaster and if he made the

                          -- end page 19 --

grade, he proudly explained in a letter to May, it would mean that he
would become an officer.  On 13 October 1918 Harry Ross Hubbard was
honorably discharged from enlisted service in the US Navy Reserve
Force and the following day he was appointed Assistant Paymaster with
the rank of Ensign.  He was thirty-two years old, positively geriatric
for an Ensign -- but it was one of the proudest moments of his life.

  Eleven days later, the front pages of the *Helena Independent* was
dominated by a single word in letters three inches high: PEACE.
Underneath, the sub-heading declared, `Cowardly Kaiser and Son Flee to
Holland.'  The terms of surrender were to be so severe, the newspaper
innocently reported, that Germany would forever `be absolutely
deprived from further military power of action on land and sea and in
the air'.

  Unlike most wives whose husbands had gone to war, May knew that the
Armistice did not mean that Hub would be coming home; he had already
told her that he intended to make a career in the Navy.  It was a
decision she could not sensibly oppose, for she was obliged to admit
that he had been incapable of making progress in his varied civilian
jobs and he was clearly happier in the Navy.  Furthermore, his
position with the Capital City Coal Company was far from secure, for
she knew that her father was worried about the business -- they were
having difficulty finding sufficient supplies of coal from Roundup and
a third coal company had opened up in town, increasing competition.
The Waterbury girls were helping with the company's cash flow problems
by knocking on doors round and about Fifth Avenue to collect payment
for overdue bills.

  Lafe Waterbury never allowed his business worries to cast a shadow
over his family life and for the children, Ron included, weeks and
months passed with not much to fret about other than whether or not
the taffy [toffee] would set.  `Taffy-pulls' were a regular ritual in
the Waterbury household: a coat hanger was kept permanently on the
back of the door in the basement to loop the sugar and water mix and
stretch it repeatedly, filling the taffy with air bubbles so that it
would snap satisfactorily when it was set.  Liberty Bill would always
sit and watch the proceedings with saliva dripping from his jaws.
Once he grabbed a mouthful when the taffy looped too close to the
floor and disappeared under a bush ill the garden for hours while he
tried to suck it out of his teeth.

  One day Marnie and June were in the basement pulling taffy with Ron
when they heard their father laughing out loud in the front room.
They ran upstairs to see what was going on and found him standing at
the window, both hands clutched to his quivering midriff, tears
streaming down his cheeks.  Outside, a young lady, in a tight hobble

                          -- end page 20 --

skirt -- the very latest fashion in Helena -- was attempting to step
down from the wooden sidewalk to cross the road.  To her acute
embarrassment, she was discovering that while it was feasible to
totter along a level surface, it was almost impossible to negotiate a
step of more than a few inches without hoisting her skirt to a level
well beyond the bounds of decorum, or jumping with both feet together.
Eventually, shuffling to the edge of the sidewalk, she managed to
slide first one foot down, then, with a precarious swivel, the other.
By this time Lafe was forced to sit down, for he could no longer
stand, and the entire family had gathered at the window.

  Laughter was an omnipresent feature of life in `the old brick'.
When Toilie brought home a bottle of wine and gave her mother a glass,
the unaccustomed alcohol thickened her tongue and the more she
struggled with ever more recalcitrant syllables, the more her
daughters howled.  Then there was the time when Lafe leaned back in
his swivel chair, overbalanced, fell under a shelf piled with
magazines and hit his head as he tried to get up -- no one would ever
forget that.  On the other hand almost the worst incident any of the
children could remember was the day when their mother's pet canary
escaped through an open window into the snow and never returned.  Ida
had loved that canary when she was lying in bed she would whistle and
it would fly over, perch on the covers and pick her teeth.

  In the summer, the children spent every waking hour after school
outdoors.  May, who had changed her job and now worked as a clerk in
the State Department of Agriculture and Publicity, bought a small plot
of land in the foothills of the mountains, about two hours' walk from
the family home and paid a local carpenter to put up a raw pine shack.
It had just two rooms inside, with a long covered porch at the front.
They called it `The Old Homestead' and used it at weekends and
holidays, taking enough food and drink with them to last the duration,
and drawing water from a well on a nearby property.  Most times Lafe
would drive them out in the Model T. and drop them on the Butte road
at the closest point to the house, from where they walked across the
fields.  The children loved The Old Homestead for the simple pleasure
of being in the mountains, playing endless games under a perfect blue
sky, optimistically panning for gold in tumbling streams of crystal
clear water, picking great bunches of wild flowers, cooking on a
campfire and huddling round an oil lamp at night, telling spooky
stories.

  When they were not planning a trip to The Old Homestead, Ron
pestered his aunts to take him on a hike up to the top of Mount
Helena, where they would sit with a picnic, munching sandwiches and
silently staring out over the sprawl of the city below and the ring of
mountains beyond.  One of the trails up the mountain passed a smoky

                          -- end page 21 --

cave said to be haunted by the men who had used it as a hideout while
being stalked by Indians in the mid-nineteenth century.  Marnie used
to take Ron, squirming with thrilled terror, into the cave to look for
ghosts.

  Marnie and Ron, with only eight years between them, were as close as
brother and sister.  When she was in a school play at Helena High,
taking the part of Marie Antoinette, he sat wide-eyed throughout the
performance then ran all the way home to tell his grandma how
beautiful Marnie was.

  While the children remained blithely unaware of events outside the
comforting confines of `the old brick' and The Old Homestead, few
adults in Montana were able to enjoy such a blinkered existence.
After years of abundant crops and high wheat prices, postwar
depression brought about a collapse in the market -- bushel prices
halved in the space of three months -- and the summer of 1919 saw the
first of a cycle of disastrous droughts.  Every day brought further
ominous tidings of mortgage foreclosures, banks closing, abandoned
farms turned into dustbowls and thousands of settlers leaving the
state to seek a livelihood elsewhere.

  In this gloomy economic climate, Lafe Waterbury was forced to close
down the Capital City Coal Company.  For a while he tinkered with a
small business selling automobile spares and vulcanizing tyres, but
the depression meant that motorists were laying up their cars rather
than repairing them and Lafe decided to retire, thankful that he still
had sufficient capital left to support his family.

  May helped with the household expenses, although she realized she
and Ron would not be able to stay there forever.  Hub had been
promoted to Lieutenant (Junior Grade) in November 1919, and whenever
he could, had been coming home on leave to see his wife and son.  He
was still intent on a career in the Navy, although he had already
suffered some setbacks.  He had been obliged to appear before a court
of inquiry in May, 1920, while serving as Supply Officer on the *USS
Aroostock*, to explain a deficiency in his accounts of $942.25.  He
also had an unfortunate tendency to overlook personal debts.  No less
than fourteen creditors in Kalispell claimed he left behind unpaid
bills totalling $125; Fred Fisch, high-grade clothier of Vallejo,
California, was pursuing him for $10 still owed on a uniform overcoat;
and a Dr McPherson of San Diego was owed $30.  All of them complained
to the Navy Department, casting a shadow over Hubbard's record.[6] He
had a long spell of inactive duty at the beginning of 1921 while he
was waiting for a new posting and he and May spent a great deal of
time discussing their future.  Hub expected May to conform, like other
Navy wives, and trail around the country with him from posting to
posting; when he was at sea, he wanted her to be close to his ship's

__________
 6. Harry Ross Hubbard navy record

                          -- end page 22 --

home port.  May obviously wanted to be with Hub, but she was reluctant
to move Ron from school to school and loath to leave her family.  She
had perhaps secretly hoped that Hub would tire of the Navy and return
to civilian life in Helena, but the depression wiped out whatever
miserable opportunities he might have had of finding work and she
realized it would never happen.  In September 1921, Hub was posted to
the battleship *USS Oklahoma* as an Assistant Supply Officer.  He
anticipated serving on board for at least two years, much of that time
at sea, and the opportunities for visits home to Helena would be
severely curtailed.  As a loyal wife, May felt she could no longer
justify staying in Helena.  She and Ron packed their bags, bade the
family a tearful farewell and caught a train for San Diego, the *USS
Oklahoma*'s home port.

  Although Ron must have missed the convivial domesticity of `the old
brick', he did not appear to mind, in the least, being a `Navy brat'
-- the curiously affectionate label applied to all children of
servicemen, many of whom needed more than the fingers of both hands to
count their schools.  He was a gregarious boy, quick to make friends,
and starting a new school held no terrors for him.  After about a year
in San Diego, the Hubbards moved north to Seattle, in Washington
State, when the *Oklahoma* was transferred to Puget Sound Navy
Shipyard.

  In Seattle Ron joined the boy scouts, an event that would figure
prominently in a hand-written journal which he scrawled on the pages
of an old accounts book, interspersed with short stories, a few years
later: `The year Nineteen Hundred and Twenty-Three rallied round and
found me contentedly resting on my laurels, a first class badge.  For
I was a boy scout then and deaf was my friend that hadn't heard all
about it.  I considered Seattle the best town on the map as far as
scouting was concerned.'

  In October 1923, Lieutenant Hubbard completed sea duty on the *USS
Oklahoma* and, after brief spells of temporary duty in San Francisco
and New York, was assigned for further training to the Bureau of
Supply and Accounts School of Application in Washington DC.  The US
Navy, which clearly despised any form of land transport, saved itself
the cost of two long-distance train fares by giving May and Ron berths
on the *USS U.S. Grant*, a German warship acquired by the US Navy
after the First World War, which was due to sail from Seattle to
Hampton Roads, Virginia, via the Panama Canal.  It was thus December,
and the snow was thick on the ground, before the Hubbards were
re-united in Washington after a voyage of some seven thousand miles,
three-quarters of the way round the coast of the United States.  It
was on this trip, it seems, that Ron met the enigmatic Commander
`Snake' Thompson of the US Navy Medical Corps, a psychoanalyst he

                          -- end page 23 --

would later claim was responsible for awakening his youthful interest
in Freud, although he only made the briefest mention of the journey in
his journal.  His style of writing was fluent, breezy, schoolboyishly
cocksure and addressed directly to the reader.  `If obviously pushed
upon,' he wrote, `I supposed I could write a couple of thousands
[*sic*] words on that trip ... But I spare you.'

  He usually referred to himself in a gently ironic tone, perhaps to
avoid giving an impression of thinking rather too highly of himself.
When he arrived in Washington, two troops of local scouts were
battling for a prized scouting trophy, the Washington Post Cup.  Troop
100, he noted, belonged to the YMCA `and would therefore probably
lose', so he joined the other outfit, Troop 10, `which must have
sighed loudly when it perceived me crossing the threshold'.

  The journal also contained flashes of humour, delivered deadpan:
`Visualize me in a natty scout suit, my red hair tumbling out from
under my hat, doing my good turn daily.  Once I saved a man's life.  I
could have pushed him under a streetcar but I didn't.'

  Intent on pushing Troop 10 to victory, Ron began acquiring merit
badges with extraordinary speed and dedication.  In his first two
weeks, he was awarded badges for Firemanship and Personal Health,
quickly followed by Photography, Life-Saving, Physical Development and
Bird Study.  He determinedly thrust his way into the front rank of the
Washington scouts (it was absolutely not his nature to languish shyly
among the pack) and he was chosen to represent them on a delegation to
the White House to ask President Calvin Coolidge to accept the
honorary chairmanship of National Boys' Week.  He noted the invitation
in his journal with characteristic cheek: `One fine day the Scout
executive telephoned my house and told me I was to meet the president
that afternoon.  I told him I thought it pretty swell of the president
to come way out to my house ...'

  Brushed and scrubbed ('even the backs of my hands were thoroughly
washed') he waited with forty other boys outside the Oval Office until
a secretary emerged and said the president was ready to receive them.
` With fear and trembling, we entered and repeated our names a few
times as we pumped Cal's listless hand ... I think I have the
distinction of being the only boy scout in America who has made the
President wince.'  The great man spoke in such lugubrious tones that
Ron compared the occasion to being invited to his own hanging.

  In the boy scout diary he kept intermittently around this time, Ron
was a lot less forthcoming than in the journal, which was clearly
written with an intention to entertain.  The most frequent entry in
his diary was a laconic `Was bored.'  Yet he would claim in later
years that the four months he spent in Washington was a crucial period
of his life during which he received `an extensive education in the
field of the

                          -- end page 24 --

human mind' under the tutelage of his friend Commander Thompson.[7] He
also noted -- in his journal -- that he became a close friend of
President Coolidge's son, Calvin Junior, whose early death accelerated
his `precocious interest in the mind and spirit of Man.'[8]

  `Snake' Thompson was apparently a friend of Ron's father and a
personal student of Sigmund Freud, under whom he had studied in
Vienna.  His inauspicious nickname was derived from his love of
slithery creatures, but it was in his capacity as a student of the
founder of psychoanalysis that he took it upon himself to give the
twelve-year-old boy a grounding in Freudian theory as well as `shoving
his nose' into books at the Library of Congress.

  [Ron would often refer to Thompson in later life, yet the Commander
remains an enigma.  He cannot be identified from US Navy records, nor
can his relationship with Freud be established.  Doctor Kurt Eissler,
one of the world's leading authorities on Freud, says he has no
knowledge of any correspondence or contact of any kind between Freud
and Thompson.[9]]

  Presumably the hours that Ron and Thompson spent closeted together
in the Library of Congress were somehow dovetailed into the time he
devoted to scouting, for on 28 March 1924, a few days after his
thirteenth birthday, Ron was made an eagle scout.

  `Twenty-one merit badges in ninety days,' he recorded triumphantly
in his journal.  `I was quite a boy then.  Written up in the papers
and all that.  Take a look at me.  You didn't know the wreck in front
of you was once the youngest Eagle Scout in the country, did you?'

  Neither did Ron.  At that time the Boy Scouts of America only kept
an alphabetical record of eagle scouts, with no reference to their
ages.[10]

__________
 7. *Facts About L. Ron Hubbard -- Things You Should Know*, Flag
    Divisional Directive, 8 Mar 1974
 8. *Mission Into Time*, L. Ron Hubbard, 1973
 9. Letter to author, 25 Mar 1986.  Also US Govt Memorandum, 16 Nov
    1966.
10. Letter to author, 1 Feb 1986

                          -- end page 25 --

                             *Chapter 2*

                       *Whither did he Wander?*

  Fundamental to the image of L. Ron Hubbard as prophet are the tales
of his teenage travels.  At the age of fourteen, it seems, the
inquisitive lad could be found wandering the Orient alone,
investigating primitive cultures and learning the secrets of life at
the feet of wise men and Lama priests.  `He was up and down the China
coast several times in his teens from Ching Wong Tow to Hong Kong and
inland to Peking and Manchuria.'[1] In China he met an old magician
whose ancestors had served in the court of Kublai Khan and a Hindu who
could hypnotize cats.  In the high hills of Tibet he lived with
bandits who accepted him because of his `honest interest in them and
their way of life'.[2] In the remote reaches of western Manchuria he
made friends with the ruling warlords by demonstrating his
horsemanship.  On an unnamed island in the South Pacific, the fearless
boy calmed the natives by exploring a cave that was supposed to be
haunted and showing them that the rumbling sound from within was
nothing more sinister than an underground river.  `Deep in the
jungles' of Polynesia he discovered an ancient burial ground `steeped
in the tradition of heroic warriors and kings ... Though his native
friends were fearful for him, he explored the sacred area -- his
initiative based on doing all he could to know more'.[3]

  There appeared to be no limit to the young man's abilities: `I
remember one time learning Igoroti, an Eastern primitive language, in
a single night.  I sat up by kerosene lantern and took a list of words
that had been made by an old missionary in the hills of Luzon
[Philippines].  The Igorot had a very simple language.  This
missionary phoneticized their language and made a list of their main
words and their usage and grammar.  And I remember sitting up under a
mosquito net with the mosquitoes hungrily chomping their beaks just
outside the net, and learning this language -- three hundred words --
just memorizing these words and what they meant.  And the next day I
started to get them in line and align them with people, and was
speaking Igoroti in a very short time.'[4]

  Throughout this period, Ron was said to have been supported by his
wealthy, not to say indulgent, grandfather and it was during his

__________
 1. *Facts About L. Ron Hubbard -- Things You Should Know*, Flag
    Divisional Directive, 8 Mar 1974
 2. *What Is Scientology?*, 1973, p. xlii
 3. *ibid.*, p. xliv
 4. *Scientology: A New Slant on Life*, L. Ron Hubbard, 1965

                          -- end page 26 --

travels in the East that he became interested in the `spiritual
destiny' of mankind.  `L.  Ron Hubbard learned that there was more to
life than science had dreamed of, that Man did not know everything
there was to know about life, and that neither East nor West, the
spiritual and the material, had any full answer.  To L. Ron Hubbard
there was a whole field here that was begging for research.'[5]

  It would, to be sure, have been an impressive start to any young
man's career, if only it had been true.

                              * * * * *

At the end of March 1924, the Hubbards left Washington DC and moved,
once again, from one side of the continent to the other.  Having
finished his training at the Bureau of Supply and Accounts School,
Harry Hubbard was promoted to full Lieutenant and posted back to the
Puget Sound Navy Shipyard at Bremerton, in Washington State, as
Disbursing Officer.

  Bremerton was a nice little town mushroomed around the great naval
shipyard, the northern base of the Pacific Fleet, which sprawled along
the shore of Puget Sound.  Seagulls wheeled and cawed over the quiet
high street and the fishing fleet in the harbour and a tangy aroma of
salt, tar and oil scented the breeze off the Sound, where bustling
white-painted ferries provided the town's main link to Seattle on the
opposite shore.  The Hubbards found a house two blocks from the
shipyard and their son enrolled in the eighth grade at Union High
School, on the corner of Fifth and High Avenues.

  Run liked Bremerton on sight, as would any thirteen-year-old with a
taste for outdoor activities.  After school in the summer he
invariably joined a group of boys to swim and fish and canoe in the
Sound and at weekends he cadged a ride out to Camp Parsons, the boy
scout camp on the north-west shore of Hood Canal.  Parsons was a
permanent campsite in the heart of the Olympic National Park and was
considered by thousands of boys to be paradise.  There were oysters,
clams, shrimp and crabs to be fished from the canal and cooked over
campfires; eagles soared in the thermals high overhead and the dense
forest all around the camp was alive with deer, beavers, bobcats and
black bears.  Like countless fellow scouts, Ron's favourite trek from
Camp Parsons was the `Three Rivers Hike', which started with the
`poop-out drag' -- a long climb up a sun-baked southern slope -- and
ended in the late afternoon at Camp Mystery at the top of the pass,
where there were meadows full of wild flowers and thrilling views over
the Olympic mountain wilderness.  It was a boyhood idyll that was to
last for only two happy years; in the summer of 1926 his parents
decided to move across the Sound back to Seattle.  It was no trouble
for Harry to commute to work at

__________
 5. *Facts About L. Ron Hubbard -- Things You Should Know*, Flag
    Divisional Directive, 8 Mar 1974

                          -- end page 27 --

the shipyard by ferry and they felt that Ron ought to complete his
high school education in a bigger and more sophisticated school than
Union High.  So it was that Ron began his sophomore year at Queen Anne
High, a majestic seminary built in sparkling white bricks on a hilltop
overlooking Seattle.

  He was barely into his second semester when his father received his
first foreign posting.  Lieutenant Hubbard was to take over as Officer
in Charge of the Commissary Store at the US Naval Station on Guam, a
remote, mountainous tropical island in the Pacific, three thousand
miles west of Hawaii.  Largest and southernmost of the Mariana
Islands, Guam had been ceded to the United States as a prize in the
Spanish-American War in 1898 and, as far as the Hubbard family was
concerned, was so far away it might as well have been on another
planet.

  May and Hub talked long into many nights about how they should
accommodate their lives to this new upheaval.  Guam was a minimum
two-year posting and May naturally wanted to accompany her husband,
particularly as there as no chance of him returning home on leave.
What most worried them was what to do with Ron, who had immediately
assumed he would be going too.  Then just sixteen years old, he was
thrilled at the prospect of exchanging the dreary routine of Queen
Anne High for life on a tropical island.

  But officers returning from Guam were full of lurid stories about
the island and its inhabitants.  Many of them concerned the charms of
Guam's `dusky maidens' and the uninhibited enthusiasm with which they
pursued young Americans as potential husbands.  There was also much
gossip about the horrendous strains of venereal disease which were
endemic.  Time and time again Hub was told by ex-Guam veterans that
they would never let a son of theirs set foot in the place.

  In the end they made the painful decision to leave Ron behind.  May
arranged for him to move back into `the old brick' with her parents
and to finish high school in Helena.  Ron made no secret of his
disgust When his parents broke the news, although he was slightly
mollified by his father's promise to try and arrange for him to travel
with his mother out to Guam for a short holiday before returning to
Helena.

  Lieutenant Hubbard sailed to Guam on 5 April 1927; his wife and son
followed several weeks later on the passenger steamship, *President
Madison*, bound for Honolulu, Yokohama, Shanghai, Hong Kong and
Manila, out of San Francisco.  Ron took with him his ukulele and
saxophone, two instruments he had been struggling to learn, and a
headful of yarns, spun by his father's friends, about how anyone with
red hair was instantly proclaimed king on arrival in Guam.  To his
great chagrin, his return passage was already booked for July, to get

                          -- end page 28 --

him back in time for the start of the junior term at Helena High
School.  May took sufficient books to tutor her son in history and
English during the trip, to make up for him not finishing the semester
at Queen Anne High School.

  Considering he was still only sixteen, Ron's log of his trip to Guam
was acutely observed and literate, even if the prose was occasionally
artless and self-conscious ('Westward tugged the ship's twelve
thousand horses').  It was also packed with information, reflecting
the unashamed curiosity of an inquisitive and extrovert young man
travelling abroad for the first time.

  Watching San Francisco's Golden Gate disappear from view, Ron
admitted to a lump in his throat, although he was soon involved in the
timeless and time-wasting pursuits that comprised life on board --
shuffle board and deck golf, a dance one evening, a movie the next,
and obsessive discussion about who was seasick and who was not.  Some
of the crew tried to turn Ron's stomach by describing revolting meals
of salt pork and slippery oysters, but he was pleased to record that
neither he nor his mother succumbed.

  First stop, six days out, was Honolulu, where the *President
Madison* was greeted in the harbour by flotillas of small boats rowed
by lithe, brown-skinned urchins who dived for quarters flipped
overboard from the deck of the steamship.  They used to dive for
pennies, Ron noted laconically, `thus has the Hawaiian developed his
commerce'.  Friends showed the Hubbards around the island while the
ship was docked and Ron managed to get a swim and a ride on a
surf-board at Waikiki beach.  The waves were much longer than those in
California, he wrote, and sometimes attained speeds of sixty miles an
hour.

  Outward bound from Hawaii, Ron made friends with the second engineer
who took him on a conducted tour of the ship, including the galley,
`spotless with shining equipment and Chinese cooks who grinned and
displayed blank teeth'.

  Fifty miles off the coast of Japan, they caught their first glimpse
of the `celestial beauty' of Mount Fuji rising through the clouds and
cloaked in a `pink robe of snow' suggesting, Ron thought, a `garment
for royalty'.  They stayed three days in Japan, first at Yokohama and
then at Kobe.  Ron made meticulous notes about everything he saw,
including detailed descriptions of how the people dressed.  Much of
the devastation caused by the earthquake four years earlier was still
evident -- including the ruin of a `hideously scrambled' fort guarding
the harbour entrance in which 1700 men had died when the walls
collapsed.  Ron was generally unimpressed by Japan and clearly
unprepared, as a young American innocent of foreign ways, for the
sights and smells of the Orient -- the disease and the dirt, the
stinking

                          -- end page 29 --

slums and the beggars sleeping in the street.  `It doesn't look the
happy land so pictured in stories,' he concluded.  `Only at cherry
blossom time or in the romantic novel do I believe there is beauty in
Japan.'

  He was rather more cheered by Shanghai, the *President Madison*'s
next port of call, partly because the first flag to greet them as they
entered the Yangtze river was the Stars and Stripes, flying from the
stern of a US Navy destroyer.  The bustling river traffic -- `millions
of fishing boats and junks' -- astonished him, as did the fact that
the `ragged and decrepit' coolies who unloaded the ship only earned
fifteen cents a day and `fifteen cents Mex at that!'  They lived, he
added somewhat unnecessarily, `worse than anyone in the world'.

  He and his mother accompanied the ship's chief officer, who was also
from Seattle, on a drive through the town.  `Opening down the main
avenue over which our car travelled were hundreds of narrow intriguing
streets, teeming with life.  Great fish floated here and there and
paper banners hung overhead.  The stores were stocked with every sort
of junk.  Dried fish rattled on strings in the wind.  Queer looking
foods and drygoods were side by side.  Sikh policemen were everywhere.
They are big dark bearded fellows and in their turbans and short
trousers of khaki look picturesque.  They carry great rattan sticks
and a rifle across the back.  Tommy Atkins was very much in evidence
and the American Marines, as well as Japanese and British marines.  On
the outside of the British concession I saw a British tommy take a
Chinaman by the coat and knock him across the street.  On Bubbling
Well Road is a beautiful hotel once the home of a Chinese gentleman.
The grounds are laid out with pergolas and fountains and the hotel has
tapestries and mosaic tile floors.'

  It was clear that by the time he reached Shanghai, Ron had adopted
some of the more obvious colonial mannerisms, for he casually reported
joining the Madison crowd for `tiffin' at the Palace Hotel later that
day and would also soon be referring to the natives as `gooks'.

  From Shanghai they sailed for Hong Kong, a city that was `very
British on the surface and very native underneath' May and Ron took a
tram up to the top of the mountain overlooking the harbour, but they
found the heat and humidity very exhausting, not to mention the
throngs of coolies `not caring where they spit', and they were glad to
leave on the last leg of their voyage on the *President Madison* to
Manila in the Philippines.

  In Manila they were to transfer, with fifteen other Navy families,
to a US Navy cargo auxiliary, the *USS Gold Star*, which was anchored
across the bay at Cavite, waiting to take them to Guam.  There was
considerable confusion unloading the baggage from the

                          -- end page 30 --

*President Madison*, which Ron blamed on the `lazy, ignorant natives',
and it was some time before their trunks were safely on their way and
May and Ron could relax with a glass of lemon squeeze at the Manila
Hotel.

  Next day Ron went sight-seeing with a Lieutenant McCain from the
Cavite Navy Yard, an acquaintance of his father.  To a boy who loved
blood-and-thunder adventure stories, the old Spanish forts in Cavite
exercized a compelling fascination.  `All the old guns have been
dismantled, but the emplacements remain.  Such an awful place in which
to fight.  The places were traps as it takes four men to even open a
door.  There are tunnels connecting all of them to an ancient
cathedral which is un-used and filled with snakes, bats and trash.
Very mysterious.  I looked it over well when Mr McCain told me that
millions in Spanish gold were buried in those tunnels.  Some day I am
going back there and dredge [*sic*] the whole place.  *Maybe*.'

  That evening he was taken to `Dreamland', one of the more
respectable bars in Manila where girls were available for hire, for
dancing, at five centums a dance.  `Of course we didn't dance,' Ron
was at pains to record, `because by doing so one loses cast.  The
Charleston has just hit them, but it's too hot (I mean the weather).'

  Two days later, the *USS Gold Star* weighed anchor and set course
for Guam, a seven-day voyage across the Philippine Sea which could not
have offered a greater contrast to the comparative luxury of a
passenger ship like the *President Madison*.  The accommodation was
spartan, the food was poor and the officers remained haughtily aloof
from their luckless passengers, even eating at a separate table in the
dining-room.  To make matters worse, the weather was terrible and the
ship pitched and rolled and wallowed in a grey, relentlessly heaving
sea with the constant threat of a typhoon gathering on the horizon.
It was, said Ron, a `gosh-awful trip'.

  When a smudge of land appeared in the far distance and word went
round that it was Guam, the relief was palpable.  The *USS Gold Star*
hove to off Guam on Monday 6 June, thirty-six days after the Hubbards
had left San Francisco.  Hub was on the second tender that came out to
the ship and Ron spoke for both himself and his mother when he noted:
`We were sure glad to see him.'

  Ron's first impression of Guam, with its thickly forested green
hills and little red-roofed houses, was favourable.  Even the sickly
sweet aroma of copra which filled the air was distinctly preferable to
the stench of open drains that had predominated at all their previous
ports of call.  The poverty, filth and disease which had been so
prevalent elsewhere were kept in abeyance in Guam by the overwhelming
presence of the United States Navy, which pushed, prodded and paid the
local Chamorro natives to keep the streets clean and to observe basic
hygiene.

                          -- end page 31 --

  Hub had been allocated a large bungalow surrounded by banana trees
in the town of Agana, about five miles from the harbour.  It was still
not fully furnished when May and Ron arrived, but Ron liked the cool
sparse rooms with their highly polished floors of black hardwood,
reflecting the light filtering through the bamboo screens.  The family
had two houseboys and a cook and lived in a style that none of them
had ever previously experienced.  May, for example, had never had
servants in her life and very much enjoyed the novelty.

  Ron's father had arranged for him to spend part of the six weeks he
was due to stay on the island teaching English to Chamorro children in
the local grade school, which was run by the Navy.  Ron did not object
to undertaking this chore, but found it a more or less impossible task
because of his red hair.  Although he had not been instantly
proclaimed king on arrival, he quickly discovered that his hair caused
much excitement and interest, both on the street and in the classroom.
The Chamorros, dark-skinned people of Indonesian stock, seemed unable
to believe that a human head could sprout such a fiery crine and Ron's
students spent their entire lesson staring uncomprehendingly at the
top of his head.  His parents laughed when he told them what was
happening and his mother, drawing on her own teaching experience,
softly advised him just to do his best.

  When he was not trying to be a teacher, Ron spent a great deal of
his time satisfying his natural curiosity by researching the island's
history and culture.  Some of his notes about Guam and its people bear
a strange similarity to stories that would later be incorporated into
the L. Ron Hubbard mythology.  The Chamorro dialect, for example,
which had originally contained some two thousand words and idioms, had
been reduced over the years to around three hundred idioms with an
almost non-existent grammatical structure -- curiously akin to
Igoroti, the primitive language Ron was said to have learned in a
single night by the light of a kerosene lamp.  And one of the
Hubbards' house boys told Ron about a devil ghost called `Tadamona'
which was believed to haunt Missionary Point, where a fast-flowing
underground river made eerie moaning noises at night ...

  In Guam, as elsewhere, Ron was particularly intrigued by the forts,
which held a special romance and mystery he toiled to convey in his
journal: `An especially interesting one is the fort of San Juan de
`Apra [*sic*] in Apra harbour.  Its doors have been sealed for years
and, as if to hide the structure, vines wind themselves about it.  The
walls were built with remarkable skill, especially the corners.  Most
of the prison and turret have been eroded and have falled [*sic*] into
decay, but the powder house and firing steps remain.  The walks that
once heard the rhythm of the sentry's beat, and the crash of the
evening gun are now

                          -- end page 32 --

the running place of lizards.  One cannot imagine the solitude and
depression that surrounds it.  All that beauty and grandeur which
surrounded it yesterday has faded as the rose which dies and leaves
its thorn.'

  Ron was due to leave Guam on Saturday 16 July 1927, on board an
ammunition ship, *USS Nitro*, bound for Bremerton.  His parents drove
him down to the harbour in the early morning and accompanied him out
to the ship to help him with his bags, now crammed with souvenirs and
presents for the family back home in Helena.  The three of them had a
quiet breakfast together on board and at eight o'clock May and Hub
said goodbye and returned ashore on a tender, hardly daring to look
back at the lonely figure of their son standing at the rail.  The *USS
Nitro* sailed within the hour.

  If Ron was sad to be leaving, he made no mention of it in his
journal.  He `felt rather lonely' on the first day out, but the two
boys with whom he was sharing a cabin, Jerry Curtis and Dick
Derickson, were so homesick that both were close to tears.  Ron did
his best to cheer them up.  He particularly liked Dick, who was from
Seattle and whom he had met at Camp Parsons.  `Dick and I have been
reading up on atheism,' he noted.  `Such a terrible thing to make an
issue of.  Something is at the bottom of it.  I'll find out in the
States.'

  Four days out, the *USS Nitro* hove to off Wake Island so that the
crew could go fishing and swimming.  Ron went ashore in a whale boat
and discovered that the island was inhabited by many strange and
beautiful birds, apparently quite unafraid of the sailors walking
round their nests.  In the lagoon, he wrote, the multi-coloured
tropical fish looked like `a forth [*sic*] of July parade' and the
water was so clear he could see through thirty fathoms to the rocks on
the bottom.

  Deprived of the recreations offered on board the *President
Madison*, Ron found the return voyage, courtesy of the US Navy, to be
unremittingly dreary.  He liked to watch the stars at night ('never in
my life have I seen such beauties') and during the day he enjoyed
visiting the engine-room, but much of the time he was bored.

  Ironically, Ron had seriously discussed with his father the
possibility of a career in the Navy, although he certainly did not
seem much enthused by his experience on the *USS Nitro*.  `If this
ship is the cream of the naval duty,' he wrote, `I'll sure stick to
milk.  The officers work about an hour and then sit around and look
bored.  The enlisted personnel bear the brunt of the work.'
Nevertheless, he could not have been completely deterred, for he noted
that he and Dick would be going to Annapolis (home of the Naval
Academy) at the same time.

  Off Hawaii, one of the officers told Ron he could go up to the
lookout in the crow's nest.  `A moment later found me staring up the
forward mast which looked ungodly high.  I overcame a nervous

                          -- end page 33 --

tremor and climbed a rope up to the steel ladder ... Nice prospect a
fall was.  Then I tackled the first fifty feet of ladder.  It surely
looked and felt insubstantial.  About half way up I thought I'd never
been so nervous before.  After that ladder came an even smaller steel
ladder.  Up I went all confidence by this time.  In a moment I reached
the nest and sure enough there was the lookout reading a `Western
Story'.  He invited me to climb in.  The last in itself is worse than
the rest of it put together.  One has to dangle with nothing under him
and work half way round to the other edge.  Over the side of the box I
swung and then in.  My God what a relief!'

  On 6 August, in thick fog, the *USS Nitro* nosed into Bremerton and
moored to Pier 4A at the Navy Yard.  Ron disembarked without a
moment's regret, thankful to be back on dry land and away from the
cramped and stultifying atmosphere of the ship.  Next day he caught a
train for Helena, where he was welcomed by the Waterburys like the
prodigal son.  In `the old brick', savouring the heady fragrance of
his grandmother's baking, which he remembered so well, he regaled
everyone with the tales of his adventures and if he embroidered the
account just a little, who could have blamed him?

  Even a local newspaper apparently felt his exploits worth reporting
in a double-column story under the headline `Ronald Hubbard Tells of
His Trip to Orient and Many Experiences'.  The interview closely
followed the notes Ron had made in his journal except for the
surprising claim, somehow neglected in his diary, that he had
witnessed an execution while he was in China.  `Ronald Hubbard has the
distinction', the story concluded, `of being the only boy in the
country to secure an eagle scout badge at the age of twelve years.'

  [He had, in fact, been thirteen.  But this small slip-up and the
curious omission of the `execution' from his journal were not nearly
as puzzling as the fact that it has never been possible to trace the
newspaper from which the cutting was taken.[6] It appears to exist
only as a photostat in the archives of the Church of Scientology
labelled `Clipping from Helena, Montana, newspaper circa 1929'.]

  On 6 September 1927, Ron enrolled in the junior year at Helena High
School, a forbidding Victorian building of rough-hewn grey stone with
castellated gables and turrets, just five minutes' walk from the
Waterbury home.  A cousin, Gorham Roberts, who was in the same year,
introduced Ron to many of his new school-mates, but no one found it
easy to settle down to work, for the whole school was distracted by
the frustrating knowledge that Charles A. Lindbergh was visiting
Helena.  He was on a triumphant tour of the country after flying the
Atlantic alone in his tiny monoplane *Spirit of St Louis* and
returning as a national hero, and there was not a boy or girl in the
school who did not fervently wish to catch a glimpse of him.

__________
 6. Letter to author from Montana Historical Society, 24 Mar 1986

                          -- end page 34 --

  At first Ron seemed perfectly happy at Helena High, perfectly happy
to be back with his grandparents.  In October he joined the Montana
National Guard, enlisting at the State Armory on North Main Street and
claiming he was eighteen to avoid having to wait months for his
parents to send consent papers from Guam.  As a private in
Headquarters Company of 163rd Infantry he felt he cut quite a dash as
he strode through the town in his uniform -- broad-brimmed hat, khaki
shirt and breeches, gloves tucked into the belt -- to report for
training at the Armory, where twin flagpoles rose from perfectly
manicured patches of green grass.

  At school, he managed to get himself appointed to the editorial
staff of *The Nugget*, Helena High's bi-monthly newspaper.  He would
naturally have preferred to have been editor-in-chief, but as a
newcomer he had to be satisfied with jokes editor, a position he held
jointly with Ellen Galusha.  He was photographed with the rest of the
editorial staff for the year book, standing in the middle of the group
on the steps of the school wearing a suit and a bow tie, eschewing the
faintly raffish literary style affected by his colleagues.  `*The
Nugget* is a really good paper ...'  the caption explained.  `The name
originates from the large expensive gold nuggets which the prospectors
mined in previous years on the main street of Helena.'

  Although Ellen Galusha rather upstaged her follow jokes editor by
winning first place in the district finals of the Extemporaneous
Speaking Contest, Ron felt he kept his end up by having one of his
essays selected to represent Helena High in the State Essay Contest.
He had also written a short play which was performed by the junior
branch of the Shriners and very well received.

  After school on 2 December, Ron and a group of his friends rushed
round to the showrooms of Capital Ford hoping to see the sleek new
Model A. Fords which were said to have arrived in town that day.  They
found a crowd of around four thousand people jamming the street
outside the Ford agency, all with the same idea.  Replacement for the
beloved Model T., the Model A. was not only a completely new design
but was also available in a number of different *colours*, a
development which caused Ron and his friends to gasp with amazement.
Later, over sodas at the Weiss Caf on North Main Street, the boys
hotly debated which of the models -- roadster, sports coup or sedan
-- was preferable and which colour each of them would be purchasing as
soon as they had some money.

  That winter was the worst in living memory for the people of Helena.
On 8 December, Ron woke to find the overnight temperature had dropped
fifty-eight degrees [Fahrenheit] to thirty-five below zero, one of the
coldest on record.  Outside, a biting blizzard swept down from the
mountains, obliterating the town and the surrounding country.

                          -- end page 35 --

Morning editions of the *Helena Independent* were full of terrible
stories of families marooned and frozen to death, school buses lost in
the storm and entire herds of cattle wiped out.

  The snow had still not melted when Ron began preparing for the
annual Vigilante Day Parade, the high spot of the school year, held on
the first Friday in May.  Although the theme of the parade always
harked back to the pioneer days, Ron plumped for a more unconventional
role and decided he would go as a pirate.  He somehow persuaded five
doubting friends, two boys and three girls, to join him, casually
brushing aside any objections based on the rather obvious absence of
pirate involvement in Montana's early history.  Aunt Marnie helped
with the costumes by taking down her drapes and removing the brass
rings to provide the pirates with suitable earrings, as worn on the
Spanish Main.

  Thus it was that as the Vigilante Day Parade, led by the Helena High
School Band, progressed along Main Street on the afternoon of Friday 4
May 1928, the settlers, cowboys, cowgirls, miners, trappers,
prospectors, Indians and sheriffs were inexplicably joined by a small
band of ferocious pirates with eyepatches and painted beards, waving
wooden cutlasses.  At the dance after the parade, `Pirates by R.
Hubbard' won one of three prizes in the `Most Original' category.

  The report on the parade in the *Helena Independent* next day
positively glowed with pride: `The parade was larger, more ingenious,
spectacular, striking, imaginative and suggestive of the past this
year than ever before.  The high school students once more covered
themselves with glory -- besides having a jolly good time and
communicating a lot of fun to the bystanders ... As a success the
Vigilante parade was complete, and once more advertized to the world
that the Helena High School and Last Chance Gulch puts on a show once
a year unmatched elsewhere on the globe.'

  A week later, Ron disappeared.  When he did not show up for school
on Monday 14 May, there were excited rumours in the junior year that
he had been expelled.  `Certainly we believed he had left in a hurry,
under something of a cloud,' said Gorham Roberts.  `The story was that
he had got mad at a teacher and put his butt into a waste-paper
basket.  Old A. J. Roberts, the principal, was a German from
Heidelberg and a strict disciplinarian.  Ron knew that he would never
put up with such behaviour, so he didn't trouble to come back.'[7]

  Aunt Marnie explained it differently: `He just got itchy feet.  He
wanted to see something new.  He was an adventurer at heart.  The
wanderlust was in him and he couldn't see himself staying in a little
town like Helena when there was adventure ahead.  He went off to
Seattle to stay with my sister Midgie and her husband Bob.  They

__________
 7. Interview with Gorham Roberts, Helena, Montana, April 1986

                          -- end page 36 --

tried to talk him into staying with them, but he went south, hopped a
ship and worked his way back to Guam.'[8]

  Whatever the truth, Ron never returned to Helena High.  Two years
later, he wrote two colourful accounts of the events leading up to his
departure from Helena.  Although they were only separated by a few
pages in his journal, many of the details do not match; indeed some
passages read suspiciously like the adventure stories he was
constantly scribbling in his spare time.

  It seemed he was driving his friends home after the Vigilante Day
Parade in his `mighty Ford' (presumably his grandfather's Model T.)
when someone threw a baseball at them and hit him on the head.  He
stopped the car, chastized the offenders and dealt with them so
severely that he broke four `marcarpals' in his right hand.

  `That was the beginning and the end.  I couldn't wait and school
faded from the picture.  My hand was reset four times and life lost
its joy.  I sold the Ford and went West, taking Horace Greeley's
[*sic*] advice.'

  He announced to his grandfather that he had decided on a `change of
scenery' and caught a train for Seattle, where he stayed with his aunt
and uncle for a couple of days.  On 7 June, trading on his `scout
prestige', he moved to Camp Parsons for about a week, until it became
too crowded and he decided to move on.

  `I set out at noon, hiking a swift pace under a heavy pack through
the lofty, virgin Olympics.  At nine o'clock that night I made camp
about two miles down the trail from "Shelter Rock".  Twelve hours
later I was limp on top of a boulder pile, saved from a broken spine
by my pack.  I gazed at the blood pumping from my wrist and decided it
was high time I went to visit herr Docteur.'

  No explanation is offered for this incident or for how he managed,
in such a parlous state, to find his way back to Bremerton.  It was
there, while being treated by a Navy doctor, he was told that a US
Navy transport, *USS Henderson*, was due to leave for Guam from San
Francisco in a week's time (in the first account), or two weeks (in
the second account).  That night (first account), eight days later
(second account), he was on a Shasta Limited overnight train heading
south for California, apparently intent on rejoining his parents in
Guam.

  By the time he got to the Transport Dock in San Francisco the
*Henderson* had already sailed.  With only twenty dollars left in his
pocket, Ron invested a nickel in a newspaper and read on the shipping
page that the liner *President Pierce*, bound for China, was moored at
Dock 28.  An hour later he was standing in line at the dock, waiting
to sign on as an ordinary seaman.  While in the queue, smoking to calm
his nerves, he suddenly decided it would be worth a call to Twelfth
Naval District to find out where the *Henderson* was.  Perhaps, he

__________
 8. Interview with Mrs. Margaret Roberts, Helena, Montana, April 1986

                          -- end page 37 --

thought, she had not yet sailed for Guam, but had just moved down the
coast to another port.  His hunch was correct -- an officer at Twelfth
District told him the *Henderson* was in San Diego.  Within half an
hour -- he appeared remarkably lucky with connections -- he was on a
bus bound for San Diego, five hundred miles further south.

  When he finally caught up with the *Henderson* in San Diego, `faint
from lack of sleep and food', he was told that Washington would need
to approve his request for a passage to Guam.  Nothing if not bold,
Ron called on the Aide to the Commandant, who turned out to be
extraordinarily obliging and agreed to telegraph Washington
immediately.  Satisfied there was nothing more he could do for the
moment, Ron rented a cheap room near the naval headquarters and slept
for eighteen hours.  When he woke, he learned that a signal had been
received from Washington saying that his father's permission would be
needed before he could join the ship.

  `With fear and trembling, I had a radio sent out to Guam ... I
walked the streets of San Diego all that day with Old Man Worry
gnawing at my brow.  Would Dad reply "No!"  or would he say "Yes"?
You see, I had reason to be worried.  This would be the first
intimation he would have of my portending return ...'

  Out in Guam, Lieutenant Hubbard no doubt wondered what the hell was
going on when he received a message from Washington informing him that
his son was in San Diego requesting passage on a ship to Guam.  It was
to his credit that he immediately cabled his permission, which arrived
in San Diego, according to Ron, only an hour before the *Henderson*
was due to sail.

  This does not quite accord with the deck log of the *Henderson*,
which records that `L.R. Hubbard, son of Lieutenant H. R. Hubbard USN,
reported on board for transportation to Guam' at 1620 hours on
Saturday 30 June.  The ship did not sail until 1330 the following day.
Neither do the dates match Lieutenant Hubbard's navy record, which
indicates that Ron wrote to the Navy Department asking about
transports to Guam as early as 10 May; he submitted a formal
application for a passage in the *Henderson* on 28 May.[9]

  However, Ron never considered that strict regard for the truth
should be allowed to spoil a good story and so he described how he was
standing with his suitcase in his hand at the bottom of the gangway to
the ship when the cable came through.  He had lost his trunk,
somewhere between San Francisco and San Diego, but he was unconcerned.
`The *Henderson* sailed with me aboard,' he noted triumphantly.  `My
possessions were: two handkerchiefs, two suits underwear, one pair
shoes, one worn suit, one thin topcoat, one tooth brush, two pair
socks and two pennies.  No wardrobe, no money ...'

  He ended this part of his journal with a jaunty little postscript

__________
 9. H.R. Hubbard navy record

                          -- end page 38 --

addressed to the reader: `I will tell you the secret of this strange
life I had.  Sssh!  I was born on Friday the thirteenth.'

  It was, unfortunately, not quite true.  13 March 1911 was a Monday.

                          -- end page 39 --

                             *Chapter 3*

                          *Explorer Manqu*

  `The following years, from 1925 to 1929, saw the young Mr Hubbard,
between the ages of 14 and 18, as a budding and enthusiastic world
traveller and adventurer.  His father was sent to the Far East and
having the financial support of his wealthy grandfather, L. Ron
Hubbard, spent these years journeying through Asia ...

  `With the death of his grandfather, the Hubbard family returned to
the United States and [Ron] enrolled at the George Washington
University in the fall of 1930.  At George Washington L. Ron Hubbard
became associate editor of the University newspaper, "The Hatchet",
and was a member of many of the University's clubs and societies
... Here, also, he was enrolled in one of the first nuclear physics
courses ever taught in an American university.

  `As a student, barely 20 years old, he supported himself by writing
and within a very few years he had established himself as an essayist
in the literary world ... He made the time during these same busy
college years to act as a director with the Caribbean Motion Picture
Expedition of 1931.  The underwater films made on that journey
provided the Hydrographic Office and the University of Michigan with
invaluable data for the furtherance of their research.

  `Then in 1932, the true mark of an *exceptional* explorer was
demonstrated.  In that year L. Ron Hubbard, aged 21, achieved an
ambitious "first".  Conducting the West Indies Minerals Survey, he
made the first complete mineralogical survey of Puerto Rico.  This was
pioneer exploration in the great tradition, opening up a predictable,
accurate body of data for the benefit of others ...'  (*Mission Into
Time*, published by the Church of Scientology, 1973)

                              * * * * *

The *USS Henderson* arrived off Guam on 25 July 1928 in heavy squalls
and lay to on the lee side of the island for five days, waiting for an
opportunity to enter the harbour.  The weather did not seem to bother
Ron.  `That trip was the best I ever took,' he wrote in his journal,
`and the best I ever hope to take.  The Navy gave me a

                          -- end page 40 --

kangaroo court martial, there were nine young grass widows aboard, we
danced every other night, the movies were good.'

  Ron omitted from his journal any mention of how his parents reacted
to his return.  After more than a year apart, Harry and May were no
doubt happy to see their seventeen-year-old son again, but they could
not have been too pleased by his impetuous decision to drop out of
High School.  Since there was no possibility of getting him back to
the United States in time for the start of the senior year -- even if
he would agree to go -- it was decided that he should stay on Guam and
be tutored by his mother in preparation for the entrance examination
to the Naval Academy.

  In spite of the limitations of her teaching experience, May seemed
undaunted by the task of bringing her wayward son up to a sufficiently
high educational standard to get him through the reputedly tough and
highly competitive exam.  And with servants padding softly about the
house, attending unbidden to every household chore, she had plenty of
time to devote to her son's studies.

  For his part, Ron could not have been happier to substitute the
authoritarian regime of old A.J. Roberts at Helena High for what he
considered to be the exotic tropical allure of Guam and the gentle
coaching of his mother.

  In October, the Hubbards had an opportunity to take a recreational
trip to China on the *USS Gold Star*, the ship that had brought May
and Ron to Guam in the summer of 1927.  Neither of them had much liked
the ship, but the prospect of ten days' sight-seeing in Peking
outweighed any reservations they might have had about another voyage.
Hub warned his son that he would only be allowed to accompany them on
condition that he continued his studies while the ship was at sea.
Ron readily agreed.

  On 6 October, thirty families reported on board the *USS Gold Star*
for transportation to the China ports and return.  Like the other
officers on the excursion, Lieutenant Hubbard signed on for `temporary
duty' -- he was Assistant to the Supply Officer.  As previously, Ron
kept a log of the trip, using one of the accounts books that his
father could always provide.  `It is a delightful sensation', he
scrawled in an early entry, `to once more experience the pounding of
engines below me and to hear the swish of a dark-blue sea outside our
port.'  At the bottom of the page was a world-weary, elegiac
postscript: `Another boat caught.  Is ever thus?'

  After a stop in Manila, which he reported as being like `Guam plus
XXX and a few trimmings', they sailed north towards the China coast.
Ron was reluctantly confined to a desk in Cabin 9, claiming good
progress with his studies.

  The *Gold Star* re-fuelled with coal at Tsingtao, a busy port on the

                          -- end page 41 --

Shantung Peninsula only recently returned to China after being
occupied for some years, first by the Germans, then the Japanese.  Ron
took the trouble to research Tsingtao's history and concluded that the
Chinese, with all their corruption, were unworthy heirs to their own
territory inasmuch as they had failed to profit from the efforts of
Germany and Japan to clean up their country.  `A Chinaman can not live
up to a thing,' he wrote, `he always drags it down.'  On 30 October he
noted thankfully: `We have left Tsingtao forever, I hope.'

  On the following day the *Gold Star* anchored off T'ang-ku, from
where its passengers took a train to Peking.[1] Like American tourists
the world over, they made sure they got at least a glimpse of all the
sights, which Ron described as `rubberneck stations'.  He was
decidedly unimpressed by Peking's historical and religious
architectural heritage.

  The Temple of Heaven, probably the supreme achievement of
traditional Chinese architecture, he considered `very gaudy and more
or less crudely done'.  The summer palace was `very cheap as to
workman-ship' and the winter palace was `not much of a palace in my
estimation'.

  The Lama temple, closed a few days after their visit by the
newly-formed National Government, was `miserably cold and very shabby
... The people worshipping have voices like bull-frogs and beat a drum
and play a brass horn to accompany their singing (?).'

  As for the Imperial palaces in the Forbidden City, one was `very
trashy-looking' and most of the others were `not worth mentioning'.
Only the Great Wall of China seemed to fire his imagination and that
mostly because it was `the only work of man's hand visible from Mars'.
If China turned it into a `rolly coaster', he added, `it could make
millions of dollars every year.'

  Neither did the Chinese people endear themselves to the opinionated
young American.  He found them shallow, simple-minded, dishonest, lazy
and brutal.  `When it comes to the Yellow Races overrunning the world,
you may laugh,' he noted.  `... [The Chinese] have neither the
foresight or endurance to overrun any white country in any way except
by intermarriage.  One American marine could stand off a great many
yellowmen without much effort.'

  Even the climate failed to please.  Winter lasted from October to
May, he said, the cold was intense, and it was so dry that dust formed
ankle-deep in the roads and caused `Peking sore throat', a formidable
complaint that endured all winter.

  `I believe that the most startling thing one can see in northern
China', he wrote, `is the number of camels.  These are of a very mean
breed but they resist cold and carry burdens which is all the Chinaman
requires of them.  Every day in Peking one can see many caravans in

__________
 1. Deck log, *USS Gold Star*

                          -- end page 42 --

the streets.  They have a very stately shamble.  They carry their head
high; their mean mouths wagging and their humps lolling from side to
side.  All my life I have associated camels with Arabs and it strikes
a discordant note with me to see the beasts shepherded by Chinamen.'

  The *Gold Star* stopped at Shanghai and Hong Kong before heading
back to Guam, but Ron tired of further descriptive writing, apart from
taking a final swipe at the luckless Chinese race.  `They smell', he
concluded, `of all the baths they didn't take.  The trouble with China
is, there are too many chinks here.'

  On the final leg of the voyage, Ron's devotion to his studies rather
appeared to falter, for he began filling his journal with
one-paragraph synopses of short stories that he had either written, or
perhaps intended to write, for magazines like *True Confession* and
*Adventure*.

  It was clear from these entries that he was already thinking of a
career as a writer, the Naval Academy notwithstanding.  Indeed, he
gave the impression that he had been grinding away at a typewriter for
years, ending one synopsis, titled `Armies for Rent', with a
nonchalant addendum that it would include the `usual plot
complications'.

  Predictably, the Orient was his favourite setting and the hero was
invariably a white adventurer, as in `Secret Service': `Adventure.
All in a day's work.  Casual laddie in Hankow.  Saves town.  Joins
Brit SS to carry out such orders as "Giovinni in Mukden exciting
Communists.  Use your own judgement.  C13".'

  None of his efforts, it must be said, were startlingly original:
`Love story.  Goes to France.  Meets swell broad in Marseilles.  She
takes him to her sink, bedroom and bath where he lives until notable
citoyens object.  He stands them off and takes the next boat for
America having received a long expected will donation.'

  On page 119 of the accounts book, Ron settled down to write a
complete, though untitled, story which began: `A lazy sun peeped over
the horizon to throw glittering streamers of light across the breakers
on the surf.  The laggoon [*sic*] lay blue and cool.  Tropical birds
winged about their daily business and two figures lay stretched on the
white coral sand.  Two ragged figures, several feet apart ...'

  Ron's grasp of English grammar was as uncertain as his spelling.  It
transpired that these two figures, a boy and a girl, were the sole
survivors of a shipwreck.  The girl roused the boy in traditional
fashion ('Bob!  Bob!  Speak to me!'), whereupon Bob spoke thus:
`"Their [*sic*] gone, all gone, they're dead and the ship is at the
bottom."'

  Alone on a desert island paradise, nature takes its course and they
swear undying, though entirely chaste, love.  But after being rescued
and returning to the United States they drift apart.  The story --

                          -- end page 43 --

interrupted on page 123 by the scribbled working of some hated algebra
equations -- ends with a poignant reunion in a San Francisco hotel
lobby during which the couple laugh at their earlier foolishness.

  Although Ron's narrative writing was still immature, he demonstrated
an obvious talent in the craft of short-story writing, structuring the
narrative skilfully and compensating for what he lacked in literary
skill by sheer productivity.

  The *Gold Star* arrived back at Guam on 18 December and in the weeks
and months that followed Ron turned out dozens of stories and essays,
filling one accounts book after another.  His mother took a photograph
of him as a budding young writer, sitting at a desk in the bungalow
with his fingers poised on the keys of a big upright typewriter,
although he actually preferred to write by hand in a large, untidy
script, frequently crossing out words or sentences, sometimes even
whole pages, as he progressed.

  Like all writers, there were some days when it just would not come
right:

  `The sun was hot, the day was still, the palm trees gaudy green,
lined the beach of that tropical isle ...

  `The sun was hot, the day was still and Hospital Corpsman James
Thorpe surveyed his tiny domain ...

  `The sun was hot, the day was still ...

  `The sun was hot and except for the monotonous drone of the sea
beating the cruel reef the day was still ...'

  At the age of eighteen, Ron was a pink-faced, lanky youth with a
cowlick of red hair and a spotty complexion, but he was writing as if
he was a well-travelled man of the world, a carefree, two-fisted,
knockabout adventurer with a zest for life.  It was an image he was
able to create by using the slender experience of his brief travels in
the East to provide a gloss of verisimilitude on the overheated
combustion of his imagination.

  In this way, he felt able to philosophize about `the untrustworthy,
lying, cruel, changeable, satirical Lady Luck', as if he had suffered
more than once from her capriciousness: `This humorist of humorists,
this demon of demons has dragged men from their places in the sun into
the slime of oblivion; has made beggars kings; has, with a whisper,
made and crushed thousands; has laughed at the beings who supposed
they ruled our destinies; and has killed enough men to patch hell's
highway its blistering length.'

  Only when dealing, gingerly, with the opposite sex did the pubescent
man of the world lose his assurance.  The story that began so
tortuously with `The sun is hot ...'  was about a male nurse in the
Navy who fell for his native assistant.  `She took the chair with a
sly glance at the boy and folded her slim brown hands in her lap.  The

                          -- end page 44 --

Corpsman was suddenly aware that she was beautiful.  He swam for a
moment in the depths of her clear brown eyes and then seated himself
quickly upon the grass.  He was somewhat startled by his discovery and
told himself fiercely that she was native, native, native.'

  When, inevitably, they fell into each other's arms ('Dimly he saw
Marie on the porch and in a moment he felt her in his arms ...')  Ron
seemed unsure how to proceed with the story.  He scored through the
next four lines so heavily as to make them illegible, then abandoned
it.

  As his attention was so diverted by his fantastic excursions into
his imagination, it was perhaps no surprise that Ron failed the
entrance examination to the Naval Academy at Annapolis.  Mathematics,
which he detested, let him down.[2] His father was disappointed but
still convinced that Ron could get through the examination.
Lieutenant Hubbard's tour of duty in Guam was soon coming to an end
and he knew that his next posting would be to Washington DC, where he
was to be Disbursing Officer at the Naval Hospital.  He discovered
that Swavely Preparatory School in Manassas, Virginia -- which was
within the Washington DC metropolitan area -- ran a special course for
Annapolis candidates and after a lengthy exchange of telegrams between
Guam and Manassas, he managed to enrol Ron for the 1929-30 school
year.

  The Hubbards returned to the United States at the end of August 1929
and went straight to Helena, Montana, for a happy family reunion.
(Their return was not prompted by the death of Ron's `wealthy
grandfather', as suggested in `official' biographies, since Lafayette
Waterbury was still very much alive.  He died, aged sixty-seven, on 18
August 1931.)  May, who had sometimes found the tropical climate in
Guam exhausting, was particularly pleased to be home, filling her
lungs with the sweet mountain air of Montana, and she decided to stay
on for a while when the time came for Hub to take Ron to Washington.

  On 30 September Ron started back at school in the leafy environs of
Manassas.  In Helena, May sat down to write her son a loving, but
gently chiding, letter on the family's rickety typewriter:

  Dearest Ronald,
    Am thinking a lot about this, your first day at school.  Do hope
  you like it and that you study every lesson thoroughly.  Remember
  you are paying for the information and so do not hesitate to ask a
  teacher again and again about anything that is not clear.  I want
  you to hold to just this one job -- getting through school and
  passing examinations at the top.  Don't write anything outside your
  school stuff.  Don't read anything outside of school requirements.
  When you are through with lessons, get outdoors for your health.  If
  you stick to this rule you will win through.

__________
 2. L. R. Hubbard Service Record Book, US Marine Corps

                          -- end page 45 --

    I am feeling worlds better in this mountain air.  It is a
  wonderful change from the tropics.  It is too bad that dad could not
  also have had it instead of going so early on the job.  He did it
  for yon so when you feel like slacking, I want you to remember dad
  gave up his hard earned leave to put you where you are.  There is
  only one way you can pay dad and that is by making good.  Your
  success is our biggest goal in life ...

May went on to tell her son about the weather, a two-day fishing trip
and the trout she had caught, and Toilie being mad because he had not
written her any letters.  He was to let her know if he wanted his
hiking boots.  `I am on my toes to hear all about your school ...'
she concluded.  `With love and best wishes.  Mother.'

  Lieutenant Hubbard's heartfelt hope that his son would follow him
into the US Navy through the Naval Academy was soon to be dashed.
During his first semester at Swavely, Ron went to a doctor complaining
of eye-strain and was sent to the Naval Hospital for tests.  These
revealed him to be so short-sighted that he stood no chance of passing
the medical requirements for entry to Annapolis.  May, meanwhile, had
arrived from Helena and moved into a small house in Oakcrest,
Virginia, which Hub had rented for them.  Many evenings she would sit
with her husband fretting about Ron: Hub's gloom about what the future
held for his son was greatly exacerbated by the Wall Street Crash,
which seemed as if it would engulf the country in catastrophe.

  Ron himself exhibited little regret that a career in the Navy was no
longer an option.  At Swavely he was made an associate editor of the
school's monthly newspaper, the *Swavely Sentinel*, and he was also
busy rehearsing for his part as Anatol in *Episode*, a one-act comedy
which was to launch the Swavely Players' season on 13 December.  In
truth, being an editor or an actor was a sight more alluring to him
than being in the Navy, although he would never have admitted it to
his father.

  While Ron was happily immersed in school life at Swavely, his father
was in frequent contact with the Registrar at George Washington
University to try and find a way of getting his son accepted as an
undergraduate.  Lieutenant Hubbard was advised that if Ron could earn
sufficient credits at a recognized school -- Woodward School for Boys,
a YMCA `crammer' in Washington DC, was mentioned -- he would not be
required to sit the College Entrance Examination for the university.

  Accordingly, Ron was enrolled at Woodward in February 1930.  At the
beginning of May he took time off from his studies to enlist as a
Private in the US Marine Corps Reserve, adding two years to his age
and giving his occupation, for some reason, as `photographer'.  It
seems he was unconcerned by such piffling mendacity, even on official

                          -- end page 46 --

documents, for his bold signature appears at the bottom of his Service
Record, confirming both the errors and his physical description height
5'10", weight 165lb, eyes grey, hair red, complexion ruddy.  Six
weeks later he was inexplicably promoted to First Sergeant, a leap in
rank that was astonishing even by his own standards of self-regard.[3]

  Ron's lack of concern for literal truth was exemplified by the
persistence with which he claimed he had once been the youngest eagle
scout.  Even when he won the Woodward school finals in the National
Oratorical Contest, with a speech on `The Constitution; a Guarantee of
the Liberty of the Individual', the school newspaper did not fail to
mention that he was `at one time the youngest eagle scout in America',
although it was not immediately apparent what this had to do with
oratory.[4]

  To the intense pleasure of his parents, Ron graduated in June.  In a
letter to another university (Lieutenant Hubbard was clearly
determined to keep his son's options open), his father wrote proudly:
`Ronald worked day and night to prepare for the several examinations
and was successful in passing all of them.  In my own opinion he has
covered considerably more ground than is usual in any high school
course and the fact that with all the handicaps he has encountered he
has succeeded, he is therefore the best possible subject for
university and college work.'[5]

                                 -*-

On 24 September 1930, Ron was admitted as a freshman to the School of
Engineering at George Washington University, with a major in civil
engineering -- a discipline suggested by his father.  He was
photographed for *The Cherry Tree*, the university year book, standing
in the back row of the student chapter of the American Society of
Civil Engineers in a smart suit and spotted tie, staring solemnly at
the camera, hair smarmed back and instantly identifiable by his
curiously protuberant lips, which often gave him an unfortunately
sullen demeanour.

  The GW Campus, in the heart of Washington DC, was a lively place to
be at the start of the `thirties, despite Prohibition and the worst
depression in American history.  Even though the newspapers were full
of stories about children scavenging for food in garbage cans and
pictures of gaunt faces waiting in bread lines, civil engineering
students seemed to face a bright future, for people were already
beginning to talk about the new era of technocracy, the absolute
domination of technology, and the `Great Engineer' -- Herbert Hoover
-- occupied the White House, just a few blocks from the campus.  In
New York, the Empire State Building, the tallest building in the
world, was nearing completion, testimony to the vision, brilliance and
the bright prospects of American civil engineers.

__________
 3. *Ibid.*
 4. Unidentified newspaper clipping
 5. Letter from H. R. Hubbard to South Eastern University, 1930

                          -- end page 47 --

  Unhappily, it was a future Ron viewed with some jaundice, for his
heart was not in engineering and he had no time for worthy folk like
civil engineers.  While lecturers droned on about the theory of
structure and stress analysis, Ron's imagination roamed the world of
the adventure comic strips which were just then beginning to make an
impact on American mass culture.  His lusty fantasies were still
peopled by spies and commissars, pirates and warlords, English
soldiers of fortune with impeccable credentials and the stiffest of
upper lips pitted against Chinamen of barely credible inscrutability.

  His mother's advice -- `don't write anything outside your school
stuff' -- was quickly forgotten as he covered page after page of his
notebooks with swashbuckling yarns, usually set in the Orient and
always scribbled in obvious haste as if he could never wait to arrive
at the dnouement.  His literary interests naturally attracted him to
the staff of the university's weekly newspaper, the *Hatchet*, but
while Ron considered himself well enough qualified to be an editor,
all he was offered was the job of reporter, which lowly position he
only managed to endure for a few months in the spring of 1931.

  However, he had become much enamoured of late with the infant sport
of gliding and the idea of learning to fly and he was able to use his
influence at the newspaper to stimulate interest in the formation of a
university gliding club.  On 1 April 1931, the *Hatchet* reported that
an initial meeting of the George Washington University Gliding Club
was to he held soon.  The club had secured the use of a Berliner
primary trainer and plans were being made to buy a power glider to
train students for power flight.  Anyone interested, the report
concluded, should contact L. Ron Hubbard at the *Hatchet* office.

  Thereafter, Ron made sure that the activities of the gliding club
were extensively covered.  On 15 April it was reported that `several
GW men who are well versed in the science of aviation and motorless
flight' were expected to attend an initial meeting the following day.
22 April: `Glider Club Begins Training at Congressional Airport.'  13
May: `Members of Glider Club Try Out Theories In Air.'

  Ron adored gliding and spent a great deal of time hanging around at
Congressional Airport in Rockville, Maryland, hoping to cadge an extra
flight and a tow in the Old Ford that pulled the gliders into the air.
He never hesitated to cut classes if it meant `going up' and he relied
on his fellow students to brief him on the content of the classes he
missed.  It was not an ideal way to qualify as a civil engineer.

  Although Ron was elected president of the gliding club, it rather
appeared from the reports in the *Hatchet* that he was in danger of
being overshadowed by his vice-president, one Ray A. Heimburger.  The
13 May story noted, for example, that Heimburger was the first member
to release his tow-line in the air, at the height of forty feet,

                          -- end page 48 --

while Ron was still `trying his hand at the art of making turns in the
air'.  Einstein's theories were a `pipe', Ron was quoted as saying,
`compared to the navigation of a motorless ship'.  A few weeks later,
Heimburger won second place in a spot landing contest at the Curtis
Wright Air Show in Baltimore; another GW student took third place, but
Ron did not merit a mention.

  If there was any jealousy between the president and his deputy, it
was forgotten on 13 July when they both passed their tests at
Congressional Airport.  Ron was rated 85 -- average -- by the examiner
and was awarded Commercial Glider Pilot Licence No 385.[6] By then he
had completed 116 flights -- evidence of the amount of time he had
devoted to the sport in the two months since the gliding club began
training.

  It was hardly surprising that Ron's success as a glider pilot was
not matched by academic achievement and his grades at the end of the
second semester were disappointing.  He got an A for physical
education, B for English, C for mechanical engineering, D for general
chemistry and Fs for German and calculus.  His overall grade for the
year was D average, a result which gave no pleasure at all to his
parents.  They were convinced that he could do better.

  After a stern warning from his father that he would be expected to
show a big improvement in his second year, Ron left Washington to
spend the summer vacation at Port Huron, Michigan, where he had
arranged to help a friend, Philip Browning, run a gliding school.
While he was there, Browning taught him to fly a small stunt plane,
although Ron never held a licence for powered flight.[7]

  Ron was still in Port Huron when he learned in August that his
beloved grandfather had died.  The entire family gathered in Helena
for the funeral -- all six Waterbury `girls' (Hope had died in
childbirth in 1928) were there with their husbands and children and
Ray came from Canada with his wife.  Lafe was buried at Forestvale
Cemetery, a quiet patch of prairie mid-way between the town and the
mountains.  Immediately after the funeral, Ron returned to Washington
to report for two weeks' annual training with the 20th Marine Corps
Reserve and was rated `excellent' for military efficiency, obedience
and sobriety.[8]

  On the morning of Sunday 13 September 1931, the good people of
Gratis, Ohio, a small farming community in Preble County, were
surprised to see a small biplane swoop out of the sky and land on a
field to the east of the town.  The pilots, according to an awed
report in the *Preble County News*, were Philip Browning and `L.  Ron
"Flash" Hubbard, dare-devil speed pilot and parachute artist'.

  The newspaper reported that the two flyers were forced down after
running short of fuel.  George Swisher, on whose farm they landed,

__________
 6. Certified airman's file, Federal Aviation Administration, 12 May
    1986
 7. *Ibid.*
 8. L. R. Hubbard Service Record Book, US Marine Corps

                          -- end page 49 --

must have been a phlegmatic sort of chap, because it was averred that
his first words were: `Anything I can do for you boys?'  After the
`dare-devil speed pilot and parachute artist' had explained the
problem, an obliging local by the name of Raymond Boomershine
volunteered to run into town to get them some gas.

  `Meanwhile,' Ron would recall, `a lot of people were arriving.  They
wanted to know if we needed any help.  And we said the plane had to be
turned around and although they were all in their Sunday best they
grabbed the tail and turned her around.  Then Raymond Boomershine came
back with the gas and helped us fill the tank.  We tried to pay him
and he said "Nope" and my pal said, "We don't know how to thank you."
And Raymond said, "Well, if you put it that way, I always wanted to
ride in one of them things.  How about a short hop?"  That started it.
Everyone and his kids got a ride.'[9]

  According to the *Preble County News*, a total of thirty-six `daring
souls' were given a joy-ride that Sunday, by which time it was too
dark for the fliers to leave.  They stayed the night with Mr and Mrs
Luther Kiracofe and next day `roared on to St Louis, headed for more
adventures'.

  On the same day Ron was roaring to St Louis, he was also placed on
`scholastic probation' at George Washington University because of his
poor grades.  When he eventually returned to Washington he appeared
unabashed by this stricture, for he continued to devote much of his
energy to the gliding club in the hope of raising sufficient funds to
purchase a soaring plane.

  A few years later Ron would provide, in his usual jaunty prose, a
picturesque description of how he had become disillusioned with civil
engineering: `I have some very poor grade sheets which show that I
studied to be a civil engineer in college.  Civil engineering seemed
very handsome at the time.  I met the lads in their Stetsons from
Crabtown to Timbuctu and they seemed to lead a very colorful existence
squinting into their transits.  However, too late, I was sent up to
Maine by the Geological Society to find the lost Canadian Border.
Much bitten by seven kinds of insects, gummed by the muck of swamps,
fed on johnny cake and tarheel, I saw instantly that a civil engineer
had to stay far too long in far too few places and so I rapidly forgot
my calculus and slip stick ...'[10]

  At the end of the next semester, Ron's grades showed no improvement
and he remained on probation.  He was nevertheless elected a member of
Phi Theta XI, the Professional Engineering Fraternity, and was
photographed for the year book in formal evening dress, black tie and
starched wing collar, as if grimly intent, like his fraternity
fellows, on pursuing a career building bridges.  On the evening of 8
January 1932, Ron could be found among the

__________
 9. *Preble County News*, 21 July 1983, (reprint of original article)
10. *Adventure*, 1 October 1935

                          -- end page 50 --

eight hundred revellers at the first Engineering Ball, held in the
west ballroom at the Shoreham Hotel in Washington.  Music for dancing
was provided by Red Anderson and his orchestra -- `Mood Indigo',
`Goodnight Sweetheart', `Minnie the Moocher' and `When the Moon comes
over the Mountain' were the popular songs of the day -- and the
cabaret featured The Troubadours, under the directions of one Trimble
Sawtelle.  The *Hatchet* listed Ron as one of the members of the
organizing committee and declared the event to be a `pronounced'
success.

  A more important event for Ron that month was the publication of his
first article in a magazine.  `Tailwind Willies', in the *Sportsman
Pilot*, described his adventures flying across country in the Midwest
with his friend Philip `Flip' Browning.  `We had three weeks' excess
time before we had to get back to the college grind,' he wrote.  `Our
resources were one Arrow Sport biplane, two toothbrushes and four
itchy feet ... We carefully wrapped our "baggage", threw the fire
extinguisher out to save half a horsepower, patched a hole in the
upper wing and started off to skim over four or five states with the
wind as our only compass ...'

  The forced landing at Gratis was not apparently considered worthy of
mention, perhaps because there appeared to be no shortage of
spectacular, not to say unlikely, incidents.  At Newport, Indiana, for
example, they stopped to take on gas but got stuck in a muddy field.
`I crawled out to let Flip take a whirl at it alone.  By using up half
the field he managed to wish the muddy *Sparrow* into her element, and
after building some altitude, wheeled over to the place where I stood
and called down that there was another field a short distance away.
After pacifying a sheriff, who was about to lock me up for
trespassing, by shoving him into a mud puddle, I hopped onto the
running board of a Purdue Boy's car and burned road over to Flip's new
landing place -- if you could call it that.  The second field was
little better than the first and three attempts were necessary before
we willed the *Sparrow* up just in time to see a nine-foot telephone
wire at the height of our prop.  Flip threw the nose down and the
wires were a scant foot above my head ...'

  Any hope of Ron knuckling down to his studies disappeared early in
1932 when the *Hatchet* announced its intention to publish a monthly
Literary Review.  Nothing could have suited him better, for it
provided him with a further excuse to neglect his tedious engineering
books while he wrote more short stories, and sifted through the
hundreds he had already written, to find something suitable for
publication.

  It was unthinkable, out of the question as far as Ron was concerned,
for the Literary Review to appear without a contribution from L. Ron

                          -- end page 51 --

Hubbard and the first issue, published on 9 February 1932, carried a
short story eponymously titled `Tah', about a twelve-year-old boy
soldier in China on a route march to a gory death at the point of a
bayonet.  It was clearly a successful debut, for the third issue
included `Grounded', another bloodthirsty Hubbard story, this one a
description of a naval engagement on the Yangtze river, swirling with
headless corpses, in which the Commanding Officer of *HMS Spitfire*
meets a sticky end.

  In May, Ron won the Literary Review's drama contest with a one-act
play, *The God Smiles*.  Set in a caf in Tsingtao in Communist China,
the plot hovered uncertainly between Chekhov and farce and involved a
White Russian officer and his lover hiding behind a curtain to escape
arrest by a tyrannical warlord.

  Ron was pleased to have his work acknowledged, but he was by then
immersed in a new and consuming project that would temporarily take
precedence over all his other interests -- even gliding.  He was
making plans to lead an `expedition' to the Caribbean.

                                 -*-

Other, less bombastic, students might have been inclined to describe
the venture as a `summer cruise', but that was not Ron's way.  No, it
was to be nothing short of a fully-fledged expedition and he was to be
its leader.  He had already decided on a suitably grandiose title --
the Caribbean Motion Picture Expedition.  Its dubious scientific aim
was to explore and film the pirate `strongholds and bivouacs of the
Spanish main' and to `collect whatever one collects for exhibits in
museums'.[11]

  The background to the `expedition' was that Ron and his friend Ray
Heimburger had discovered a big old four-masted schooner, the *Doris
Hamlin*, berthed in Baltimore and available for charter through the
summer.  Two hundred feet long and 1061 gross tons, she had never been
fitted with engines and was thus not exactly overwhelmed with
business.  Ron had a long talk with the skipper, Captain Fred
Garfield, and reckoned that if he could get together about fifty other
students they could afford to charter the *Doris Hamlin* for the whole
of the summer vacation.  After all, he reasoned, with unemployment in
the Unites States topping thirteen million, no one could entertain
much hope of finding a vacation job.  It did not take him long to find
enough volunteers to join him -- a tribute to his enthusiasm,
organizational ability and salesmanship.

  The first report of the forthcoming expedition in the *Hatchet*, on
24 May 1932, was not by-lined but bore all the hallmarks of L. Ron
Hubbard's florid literary style.  `Contrary to popular belief,' it
began, `windjammer days are not over and romance refuses to die the
death -- at least for fifty young gentleman rovers who will set sail
on the

__________
11. The *Hatchet*, 24 May 1932

                          -- end page 52 --

schooner *Doris Hamlin* from Baltimore on 20 June for the pirate
haunts of the Spanish Main ...

  `According to L. Ron Hubbard, the strongholds and bivouacs of the
Spanish Main have lain neglected and forgotten for centuries and there
has never been a concerted attempt to tear apart the jungles to find
the castles of Teach, Morgan, Bonnet, Bluebeard, Kidd, Sharp ...  Down
there where the sun is whipping up heat waves from the palms, this
crew of gentleman rovers will re-enact the scenes which struck terror
to the hearts of the world only a few hundred years ago -- with the
difference that this time it will be for the benefit of the fun and
the flickering ribbon of celluloid.  In their spare time, if they have
any, they will scale the heights of belching volcanoes, hunt in the
thick jungles, shoot flying fish on the wing ...'

  Apart from exploring and `re-enacting' pirate scenes (a perhaps
questionable contribution to science), the `gentlemen rovers' also
planned to collect valuable botanical specimens, write articles for
travel magazines and make a number of short movies.  `Scenarios will
be written on the spot in accordance with the legends of the
particular island and after a thorough research through the ship's
library, which is to include many authoritative books on pirates.'

  The itinerary was similarly crowded -- during the one hundred-day
cruise it was planned to stop at sixteen ports on the islands of
Martinique, Dominica, Guadeloupe, Nevis, Montserrat, St Croix,
Vieques, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Jamaica, Gonave, Tortue and the Bahamas.
More experienced expedition leaders might have paused to ponder the
feasibility of attempting to sail five thousand miles in one hundred
days in an old four-master with no auxiliary power, but Ron was able
to draw on all the overweening confidence of his twenty-one years and
would not consider anything remotely less ambitious.

  The expedition certainly appeared to have impressive backing.  There
were reports that the University of Michigan was providing technical
support, the Carnegie Institute and the Metropolitan Museum were
somehow involved, a sea-plane had been shipped on board to take aerial
pictures, Fox Movietone and Path News were competing for film rights
and *The New York Times* had contracted to buy still photographs.
Members of the expedition, it was said, would be sharing the profits
from these various lucrative deals.

  It seemed that young Ron Hubbard had pulled off quite a coup and it
was in the spirit of the greatest possible optimism that the *Doris
Hamlin* set sail from Baltimore on 23 June, only a few days behind
schedule.  As the schooner slipped her moorings, spread her four great
sails and leaned into Chesapeake Bay, every man on board believed he
was on the threshold of a great adventure.  Ron, standing in the bows
with the wind ruffling his red hair, was grinning as broadly as the
rest,

                          -- end page 53 --

even though ten of the `gentleman rovers' had entertained last-minute
second thoughts and pulled out, leaving the expedition in what he
would later ominously describe as a `delicate financial situation'.

  In Washington, nothing was heard of the expedition until 5 August,
when the *Hatchet* reported that the schooner had arrived, `with
everything ship-shape', at Bermuda on 6 July.  The story quoted a
letter, presumably from Ron, explaining some of the expedition's early
difficulties: `We had one H--- of a time getting out of the Chesapeake
Bay with the wind blowing in like the very devil.  After that we had a
couple of days of calm.  Then a stiff breeze came along and we keeled
over and ran before it nicely.  But next it blew into a storm and for
two days we were tossed and rolled about enough to make nearly
everyone sick.  After that we got a break and the last three days our
bowsprit has been cutting through the brine at eight or nine knots.'

  What was not explained was why, two weeks after leaving Baltimore,
the *Doris Hamlin* was in Bermuda, six hundred miles out in the
Atlantic and almost as far from Martinique, her planned first port of
call, as Baltimore.  It was a question that could not be answered
until early in September when the *Doris Hamlin* sailed back into
Chesapeake Bay three weeks before her expected return.  In Baltimore,
Captain Garfield, a man of few words but with thirty years' sailing
experience, sourly declared the voyage `the worst trip I ever made'.

  Even Ron, who did his best to put a brave face on it, could barely
conceal the fact that the Caribbean Motion Picture Expedition had been
a disaster.  From the start, nothing had gone right: after leaving the
east coast of the United States, storms had driven the schooner far
off course and Captain Garfield had told Ron they would have to put
into Bermuda to replenish the fresh water tanks, which had sprung a
leak.  Ron, who knew there was barely enough money in the kitty to
cover expenses, ordered the Captain to stand off the island to try and
avoid harbour charges.  Garfield refused.  A heated argument followed
but the veteran skipper was not of a mind to take orders from a
twenty-one-year-old and sailed his ship into Bermuda harbour.

  At this first landfall, eleven members of the expedition promptly
announced they had had enough adventure and intended to go home.  They
had been disgusted, Ron explained, by the `somewhat turbulent seas'.
It transpired that the ship's cook also suffered from seasickness and
so Ron fired him and hired two Bermudans to take his place.  By the
time he had paid off the cook and settled the bills for fresh water
supplies, mooring and pilotage, the Caribbean Motion Picture
Expedition was in danger of running out of money before it even
arrived in the Caribbean.

  Two days out from Bermuda, bound for Martinique, Ron discovered that
all the fresh water which had been taken on board had

                          -- end page 54 --

leaked away and his relationship with the Captain became even more
acrimonious.  It took the *Doris Hamlin* seventeen days to reach
Martinique, where she arrived a month to the day after leaving
Baltimore.

  As soon as the anchor splashed into the blue water of the bay at
Fort de France, once notorious for yellow fever, several more
`gentleman rovers' abandoned ship and made their own way home,
disinterested in further roving with Ron.  After they had gone ashore,
Ron decided on a showdown with the increasingly surly Captain
Garfield.  As a result of the fresh water dbcle, he said, he would
not be handing over any more money to the Captain.  Garfield stomped
off, muttering dark threats.

  News of this development instantly reached the ears of the six-man
crew, whom Ron had earlier affectionately described as `old sea dogs'.
Faced with a threat to their wages, they instantly turned rabid and
demanded Ron pay them in full, in advance.  The leader of the rapidly
disintegrating expedition tried to placate them and promised to cable
home for more money.

  Meanwhile, Captain Garfield was sending his own cable home -- to the
owners of the *Doris Hamlin*, warning them that the charter fees were
at risk.  Their response was immediate and unequivocal.  Garfield was
ordered to sail the ship straight back to Baltimore.  Ron pleaded for
more time, swore there was no shortage of money, threatened dire
retribution in the courts, appealed to the Captain's better nature --
all to no avail.  In desperation, he went ashore to seek advice from
the US Consul in Fort de France, but was told there was nothing that
could be done.

  The *Doris Hamlin* weighed anchor and set a course for home with not
a single pirate haunt explored.  The `gentlemen rovers' could do no
more than stare moodily from the schooner's rails as the islands they
hoped to visit passed by on the horizon and dropped astern.  `When we
left Martinique, the whole aspect of the trip had changed,' Ron
confessed.  `Morale was down to zero.'

  Captain Garfield was obliged to stop at Ponce in Puerto Rico to take
on supplies of food and water and Ron went ashore once more to make a
final attempt to salvage the expedition.  At the Ponce Harbor Board he
was told he could take legal action against the owners of the *Doris
Hamlin* but that it might take months to resolve.  Sadly, he accepted
defeat and the remaining `gentleman rovers' were carried unwillingly
back to Baltimore.

  After his return to Washington, he wrote an account of the
expedition's troubles for the *Washington Daily News*, contriving to
cast Captain Garfield in the worst possible light.  To head off
assumptions that the whole trip had been a flop, he concluded in

                          -- end page 55 --

typically rhapsodic vein: `Despite these difficulties, we had a
wonderful summer.  The lot of us are tanned and healthy and we know
what few men know these speedy days -- the thrill of plowing thru blue
seas in a wooden ship with nothing but white wings to drive us over
the horizon.'

  By the time Ron and Ray Heimburger got round to preparing a report
for the *Hatchet* on 17 September 1932, the Caribbean Motion Picture
Expedition had been miraculously transformed into something of a
triumph.  Slow sailing, unforeseen expenses and lack of experience
were blamed for the cutback in the itinerary, but `although the
expedition was a financial failure, nevertheless the adventures and
scientific ends accomplished well compensated for the financial
deficit.'

  Among the scientific accomplishments claimed was the collection of a
great many specimens of flora and fauna for the University of
Michigan, some of them `very rare', the provision of underwater film
to the Hydrographic Office, and `much research work in the field of
natural life while at the various islands'.  *The New York Times*, it
was reported, had bought some of the photographs taken on the
expedition.

  Life on board the *Doris Hamlin* was presented in the rosiest of
lights and there was even a hint of romantic adventures ashore: `By
way of amusement on board the ship, the boys entertained themselves
with chess, bridge, volley-ball tournaments, etcetera, and on land,
when they weren't out catching sharks or harpooning or visiting some
colourful spot, they were capably entertained by the dark-eye
seoritas at the various ports.'

  All in all, the report concluded that the expedition was nothing
short of a `glorious adventure'.

  Curiously, no trace may be found of the many contributions to
science which Ron claimed on behalf of the Caribbean Motion Picture
Expedition.  The Hydrographic Office has no record of receiving the
expedition's underwater films,[12] the University of Michigan can find
none of the specimens brought back by the `gentleman rovers'[13] and
the archives at *The New York Times* hold no photographs from the
expedition, no evidence that it was ever intended to buy such
photographs, nor indeed any indication that the newspaper was even
aware of the expedition's existence.[14]

  Mystery similarly surrounds the West Indies Minerals Survey, that
`pioneer exploration in the great tradition' during which Ron is said
to have completed the first mineralogical survey of Puerto Rico.  This
would certainly have been an impressive achievement for a
twenty-one-year-old civil engineering student, but the US Geological
Survey knows nothing about it[15], neither does the Puerto Rican
Department

__________
12. Letter from Oceanographic Office, Dept of Navy, 22 June 1970
13. Letter to author from University of Michigan, 23 April 1986
14. Letter to author from Director of Archives, *The New York Times*,
    14 April 1986
15. Report from Clifford Kaye, US Geological Survey, 22 June 1970

                          -- end page 56 --

of Natural Resources[16] nor Doctor Howard Meyerhoff, visiting
professor in geology at the University of Puerto Rico, 1931-2.[17]

                                 -*-

When Ron returned home from the Caribbean, he discovered that his
grades for his second year at George Washington University were
disastrous: a B for English, but D in calculus and electrical and
magnetic physics, and an F for molecular and atomic physics.  He was
perhaps not surprised and as his expectation of graduating was fast
receding he could see no point in wasting a third year studying a
subject in which he had no interest.  When he adjudged the moment to
be appropriate, he announced to his parents that he had had enough of
civil engineering and did not intend to return to university.

  May and Harry Hubbard were mortified.  As they saw it, their son was
squandering a fine opportunity to enter a respectable profession and
enjoy a successful career; it seemed such a waste.  But Ron adamantly
refused to listen to their entreaties that he should face up to his
responsibilities, return to university, study hard and graduate.

  Lieutenant Hubbard, accepting at last that Ron could not be
persuaded to change his mind, cast about for something worthwhile to
keep his son occupied until he was ready to think again about a proper
career; he was determined not to allow Ron to fritter away his time
scribbling more stories.  At the Naval Hospital where he was still
working as Disbursing Officer, he heard that the Red Cross was looking
for volunteers to work in Puerto Rico.  On 13 October, he wrote to the
Navy Department requesting a passage to San Juan for his son,
supporting his request with a note: `The purpose of sending my son to
Puerto Rico is to place his services at the disposal of the American
Red Cross in their relief work on that island.'  Two days later, the
request was approved.

  On 23 October 1932, Ron reported on board the US Navy transport,
*USS Kittery*, at Norfolk, Virginia, for transportation to Puerto
Rico.  Among his fellow passengers were a number of nurses and the
wife of the director of the American Red Cross.  While he was still at
sea, readers of the November issue of the *Sportsman Pilot* were
entertained by a second L. Ron Hubbard article, this time about his
escapades as a glider pilot.  He described `the most terrible
nightmare I have ever gone through' -- how his glider had folded a
wing at four hundred feet, how he had battled to prevent it going into
a spin and how, as he crashed, `so many wires wrapped themselves about
my neck that I was unable to wear a collar for weeks.'  A few weeks
later, he modestly added, he set up an unofficial world record by
flying a glider at a speed of eighty miles an hour at a level altitude
for a duration of twelve minutes.

  The *USS Kittery* arrived at Port au Prince, Puerto Rico, on 4

__________
16. Letter from Dept of Natural Resources, San Juan, 10 Oct 1979
17. Letter from Dr Meyerhoff, 11 Feb 1980

                          -- end page 57 --

November.  The log book records that L. R. Hubbard left the ship along
with his fellow passengers, but by then he had plans other than
volunteer relief work.  Somewhere between Norfolk, Virginia, and Port
au Prince it seems that Ron decided to abandon the Red Cross and
strike out into the hills in search of the gold he was convinced must
have been left behind on the island by the Conquistadores.

  He would later claim that he spent at least six months prospecting
in Puerto Rico: `Harboring the thought that the Conquistadores might
have left some gold behind, I determined to find it ... After a half
year or more of intensive search, after wearing my palms thin wielding
a sample pack, after assaying a few hundred sacks of ore, I came back,
a failure.'[18]

  It is possible that his real motive was not so much a genuine
expectation of striking gold as a desire to escape the dreary clutches
of the Red Cross.  As he noted in an article written on his return to
the United States: `Gold prospecting in the wake of the
Conquistadores, on the hunting grounds of the pirates in the islands
which still reek of Columbus is romantic, and I do not begrudge the
sweat which splashed in muddy rivers, and the bits of khaki which have
probably blown away from the thorn bushes long ago.'

  Quite how long he spent splashing through muddy rivers was not
documented.  Certainly at one point during his short sojourn on the
island, he appears to have been employed as a field representative for
a prospecting company called West Indies Minerals and a photograph
exists of him standing disconsolately in a pith helmet, hands in his
pockets, watching a party of three or four labourers digging on a
hillside.

  But if he was supervising the first mineralogical survey of Puerto
Rico, it was a survey destined never to materialize in any archive.
Indeed, it rather seems as if the `West Indies Minerals Survey'
derived from a trip undertaken, at the insistence of Ron's angry and
disappointed father, more as a penance than an expedition.

__________
18. *Adventure*, 1 October 1935

                          -- end page 58 --

                             *Chapter 4*

                         *Blood and Thunder*

  `His first action on leaving college was to blow off steam by
leading an expedition into Central America.  In the next few years he
headed three, all of them undertaken to study savage peoples and
cultures to provide fodder for his articles and stories.  Between 1933
and 1941 he visited many barbaric cultures and yet found time to write
seven million words of published fact and fiction.'  (*A Brief
Biography of L. Ron Hubbard, 1959*)

  Precious little care went into compiling the many biographies of L.
Ron Hubbard.  Had anyone bothered to research Hubbard's published
output, it would immediately have been obvious that he had not written
anything like seven million words during this period.  Between 1933
and 1941, he published about 160 articles and stories, almost all of
them in pulp magazines.  The nature of the medium proscribed lengthy
literary efforts, thus pulp fiction tended to be short, with few
stories running to more than 10,000 words.  If he had written seven
million published words, the *average* length of each of his
contributions would have been an impossible 44,000 words.

  A little intelligent inquiry would also have established that
Hubbard never left North America during the years in question: the
`fodder' for his stories derived not from expeditions to faraway
places, but from past experiences embellished by his fecund
imagination.  Neither did he visit `barbaric cultures', except,
perhaps, those to be found in New York and Los Angeles ...

                              * * * * *

Ron arrived back in Washington DC in February 1933, not too
disappointed at his failure as a gold prospector and hotly anxious to
renew his acquaintanceship with a young lady he had met on a gliding
field shortly before his father sent him packing to Puerto Rico.

  The object of his ardour was a twenty-six-year-old farmer's daughter
from Elkton, Maryland.  Her name was Margaret Louise Grubb, but
everyone called her Polly.  She was a bright, pretty girl with bobbed
blond hair and an independent streak in keeping with the age of Amelia
Earhart who, nine months earlier, had become the first

                          -- end page 59 --

woman to fly solo across the Atlantic.  Earhart inspired thousands of
American women to take an interest in aviation and at weekends Polly
used to like to walk out to an airfield near her home to watch the
gliders wobble uncertainly into the air behind a tow from an aged and
rusting Ford.

  An only child whose mother had died years earlier, she both looked
after her father and supported herself financially (she had got her
first job, working in a shoe shop, at the age of sixteen).  But
despite her responsibilities, she was soon determined to learn to fly
and was well on the way to getting her own licence[1] when a young man
with startling red hair showed up at the airfield one weekend.

  Polly could hardly fail to register Ron's arrival since he was
immediately the focus of attention among the little group of
leather-helmeted pilots waiting for a tow.  They seemed to gather
naturally around him, laughing frequently while he talked non-stop,
slicing the air with his hands to illustrate his various aerial
exploits.  For his part, it was not long before Ron noticed the
attractive young woman in flying gear and strolled over to talk to
her.

  Although she was nearly four years older than Ron, the difference in
their ages did not bother Polly in the least.  Other, less
open-minded, women might never have considered the possibility of a
romance with a man younger than themselves, but Polly found Ron to be
an irresistible companion -- kind, considerate, entertaining and
always able to make her laugh.  He talked a great deal about his
travels in the East, but she was never bored; indeed, she was
constantly amazed at all the things he had seen and done.  He was so
much more mature, so much more *worldly*, than the young men she knew
around Elkton, a rural community of less than six thousand people
close to the north-east corner of Chesapeake Bay.  Most of *them* had
never been further than Wilmington, Delaware, ten miles up the road.

  Polly's father was, understandably, faintly alarmed to learn that
his daughter was `walking out' with Ron Hubbard.  It was not that he
did not like the young man; he, too, thought Ron was charming.  Nor
was he concerned that Ron was younger than Polly.  What worried him
was the fact that Ron had neither money nor career prospects and
apparently had no intention looking for a job, since he planned to
support himself by writing.  In Mr Grubb's eyes, being a writer was
not a *job*, and nothing Ron could do or say would convince him
otherwise, particularly since he could only produce two articles from
the *Sportsman Pilot* as evidence of his earning potential.

  However, both Mr Grubb and Ron's parents recognized the futility of
trying to oppose the match.  Polly was quite as headstrong as Ron and
if she had made up her mind to marry him, there was nothing anyone in
the world could do to stop her.  And Ron, still the adored

__________
 1. Letter to author from Mrs Catherine Gillespie, Dec 1986

                          -- end page 60 --

only child, always got his own way with his parents.  Blessings were
reluctantly bestowed and the marriage took place in Elkton on Thursday
13 April.  Many of the guests correctly speculated about the whirlwind
nature of the courtship and the speed with which the ceremony was
arranged.  Polly and Ron moved into a little rented house in
Laytonsville, Maryland, where she had a spontaneous abortion.  In
October, she discovered she was pregnant again.

  In May Ron received an assignment from the *Sportsman Pilot* to
cover an amateur flying competition at College Park Airport, near
Washington.  His report was competent enough and written in his usual
breezy prose: `Since I was, perforce and per poverty, among the
spectators, I can speak only from the ground view and venture the
point that those six [pylon] races suffered on only one score.  They
inherited the disadvantage of all conventional pylon races -- we on
the ground had nothing to watch save an empty sky as the ships
disappeared for their swing around the course.  The finishes, though,
made up for that temporarily empty sky.  The home stretch brought the
ships down a brisk wind, through some bumps for which the field's
tree-trimmed boundaries must be blamed, and down across the finish
line in a power dive to fifty feet.  That satisfied the spectators; it
looked meteoric and heroic.  And you know spectators.'

  The article was published in the May/June issue of the magazine,
with photographs also provided by Ron.  It was his first published
piece as a professional writer and he was very proud of it, but it
could hardly be described as a promising start to his career.  Months
would pass before his by-line appeared again.

  For a short while it seemed it did not much matter that Ron was
finding it difficult to make a living as a writer, for on Friday 18
August, a headline in the *Washington Daily News* proclaimed:
`Youthful DC Adventurer Finds Gold in Nearby Maryland After Trek
Fails.'  The three-column story reported that L. Ron Hubbard, while on
furlough from his job as general manager of West Indies Minerals Inc,
had discovered gold on his wife's farm in Maryland.

  Much was made of the irony of a prospector striking gold in his own
back yard: `Hubbard, still in his twenties, left here last year for
Antilles, West Indies, in search of gold so that he might return and
marry the girl he met shortly before his departure.  He returned a
short time ago empty handed and considerably weakened from fever ...
"Imagine me going 1300 miles in search of gold when it lay right at
the back door of my bride-to-be," Hubbard said dejectedly.'

  Ron told the newspaper that mining would soon be under way `on a
large scale' and he had also encountered several specimens of a
curious white metal he believed was either platinum or iridium.  Two
photographs accompanied the story, one of Polly, fetchingly attired in
boots

                          -- end page 61 --

and jodhpurs, panning for gold, and another of the young couple
examining a large chunk of rock with an explanatory caption: `L. Ron
Hubbard, the prospector, says the boulder in the above photo is the
largest specimen of gold quartz he has ever seen.'

  Paradoxically, despite having struck gold, Ron's financial situation
remained precarious.  In September, his glider pilot licence expired
and he was unable to renew it as he had not completed the necessary
ten hours' solo flying in the previous six months.  The problem was
simply that he had no money, but in a plaintive letter to the Bureau
of Aeronautics he side-stepped confessing he was broke by claiming the
difficulty was that there was `no glider within two hundred miles in
which I would care to risk my neck'.  The Washington Glider Club had
offered him the use of their Franklin but it was in such a sorry
condition he had to `beg off' and he did not want to use a primary
glider because `I cracked one up once in Port Huron, Michigan, for the
simple reason that most primaries won't fly.'

  Ron was, as always, optimistic about the future.  `Here's the
point,' he wrote.  `I am going to get me a glider next spring.  A big
Franklin.  It took me two months of waiting on good flying days and
inspectors the last time I took the commercial exam.  I don't want to
have to go through all that next springs [*sic*], for springs at best
are fleeting.  I've flown a great deal more than most glider pilots.
Maybe you've seen one of my glider articles in aviation magazines.  My
one ambition is to get a glider of my own.

  `And here's my plea.  Isn't there some way you can extend this thing
in view of the circumstances ... Isn't there something you can do
about it?'[2]

  It was a nave hope: no bureaucracy is structured to indulge the
roseate ambitions of young men and the Bureau of Aeronautics was no
exception.  Its dour reply was brief: `It is regretted that your
glider pilot's licence ... cannot be extended as requested.  Also it
is the policy of this Department not to extend licences.'[3]
Officially it was the end of Ron's gliding career, for he never again
held a licence although he would apply, a couple more times, for a
student pilot's licence.

  In October, Ron contributed another feature to the *Sportsman
Pilot*, this time a profile of Chet Warrington, a well-known
Washington pilot, and in November he wrote an article about the infant
science of radio navigation.  His lack of a licence notwithstanding,
he always adopted a chatty, aviator-to-aviator style: `Personally, I
abhor navigation.  It takes too much algebra and I don't speak good
algebra ... It's my ambition to step into a ship some day and take off
in rain and fog with the other coast in mind as a destination.  But I
don't like circular rules and too many gadgets.  I'm lazy, I want
someone to tie a piece of string to the hub of the prop and lead me
right where I want

__________
 2. Certified airman's file
 3. *Ibid*.

                          -- end page 62 --

to go.  That's my ambition, and I'll bet my last turnbuckle in a power
dive that it's yours too.'

  In addition to his three pieces for the *Sportsman Pilot*, Ron also
sold an article titled `Navy Pets' to the *Washington Star* in 1933.
But that was the sum of his published output for the year.

  The going rate for freelance writers around that time was a cent a
word.  Polly, whose thickening waistline added greatly to her worries,
calculated at the end of 1933 that her husband had managed to earn,
during the course of that year, rather less than $100.

  There were better times ahead, however, for Ron soon discovered his
natural habitat as a writer -- the blood and thunder world of `the
pulps'.

                                 -*-

Pulp magazines had an honorable literary genesis in the United States
and an eclectic following: John Buchan wrote *The Thirty-Nine Steps*
in 1915 for *Adventure* magazine, which at one time counted among its
subscribers such unlikely fellow travellers as Harry Truman and Al
Capone.  Writers like C.S. Forester, Erle Stanley Gardner and Joseph
Conrad were introduced to huge new audiences through the pulps, as
were unforgettable characters like Buffalo Bill, boy detective Nick
Cartot and the ever-inscrutable Dr Fu Manchu.  The most successful of
all pulp heroes, Edgar Rice Burrough's `Tarzan of the Apes', made his
first appearance in the pages of *All-Story* magazine and went on to
spawn the longest-running adventure comic strip and Hollywood's
biggest money-making film series.

  By the early `30s, pulp fiction was a major source of inexpensive
entertainment for millions of Americans and a convenient means of
escape from the anxieties and realities of the Depression.  For as
little as a dime, readers could enter into an action-packed adventure
in which the heroes slugged their way out of tight spots in various
exotic corners of an improbable world.  Good invariably triumphed over
evil and sex was never allowed to complicate the plot, for no hero
ever proceeded beyond a chaste kiss and no heroine would dream of
expecting anything more.

  In 1934, more than 150 pulp magazines were published in New York
alone.  *Black Mask* was considered the best of the bunch by writers,
largely because it paid its top contributors as much as a nickel a
word, but *Argosy*, *Adventure*, *Dime Detective* and *Dime Western*
were all said to offer more than the basic rate of a cent a word to
the best writers.  As the average 128-page pulp magazine contained
around 65,000 words and as many of them were published weekly, the
market for freelance writers was both enormous and potentially
lucrative.

  Of all this L. Ron Hubbard knew virtually nothing until he began to
cast around for new outlets as a matter of urgency after his first

                          -- end page 63 --

disastrous year as a writer.  `He told me', said his Aunt Marnie,
`that he went into a bookstall and picked up all the pulp books from
the rack.  He took a big pile home to see what it was that people
wanted to read.  He thought a lot of it was junk and he knew he could
do better.  That's how he started writing mystery stories.'[4]

  More importantly, perhaps, it dawned on Ron that he had been writing
in the pulp genre for most of his life.  The swashbuckling short
stories he had scribbled across page after page of old accounts books
when he was in his teens were, he belatedly realized, precisely the
sort of material that was to be found between the lurid covers of the
most popular `pulps'.

  Polly was fast expanding and every week they were deeper in debt.
Ron knew he *had* to earn money somehow and the `pulps' seemed to
offer the best hope.  He began writing one story after another,
winding page after page into his typewriter without a break, often
hammering away all night.  Typing at phenomenal speed, never needing
to pause for thought, never bothering to read through what he had
written, he roamed the entire range of adventure fiction with
red-blooded heroes who were gunslingers, detectives, pirates, foreign
legionnaires, spies, flying aces, soldiers of fortune and grizzled old
sea captains.  For a period of six weeks he wrote a complete story of
between 4,500 and 20,000 words every day, gathered up the pages when
he had finished and mailed it to one or another of the pulps in New
York without a second look.

  It did not take long to pay off.  One morning Ron went out to
collect the mail and found there were two cheques waiting for him,
totalling $300 -- more money than he had ever earned in his life.  The
first was from *Thrilling Adventures* for a story called `The Green
God', the second from *The Phantom Detective* for `Calling Squad
Cars'.  More acceptances soon followed -- `Sea Fangs' was bought by
*Five Novels Monthly*, `Dead Men Kill' by *Thrilling Detective*, `The
Carnival of Death' by *Popular Detective* ...

  By the end of April Ron had earned enough money to take Polly on a
short holiday to California.  They took a cheap hotel room at
Encinitas, a resort a few miles north of San Diego, but Polly, now
seven months into her pregnancy, found the unaccustomed heat somewhat
debilitating.  On 7 May 1934, she decided to take a dip in the ocean
to cool off and got caught in a rip tide.  She was a strong swimmer
but only just managed to get back to the beach and the exertion
brought on labour.  Later that day she gave birth to a son.

  The baby weighed only 2lb 2oz and clung to life by the most gossamer
of threads.  Praying he would survive, they named him Lafayette Ronald
Hubbard Junior.  Ron constructed a crude incubator, first out of a
shoe box, then by lining a cupboard drawer with

__________
 4. Interview with Mrs Roberts

                          -- end page 64 --

blankets and keeping it warm with an electric light bulb; Polly
wrapped the mewling mite in cotton wool and fed him with an
eye-dropper.  For two months they maintained a day and night vigil,
taking it in turns to watch over the infant and marvelling at its will
to live.  While Polly was pregnant, Ron's father always used to ask
her how `his Nibs' was doing and by the time the danger period had
passed L. Ron Hubbard Junior was known to the entire family as `Nibs',
a name that would stick for the rest of his life.

  Fatherhood in no way moderated Ron's desire to be seen as a
devil-may-care adventurer and fearless aviator and he assiduously
promoted this image at every opportunity.  In July, for example, he
was the subject of a glowing tribute in the `Who's Who' column of the
*Pilot*, `The Magazine for Aviation's Personnel', which described him
as `one of the outstanding glider pilots in the country'.  The author,
H. Latane Lewis II, made no secret of his admiration.

  `Whenever two or three pilots are gathered together around the
Nation's Capital,' he wrote, `whether it be a Congressional hearing or
just in the back of some hangar, you'll probably hear the name of Ron
Hubbard mentioned, accompanied by such adjectives as "crazy", "wild"
and "dizzy".  For the flaming-haired pilot hit the city like a tornado
a few years ago and made women scream and strong men weep by his
aerial antics.  He just dared the ground to come up and hit him ...
Ron could do more stunts in a sailplane than most pilots can in a
pursuit job.  He would come out of spins at an altitude of thirty
inches and thumb his nose at the undertakers who used to come out to
the field and titter.'

  It was not too surprising that Ron was considered to be eminently
suitable for inclusion in the `Who's Who' column, for it was patently
obvious that he had been at pains to project himself as the most
colourful of characters: `Before he fell from grace and became an
aviator, he was, at various times, top Sergeant in the Marines, radio
crooner, newspaper reporter, gold miner in the West Indies and movie
director-explorer ...'  Among his other achievements, it seems he
taught himself to fly powered aircraft ('He climbed into a fast ship
and, without any dual time at all, gave the engine the soup and hopped
off ...'), then became a barnstormer and `flew under every telephone
wire in the Middle West', before settling down to become director of
the flying club at George Washington University.  H. Latane Lewis II
concluded that Ron was `one of aviation's most distinguished
hellraisers'.  It was a sobriquet with which the subject heartily
concurred.

  When Nibs was bawling and burping like other contented babies, the
twenty-three-year-old `distinguished hell-raiser' decided it was time
to make the acquaintance of his fellow pulp writers.  Leaving Polly
and the baby at home, he caught a train for New York and

                          -- end page 65 --

checked into a $1.50-a-night room at the Forty-fourth Street Hotel,
which he had been assured was where many visiting writers stayed.

  In 1934, with the country still in the stranglehold of the
Depression, there were few tourists in New York, but even before the
Wall Street Crash the Forty-fourth Street Hotel had rarely attracted
much tourist trade.  It was a seedy establishment on Times Square
largely patronized by out-of-work actors, third-rate vaudeville
performers, wrestlers, touts and bookies.  Frank Gruber, the only pulp
writer resident when Ron arrived, accurately characterized his fellow
guests as `all-round no-goods and deadbeats'.

  Gruber was an aspiring writer from Mount Morris, Illinois, who had
come to New York to make his fortune on the strength of selling one
story to *Secret Agent X* magazine and a couple more to *Underworld*.
That he was not succeeding soon became evident when he explained to
Ron how to get a free bowl of tomato soup at an Automat.  All you had
to do, he said, was pick up a bowl, fill it with hot water, skip the
nickel slot which dispensed soup powder and grab a couple of bags of
crackers.  You took your bowl of hot water to a table, crumbled the
crackers into it, then tipped in half a bottle of tomato ketchup.
`Presto!'  said Gruber triumphantly.  `Tomato soup.'

  Not entirely motivated by charity, Ron offered to buy Gruber a meal.
Sitting in Thompson's Restaurant on Sixth Avenue, just around the
corner from the hotel, Ron pumped the other man for information about
which editors were easiest to see, who was buying what kind of
material and which magazines paid most.  He made a list of the
commissioning editors at the most important publishers -- Street and
Smith, the Frank A. Munsey Company, Popular Publications and Dell
Magazines.

  A few days later, Gruber took Ron along to Rosoff's restaurant on
43rd Street, where members of the American Fiction Guild met for lunch
every Friday.  Most of the successful pulp writers in New York were
members of the Guild and most of them gathered at Rosoff's at
lunchtime on Fridays.  They were names familiar to millions of pulp
readers: Lester Dent, creator of Doc Savage; George Bruce,
acknowledged ace of battle-in-the-air yarns; Norvell Page, who was
said to earn $500 a month for his stories in the *Spider*; and
Theodore Tinsley, a regular contributor to *Black Mask*.  President of
the Guild was Arthur J. Burks, who had been dubbed `King of the Pulps'
in a *New Yorker* profile and quoted as saying that any pulp writer
who did not make at least $400 a month was not worth his salt.  It was
a remark that was to cause him considerable embarrassment, for it was
common knowledge in the Guild that Burks never earned that much,
despite turning out around two hundred thousand words every month.

  Ron was not the kind of young man to be overawed by such

                          -- end page 66 --

illustrious company and he walked into the Guild lunch at Rosoff's as
if he was quite as famous and successful as any man present.  He was
also a good deal younger than most of the members, but acted as if he
had seen and done more than any of them.  By the end of the lunch, he
was confidently presiding over one end of the table, holding the
attention of everyone within earshot with an enthralling blow-by-blow
account of his expedition to explore pirate strongholds of the Spanish
Main.

  It was accepted, at the American Fiction Guild lunches, that members
might be inclined to blur the distinction between fact and fiction.
What mattered more than strict adherence to literal truth was that the
stories should be entertaining, and on that score young Hubbard could
not be faulted.  He was a natural story-teller, able to set the scene
quickly and evocatively, describe the action in rich detail, recount
credible dialogue and interject humour with an acute sense of timing.
Arthur Burks was happy to welcome him as a new member of the Guild,
after he had paid his $10 membership fee, of course.

  Ron did well in New York.  He made the rounds of the pulp
publishers, talked his way into the offices of the important editors,
sold a few stories and generally made himself known.  In the evenings
he used to sit in Frank Gruber's room at the Forty-fourth Street
Hotel, kicking ideas around with other young writers and holding
forth, although his host eventually tired of Ron's apparently endless
adventures.  One evening Gruber sat through a long account of Ron's
experiences in the Marine Corps, his exploration of the upper Amazon
and his years as a white hunter in Africa.  At the end of it he asked
with obvious sarcasm: `Ron, you're eighty-four years old aren't you?'

  `What the hell are you talking about?'  Ron snapped.

  Gruber waved a notebook in which he had been jotting figures `Well,'
he said, `you were in the Marines seven years, you were a civil
engineer for six years, you spent four years in Brazil, three in
Africa, you barnstormed with your own flying circus for six years
... I've just added up all the years you did this and that and it
comes to eighty-four.'

  Ron was furious that his escapades should be openly doubted.  `He
blew his tack,' said Gruber.[5] He would react in the same way at the
Guild lunches if someone raised an eyebrow when he was in full flow.
Most of the other members *expected* their yarns to be taken with a
pinch of salt, but not Ron.  It was almost as if he believed his own
stories.

                                 -*-

Back home with Polly and the baby, Ron continued writing for `the
pulps' at a ferocious rate, turning out endless variations on a
hairy-chested theme.  His protagonists thrashed through jungle

__________
 5. Frank Gruber, *The Pulp Jungle*, 1967

                          -- end page 67 --

thickets pursued by slavering head-hunters, soared across
smoke-smudged skies in aerial dog-fights, wrestled giant octopi twenty
fathoms beneath storm-tossed seas, duelled with cutlasses on
blood-soaked decks strewn with splintered timbers and held dervish
hordes at bay by dispensing steel-jacketed death from the barrel of a
machine-gun.  Women rarely made an appearance except to be rescued
from the occasional man-eating lion or grizzly bear.  The titles he
gave to his stories vividly attested to their genus -- `The Phantom
Patrol', `Destiny's Drum', `Man-Killers of the Air', `Hostage to
Death' and `Hell's Legionnaire'.

  Interspersed between these gripping sagas, Ron still wrote
occasional features for the *Sportsman Pilot* in his capacity as
aerial hell-raiser.  `There are few men in the United States -- nay,
the world -- as well qualified as I to write upon the subject of
cross-country flying,' he began a piece in the September 1934 issue.
`It so happens I hold the world's record in dead reckoning.  I just
have to marvel about it.  Probably no other pilot in the world could
do it.  Probably no other pilot in the world actually has done it so
well.'

  The braggadocio was a tease, as he soon made clear.  On a fifty-mile
flight from New London to Mansfield, Ohio, navigating by the sun, he
claimed to have missed his destination by a record margin.  `The ship
bumped to a beautiful landing.  But, and but again, Mansfield was
nowhere in sight.  We grabbed a farmer's suspender and snapped it for
attention.  We asked, disdainfully, where we might be.  Well, there's
no use dragging this out.  We were 37 miles off ... That, I maintain,
is a world record.'

  In December he was offering readers tips about flying to the West
Indies: `With the long, long shores of Cuba behind you, you hit Port
au Prince.  Right now we start assuming definitely that your plane has
floats on it, though we've been assuming it vaguely all along.
Otherwise, you'll get your wheels wet.  Port au Prince isn't favoured
unless you can wangle the Gendarmerie du Haiti into letting you use
their fields.  You'd have to be a better wangler than we are ...'

  Two months after this feature was published, on 25 February 1935 Ron
again applied for a student pilot's licence.  He never got round to
taking the test to become a qualified pilot and never actually applied
for another licence,[6] but he blithely continued writing for the
*Sportsman Pilot*, offering advice to fellow aviators and filling many
pages of the magazine with dashing accounts of his aerial exploits.

  Ron's published work in 1935 included ten pulp novels, three
`novelettes', twelve short stories and three non-fiction articles.  In
October, *Adventure* magazine invited him to introduce himself to
readers in their `Camp Fire' feature, `where readers, writers and
adventurers meet'.  Ron began in jocular fashion -- `When I was a year

__________
 6. Certified airman's file

                          -- end page 68 --

old, they say I showed some signs of settling down, but I think this
is merely rumour ...'  -- and touched on all the familiar highspots of
his dazzling career, his `Asiatic wanderings', his expeditions, his
`barn-storming trip through the Mid-West', and so on.

  Perhaps because the same issue of *Adventure* also published one of
his `leatherneck yarns', Ron chose to elaborate on his experiences as
a `top-kicker' in the Marines.  `I've known the Corps from Quantico to
Peiping, from the South Pacific to the West Indies,' he wrote.  `To me
the Marine Corps is a more go-to-hell outfit than the much lauded
French Foreign Legion ever could be ...'  Expressing the hope that his
thumbnail sketch would be a passport to the readers' interest, he
ended with the promise: `When I get back from Central America, where
I'm going soon, I'll have another yarn to tell.'[7]

  Ron did not go to Central America but to Hollywood, where one of his
stories, `The Secret of Treasure Island', had been bought by Columbia
to be filmed as a fifteen-part serial for showing at Saturday morning
matines. An advertisement in the *Motion Picture Herald* boasted that
L. Ron Hubbard, `famous action writer, stunt pilot and world
adventurer' had written an `excitement-jammed yarn with one of the
best box office titles in years'.

  Ron, of course, was pleased to add the title of `Hollywood
scriptwriter' to his ever increasing roll-call of notable
accomplishments and he would soon be claiming screenwriting credit for
a number of successful movies, among them John Ford's classic,
*Stagecoach*,[8] and *The Plainsman*, starring Gary Cooper.  Most
biographies of L. Ron Hubbard describe his Hollywood career,
inevitably, as a triumph: `In 1935, L. Ron Hubbard went to Hollywood
and worked under motion picture contracts as a scriptwriter of
numerous films making an outstanding reputation there with many highly
successful films.  His work in Hollywood is still remembered.'[9] He
was also said to have salvaged the careers of both Bela Lugosi and
Boris Karloff by writing them into scripts when they were out of work.
In short, Ron became another `Hollywood legend'.[10]

  Sadly, it appears he was an unsung legend for his name cannot be
found on any `highly successful films', with the exception of *The
Secret of Treasure Island*.  But this lack of recognition never
prevented Ron from reminiscing about his golden days in Hollywood: `I
used to sit in my penthouse on Sunset Boulevard and write stories for
New York and then go to my office in the studio and have my secretary
tell everybody I was in conference while I caught up on my sleep
because they couldn't believe anybody could write 136 scenes a day.
The Screen Writers' Guild would have killed me.  Their quota was
eight.'[11]

  Ron did not stay long in Hollywood knocking out 136 scenes a day

__________
 7. *Adventure*, 10 October 1935
 8. Interview with Robert Macdonald Ford, Olympia, Washington, 1
    September 1986
 9. *Facts About L. Ron Hubbard*, Flag Divisional Directive of 8 Mar
    1974
10. L. Ron Hubbard autobiographical notes, 1974
11. *Rocky Mountain News*, 20 February 1983

                          -- end page 69 --

and by the end of the year he was back in New York.  Polly was
pregnant again and mindful of what had happened with Nibs, they
decided she should have the baby in a New York hospital.  On Wednesday
15 January 1936, she produced a daughter, Catherine May.  Unlike Nibs,
Catherine was a lusty, full-term baby, perfect in every way except for
a birthmark on one side of her face.  Not long after she was born, the
Hubbards travelled by train to visit Ron's parents in Bremerton,
Washington.

  Harry Ross Hubbard had been promoted to Lieutenant Commander, at the
age of forty-eight, in December 1934 and the following July he was
posted, for the third time, to Puget Sound Navy Yard, Bremerton, as an
Assistant Supply Officer.  For Ron's mother it was a particularly
welcome move: her much-loved sister, Toilie, was by then also living
in Bremerton and their younger sister, Midgie, lived across the bay in
Seattle.  May and Harry had already decided they would retire to
Bremerton after he left the Navy and so they bought a small house at
1212 Gregory Way, just two blocks from the Navy Yard.

  Ron's seventy-two-year-old grandmother, Ida Waterbury, was still at
`the old brick' in Helena, but in October 1935 Helena was hit by an
earthquake.  The first tremor was felt during one of President
Roosevelt's Friday night `fireside chats' on the radio.  Throughout
the following week, fifty-six further shocks were recorded, none of
them serious, but at ten o'clock on the evening of 18 October a series
of violent tremors shook the town, reducing many of the public
buildings to rubble and generating widespread panic.  `The old brick'
survived the earthquake, but in a dangerous condition.  Next day, old
Mrs Waterbury caught a train for Bremerton to stay with May and Hub at
Gregory Way.

  It was in these circumstances that Polly, Ron and their two small
children were welcomed into the bosom of the Waterbury family when
they arrived in Bremerton in the spring of 1936.  All the Waterburys
liked Polly.  `She was a lot of fun,' said Marnie, `a good sport.'
Polly reciprocated their warmth, was comfortable with the family and
happy to have grandparents and great-aunts around to help take care of
the boisterous Nibs while she looked after the baby.

  Such was the conviviality of the milieu that Polly and Ron soon
began looking for a home of their own in the Bremerton area.  Property
was cheap in rural Kitsap County and they found a little wooden house
at South Colby, a small community with a post office and general store
facing Yukon harbour to the south of Bremerton.  The house was set
among cedar trees on a steep hillside overlooking orchards and meadows
sloping down to Puget Sound; from the front porch at nights you could
see the lights of Seattle on the other side of the water.  Polly fell
in love with the place and named it `The Hilltop'.

                          -- end page 70 --

  Although the house had three rooms upstairs, Ron decided he needed
more privacy for writing and employed a local carpenter to build a
rough pine cabin in the trees at the back of the property which he
could use as a `studio'.  He put in a desk and typewriter and went
back to work, churning out such stirring epics as `The Baron of Coyote
River' for *All Western*, `Loot of the Shantung' for *Smashing Novels*
and `the Blow Torch Murder' for *Detective Fiction*.

  The responsibilities of fatherhood weighed lightly on Ron's
shoulders and he ignored any suggestion that he should adapt his
working habits to accommodate family life.  He liked to work all night
and sleep all morning, sometimes not making an appearance until two or
three o'clock in the afternoon, at which time Polly would be expected
to produce `breakfast'.

  Although he was selling stories almost every week, they never seemed
to have enough money and the owner of the general store in South Colby
was frequently threatening to cut off their credit.  Ron was
completely unconcerned by the mounting bills.  One day he took the
ferry into Seattle and came back with an expensive phonograph that he
had bought on credit at the Bon Marche department store.  When Polly
despairingly asked him how he was going to meet the payments he
replied, with a grin, that he had no intention of making any.  He
figured it would be at least six months before Bon Marche got round to
repossessing their property, meanwhile they could enjoy it.

  Financial worries apart, Polly was perfectly content at The Hilltop.
She enjoyed being a mother and was a keen gardener, spending much of
her spare time clearing the ground around the house and planting
shrubs and flowers.  Ron was less easily satisfied by the quiet charm
of South Colby and made frequent trips to New York `on business'.  As
his absences became longer and longer, Polly suspected, correctly,
that he might be seeing other women -- she was also acutely aware that
there was absolutely nothing she could do about it.

  It was not philandering that took Ron away from home so much as the
reality that being stuck out in the backwater of South Colby was
uncomfortably at odds with his perception of himself.  He had spent
much of his adult life vigorously and successfully promoting himself
as a `dare-devil adventurer'.  It was a description that would be used
about him time and time again and he never tired of it.  But it was
also an image that needed to be sustained, bolstered here and there,
and he could hardly do that sitting in a cabin in Kitsap Country.  No,
he needed to be in New York holding his fellow writers in thrall with
epic tales and making sure everyone knew that Ron `Flash' Hubbard (he
sometimes admitted to `Flash' as a nickname) was `quite a character'.

  Who dared doubt it?  Absolutely not the editor of *Thrilling*

                          -- end page 71 --

*Adventure*, who was pleased to share his conviction with his readers:
`I guess L. Ron Hubbard needs no introduction.  From the letters you
send in, his yarns are among the most popular we have published.
Several of you have wondered too how he gets the splendid color which
always characterizes his stories of far-away places.

  `The answer is, he's been there, brothers.  He's been and seen and
done.  And plenty of all three of them!'

  In July 1936, New York literary agent and columnist Ed Bodin added a
further feather to Ron's crowded cap by reporting in one of his
columns that Ron had hit a staggering one million words in print.  It
was a claim as pointless as it was absurd, yet it would be
remorselessly escalated over the years until by 1941 Ron was being
variously credited with an output of between seven and fifteen million
words.[12]

  Whatever the real figure, Ron was certainly proud of his
productivity, the sheer number of words he was able to hammer out of
his typewriter, and there is no question that he was a truly prolific
writer.  By 1937 he was using a roster of marvellously improbable pen
names -- `Winchester Remington Colt, Kurt von Rachen, Ren Lafayette,
Joe Blitz and Legionnaire 148 among them.  His legendary writing speed
led to rumours that he typed on to a continuous roll of paper that fed
automatically into an electric typewriter with a keyboard of his own
design featuring single keys fur commonly used words like `and' and
`the'.  It was also said that editors in New York sent messengers to
Ron's hotel room with a cover illustration and note asking him if he
would be kind enough to write a story to fit the picture.  The
punchline was that the messengers *would be told to wait* while Ron
dashed off the story, such was the prodigious fertility of his
imagination.

  Towards the end of 1937, Ron sold his first hardback novel.
*Buckskin Brigades*, published by Macaulay, was said to have been
inspired by his experiences as a small boy in the wilds of Montana
when he became a blood brother of the Blackfoot Indians.  The theme of
the book revolved around the mistreatment of the Indians by the Hudson
Bay Company, although the message did not perhaps get across too
forcibly because the Hudson Bay Company sent Ron a case of whisky
after publication.

  Polly was very pleased that Ron had been able to cross the divide
between pulp fiction and `respectable' publishing, although she was
even more pleased that Macaulay had offered an advance of $2500 for
*Buckskin Brigades*.  It was money they badly needed to clear their
debts.  They both waited -- Ron was back from New York -- with
considerable impatience for the cheque to arrive.  On the morning the
local post office telephoned to say there was a money order for
collection, Ron rushed out of the house and was gone

__________
12. *A Brief Biography of L. Ron Hubbard*

                          -- end page 72 --

for hours.  He returned in the late afternoon in a state of high
excitement and announced to Polly that he had bought a boat, a
wonderful boat, a thirty-foot ketch called the *Magician*.  It was a
double-ended Libby hull, the kind they used to catch salmon up in
Alaska.  It had a small cabin and he was going to put a new engine in
it and change the rigging and ... Polly could hardly believe her ears.
She had a drawer full of unpaid bills and her husband had just blown
all their money on a boat!

                                 -*-

Ron's best friend in Bremerton was a thrusting young insurance
salesman by the name of Robert MacDonald Ford.  `Almost the first
thing Ron did when he got the boat', Ford recalled, `was to get some
letter-heads printed.  Ron was always having letter-heads printed,
always on the best bond paper.  The heading was "Yukon Harbor Marine
Ways".  There was no such company, but that didn't bother Ron -- he
only wanted the letter-head so he could buy things for the boat at
wholesale prices.'

  Ford met Ron because he was always on the look-out for new business.
When one of his policy holders ran into a car owned by a
Lieutenant-Commander H.R. Hubbard and caused $15 worth of damage, he
delivered the settlement draft personally at 1212 Gregory Way in the
hope of selling some more insurance.  Ron's mother was home when Ford
called.  `She was a funny little woman,' he said, `sort of wrinkled
and dried up.  When I asked her if she knew anyone who needed
insurance she said her son, who lived out at South Colby, didn't have
any.  She telephoned him right then, offered to pay half the cost and
we wrote the business over the 'phone.  I figured if she was going to
pay I'd have a good chance of collecting the premiums.'

  A couple of weeks later, Ford decided to pay his new policy holder a
visit, accompanied by his wife, Nancy.  It took them a little while to
find The Hilltop at South Colby and when they finally arrived at the
house Polly answered the door and said her husband was still asleep as
he had been working all night.  She apologized and invited them to
return for dinner that evening.

  The Fords and the Hubbards liked each other on sight and quickly
discovered they had much in common.  They had children of similar
ages, both wives were avid gardeners and excellent cooks, and Ron and
Mac were the same age, keen on sailing and loved to talk.  That first
evening spent together at The Hilltop ended with much hilarity when
the two men skulked off to the County gravel pile in the dead of night
to fill ballast bags Polly had been sewing for the boat.

  Thereafter, Ford was a frequent visitor.  He used to sit in the
cabin with Ron drinking China tea and playing chess by candlelight,
using the exquisitely carved chess set he said he had brought back
from the

                          -- end page 73 --

East -- even the pawns were fearsome little warriors carrying swords.
Sometimes they would shoot at a target pinned to the cabin wall with
Ron's air pistol; sometimes they would just talk for hours on end,
well into the night.  They often discussed what was happening in
Europe, what Hitler was up to and whether or not there would be a war.

  `He was a sharp guy,' said Ford, `very stimulating and fascinating
to be around.  He was interested in a lot of things and was pretty
well informed.  When he talked about the things he'd done, sometimes I
would think he was feeding me a line, but then you'd find out that it
had actually happened.  He told me once that when he was gliding a guy
wire had snapped and smoothed off the ends of his fingers, leaving
them very sensitive.  I'm pretty sure that happened.  When we went to
see *Stagecoach* -- the original one with John Wayne -- he told me
he'd worked on the script.  I looked for his name on the credits, but
didn't see it, although I didn't necessarily disbelieve him.  It's
possible he exaggerated his exploits a little, but he was a writer and
did have a very fertile imagination.  Certainly he got into a lot of
things.

  `He and Polly were on pretty good terms.  She was an independent
sort of gal, wouldn't take a lot of crap from anybody.  They had their
arguments, yes, but by and large it wasn't that bad.  She'd take a
drink, but never much.  We didn't drink too much in those days.  They
were in fairly dire straits for money; the grocer was always pressing
them to pay his bill.  It would take Ron two or three nights to finish
a novelette.  Whenever he got some money in, he'd see the grocer was
satisfied and then he'd play for a while on his boat, the
*Maggie*.'[13]

  The Fords and the Hubbards joined Bremerton Yacht Club at the same
time and whenever there was a dance they could be found at the same
table, usually laughing and always enjoying themselves.  In some
combination the two families were involved in any number of madcap
projects and outings -- Polly and Nancy once took a ferry across to
Victoria in Canada to visit a horticultural show and returned with
dozens of stolen cuttings stuffed into their bras.

  On another memorable occasion, Ron and Mac decided they would build
an experimental sail-boat with inflatable rubber wheels on the theory
that it would be subject to less friction than a conventional hull.
They constructed a crude timber frame with three axles and six wheels
made out of inner tubes on wooden drums and borrowed a mast and sail
from a small boat in the harbour.  It was agreed that Ron, the more
experienced sailor of the two, would conduct the first trials.  He
kitted himself out for the occasion in sea boots, cap and yachting
rig, and they towed the strange craft out into the Sound with a
row-boat.  Ron confidently stepped on board and as he did so there was
an ominous crack.  One of the crucial joints of the frame snapped
under his weight and the entire contraption rapidly disintegrated.

__________
13. Interview with R.M. Ford

                          -- end page 74 --

  The sight of Ron in his natty sailor suit clinging grimly to the
wreckage and bellowing to be taken off was too much for Ford.  He
collapsed in the bottom of the row-boat and the more he laughed the
angrier Ron became.  In the end, Ford rowed ashore and let someone
else pick up his friend.  `He had a real temper and I sure as hell
wasn't going to let him catch me when he had his temper up like that,'
he explained.  `He would have killed me if he'd got his hands on me at
the time.  I stayed out of sight for a couple of hours but he soon
cooled down.  We had dinner together that night.'

  Undaunted by the failure of the rubber-wheeled boat, the two friends
could soon be found testing a model boat with an unusual V-shaped keel
of their own design in Polly's washing machine, trying to figure out
an accurate method of measuring the drag.  Then they spent several
days on the *Maggie* with a complicated arrangement of zips and canvas
sleeves with which they hoped to improve the efficiency of the sails.

  While the men were playing, it was inevitable that Polly and Nancy
would spend a great deal of time together with their children.  Thus
Nancy knew that Polly suspected Ron of having affairs with other women
during his frequent absences back East.  Nancy told Mac, who said he
was sure Polly was wrong.

  A few weeks later, the Hubbards arrived separately at the regular
Saturday night dance at Bremerton Yacht Club.  Polly drove alone from
The Hilltop and Ron sailed across in the *Maggie*, making no attempt
to conceal his surly demeanour.  `They were not speaking to each
other,' said Ford, `and it took us a while to find out what had
happened.  It seems Ron had written letters to a couple of girls in
New York and left them in the mail box to be picked up.  Polly found
them and got so mad that she opened the envelopes, switched the
letters and put them back in the box.  She didn't tell him what she
had done until they had been picked up.  Polly was a great girl, a lot
of fun.'

  Next morning, Ron packed his bag and caught a train for New York,
still in a vile temper.

                          -- end page 75 --

                             *Chapter 5*

                          *Science Fictions*

  `By 1938, Hubbard was already established and recognized as one of
the top-selling authors ... [and] was urged to try his hand at science
fiction.  He protested that he did not write about "machines and
machinery" but that he wrote about people.  "That's just what we
want," he was told.  The result was a barrage of stories from Hubbard
that expanded the scope and changed the face of the literary genre
...'  (*About L. Ron Hubbard*, Writers of the Future, Volume II,
Bridge Publications Inc., 1986)

                              * * * * *

To science-fiction fans, 1938 marked the dawn of a new era they were
pleased to call the `Golden Age'.  Before then, science-fiction pulps
with gosh-wow titles like *Amazing*, *Wonder*, *Planet Stories* and
*Startling* had usually been ridiculed if not ignored.  Crowded into
the darkest corner, or on to the lowest shelf of the news-stand, they
were only sustained by the devotion of a small group of passionately
loyal enthusiasts who, dreaming of time machines and space travel in
the grimly haunted days of the Depression, were widely considered to
be dotty.

  The sad truth was that the nineteenth century heritage of Mary
Shelley, Jules Verne, Edgar Allen Poe and H.G. Wells had largely
degenerated, by the early 'thirties, into trash -- uninspiring tales
of slavering robots and talking animals written in penny-dreadful
prose, mediocre fiction without the science.  Bug-eyed monsters
figured prominently, either invading earth with the intention of
enslaving the human race or carrying away our `fairest maidens' for
use as love-toys on some alien planet.  Readers needed considerable
faith to relish repeated workings of the same tedious themes, but then
science-fiction fans were acknowledged to be particularly fanatical,
if not particular.

  It was possible to date, precisely, the metamorphosis that ushered
in the Golden Age because it began with the appointment of John W.
Campbell Junior as editor of *Astounding* magazine, at the age of
twenty-seven, in early 1938.  Campbell was the man who dragged science
fiction out of the pulp mire and elevated it to an art form.

                          -- end page 76 --

Opinionated, overbearing and garrulous, he was a chain-smoking
intellectual dynamo bursting with ideas which he would expound at
length, driving home every point by stabbing the air with his long
black cigarette holder.  His first science-fiction story, `When The
Atoms Failed', was published in *Amazing* in 1930 and he quickly made
a name for himself as an original, imaginative and sophisticated
writer.  One of his best stories was transformed, through no fault of
his, into one of Hollywood's worst movies, *The Thing From Outer
Space*.

  As an editor, Campbell used his magazine to speculate on the
implications -- emotional, philosophical and sociological -- of future
scientific discoveries.  He expected style, skill, ingenuity and
technical proficiency from his contributors.  Few of the existing pulp
writers could meet his exacting standards and so he set out to nurture
new talent.  Almost all the biggest names of the Golden Age -- Isaac
Asimov, Robert Heinlein, A.E. van Vogt and many others -- were first
published in *Astounding*.  Campbell never compromised.  Faulty plots
were ruthlessly rejected with pages of closely typed criticism --
Theodore Sturgeon once got a story back with a seven-page explanation
as to why a particular fission of light metals was not feasible.  Yet
Campbell's critiques to writers were always accompanied by a flood of
new ideas and suggestions for other stories.  `No editor was ever more
helpful,' said Jack Williamson, one of his contributors.  `He read
every story submitted.  Those he rejected came back with useful
comments, and many a letter accepting one story also included ideas
for another.'[1] The mechanical ants in Williamson's novel, *The Moon
Children*, were Campbell's idea.

  Isaac Asimov always remembered his first meeting with Campbell in
the Seventh Avenue offices of Street and Smith, the publishers of
*Astounding*.  `I was eighteen and had arrived with my first story
submission, my very first.  He had never met me before, but he took me
in, talked to me for two hours, read the story that night and mailed
the rejection the following day along with a kind, two-page letter
telling me where I had gone wrong.'[2]

  Campbell was both a visionary and a realist.  He believed in
supernatural power and space travel and rockets and a multiplicity of
worlds, but he also fervently believed that science fiction should
live up to its name.  His writing was studded with extraordinary
technical detail explaining how complex machines worked, yet his
scientists were always real people with human emotions and foibles.

  One of what he called his `pet ideas' was that less than a quarter
of the functioning capacity of the brain was used.  `Could the full
equipment be hooked into a functioning unit,' he wrote in *Thrilling
Wonder Stories* in 1937, `the resulting intelligence should be able to
conquer the world without much difficulty.'  Working on this doubtful

__________
 1. Jack Williamson, *Child of Wonder*, 1985
 2. Isaac Asimov, *In Memory Yet Green*, 1979

                          -- end page 77 --

premise, Campbell made unremitting attempts to encompass telepathy,
ESP and other odd psychic phenomena into a science he called
`psionics'.

  As the reputation of Campbell's *Astounding* grew, new magazines
appeared on the streets thick and fast -- *Marvel Science Stories* was
out first, closely followed by *Startling Stories*, *Dynamic Science
Stories* and *Fantastic Adventures*.  To distance his own magazine
from the more garish pulps, Campbell changed the title to *Astounding
Science Fiction*, which he thought sounded more dignified and more
accurately reflected the content.

  Campbell first met L. Ron Hubbard at about the time he took over as
editor.  Ron provided a typically bombastic account of the
circumstances: `I got into science fiction and fantasy because F.
Orlin Tremaine, at the orders of the managing director of Street and
Smith, brought me over and ordered John W. Campbell Jr ... to buy
whatever I wrote, to freshen up the mag, up its circulation, and to
put in real people and real plots instead of ant men.  John, although
we became dear friends later, didn't like this a bit.'[3]

  Tremaine was an editorial director of Street and Smith and might
well have effected the introduction -- he would certainly have known
Ron, since Ron had contributed many stories to Street and Smith's
stable of adventure pulps.  But it was inconceivable that Campbell
would have been *ordered* to buy everything Ron wrote.  Campbell was
an editor of total dedication and a notorious perfectionist -- he
would never have relinquished his right to edit or to ask contributors
for a rewrite if he thought it was necessary.  `Those who could not
meet his requirements,' said Isaac Asimov, `could not sell to him.'

  Whatever the circumstances of their meeting, it was clear that the
young editor and the young writer hit it off, for in April, 1938
Campbell wrote Ron a long, funny letter, full of friendly
gobbledegook, to chide Ron for not making contact when he was recently
in New York.  `HUBBARD SNUBBARD: HUBBARD SNUBBARD: HUBBARD SNUBBARD,'
Campbell began.  `When I was a little boy, on me fodder's knee, he
says to me, says he to me (yes, I was a little boy, and I did have a
fodder, and he did have a knee, and he did say to me): "Never take
offense, where offense isn't meant."  So thata is data ...'

  He continued in similar vein for several pages, invited Ron to
contribute some anecdotes about himself for a feature he was writing
on the pulp magazine industry and ended: `My best to your wife and
kiddies.  I am now about to sign off.  By the way, forgive the bad
copy; I only learned to type a couple of weeks ago, and can't control
the engine sometimes.  Addio, John.'[4]

  Ron's first story for *Astounding*, and his first venture into
science

__________
 3. *Ron The Writer*, Author Services Inc., 1982
 4. *The John W. Campbell Letters, Vol.  I*, 1985

                          -- end page 78 --

fiction, was `The Dangerous Dimension', published in the July 1938
issue.  It was a diverting little tale about a mild-mannered
university professor, Henry Mudge, who works out a philosophic
equation enabling him to transport himself to any part of the universe
by thought alone.  Teleportation causes him endless difficulties since
every time he thinks about a place he finds himself whisked there with
no more than a `whup!'  By and large, he is remarkably unperturbed, as
when he thinks himself to Mars ("Oh dear," thought Mudge.  "Now I've
done it!").

  `The Dangerous Dimension' was followed later in the year by a
three-part novelette, `The Tramp', which also dealt with fantastic
powers of the mind.  The tramp, one `Doughface Jack', falls from a
train and suffers severe head injuries.  After an operation to save
his life during which a silver plate is inserted into his head, he
discovers he has the power to heal, or to kill, with a single glance.
The surgeon is so envious of his patient's remarkable new powers that
he decides to have the operation, too, with less happy results.

  When, by and by, it became important to promote an image of Ron as
one of the world's great thinkers and philosophers, these two stories
would be presented as clear evidence that L. Ron Hubbard had begun his
research into the workings of the mind.  Science fiction, it was
explained, was `merely the method Ron used to develop his
philosophy'.[5]

  It was a philosophy which was supposedly fully expounded in
*Excalibur*, an unpublished book Ron was first said to have written in
1938.  Modestly described as `a sensational volume which was a
summation of life based on his analysis of the state of Mankind',[6]
much would be heard of this great work in later years; indeed, it
would become a cornerstone of the mythology built around his life.  It
was claimed that the book derived from Ron's `discovery' that the
primary law of life was to survive, although, naturally, the part
played by `his explorations, journeys and experiences in the four
corners of the earth, amongst all kinds of men, was crucial'.[7]

  The first six people to read the manuscript were said to have been
so overwhelmed by the contents that they went out of their minds.
Curiously, however, few of Ron's fellow writers were aware of the
existence of the book, with the exception of Art Burks: `Ron called me
one day and said, "I want to see you right away, I have written *the*
book."  I never saw anybody so worked up.  Apparently he had written
it without sleeping, eating, or anything else and had literally worked
himself into a frazzle.

  `He was so sure he had something "away out and beyond" anything else
that he said he had sent telegrams to several book publishers telling
them that he had written *the* book and that they were to meet

__________
 5. *Ron The Writer*, Author Services Inc., 1982
 6. L. Ron Hubbard, *Mission Into Time*, 1973
 7. *Ibid.*

                          -- end page 79 --

him at Penn Station and he would discuss it with them and go with
whoever gave him the best offer.  Whether he did this or not, I don't
know, but it is right in line with something he would do.

  `He told me it was going to revolutionize everything: the world,
people's attitudes to one another.  He thought it would have a greater
impact upon people than the Bible.'[8]

  Burks's recollection of the manuscript was that it was about seventy
thousand words long and began with a fable about a king who gathered
all his wise men together and commanded them to bring him all the
wisdom of the world in five hundred books.  He then told them to go
away and condense the information into one hundred books.  When they
had done that, he wanted the wisdom reduced into one book and finally
into one word.  That word was `survive'.

  Ron developed an argument that the survival instinct could explain
all human behaviour and that to understand survival was to understand
life.  Burks particularly remembered a passage in which Ron explained
how emotions could be whipped up to the point where a lynch mob was
formed.  `It made the shivers move up your back from your heels to the
top of your head,' he said.

  Burks was sufficiently impressed by *Excalibur* to agree to write a
brief biographical sketch of Ron for use as a preface.  It was the
usual `red-headed fire-eater' material, with only one surprising new
claim -- that 1934 was the year Ron `rounded off his application of
analytical geometry to aerial navigation'.

  The preface also mentioned a facet of Ron's character which few
members of the American Fiction Guild had noticed -- his unwillingness
to talk about himself.  `Long ago he discovered that his most concrete
adventures raised sceptic eyebrows and so, without diminishing his
activities, he has fallen back on silence.  We hear of him building a
road in the Ladrone Islands or surveying the Canadian border and
bellowing squads east and west with the perfection of a trained
military man and delve though we may, that is as far as we can get.'

  Burks concluded with a tactful reference to the difficulty of
reconciling the adventurer with the author of a philosophic treatise:
`One envisions the philosopher as a quiet gray-beard, timid in all
things but thought.  It is, withal, rather upsetting to the general
concept to think of L. Ron Hubbard as the author of *Excalibur*.'

  Although *Excalibur* was never published -- Burks was convinced that
Ron was deeply disappointed he could not find a publisher -- Ron
assiduously stoked rumours about its existence and its content.  `He
told me once that he had a manuscript in his trunk that was going to
revolutionize the world,' said his friend Mac Ford.  `He said it was
called *Excalibur*, but that's all I know about it.  I never saw
it.'[9]

__________
 8. The *Aberee*, Dec. 1961
 9. Author's interview with Ford, 1 September 1986

                          -- end page 80 --

Unquestionably, Ron himself believed in *Excalibur*, for in October
1938 he wrote a long and emotional letter to Polly in which he
expressed his hope that the manuscript would merit him a place in
history.

  Polly had recently had a riding accident which resulted in her
losing the tip of one finger.  Ron tried to cheer her up with a funny
catalogue of his own imagined ailments and promised her a jewelled
Chinese fingernail holder which she could be `snooty' about.  He wrote
of his frustration about his work, the constant shortage of money ('I
still wonder how much money we owe in incidental bills.  It's grave, I
know ...')  and the need to spend so much time in New York, away from
her and the children.

  Then he turned to the subject which was clearly in the forefront of
his mind: `Sooner or later *Excalibur* will be published and I may
have a chance to get some name recognition out of it so as to pave the
way to articles and comments which are my ideas of writing heaven.

  `Living is a pretty grim joke, but a joke just the same.  The entire
function of man is to survive.  The outermost limit of endeavour is
creative work.  Anything less is too close to simple survival until
death happens along.  So I am engaged in striving to maintain
equilibrium sufficient to at least realize survival in a way to
astound the gods.  I turned the thing up so it's up to me to survive
in a big way ... Foolishly perhaps, but determined none the less, I
have high hopes of smashing my name into history so violently that it
will take a legendary form even if all books are destroyed.  That goal
is the real goal as far as I am concerned ...

  `When I wrote it [*Excalibur*] I gave myself an education which
outranks that of anyone else.  I don't know but it might seem that it
takes terrific brain work to get the thing assembled and usable in the
head.  I do know that I could form a political platform, for instance,
which would encompass the support of the unemployed, the industrialist
and the clerk and day laborer all at one and the same time.  And
enthusiastic support it would be.  Things are due for a bust in the
next half dozen years.  Wait and see.'

  Ron was clearly worried that he would be hampered by his reputation
as a pulp writer: `Writing action pulp doesn't have much agreement
with what I want to do because it retards my progress by demanding
incessant attention and, further, actually weakens my name.  So you
see I've got to do something about it and at the same time strengthen
the old financial position.'

  Towards the end of the letter he wrote about strange forces he felt
stirring within him which made him feel aloof and invincible and the
struggle he had faced trying to answer the question `Who am I?'
before returning to the theme of immortality: `God was feeling
sardonic the

                          -- end page 81 --

day He created the Universe.  So it's rather up to at least one man
every few centuries to pop up and come just as close to making him
swallow his laughter as possible.'

  Ron's nickname for Polly was `Skipper' and hers for him was `Red'.
The letter finished with a single encouraging line: `I love you,
Skipper, and all will be well.  The Redhead.'

                                 -*-

While Ron's philosophical work languished for want of a publisher, his
literary endeavours in other fields continued to find wide favour.
Apart from marking his dbut in science fiction, 1938 was the year Ron
rode the range of Western adventure.  His name appeared in *Western
Story* magazine almost every month with a series of two-gun titles
designed to set the pulse racing -- `Six Gun Caballero', `Hot Lead
Payoff', `Ride 'Em Cowboy', `The Boss of the Lazy B', `The Ghost Town
Gun-Ghost', `Death Waits at Sundown', etcetera.

  Campbell thought Ron was wasting his time with Westerns and told him
so in a letter dated 23 January 1939: `I don't, personally, like
Westerns particularly, and, in consequence, haven't read your Western
stuff.  But I'm convinced that you do like fantasy, enjoy it, and have
a greater gift for fantasy than for almost any other type.  The fact
that editor after editor has urged you to do that type seems to me
indication that you always have had that ability, and that, in
avoiding it heretofore, you've suppressed a natural, and not common,
talent.  There are a lot of boys that run out readable Westerns, but
only about three or four men in a generation that do top-notch
fantasy.'[10]

  Campbell wanted Ron to contribute to *Unknown*, a new magazine he
was in the process of launching which was to specialize in bizarre
fantasy, and promised to reserve space for him with a proviso that
only `genuinely first-rate fantasy' would be considered.  In response
Ron produced a story called `The Ultimate Adventure', which was used
as the lead novel in the April 1939 issue and marked the beginning of
a tenure during which his name was virtually a permanent fixture in
the magazine.

  The protagonist in `The Ultimate Adventure' was a favourite Hubbard
stereotype -- a wimp transported by magic to another, vaguely
Oriental, world and miraculously mutated into a roistering adventurer.
The wimp in this case was a destitute orphan.  Beguiled by a mad
professor, tie finds himself in a scene from *The Arabian Nights*, is
condemned to death as a suspected ghoul, shoots his way out, falls in
with a band of genuine ghouls who eat human heads, rescues a fair
princess from the clich castle and finally turns the tables on the
mad professor.  It was rip-roaring stuff.

  A second L. Ron Hubbard story, `Slaves of Sleep', appeared in the
July issue of *Unknown*.  This time the hero was not a penniless
orphan

__________
10. *The John W. Campbell Letters, Vol.  I*, 1985

                          -- end page 82 --

but an heir to a shipping fortune, although quite as ineffectual.
Another wicked professor (Ron did not have much time for academics)
causes the young man to be cursed with eternal sleeplessness,
banishing him to a world where he is a seventeenth-century sailor on
the Barbary coast embroiled in hair-raising adventures.  Fortunately,
he has a magic ring for use in really tricky situations -- as when he
single-handedly defeats an enemy fleet by obdurately ordering the
ships to fall apart.

  Compared to previous years, Ron's output in 1939 was positively
dilatory -- just seven novels and two short stories.  But then be had
other things on his mind.  A year earlier, his friend H. Latane Lewis
II, who was by then working for the National Aeronautic Association,
had recommended him to the War Department in Washington as the right
man for an advisory post in the Air Corps.

  In a letter to Brigadier General Walter G. Kilner, Assistant Chief
of the Air Corps, H. Latane Lewis II unexpectedly promoted Ron to the
rank of `Captain', perhaps to enhance his case: `When you asked me
last week to procure advice on the problem of bringing a more
agreeable and adventurous type of young man into the Air Corps, I did
not know I would be fortunate enough to receive a call today from
Captain L. Ron Hubbard, the bearer.

  `Captain Hubbard, whom you know as a writer and lecturer, is
probably the best man to consult on this subject due to his many
connections.  He has offered to deliver his views in person.

  `As a member of the Explorers Club he has occasion to address
thousands of young men in various institutions concerning his sea
adventures and his various expeditions.  Though he only pursued
soaring and power flight long enough to emass [*sic*] story
information, he is still much respected in soaring societies for the
skill and daring which brought him two records.  He often speaks at
Harvard ...'[11]

  Nothing came of Ron's offer to deliver his views in person, possibly
because the Brigadier General discovered L. Ron Hubbard was not a
Captain, not a member of the Explorers Club, not a lecturer, held no
flying records and had never addressed Harvard.

  Ron, as ever, was unabashed but as the situation in Europe
deteriorated -- the newspapers were full of alarming reports that a
German invasion of Poland was imminent -- he became increasingly
enamoured with the idea that his panoply of talents should be
available to Washington.

  On 1 September, the day England and France declared war on Germany,
he wrote to the Secretary of the War Department: `Because of the
possibility that our nation may, in the near future, find itself at
war and because I well know the difficulty of finding trained men at
the height of such a crisis, I wish to offer my services to my

__________
11. Letter from H. Latane Lewis II, 14 February 1938

                          -- end page 83 --

government in whatever capacity they might be of the greatest use ...'
He continued with a resum of his career which was, for Ron, a model
of restraint and veracity.  It was just possible that he inadvertently
implied he had only left university in order to lead an expedition to
the Caribbean, and his military experience was perhaps just a little
over-emphasized, but by and large he stuck to the facts.  He even had
the grace to point out that though he had spent five years studying
psychology and human behaviour it was purely for his own benefit.  His
`pioneering' notes on emotional reactions, he added, would be
published in the coming year.

  Unfortunately for Ron, two days later, President Roosevelt declared
the neutrality of the United States, temporarily thwarting his
ambition to play a role in the defeat of Hitler.

                                 -*-

Following the move to South Colby, Ron became accustomed to spending
summers at The Hilltop, burning the midnight oil in his little cabin
in the woods and sailing the ruffled reaches of Puget Sound in the
*Maggie* at weekends, and winters in New York, where he could enjoy
the amiable and cosmopolitan company of his fellow writers.

  He usually stayed in the cheapest hotel room he could find, but in
the fall of 1939 he scraped together enough money to rent a small
apartment in Manhattan, on the Upper West Side at 95th and Riverside.
To make a place where he could work without distraction, he rigged up
a curtained enclosure about the size of a telephone booth, lit with a
blue electric bulb to cut down the reflected glare from his typing
paper.

  Most of the top science fiction writers of the day tended to gather
in John W. Campbell's cluttered office in the Street and Smith
building on Seventh Avenue and it was there that other contributors to
*Astounding* and *Unknown* made the acquaintance of L. Ron Hubbard.
L.  Sprague de Camp thought that he looked like a `reincarnated Pan
who had been doing himself a bit too well on the ambrosia'[12] and
Isaac Asimov, who greatly admired Ron's work, became quite flustered
at meeting him for the first time.

  `He was a large-jawed, red-haired, big and expansive fellow who
surprised me,' Asimov recalled.  `His heroes tended to be frightened
little men who rose to meet emergencies, and somehow I had expected
Hubbard to be the same.  "You don't look at all like your stories," I
said.  "Why?  How are my stories?"  he asked.  "Oh they're *great*," I
said enthusiastically and all present laughed while I blushed and
tried to explain that if the stories were great and he was not like
his stories, I didn't mean he was *not* great.[13]

  While he was in New York, Ron lobbied assiduously and moved
inexorably towards the fulfilment of a long-standing ambition -- to be

__________
12. L. Sprague de Camp, *Elron and the City of Brass* (*Fantastic*,
    August 1975) & *Science Fiction Handbook*, 1953
13. Asimov, *op. cit.*

                          -- end page 84 --

accepted as a member of the Explorers Club.  He had often hinted, over
the years, that he was a member, but in reality it was an accolade
that had proved singularly elusive.  The club occupied a handsome red
brick and stone building of suitable neo-Gothic dignity on East 70th
Street, but its worth as a prime piece of Manhattan real estate was as
nothing compared to the privilege of being allowed to walk through the
wrought iron gates as a member.  Membership of the snooty Explorers
Club of New York, founded in 1904, conferred prestige, social standing
and influence.  Ron longed to join this exalted fraternity, not least
because it would, at a stroke, forever legitimize his doubtful career
as an explorer and adventurer.

  He could be the most charming and sociable of men when he so desired
and he worked hard to make the right connections.  On 12 December
1939, he was formally proposed for membership of the Explorers Club on
the basis of what appeared to be an impressive application, citing the
valuable data he had obtained for the Hydrographic Office and the
University of Michigan during his expedition to the Caribbean, his
pioneering mineralogical survey of Puerto Rico and his survey flights
in the United States, undertaken to `aid adjustment of field and
facility data'.

  The club's membership committee did not, it seems, require any of
these claims to be checked and on 19 February 1940, L. Ron Hubbard was
duly elected, to his enormous and undisguised pleasure.  Thereafter,
he would rarely forgo the satisfaction of giving his address as
`Explorers Club, New York.'

  It not being in his nature to blush quietly on the sidelines, Ron
was soon making his presence felt.  Within a matter of months the club
magazine was reporting rumours that `our red-headed Captain Ron
Hubbard' liked to wrestle fully-grown brown bears.  Ron wrote a
good-natured denial, slyly contriving to portray himself as both sport
and saint: `I do not make a practice of going around picking on poor,
innocent Kodiak bears.  The day I arrived in New York City, this thing
began: I picked up my phone to hear a cooing voice say, "Cap'n, do you
*like* to wrassle with bears?"  And since that day I have had no
peace.  How the story arrived ahead of me I do not know, I mean the
whole thing is a damned lie!

  `A man can spend endless months of hardship and heroic privation in
checking coast pilots; he can squeeze his head to half its width
between earphones calculating radio errors; he can brave storm and
sudden death in all its most horrible forms in an attempt to increase
man's knowledge, and what happens?  Is he a hero?  Do people look upon
his salt-encrusted and exhausted self with awe?  Do universities give
him degrees and governments commissions?  *No*!  They all look at him
with a giggle and ask him if he likes to wrassle bears.  It's an

                          -- end page 85 --

outrage!  It's enough to make a man take up paper-doll cutting!
Gratitude, bah!  Attention and notoriety have centred upon one
singular accident -- an exaggerated untruth -- and the gigantic
benefits to the human race are all forgotten!'

  In the early months of 1940, Ron was forced to abandon the pursuit
of further gigantic benefits for the human race in favour of earning a
living.  Working under the blue light in the curtained cubicle in his
apartment on the Upper West Side, he produced three stories that would
come to be regarded as classics- `Fear', `Typewriter in the Sky' and
`Final Blackout'.

  `No one who read "Fear" in *Unknown* during their impressionable
years would ever forget it,' claimed Brian Aldiss, science fiction
writer and historian.[14] The stream-of-consciousness narrative, akin
to literary psychoanalysis, charts the disintegration of an academic
who writes an article debunking the existence of spirits and demons
and is punished by being dragged into a nightmare of black magic and
hallucinations.  In contrast, `Typewriter In The Sky' was a typical
Hubbard swashbuckler about a character called Mike de Wolfe who finds
himself trapped in the past as the unwilling victim of a science
fiction writer named Horace Hackett.  Transported to the Spanish Main,
de Wolfe is saddled with the implausible name of Miguel Saint Raoul
Maria Gonzales Sebastian de Mendoza y Toledo Francisco Juan Tomaso
Guerrero de Brazo y Leon de Lobo and is required to duel with English
sea dog Tom Bristol for the hand of the fair Lady Marion,
`flame-headed, imperious and as lovely as any statue from Greece'.  It
was an ingenious little tale, but hardly great literature,
particularly since the protagonists were given to uttering lines like
`God's breath, milord, you jest!'  and `By gad, he's got spunk!'  or
even `Peel your peepers!'

  *Final Blackout* was a novel which many science-fiction fans
considered Hubbard's finest work and led to hopeful comparisons with
Jules Verne and H.G. Wells.  (When it was published in hardback later,
Ron contrived, unsuccessfully, to appear self-effacing in a jacket
note: `I cannot bring myself to believe that *Final Blackout*, as so
many polls and such insist, is one of the ten greatest stories ever
published.')

  Serialized in the April, May and June issues of *Astounding*, *Final
Blackout* precipitated furious controversy in fan magazines and bitter
accusations that it was Communist or Fascist propaganda.  The story
was set in a Europe laid waste by generations of war and populated
only by marauding bands of renegade soldiers.  Leading a brigade of
`unkillables', the hero, identified only as the `Lieutenant', fights
his way to England, where he establishes a benign military
dictatorship until he is overthrown by his former commanding officers,
with the backing of the United States.

__________
14. Brian Aldiss, *Trillion Year Spree*, 1986

                          -- end page 86 --

  It was a peculiarly grim and apposite story to be published in the
spring of 1940.  Viewed from the United States, the war in Europe
seemed like a prelude to Armageddon, the potential destruction of
civilized life under the heel of the jackboot.  While American
liberals were campaigning for positive action from the government to
aid the Allies in the fight against Fascism, the anti-war neutralist
lobby was equally vociferous.  Partisans of both left and right read
political significance into *The Final Blackout*: it was pro-war,
anti-war, Communist or anti-Communist, depending on the reader's
political inclinations.

  Even Ron's friends could not agree about his intentions.  Ron was a
member of a war-game circle which had been started by Fletcher Pratt,
a naval historian who also enjoyed writing science fiction.  Using
scale models of real warships made from balsa wood, they re-enacted
naval battles on the floor of the living-room in Pratt's New York
apartment until the group became too large and it was necessary to
transfer the battleground to a hired hall on East 59th Street.  While
the balsa battles were being fought, they often discussed the war and
its attendant politics.

  `Hubbard gave a varied impression of himself,' recalled L. Sprague
de Camp, who was also a member of the war-game circle.  `Some thought
him a Fascist because of the authoritarian tone of certain stories.
But one science-fiction writer, then an idealistic left-liberal, was
convinced that Hubbard had profound liberal convictions.  To others,
Hubbard expressed withering disdain for politics and politicians,
saying about the imminence of war: "Me, fight for a *political*
system?"[15]

  There was certainly no doubt that Ron was anti-German, for on 16 May
he wrote a letter to the FBI in Washington on his exotic personalized
stationery featuring his initials and a charging cavalryman:
`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 was a German steward at the Knickerbocker
Hotel in New York whose sister, according to Ron, was a member of the
Gestapo.  Ron accused him of being anti-American, an illegal immigrant
and `definitely fifth column'.  `My interest in this is impersonal,'
he added, `though possibly shaded by the feeling of dislike which he
always inspires in me.'

  J. Edgar Hoover replied promptly, thanked Ron for the information
and promised an investigation.  But when an FBI agent called at Ron's
apartment on Riverside Drive, he discovered that Ron had moved out on
1 June.  The agent reported that Ron had told neighbours he was moving
to Washington DC, but as he left no forwarding address, the case was
closed.[16]

__________
15. *Fantastic*, August 1975
16. FBI files on L. R. Hubbard

                          -- end page 87 --

  Ron had not gone to Washington DC but to Washington State, back to
The Hilltop and to Polly and the children.  There was perhaps little
time for a lengthy family reunion, however, for he was deeply involved
in the planning of his next great adventure -- the Alaskan
Radio-Experimental Expedition.  He was, of course, the leader and
would be carrying with him, for the first time, the flag of the
Explorers Club.

  The signal honour of carrying the club flag was jealously guarded
and only granted to members taking part in expeditions with proven
serious scientific objectives.  Every application was obviously
subjected to rigorous scrutiny by the Flag and Honors Committee, lest
the significance of its award be devalued.  Thus Captain Hubbard
proposed eminently laudable aims for his Alaskan Radio-Experimental
Expedition, notably to rewrite an important navigation guide -- the US
Coast Pilot, Alaska, Part 1 -- and to investigate methods of radio
position-finding with experimental equipment and a new system of
mathematical computation.  In a committee room at the Explorers Club,
these creditable aspirations clearly met with unhesitant approval.

  In and around Bremerton, members of the Waterbury family had a
rather more prosaic perspective on the Alaskan Radio-Experimental
Expedition, referring to it simply as `Ron and Polly's trip'.  As far
as the family was concerned, Ron was going to take Polly on a cruise
up to Alaska.  Aunt Marnie viewed the venture as a wangle entirely
typical of her nephew.  `Ron dreamed up the trip as a way of
outfitting the *Maggie*,' she said.  `His brain was always working and
when he was trying to figure out how he could afford to outfit the
boat he wrote letters to all these different manufacturers of
instruments and equipment offering to test them out.'

  The letters were written on crisply designed notepaper headed
`ALASKAN RADIO-EXPERIMENTAL EXPEDITION', with a sub-heading `Checking
data for the US Coast and Geodetic Survey and the US Navy Hydrographic
Office'.  The expedition's base was given as Yukon Harbor, Colby, and
its address, inevitably, was the Explorers Club of New York.  With
such impressive credentials, it was no surprise that manufacturers
responded positively to letters from `Captain L. Ron Hubbard, Director
AREE '40' asking for equipment to be submitted for scientific testing.

  Aunt Marnie knew all about `Ron and Polly's trip' because they had
asked her to look after Nibs and Katie at The Hilltop while they were
away.  She and her husband, Kemp, were living in Spokane, but Kemp had
been unemployed throughout the Depression and they were happy to move
into The Hilltop as Kemp thought he might find work at the Navy Yard
in Bremerton.  `It was a beautiful spot,' said

                          -- end page 88 --

Marnie.  `Polly had fixed up the house and the garden real nice.  She
was very clever with flowers, very good at gardening.  From the garden
you could see the ferry boats coming over from Seattle.'

  A few days before they were due to leave, Ron offered to take Marnie
and Toilie for a trip round the bay in the *Maggie*.  It was not an
outing that augured well for the Alaskan Radio-Experimental Expedition
-- `We were quite a ways out', Marnie recalled, `when the engine
suddenly went phut-phut -- out of gas.  Polly was furious and shouted
at Ron, "I thought you were going to re-fuel it."  He had forgotten to
do it.  We prayed for a wind to blow so we could get in under sail.
In the end we had to drain the little oil lamps.  That gave us enough
fuel to give the engine a shot to get us moving, then we would drift
for a bit and give it another shot and finally we got back.  That was
my last trip on the *Maggie*.'[17]

  The `expedition' departed its Yukon Harbor `base' in July, with May,
Marnie, Toilie and Midge and their various children waving farewell
from the quayside.  Marnie and Kemip settled into The Hilltop with
Nibs and Katie, their own two children and Marylou, the daughter of
Marnie's sister, Hope.  For the next several months their only contact
with Ron and Polly was through letters posted from various ports in
British Columbia as the *Maggie* sailed erratically northwards along
the Pacific coast of Canada.

  From the start, the *Maggie*'s new engine, fitted only a few weeks
before they left Puget Sound, gave trouble.  On their second day out,
nosing through thick fog in the Juan de Futa Strait, between Vancouver
Island and the US coast and barely eighty miles from Bremerton, the
engine spluttered and died.  They very nearly ran aground before Ron
could get it going again.  The same thing happened in Chatham Sound,
off Prince Rupert, also, coincidentally, in a pea-souper.

  On Friday 30 August, the *Maggie* limped into the harbour at
Ketchikan, Alaska, with the engine crankshaft banging ominously.
Ketchikan was a small fishing and logging community surrounded by
spruce forests on the southern tip of the Alaskan panhandle, some
seven hundred miles from Bremerton.  The *Maggie*'s arrival merited a
story in the *Ketchikan Alaska Chronicle*, although no mention was
made of the expedition:

  `Captain L. Ron Hubbard, author and world traveller, arrived in
Ketchikan yesterday in company with his wife aboard the vest pocket
yacht, *Magician*.  His purpose in coming to Alaska was two-fold, one
to win a bet and another to gather material for a novel of Alaskan
salmon fishing.'

  It seems Ron told the newspaper that friends had wagered it was
impossible to sail a vessel as small as the *Maggie* to Alaska and he
was

__________
17. Author's interview with Mrs Roberts, April 1986

                          -- end page 89 --

determined to prove them wrong.  `Captain Hubbard covered their bets
and, now that he has arrived, will have the satisfaction of
collecting.'

  Ron no doubt wished the story was true, for he had hopelessly
underestimated the cost of the trip and they were already so short of
money that they could not afford to get the engine repaired.  More in
hope than anticipation, he sent an angry cable to the engine supplier
in Bremerton demanding a replacement crankshaft, free of charge.
Meanwhile, they were effectively marooned in Ketchikan.

  While Ron and Polly were carefully saving wherever they could, a
letter arrived from Marnie saying that Nibs had been up crying all
night with a toothache and she had taken him to the dentist.  Ron was
angry that Marnie should involve them in further expense and dashed
off an irritable reply telling her it was none of her business and she
should have waited until they got back.  Marnie responded furiously:
`What kind of heel are you?'

  Despite these trials, Ron did his best to invest the trip with
scientific purpose.  In mid-September, he despatched a package of
sailing directions and eleven rolls of film to the Hydrographic Office
in Washington DC with a note expressing the hope that they would prove
of value.  He was also able to report favourably to the Cape Cod
Instrument Company in Hyannis on the accuracy of its `Cape Cod
Navigator', which he had tested with 721 bearings on radio beacons.
`It has at all times performed its duties like a true shipmate,' Ron
wrote.

  A solution to their predicament presented itself later that month in
the shape of Jimmy Britton, the owner and president of the local radio
station.  KGBU Radio was a home-spun operation which proclaimed itself
to be `The Voice of Alaska' since it was virtually the only radio
station in the area.  Jimmy Britton made all the announcements, read
the news, conducted interviews, played records and filled in time as
best he could.

  KGBU was usually so short of material that anyone in Ketchikan was
welcome on the air to talk about almost anything.  It was hardly
surprising, then, that the arrival in town of Captain Hubbard, leader
of a scientific expedition carrying the flag of The Explorers Club of
New York, was nothing short of a godsend to Britton, particularly as
Hubbard was not only willing to broadcast, he seemed positively
*eager* to do so.  He was soon regaling listeners with a gripping
account of his expedition and his adventures navigating through
fog-bound, tide-bedevilled and uncharted waters.

  Britton recognized that Ron was a natural broadcaster and
storyteller, with a seemingly limitless reservoir of material, and his
talks on KGBU became a regular and popular feature for several weeks.
In one

                          -- end page 90 --

of them he revealed how, after only a week in Alaskan waters he had
discovered, with the help of his advanced radio navigational
instruments, a source of interference which had baffled the local
coastguard and signal station.  In another he described his role in
tracking down a German saboteur who had been sent to Alaska with
orders to cut off communications with the United States in the event
of war.  And his dramatic and sometimes hilarious account of how, on a
fishing expedition with a friend, he lassooed a swimming brown bear
which then climbed on to their boat, had listeners everywhere glued to
their sets.  Off the air, at Jimmy Britton's request, Ron re-organized
the station and wrote new programming schedules with all the
confidence of a man who had spent a lifetime in broadcasting.

  With little interference from other radio stations, KGBU's signal,
on 900 watts and 1000 kilocycles, carried for hundreds of miles and
could often be heard as far south as Seattle and Bremerton.  It was
for this reason that Ron always contrived to mention that he and his
wife were stranded in Ketchikan because the Regal Company of Bremerton
had refused to meet its obligations and replace their defective
crankshaft.  When a new crankshaft arrived in early December, Ron was
convinced it was his constant needling on the air that was
responsible.

  As soon as the new crankshaft was fitted, Ron and Polly set sail for
home.  No one was more sorry to see them go than Jimmy Britton: he
felt that KGBU had hardly begun to tap Ron's fund of stories.  The
*Maggie* sailed back into Puget Sound on 27 December 1940.  Ron bought
Marnie a yellow canary to thank her for looking after the children and
not a word was said about the dentist.

  Beset once more by debts, Ron went straight back to work to earn
some money.  For many weeks a light could be seen burning all night in
the window of the little cabin at the back of The Hilltop as the
stories rolled relentlessly out of his typewriter.  In one of them,
`The Case of the Friendly Corpse', published in *Unknown*, Ron
cheekily disposed of Harold Shea, the hero of a story by L. Sprague de
Camp that had appeared in the magazine two months previously.  Ron had
his own hero meet Harold Shea and demonstrate a magic wand which
turned into a serpent and proceeded to swallow up poor Harold.
L. Sprague de Camp fans were outraged that Hubbard should so brusquely
dispatch someone else's hero.

  When he was not working, Ron spent a lot of time, as before, with
his friend Mac Ford, who had recently been elected to the state
legislature.  During the hours they spent playing chess they talked at
length about the war in Europe and the likelihood of the United States
becoming involved.  Ron seemed somewhat subdued after his return from
Alaska; he was convinced that the Japanese were planning to

                          -- end page 91 --

attack the West coast mainland and gloomily prophesied that US forces
would be driven back to the Rockies before they could stem the tide of
the invasion.

  Unbeknown to Ford, Ron had made up his mind to join the Navy and was
making painstaking preparations to ensure he was offered a commission,
tenaciously cultivating useful contacts and soliciting letters of
recommendation wherever he could.  Jimmy Britton of KGBU Radio was
naturally happy to oblige and despatched a two-page eulogy to the
Secretary of the Navy on 15 March 1941, listing Ron's abundance of
accomplishments.  Among them he mentioned that Ron was a `good
professional photographer' whose work he had seen in *National
Geographic Magazine*.  No one else had, for *National Geographic* had
never published any of Ron's pictures.[18] `I do not hesitate',
Britton enthused, `to recommend him without reserve as a man of
intelligence, courage and good breeding as well as one of the most
versatile personalities I have ever known.'

  Ten days later, Commander W. E. McCain of US Naval Powder Factory at
Indian Head, Maryland, added his support: `This is to certify that I
have personally known Mr L. Ron Hubbard for the past twenty years.  I
have been associated with him as a boy growing up and observed him
closely.  I have found him to be of excellent character, honest,
ambitious and always very anxious to improve himself to better enable
him to become a more useful citizen ... I do not hesitate to recommend
him to anyone needing the services of a man of his qualifications.'
(McCain was the Lieutenant who had shown Ron and his mother around
Manila in 1927 and whom Ron mentioned in his journal.)

  Meanwhile, Ron was in touch with his Congressman, Warren
G. Magnuson, who was a member of the Committee on Naval Affairs.  Ron
had suggested to Magnuson that the US Navy should set up its own
Bureau of Information, both to improve the Navy's public relations and
to counter the `defeatist propaganda' about naval affairs which Ron
claimed was `flooding the press'.  At Magnuson's request, he produced
a nine-page report which the Congressman submitted with an
introduction which cannot have displeased the author: `This plan of
organization has been prepared by Captain L. Ron Hubbard, a writer who
is well-known under each of five different pen names.  His leadership
in the Authors' League and the American Fiction Guild, his political
and professional connections and the respect in which he is held by
writers and newsmen make his aid in this organization valuable.  His
participation in this organization will give to it an instantaneous
standing in the writing profession, and bring to it a standard of high
ideals ...'

  As if this was not enough, the Congressman also took it upon

__________
18. Letter to author from *National Geographic*, 3 Mar 1986

                          -- end page 92 --

himself to write to no less a person than President Roosevelt to extol
the virtues of `Captain' Hubbard.  The letter, dated 8 April, added
yet another laurel to Ron's crown with the improbable claim that he
held more marine licences than anyone else in the country.  It also
introduced an aspect of his personality that was certainly not obvious
to other people who knew Ron Hubbard -- his `distaste for personal
publicity'.

  `Dear Mr President,' Magnuson wrote.  `May I recommend to you a
gentleman of reputation?  L. Ron Hubbard is a well-known writer under
five different names.  He is a respected explorer as Captain Bryan,
Navy Hydrographer, will confirm.  [Bryan acknowledged the sailing
directions and films that Ron sent to the Hydrographic Office from his
Alaskan trip.]

  `Mr Hubbard was born into the Navy.  He has marine masters papers
for more types of vessels than any other man in the United States.

  `He has written for Hollywood, radio and newspapers and has
published many millions of words of fact and fiction in novels and
national magazines.  In writing organizations he is a key figure,
making him politically potent nationally.

  `An interesting trait is his distaste for personal publicity.  He is
both discreet and resourceful as his record should indicate.

  `Anything you can do for Mr Hubbard will be appreciated ...'

  On 18 April, Ron reported to the Naval Reserve Headquarters in
Washington DC for a physical examination.  Next day, he persuaded the
Dean of the School of Civil Engineering at George Washington
University to write a letter to the Navy Yard recommending him for a
commission.  Professor Arthur Johnson complimented Ron's leadership,
ingenuity, resourcefulness and personality and strove to explain why
such a paragon had failed to graduate: `His average grades in
engineering were due to the obvious fact that he had started in the
wrong career.  They do not reflect his great ability.'

  Unquestionably the most lyrical of all the letters of recommendation
was that signed by Senator Robert M. Ford on the notepaper of the
House of Representatives for the State of Washington.  Ford was not
the kind of man to be too bothered by protocol or paperwork.  `I don't
know why Ron wanted a letter,' he said.  `I just gave him a
letter-head and said, "Hell, you're the writer, you write it!"'[19]

  Ron was unstinting in praise of himself.  `To whom it may concern,'
he began.  `This will introduce one of the most brilliant men I have
ever known: Captain L. Ron Hubbard.

  `He writes under six names in a diversity of fields from political
economy to action fiction and if he would make at least one of his pen

__________
19. Interview with former Senator R.M. Ford

                          -- end page 93 --

names public he would have little difficult entering anywhere.  He has
published many millions of words and some fourteen movies.

  `In exploration he has honourably carried the flag of the Explorers
Club and has extended geographical and mineralogical knowledge.  He is
well known in many parts of the world and has considerable influence
in the Caribbean and Alaska.

  `As a key figure in writing organizations he has considerable
political worth and in the Northwest he is a powerful influence.

  `I have known him for many years and have found him discreet, loyal,
honest and without peer in the art of getting things done swiftly.

  `If Captain Hubbard requests help, be assured that it will benefit
others more than himself.

  `For courage and ability I cannot too strongly recommend him.'

  On 19 July 1941, L. Ron Hubbard was commissioned as a Lieutenant
(Junior Grade) in the US Naval Reserve.

                          -- end page 94 --

                             *Chapter 6*

                    *The Hero Never Who Never Was*

  `Commissioned before the war in 1941, by the US Navy, he [Hubbard]
was ordered to the Philippines at the outbreak of war in the US and
was flown home in the late spring of 1942 in the Secretary of the
Navy's private plane as the first US returned casualty from the Far
East.'  (*A Brief Biography of L. Ron Hubbard*)

  `He served in the South Pacific, and in 1942 was relieved by fifteen
officers of rank and was rushed home to take part in the 1942 battle
against German submarines as Commanding Officer of a corvette serving
in the North Atlantic.  In 1943 he was made Commodore of Corvette
Squadrons, and in 1944 he worked with amphibious forces.  After
serving in all five theaters of World War II and receiving 21 medals
and palms, in 1944 he was severely wounded and was taken crippled and
blinded to Oak Knoll Naval Hospital.'  (*Facts About L. Ron Hubbard*)

                              * * * * *

By July 1941, the United States was effectively, although
unofficially, at war.  US marines had taken over the British garrison
in Iceland and US warships were already escorting convoys of
lend-lease supplies across the North Atlantic.  The isolationist lobby
bitterly accused President Roosevelt of needlessly leading the nation
into the conflict, but the momentum was irreversible.  When Germany
invaded Russia, Roosevelt immediately promised US aid, declaring the
defence of Russia to be `vital to the defence of the United States'.

  In August, as the apparently invincible Nazi Panzer divisions pushed
the Red Army back towards the outskirts of Leningrad, Roosevelt met
the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, off the coast of
Newfoundland and signed the Atlantic Charter, confirming US-Anglo
co-operation and calling for `the right of all peoples to choose the
form of Government under which they will live'.  A few days later, a
German U-Boat unsuccessfully attacked an American destroyer, the *USS
Greer*, south of Iceland and Roosevelt issued orders to `shoot on
sight'.  In October, the US Navy suffered its first

                          -- end page 95 --

casualty when another destroyer, the *USS Kearney*, was sunk by a
submarine in the North Atlantic.  After the loss of the *Kearney*, the
United States embarked on an undeclared naval war against Germany.

  Lieutenant L.R. Hubbard, US Naval Reserve, did not exactly play a
central role in these events.  In moments of fantasy he could no doubt
picture himself on the bridge of the *Kearney*, heroically choosing to
go down with his ship, a wry smile playing on his lips as the last of
his crew was rescued; in reality, he was being shunted from one desk
job to another in public relations.

  In the light of his success as a writer, it was not surprising that
the US Navy assigned Lieutenant Hubbard to a job in publicity, even
though the fledgling officer's literary talent was largely confined to
the abstruse field of science fiction, far divorced from the sober
requirements of military public relations.

  But Ron naturally considered himself supremely well qualified and he
had barely been in uniform five minutes before he was offering the
benefit of his advice to his senior officers.  On 21 July, with two
full days' service completed, he wrote to Congressman Magnuson
thanking him for his help in obtaining a commission and mentioning
that he had already submitted three ideas to accelerate recruiting,
all of which were `going into effect'.[1] Magnuson replied; `Glad to
bear your commission went through.  Know you will be right at home in
your work with Navy Press Relations.'

  A week later, Ron had other plans.  In a second letter to Magnuson,
dated 29 July and written from The Explorers Club in New York, he said
that `as Press Relations was getting along well enough' he had offered
to write two articles every week for national magazines, with the aim
of selling the `American bluejacket' to the public.  He had, he said,
been given a `free helm' and `because this program will net about
three times as much as Navy pay I think it no more than right that I
return anything above pay and expenses to Navy Relief.  So all goes
along swimmingly.'

  Well, not quite swimmingly: it transpired that Ron was a little
over-confident about his ability to sell US Navy stories to national
magazines.  He might have written two articles every week, but none
was published.

  When it became clear to the Navy that Lieutenant Hubbard was wasting
his time, it was decided to send him to the Hydrographic Office in
Washington to annotate the photographs he had taken during his trip to
Alaska with Polly.  He arrived on 22 September and stayed two weeks.
In a memo to the Assistant Hydrographer, it was noted that several
dozen of his photographs were `fairly clear' and of `some navigational
interest'.  Ron had also suggested changes and amplifications to the
Sailing Directions for British Columbia.  Some were

__________
 1. Memorandum from Hubbard to Magnuson, 22 July 1941

                          -- end page 96 --

unimportant, the memo continued, `but in the aggregate they represent
a very definite contribution'.[2]

  It was a contribution that marked the end of Ron's career in public
relations.  On 24 November, after six weeks' leave, he was posted to
Headquarters, Third Naval District, in New York, for training as an
Intelligence Officer.

  Throughout this period, his father was stationed at the Navy Yard on
Mare Island in San Pablo Bay, California, as officer in charge of the
commissary.  Now fifty-five and still a Lieutenant-Commander, Harry
Hubbard's relationship with his son had deteriorated over the years
and they saw little of each other.  Any pleasure Hub might have
experienced when he learned Ron was following him into the Navy could
not outweigh his overall disapproval of, and disappointment with, his
son.  Harry Hubbard was a deeply conservative, utterly conventional
plodder, a man ruled by routine and conformity.  He could never come
to terms with what he viewed as his son's eccentricities -- his
refusal to get a job, his habit of staying up all night and sleeping
all day, his prolonged absences from home, his lack of regard for his
family.  Hub was extremely fond of Polly and adored his two
grandchildren -- Nibs, then seven years old, and Katie, who was five.
Sometimes he felt he was closer to them than their own father and he
was saddened that this should be the case.

  As far as Ron was concerned, he had nothing in common with his
father who had spent virtually his entire life pushing paper in the
Navy with nothing in prospect but a pension.  To Ron it was a grey and
unappealing existence compared to his own world, at least as it
existed in his thoughts.  Ron still saw himself as an adventurer cast
in the mould of his fictional heroes and never missed an opportunity
to promote himself as a fearless, devil-may-care, globetrotter.  It
was no wonder father and son inexorably drifted apart -- their
characters were simply too different to be compatible.

  Ron was still at HQ Third Naval District in New York when, a few
minutes after three o'clock on the afternoon of Sunday 7 December, an
announcer broke into a New York Philharmonic concert being broadcast
on CBS: `We interrupt this program to bring you a special news
bulletin.  The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor.'  At that very
moment, bombs were still falling on the ships in Pearl Harbor and
before the Japanese pilots headed for home, five US battleships had
been sunk or beached, three others damaged, ten smaller warships
disabled and some 2400 men killed.  Next day, the President signed a
declaration of war.

  If Ron was chafing to get into action he was to be disappointed.  On
18 December, he was posted to the Philippines, but got no further than
Brisbane, Australia, where while waiting for a ship to Manila, he

__________
 2. Memorandum for Assistant Hydrographer, 22 October 1941

                          -- end page 97 --

so antagonised his senior officers that in February 1942 he was on his
way home again on board the *USS Chaumont*.  `This officer is not
satisfactory for independent duty assignment,' the US Naval Attach in
Melbourne reported on 14 February.  `He is garrulous and tries to give
impressions of his importance.  He also seems to think he has unusual
ability in most lines.  These characteristics indicate that he will
require close supervision for satisfactory performance of any
intelligence duty.'  It was claimed that Ron assumed authority without
bothering to obtain official sanction and attempted to perform duties
for which he had no qualifications, thus becoming `the source of much
trouble'.[3]

  At Headquarters Twelfth Naval District in San Francisco, it was
decided that Ron's talents might be more profitably employed in
censoring cables.  In a despatch dated 22 April, the Chief Cable
Censor in Washington recommended that no disciplinary action be taken
following the report from Melbourne `as it is thought that the
Subject's qualifications may find a useful outlet in the Office of the
Cable Censor, New York'.

  Ron did not enjoy his desk job at the Office of the Cable Censor and
in June he put in a request for sea duty on a patrol boat, preferably
in the Caribbean area, `the peoples, language and customs of which I
know and of which I possess piloting knowledge.'  His request was
approved -- he was taken off cable censorship work and ordered to
report to a shipbuilding yard in Neponset, Massachusetts, to supervise
the conversion of a heavy beam trawler, the *Mist*, into a US Navy
gunboat to be classified as *USS YP-422*.  When she was ready to put
to sea he was to take over as Commanding Officer.

  Here at last was his opportunity to prove he was the hero he
devoutly believed himself to be.  (Had he not fought and won countless
battles in the pages of his fiction?)  Fighting men of calibre were
certainly desperately needed, for the months following Pearl Harbor
saw some of the darkest days of the war for the United States.
Although jukeboxes around the country were tinnily cranking out
patriotic jingles like `Goodbye, Mama, I'm Off To Yokohama' and
`You're a Sap, Mister Jap', the initial euphoria that had greeted the
war soon began to fade as the Allies were routed in the Pacific: Guam
fell, then Manila, then Singapore, Bataan and Corregidor.

  It was, then, with a certain sense of fulfilling his destiny that
Lieutenant Hubbard travelled to Neponset, his orders contained in a
signal in his pocket: `LTJG LAFAYETTE R HUBBARD DVS USNR HEREBY
DETACHED PROCEED IMMEDIATELY NEPONSET MASS ... DUTY CONNECTION
CONVERSION YP422 AT GEORGE LAWLEY AND SONS AND AS CO OF THAT VESSEL
WHEN PLACED IN FULL COMMISSION.'

  The conversion work was carried out swiftly and on 9 September

__________
 3. Despatch from US Naval Attach, Melbourne, 14 February 1942

                          -- end page 98 --

1942, Ron despatched a message to the Commandant of Boston Navy Yard
reporting that *USS YP-422* was in excellent condition, crew training
was `approaching efficiency' and morale was high.  `As soon as a few
deficiencies are remedied,' he added `this vessel will be in all
respects ready for sea and is very eager to be on her way to her
assigned station or task force.'

  Like his father, Ron tended to be somewhat absent-minded about
personal debts.  While he was supervising the conversion of the
*YP-422* he was being pursued by tailors in Brisbane and Washington DC
for unpaid uniform bills and he still owed $265 to the Bank of
Ketchikan.  When the Alaskan bank reported Lieutenant Hubbard's debt
to the Bureau of Navigation in Washington, Ron wrote an indignant
letter to the cashier: `You are again informed that the reason for
non-payment of this note is the sharp decrease in pay which I was
willing to take to help my country.  Until this war is ended I can
only make small and irregular payments.'

  The implication was that Lieutenant Hubbard was far too busy
fighting a war to be bothered by trifling debts, but sadly, when the
*USS YP-422* set out on her shakedown cruise, Lieutenant Hubbard was
nowhere to be seen on board.  On 1 October, Ron was summarily relieved
of his command and ordered to report to the Commandant, Twelfth Naval
District `for such duty as he may assign you'.  No explanation was
contained in his orders, although earlier he had been involved in an
unwise altercation with a senior officer at the shipyard.
Considerable tension had developed between the officers in charge of
the conversion work and those officers assigned to crew the ten YPs
being converted at the Neponset shipyard, culminating in an
extraordinary order prohibiting YP officers from approaching the
conversion office or even speaking to any of the shipyard workers.
Ron had taken it upon himself to fire off a memorandum to the
Vice-Chief of Naval Operations in Washington, naming the officer
responsible and pointing out that the YP commanding officers were all
`startled' by the order.[4] He might have been better advised to keep
quiet: on 25 September the Commandant of Boston Navy Yard sent a
signal to Washington stating his view that Hubbard was `not
temperamentally fitted for independent command.'

  With his dreams of glory temporarily crushed, Ron waited for his
next assignment without much optimism, anticipating he would probably
be put back in command of a desk.  However, he perked up considerably
when his orders came through -- he was to be sent to the Submarine
Chaser Training Center in Miami, Florida.  This immediately opened up
a vista of wonderful new images -- `Ron the Fox', ace sub hunter,
fearless scourge of the Japanese submarine fleet, etcetera.

  Wearing dark glasses, Lieutenant Hubbard arrived at the Training

__________
 4. Memorandum from C.O. *USS YP-422*, 12 September 1942

                          -- end page 99 --

Center on 2 November and quickly made friends with another officer on
the course -- a young Lieutenant from Georgetown, Maine, by the name
of Thomas Moulton.  Ron light-heartedly explained that he was obliged
to wear dark glasses as he had received a severe flash burn when he
was serving as Gunnery Officer on the destroyer *Edsel*.  He had been
standing close to the muzzle of a five-inch gun which fired
prematurely and while his injuries did not impair his vision, he found
any kind of bright light painful without dark glasses.  Moulton,
understandably, was impressed.

  By judiciously lacing his conversation with jargon and anecdotes,
Ron possessed an uncanny ability to be totally convincing.  It was
soon `common knowledge' at the Center that he had served on
destroyers; indeed, said Moulton, he was `used as something of an
authority in the classroom'.[5] While they were training together in
Miami, mastering the intricacies of tracking and attacking enemy
submarines, Moulton was treated to further details of his new friend's
astonishing exploits in the early months of the war.  His strong
recollection was that Ron was a reticent sort of hero, reluctant to
talk about himself, but over the weeks his story came out bit by bit.

  On the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, it seemed that Ron
was landed from the *Edsel* on the north coast of Java in the Dutch
East Indies, not far from the port of Surabaya, to carry out a secret
mission.  The *Edsel* was sunk a couple of days later [not quite
accurate -- she was sunk in March 1942] and went down with all hands.
When the Japanese occupied the island, Ron took off for the hills and
lived rough in the jungle.  Once he was almost caught by a Japanese
patrol and was hit in the back by machine-gun fire before he was able
to make his escape.  Those wounds still troubled him, he confessed.
He often suffered severe pain in his right side and the bullets had
damaged his urinary system, making it difficult for him to urinate.
He was in bad shape for quite a while after being shot, but eventually
he teamed up with another officer and they constructed a raft on which
they sailed across the shark-infested Timor Sea to within one hundred
miles of the Australian coast, where they were picked up by a British
or Australian destroyer.  It was, Moulton thought, a remarkable piece
of navigation.

  In January 1943, Ron was sent on a ten-day anti-submarine warfare
course at the Fleet Sound School in Key West, Florida, prior to being
posted to Portland, Oregon, as prospective Commanding Officer of *USS
PC-815*, a 280-ton submarine-chaser under construction at the Albina
Engine and Machine Works.  Ron asked Moulton if he would be his
Executive Officer.  Moulton was really hoping for a ship of his own,
but he so admired Ron that he agreed.

__________
 5. Moulton testimony in Church of Scientology *v.* Armstrong, 21 May
    1984

                          -- end page 100 --

  While the *PC-815* was being built, the two officers found time to
enjoy life a little in the pleasant city of Portland.  Moulton's wife
came over from the East Coast and Polly was able to visit from
Bremerton, which was only 150 miles to the north.  As a foursome they
enjoyed each other's company and frequently had dinner together,
despite rationing, in one of the restaurants overlooking the green
valley of the Willamette river and the distant snow-capped peak of
Mount Hood.  On one well-remembered occasion, the prospective
Commanding Officer of *PC-815* and his Executive Officer drove up to
Seattle for a dance at the tennis club.  Ron was wearing his
mysterious dark glasses, as usual, and was being gently teased by one
of the women in their group.  When he explained why they were
necessary, the woman raised her eyebrows as if she did not believe
him.  Moulton was quite shocked.  However, to prove what he was
saying, Ron took off his glasses and within five or ten minutes his
eyes began watering and were clearly sore.  His friend was deeply
gratified.

  At ten o'clock on Tuesday 20 April 1943, the *USS PC-815* was
commissioned.  Ron noted the event in a pencilled entry on the first
page of the ship's log book, signing his name with a proud flourish.
Two days later, the *Oregon Journal* published a photograph of Ron and
Moulton in uniform with an article about the commissioning of the new
ship.  Ron wore his dark glasses and an intrepid expression, his coat
collar was turned up and he gripped a pipe in his right hand: he
looked just like a man ready to go to war.

  In the story, Ron was described as a `veteran sub-hunter of the
battles of the Pacific and Atlantic ... an old band at knocking tails
off enemy subs'.  To add a little local interest, it seems he told the
reporter that he had grown up in Portland and came from a long line of
naval men.  He said his grandfather, `Captain' Lafayette Waterbury,
and his great-grandfather, `Captain' I.C. DeWolfe, had both helped
make American naval history, although naturally he did not elaborate
on their contribution.  [His great-grandfather's name was Abram;
`I.C.'  were his grandmother's initials.]

  His membership of the Explorers Club received a prominent mention,
of course, along with the fact that he had commanded three
`internationally important' expeditions.  He was also persuaded to
reveal that during the Caribbean Motion Picture Expedition he had
become the first man ever to use a bathysphere for underwater filming.

  When the reporter asked Ron for a comment about his new ship, he
obliged with a picturesque quote that began by sounding like Humphrey
Bogart and ended like the President: `Those little sweethearts are
tough.  They could lick the pants off anything Nelson or Farragut ever
sailed.  They put up a sizzling fight and are the only answer to the
submarine menace.  I state emphatically that the future of America
rests with just such escort vessels.'

                          -- end page 101 --

On the evening of 18 May, the *USS PC-815* sailed from Astoria,
Oregon, on her shakedown cruise.  Her destination was San Diego, but
she had only been at sea for five hours when, at 0230 hours off Cape
Lookout on the coast of Oregon, she encountered at least one, perhaps
two, enemy submarines in the middle of a busy shipping lane!

  Ron provided a graphic account of the engagement that followed in a
secret Battle Report to the Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Fleet:[6]

  `Proceeding southward just inside the steamer track an echo-ranging
contact was made by the soundman then on duty ... The Commanding
Officer had the conn and immediately slowed all engines to ahead one
third to better echo-ranging conditions, and placed the contact dead
ahead, 500 yards away.

  `The first contact was very good.  The target was moving left and
away.  The bearing was clear.  The night was moonlit and the sea was
flat calm ... The *USS PC-815* closed in to 360 yards, meanwhile
sounding general quarters ... Contact was regained at 800 yards and
was held on the starboard beam while further investigation was made.
Screws were present and distinct as before.  The bearing was still
clear.  Smoke signal identification was watched for closely and when
none appeared it was concluded the target must not be a friendly
submarine.  All engines were brought up to speed 15 knots and the
target was brought dead ahead ...'

  On its first attack run, the *USS PC-815* dropped a barrage of three
depth charges.  When it had re-established contact, a second attack
was made at 0350 hours, this time laying down a pattern of four depth
charges.

  Ron lapsed into rather unmilitary lyricism to describe the ensuing
events: `The ship, sleepy and sceptical, had come to their guns
swiftly and without error.  No one, including the Commanding Officer,
could readily credit the existence of an enemy submarine here on the
steamer track and all soundmen, now on the bridge, were attempting to
argue the echo-ranging equipment and chemical recorder out of such a
fantastic idea ...

  `At 0450, with dawn breaking over a glassy sea, a lookout sighted a
dark object about 700 yards from the ship on the starboard beam.  When
inspected the object seemed to be moving ... Although very probably
this object was a floating log no chances were taken and the target
was used to test the guns which had not been heretofore fired
structurally.  The gunners, most of whom were men of experience,
displayed an astonishing accuracy, bursts and shells converging on the
target.

  `The target disappeared for several minutes and then, to test the
guns not brought to bear on the first burst, the ship was turned in

__________
 6. *USS PC-815* Action Report, 24 May 1943

                          -- end page 102 --

case the object reappeared.  The object appeared again closer to the
ship.  Once more fire was opened and the target vanished.'

  Ron stressed that he considered it likely this target was no more
than driftwood, but he thought it was good for the morale of the
gunners to ensure the newly-installed guns worked.  The *USS PC-815*
mounted four further attacks on the elusive submarine in the hope of
forcing it to the surface, without success.  At the end of the sixth
attack the ship's supply of depth charges was exhausted.  Urgent
signals requesting more ammunition at first met with no response.

  At nine o'clock in the morning, two US Navy blimps, *K-39* and
*K-33*, appeared on the scene to help with the search.  By noon, Ron
believed that the submarine was disabled in some way, or at least
unable to launch its torpedoes, since the *PC-815*, lying to in a
smooth sea, presented an easy target and had not been attacked.  In
the early afternoon a second, smaller, sub-chaser, the *USS SC-536*
arrived, but was unable to make contact with the target.

  On the bridge of *PC-815*, Ron offered to lead the other ship on an
attack run, blowing a whistle to signal when to drop its depth
charges.  `With the bullnose of the SC nearly against our flagstaff,'
Ron wrote, `we came to attack course ...'  Five depth charges were
dropped on the first run and two on the second.

  "The observation blimps began to sight oil and air bubbles in the
vicinity of the last attack and finally a periscope.  This ship also
sighted air bubbles ... At 1606 oil was reported again and this ship
saw oil.  Great air boils were seen and the sound of blowing tanks was
reported by the soundman ... All guns were now manned with great
attention as it was supposed that the sub was trying to surface.
Everyone was very calm, gunners joking about who would get in the
first shot.'

  But the submarine did not surface.  Far from being discouraged, it
seemed that Ron was by then convinced that there was not just one but
two submarines lurking somewhere beneath them.  His sonar operator had
reported making a second, separate, contact a few hours earlier.

  Shortly before five o'clock, a Coast Guard patrol boat brought in
further supplies of ammunition.  Manoeuvring alongside, twenty-seven
depth charges were transferred on to the *USS PC-815* and made ready
for firing.  Not long afterwards, a second Coast Guard patrol boat,
the *Bonham* arrived, followed by another sub-chaser, the *USS
SC-537*.  There was now a total of five ships and two observations
blimps involved in the search for the enemy submarines off the coast
of Oregon.

  All through the next day, sweep and search operations continued,
although not all the Commanding Officers were as keen or convinced as
Ron.  `Neither the *SC-537* nor the *Bonham*', he noted `showed any

                          -- end page 103 --

understanding whatever and refused by their actions to cooperate.'
The *SC-537*, he added with barely concealed disgust, failed to drop a
single depth charge.  As if in compensation, the *USS PC-815* made one
attack run after another, forging back and forth at high speed,
dropping barrage after barrage.

  Still no wreckage, no bodies, floated to the surface.  Ron was not
in the least deterred.  `Because we had three times found two sub
targets on the previous day, we considered from her failure to surface
that one sub was gone down in 90 fathoms.  The other still had
batteries well up for it made good speed in subsequent attacks ...

  `All during the following night, the *USS PC-815* kept the area
swept as well as it could.  The moonlight showed up an oil slick which
we investigated, though the slick was too thin for samples ... A
report that the sub had surfaced off Sand Lake caused all vessels
except the *Bonham* to go flying north to that position.  But before
flank speed was attained the reported "sub" was reported as a fishing
vessel ...

  `At 0700, May 21, 1943, being near the area of the attacks the night
before this ship stopped to search ... Suddenly a boil of orange
colored oil, very thick, came to the surface immediately on our port
bow ... The Commanding Officer came forward on the double and saw a
second boil of orange oil rising on the other side of the first.  The
soundman was loudly reporting that he heard tanks being blown on the
port bow.

  `Every man on the bridge and flying bridge then saw the periscope,
moving from right to left, rising up through the first oil boil to a
height of about two feet.  The barrel and lens of the instrument were
unmistakable ... On the appearance of the periscope, both gunners
fired straight into the periscope, range about 50 yards.  The
periscope vanished in an explosion of 20mm bullets.'

  The *USS PC-815* made one further attack run and dropped its last
two depth charges.  At midnight, after being in action for some
sixty-eight hours, Ron received orders to return to Astoria.

  He noted in his report, rather sourly, that they were greeted with
`considerable scepticism' on their return.  Nevertheless, his
conclusion was unequivocal: `It is specifically claimed that one
submarine, presumably Japanese, possibly a mine-layer, was damaged
beyond ability to leave the scene and that one submarine, presumably
Japanese, possibly a mine-layer, was damaged beyond ability to return
to its base.

  `This vessel wishes no credit for itself.  It was built to hunt
submarines.  Its people were trained to hunt submarines.  Although
exceeding its orders originally by attacking the first contact, this
vessel feels only that it has done the job for which it was intended
and stands ready to do that job again.'

                          -- end page 104 --

  Despite the scepticism, the US Navy mounted an immediate
investigation of the incident.  Ever since Pearl Harbor, Americans had
been jittery about the possibility of an attack on the mainland by
Japanese submarines.  In February 1942, a lone enemy submarine had
surfaced about a mile offshore north of Santa Barbara, California, and
lobbed twenty-five shells at an oil refinery.  If it happened once, it
could presumably happen again and the Navy certainly needed to know if
the *USS PC-815* had indeed stumbled across enemy submarines close to
the coast of Oregon.

  The Commanding Officer and Executive Officer of *PC-815* were
ordered to report immediately to Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher,
Commander Northwest Sea Frontier, in Seattle.  Fletcher studied Ron's
eighteen-page Battle Report and interviewed the Commanding Officers of
the four other ships and two blimps involved.  The tape from the
*PC-815*'s attack recorder, which recorded the strength and
characteristics of the sonar signals, was evaluated by experts.  When
all the reports were in, Fletcher swiftly came to the conclusion that
the hundred depth charges dropped during the `battle' had probably
killed a few fish but no Japanese.

  In a secret memorandum to the Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Fleet,
dated 8 June 1943, Fletcher stated: `An analysis of all reports
convinces me that there was no submarine in the area.  Lieutenant
Commander Sullivan [Commander of the blimps] states that he was unable
to obtain any evidence of a submarine except one bubble of air which
is unexplained except by turbulence of water due to a depth charge
explosion.  The Commanding Officers of all ships except the *PC-815*
state they had no evidence of a submarine and do not think a submarine
was in the area.'[7]

  Fletcher added that there was a `known magnetic deposit' in the area
in which the depth charges were dropped.  The implication was clear:
Lieutenant Hubbard, Commanding Officer of *USS PC-815*, had fought a
two-day battle with a magnetic deposit.

  Neither Ron nor Moulton would accept this verdict.  They believed
that denying the existence of the submarines was a political decision
taken to avoid spreading alarm among the civilian population.  Moulton
pointed out that the *Reader's Digest* had recently published a story
about the attack on the oil refinery near Santa Barbara and it had
caused something approaching panic among people living along the coast
of California.  It was hardly surprising, they concluded, that the top
brass wanted to hush up the fact that US Navy ships had been fighting
enemy submarines only about ten miles off the coast of Oregon.

  The disconsolate crew of the *USS PC-815*, who had no doubt expected
to return home as conquering heroes, had to be satisfied with

__________
 7. Memorandum from Commander NW Sea Frontier, 8 June 1943

                          -- end page 105 --

this explanation and forego public recognition of their battle.  It
was a bitter pill for them to swallow.  The only reward their
Commanding Officer could arrange was a rare treat recorded in the
ship's log on the day they returned to Astoria: `Ice cream brought on
board.'

  As Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Hubbard's record was
unquestionably blighted by the Admiral's damning report, although
there was no suggestion that he should be relieved of his command.
There was plenty of good-natured joshing in the service about the man
who had attacked a magnetic field, but it would probably have been
forgotten eventually and need not have affected Ron's career, except
that the luckless *USS PC-815* was soon in even worse trouble.

  Towards the end of May, the PC-815 was detailed to escort a new
aircraft carrier from Portland to San Diego.  Thankfully this voyage
was completed without incident.  On arrival in San Diego Ron said
goodbye to his friend Tom Moulton, who had been transferred to HQ
Thirteenth Naval District in Seattle for further assignment.

  San Diego is the most southerly coastal town in California, only ten
miles from the Mexican border at Tijuana.  Just offshore from Tijuana
there is a small group of islands known as Los Coronados, used by
local fishermen to dry their nets.

  On the afternoon of 28 June, the *PC-815* steamed unknowingly into
Mexican territorial waters and fired four shots with its 3-inch gun in
the direction of the Coronados islands.  She then anchored off the
island and fired small arms -- pistols and rifles -- into the water.

  The Mexican government may not have considered that the United
States was launching a surprise attack, but the incident was deemed
sufficiently serious for an official complaint to be lodged.
Lieutenant Hubbard, fresh from his notorious battle with a magnetic
deposit, was not exactly well placed to be forgiven for this new
blunder.

  On 30 June, a Board of Investigation was convened on board the
*PC-815* in San Diego Harbor.  Lieutenant Hubbard was first to give
evidence and stoutly denied that he had done wrong.  He had ordered
the gunnery practice because he was anxious to train his crew and he
believed he had authority to be in the area.  When asked why he had
anchored for the night he admitted that he had not wanted to spend the
entire night on the bridge.  `On three separate occasions,' he added,
`when leaving my officers in charge of the bridge they have become
lost.'[8]

  The next witness was the Gunnery Officer, who cheerfully confessed
that he thought the Coronados Islands belonged to the United States.
After listening to more than thirteen hours of evidence, the three-man
Board of Investigation concluded that Lieutenant Hubbard had
disregarded orders, both by conducting gunnery practice and by
anchoring in Mexican territorial waters without proper authority.

__________
 8. Record of proceedings, Board of Investigation, *USS PC-815*, 30
    June 1943

                          -- end page 106 --

  It was recommended, in the light of the short time he had been in
command, that he should be admonished in lieu of the more drastic
disciplinary action that the offences would normally have deserved.[9]
But it was also decided that he should be transferred to other duties.

  On 7 July, after just eighty days as Commanding Officer of his own
ship, Ron signed his last page of the *PC-815*'s deck log: `1345,
Signed on Detachment, L. R. Hubbard.'

  In a fitness report covering his brief career as a Commanding
Officer, Rear-Admiral E.A. Braisted, Commander, Fleet Operational
Training Command, Pacific, rated Lieutenant L.R. Hubbard as `below
average' and noted: `Consider this officer lacking in the essential
qualities of judgement, leadership and cooperation.  He acts without
forethought as to probable results.  He is believed to have been
sincere in his efforts to make his ship efficient and ready.  Not
considered qualified for command or promotion at this time.  Recommend
duty on a large vessel where he can be properly supervised.'[10]

  Ron was posted to temporary duty in the Issuing Office at
Headquarters, Eleventh Naval District in San Diego, where he almost
immediately reported sick with a variety of ailments ranging from
malaria to a duodenal ulcer to pains in his back.  He was admitted to
the local naval hospital for observation and remained there as an
in-patient for nearly three months.  He wrote home to inform the
family that he was in hospital because he had been injured when he
picked up an unexploded shell from the deck of his ship; it had
exploded in mid-air as he threw it over the side.[11]

  In later years Ron would tell a story of how he had helped the staff
at San Diego Naval Hospital during this period.[12] It seemed a
regiment of marines had been shipped home with a disease called
filoriasis about which the doctors knew nothing.  Ron, because of his
experience in `the South Pacific', advised them that although there
was a serum available to treat the condition, his understanding was
that a spell in a cold climate would work equally well.  Accordingly,
the regiment was despatched to Alaska where, Ron said, `I am sure they
all recovered.'

  This good deed done, in October 1943 Ron was sent on a six-week
course at the Naval Small Craft Training Center on Terminal Island,
San Pedro, California.  In December he learned he was to be given
another opportunity to go to sea -- as the Navigating Officer of the
*USS Algol*, an amphibious attack cargo ship under construction at
Portland, Oregon.

  To judge from an entry in his private journal, he was not
particularly thrilled about going back to sea, nor indeed, about being
in the Navy at all.  `My salvation is to let this roll over me,' he
noted gloomily on 6 January 1944, `to write, write and write some
more.  To

__________
 9. Letter of admonition from Commander, Fleet Operational Training
    Command, Pacific, 15 July 1943
10. Report on the Fitness of Officers, 29 May -- 7 July 1943
11. Letter from L. Ron Hubbard Jr., 26 January 1973
12. L. Ron Hubbard autobiographical notes, 1972

                          -- end page 107 --

hammer keys until I am finger worn to the second joint and then to
hammer keys some more.  To pile up copy, stack up stories, roll the
wordage and generally conduct my life along the one line of success I
have ever had.'[13]

  `The only thing that ever affected me as a writer,' he recalled
years later in a newspaper interview,[14] `was the US Navy when their
security regulations prohibited writing.  I was quiet for about two
years before I couldn't take it any more and went and took it out on a
typewriter and, wearing a stetson hat in the middle of a battle
theater, wrote a costume historical novel of 60,000 words which has
never seen the light of day.'

  For the first six months of 1944, Ron remained in Portland during
the fitting out of the *Algol*.  News of the war in the Pacific was of
bitter fighting and heavy casualties.  US Marines were working their
way from island to island towards Japan, but at shocking cost.  In the
attack on Tarawa Atoll, more than a thousand Americans were killed and
two thousand wounded: news pictures of the beaches littered with dead
Marines shocked the nation and brought home the terrible reality of
war.  On 15 June, two divisions of US Marines began an assault on
Saipan in the southern Marianas, and in the battle that followed
16,500 Americans were killed or wounded.

  The *USS Algol* was commissioned in July and immediately put to sea
for trials.  Through August and most of September she was exercizing
at sea; as Navigating Officer, Ron signed the ship's deck log every
day, but there was little to report except `under way, as before'.  He
seemed to have had second thoughts about wanting to see action, for on
9 September he applied for an appointment to the School of Military
Government, citing among his qualifications his education as a civil
engineer, membership in the Explorers Club, wide travel in the Far
East and experience of handling natives.  The *Algol*'s Commanding
Officer approved Ron's application, noting on his fitness report that
while Lieutenant Hubbard was a capable and energetic officer, he was
`very temperamental and often has his feelings hurt'.

  On 22 September, the *Algol* was at last ordered to Oakland,
California, to start taking on supplies in preparation for sailing to
war.  The excited rumour among the crew was that the ship was to take
part in a major new offensive in the Pacific aimed at the final defeat
of the Japanese.

  At 1630 on the afternoon of 27 September- the day before Ron was due
to leave for Princeton -- the ship's deck log recorded an unusual
incident: `The Navigating Officer reported to the OOD [Officer On
Duty] that an attempt at sabatage [*sic*] had been made sometime
between 1530-1600.  A coke bottle filled with gasoline with a cloth
wick inserted had been concealed among cargo which was to be hoisted
aboard and stored in No 1 hold.  It was discovered before being taken

__________
13. *Ron The Writer*
14. *Rocky Mountain News*, 20 February 1983

                          -- end page 108 --

on board.  ONI, FBI and NSD authorities reported on the scene and
investigations were started.'[15]

  No further mention was made of the incident.  There was no
explanation of why Lieutenant Hubbard, the Navigating Officer, was
poking around in cargo being loaded on to the ship or of how he had
managed to find the `petrol bomb'.  Neither was the result of the
investigations recorded.  Shortly after ten o'clock that evening a
brief signal was received `Lt Lafayette Ron Hubbard, D-v (S), USNR
113392, is this date detached from duty.'

  On 4 October, the *USS Algol* sailed for Eniwetok Atoll in the
Marshall Islands, from where she would take part in the invasion of
Luzon in the Philippines and the landings on Okinawa, earning two
battle stars.  Her erstwhile Navigating Officer, meanwhile, was on a
four-month course in `Military Government' at the Naval Training
School, Princeton, prompting him to claim ever after that he finished
his education at the venerable Ivy League university of the same name.

  While he was at Princeton, Ron was invited to join a group of
science-fiction writers who met every weekend at Robert Heinlein's
apartment in Philadelphia to discuss possible ways of countering the
Kamikaze menace in the Pacific.  They were semi-official,
brainstorming sessions that Heinlein had been asked to organize by the
Navy, in the faint hope of coming up with a defence against young
Japanese pilots on suicide missions.  `I had been ordered to round up
science fiction writers for this crash project,' Heinlein recalled,
`the wildest brains I could find.'[16]

  Heinlein's apartment was only three hundred yards from Broad Street
Station in downtown Philadelphia and the group gathered on Saturday
afternoons, arriving on Pennsylvania Railroad trains which ran every
half hour into Broad Street.  `On Saturday nights there would be two
or three in my bed,' said Heinlein, `a couple on the couch and the
rest on the living-room floor.  If there was still overflow, I sent
them a block down the street to a friend with more floor space if not
beds.'

  Heinlein tried to avoid asking Ron to walk down the street as Ron
had said that both his feet had been broken when his last ship was
bombed.  `Ron had had a busy war -- sunk four times and wounded again
and again,' Heinlein explained sympathetically.

  Sunday morning was set aside for the working session, after which
everyone sat around swapping stories and jokes.  Ron often got out his
guitar and entertained them in a rich baritone voice with songs like
`Fifteen Men on a Dead Man's Chest' and `I Learned about Women from
Her'.  He could also reduce the assembled company to helpless laughter
with his repertoire of fast-moving burlesque skits in which he played
all the roles.

__________
15. Deck log of *USS Algol*, US National Archives
16. Foreword to Godbody by Theodore Sturgeon, 1986

                          -- end page 109 --

  On Saturday 2 December, Jack Williamson, then a Sergeant in the US
Army, hosted a dinner in Philadelphia for fellow science-fiction
writers and their wives.  He was to be sent overseas in a couple of
days and this was his farewell party.  Among those present were the
Heinleins, the de Camps, the Asimovs and L. Ron Hubbard.  `The star of
the evening', Isaac Asimov recalled, `was Ron Hubbard.  Heinlein, de
Camp and I were each prima donna-ish and each liked to hog the
conversation -- ordinarily.  On this occasion, however, we all sat as
quietly as pussycats and listened to Hubbard.  He told tales with
perfect aplomb and in complete paragraphs.'[17]

  The host was less impressed.  `Hubbard was just back from the
Aleutians then,' said Williamson, `hinting of desperate action aboard
a Navy destroyer, adventures he couldn't say much about because of
military security.

  `I recall his eyes, the wary, light-blue eyes that I somehow
associate with the gunmen of the old West, watching me sharply as he
talked as if to see how much I believed.  Not much.'[18]

  Heinlein's group never came up with any ideas about how to prevent
US Navy losses from Kamikaze pilots, but it did not matter much
because the war was drawing to a close and Japan was running out of
aircraft and pilots to fly them.  The last big Kamikaze strike was
launched in January 1945 against the US fleet (including Ron's old
ship, the *USS Algol*) taking part in the invasion of Luzon.  That
same month Ron was transferred to the Naval Civil Affairs Staging Area
in Monterey, California, for further training, having finished about
mid-way among the 300 students on his course at the school of Military
Government.  In April he again reported sick and a possible ulcer was
diagnosed.

  On 2 September 1945, after the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the
Japanese signed the surrender instrument on the quarterdeck of the
*USS Missouri*, anchored in Tokyo Bay.  Three days later, Ron was
re-admitted to Oak Knoll Naval Hospital, Oakland, not as a result of
heroic war wounds, but to be treated for `epigastric distress'.  It
was in this rather inglorious situation, suffering from a suspected
duodenal ulcer, that the war ended for Lieutenant L. Ron Hubbard, US
Navy Reserve.

  He, of course, saw it somewhat differently: `Blinded with injured
optic nerves, and lame with injuries to hip and back, at the end of
World War Two I faced an almost non-existent future ... I was
abandoned by family and friends as a supposedly hopeless cripple and a
probable burden upon them for the rest of my days ... I became used to
being told it was all impossible, that there was no way, no hope.  Yet
I came to see and walk again ...'[19]

  If his own account of his war experiences is to be believed, he

__________
17. Asimov, *op. cit.*
18. Williamson, *op. cit.*
19. Hubbard, *My Philosophy*, 1965 and *passim*

                          -- end page 110 --

certainly deserved the twenty-one medals and palms he was said to have
received.  Unfortunately, his US Navy record indicates he was awarded
just four routine medals -- the American Defense Service Medal,
awarded to everyone serving at the time of Pearl Harbor, the American
Campaign Medal, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal and the World War
Two Victory Medal, this last received by everyone serving on V-J Day.

                          -- end page 111 --

                             *Chapter 7*

                       *Black Magic and Betty*

  `Hubbard broke up black magic in America ... because he was well
known as a writer and philosopher and had friends among the
physicists, he was sent in to handle the situation [of black magic
being practised in a house in Pasadena occupied by nuclear
physicists].  He went to live at the house and investigated the black
magic rites and the general situation and found them very bad ...
Hubbard's mission was successful far beyond anyone's expectations.
The house was torn down.  Hubbard rescued a girl they were using.  The
black magic group was dispersed and never recovered.'  (Statement by
the Church of Scientology, December 1969)

                              * * * * *

Hubbard was a patient at Oak Knoll Naval Hospital for three months
after the war, although the doctors were undecided as to precisely
what was wrong with him.  He was certainly neither blind nor crippled,
but seemed to be suffering from endless minor aches and pains.  His
medical record shows that he was examined exhaustively, almost every
week, complaining of headaches, rheumatism, conjunctivitis, pains in
his side, stomach aches, pains in his shoulder, arthritis,
haemorrhoids ... there seemed to be no end to his suffering.
Sometimes the doctors could find symptoms, sometimes they could not.
In September, for example, he was declared `unfit for service' because
of an ulcer, but in November his ailments were described as `minimal'.

  It may be, of course, that Ron was simply preparing the ground to
claim a veteran's disability pension, for he certainly wasted no time
putting in his application.  Lieutenant Hubbard was `mustered out' of
the US Navy on 5 December 1945, and on the following day he applied
for a pension on the basis of a sprained left knee, conjunctivitis, a
chronic duodenal ulcer, arthritis in his right hip and shoulder,
recurrent malaria and sporadic undiagnosed pain in his left side and
back.[1]

  On the claim form, Ron said his wife and children were living with
his parents at 1212 Gregory Way, Bremerton, until he was able to get

__________
 1. L. R. Hubbard Claim 7017422, Veterans' Administration Archives

                          -- end page 112 --

a house of his own.  He described himself as a freelance writer with a
monthly income of $0.00; before he joined the Navy he claimed his
average earnings had been $650 a month.

  Satisfied he had presented a convincing case for a pension, Ron
drove out of the Officer Separation Center in San Francisco at the
wheel of an old Packard with a small trailer in tow, both of which he
had recently acquired.  Home and the family were to the north, up in
Washington State.  But Ron headed south, towards Los Angeles, to a
rendezvous with a magician in a bizarre Victorian mansion in Pasadena.

                                 -*-

John Whiteside Parsons, known to his friend as Jack, was an urbane,
darkly handsome man, not unlike Errol Flynn in looks, and the scion of
a well-connected Los Angeles family.  Then thirty-one years old, he
was a brilliant scientist and chemist and one of America's foremost
explosives experts.  He had spent much of the war at the California
Institute of Technology working with a team developing jet engines and
experimental rocket fuels and was, perhaps, the last man anyone would
have suspected of worshipping the Devil.

  For Jack Parsons led an extraordinary double life: respected
scientist by day, dedicated occultist by night.  He believed,
passionately, in the power of black magic, the existence of Satan,
demons and evil spirits, and the efficacy of spells to deal with his
enemies.[2]

  While still a student at the University of Southern California, he
had become interested in the writings of Aleister Crowley, the English
sorcerer and Satanist known as `The Beast 666', whose dabblings in
black magic had also earned him the title `The Wickedest Man In The
World'.  Crowley's *The Book of the Law* expounded a doctrine
enshrined in a single sentence -- `Do what thou wilt shall be the
whole of the Law' -- and Parsons was intrigued by the heady concept of
a creed that encouraged indulgence in forbidden pleasures.

  In 1939, Parsons and his young wife, Helen, joined the OTO, Ordo
Templi Orientis, an international organization founded by Crowley to
practise sexual magic.[3] A lodge had been set up in Los Angeles and
met in a suitably sequestered attic.  Meetings were conducted by a
priestess swathed in diaphanous gauze, who climbed out of a coffin to
perform mystic, and painstakingly blasphemous, rites.[4] Parsons
quickly rose to prominence in the OTO and by the early '40s he had
begun a regular correspondence with Crowley, always addressing him as
`Most Beloved Father' and signing his letters `Thy son, John'.

  When Parson's father died, his son inherited a rambling mansion and
adjoining coach-house on South Orange Grove Avenue in Pasadena.  South
Orange Grove was where the best people lived in Pasadena in the '20s
and '30s, and although its discreet gentility was

__________
 2. Alva Rogers, *Darkhouse*, 1962
 3. John Symonds, *The Great Beast*, 1971
 4. Letter from L. Sprague de Camp to Symonds, 5 August 1952

                          -- end page 113 --

fading by the end of the war, most of the large houses in the area
were still in single occupancy, the paintwork had yet to peel and the
lawns were regularly watered and manicured.

  The residents of South Orange Grove Avenue did not welcome the
arrival of young Jack Parsons, for the elegant three-storey family
mansion, shaded by huge palms and flowering magnolias and set in its
own grounds, was rapidly transformed, under his ownership, into a
rooming-house of dubious repute -- the only way he could afford to
keep the house was by renting rooms.  This might not have caused too
much upset in the neighbourhood, except that when he advertized for
tenants in the local newspaper, he specified that only atheists and
those of a Bohemian disposition need apply.  Thus were the myriad
rooms at 1003 South Orange Grove Avenue occupied by an exotic,
argumentative and peripatetic assortment of itinerants and
ne'er-do-wells -- out-of-work actors and writers, anarchists and
artists, musicians and dancers, all kinds of questionable characters
and their equally questionable friends of both sexes.  Noisy parties
continued for days on end, guests slept on the floor when they could
not find a bed and sometimes they simply forgot to leave.

  Understandably the neighbours were outraged, although they would
undoubtedly have been even more alarmed had they known that the house
was also destined to become the headquarters of a black magic group
which practised deviant sexual rites.  Parsons converted two large
rooms into a private apartment for himself and a temple for the OTO
lodge.  In his bedroom, the biggest room in the house, there was an
altar flanked by pyramidal pillars and hung with occult symbols.  The
other room was a wood-panelled library lined with books devoted to the
occult and dominated by a huge signed portrait of Crowley hanging over
the fireplace.

  No one was allowed into these two rooms unless specifically invited
by Parsons; when members of the OTO turned up for a meeting, the doors
remained firmly closed.  Other residents sometimes glimpsed Parsons or
one of his followers moving about the house in black robes, but no one
really knew what went on in the `temple'[5] On one occasion, two
smirking policemen arrived at the front door to investigate a
complaint that the house was being used for black magic orgies.  They
had been told, they said, something about a ceremony requiring a naked
pregnant woman to leap nine times through a sacred fire, but they made
it so obvious that they considered the whole thing to be a joke that
Parsons had no difficulty convincing them he was a bona fide and
respectable scientist, and persuaded them to leave without conducting
a search.

  Among his other interests, Parsons was also a science-fiction fan
and occasionally turned up at meetings of the Los Angeles Fantasy and

__________
 5. Interview with Nieson Himmel, Los Angeles, 14 August 1986

                          -- end page 114 --

Science Fiction Society, where devoted fans gathered every week to
meet the top science fiction writers.  Jack Williamson, a regular
contributor to *Science Wonder Stories*, encountered Parsons at a
meeting in 1941 and was surprised to learn he was a scientist.  `He
had read my novel *Darker Than You Think*, which deals with the
supernatural,' Williamson recalled.  `I was astonished to discover he
had a far less sceptical interest in such things than I did.'[6]

  To Parsons there was an attractive affinity between magic and
science fiction and on Sunday afternoons in the summer his
science-fiction friends tended to congregate in his kitchen for
endless discussions about the relative merits of sci-fi writers, their
ideas and stories.  One of the fans who regularly took the streetcar
to South Orange Grove Avenue on Sunday afternoons was a young man
called Alva Rogers, who would eventually become a `semi-permanent
resident' -- an arrangement that was not in the least unusual.  On an
early visit be met and fell in love with a young art student who was
renting a room in the mansion and thereafter he would spend the night
with her whenever he could.

  Rogers was fascinated by the house, its owner and the occupants.
`Mundane souls were unceremoniously rejected as tenants,' he said.
`There was a professional fortune teller and seer who always wore
appropriate dresses and decorated her apartment with symbols and
artefacts of arcane lore.  There was a lady, well past middle age but
still strikingly beautiful, who claimed to have been at various times
the mistress of half the famous men of France.  There was a man who
had been a renowned organist in the great movie palaces of the silent
era.  They were characters all.'

  According to Rogers, Parsons never made any secret of his interest
in black magic or his involvement with Aleister Crowley.  `He had a
voluminous correspondence with Crowley in the library, some of which
he showed me.  I remember in particular one letter from Crowley which
praised and encouraged him for the fine work he was doing in America,
and also casually thanked him for his latest donation and intimated
that more would shortly be needed.  Jack admitted that he was one of
Crowley's main sources of money in America.

  `I always found Jack's insistence that he believed in, and
practised, magic hard to reconcile with his educational and cultural
background.  At first I thought it was all fun and games, a kick he
was on for its shock value to his respectable friends.  But after
seeing his correspondence with Crowley, and the evidence of his
frequent remittances to Crowley, I had to give him the benefit of the
doubt.'[7]

  In the summer of 1944, Helen Parsons left her husband and ran off
with another member of the lodge, by whom she was pregnant.

__________
 6. Letter to author from Jack Williamson, 1 November 1986
 7. Rogers, *op. cit.*

                          -- end page 115 --

Parsons consoled himself by transferring his affections to Helen's
younger sister, Sara Northrup, who was then eighteen, a beautiful and
vivacious student at the University of Southern California.  Within a
few months, Sara dropped out of her course and moved in with Parsons,
to the great distress of her parents.  At South Orange Grove Avenue
she became known as Betty (her middle name was Elizabeth).  Completely
under the spell of her lover, she was soon inculcated onto the OTO and
assisting in its ceremonies.  In accordance with the teachings of `the
Beast', Parsons encouraged Betty to enjoy sex with other members of
the lodge, or indeed any man who took her fancy.  It would not affect
their relationship, he loftily explained to anyone who cared to
listen, since jealousy was a base emotion unworthy of the enlightened
and fit only for peasants.

  `Betty was a very attractive blonde, full of joie de vivre,' said
Rogers.  `The rapport between Jack and Betty, the strong affection, if
not love, they had for each other, despite their frequent separate
sextracurricular activities, seemed pretty permanent and
shatterproof.'[8]

  It was soon to prove an illusion.  One afternoon in August 1945, Lou
Goldstone, a well-known science-fiction illustrator and a frequent
visitor to South Orange Grove Avenue, turned up with L. Ron Hubbard,
who was then on leave from the Navy.  Jack Parsons liked Ron
immediately, perhaps recognized in him a kindred spirit, and invited
him to move in for the duration of his leave.

  Ron, ebullient as always, was not in any way intimidated by the
egregious company and surroundings; on the contrary, he felt instantly
at home.  Most evenings he could be found dominating the conversation
at the big table in the kitchen, where the roomers tended to gather,
telling outrageous stories about his adventures.  One night he
unbuttoned his shirt to display the scars left by arrows hurled at him
when he encountered a band of hostile aborigines in the South American
jungle.

  Like almost everyone in the house, Alva Rogers thought Hubbard was
an enormously engaging and entertaining personality.  Rogers also had
red hair and Ron confided to him his belief, confirmed by extensive
research he had undertaken at the `Royal Museum' in London, that all
redheads were related, being descended from the same line of
Neanderthal man.  `Needless to say,' Rogers recalled, `I was
fascinated.'

  For a while, Ron shared a room with Nieson Himmel, a young reporter
who had also met Parsons through a shared interest in science fiction.
Perhaps because of the inbred scepticism of newspapermen, Himmel was
less impressed than most by his new room-mate: `I can't stand phoneys
and to me he was so obviously a phoney, a real con

__________
 8. Rogers, *ibid.*

                          -- end page 116 --

man.  But he was certainly not a dummy.  He was very sharp and quick,
a fascinating story-teller, and he could charm the shit out of
anybody.  He talked interminably about his war experiences and seemed
to have been everywhere.  Once he said he was on Admiral Halsey's
staff.  I called a friend who worked with Halsey and my friend said
"Shit, I've never heard of him."

  `I was not one of his favourite people because I liked to try and
trip him up.  One time he told a story about how he was walking down a
corridor in the British Museum when he was suddenly grabbed by three
scientists who dragged him into an office and began measuring his
skull because it was such a perfect shape.  I said, "Gee, Ron, that's
a great story -- didn't I read it in George Bernard Shaw?"  Another
time he said he was in the Aleutians in command of a destroyer and a
polar bear jumped from an ice floe onto his ship and chased everyone
around.  I recognized it as an old, old folklore story that goes way
back.

  `He was always broke and trying to borrow money.  That was another
reason he didn't like me -- I would never lend him a cent.  Whenever
he was talking about being hard up he often used to say that he
thought the easiest way to make money would be to start a
religion.'[9]

  Parsons shared none of Himmel's mistrust.  He considered that Ron
had great magical potential and took the risk of breaking his solemn
oath of secrecy to acquaint Ron with some of the OTO rituals.[10]
Betty, too, was much enamoured with the voluble naval officer, so much
so that she soon began sleeping with him.  True to his creed, Parsons
tried to pretend he was not concerned by this development, but others
in the house thought they detected tension between the two men.
Himmel, who was himself in love with Betty, was furious that she had
been seduced by Hubbard.  `Betty was beautiful, the most gorgeous,
intelligent, sweet, wonderful girl.  I was so much in love with her
and I knew she was a woman I could never have.  Then Hubbard comes
along and starts having affairs with one girl after another in the
house and finally fastens on to Betty.  I couldn't believe it was
happening.  There he was, living off Parsons' largesse and making out
with his girlfriend right in front of him.  Sometimes when the two of
them were sitting at the table together, the hostility was almost
tangible.'[11]

  Alva Rogers, too, sensed that Parsons was suffering.  `Jack had
never boggled at any of Betty's previous amorous adventurings, but
this time it seemed somehow different ... although the three of them
continued to maintain a surface show of unchanged amicability, it was
obvious that Jack was feeling the pangs of a hitherto unfelt passion,
jealousy.  As events progressed, Jack found it increasingly difficult
to keep his mind on anything but the torrid affair going on between
Ron

__________
 9. Interview with Himmel.
10. Kenneth Grant, *The Magical Revival*, 1972
11. Interview with Himmel.

                          -- end page 117 --

and Betty and the atmosphere around the house became supercharged with
tension.'

  Nevertheless, Parsons clearly remained convinced that Ron possessed
exceptional powers.  After Ron had left to report back to Oak Knoll
Naval Hospital, Parsons wrote to his `Most Beloved Father' to acquaint
him with events: `About three months ago I met Captain L. Ron Hubbard,
a writer and explorer of whom I had known for some time ... He is a
gentleman; he has red hair, green eyes, is honest and intelligent, and
we have become great friends.  He moved in with me about two months
ago, and although Betty and I are still friendly, she has transferred
her sexual affection to Ron.

  `Although he has no formal training in Magick, he has an
extraordinary amount of experience and understanding in the field.
From some of his experiences I deduced that he is in direct touch with
some higher intelligence, possibly his Guardian Angel.  He describes
his Angel as a beautiful winged woman with red hair whom he calls the
Empress and who has guided him through his life and saved him many
times.  He is the most Thelemic person I have ever met and is in
complete accord with our own principles ... I think I have made a
great gain and as Betty and I are the best of friends, there is little
loss.  I cared for her rather deeply but I have no desire to control
her emotions, and I can, I hope, control my own.  I need a magical
partner.  I have many experiments in mind ...'[12]

  In early December 1945, Ron showed up again at South Orange Grove
Avenue, still in uniform, having driven directly from the Officer
Separation Centre in San Francisco.  He parked his Packard and his
trailer at the rear of the house and walked back into the complicated,
enigmatic lives of Jack Parsons and Betty Northrup.  To Parsons's
secret distress, Betty and Ron immediately resumed their affair.

  Alva Rogers and his girlfriend were perhaps the only two people in
the house who really knew how much their friend was suffering.  `Our
room was just across the hall from Jack's apartment,' Rogers recalled,
`and in the still, early hours of a bleak morning in December we were
brought out of a sound sleep by some weird and disturbing noises as
though someone was dying or at the very least was deathly ill.

  `We went out into the hall to investigate the source of the noises
and found that they came from Jack's partially open door.  Perhaps we
should have turned around and gone back to bed at this point, but we
didn't.  The noise, which by this time we could tell was a sort of
chant, drew us inexorably to the door, which we pushed open a little
further in order to better see what was going on.

  `What we saw I'll never forget, although I find it hard to describe
in any detail.  The room, in which I had been before, was decorated in
a

__________
12. Symonds, *op. cit.*

                          -- end page 118 --

manner typical of an occultist's lair, with all the symbols and
appurtenances essential to the proper practice of black magic.  It was
dimly lit and smoky from a pungent incense; Jack was draped in a black
robe and stood with his back to us, his arms outstretched, in the
centre of a pentagram before some sort of altar affair on which
several indistinguishable items stood.

  `His voice, which was actually not very loud, rose and fell in a
rhythmic chant of gibberish which was delivered with such passionate
intensity that its meaning was frighteningly obvious.  After this
brief and uninvited glimpse into the blackest and most secret center
of a tortured man's soul, we quietly withdrew and returned to our
room, where we spent the balance of the night discussing in whispers
what we had just witnessed.'[13]

  Rogers was convinced that Parsons was trying to invoke a demon in
order to despatch his rival, or harm him in some way.  It clearly did
not work, however, for Ron remained in the best of spirits.  Despite
what Alva Rogers and his girlfriend had seen on that unforgettable
December night, the fragile three-cornered relationship continued.
Parsons seemed determined to try and overcome what he considered to be
an unworthy emotion.  `I have been suffered to pass through an ordeal
of human love and jealousy,' he noted in his `Magical Record', adding,
`I have found a staunch companion and comrade in Ron ... Ron and I are
to continue with our plans for the Order.'[14]

  Their plans were unprecedented.  Parsons wanted to attempt an
experiment in black magic that would push back the frontiers of the
occult world.  With the assistance of his new friend, he intended to
try and create a `moonchild' -- the magical child `mightier than all
the kings of the earth', whose birth had been prophesied in *The Book
of the Law* more than forty years earlier.

  Aleister Crowley professed `the great idea of magicians of all
times' was to bring into being an Anti-Christ, a `living being in form
resembling man, and possessing those qualities of man which
distinguish him from beasts, namely intellect and power of speech, but
neither begotten in the manner of human generation, nor inhabited by a
human soul'.[15] To find a mother for this new Messiah, Parsons
envisaged invoking an elemental spirit of the `whore of Babylon', the
scarlet woman of St John's Revelation: `I saw a woman sit upon a
scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads
and ten horns.  And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet
colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a
golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her
fornication.  And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery,
Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots ...'

  On 4 January 1946, Jack Parsons began a series of elaborate mystic

__________
13. Rogers, *op. cit.*
14. Parsons file, O.T.O. archives, New York
15. Aleister Crowley, *The Book of the Law*

                          -- end page 119 --

rituals, known as the `Babalon Working', which he hoped would lead to
the invocation of a scarlet woman whose destiny was to be mother to
the moonchild.  For the benefit of future magicians, he kept a
detailed, day-by-day account in a manuscript be called the `Book of
Babalon'.

  Magical rites began in the temple at South Orange Grove at nine
o'clock that evening, with Prokofiev's *Violin Concerto* playing in
the background.  First Parsons prepared and consecrated various
magical weapons, tablets and talismans, then he carried out eleven
separate rituals, beginning with `Invoking Pentagram of Air' and
`Invocation of Bornless One' and ending with `License to Depart,
Purification and Banishing'.

  The nightly ritual of incantation and talisman-waving continued for
eleven days, at first without much effect.  Parsons noted that a
strong windstorm blew up on the second and third days, but he had
obviously been hoping for rather more startling results.  `Nothing
seems to have happened,' he wrote in a letter to Crowley.  `The wind
storm is very interesting, but that is not what I asked for.'[16]

  On the seventh day, Parsons was woken at midnight by seven loud
knocks and he discovered that a table lamp in the corner of his
bedroom had been thrown violently to the floor and smashed.  `I have
had little experience with phenomena of this sort,' he recorded.
`Magically speaking, it usually represents "breaks" in the operation,
indicating imperfect technique.  Actually, in any magical operation
there should be no phenomena but the willed result.'

  Not until 14 January was the frustrated magician able to report an
encouragingly mysterious occurrence.  `The light system of the house
failed at about 9 pm.  Another magician [Hubbard] who had been staying
at the house and studying with me, was carrying a candle across the
kitchen when he was struck strongly on the right shoulder, and the
candle knocked out of his hand.  He called me, and we observed a
brownish yellow light about seven feet high in the kitchen.  I
brandished a magical sword and it disappeared.  His right arm was
paralyzed for the rest of the night.'

  Next morning, the magicians had more prosaic business to attend to.
For some time, Ron, Betty and Jack had been discussing the prospect of
going into business together, buying yachts on the East Coast and
sailing them to California to sell at a profit.  On 15 January the
three of them signed their names to an agreement setting up a business
partnership with the hopeful title of `Allied Enterprises'.  It was
not exactly an equitable financial arrangement, since Parsons put up
more than $20,000, Ron only managed to vouchsafe $1200 and Betty
contributed nothing.  Under the articles of co-partnership, it was
vaguely stated that Allied Enterprises would indulge in activities of
a

__________
16. Grant, *op. cit.*

                          -- end page 120 --

`varied and elastic nature', presumably with an eye to subsequent
expansion into other fields.[17]

  That evening, the new business partners resumed their magical
activities and there was a further strange incident involving Ron who
was by then occupying the role of `scribe'.  Parsons noted that the
scribe had `some sort of astral vision' and saw one of his old enemies
standing behind him clad in a black robe with an `evil, pasty face';
Ron promptly launched an attack and pinned the phantom figure to the
door with four throwing knives.  `Later, in my room,' Parsons wrote,
`I heard the raps again and a buzzing, metallic voice crying, "Let me
go free."  I felt a great pressure and tension in the house that
night.'

  The tension continued for four days, until the evening of 18
January.  The magician and his scribe had ventured out into the Mojave
Desert on some unexplained mystical mission and, at sunset, the stress
that Parsons had recently been experiencing drained away.  He was
suffused instead with a sense of well-being and turned to Ron and said
simply: `It is done.'

  When the two men returned to South Orange Grove Avenue, they found
the `scarlet woman' waiting for them.  Her name was Marjorie Cameron
and in truth she was not very much different from many of the
unconventional and free-spirited young women who had gravitated to the
Bohemian lodging-house in Pasadena.  But Parsons was convinced that
she was his libidinous elemental spirit, not least because it
transpired she was not only willing, but impatient, to participate in
the magical and sexual escapades he had in mind.  `She is
describable', he wrote in the `Book of Babalon', `as an air of fire
type, with bronze red hair, fiery and subtle, determined and
obstinate, sincere and perverse, with extraordinary personality,
talent and intelligence.'

  A few days later he wrote exultantly to Crowley: `I have my
elemental!  She turned up one night after the conclusion of the
Operation and has been with me since ... She has red hair and slant
green eyes as specified ... She is an artist, strong minded and
determined, with strong masculine characteristics and a fanatical
independence.'

  Crowley replied: `I am particularly interested in what you have
written to me about the elemental, because for some little time past I
have been endeavouring to intervene *personally* in this matter on
your behalf ...'

  Towards the end of February, Ron went on a trip to the East Coast,
perhaps to investigate the yacht market on behalf of Allied
Enterprises.  On 28 February Parsons drove alone into the lonely
reaches of the Mojave Desert to perform an invocation of the goddess
Babalon.  During this invocation, he said, the presence of the goddess
came

__________
17. Parsons *v.* Hubbard & Northrup, Case No. 101634, Circuit Court,
    Dade County, Florida.

                          -- end page 121 --

upon him and commanded him to write a mystical communication, couched
in picturesque biblical terminology and beginning: `Yea, it is I,
Babalon.  And this is my book ...'

  The seventy-seven clauses Parsons excitedly scribbled in his
notebook became the centrepiece of the `Book of Babalon'.  He believed
he was taking instructions for the impregnation of his scarlet woman,
although it would not have been immediately obvious to nonbelievers:
`Now is the hour of birth at hand.  Now shall my adept be crucified in
the Basilisk abode.  Thy tears, thy sweat, thy blood, thy semen, thy
love, thy faith shall provide ...'

  Some of the message was also suspiciously contemporary: `Thou fool,
be thou also free of sentimentality.  Am I thy village queen and thou
a sophomore, that thou should have thy nose in my buttocks?'

  Parsons returned to Pasadena in a state of considerable agitation
which was greatly increased when his magical partner arrived back the
next day and announced he had had a vision of a `savage and beautiful
woman riding naked on a great cat-like beast' and had an urgent
message to deliver.

  That night, in the temple at South Orange Grove, the two magicians
made preparations to receive the message.  Candles were lit, incense
burned and a magical altar was laid with flowers and wine.  Hubbard,
the scribe, wore a white-hooded robe and carried a lamp; Parsons, the
high priest, wore a black robe and carried a cup and dagger.  An
automatic tape recorder was set up and at Hubbard's suggestion
Rachmaninoff's `Isle of the Dead' was played as background music.

  At eight o'clock, Hubbard began to intone his message from the
astral world: `These are the preparations.  Green gold cloth, food for
the Beast, upon a hidden platter, back of the altar.  Disclose only
when the doors are bolted.  Transgression is death.  Back of the main
altar.  Prepare instantly.  Light the first flame at 10 pm, March 2,
1946.  The year of Babalon is 4063 ...'

  After a few minutes, Parsons noticed that his scribe was pale and
sweating profusely.  Hubbard rested for a few moments, then continued:
`Make a box of blackness at ten o'clock.  Smear the vessel which
contains flame with thine own blood.  Destroy at the altar a thing of
value.  Remain in perfect silence and heed the voice of our Lady.
Speak not of this ritual or of her coming to any person ...

  `Display thyself to Our Lady; dedicate thy organs to Her, dedicate
thy heart to Her, dedicate thy mind to Her, dedicate thy soul to Her,
for She shall absorb thee, and thou shall become living flame before
She incarnates ...'

  When Hubbard finished dictating, the scarlet woman, naked under

                          -- end page 122 --

a crimson robe, was brought into the temple.  `Oh circle of stars,'
the high priest informed, `whereof our Father is but the younger
brother, marvel beyond imagination, soul of infinite space ...'

  Marjorie Cameron had been well rehearsed in the necessary response.
`But to love me is better than all things ...'  she chanted.  `Put on
the wings and arouse the coiled splendour within you.  Come unto me,
to me!  Sing the rapturous love songs unto me!  Burn to me the
perfume!  Drink to me for I love you!  I am the blue-lidded daughter
of sunset, I am the naked brilliance of the voluptuous night sky ...'

  With passions mounting, the three black magicians intoned a chorus:
`Glory unto the Scarlet Woman, Babalon, the Mother of Abominations,
that rideth upon the Beast, for She hath spilt their blood in every
corner of the earth and lo!  she hath mingled it in the cup of her
whoredom ...'

  The scribe remained at the altar declaiming and describing what was
supposed to be happening on an astral plane while the high priest
excitedly inserted his `wand' into the scarlet woman and they began
copulating furiously.

  At midnight the unholy troika retired to bed, exhausted.  Next
morning one of the lodgers in the house disturbed Parsons while he was
meditating in the temple -- he flew out in a rage and put a curse on
the man, who, he said, was very soon taken ill.  After this incident,
Parsons confessed that he succumbed to a black mood.  His temper
cannot have improved when he discovered that the roof of the
guest-house had caught fire and been partially destroyed the previous
night while he was otherwise occupied.  He darkly deduced that the
fire had started at the very moment, during the night's black
festivities, when he had smashed an image of Pan.

  `That evening,' Parsons wrote, `the scribe and I resumed our work.'
This time a white sheet smeared with menstrual blood was laid out on
the floor of the temple and a red star, cut from the high priest's
robe, was symbolically burned on the altar.  As Parsons performed the
`Invocation of the Wand' on the naked body of the scarlet woman, the
scribe droned: `Embrace her, cover her with kisses.  Think upon the
lewd lascivious things thou couldst do.  All is good to Babalon.
*All* ... The lust is hers, the passion yours.  Consider thou the
Beast raping.'

  On the third and final day, the rituals began four hours before dawn
and ended with a long poem titled `The Birth of Babalon' extolling
`holy whoredom':

  Her mouth is red and her breasts are fair and her loins are full of
    fire,
  And her lust is strong as a man is strong in the heat of her desire,

                          -- end page 123 --

  And her whoredom is holy as virtue is foul beneath the holy sky,
  And her kisses will wanton the world away in passion that shall not
    die.
  Ye shall laugh and love and follow her dance when the wrath of God
    is gone,
  And dream no more of hell and hate in the birth of Babalon.[18]

In the `Book of Babalon', Parsons was completely convinced that the
magic had worked and that his scarlet woman would be delivered of a
moonchild in nine months.  `Babalon,' he wrote confidently, `is
incarnate upon the earth today awaiting the proper hour of her
manifestations.'[19]

  But in his `Magical Record' he was less assured: `For the last three
days I have performed an operation of birth, using the air tablet, the
cup and a female figure, properly invoked by the wand, then sealed up
in the altar.  Last night I performed an operation of symbolic birth
and delivery.  Now I can do no more than pray and wait.'[20]

  On 6 March, Parsons sat down to compose a letter to his Satanic
Master in England, apprising him of the momentous events that had
recently taken place.  `I can hardly tell you or decide how much to
write,' he began.  `I am under command of extreme secrecy.  I have had
the most important, devastating experience of my life ... I believe it
was the result of the IXth degree working [the class of sexual magic
designed to produce a higher being] with the girl who answered my
elemental summons.  I have been in direct touch with One who is most
Holy and Beautiful as mentioned in *The Book of the Law*.  I cannot
write the name at present.  First instructions were received direct
through Ron, the seer.  I have followed them to the letter.  There was
a desire for incarnation.  I do not yet know the vehicle, but it will
come to me bringing a secret sign.  I am to act as instructor guardian
for nine months; then it will be loosed on the world.  That is all I
can say now ...'[21]

  Crowley, who was by then in his seventies, chronically addicted to
heroin and facing death, was irritated by his disciple's secrecy.  On
19 April he despatched a terse reply: `You have got me completely
puzzled by your remarks about the elemental ... I thought I had a most
morbid imagination, as good as any man's, but it seems I have not.  I
cannot form the slightest idea of what you can possibly mean.'  On the
same day he wrote to Karl Germer, head of the OTO in the United
States: `Apparently Parsons or Hubbard or somebody is producing a
Moonchild.  I get fairly frantic when I contemplate the idiocy of
these louts.'

  While Parsons fretted over Crowley's letter, his faithful scribe was
facing more earthly, and much more familiar, problems.  Having
contributed his meagre savings to Allied Enterprises, Hubbard was
badly in need of money.  He had written virtually nothing since
leaving

__________
18. *Book of Babalon*, O.T.O archives, New York
19. *ibid.*
20. John Parsons, `Magical Record', O.T.O. archives, New York
21. Symonds, *op. cit.*

                          -- end page 124 --

the Navy and his wife was rapidly losing patience with his repeated
excuses as to why he was unable to send any money home to support her
and the children.

  Polly recognized by this time that there was little chance of saving
her marriage.  Towards the end of the war, she and Ron had briefly
discussed moving to California when he was discharged from the Navy,
but Polly refused to uproot the children.  She had a nightmare vision
of trying to raise a family while trailing forlornly after her
husband, backwards and forwards from one coast to the other.[22] Nibs
and Katie were happily settled in Bremerton, enjoyed school, and had
friends and family all around.  Polly had left The Hilltop and moved
in with Ron's parents to be closer to the facilities of Bremerton; it
was an arrangement she found perfectly satisfactory.  Both Harry
Hubbard, who had retired from the Navy and found a job as manager of
Kitsap County Fair, and his wife enjoyed having their grandchildren
around.

  But while Polly was content to live with her in-laws, she still
needed money to feed and clothe herself and the children and, not
unreasonably, she expected her husband to provide it.  Ron's problem
in this regard was not just that he was broke (nothing unusual), but
that he had reached the limit of his credit with the residents of 1003
South Orange Grove Avenue, having borrowed from everyone who was
prepared to lend.

  In February, the Veterans Administration had awarded him a pension
of $11.50 a month for a ten per cent disability caused by his ulcer.
Ron did not consider this miserable amount to be nearly sufficient and
on 18 March, two weeks after completing his duties as a black magic
scribe, he lodged an appeal, producing a dramatic new disability which
he had somehow neglected to mention on his original claim form.  `I
have lost between sixty and eighty per cent of my vision,' he claimed
in a letter typed on his distinctive initialled notepaper, `and as my
profession is that of writer, my present inability to read or use my
eyes seriously affects my income.  I cannot work either long hours or
under the slightest adverse conditions.  My income at the present
time, due entirely to service connected injuries, is zero.  Would you
please advise me as to the steps I should take to gain further
pension?'[23]

  After his years in the Navy, Ron was well aware of the speed with
which the wheels of bureaucracy moved and his need for money was
urgent.  His solution was to persuade Parsons that the time had come
to activate Allied Enterprises.  Towards the end of April, Ron and
Sara [she was only called Betty at South Orange Grove] left for
Florida with $10,000 drawn from the Allied Enterprises account at the
Pasadena First Trust and Savings Bank.  Parsons approved the
withdrawal so that the partnership could purchase its first yacht in
the

__________
22. Letter to author from Mrs Catherine Gillespie, November 1986
23. Hubbard file, VA archives

                          -- end page 125 --

east; it was agreed that Ron and Sara would then either sail it back
to California for re-sale, or transport it overland, whichever proved
to be cheaper.

  It seemed a perfectly simple and sensible business arrangement,
although Parsons presumably did not know that on 1 April Ron had
written to the Chief of Naval Personnel requesting permission to leave
the United States to visit South America and China.[24] However, not
many weeks passed before Parsons began to worry, for he heard not a
word from either Ron or Sara.  He realized, with mounting frustration,
that they had gone off with $10,000 of his money and he had little
idea of where they might be.  He confessed his concern to Louis
Culling, another member of the OTO lodge, and swore he was going to
get his money back and dissolve the partnership.

  The next day Ron telephoned from Florida, reversing the charges.
Culling was at South Orange Grove when the call came through and he
was amazed to find that Parsons was completely dominated by Hubbard.
After what had been said the previous day, Culling expected Parsons to
be cool towards his wayward partner at the very least.  But Parsons
made no mention of his disquiet, did not complain about being kept in
the dark and said nothing about dissolving the partnership.  He was
soon laughing happily into the telephone as if he had not a care in
the world and the conversation ended with Parsons saying, `I hope we
shall *always* be partners, Ron.'

  Greatly disturbed, Culling took it upon himself to make some
inquiries and on 12 May he wrote to Karl Germer: `As you may know by
this time, Brother John signed a partnership agreement with this Ron
and Betty whereby all money earned by the three for life is equally
divided between the three.  As far as I can ascertain, Brother John
has put in all of his money ... Meanwhile, Ron and Betty have bought a
boat for themselves in Miami for about $10,000 and are living the life
of Riley, while Brother John is living at rock bottom, and I mean
*rock bottom*.  It appears that originally they never secretly
intended to bring this boat around to the California coast to sell at
a profit, as they told Jack, but rather to have a good time on it on
the east coast ...'[25]

  Germer naturally informed Crowley, who replied by cable on 22 May:
`Suspect Ron playing confidence trick.  Jack evidently weak fool.
Obvious victim prowling swindlers.'  In a letter seven days later,
Crowley wrote, `It seems to me on the information of our brethren in
California that Parsons has got an illumination in which he has lost
all his personal independence.  From our brother's account he has
given away both his girl and his money.  Apparently it is the ordinary
confidence trick.'[26]

  While Crowley and fellow members of the OTO were already in

__________
24. L. R. Hubbard navy record
25. O.T.O archives, New York
26. *ibid.*

                          -- end page 126 --

agreement that Brother Parsons had been conned, Brother Parsons was
painfully arriving at a similar conclusion and at the beginning of
June he packed a case and caught a train East, determined to track
down the errant lovers and get his money back.

  In Miami, Parsons discovered to his astonishment that Allied
Enterprises had already purchased three boats -- two auxiliary
schooners, the *Harpoon* and the *Blue Water II*, and a yacht, the
*Diane*.  It seemed that Ron had raised mortgages totalling more than
$12,000 to buy the schooners.

  Parsons traced the *Harpoon* to Howard Bond's Yacht Harbor on the
County Causeway, but there was no sign of either Ron or Sara.  The
*Blue Water* was found at the American Ship Building Company docks on
the Miami river; again, there was no one on board.

  One evening a few days later, Parsons received a telephone call from
the harbour.  The *Harpoon*, he was told, had set sail at five o'clock
that afternoon, with Ron and Sara on board apparently intent on making
an escape.  In his Miami hotel room, Parsons donned his magic robes
and traced a circle on the floor with his magic wand.  At eight
o'clock, he stepped into the ring and performed the `Banishing Ritual
of the Pentagram', the preliminary to all magic, followed by a full
invocation of Bartzabel, the spirit of Mars, whose help he sought to
restrain his fleeing partners.  In a letter to Crowley describing his
actions, he was able to report a highly satisfactory result: `At the
same time, so far as I can check, his ship was struck by a sudden
squall off the coast, which ripped off his sails and forced him back
to port, where I took the boat in custody.'[27]

  On 1 July, the magician sought redress through more conventional
means: he filed suit in the Circuit Court for Dade County, accusing
Ron and Sara of breaking the terms of their partnership, dissipating
the assets and attempting to abscond.[28] A receiver was appointed to
wind up the affairs of Allied Enterprises and a restraining order was
placed on the defendants, preventing them from leaving Miami or
disposing of any of the partnership's assets.

  `Here I am in Miami pursuing the children of my folly,' Parsons
wrote gloomily to Crowley on 5 July.  `I have them well tied up.  They
cannot move without going to jail.  However, most of the money has
already been dissipated.  I will be lucky to salvage $3000 to $5000.'

  On 11 July, the three partners signed an agreement, drawn up by
Parsons' lawyer, dissolving the partnership.  Ron and Sara handed over
the *Blue Water* and the *Diane* and agreed to pay half Parsons' legal
costs.  For his part, Parsons allowed Ron and Sara to keep the
*Harpoon* in return for a $2900 promissory note which covered his
financial interest in the schooner.  Jack Parsons returned to Pasadena
satisfied that he had made the best deal he could under the
circumstances and

__________
27. Grant, *op. cit.*
28. Parsons *v.* Hubbard & Northrup

                          -- end page 127 --

not too distressed at the loss of his former lover and his former best
friend.  He never saw either of them again.

  In Miami, Ron and Sara were returned to their accustomed state of
penury after their brief fling at the expense of Allied Enterprises.
Their most immediate and pressing problem was how to maintain payments
on the $4600 mortgage still outstanding on the *Harpoon*.  Ron, who
had never allowed money matters to worry him over-much, clung to the
belief that he would eventually be able to wheedle a larger pension
from the Veterans Administration.  On 4 July, Independence Day, he had
spent part of the holiday composing yet another stirring appeal
against his pension award and introducing a further hitherto
unmentioned disability, this time a `chronic and incapacitating bone
infection'.

  On the claim form, he painted a harrowing picture of a veteran
gamely struggling against disabilities which he rated at one hundred
per cent.  His original duodenal ulcer had mysteriously multiplied;
his `ulcers', he pointed out, had caused him to abandon his old
profession of `ship-master and explorer' and severely hampered his
work as a writer.  `I can do nothing involving nervous strain without
becoming dangerously ill.'  As for his failing eyesight, he now found
it difficult to read for more than three or four minutes without
suffering from headaches, making it virtually impossible for him to do
any research.  His problems had begun, he noted, after `prolonged
exposure to tropical sunlight in the Pacific'.  Furthermore, he was
lame as the result of a bone infection in his right hip, contracted at
Princeton University because of `the sudden transition from the
tropics to the slush and icy cold of Princeton'.  He was unable to
walk without suffering severely.

  `My earning power, due to injuries, all service connected,' he
concluded, `has dropped to nothing.  I earned one thousand dollars a
month prior to the war as a writer.  I cannot now earn money as a
writer and attempts to find other employment have failed because of my
physical condition.'

  To support his case, Hubbard persuaded Sara to write to the Veterans
Administration as an old friend to provide independent corroboration
of his rapidly deteriorating health.  She put her parents address in
Pasadena on the top of the letter.

  `I have known Lafayette Ronald Hubbard for many years,' she began,
inauspiciously and untruthfully, `and wish to testify as to the
condition of his health as I have observed it since his separation
from the Navy.

  `Before the war, he was an extremely energetic person in excellent
health and spirits ... Since his return in December last year he is
entirely changed.  He cannot read because of his eyes, which give him

                          -- end page 128 --

much pain.  He is rather lame and cannot take his accustomed hikes
... He has tried to work at three different jobs and each he has had
to leave because of an increase in his stomach condition.  He seems to
need an enormous amount of rest ...

  `I do not know what he is going to do for income when his own meagre
savings are exhausted, because I see no chance of his condition
improving to a point where he can regain his old standards.  He is
becoming steadily worse, his health impaired again by economic worries
...'[29]

  In fact, a short-term solution to his economic worries was
immediately and obviously at hand: the *Harpoon*.  Faced with the
impossibility of repaying the mortgage, Ron decided to sell the boat
in the hope of clearing his most pressing debts.  Solvent again,
temporarily at least, he asked Sara to marry him.  She accepted
unhesitatingly.  At the beginning of August the lovers left Florida
and caught a train for Washington DC.  On 10 August 1946,
twenty-one-year-old Sara Northrup and L. Ron Hubbard were married in a
simple ceremony at Chestertown, Maryland.

  By a curious coincidence, Chestertown was only thirty miles from
Elkton, where L. Ron Hubbard had married Polly Grubb in 1933.  Sara
knew nothing of Polly and had no idea that her new husband had been
previously married.  Still less did she know he had never been
divorced.

  Similarly, Polly, in Bremerton, had yet to learn her husband was a
bigamist.

                                 -*-

Back at South Orange Grove in Pasadena, Parsons sold the old mansion
for development and moved into the coach-house with his scarlet woman,
Marjorie Cameron, whom he subsequently married.  It was to be a
tragically brief alliance.  On the afternoon of Friday 20 June 1952,
Parsons was working alone in the garage of the coachhouse, which he
had converted into a laboratory.  At eight minutes past five there was
an enormous explosion.  The heavy stable doors were blasted from their
hinges, the walls blew out and a huge hole was torn in the floor
timbers.  When the dust had cleared, a partially dismembered body
could be seen still bleeding in the rubble.

  Further horror was to follow.  Police traced Parsons's mother, Mrs
Ruth Virginia Parsons, to the home of a crippled woman friend in West
Glenarm Street.  Informed of the accident and her son's death, Mrs
Parsons returned to the room where her friend was sitting in an
armchair.  She sat down in another chair out of reach, unscrewed a
bottle of sleeping tablets and, watched by her helpless and appalled
friend, rapidly swallowed the entire contents.  Unable to move from
her chair, the terrified cripple watched her friend slowly die.[30]

__________
29. Hubbard file, VA archives.
30. *Pasadena Star News*, 21 June 1952 and 5 July 1952

                          -- end page 129 --

  The inquest found that the explosion had been caused by Parsons
accidentally dropping a phial of nitro-glycerine.  But because of his
known interest in the occult, there were inevitably rumours of suicide
or even murder; none of his friends could believe that a man so
experienced in handling explosives would have dropped nitro-glycerine
accidentally.

  Whatever the truth, no black magician could have wished for a
blacker departure from the world.

                          -- end page 130 --

                             *Chapter 8*

                *The Mystery of the Missing Research*

  `In 1948, Mr Hubbard's first writings on the nature of life and the
human mind began to circulate privately.  Passed from hand to hand,
word quickly spread that he had made a revolutionary breakthrough ...'
(L. Ron Hubbard, *The Man and His Work*, 1986)

                              * * * * *

After their wedding in Maryland, Hubbard and his young bride returned
to California and found an apartment at Laguna Beach, a resort much
favoured by artists and writers, half-way between Los Angeles and San
Diego.  John Steinbeck lived there when he was writing his first major
novel, *Tortilla Flat*, a factor Ron no doubt took into consideration
when he was looking for a place to settle down and resume his career
as a writer.

  The problem was that he could neither settle down nor write.
Indeed, to judge from his bulging file at the Veterans Administration,
in 1946 Ron largely directed his literary talents to the diligent
pursuit of a bigger pension.  On 19 September, he limped into the VA
medical centre in Los Angeles with a miserable litany of by now
familiar complaints: `Eyes are sensitive to bright sunlight and I
can't read very much and I have severe headaches ... My stomach
trouble keeps me on a very rigid diet -- can only eat milk, eggs,
ground meat and strained vegetables ... I tire quickly and become
nauseated when I work hard ... My left shoulder, hip -- in fact the
entire left side is bothered with arthritic pains -- can't sit any
length of time at typewriter or desk ...'

  Once again, the doctors did not seem to be able to find anything
markedly wrong with the veteran, other than calcified bursitis, a
touch of arthritis in his ankles apparently causing him to walk with a
`hobble-like gait' and `minimal duodenal deformity'.  On the
examination report it was noted that there were no scars or
indications of gunshot wounds or other injuries.[1]

  It was perhaps just as well for Ron that the Veterans Administration
did not have access to his private journals, for a very different
picture was presented therein.  Several scrawled pages were filled
with

__________
 1. Report of Physical Examination, VA file, 19 September 1946

                          -- end page 131 --

`Affirmations', many of which concerned his health.  Had he been a
little more circumspect, the `Affirmations' could have been viewed as
a brave attempt to make light of his ailments, or to cure himself
through sheer strength of will, for in some of them he seemed to be
trying to convince himself that he was fit:

  `Your ulcers are all well and never bother you.  You can eat
anything.

  `You have a sound hip.  It never hurts.

  `Your shoulder never hurts.

  `Your sinus trouble is nothing.'

  Unfortunately for his place in posterity, he frequently chose to
elaborate.  Thus he confessed that his stomach trouble was a device he
had used to get out of punishment in the Navy, his bad hip was a pose
and his foot injury was an alibi: `The injury is no longer needed.  It
is well.  You have perfect and lovely feet.'  A few of the
Affirmations were also stamped with the faintly sinister mark of
Aleister Crowley, as in `Men are your slaves' and `You can be
merciless whenever your will is crossed and you have the right to be
merciless.'

  VA doctors would undoubtedly have found them fascinating reading,
not least for the insight they provided into Hubbard's psyche and his
attitude towards the VA:

  `When you tell people you are ill, it has no effect upon your
health.  And in Veterans Administration examinations you'll tell them
how sick you are; you'll look sick when you take it; you'll return to
health one hour after the examination and laugh at them.

  `No matter what lies you may tell others, they have no physical
effect on you of any kind.  You never injured your health by saying it
is bad.  You cannot lie to yourself.'[2]

  By October, Hubbard was once again down to his last few dollars and
when a friend offered him a temporary job taking care of a boat at the
yacht club on Santa Catalina Island he jumped at the opportunity.
After less than six weeks at Laguna Beach, Sara uncomplainingly packed
their bags and prepared to move on.  It was a situation with which she
would become all too familiar in the months ahead.

  While staying at the Catalina Island Yacht Club, Ron managed to stir
himself to write an article about fishing for the local newspaper, the
*Catalina Islander*, but this was his only published work in 1946.  On
14 November, he wrote to the Veterans Administration from the Yacht
Club to complain that his last two pension cheques had not been
forwarded.  `I need this money, little as it is, very badly,' he wrote
`and would appreciate any expedition which the matter can be given.'

  A week later, he wrote again to explain why he had failed to show up
for another medical examination which the VA had requested in October.
`I was unable to report for further examination because I was

__________
 2. Transcript -- Church of Scientology *v.* Armstrong

                          -- end page 132 --

both ill and broke ... I certainly hope you can scare me up something
by way of a pension for I am not eating very well these days and this
job I have will vanish shortly.'[3]

  Vanish it did and by the beginning of December Ron and Sara were in
New York, staying at the Hotel Belvedere, West 48th Street.  On 8
December he wrote on hotel notepaper to acknowledge receiving orders
to report for another examination, explaining his expensive address by
saying that a friend had financed his trip back East in return for his
advice on an expedition then being planned.

  While he was in New York, Ron naturally looked up his old science
fiction friends and one of them introduced him to Sam Merwin, who was
then editing the `Thrilling' group of magazines.  `I found him a very
amusing guy,' Merwin recalled, `and bought several stories from him.
He was really quite a character.  I always knew he was exceedingly
anxious to hit big money -- he used to say he thought the best way to
do it would be to start a cult.'[4]

  Ron also called on his old friend and mentor, John W. Campbell, in
his familiar office in the Street and Smith building.  Campbell was
delighted to welcome Ron back from the war; he had written to him a
year earlier[5] pleading for contributions ('*Astounding* is in a mell
of a hess.  I need -- and but bad -- stories.  Any length.')  and now
he urged Ron to get back to work.  He was constantly getting letters
from readers, he said, asking when the magazine was going to publish
more stories by L. Ron Hubbard.  Before he left the building, Ron
accepted an assignment to write a five thousand-word feature about the
consequences of man landing on the moon for *Air Trails and Science
Frontiers*, a new non-fiction magazine which Campbell had recently
launched.

  Despite his terrible eye-strain and rheumatism and ulcers and
everything else, Hubbard managed to put together an imaginative and
informative piece.  He prophesied that the first moon landing would
take place within five or ten years and argued that a lunar military
base would have enormous strategic value.  `It is entirely within
reason', he wrote, `that the nation which demonstrates the courage,
intelligence and industrial proficiency necessary to establish a base
on the moon will rule the world.'

  `Fortress in the Sky', under the byline of Captain B.A. Northorp,
was the cover story in the May 1947 issue of *Air Trails*.  The reason
Hubbard did not use his own name could be found buried deep in the
text.  Although he packed the feature with authoritative and
impressive detail about the composition and environment of the moon,
he simply could not resist the opportunity for further
self-aggrandisement.  In a section discussing the technical problems
of reaching the moon by rocket, he wrote: `Here and there throughout
the world

__________
 3. Hubbard file, VA archives
 4. Interview with Merwin, Los Angeles, August 1986
 5. *The John W. Campbell Letters, Vol.  1*

                          -- end page 133 --

many men have been thinking about rockets for some time.  I recall
that in 1930, L. Ron Hubbard, a writer and engineer, developed and
tested -- but without fanfare -- a rocket motor considerably superior
to the V-2 instrument of propulsion and rather less complicated.'

  Campbell was still a meticulous editor and a stickler for accuracy.
If he believed that his friend was developing rocket motors in 1930 at
the age of nineteen, he was also extraordinarily nave.  It is more
likely that he turned a blind eye to keep Ron happy in the hope that
he would soon return to the pages of *Astounding*.

  Ron and Sara only stayed a matter of weeks in New York.  In the New
Year they were on the move again, this time to the unprepossessing
environs of Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, just south of the Pocono
Mountains.  There Ron fulfilled Campbell's hopes by writing a novel,
*The End Is Not Yet*, about a young nuclear physicist's attempts to
prevent the world being taken over by constructing a new philosophical
system.  It was serialized in three parts in *Astounding* later in the
year, although it was not as well received as some of Ron's earlier
work.

  On 14 April 1947, the long-suffering Polly filed for a divorce in
Port Orchard, Washington, on the grounds of desertion and non-support.
She was still unaware that her husband had `re-married'; she did not
even know he was living with another woman.  That situation was soon
to change.

  Three weeks after Polly set divorce proceedings in motion, Ron
scandalized his family by moving into The Hilltop with Sara.  `It was
an awful slap in the face for his mother,' said his Aunt Marnie.  `Hub
and May deeply disapproved.  It was very difficult for them as they
had Polly and the children living with them.  The family clammed up
about it and never mentioned it.  When Ron took Sara up to The Hilltop
I said to my sister, "Well, we loved him as a child, Midgie, but he's
a perfect stranger to us now."'[6]

  The family would have been even more shocked had they known that Ron
had married Sara; only Ron's friend, Mac Ford, knew the truth and he
kept quiet.  `I ran into Ron one evening when he was taking the
children to the theatre in Bremerton,' Ford said.  `We hadn't seen
each other since before the war and when we were talking in the lobby
he mentioned something about marrying again.  I thought it was strange
because I knew that he was not divorced from Polly, but I did not say
anything because I didn't want to get involved.'[7]

  Hubbard filed an agreement to the divorce on 1 June and an
interlocutory decree was awarded on 23 June.  Polly was given custody
of the children, costs and $25 a month maintenance for each child.
Knowing Ron, she did not cherish much hope of the maintenance payments
arriving regularly, if at all.

__________
 6. Interview with Mrs Roberts
 7. Interview with Ford

                          -- end page 134 --

  Ron and Sara left The Hilltop in July and returned to California, to
a rented trailer on a lot in the seediest section of North Hollywood,
where he began writing the first of the popular `Ole Doc Methuselah'
stories -- rousing yarns about a Soldier of Light and his devoted
four-armed slave, Hippocrates, who travel around the universe in a
golden spaceship saving entire civilizations from death and disease
and overthrowing despotic inter-planetary dictators as a sideline.

  In August, the month *The End Is Not Yet* began serialization in
*Astounding*, Ron acquired a literary agent.  Forrest Ackerman was not
a big-time Hollywood agent with a fat cigar, but a young man with
thick horn-rimmed spectacles who had been addicted to science fiction
ever since he first picked up a copy of *Amazing Stories* at the age
of nine.

  `Forrie' Ackerman would one day be the proud owner of the world's
biggest collection of science-fiction magazines and would drive around
Los Angeles in a red Cadillac with SCI-FI on the licence plate, but in
1947 he was still struggling to capitalize on his devotion to the
genre by persuading science-fiction writers that he could represent
them.  Then thirty years old, he had actually met Hubbard ten years
earlier in Shep's Shop, a second-hand bookshop on Hollywood Boulevard
which specialized in science fiction.

  `I was browsing in Shep's Shop one night in 1937 when I got into
conversation with this young red-haired man who told me he held a
world record in gliding.  He said his name was L. Ron Hubbard and that
he had had a lot of adventure stories published in pulp magazines.  I
asked him if he had ever tried his hand at science fiction and he
said, no, oddly enough, he hadn't.  But right there, on the spot, he
began to outline the plot for a science fiction story set in
California 25,000 years in the future, during a second Ice Age.  I
never saw that story in print, but it seemed to plant a seed in his
mind ...'

  Ackerman liked to believe that their brief encounter in Shep's Shop
was the spur that started Ron Hubbard writing science fiction.  His
first act on his new client's behalf was to take him to meet G. Gordon
Dewey and Peter Grainger, two Los Angeles businessmen who wanted to
diversify into publishing.  The meeting was not a marked success:
there was some desultory discussion about buying rights to some of
Hubbard's novels, but nothing was concluded.  Afterwards, Ron offered
to drive Forrie back to his apartment in New Hampshire.  It was a
journey Ackerman would never forget, for on the way Ron began to tell
him the incredible story of how he had died on an operating table
during the war.

  `I remember he had an old rattletrap of a car and he was chewing
tobacco.  As he drove he would open the door with one hand and squirt
tobacco juice out onto the road.  When we got to my apartment we sat
outside in the car while he continued with the story.  It was after
five

                          -- end page 135 --

o'clock in the morning, and the sun was coming up, before he had
finished.

  `Basically what he told me was that after he died he rose in spirit
form and looked back on the body he had formerly inhabited.  Over
yonder he saw a fantastic great gate, elaborately carved like
something you'd see in Baghdad or ancient China.  As he wafted towards
it, the gate opened and just beyond he could see a kind of
intellectual *smorgasbord* on which was outlined everything that had
ever puzzled the mind of man.  All the questions that had concerned
philosophers through the ages -- When did the world begin?  Was there
a God?  Whither goest we?  -- were there answered.  All this
information came flooding into him and while he was absorbing it,
there was a sort of flustering in the air and he felt something like a
long umbilical cord pulling him back.  He was saying "No, no, not
yet!", but he was pulled back anyway.  After the gates had closed he
realized he had re-entered his body.

  `He opened his eyes and found a nurse standing over him looking very
concerned.  Just as a surgeon walked into the room, Ron said, "I was
dead, wasn't I?"  The surgeon shot a venomous look at the nurse as if
to say, "What have you been telling this guy?"  But Ron said "No, no,
I know I was dead."

  `The next part of the story I would find very difficult to direct
realistically if I was a movie director.  According to Ron, he jumped
off the operating table, ran to his Quonset hut, got two reams of
paper and a gallon of scalding black coffee and for the next 48 hours,
at a blinding rate, he wrote a work called *Excalibur*, or *The Dark
Sword*.

  `Well, he kept the manuscript with him and when he left the Navy he
shopped it around publishers in New York, but was constantly turned
down.  He was told it was too radical, too much of a quantum leap.  If
it had been a variation of Freud or Jung or Adler, a bit of an
improvement here and there, it would have been acceptable, but it was
just too far ahead of everything else.  He also said that as he
shopped the manuscript around, the people who read it either went
insane or committed suicide.  The last time he showed it to a
publisher, he was sitting in an office waiting for a reader to give
his opinion.  The reader walked into the office, tossed the manuscript
on the desk and then threw himself out of the window.

  `Ron would not tell me much about *Excalibur* except that if you
read it you would find all fear would be totally drained from you.  I
could never see what was wrong with that or why that would cause
anyone to commit suicide.'[8]

  Ackerman was frankly incredulous, but was impressed by the sincerity
and conviction with which Ron told the story.  He also recognized, as
an aspiring literary agent, that *Excalibur* could be just the kind of
thing to get a new publishing venture off the ground.

__________
 8. Interview with Forrest Ackerman, Hollywood, 30 July 1986

                          -- end page 136 --

  Later that morning he telephoned Gordon Dewey and Peter Grainger,
repeated the story Ron had told him and asked them if they would take
a look at the manuscript.  His sly hint of the potential risk only
served to whet their appetites.  `They were mad keen to see it,'
Ackerman said.  `I remember Dewey saying, "No combination of words,
ideas or philosophy will have that effect on *me*!"'

  Ackerman reported the good news to his client, but Hubbard, suddenly
and uncharacteristically bashful, refused to produce the manuscript.
`He said it was in a bank vault and it was going to stay there.  I
think he was quite sincere.  He seemed like a man who had seen too
many people go crazy or commit suicide, who had enough on his
conscience already.  I never did get to see the manuscript or show it
to any publisher.  In fact, I never encountered anyone who said they
had seen it.'

  Despite Forrie's best efforts, Ron did not make anything like a
living wage as a writer in 1947.  After *The End Is Not Yet*, he sold
two Ole Doc Methuselah stories to *Astounding*, a short story,
`Killer's Law', to *New Detective* and a novel, *The Chee-Chalker*, to
*Five Novels Monthly*.  The income generated from these five stories
was barely sufficient to support himself, let alone his present wife,
his former wife and his two teenage children.

  In October, Ron discovered he could qualify for $90 a month
subsistence from the VA if he enrolled at college.  He promptly signed
on as a student at the Geller Theater Workshop on the corner of
Fairfax and Wilshire, but he was still determined to pursue a better
disability pension.  Two weeks later he composed a letter to the VA in
Los Angeles unquestionably designed to tug at bureaucratic
heartstrings by painting a pathetic picture of a confused and helpless
veteran on the brink of a total breakdown:

  Gentlemen;

  This is a request for treatment ...
  After trying and failing for two years to regain my equilibrium in
  civil life, I am utterly unable to approach anything like my own
  competence.  My last physician informed me that it might be very
  helpful if I were to be examined and perhaps treated psychiatrically
  or even by a psychoanalyst.  Toward the end of my service I avoided
  out of pride any mental examinations, hoping that time would balance
  a mind which I had every reason to suppose was seriously affected.
  I cannot account for nor rise above long periods of moroseness and
  suicidal inclinations, and have newly come to realize that I must
  first triumph above this before I can hope to rehabilitate myself at
  all.

                          -- end page 137 --

  I cannot leave school or what little work I am doing for
  hospitalization due to many obligations, but I feel I might be
  treated outside, possibly with success.  I cannot, myself, afford
  such treatment.
  Would you please help me?

  Sincerely, L. Ron Hubbard[9]

To its credit, the VA responded to this dramatic cry for help with
commendable speed and arrangements were made for Hubbard to attend
Birmingham VA Hospital in Van Nuys for another examination.  By this
time, his medical records were hopelessly confused as he had given so
many different versions of his service career, his injuries and
ailments.  He took the opportunity of this consultation to add another
injury to the record, claiming that he had fallen from a ladder on a
ship called the *USS Pennant* in 1942, injuring his back, hip, left
knee and right heel.

  While he was waiting for the results to come through, Ron was
greatly discomforted to receive a demand from the VA for $51 which he
had been overpaid in subsistence -- he had dropped out of college on
14 November, claiming he was too ill to continue studying, but had
collected subsistence until the end of the month.

  `I cannot imagine how to repay this $51', he whined in a letter to
the VA dated 27 January 1948, `as I am nearly penniless and have but
$28.50 to last me for nearly a month to come.  Since leaving school in
mid-November I have made $115 from various sources -- about $40 from
the sale of two bits to magazines in late November and the repayment
of a bad debt for $75.  These comprise my income to date except for
the sale of a typewriter tonight for the above $28.50.  My
expenditures consist of $27 a month trailer rent and $80 a month loud
for my wife and self, which includes gas, cigarettes and all
incidentals.  I am very much in debt and have not been able to get a
job but am trying to resume my pre-war profession of professional
writing.  My health has been bad and I feel that if I could just get
caught up financially I could write a novel which has been requested
of me and so remedy my finances.  It would take me three months and
even then I would not be able to guarantee solvency.  Is there any
provision in the Veteran's Administration for grants or loans or
financing so that I could get back on my feet?'

  Nothing came of this hopeful inquiry.  A few days later the results
of Ron's medical examination arrived, but offered little encouragement
that he would he awarded a higher pension.  As before, nothing too
serious was diagnosed, other than arthritis and myositis, an
inflammation of the muscle tissue.  There was not even, any longer,
any evidence of a duodenal ulcer and no evidence at all of the
injuries he said he had sustained when he fell from a ladder.

__________
 9. Hubbard file, VA archives

                          -- end page 138 --

  However, bureaucracy works in strange and unfathomable ways.
Despite the findings of his most recent medical, Ron's bewildering
portfolio of infirmities and his dogged determination to be disabled
finally paid off.  On 27 February he received a letter from the VA
regional office with the good news that his combined disability rating
had been re-assessed at forty per cent and his pension increased to
$55.20 a month.[10] With that, Lieutenant Hubbard USNR had to be
satisfied.

                                 -*-

Forrest Ackerman, who had noticeably not been getting rich from his
ten per cent of Ron's earnings, nevertheless remained on good terms
with his client.  When Ron came bounding up the stairs to his
apartment one afternoon, sweat trickling from under the band of his
white straw hat, and said he needed money to get out of town because
his ex-wife was after him for alimony, Forrie good-naturedly handed
over everything he had in his wallet -- $30.  `It was a small fortune
to me then,' he recalled.

  For some time, Forrie had been trying to persuade Ron to make an
appearance at one of the meetings of the Los Angeles Fantasy and
Science Fiction Society, of which he was naturally a founding member.
The meetings were held every Thursday evening in the basement room of
a small hotel on South Bixel Street in downtown Los Angeles and were
often attended by writers with an eye to future sales.

  Ron first turned up at a `Lasfas' meeting on 15 April and, as a
distinguished guest, was invited to address the members.  He gave an
impromptu, entertaining little talk about himself and his work,
mentioning his `shame' that he was only able to write about five
thousand words a day and touching briefly on his philosophical opus,
*Excalibur*, which he had locked in a bank vault when he `finally
realized how dangerous it was'.

  `The real surprise of the evening', the club magazine reported,
`came when Hubbard was talking about his friend, Arthur J. Burks.
Someone mentioned Burks's story, "Survival", which had been judged one
of the best of 1938 when it appeared that year in *Marvel Tales*.
"Survival?"  questioned Hubbard.  "I don't remember reading that one.
What was it about?"  It concerned an invasion of America by the
"yellow men of the East", he was told.  "What?"  said Hubbard.  "And
how did they escape the peril?"  By burrowing under the ground, he was
told.  Mr Hubbard was surprised at this.  In fact, he said, "Good God!
That dog!  Wait till I get hold of Burks ..."  He explained the
outburst: "Back in '38 I wrote a movie treatment of a story called
`Survival'.  It concerned an invasion of America by the yellow men of
the East.  They escaped by burrowing under the ground!  I gave that

__________
10. *ibid.*

                          -- end page 139 --

story and four others to an agent to sell.  He lost them.  And now I
find that Burks has written and sold a story just like it!"'[11]

  Among the fans present that evening was a young teletype operator by
the name of Arthur Jean Cox.  He admitted to mixed feelings about
meeting the famous Ron Hubbard for the first time: `He was an amusing,
lively, animated, dynamic man who dominated the conversation, although
I had the feeling that he told more lies in the club room in the first
half hour than had been told there in the previous month.  He talked a
lot about his past -- I heard the story about the polar bear jumping
on his boat dozens of times -- but I thought it was all fantasy.

  `At that time he was one of the most famous science fiction writers
in America, certainly in the top ten.  Most of the members of the club
were very young and in awe of him, but I didn't like him.  His face
was pock-marked, as if he'd had smallpox as a child, and I thought he
looked like a wolf; he was a very predatory sort of man.'[12]

  Hubbard returned to the Los Angeles science fiction society two
weeks later to give a talk about immortality and the future of medical
science.  He had become interested in medical matters, he explained to
a mainly spellbound audience, after he had `died' for eight minutes as
a result of wounds received in the war.  He was brought back to life
`by the use of several emergency measures'.  While convalescing he had
plenty of time to satisfy his natural curiosity and he had become
convinced that bio-chemists were capable of lengthening life to the
point of `limited immortality'.  Joseph Stalin was only being kept
alive, he claimed somewhat obscurely, because of a particular serum
that had been developed by the Russians.

  Afterwards, Ron demonstrated a surprising talent as a hypnotist with
a repertoire of parlour tricks.  He hypnotised almost everyone in the
clubroom: one young man looked at his hand with utter astonishment,
convinced he was holding a pair of miniature kangaroos in his palm;
another rapidly removed his shoes when he felt the floor getting hot
and a third spent a hysterically funny ten minutes on an imaginary
telephone trying to fend off a persistent and non-existent car
salesman.

  It was probable that Hubbard had learned hypnosis from Jack Parsons
and he appeared to have no difficulty inducing hypnotic trances -- all
he needed to do, with some people, was count to three and snap his
fingers.  But he sometimes forgot to bring a subject out of hypnosis.
He told Cox's younger brother, Bill, that he would fall asleep every
time he (Hubbard) scratched his nose.  Under hypnosis, Bill dutifully
obeyed.  But later in the evening Hubbard absent-mindedly scratched
his nose while he was standing in the centre of a group of fans and
Bill Cox instantly collapsed, fortunately falling into the arms of
Forrest Ackerman, who was standing behind him.

__________
11. *Shangri-La*, LASFAS club organ, No. 6, May-June 1948
12. Interview with Arthur Jean Cox, Los Angeles, 18 August 1986

                          -- end page 140 --

  Hubbard also played a cruel, post-hypnotic trick on Bill Cox.  He
took him to one side at the meeting and told him that the following
afternoon, at two o'clock, he would drop whatever he was doing and
meet Hubbard at a building site on the corner of Wilshire and Lucas.
Hubbard was waiting there next day when, at precisely two o'clock, Cox
showed up.  Under Hubbard's instructions, Cox first found he could not
take his hands of his pockets.  Then he was ordered to take hold of a
nearby railing and discovered he could not let go.  As he struggled to
release his grip, Hubbard told him the rail would get hotter and
hotter until it was red hot.  Considerably distressed, Cox writhed in
agony until at last Hubbard laughed, patted him on the shoulder, told
him he could go home and that he would not remember anything that had
happened.

  This incident only later came to light because a fellow science
fiction writer, A.E. van Vogt, shared Hubbard's interest in hypnotism.
One night at a Lasfas meeting, someone described a particularly vivid
dream and Hubbard immediately claimed responsibility for it, saying it
was a hallucination he had caused while he was `out strolling in
Astral form'.

  Van Vogt did not necessarily disbelieve Hubbard but thought it was
more likely that he had induced the dream by post-hypnotic suggestion.
With the help of a professional hypnotist friend, he decided to check
if any members of the club had been hypnotized by Hubbard without
being able to remember it.  They started with Bill Cox, put him in a
deep trance and quickly learned of the ordeal that Hubbard had put him
through.  Although van Vogt gravely disapproved, he continued,
curiously, to hold Hubbard in the highest esteem.

  In the world of science fiction, A.E. van Vogt was considered to be
in the very top rank of writers and it was Hubbard who requested that
they should meet at the end of the war.  Van was invited to dinner
with Hubbard at Jack Parsons's house in Pasadena and was instantly
dazzled by the force of his personality; like everyone else around
Hubbard, he rapidly found himself in a vaguely supplicant position.
Very soon he would be running around at Hubbard's beck and call.

  `When we were first introduced, a hand of steel grabbed mine and
squeezed it so hard that I braced myself.  He was physically very
strong and in fine physical condition.  He had been in command of a
gunboat in the Pacific.  Once he sailed right into the harbour of a
Japanese occupied island in the Dutch East Indies.  His attitude was
that if you took your flag down the Japanese would not know one boat
from another, so he tied up at the dock, went ashore and wandered
around by himself for three days.  Everyone else was scared except
Hubbard; he was a brave man, no question about it.

  `I knew his work as a writer, of course, and enjoyed it.  He wrote

                          -- end page 141 --

about a million words a year, straight on to the typewriter at
incredible speed.  My guess was that he typed at about seventy words a
minute.  It just poured out -- I have seen typists working at that
speed, but never a writer.  I was in his apartment a couple of times
when he said he had to finish a story and he would sit typing steadily
for twenty minutes without a break and without looking up.  That would
have been totally impossible for me.

  `When he was out in the evenings, he would begin to think of a plot
for a story and throw ideas around, asking people around the table
what they thought of this or that.  By the end of the evening he would
have it worked out in his mind and when he got home he would spend the
night writing, tearing the pages out of the typewriter and throwing
them all over the floor.  Sara told me it was her job when she got up
in the morning to collect the pages and put them in order.  He left a
note to tell her where to send it and he never looked at it again.

  `He never told me where he learned hypnotism, but he was certainly a
great hypnotist.  There were certain people he could hypnotize
instantly.  He would talk to them for a few moments, take their mind
in a certain direction, then just say "Sleep!"'[13]

  Hubbard's efforts to use his facility in a more constructive fashion
at the science fiction society were somewhat less successful.  He once
hypnotized a member who was taking a college examination the following
day and ordered him to get straight A's, without that happy result.
Another attempt to help someone who felt he had a `block' about
spelling similarly failed.  By the time a fan approached Ron to ask if
hypnosis could help with his emotional problems, Ron could only lamely
suggest he tried reading Dale Carnegie's *How to Make Friends and
Influence People*.

  That summer, 1948, Hubbard ran into a spot of bother with the law.
A trifling misunderstanding over a cheque led to the embarrassment of
his being arrested by the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff,
fingerprinted and charged with petty theft.  He was released on bail
of $500 while the Sheriff's Forgery Detail investigated the
circumstances of the offence.  On 19 August 1948 he was arraigned at
San Gabriel Township Justice Court where he entered a plea of not
guilty and waived trial by jury.  However, by the time the trial date
came around on 31 August, Hubbard changed his plea to guilty and was
fined $25.  Remarkably, he did not need time to pay.[14]

  Ron never mentioned the incident to his friends and the court files
were destroyed in 1955, so it will never be known precisely what he
had done wrong.  He was also fortunate that none of the local
newspaper reporters was a science-fiction fan and so no one realized
that the L.R. Hubbard charged with petty theft at San Luis Obispo was
a famous sci-fi writer.

__________
13. Interview with A.E. van Vogt, Los Angeles, 22 July 1986
14. FBI memo, 13 April 1967

                          -- end page 142 --

  Shortly afterwards, Ron and Sara left California for Savannah,
Georgia, where, Ron would claim later, he embarked upon another
important stage of his pioneering research into the unexplored
recesses of the human mind.

                                 -*-

Within a couple of years it would become imperative for L. Ron Hubbard
to play down his career as a pulp writer and establish for himself a
rather more sober reputation as a scientist, philosopher and guru.
Lesser men might have hesitated to undertake such a radical
metamorphosis, but not Ron Hubbard, who effortlessly contrived to make
it appear as if his whole life had been dedicated to unravelling the
mysteries of the psyche.

  The story of his childhood in the `wilds of Montana' and his
adoption as a blood brother of an Indian tribe presented a picture of
a boy unusually in tune with nature and primitive cultures.  His
tutelage by a `personal student' of Freud, his `wanderings' in the
mystic East and his expeditions as an explorer all suggested an
upbringing and career of extraordinary dimensions, constantly directed
towards a quest for deeper understanding of life's mysteries.  Writing
science fiction was downgraded to no more than a convenient device
designed to finance his `research'.

  During the `year' he had spent in Oak Knoll Naval Hospital, Ron
would claim he had had the run of the medical library and access to
the medical records of former prisoners of war.  He began experimental
psycho-analysis on ex POWs, `using a park bench as a consulting room',
and his research continued ever more intensively through the post-war
years.  In Savannah, he said, he worked as a volunteer lay
practitioner in a psychiatric clinic, helping charity patients no one
else would treat.

  There was, perhaps, no reason why anyone should question the
veracity of Hubbard's research, but his friends must have been puzzled
that they knew nothing of it.  Mac Ford, for example, who had spent so
much time with Ron in the late '30s, sailing on Puget Sound and often
talking through the night over a bottle of whisky, had never realized
that his friend was engaged in research of any kind.  In the heated
and wide-ranging discussions that took place in the kitchen of Jack
Parsons's house in Pasadena, the ideal forum for Hubbard to talk about
his theories, he had said not a word about them.  Alva Rogers had
frequently heard him tapping away at a typewriter in his room, but
there was nothing to indicate he was writing anything but fiction.
Not even the amiable Forrest Ackerman had any idea that Ron was about
to abandon science fiction in favour of philosophy, although in
January 1949 he received an amusing letter from his client hinting at
the possibility.

                          -- end page 143 --

  Addressing Ackerman, as always, as `4E', Ron wrote from Savannah to
say that he had set up an office in the apartment building where he
was living on Drayton Street.  It was a very nice place, he said, and
could easily become a den of vice, `so I only allow women over 16 in
there'.  He had acquired a dictaphone machine which Sara was `beating
out her wits on' transcribing not only fiction but his book on the
`cause and cure of nervous tension', which he was going to call either
*The Dark Sword* or *Excalibur* or *Science of the Mind*.  He was
writing so much fiction, Sara was having to work on the manuscript in
fits.  `So far, however,' he wisecracked, `she has recovered easily
from each fit.'

  If Ackerman did not take the letter too seriously he could hardly be
blamed, for its tone was largely facetious throughout.  Ron promised
that among the `handy household hints' contained in the book was
information on how, to `rape women without their knowing it,
communicate suicide messages to your enemies as they sleep, sell the
Arroyo Seco parkway to the mayor for cash, and evolve the best way of
protecting or destroying communism'.  He had not decided, he added
casually, whether to destroy the Catholic Church or `merely start a
new one'.

  Although he continued in similar vein, suggesting promotion gimmicks
like requiring readers to sign a release absolving the author of any
responsibility if they went crazy, it was clear that he expected the
book to he a success: `Thought of some interesting publicity angles on
it.  Might post a ten thousand dollar bond to he paid to anyone who
can attain equal results with any known field of knowledge.  A reprint
of the preface, however, is about all one needs to bring in orders
like a snow storm.  This has more selling and publicity angles than
any book of which I have ever heard ...'

  (Publicity angles notwithstanding, he could not have been too
confident of the book's success, because shortly after writing to
Forrie he wrote to the Bureau of Naval Personnel asking for a
transcript of his sea service in order to apply for a licence in the
merchant marine.  He asked for the request to be dealt with quickly as
he had a `waiting berth'.[15])

  The first sci-fi fans knew of L. Ron Hubbard's intention to write a
philosophic treatise was an interview with him that appeared in the
January 1949 issue of a magazine called *Writers' Markets and
Methods*, during which he mentioned that he was working on a `book of
psychology'.  But he added that he was also working on a rewrite of a
Broadway play, no less than ten novels and a serial for Street and
Smith.

  This was the conundrum.  In 1949, the year in which Hubbard's
`research' was presumably approaching fruition, he once again began
writing fiction at a prolific rate: `Gun Boss of Tumbleweed' and
`Blood on his Spurs' for *Thrilling Westerns*, `Gunman' and `Johnny
the Town Tamer' for *Famous Westerns*, `Plague' and `The Automagic
Horse' for

__________
15. L.R. Hubbard navy record

                          -- end page 144 --

*Astounding*, `Beyond the Black Nebula' and `the Emperor of the
Universe' for *Startling Stories*, and many more.

  Not a month passed in 1949 without the name of L. Ron Hubbard
appearing on the cover of one of the pulp magazines.  Nevertheless,
rumours began to circulate among science-fiction fans in the summer of
1949 that Ron Hubbard was also writing a book about philosophy and was
intending to unveil an entire new `science of the mind'.  What was
most surprising to the fans was that Hubbard had found the *time* to
produce such a science, for it had long been expected by science
fiction devotees that one of their number would eventually come up
with some world-shaking discovery.  Many of the technological
developments of the previous twenty years, including the atom bomb,
had been predicted with uncanny accuracy by science-fiction writers
and to the fans it was entirely logical that science fiction should
give birth to an important new science.

  The rumours were fuelled by the fact that no one had seen Hubbard
for months -- he had not attended any of the recent gatherings of the
Los Angeles science fiction society, neither had he made an appearance
in any of the magazine offices in New York.  It was said he was holed
up somewhere in New Jersey and that John W. Campbell was somehow
involved in his plans.  But no one knew exactly where Hubbard was or
precisely what he was doing or what the new `science' might entail,
although everyone was agreed that Hubbard was on to `something big',
whatever it was.

  The first tantalizing details were revealed in an editorial in the
December issue of *Astounding Science Fiction*.  With an implicit
sense of history in the making, Campbell announced that an article was
in preparation about a new science called Dianetics.  `Its power is
almost unbelievable; it proves the mind not only can but does rule the
body completely; following the sharply defined basic laws set forth,
physical ills such as ulcers, asthma and arthritis can be cured, as
can all other psychosomatic ills ...'  On the facing page, by a
curious coincidence, there was a story titled `A Can of Vacuum' by L.
Ron Hubbard, about a practical joke which results in remarkable
scientific discoveries.

  By January 1950, the rumours had reached the ears of Walter
Winchell, the syndicated columnist on the New York *Daily Mirror*.
`There is something new coming up in April called Dianetics,' he wrote
in his column on 31 January.  `A new science which works with the
invariability of physical science in the field of the human mind.
From all indications it will prove to be as revolutionary for humanity
as the first caveman's discovery and utilization of fire.'

  In the April issue of *Astounding*, Campbell announced that the
long-awaited article was at last ready for publication: `Next month's

                          -- end page 145 --

issue will, I believe, cause one full-scale explosion across the
country.  We are carrying a 16,000 word article entitled "Dianetics --
An Introduction to a New Science", by L. Ron Hubbard.  It will, I
believe, be the first publication of the material.  It is, I assure
you in full and absolute sincerity, one of the must important articles
ever published.  In this article, reporting on Hubbard's own research
into the engineering question of how the human mind operates,
immensely important basic discoveries are related.  Among them:

  `A technique of psychotherapy has been developed which will cure any
insanity not due to organic destruction of the brain.

  `A technique that gives any man a perfect, indelible, total memory,
and perfect, errorless ability to compute his problems.

  `A basic answer, and a technique for curing -- not alleviating --
ulcers, arthritis, asthma, and many other nongerm diseases.

  `A totally new conception of the truly incredible ability and power
of the human mind.

  `Evidence that insanity is contagious, and *is not hereditary*.

  `This is no wild theory.  It is not mysticism.  It is a coldly
precise engineering description of how the human mind operates, and
how to go about restoring correct operation tested and used on some
250 cases.  And it makes only one overall claim: the methods logically
developed from that description *work*.  The memory stimulation
technique is so powerful that, within 30 minutes of entering therapy,
must people will recall in full detail their own birth.  I have
observed it in action, and used the techniques myself ...

  `It is not only a fact article of the highest importance; it is the
story of the ultimate adventure -- an exploration in the strangest of
all *terra incognita*; the human mind.  No stranger adventure appeared
in *The Arabian Nights* than Hubbard's experience, using his new
techniques, in plowing through the strange jungle of distorted
thoughts within a human mind.  To find, beyond that zone of madness, a
computing mechanism of ultimate and incredible efficiency and
perfection!'

  Rarely can any editor have penned such a fulsome and glowing
testimonial.  The world, or at least the world of science fiction,
waited with bated breath.

                          -- end page 146 --

                             *Chapter 9*

                   *The Strange Dbut of Dianetics*

  `My vanity hopes that you will secure credit to me for eleven years
of unpaid research, but my humanity hopes above that that this science
will be used as intelligently and extensively as possible, for it is a
science and it does produce exact results uniformly and can, I think,
be of benefit.'  (Letter from L.R. Hubbard to Dr Joseph Winter, August
1949)

                              * * * * *

In the spring of 1949, Ron and Sara had moved to the New Jersey shore,
to a beach cottage at Bay Head, a discreetly genteel yachting resort
on the northern tip of Barnegat Bay.  Rich New Yorkers who could not
quite afford the Hamptons kept large summer houses at Bay Head where
they sailed the ruffled blue waters of the bay, played tennis and
attended each other's cocktail parties.  The Hubbards' rented cottage
was one of the smallest properties, but Sara, who suspected she was
pregnant, was delighted with it.  She was weary of their peripatetic
lifestyle; she calculated that in only three years of marriage they
had set up home in seven different States and had never stayed in one
place for more than a few months.  Bay Head, with its country club
aura, did much to lift her spirits.

  John Campbell had persuaded them to move from Georgia and had found
them the cottage which was less than a hour's drive on the Garden
State Parkway from Plainfield, where he and his wife lived.  He wanted
Ron close by because he wanted, passionately wanted, to be involved in
what he considered to be the historic genesis of Dianetics.

  It was predictable, in the course of their working relationship as
science-fiction editor and science-fiction writer, that Campbell and
Hubbard would spend time together discussing ideas and that Ron would
test his theories on a man as responsive as the editor of
*Astounding*.  Campbell was an intellectual maverick: he had studied
physics and chemistry at college, had a mechanistic approach to
psychology and was fascinated by gimmicks and technology, but he also
flirted with psychic phenomena like dowsing, telekinesis,

                          -- end page 147 --

telepathy and clairvoyance.  Ron could not have had a more attentive
audience when he first began to propound his theory that the brain
worked like a computer which could be made markedly more efficient by
clearing its clogged memory bank.

  Always a persuasive talker, Hubbard possessed a natural ability to
marshal a smattering of knowledge into a cogent and authoritative
thesis, interwoven with scientific and medical jargon.  His
`scientific' approach to unravelling the mysteries of the human psyche
precisely accorded with Campbell's own view that humanity could be
investigated with the techniques and impersonal methodology of the
exact sciences,[1] and although Ron's ideas stemmed more from his
exuberant imagination than from any research, to Campbell what Hubbard
had to say was tantamount to a revelation on the road to Damascus.

  He compared individual memory to a `time-track' on which every
experience was recorded.  Using a form of hypnosis, he believed
painful experiences could be recalled and `erased' with consequent
beneficial effects to both physical and mental health.  Ron offered to
demonstrate on a convenient couch at Campbell's home in Plainfield.
He drew the blinds, told Campbell to relax, close his eyes on a count
to seven and try to recall his earliest childhood experience.  Gently
prompted by Ron to produce more and more details, Campbell was
surprised to find he could resurrect long-forgotten incidents with
such clarity that it was as if he had physically returned to the time
and place.  After a couple of sessions, he seemed to be able to go
back far enough to actually re-live the astonishing experience of his
birth and at the same time he discovered that the chronic sinusitis
that had plagued him all his life was much improved.

  Thereafter, Campbell was the first committed disciple of Dianetics,
utterly convinced that L. Ron Hubbard had made profound discoveries
about the workings of the mind and that the fundamental nature of
human life was about to be changed for the better.  [Hubbard himself
was perhaps as concerned to make money as he was to help humanity and
he had some interesting ideas about how to do it.  Around this time he
was invited to address a science-fiction group in Newark hosted by the
writer, Sam Moskowitz.  `Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous,' he
told the meeting.  `If a man really wanted to make a million dollars,
the best way to do it would be to start his own religion.'[2]]

  Determined to help Ron propagate his new `science', in July 1949
Campbell wrote to Dr Joseph Winter, a general practitioner from St
Joseph, Michigan, who had contributed occasional articles on medical
subjects to *Astounding*: `L. Ron Hubbard, who happens to be an
author, has been doing some psychological research ... He's gotten
important results.  His approach is, actually, based on some very
early

__________
 1. *The Universe Makers*, Donald Wollheim, 1971
 2. *Los Angeles Times*, 27 August 1978

                          -- end page 148 --

work of Freud's, some work of other men, and a lot of original
research.  He's not a professional psychoanalyst or psychiatrist, he's
basically an engineer.  He approached the problem of psychiatry from
the heuristic viewpoint -- to get results.'

  Campbell described the case of an amputee veteran suffering from
severe depression who had been helped by Hubbard after conventional
psychiatry had failed to alleviate his condition.  Psychiatrists had
injected sodium pentothal to enable the veteran to re-live his war
experience, taking him through the moment he was hit by a mortar shell
to the moment he recovered consciousness in the aid station, but he
continued to be depressed and insist he would be better off dead.
Using Dianetics, Hubbard had also taken the veteran back through the
shell burst but discovered that *while he was unconscious* medics had
said, `This guy's hopeless, he's better off dead anyway' and chosen to
move other casualties first.  This incident, it transpired, was the
cause of his problems.

  Winter was intrigued: he had never considered before that an
unconscious patient could in any way be aware of what was going on
around him.  He wrote to Campbell asking for more information and back
came another long letter elaborating on the theory and concluding:
`With cooperation from some institutions, some psychiatrists, he
[Hubbard] has worked on all types of cases.  Institutionalized
schizophrenics, apathies, manics, depressives, perverts, stuttering,
neuroses -- in all, nearly 1000 cases.  But just a brief sampling of
each type; he doesn't have proper statistics in the usual sense.  But
he has one statistic.  He has *cured every patient* he worked with.
He has cured ulcers, arthritis, asthma.'

  While Winter was avowedly incredulous at the idea that a man with no
medical training of any kind was able to cure one hundred per cent of
his patients, he did not share the tendency of his medical colleagues
to dismiss all lay practitioners as dangerous cranks.  He had always
been fascinated by the enigmas of human behaviour and believed in a
holistic approach to medicine which was amenable to unconventional
hypotheses.  He contacted Hubbard, suggested that he present his
findings to the medical profession, and offered to help.

  Hubbard quickly replied, promising to forward an `operator's manual'
for Winter's use and thanking him for his interest.  When his manual
arrived, Winter made several copies and gave them to psychiatrist
friends in Chicago, but was disappointed by their negative reactions.
They were interested in the ingenuity of Hubbard's ideas, but strongly
sceptical of their efficacy.  However, Winter still felt the subject
was worth pursuing and made arrangements to visit Bay Head to observe
Dianetics `in action'.  Ron, who was acutely aware

                          -- end page 149 --

of the potential value of recruiting a doctor to the Dianetic cause,
invited Winter to stay with him and Sara at the cottage on the beach.

  He arrived in Bay Head on 1 October 1949, and Sara, now several
months into her pregnancy, did her best to make the young doctor
welcome, despite somewhat cramped conditions.  Winter discovered that
Hubbard was spending much of his time testing his theories by
`running' science-fiction fans brought in by Campbell.  The purpose of
`running' a patient, Hubbard explained, was to send them `down the
time-track' to uncover their `impediments'.

  Winter sat in on several sessions, then agreed to Ron's suggestion
that he should be `run' himself.  `The experience was intriguing,' he
said.  `I felt, in general, that I was obtaining some benefits from
Hubbard's methods of therapy.  I was also aware of the possible
inaccuracies of a subjective evaluation of my own progress: I
therefore endeavoured to make up for this by observing the other
patients closely.  It was possible during this short period of
observation to note only the differences in their behaviour before and
after each therapy session.  The changes were obvious: before a
session I would see agitation, depression and irritability; after a
session the patient would be cheerful and relaxed.'[3]

  Although he had some reservations, particularly about Hubbard's
absolutism and inclination to make sweeping generalizations, he was
unquestionably impressed.  He noted the emotional discharge that
resulted when patients recalled painful experiences; he himself
re-lived the terror he had felt as a child on learning of his
grandmother's death and found it dissolving in a fit of sobbing and
weeping, after which he felt a great sense of relief.

  Winter did not return to Michigan until Thanksgiving, when an
incident occurred which finally convinced him of the validity of
Dianetics.  He arrived home to discover that his six-year-old son was
having problems: the boy had developed a paralyzing fear of the dark
and of ghosts, which he believed were waiting upstairs to strangle
him.  Winter recalled that his wife had experienced considerable
difficulties during the boy's birth and decided to apply Dianetic
techniques to see if there was any connection.  He was flabbergasted
by the result.

  The doctor persuaded his son to lie down, close his eyes and try to
recall the first time he had ever seen a ghost.  To Winter's amazement
the boy described in detail the white apron, cap and mask of the
obstetrician who had delivered him and how he felt he was being
strangled.  Winter and his wife discussed what had happened and
concluded with certainty that the only time their son had seen that
doctor in his surgical gown was at the moment of his birth.  It was
evident to them that the boy's fear was connected with his struggle to
be born and his phobia soon disappeared.

__________
 3. *A Doctor's Report on Dianetics*, Joseph A. Winter, 1951

                          -- end page 150 --

  Believing himself to be at the possible dawn of a `Golden Age of
greater sanity', Winter returned to Bay Head after the holiday
enormously optimistic about the prospects for Dianetics.  `I
immediately became immersed in a life of Dianetics and very little
else,' he recorded.  Hubbard and Campbell were deeply involved in the
projected article for *Astounding* and Winter began work on the
preparation of a paper explaining the principles and methodology of
Dianetic therapy, intended for presentation to the medical profession.
Ron, who made no secret of his contempt for the medical establishment
(often to the considerable embarrassment of Dr Winter), was not in the
least surprised by the reception it received: the *Journal of the
American Medical Association* and the *American Journal of Psychiatry*
both rejected the paper for publication on the grounds of insufficient
clinical evidence of the technique's effectiveness.

  Undeterred, the three men continued developing and refining Dianetic
theory, slowly bringing into their orbit other converts, notably a
young electrical engineer by the name of Don Rogers and Art Ceppos,
head of Hermitage House, a small medical and psychiatric textbook
publisher who had contracted, at Campbell's instigation, to publish a
book about Dianetics.  The `Bay Head Circle', as it came to be known,
devoted many hours to discussion of terminology.  Ron was still using
the word `impediment' to describe painful past experiences, although
they all agreed that a new word was needed to avoid confusion.  For a
while, impediment was replaced by `norn', the name of the Norse
goddesses said to control Man's destiny, but in the end they plumped
for `engram', which was defined in Dorland's *Medical Dictionary*, as
a `lasting mark or trace'.

  Meanwhile, Ron found time to dash off a feature about Dianetics for
the Explorers Club journal, in which he explained that he had
developed the therapy as a tool for expedition commanders to maintain
the health and morale of their men.  `That it apparently conquers and
cures all psychosomatic ills', he added with barely feigned modesty,
`and is of interest to institutions where it has a salutary effect
upon the insane, is beyond the province of its original intention.'
Untroubled, as always, by facts, Ron nonchalantly informed his fellow
members that details of the science could be found, `where it
belonged', in textbooks and professional publications on the mind and
body.[4]

  [Credit for the inspiration for Dianetics would be variously and
fancifully attributed over the years; at one point Hubbard claimed his
interest in the mind had been stimulated while at university by
comparing the rhythmic vibrations of poetry in English and Japanese,
in which language he was, of course, fluent[5].]

  Shortly before Christmas 1949, Hubbard finished the article for

__________
 4. *Explorers Journal*, Winter/Spring 1950
 5. Hubbard's autographical notes, 1972

                          -- end page 151 --

*Astounding*, but Campbell agreed to delay publication so that it
would come out shortly before the book was available and help promote
sales.  Despite his lingering misgivings about the extravagance of
Ron's claims, Winter agreed to write a foreword to the article, an
endorsement which would greatly add to the credibility of Dianetics.
`I sincerely feel', he wrote, `that Ron Hubbard has discovered the key
which for the first time permits a true evaluation of the human mind
and its function in health and in illness -- the greatest advance in
mental therapy since man began to probe into his mental make-up.'

  In the midst of all this accelerating activity, of writing and
revising, proof-reading, `running patients' and answering the
inquiries that were beginning to arrive as a result of the advance
editorials in *Astounding*, Hubbard became a father for the third
time.  On 8 March, 1950, Sara gave birth to a daughter, Alexis
Valerie, in the local hospital.  Winter, conveniently on hand,
supervised the delivery.  When she cradled the baby in her arms for
the first time, Sara registered with considerable pleasure that her
daughter had flaming red hair.

  By the beginning of April, Campbell's editorials had stimulated so
much interest that it was decided to establish a Hubbard Dianetic
Research Foundation to disseminate knowledge of the new therapy and
stimulate further research.  The Foundation was incorporated in the
unlovely environs of Elizabeth, New Jersey, a grimy industrial town on
the shores of Newark Bay, opposite Staten Island.  The board of
directors was made up of Ron and Sara Hubbard, Campbell, Winter, Don
Rogers, Art Ceppos and a lawyer by the name of Parker C. Morgan.  Dr
Winter, who had by then sold his practice in Michigan to devote
himself full-time to Dianetics, accepted the post of medical director
`without qualms'.

  The Foundation rented the top floor of an old office building on
Morris Avenue and furnished it with second-hand sheet-metal desks,
Navy surplus lecture-hall chairs and Army surplus cots.  Ron and Sara
rented a small frame house at 42 Aberdeen Road, Elizabeth, and moved
in with the baby.  Sara very much regretted leaving Bay Head and
viewed Elizabeth with unconcealed distaste, but Ron persuaded her that
it was vital for him to be on hand to direct the affairs of the
Foundation.

  Campbell's wife, Dona, was similarly suffering from her husband's
obsession with Dianetics, so much so that she walked out of their
marriage, declaring Dianetics to be the `last straw'.  Regular
contributors to *Astounding* also began to express concern that the
editor no longer seemed interested in anything but Ron Hubbard's
wonderful new science and many of them failed to share his enthusiasm.
Isaac Asimov read an advance copy of the Dianetics article and thought
it

                          -- end page 152 --

was `gibberish'[6] while Jack Williamson said he thought it was like a
`lunatic revision of Freudian psychology'.

  But Campbell's ardour could not be cooled.  In a letter to
Williamson be said he had witnessed Ron restoring sanity to a `raving
psychotic' in thirty minutes and curing a Navy veteran of ulcers and
arthritis.  `I *know* dianetics is one of, if not the greatest,
discovery of all Man's written and unwritten history,' he added.  `It
produces the sort of stability and sanity men have dreamed about for
centuries.'[7]

                                 -*-

The May 1950 issue of *Astounding Science Fiction* appeared on the
streets in the third week of April.  A hairy, ape-like alien with
yellow cat's eyes glowered menacingly from the cover.  Readers would
discover that he was the evil Duke of Kraakahaym, special envoy from
the Empire of Skontar to the Commonwealth of Sol, but everyone knew
there was something much more diverting in the magazine that month --
the long-awaited introduction to Dianetics, the first science ever to
be launched in a pocketbook pulp magazine.

  So startling were the tidings that Campbell felt obliged to
emphasize that the author was entirely serious.  `I want to assure
every reader, most positively and unequivocally,' he wrote, `that this
article is *not* a hoax, joke, or anything but a direct, clear
statement of a totally new scientific thesis.'

  Hubbard might have wished for a more venerable medium in which to
launch his new science, but he could hardly have found a more
receptive forum.  Many science-fiction fans at that time had an
engineering and science background and as far as they were concerned
Hubbard's dissertation, filling more than forty pages and seemingly
resulting from years of diligent research and study, was logical,
enticing and thoroughly persuasive.

  It was certainly very different from his previous writing.  The
customary narcissistic swaggering was notably absent and his usual
racy prose was replaced by a sober, textbook style sometimes too
worldly to be immediately comprehensible: `When exterior determinism
was entered into a human being so as to overbalance his self
determinism the correctness of his solutions fell off rapidly.'

  Hubbard's approach was that of an engineer seeking practical,
scientific solutions to the mysteries of the human mind, constantly
testing his postulates against a single, simple criterion: does it
work?  He began by drawing an analogy between the brain and a computer
with an infinite memory bank and perfect function.  Every human brain,
he argued, had the potential to operate as this optimum computer, with
untold benefits to the individual and to mankind, not least restoring
sanity to the insane, curing all manner of illnesses and ending wars.

__________
 6. Asimov, *op. cit.*
 7. Williamson, *op. cit.*

                          -- end page 153 --

  Constraints were presently imposed on the brain by `aberrations',
usually caused by physical or emotional pain.  Since pain was a threat
to survival, the basic principle of existence, the sane, analytical
mind sought to avoid it.  Evolution had provided the necessary
mechanism by means of what he called the `reactive mind'.  In moments
of stress, the `analytical mind' shut down and the `reactive mind'
took over, storing information in cellular recordings, or `engrams'.

  He provided an example of how an engram was stored.  If a child was
bitten by a dog at the age of two, she might not remember the incident
in later life but the engram could be stimulated by any number of
sights or sounds, causing her inexplicable distress.  It might be a
similar noise to that of the car driving past when the dog attacked,
the smell of a dog's fur, or the scrape of skin on concrete when she
was knocked to the ground.

  The purpose of Dianetic therapy, he explained, was to gain access to
the engrams in the reactive memory banks and `re-file' them in the
analytical mind, where their influence would be eradicated.  To
`unlock' the reactive memory bank it was necessary to locate the
earliest engrams, which he claimed were often pre-natal, sometimes
occurring within twenty-four hours of conception!  A foetus might not
understand words spoken while it was in the womb, he asserted, but it
would be able to recall them in later life.

  Having cleared the reactive mind, the analytical mind would then
function, like the optimum computer, at full efficiency -- the
individual's IQ would rise dramatically, he would be freed of all
psychological and psychosomatic illnesses and his memory would improve
to the point of total recall.

  Dianetics was easy to apply, he asserted, once the axioms and
mechanisms had been learned, and he envisaged the science being
practised by `people of intelligence and good drive' on their friends
and families.  `To date, over two hundred patients have been treated,'
he claimed; `of those two hundred, two hundred cures have been
obtained.'

  It was certainly an alluring prospect -- a simple science available
to ordinary people that invariably succeeded and claimed amazing
results.  But Hubbard knew better than to reveal, in a
twenty-five-cent magazine, *how* to practise his wonderful new
science; readers were specifically warned that the article would not
contain sufficient information for them to become Dianetic operators.
All the techniques would be explained, they were told, in a
forthcoming book soon to be published by Hermitage House, price $4.00.

                                 -*-

On 9 May 1950, *Dianetics, The Modern Science of Mental Health* by L.
Ron Hubbard appeared without fanfare in bookstores across the

                          -- end page 154 --

nation.  Hermitage House was not optimistic that it would be a big
seller and set the initial print run at a modest six thousand copies.

  The book, dedicated to Will Durant, esteemed author of *The Story of
Philosophy*, displayed none of the restraint evident in the
*Astounding* article.  Indeed, Hubbard introduced his new science with
breathtaking magniloquence.  `The creation of Dianetics', he declared
in the opening sentences of the book, `is a milestone for Man
comparable to his discovery of fire and superior to his inventions of
the wheel and the arch ... The hidden source of all psychosomatic ills
and human aberration has been discovered and skills have been
developed for their invariable cure.'

  Significant among the maladies Hubbard claimed he could cure were
the complaints that had figured so prominently in his Veterans
Administration file: arthritis, eye trouble, bursitis and ulcers.  He
also added to the list the most intractable ailment known to medical
science -- the common cold.

  Optimism and confidence in the ability of Dianetics to deal with
almost all human problems were the abiding themes of the book.
Hubbard's seductive message was simple -- a dramatic breakthrough had
occurred in psychotherapy.  The techniques were easy to learn, were
available to everyone and, most important of all, *always worked*!

  The first challenge of Dianetics was to get through the book, for
the text was abstruse, rambling, repetitive, studded with confusing
neologisms and littered with interminable footnotes, which Hubbard
seemed to think added academic verisimilitude.  Fellow science-fiction
writer L. Sprague de Camp frankly admitted he found the book
incomprehensible and quoted W.S. Gilbert to explain why a fiction
writer who was fluent, literate and readable should produce such
impenetrable non-fiction:

  `If this young man expresses himself in terms too deep for *me*,
  Why, what a very singularly deep young man this deep young man must
    be!'[8]

Hubbard's anxiety to invest his work with intellectual authority
should have deterred him from laying bare his own fierce prejudices,
but he could not be restrained.  The book exposed a deep-rooted hatred
of women, exemplified by a prurient pre-occupation with `attempted
abortions', which he claimed were the most common cause of pre-natal
engrams.  `A large proportion of allegedly feeble-minded children', he
wrote, `are actually attempted abortion cases ... However many
billions America spends yearly on institutions for the insane and
jails for the criminals are spent primarily because of attempted
abortions done by some sex-blocked mother to whom

__________
 8. *Fantastic*, August 1975

                          -- end page 155 --

children are a curse, not a blessing of God ... All these things are
scientific facts, tested and rechecked and tested again.'

  When the women in Hubbard's `case histories' were not thrusting
knitting needles into themselves, they were usually being unfaithful
to their husbands, or they were being beaten up, raped or otherwise
abused.  Almost without exception, they allowed the wretched embryos
in their wombs to be grievously mistreated.  `Fathers, for instance,
suspicious of paternity, sometimes claim while trouncing or upsetting
mothers that they will kill the child if it isn't like Father.  This
is a very bad engram ... it may compel an aberee into a profession he
does not admire and all out of the engramic command that he must be
like the parent.  The same engram, he added mysteriously, could also
cause premature baldness or lengthen the child's nose.

  Hubbard gave many illustrations of the problems caused by pre-natal
engrams, some of which might have strained the credulity of even his
most gullible readers.  If a husband beat his pregnant wife, for
example, yelling, `Take that!  Take it, I tell you.  You've got to
take it!', it was possible the child would interpret these words
literally in later life and become a thief.  Or a pregnant woman
suffering from constipation might sit straining for a bowel movement
muttering to herself, `Oh, this is hell.  I am all jammed up inside.
I feel so stuffy I can't think.  This is too terrible to be borne.'
In this case, he explained, the child might easily develop an
inferiority complex from a engram which suggested to him he was too
terrible to be `born'.

  Some of the worst pre-natal engrams were caused by naming the child
after the father.  If the expectant mother was committing adultery, as
so many of Hubbard's pregnant women were wont to do, she was likely to
make derogatory remarks about her husband while engaged in sexual
intercourse with her lover.  The foetus, obviously, would be
`listening' and if he was given the husband's name he would assume in
later life that all the horrible things his mother had said about his
father were actually about *him*.

  After women, Hubbard's secondary target was the medical profession,
towards which he directed almost rabid hostility, accusing
neurosurgeons of reducing their `victims' to `zombyism' either by
burning away the brain with electric shocks or tearing it to pieces
with a `nice ice-pick into each eyeball'.  `In terms of brutality in
treatment of the insane,' he wrote, `the methods of the shaman or
Bedlam have been exceeded by the "civilized" techniques of destroying
nerve tissue with the violence of shock or surgery ... destroying most
of his personality and ambition and leaving him nothing more than a
manageable animal.'

  Indisputably the most portentous section of the book was that

                          -- end page 156 --

which explained to the reader how to put Dianetics into practice.
Artfully employing the jargon of modern technology, Hubbard called the
process `auditing'.  The practitioner was the `auditor' and his
patient was a `pre-clear'.  To become `clear' of all engrams was the
goal devoutly to be pursued for `clears' were free from all neuroses
and psychoses, had full control of their imaginations, greatly raised
IQs and well-nigh perfect memories.

  Auditing began in a darkened room by inducing in the pre-clear a
condition Hubbard described as `Dianetic reverie', which could
apparently be recognized by a fluttering of the closed eyelids.  It
was not so much a hypnotic trance, he was careful to point out, as a
state of relaxation conducive to travelling back along the time-track.
Once the reverie had been induced, the auditor placed the pre-clear
back in various periods of his life, moving inexorably towards birth
or conception.  Most pre-clears, Hubbard advised, would eventually
experience a `sperm dream' during which, as an egg, they would swim up
a channel to meet the sperm.  Once the earliest engram had been
erased, later engrams would erase more easily.

  An average auditing session should last about two hours and Hubbard
estimated that a minimum of twenty hours' auditing would be needed
before the pre-clear began to reap the rewards.

  To a nation increasingly inclined to unload its problems on an
expensive psychiatrist's couch, the promise of Dianetics was wondrous.
It all seemed so eminently logical, pragmatic and alluring, as if
human life was about to take on a new sparkle.  With the book in one
hand, what problems could not be solved?  Here at last was a
do-it-yourself therapy for the people that friends could offer to
friends, husbands to wives, fathers to children.  Any doubts were
swept aside by the book's overweening absolutism: who would dare make
such sweeping claims if they were not true?

  Even the immoderate tenor of the author's attack on the medical
profession struck many chords.  Electric shock therapy and pre-frontal
lobotomy were frightening and mysterious techniques disturbingly
reminiscent of the experiments that had taken place in Nazi
concentration camps, horrors only recently uncovered and still fresh
in the mind.  It was understandable that people wanted to believe in
Dianetics, if for no other reason than to relegate such seemingly
medieval practices to history.

                                 -*-

For the first few days after publication of *Dianetics, The Modern
Science of Mental Health*, it appeared as if the publisher's caution
about the book's prospects had been entirely justified.  Early
indications were that it had aroused little interest; certainly it was
ignored by most reviewers.  But suddenly, towards the end of May, the
line on the

                          -- end page 157 --

sales graph at the New York offices of Hermitage House took a steep
upturn.

  The first purchasers of *Dianetics* were mostly science-fiction fans
and readers of *Astounding*.  Primarily they wanted to see if
Hubbard's new science really did work.  Typical among them was Jack
Horner, a psychology graduate at a college in Los Angeles: `I had been
a science-fiction fan since 1934 and I was fascinated by Campbell's
editorials in *Astounding*.  I ordered the book as soon as I heard
about it.  I got it on Monday, read it by Tuesday and was auditing on
Wednesday.  I sat down and audited five people and boy, it worked just
like Hubbard said it would.  I said to myself, "Gee, he may not have
it all, but he's sure got a good piece of it."'[9]

  A. E. van Vogt knew the book was coming out because Hubbard had been
telephoning him every day from Elizabeth to try and get him interested
in Dianetics.  Van insisted he was a writer, not a therapist, and had
no intention of reading Ron's book.  But when an advance copy arrived
in the mail he could not resist taking a look and he was piqued to
discover how well Dianetic theory dovetailed with his own fiction.
His most popular novel, *Slan*, had been about supermen evolving
fantastic new powers of the mind very much in the way envisaged by
Dianetics.

  Van Vogt read *Dianetics* twice, then decided to experiment on his
wife's sister, who was visiting them at the time.  He began auditing
her, following the instructions in the book, and to his utter
astonishment found she was soon re-living the moment of her birth.
She had been a breech baby and Van and his wife, Edna Mayne, watched
in awe as she went through the motions of being born, screaming and
yelling as she `felt' the forceps pulling her out.  Next day, Van
invited Forrie Ackerman and his wife over.

  `Van was the first in town to get Ron's book' said Ackerman.  `He
told me that his 'phone was ringing off the hook all day.  Everyone
wanted to know if Dianetics was phoney or if there was really
something in it.

  `I was his second guinea pig.  He asked me to lie on a couch and
explained about the time-track.  He said I could think of it as if I
was in an elevator going down and stopping at floors equating to
different years, or I could imagine I was on a train and watching
signs with different dates flash by the window.  I got the idea and
lay there waiting for something to happen.  Suddenly, on a sort of
velvety background I saw two disembodied eyes, hard-boiled eyes like
those of the actor, Peter Lorre.  I said, "I see these popping eyes
..."

  `Van said to concentrate on that and keep repeating "popping eyes".
I kept saying it and it gradually got abbreviated to "Popeyes", then
"poppies".  When I was in High School we memorized a poem about

__________
 9. Interview with Jack Horner, Santa Monica, 24 July 1986

                          -- end page 158 --

World War One: "In Flanders fields the poppies grow, by the crosses
row on row ..."  I suddenly thought of the poppies growing row on row
and in my mind I went right to the grave of my dear brother, Lorraine
Ackerman, who didn't quite make it to twenty-one.  When I learned he
had been killed, I remember I just went round with an empty feeling.
All those years later, the sorrow that I had been holding at bay came
gushing out and I got it all out of my system.  It was quite
astonishing to me at the time and gave me the feeling there was
certainly something to it.[10]

  All over the country the same thing was happening: science-fiction
fans were buying the book and auditing their friends, who then rushed
out to buy the book so they could audit *their* friends.  In this
first flush of enthusiasm, Hubbard's insistence that Dianetics worked
seemed indisputable: everyone could uncover an engram somewhere down
their time-track and only the most churlish pre-clears would not admit
to feeling uplifted after an auditing session.  If auditing worked, it
was perhaps not unreasonable to give credence to the whole science of
Dianetics.

  At the offices of *Astounding Science Fiction* in New York, more
than two thousand letters had arrived in the fortnight following
publication of the Dianetics article and mail continued to pour in by
the sackload.  Campbell, who liked statistics, calculated that only
0.2 per cent of the letters were unfavourable.  At Hermitage House,
Art Ceppos was frantically trying to arrange for more copies of the
book to be printed and distributed; bookstore owners everywhere were
complaining that they were running out of supplies.  In Los Angeles,
the demand was so great that *Dianetics* was only available on an
under-the-counter basis.

  In Elizabeth, New Jersey, the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation
was inundated with inquiries when it was announced in June that L. Ron
Hubbard would be teaching the first full-time training course for
Dianetic auditors.  Hopeful trainees travelled thousands of miles to
New Jersey in the hope of getting a place on the course.  Jack Horner
was one of them.  `I got hold of Hubbard's telephone number and called
him and said I wanted to take the course.  He said, "It's awful
crowded out here, but you're as welcome as the flowers in May."  I had
a friend with a Cadillac who was also interested and we drove non-stop
across the country to get there in time.

  `The course cost $500, which was an immense amount of money in those
days, but it was worth every cent.  There were about thirty-five to
forty people on the course, all sorts, men and women.  They were a
well-educated, literate bunch and if there was a common factor among
them it was probably an interest in science fiction.

  `Ron lectured every day.  He was very impressive, dedicated and

__________
10. Interview with Ackerman

                          -- end page 159 --

amusing.  The man had tremendous charisma; you just wanted to hear
every word he had to say and listen for any pearl of wisdom.  We never
discussed where he had got all his knowledge.  To me, the source of
his data was irrelevant.  I'd been in college studying recent
discoveries in psychology and they were not worth a damn compared to
what he had come up with and what it would do.

  `I guess it would be true to say that the early 'fifties was the
right moment to launch Dianetics.  The atomic bomb had been dropped,
there was a sense of hopelessness around and there was a great deal of
fear about a nuclear war -- people were building cabins out in the
wilderness.  McCarthyism was rife and our troops were fighting a war
in Korea which seemed completely unreal to most of us.  Then along
comes Hubbard with the idea that if we could increase the overall
sanity of man just a little bit, it would be a partial solution to the
threat of nuclear war.  It was no wonder that people wanted to listen
to him.'

  While Hubbard was lecturing in Elizabeth, Dianetics became,
virtually overnight, a national `craze' somewhat akin to the canasta
marathons and pyramid clubs that had briefly flourished in the
hysteria of post-war America.  Dianetic groups sprang up everywhere,
in every small town and every college; on the West Coast `Dianetic
parties' became the rage; in Hollywood, where neuroses and dollars lay
thick on the ground, the movie colony joyfully embraced the idea of a
therapy that did not involve all the tedious hours demanded by
psychoanalysts.  Everyone wanted to audit everyone else and right
across the nation Americans were excitedly reliving their births,
courtesy of the new guru, L. Ron Hubbard.

  The media had so far largely chosen to ignore L. Ron Hubbard and his
new science, but it was clear from the rising level of public interest
that he could not be ignored forever.  On 2 July, *Dianetics, The
Modern Science of Mental Health* -- now known to converts simply as
`The Book' -- reached the top of the bestseller list in the *Los
Angeles Times*, where it would remain for many months.  On the same
day the book received its first major review, in *The New York Times*.
It was a predictable savaging by Rollo May, a noted psychologist and
writer.

  May could find no merit in Dianetics.  It was, he said, an
oversimplified form of regular psychotherapy mixed with hypnosis.  He
wondered if the author was not writing with his tongue in his cheek
and searched in vain for scientific evidence to support the book's
bizarre theories.  `Books like this do harm', May concluded, `by their
grandiose promises to troubled persons and by their oversimplification
of human psychological problems.'

  In *Scientific American*, a professor of physics at Columbia
University declared the book contained less evidence per page than any
publication since the invention of printing.  `The huge sale of the
book

                          -- end page 160 --

to date is distressing evidence', wrote the professor, `of the
frustrated ambitions, hopes, ideals, anxieties and worries of the many
persons who through it have sought succor.'[11] *New Republic* weighed
in by describing the book as a `bold and immodest mixture of complete
nonsense and perfectly reasonable common sense, taken from long
acknowledged findings and disguised and distorted by a crazy, newly
invented terminology'.[12]

  Following close on the heels of the media pundits came the outraged
ranks of the medical profession.  The American Psychological
Association, pointing out that Hubbard's `sweeping generalizations'
were not supported by empirical evidence, called for Dianetics to be
limited to scientific investigation `in the public interest'.

  `If it were not for sympathy for the mental suffering of disturbed
people,' Dr Frederick Hacker, a Los Angeles psychiatrist declared,
`the so-called science of Dianetics could be dismissed for what it is
-- a clever scheme to dip into the pockets of the gullible with
impunity.  The Dianetic auditor is but another name for the witch
doctor, exploiting a real need with phoney methods.'[13] Many medical
experts sourly pointed out that there was nothing new in Dianetics and
that Hubbard was simply applying new words to common phenomena long
known and accepted in psychoanalysis.  The `engram' theory, they
explained, was no more than a form of `abreaction', the psychiatric
term for releasing emotions associated with the suppressed memory of
some past event.

  In the face of such criticism, Dianeticists rose en masse to defend
their founder and his ideas, bombarding the offending publications
with indignant letters.  Leading the protest was Frederick L. Schuman,
a distinguished professor of political science from Williamstown,
Massachusetts, who had visited Hubbard in New Jersey and been
instantly converted.  `History has become a race between Dianetics and
catastrophe,' he wrote to *The New York Times*.  `Dianetics will win
if enough people are challenged, in time, to understand it.'[14]

  The constant publicity spread the word as effectively as a
nationwide advertizing campaign and the more the medical profession
railed against Dianetics, the more people became convinced there must
be something to it.  Only two months after the publication of the
book, *Newsweek* reported that more than fifty-five thousand copies
had been sold and five hundred Dianetics groups had been set up across
the United States.[15]

  If the cause of all the fuss was in any way bewildered by his sudden
change of circumstances, he was certainly not going to show it.  In
truth, Hubbard had certainly not anticipated that the book would ever
be a bestseller, but he acted as if it was pre-ordained and slipped
effortlessly into the role of luminary.  He was, naturally, much in

__________
11. *Scientific American*, Jan 1951
12. *New Republic*, 14 August 1950
13. *LOOK*, 5 December 1950
14. *The New York Times*, 6 August 1950
15. *Newsweek*, No. 36, August 1950

                          -- end page 161 --

demand for interviews and he proved to be a natural interviewee
providing reporters with a multitude of picturesque quotes about his
colourful life and exhausting years of research `in the laboratories
of the world'.

  He was unfailingly polite, amusing, ready to answer any question and
always willing to pose for a photograph.  He also contrived to provide
every reporter with a tit-bit of new information.  *Parade* magazine
was able to reveal exclusively, for example, that `the man behind the
new mental health craze' was also `the father of the world's first
Dianetics baby'.  Alexis Valerie Hubbard, Ron explained, had been
carefully shielded in her pre-natal life from noise, bumps and
parental conversations in order to protect her from engrams.  The
result, Ron happily announced, was that the baby was talking at three
months, crawling at four months and was free from all phobias.[16]

  `Since the overnight success of his book *Dianetics*,' the *Los
Angeles Daily News* reported, `Hubbard has become, in a few swift
months, a personality, a national celebrity and the proprietor of the
fastest growing "movement" in the United States.'[17]

__________
16. *Parade*, 29 October 1950
17. *Los Angeles Daily News*, 6 September 1950

                          -- end page 162 --

                             *Chapter 10*

                     *Commies, Kidnaps and Chaos*

  `The United States Government at this time [1950] attempted to
monopolize all his researches and force him to work on a project "to
make man more suggestible" and when he was unwilling, tried to
blackmail him by ordering him back to active duty to perform this
function.  Having made many friends he was able to instantly resign
from the Navy and escape this trap.  The Government never forgave him
for this and soon began vicious, covert international attacks upon his
work, all of which were proven false and baseless.'  (*What is
Scientology?*, 1978)

                              * * * * *

California, ever enchanted by fads and facile philosophies, was the
natural habitat of Dianetics and it was to California that Hubbard
returned in triumph at the beginning of August 1950, to be feted by
joyful Dianeticists waiting to meet him at Los Angeles airport.  Two
years earlier, he had left as a penniless pulp fiction author; now he
was back as a celebrity with a book firmly lodged at the top of every
bestseller list and a growing legion of followers who truly believed
him to be a genius.

  He had a busy schedule ahead: apart from personal appearances and
interviews, he was to lecture at the newly-formed Hubbard Dianetic
Research Foundation of California, all the big bookstores wanted him
for signing sessions and, most important of all, he was to attend a
rally on Thursday 10 August at the Shrine Auditorium.  It promised to
be Dianetics' finest hour, for on that evening the identity of the
world's first `clear' was to be announced.

  The Shrine was a vast, mosque-like building with white stucco
castellated walls and a dome in each corner, unforgettably
characterized by the music critic of the *LA Times* as being of the
`neo-penal Bagdad' school of architecture.  Built in 1925 by the Al
Malaikah Temple, it was the largest auditorium in Los Angeles and
could seat nearly 6500 people under a swooping ceiling designed to
resemble the roof of a tent.  When the Hubbard Dianetic Research
Foundation booked it for the meeting on 10 August, few people expected
more than half the seats to be filled.

                          -- end page 163 --

  Arthur Jean Cox, the young teletype operator who had met Hubbard at
the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society, left early for the meeting by
streetcar and was surprised how crowded it was.  `More and more people
got on at every stop,' he said.  `I couldn't believe that *everyone*
was going to the meeting but when we arrived at the Shrine on Royal
Street, everyone got off.  I was absolutely amazed.  By the time I got
inside there were only a few seats left.'[1]

  The audience was predominantly young, noisy and good-humoured.  Many
people carried well-thumbed copies of `The Book', in the hope of
getting them signed by Hubbard, and there was much speculation about
`the world's first clear' and what he or she would be able to do.
Dozens of newspapers and magazines, including *Life*, had sent
reporters and photographers to cover the event and those cynics who
had predicted a sea of empty seats looked on in astonishment as even
the aisles began to fill.

  When L. Ron Hubbard walked on to the stage, followed by A. E. van
Vogt, whom he had recently recruited, and other directors of the
Foundation, there was a spontaneous roar from the audience, followed
by applause and cheering that continued for several minutes.  Hubbard,
totally assured and relaxed, smiled broadly as he looked around the
packed auditorium and finally held up his hands for silence.

  The meeting opened with Hubbard demonstrating Dianetic techniques.
With the help of a pretty blonde, he showed how to induce Dianetic
reverie and then he `run a grief incident' on a girl called Marcia.
While the audience obligingly responded when Hubbard spread his arms
for applause at the end of each demonstration, it all seemed a little
too well rehearsed and there was a murmur of approval when someone
stood up in the audience and called out: `Ladies and gentlemen,
somehow I can't help but feel that all this has been pre-arranged.'

  Immediately people began shouting for Hubbard to demonstrate on
someone from the audience and when a young man jumped on to the piano
in the orchestra pit, a chant went up: `Take *him*!  Take *him*!'
Hubbard, not in the least flustered by this turn of events, invited
him up on to the stage.  The young man introduced himself as an actor
whose father had studied with Freud, which fortuitously gave Hubbard
the opportunity of mentioning his own connection with the great
analyst, through his old friend `Snake' Thompson.

  Sitting on facing chairs at the front of the stage, Hubbard made a
determined attempt to audit the man, but he proved an unresponsive
subject, answering almost every question in the negative.  The
audience soon became bored and restless and began calling, `Throw him
out, throw him out!'  Hubbard, perhaps somewhat relieved, shook the
man's hand and he stepped down.

__________
 1. Interview with Cox and letter to Martin Gardner, 30 April 1952

                          -- end page 164 --

  The atmosphere throughout had remained perfectly cordial, even if
the shouted comments from the audience were increasingly irreverent.
When Hubbard was explaining the multitude of mental and physical
benefits arising from successful auditing, someone yelled, `Are your
cavities filling up?'  and caused a good deal of laughter.

  As the highlight of the evening approached, there was a palpable
sense of excitement and anticipation in the packed hall.  A hush
descended on the audience when at last Hubbard stepped up to the
microphone to introduce the `world's first clear'.  She was, he said,
a young woman by the name of Sonya Bianca, a physics major and pianist
from Boston.  Among her many newly acquired attributes, he claimed she
had `full and perfect recall of every moment of her life', which she
would be happy to demonstrate.  He turned slowly to the wings on one
side of the stage and said: `Will you come out now please, Sonya?'

  The audience erupted once more in applause as a thin, obviously
nervous, girl stepped out of the wings and into a spotlight which
followed her to centre stage, where she was embraced by Hubbard.  In a
tremulous voice she told the meeting that Dianetics had cleared up her
sinus trouble and cured her `strange and embarrassing' allergy to
pain.  `For days after I came in contact with paint I had a painful
itching in my eyebrows,' she stammered.  `Now both conditions have
cleared up and I feel like a million dollars.'  She answered a few
routine questions from Hubbard, who then made the mistake of inviting
questions from the audience: they had clearly been expecting rather
more spectacular revelations.

  `What did you have for breakfast on October 3 1942?'  somebody
yelled.  Miss Bianca understandably looked somewhat startled, blinked
in the lights and shook her head.  `What's on page 122 of *Dianetics,
The Modern Science of Mental Health*?'  someone else asked.  Miss
Bianca opened her mouth but no words came out.  Similar questions came
thick and fast, amid much derisive laughter.  Many in the audience
took pity on the wretched girl and tried to put easier questions, but
she was so terrified that she could not even remember simple formulae
in physics, her own subject.

  As people began getting up and walking out of the auditorium, one
man noticed that Hubbard had momentarily turned his back on the girl
and shouted, `OK, what colour necktie is Mr Hubbard wearing?'  The
world's first `clear' screwed up her face in a frantic effort to
remember, stared into the hostile blackness of the auditorium, then
hung her head in misery.  It was an awful moment.

  Hubbard, sweat glistening in beads on his forehead, stepped forward
and brought the demonstration swiftly to an end.  Quickwitted as
always, he proffered an explanation for Miss Bianca's

                          -- end page 165 --

impressive lapses of memory.  The problem, Dianetically speaking, was
that when he called her forward, asking her to come out `now', the
`now' had frozen her in `present time' and blocked her total recall.
It was not particularly convincing, but it was the best he could do in
the circumstances.

  Forrie Ackerman, who was at the Shrine that night to see his client
perform, summed up the feelings of many people who were there: `I was
somewhat disappointed not to see a vibrant woman in command of herself
and situation.  She certainly was not my idea of a "clear".'[2]

  It would be some time before Hubbard produced another `Clear'
although his followers, in their enthusiasm, would frequently declare
that their own protgs had reached that blissful state.  One of these
was a fifteen-year-old girl of such remarkable powers that she was
said to have made her bad teeth fall out and grown new teeth in their
place.[3] But no one suggested presenting her at a public meeting.

                                 -*-

The dbcle at the Shrine was no more than a hiccup in the rising
fortunes of L. Ron Hubbard.  When, after the meeting, Ackerman called
on his client in his suite at the Frostona Hotel in Los Angeles,
Hubbard clapped him on the shoulder and boomed happily: `Well, Forrie,
I'm dragging down Clark Gable's salary.'

  It was true: money was literally pouring in.  For the first few
weeks after van Vogt agreed to take over as head of the Los Angeles
Foundation, he recalled doing little but tear open envelopes and pull
out $500 cheques from people who wanted to take an auditor's
course.[4] Only a few days after the Shrine meeting, the Foundation
moved its headquarters into the former official mansion of the
governor of California, a sprawling building shaded by palm trees on
the corner of South Hoover and Adams, known as the `Casa' because of
its Spanish appearance.  Although it cost $4.5 million, enough money
had already come in for a down payment.  Other branches of the
Foundation had opened in New York, Washington DC, Chicago and
Honolulu.

  But while money was pouring in, it was also pouring out and there
was no accounting, no organization, no financial strategy or control.
`One day the bank manager called me,' said van Vogt.  `He told me Mr
Hubbard was in the front office and wanted to draw a cashier's cheque
for $56,000 and was it all right to give it to him.  I said, "He's the
boss."'

  Trying to hold all the reins, refusing to delegate, Hubbard became
ever more authoritarian and suspicious of the people around him.  `He
was having a lot of political and organizational problems with people
grabbing for power,' said Barbara Kaye [not her real name], a public
relations assistant at the Los Angeles Foundation.  `He didn't trust
anyone and was highly paranoid.  He thought the CIA had hit men

__________
 2. Interview with Ackerman
 3. *Cults of Unreason*, Christopher Evans, 1973
 4. Interview with A.E. van Vogt

                          -- end page 166 --

after him.  We'd be walking along the street and I would ask, "Why are
you walking so fast?"  He would look over his shoulder and say, "You
don't know what it's like to be a target."  No one was after him: it
was all delusion.'

  Barbara Kaye knew a lot about Ron's problems because she was having
an affair with him.  She was just twenty years old, an exceptionally
pretty blonde and a psychology major.  `I wanted to get into public
relations and an employment agency sent me along to the Foundation.
They were looking for someone to answer the scurrilous attacks that
the Press was making on Dianetics.  Ron interviewed me for the job and
hired me straight away.

  `My first impression was of a husky, red-haired man with a full,
flabby face -- not by any means what one would call handsome.  If I'd
seen him on the street I wouldn't have given him a second look, but I
soon learned he was a very creative, intelligent and articulate
individual.  He had a marvellous personality and was very dynamic.
There was a lot going on in the office at that time and sometimes when
I worked late he took me home.  One night he kissed me and, well, one
thing led to another.  That's how it all started.  I knew he was
married, but I was very young at the time and not as concerned with
other men's wives as perhaps I should have been.'

  It was an affair squeezed into a hectic timetable.  Hubbard was
lecturing at the Foundation every day, seven days a week.  A. E. van
Vogt, who had temporarily abandoned science-fiction writing, got up at
5.30 each morning to drive down to the Casa to open the office.
Hubbard arrived an hour later and chaired a daily meeting of the staff
instructors, most of whom had received their initial training in
Elizabeth, New Jersey.  At eight o'clock the first students arrived.
Hubbard lectured from eight to nine and demonstrated from nine to ten.

  `We had an auditorium that could seat 500 people,' said van Vogt,
`but the lectures were always crowded.  You see there was nothing
available for ordinary people at that time in the way of therapy.
Analysts were a lost cause because they were already charging too much
and we offered a complete course for $500.  What sticks in my mind was
how fluently Ron talked off the top of his head.  Every morning it was
something different.  It amazed me.  Where had it all come from?  That
was the question in my mind.  The only thoughts I ever got from Ron
were that he had observed things they were doing in China and thought
they were pretty good.  I think he modified Chinese ideas.'

  When he was not lecturing in the evenings, Hubbard spent his time
with Barbara, who soon found herself hopelessly in love.  She was
thrilled when he rented a `love nest' apartment for them at the
Chateau

                          -- end page 167 --

Marmont Hotel, a fake castle on a hill overlooking Sunset Strip which
was a favourite haunt of movie stars.  The first night they spent
there together, Ron seemed to want to reassure her of the permanence
of their relationship.  He put his arm round her shoulders and took
her through the apartment.  `This is your closet,' he said, `this is
your dressing-table, this is your toothbrush ...'  Barbara was deeply
touched.

  Two days later, Sara and the baby arrived in town from the East
Coast and moved into the love nest.  When Barbara turned up for work
at the Foundation next morning, she found her toothbrush on her desk,
along with the few personal possessions she had left at the apartment.
While she stood staring at the pathetic little bundle with tears
welling in her eyes, Hubbard came over and hissed his apologies,
whispered that his wife was a `bitch' and that there was nothing he
could do.  `I miss you,' he croaked.  Then, to Barbara's amazement, he
asked her if she would like to have dinner with him and Sara that
evening.  Speechless, she could do no more than shake her head.

  Despite the hurt, Barbara could not bring herself to break off the
affair.  `I was completely infatuated.  I remember I said to my
room-mate -- we had a small apartment in Beverly Hills -- "If I ever
tell you I am marrying this guy I want you to tie me up and not let me
out of the door because he's a lunatic."  But I didn't trust myself
not to do it because I was so enchanted by him.  Being with him was
like watching a fascinating character playing a role on a stage.  I
was never bored with him.  He was a magical, delightful man, a great
raconteur, very bright and amusing and a very gentle, patient and
sweet lover.

  `At the same time I recognized early on that he was also deeply
disturbed.  Some of the things he told me were really bizarre, but I
never knew what to believe.  He said his mother was a lesbian and that
he had found her in bed with another woman and that he had been born
as the result of an attempted abortion.  He talked a lot about his
grandfather who could really hold his liquor and played a fiddle with
the head of a negro carved on the end, but he never talked about his
father and never once mentioned he had children.  I did not know he
had a son until I read it in the newspapers years later.'

  Towards the end of September, Barbara accompanied Hubbard on a
lecture tour in the San Francisco area in her capacity as public
relations officer of the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation.  To her
acute embarrassment, Sara came to see them off at Union Station and
ostentatiously kissed her husband goodbye, at the same time sweeping
her eyes up and down Barbara's figure.  Hubbard, too, was discomforted
and drank a great deal in the club car of the train as it rattled
north.

                          -- end page 168 --

  His spirits improved greatly when they arrived in San Francisco and
he discovered that a welcoming barbecue party had been arranged at the
home of a local Dianeticist.  Barbara, however, had an unhappy time --
during the course of the evening she wandered into the kitchen and
found Hubbard kissing his host's wife.  Later that evening when she
refused to sleep with him he lost his temper and bellowed, `They're
all against me!'  That night, Barbara wrote in her diary: `I see him
now as vain, arrogant, self-centred and unable to tolerate any
frustration.'

  They soon made it up, as a subsequent passage in her diary recorded:
`Things were better in Oakland.  He took a penthouse apartment, I was
with him constantly and he fell in love with me a little again and I
felt closer to him than ever.  He drank excessively and talked in
proportion to his intake.  Grotesque tales about his family mostly and
his hatred of his mother, who he said was a lesbian and a whore ...
He is a deeply unhappy man.  He said the only thing to show him
affection for the last few years, before he met me, was Calico, his
cat.'[5]

  In October, Hubbard returned to the East Coast for a few days and
was greeted at Elizabeth with the news that the Foundation was
approaching a financial crisis -- its monthly income could no longer
even cover the payroll -- and Joseph Winter, the man who had done so
much to validate Dianetics, was about to resign.

  Winter was deeply disillusioned with the Hubbard Dianetic Research
Foundation.  He no longer believed that Dianetics was free from risk
-- two pre-clears had developed acute psychoses during auditing -- and
he was extremely worried by the Foundation's continuing willingness to
accept anyone for training as an auditor.

  `People had breakdowns quite often,' said Perry Chapdelaine, a Sears
Roebuck clerk from Mason City, Iowa, who was a student at Elizabeth.
`It was always hushed up before anyone found out about it.  It
happened to a guy on my course, a chemical engineer.  They wanted to
get him out of the school and I volunteered to stay with him in an
adjoining building.  He never slept or ate and was in a terrible
state, no one could do anything with him and in the end they took him
off to an asylum.'[6]

  Apart from what he considered to be inherent dangers in allowing
anyone to audit anyone, Winter had also begun to doubt whether the
state of `clear' was realistically obtainable.  Finally, he was
frustrated by the fact that the Research Foundation was making
absolutely no attempt to conduct any serious scientific research,
which was one of its avowed aims.  He had voiced his growing concern
on several occasions, only to be airily dismissed by Hubbard.  It
became clear to Winter that he had no alternative but to resign.[7]

__________
 5. Interviews with Barbara Kaye, Los Angeles, 28 July -- 5 August 1986
 6. Interview with Perry Chapdelaine, Nashville, 25 April 1986
 7. Winter, *op. cit.*

                          -- end page 169 --

  Art Ceppos was largely in sympathy with Winter and also submitted
his resignation.  Hubbard's reaction was typically immoderate.  Angry
and bitter at what he considered to be a betrayal by two of his
earliest supporters, he spread the word that Winter and Ceppos had
been plotting to seize control of the Foundation and had consequently
been `forced' to resign.[8]

  It was not Hubbard's style to be satisfied with simply blackening
the reputation of his enemies -- he wanted *revenge*.  An opportunity
presented itself in the unlovely form of Senator Joe McCarthy, the
self-seeking demagogue who, in February 1950, had accused the State
Department of being riddled with Communists and Communist
sympathizers.  The atmosphere of fear and suspicion generated during
the witch-hunts that followed cast a shadow across America; almost
nothing was worse, during the era of McCarthyism, than to be a
`Commie', or be *thought* to be a `Commie'.  On 3 November 1950, the
general counsel of the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation in
Elizabeth contacted the FBI and said that Art Ceppos, president of
Hermitage House, was a Communist sympathizer who had recently tried to
get hold of the Foundation's mailing list of sixteen thousand names
which would be `valuable to anyone interested in circulating Communist
party literature'.[9]

  Hubbard stayed less than a week in Elizabeth and made little attempt
to resolve the financial crisis facing the Foundation.  He had
absolutely no interest in balance sheets and operated on the
optimistic, if unrealistic, belief that somehow everything would come
out all right in the end.  Further problems, of a more personal
nature, arose when he returned to Los Angeles: he began to suspect his
wife was having an affair.  One evening he had insisted on an
outlandish double date with his wife and his lover.  Barbara, who
hated the idea, reluctantly showed up to meet Ron and Sara at a Los
Angeles restaurant in the company of Miles Hollister, one of the
instructors from the LA Foundation.  `I think Sara must have known
what was going on,' said Barbara.  `She was very hostile.  At one
point in the evening we were talking about guns and she said I looked
like the type to carry a Saturday night special.'

  The dinner party back-fired on Hubbard -- his lover's date became
his wife's lover.  Miles Hollister was twenty-two years old, tall,
dark-haired and strikingly handsome, a graduate of Bard College in New
York State, where he had been president of the student body, and a
sportsman of some repute -- he was the first man to land a swordfish
off the coast of Florida using light tackle.  In short, he was
everything that Hubbard was not: young, attractive, sporting and
well-connected.  It was hardly surprising that Hubbard conceived a
passionate loathing for the young man and predictable that he would

__________
 8. Letter to Barbara Kaye from Hubbard, 21 Oct 1951
 9. US Govt memo to Director FBI from SAC Newark, 21 Mar 1951

                          -- end page 170 --

retaliate.  His first move was curiously elliptical -- he summarily
fired two of Hollister's closest friends at the Foundation, claiming
they were Communists.

  Jack Horner, who was by then working at the Los Angeles Foundation,
attempted to intervene on their behalf.  `They were both nice guys and
highly trained instructors and I tried to get them off the hook.  I
went and confronted Hubbard in his office and said, "You can't fire
those guys, you don't have any evidence."  He ranted and raved, pacing
up and down, and said, "You don't understand.  I'm fighting a battle
here.  I might lose some people on the way, but I'm going to win."

  `Hubbard was willing to do anything, for him it was any means to an
end.  A couple of weeks later he got mad at a fellow named Charlie
Crail, who had helped set up the LA organization.  They had some
disagreement about how the place should be run.  He called me and
another guy into his office and told us to go and steal Charlie's
Dianetics certificates.  We told him we wouldn't do it and that he
shouldn't count on us for that kind of operation.  He couldn't
understand it.  As far as he was concerned, because he had signed the
certificates they belonged to him.  There were lots of incidents like
that, but I was usually prepared to go along with them because I felt
his genius far outshone his craziness.'[10]

  With his suspicions festering, Hubbard's relationship with Sara
deteriorated rapidly.  One night they had a violent row and Sara
shouted at him, `Why don't you just go off and spend the weekend with
some pretty girl!'  Hubbard stormed out of the house, picked up
Barbara Kaye and drove to a motel in Malibu, where he spent much of
the weekend moodily swigging whisky.

  `He was very down in the dumps about his wife,' said Barbara.  `He
told me how he had met Sara.  He said he went to a party and got drunk
and when he woke up in the morning he found Sara was in bed with him.
He was having a lot of problems with her.  I remember he said to me I
was the only person he knew who would set up a white silk tent for
him.  I was rather surprised when we were driving back to LA on Sunday
evening, he stopped at a florist to buy some flowers for his wife.'

  Barbara kept a meticulous diary in which she constantly analyzed and
re-analyzed her affair with Hubbard, speculated on his mental
condition and recorded day-to-day drama.  On Monday 27 November, she
noted that Hubbard burst into her office that morning `tremendously
emotionally disturbed'.  Sara had tried to commit suicide over the
weekend by taking sleeping pills, he said, after Barbara had spoken to
her on the telephone.  He assumed Barbara had told her about their
affair.

__________
10. Interview with Horner

                          -- end page 171 --

  It was not true.  Barbara had telephoned to speak to Hubbard about
Foundation business and had only exchanged a few words with Sara after
learning Ron was not at home.  Hubbard would not believe it: he had
audited Sara and `recovered an engram' indicating that her suicide
attempt was triggered by Barbara's telephone call.

  An argument inevitably followed and Barbara reconstructed the
extraordinary `highlights' in her journal, very much as if she was
writing a pulp romance:

  `ME: You make a habit of *instilling* engrams, too, don't you?
  That's fine.  That's good behaviour for the founder of Dianetics.
  HE: Isn't it exciting for you being a pawn on such a grand chess
  board?  You are playing for the world.  Can you think of anything
  more exciting?
  ME: I don't give a good God damn about the world.  I want a single,
  gratifying, human relationship.
  HE: You couldn't have one.  You're an ambitious woman.  You crave
  power.  You're a Marie Antoinette, a Cleopatra, a Lucretia Borgia
  ... you must have a Caesar or an Alexander.
  ME: No, I don't need a Caesar, though Caesar may need me.  I know
  you now, Ron, and at this moment am closer to you than anyone has
  ever been.
  HE: (Head hung low) And knowing me you don't care for me any more.
  ME: I care for you in a different, new and exciting way.  (He put
  his hands on my shoulders and drew me to him.)
  HE: I shouldn't do this.  (He kissed me.)
  ME: You still care for me.
  HE: How do you know?
  ME: You can't find your hat.  You're distracted.
  HE: That makes you feel powerful, doesn't it?
  ME: It makes me aware of something interesting.  You still want me.
  HE: Why?
  ME: Because you need me.  You need me more than I need you.
  HE: In 1939 I was very much in love with a girl.  She felt that way
  too.  When I knew she had a boyfriend coming up, I waited on the
  stairway with a gun, just for a moment.  Then I said they are flies.
  I realized who and what I was and left.  I told her I would leave
  her free to marry a sharpie with a cigar in his mouth from Muncie,
  Indiana.  Would you like to be left free?
  ME: The alternative is a sharpie with a Kool cigarette from
  Elizabeth, New Jersey.
  HE: That was unwise, very unwise, of you to say that.'

Barbara discovered just how unwise it was when, two days later, she
received a terse message via Western Union: `Would advise you to

                          -- end page 172 --

forget all about me and the Foundation -- Ron.'  `I was in shock,' she
recalled.  `Here was the man I was supposed to be having a great love
affair with telling me I was fired.'

                                 -*-

A.E. van Vogt, meanwhile, was striving to keep the Los Angeles
Foundation in business.  He calculated that the six Hubbard Dianetic
Research Foundations had spent around one million dollars and were
more than $200,000 in debt.  At the beginning of November, while
Hubbard was away on the East Coast, van Vogt cut the staff of sixty by
half in an attempt to stay solvent.  Hubbard was furious and began
hiring indiscriminately the moment he returned: within a week, the
payroll was back up to sixty-seven people.  Van Vogt remonstrated, but
Hubbard insisted that the extra staff was needed for research.
`Financial disaster was inevitable,' said van Vogt.[11]

  One of the research projects about which Hubbard was very excited
was the aptly named `GUK' programme.  `GUK' was a haphazard cocktail
of benzedrine, vitamins and glutamic acid which Hubbard believed
facilitated auditing.  `I recall Ron telling a meeting about this
great breakthrough in Dianetics,' said Forrest Ackerman.  `He said he
had discovered a chemical way to audit yourself called GUK.  It
comprised huge quantities of vitamins which you took every two hours
for at least twenty-four hours.  If you took enough, he said, it would
release the engrams within you without the need for a partner.

  `The Foundation rented a huge complex on Rossmore near Beverly and
loads of Dianeticists were holed up there going through the GUK
programme but it didn't last too long -- I think it was a dead end.'

  In December, *Look* magazine published a scathing article under the
headline `Dianetics -- Science or Hoax?'  The text left the reader in
little doubt as to which the magazine thought it was.  `Half a million
laymen have swallowed this poor man's psychiatry ...'  it began.
`Hubbard has demonstrated once again that Barnum underestimated the
sucker birth rate.'  The tens of thousands of people who had swallowed
Hubbard's doctrine were characterized as `the usual lunatic fringe
types, frustrated maiden ladies who have worked their way through all
the available cults, young men whose homosexual engrams are all too
obvious ...'  The article referred to the `awe, fear and deep disgust'
with which the medical profession viewed Dianetics and quoted a doctor
at the famous Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas, who conceded that
sufferers from mental malaise might find temporary relief from
`Dianetic hocus pocus' just as they sometimes do from hypnotism or
voodoo.  `But,' he added, `the greatest harm to a person would come
not because of the vicious nature of Dianetic therapy but because it
will lead them away from treatment which they may badly need.'

__________
11. *Dianetics and the Professions*, A.E. van Vogt, 1953

                          -- end page 173 --

  Hubbard's primary attraction, *Look* concluded, was that his ersatz
psychiatry was available to all.  `It's cheap.  It's accessible.  It's
a public festival to be played at clubs and parties.  In a country
with only 6000 professional psychiatrists, whose usual consultation
fees start at $15 an hour, Hubbard has introduced mass-production
methods.  Whether such methods can actually help you if you're sick is
a moot point.'

  As always in the face of an attack, particularly from the direction
of the despised media, committed Dianeticists closed ranks and there
was no lack of cheer at the LA Foundation's Christmas party, attended
by staff and students alike.  Barbara Kaye turned up and was asked to
dance by Hubbard.  `I need some counselling, doctor, `she whispered in
his ear.  `What do you do with a pre-clear who keeps dreaming she is
in bed with you?'  He grinned broadly and replied, `I have been
thinking of beginning a series of empirical tests on the result of
substituting the reality for the dream.'  Within a few days, their
affair resumed: on New Year's Eve, Hubbard missed the party he was
supposed to attend with Sara and spent the night with Barbara at her
apartment on Dale Drive in Beverly Hills.

  In January 1951, the New Jersey Board of Medical Examiners
instituted proceedings against the Hubbard Dianetic Research
Foundation in Elizabeth, accusing it of teaching medicine without a
licence.  The Foundation hired an attorney who was confident he could
defend the suit, but there was a strong feeling among the directors
that they should `skip'; inquiries were instituted to find a state
where they would be more welcome.[12] Hubbard, who clearly thought the
prospects in New Jersey looked bleak, asked two reliable students at
Elizabeth -- John Sanborn and Greg Hemingway, the youngest son of the
writer -- to load all his personal possessions into his black Lincoln
limousine and drive it to Los Angeles.

  In the interim, perhaps still hoping to save his marriage, he
persuaded Sara and the baby to accompany him to Palm Springs, where he
had rented a single-storey adobe house with a small garden of
flowering shrubs on Mel Avenue.  He wanted to get away from the
distractions of Los Angeles, he explained, to start writing a sequel
to *Dianetics*.  It was to be called *Science of Survival* and would
introduce faster, simplified auditing techniques.

  Hubbard, Sara and Alexis were joined in Palm Springs by Richard de
Mille, son of the film director Cecil B. de Mille, who had recently
been appointed Hubbard's personal assistant.  `Although it never
occurred to me at the time, I think my name had something to do with
it,' de Mille acknowledged.  `He liked to collect celebrities.  I had
got into Dianetics as early as possible after reading the article in
*Astounding* and I was working at the LA Foundation making
publications out of Hubbard's lectures when he asked me to go with him
to Palm Springs.

__________
12. *A Factual Report on Dianetics*, John W. Maloney, Feb 1952

                          -- end page 174 --

`There was a lot of turmoil and dissension in the Foundation at the
time; he kept accusing Communists of trying to take control and he was
having difficulties with Sara.  It was clear their marriage was
breaking up -- she was very critical of him and he told me she was
fooling around with Hollister and he didn't trust her.'[13]

  Predictably, Sara did not stay long in Palm Springs -- the tension
was more than she could stand.  Hubbard did not try to detain her and
as soon as she and Alexis had departed for Los Angeles, he sent a
telegram to Barbara Kaye telling her he loved her and needed her.  She
caught a bus for Palm Springs on 3 February and was met by Hubbard at
the bus station.  `As he walked towards me,' she said, `I could see
that he was ill.'

  Kaye, who would later become a psychologist, said she made a
clinical diagnosis of Hubbard during the weeks they spent together in
Palm Springs.  `There was no doubt in my mind he was a manic
depressive with paranoid tendencies.  Many manics are delightful,
productive people with tremendous energy and self-confidence.  He was
like that in his manic stage -- enormously creative, carried away by
feelings of omnipotence and talking all the time of grandiose schemes.

  `But when I arrived he was in a deep depression.  He had been
totally unable to work on his book, which had been originally
scheduled for publication that month.  That's why he had called me --
he was hoping I could help him get through his writers' block.  He was
very sad and lethargic, lying around feeling sorry for himself and
drinking a great deal.  Sometimes he would go to the piano and fiddle
around, improvising weird melodies of his own composition.  He thought
that Sara had hypnotised him in his sleep and commanded him not to
write.  He told me that the people in Elizabeth had tried to "slip him
a Mickey" in his glass of milk and another time they attempted to
insert a fatal hypo into his eye and heart to try and stop him from
ever writing again.  Those were the engrams he was running.

  `I tried to help him by using a technique I had learned at college,
breaking down the problem into small parts and presenting it a step at
a time.  I got a block of butcher's paper and said to him, "Look, you
don't have to write.  Just sit down at this table and look at the
paper and when you don't want to look at it any more, get up and
leave."  He sat there for ten minutes on the first day and this went
on for several days until one day he picked up a pencil and began to
write.  Next day he was back at work, very excited and enthused about
what he was doing.  He was singing and horsing around, talking,
laughing and discussing ideas in the kitchen until three o'clock in
the morning.'

  One of Hubbard's favourite topics of conversation was psychiatrists.
One night over dinner at Mel Avenue, he told Barbara about an occasion
when he had demonstrated auditing techniques to a group

__________
13. Interview with Richard de Mille, Santa Barbera, 25 July 1986

                          -- end page 175 --

of psychiatrists and one of them had said to him, `If you claim to
cure people by doing that, if you're not careful we'll lock you up.'
He laughed excessively, took a bite out of a chicken leg and
spluttered, `They called me a paranoid, can you imagine it?'  That
night Barbara wrote in her diary: `My blood ran cold as he was saying
that.  It was all I could do to keep from weeping.'

  Barbara had been in Palm Springs for nearly three weeks when Ron
began fretting that `something was brewing' in Los Angeles.  He
decided that they should return immediately, even though the book was
not yet finished.

  `I didn't see him for a week after we got back,' Barbara said, `then
he turned up at my place at about five o'clock one afternoon, very
distraught and pale, with his hair all over the place.  He paced up
and down in my room and told me he had discovered Miles and Sara in
bed together.  He was afraid that they were plotting with a
psychiatrist in San Francisco to get him committed to a mental
institution.  Sara had telephoned Jack Maloney, the general manager in
Elizabeth, and said a doctor had recommended he should be treated for
paranoid schizophrenia.  He said he had found letters proving that
Miles was conspiring with Ceppos and Winter to get control of the
Foundation.  "Please don't ask me anything," he said.  "I'm in a very
bad way.  I'm going to the desert for a few days alone.  Things are
very bad."'

  Hubbard did not go off into the desert alone.  He had other plans:
he was going to get Sara committed before she committed him.  But
first he had to kidnap Alexis.

                                 -*-

On the evening of Saturday, 24 February 1951, John Sanborn was
babysitting for eleven-month-old Alexis Hubbard at the Casa on Hoover
and Adams in Los Angeles.  Several of the staff, Sanborn included,
lived in one wing of the building.  Sanborn and Greg Hemingway used to
hang around with Hank and Marge Hunter, who worked in the research
department; they'd usually eat together in a little joint down the
road called `The Bread Line'.  Marge, who was a friend of Sara's, had
a baby daughter the same age as Alexis and Sara occasionally left
Alexis with Marge when she wanted to go out.

  This particularly Saturday evening, Sanborn was tired and when there
was a suggestion that they should all go to the movies, he offered to
stay behind and look after the kids.  He had done it lots of times
before, knew all about changing nappies and giving them bottles.
Marge was grateful and went off with the others, happy to have a night
out, leaving Sanborn in charge of her daughter, Tam, and `Lexie'.

  At about eleven o'clock there was an urgent rapping at the door.
Sanborn opened it and found Frank Dessler, one of Hubbard's aides,
standing on the doorstep wearing a long topcoat and wide-brimmed

                          -- end page 176 --

felt hat.  His hands were thrust into his coat pockets in such a way
that Sanborn was positive he was carrying a gun.  `Mr Hubbard's
coming,' Dessler rasped.  `He's here to get Alexis.'  Sanborn thought
it was a hell of a time of night to do it, but said nothing.

  A few minutes later, Hubbard came in, also wearing a topcoat and
felt hat.  `We're just taking Alexis,' he said.  Sanborn led the way
to the room where both children were sleeping.  Hubbard leaned over
and picked up a toy from Alexis's crib.  `This hers?'  he asked.
Sanborn shook his head and Hubbard threw it on the floor.  While they
were getting the baby's things together, Sanborn started to say,
`Listen, if she wakes up in the night there's a certain routine ...'
but Hubbard cut him short.  `I don't care about that,' he snapped.
`We've got a nurse for her and we're taking her to Palm Springs.'  He
picked Alexis out of her crib, still asleep, and hurried away into the
night.

  Sanborn wondered idly what was going on, but he went to bed soon
afterwards.  At one o'clock in the morning he was woken by someone
shaking him violently and he sat up with a start to find Miles
Hollister standing over his bed.  If he had not been so sleepy, he
would have laughed: Hollister, too, was wearing a long topcoat and
felt hat and also appeared to be carrying a gun.  `Where did Ron take
Lexie?'  he demanded.  Sanborn rubbed his eyes and mumbled, `Palm
Springs.'  `When did they leave?'  Hollister asked.  It seemed that
Sanborn did nut respond quickly enough, for Hollister shouted `*When
did they leave*?'  Sanborn told him and he hurried out of the room.  A
few minutes later, Sanborn heard Hollister revving his car outside.

  Hollister headed out of town at high speed in the direction of Palm
Springs, which was exactly what Hubbard had intended him to do.  By
then, Alexis had been handed over to the twenty-four hour Westwood
Nurses Registry in Los Angeles.  Hubbard, posing as a businessman by
the name of James Olsen, had asked the agency to arrange for his
child, Anne-Marie, to be put in the care of a competent nurse for
about a month because his wife had suddenly been taken seriously ill
and business commitments required him to leave immediately for the
East Coast.  Melba McGonigel, the owner of the agency, was deeply
suspicious but agreed to take the baby after `Mr Olsen' had signed a
`To whom it may concern' statement releasing the agency of any
responsibility.

  Shortly after one o'clock on the morning of 25 February, a black
Lincoln drew up outside the Hubbards' apartment at 1251 Westmoreland
Avenue in West Los Angeles.  Richard de Mille was at the wheel,
Hubbard and Frank Dessler were in the back.  Inside the house, Sara
sat in her nightgown by the telephone, weeping into a handkerchief as
she waited for news of Alexis.  She jumped up in alarm when she heard
a key scraping at the door, but her fear turned to anger when her

                          -- end page 177 --

husband and Dessler appeared in the doorway.  `Where's Lexie?'  she
screamed.  Neither man said a word.  They grabbed her by each arm, one
of them clamped a hand over her mouth and they bustled her out of the
house, across the sidewalk and into the back of the car, which drove
off at speed.

  Sara fought like a cat in the back of the car, screaming and
shouting at Hubbard, who in turn was shouting at her.  At one point,
when the car stopped at traffic lights, she tried to leap out and
thereafter Hubbard gripped her round the neck in a stranglehold while
the argument continued.  `She was enraged at being hauled off and was
fulminating insults in all directions,' said de Mille.  `She was very
bitter about their marriage and his conduct and Ron was fulminating
against Miles Hollister and *her* conduct.'

  At Los Angeles city limit, Dessler was dropped off and the Lincoln
sped on towards San Bernardino, where Ron hoped to get Sara medically
examined and declared insane.  `She was eager to get the same opinion
about him,' de Mille declared, `but Ron held all the cards at that
point.'  There followed a ludicrous farce as they toured the dark
streets of San Bernardino trying to find a doctor while Sara
alternately screamed at, and pleaded with, her husband to tell her
where he had taken Alexis.  Eventually, Hubbard went into the county
hospital while de Mille guarded Sara in the car.  He returned after
some few minutes, apparently surprised and disgusted that there was no
doctor available in the early hours of the morning willing to declare
his wife insane.

  At dawn, the Lincoln could be seen trailing a cloud of dust as it
headed east across the desert towards the Arizona border; Hubbard had
ordered de Mille to drive to the airport at Yuma.  The angry
squabbling in the back of the car had not let up for a moment.  Sara
swore again and again that she would have Ron arrested for kidnapping
the moment she was free and he swore that if she did she would never
see Alexis again.  The mutual threats and recriminations continued
while Hubbard was thinking hard how he could extricate himself from
the situation.

  Parked in the watery early morning sunshine in a quiet corner of
Yuma airport, the warring couple at last agreed on a temporary truce.
Hubbard promised to release Sara and tell her where Alexis was if she
signed a piece of paper saying that she had gone with him voluntarily.
Sara tearfully signed and Hubbard scribbled a note to Dessler: `Feb.
25.  To Frank -- This will authorize Sara to take Alexis to live with
her when she has a house.  L. Ron Hubbard.'  He jotted down the name
of the agency he said was caring for Alexis -- `Baby Sitters Inc,
Hollywood phone book' -- and added, `Give Sara the baby's address now
so Sara can see her.'

                          -- end page 178 --

Hubbard and de Mille got out of the car and Sara, still in her
nightgown, drove back to Los Angeles clutching the piece of paper she
believed would enable her to be re-united with her baby.  But Hubbard
had no intention of permitting such a reunion.  `He believed that as
long as he had the child he could control the situation,' de Mille
explained.

  While Sara was on her way back to Los Angeles, Hubbard was standing
in a telephone booth at Yuma airport giving urgent instructions to
Frank Dessler.  He was to arrange for Alexis to be collected from her
nurse before Sara got there.  No matter what it cost, he was then to
hire a reliable couple to drive the baby to Elizabeth, New Jersey,
where Hubbard would meet her.

  It did not take long for Sara to discover that Ron had misled her
but by the time she had persuaded Dessler to reveal the baby's
whereabouts it was too late.  She arrived at the Westwood nursery just
two hours after Alexis had been taken away.  Sara filed a kidnapping
complaint with Los Angeles police department, but Hubbard was lucky --
the police dismissed the incident as a domestic dispute which was
nothing to do with them.

  Hubbard did not go directly to Elizabeth because he wanted to block
any further attempts Sara might make to have him committed.
Accompanied by the loyal de Mille, he caught a commuter plane to
Phoenix and from there they flew to Chicago, where Hubbard presented
himself for examination by a psychiatrist and a psychologist, both
equally bemused.

  `He wanted a testimonial from a professional who would say he was OK
and that he was not a paranoid schizophrene,' said de Mille.  `He and
I went first to a psychiatrist who didn't like the smell of it.  He
obviously thought he was being manipulated, so we just paid him $10
and left.  Then we went to a prominent diagnostic psychologist of that
era who did some projective testing on Hubbard and produced an upbeat,
harmless report, saying that he was a creative individual upset by
family problems and dissension and it was depressing his work and so
forth.  It was very bland but Hubbard was delighted with it.  The main
value of it to him was that it didn't say he was crazy, so he could
claim he had been given a clean bill of health by the psychiatric
profession.'

  Before leaving Chicago, Hubbard called at the offices of the FBI to
alert them of his suspicions that one of his employees was a
Communist.  The man's name, he was far from reluctant to reveal, was
Miles Hollister.[14] Hubbard and de Mille then flew to New York and
caught a taxi to Elizabeth, where the Hubbard Dianetic Research
Foundation was still in operation, although besieged by creditors.
They checked into a hotel and waited for Alexis to arrive.

__________
14. US Govt memo to Director FBI from SAC Chicago, 27 April 1951

                          -- end page 179 --

While they were there, a further complication entered Hubbard's
already entangled private life: Polly Hubbard filed suit in Port
Orchard, Washington, for maintenance, alleging that her former husband
had `promoted a cult called Dianetics', had authored a bestseller,
owned valuable property and was well able to afford payment of
maintenance for his two children, Nibs, then sixteen, and Katie,
fifteen.  Hubbard responded by claiming that his first wife was not a
fit and proper person to have control of the children because she
`drinks to excess and is a dipsomaniac'.

  On 3 March 1951, Hubbard, in his role as patriotic citizen, wrote to
the FBI in Washington to provide the names and descriptions of fifteen
`known or suspected Communists' within his organization.  Heading the
list were his wife and her lover:

  `SARA NORTHRUP (HUBBARD): formerly of 1003 S. Orange Grove Avenue,
Pasadena, Calif.  25 yrs.  of age, 5'10", 140 lbs.  Currently missing
somewhere in California.  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.

  `MILES HOLLISTER: Somewhere in the vicinity of Los Angeles.
Evidently a prime mover but very young.  About 22 yrs, 6', 180 lbs.
Black hair.  Sharp chin, broad forehead, rather Slavic.  Confessedly a
member of the Young Communists.  Center of most turbulence in our
organization.  Dissmissed [*sic*] in February when affiliations
discovered.  Active and dangerous.  Commonly armed.  Outspokenly
disloyal to the U.S.'

  FBI director John Edgar Hoover replied promptly: `I wish to thank
you for the information you have made available to this Bureau.'[15]

  Four days later, Hubbard kept an appointment, arranged at his
request, with an FBI agent from the Internal Security Section.  His
intention was to press home his accusations against Hollister, as was
evident from the agent's report: `Hubbard advised that he felt that
Communists within his organization were undermining its structure.  He
advised that he had turned over the names of several suspected
Communists to the FBI office in Los Angeles.  Hubbard could only
recall the name of one of these individuals.  He stated Miles
Hollister was one of the individuals he suspected of being
Communistically inclined.  Concerning Hollister, Hubbard stated that
he was instrumental in driving Hubbard's wife, Sara Elizabeth
Northrup, to the point of insanity.  Hubbard expressed considerable
concern in connection with Hollister's influence on his wife.  He
stated that his wife, as well as his Army .45 automatic, had been
missing for several days ...'

__________
15. Letter in FBI files, 10 Mar 1951

                          -- end page 180 --

Later in the interview, Hubbard disclosed that Russia was interested
in his work.  `Hubbard stated that he strongly feels that Dianetics
can be used to combat Communism.  However, he declined to elaborate on
how this might be done.  He stated that the Soviets apparently
realized the value of Dianetics because as early as 1938 an official
of Amtorg, while at The Explorers Club in New York, contacted him to
suggest that he go to Russia and develop Dianetics there.

  `In an apparent attempt to give credence to his statements, Hubbard
advised that he was recently psychoanalyzed in Chicago and was found
to be quite normal ...'[16] The FBI agent conducting the interview
could not agree: he concluded that Hubbard was a `mental case'.[17]

  During his short stay in Elizabeth, Hubbard managed to alienate his
old friend and mentor, John W. Campbell, who resigned from the
Foundation and thus joined Hubbard's lengthening list of enemies.  In
Campbell's view, Hubbard had become impossible to work with and was
responsible for the ruinous finances and complete disorganization
throughout the Dianetics movement.  (Dessler wrote to Hubbard on 9
March to say that none of the staff at the LA Foundation had been paid
for more than two weeks, but Hubbard seemed unconcerned.)

  Soon after Alexis arrived, Hubbard announced to de Mille that they
were going to go south, where it was warmer, so that he could continue
with his book.  It had been snowing for weeks in Elizabeth and de
Mille was not in least the sorry to leave, even though Hubbard had
made it clear that it would be his responsibility to care for the
baby.

  They were unlikely fellow travellers: a large, forty-year-old man
with a florid complexion, flaming red hair and a Kool cigarette
constantly between his lips; his diminutive companion, twenty-nine
years old, rather shy and very much in awe of the older man; and a
gurgling twelve-month-old baby in nappies just learning to walk.  The
three of them arrived in Tampa, Florida, in the middle of March.  They
took two rooms in a small hotel: Hubbard had a room to himself, de
Mille and the baby shared.  `It never crossed my mind that the baby
should go in with him,' said de Mille.  `He was the leader and I was
the follower.  He gave the orders; I was privileged to serve.'

  Hubbard pretended to look for property in Tampa, but de Mille
noticed that he seemed nervous and ill at ease much of the time.  `One
evening I knocked on his door and he opened it carrying a loaded .45
service automatic.  I must have looked a bit surprised because he
said, "You shouldn't creep up on me like that, Dick."  I didn't even
know he had a gun until that moment.'

  A couple of days later Hubbard said to de Mille: `I don't like the

__________
16. US Govt memo 62-116151-70, 7 Mar 1952
17. Letter in FBI files, 10 Mar 1951

                          -- end page 181 --

way things feel around here.  I want to go to a place where I can
breathe free.  We're going to Havana.'

                                 -*-

Havana in the early 'fifties, before Castro, was the fun capital of
the Western hemisphere -- a corrupt, colourful, hedonistic, wide-open
city where tourists with money were guaranteed a good time.  Americans
did not even need a passport to enter Cuba and no one raised an
eyebrow at the two men who arrived from Florida in the company of an
apparently motherless baby.  They took a taxi downtown and checked
into a hotel on the Paseo Marti, Havana's bustling main street.

  `Hubbard managed to rent a very old Spanish typewriter', de Mille
recalled, `and was madly banging away on it all night, while I was
taking care of the baby and trying to sleep with the water pipes
rattling in the wall.  After we had stayed there a couple of nights,
we went to a real estate agent and rented a ground-floor apartment in
the Vedado district, the Beverly Hills of Havana.  Once we had moved
in, we hired two Jamaican women to look after Alexis, which was a
great relief to me.'

  Comfortably installed in the apartment, Hubbard began working
intensively in his book, dictating into a recording machine.  As was
his usual habit, he worked all night with little to sustain him but a
bottle of rum, which was usually empty by dawn.

  In the afternoons, he would often sit and talk with de Mille.  `He
talked about himself a lot, but as is often true with that kind of
person he didn't really give me any confidences: he was telling me his
story as he thought I ought to know it.  He told me about Jack Parsons
and Aleister Crowley and all that.  He didn't take any responsibility
for the black magic rituals and blamed them on Parsons, but he
admitted he was there.

  `What I didn't understand about him at the time was his lack of
personal attachment.  He thought people were there to be used, to
serve the user and didn't have any importance in their own right.  I
don't think he abducted Alexis, for example, with any intention of
keeping her; he was just using her to keep control of the situation.

  `When I first saw him at the meeting at The Shrine auditorium I was
very impressed.  I thought he was a great man who had made a great
discovery and whatever his shortcomings they must be discounted
because he had the answer.  He promised heaven.  He said I have the
key which can open the door, do you want to go there?  It did not
matter that his qualifications were suspect; he held the key.
Actually, he was very widely read, a sort of self-made intellectual.
I don't think he did any research in the academic sense, but he knew a
lot about Freud, hypnosis, the occult, magic, etcetera, and Dianetics
grew out of that knowledge.

                          -- end page 182 --

  `I don't think Dianetics were necessarily successful because the
time was right.  The time is never wrong for a cultist movement.
People present new ideas which they say are going to change the world
and there are always a certain number of people who believe them.
Lenin was the Hubbard of 1917.  Hubbard was the Madame Blavatsky of
1950.'

  Hubbard's ability to concentrate on his work was subjected to a
severe setback when the American newspapers of Thursday 12 April
arrived in Cuba.  Sara had at last blown the whistle and filed a writ
at Los Angeles Superior Court demanding the return of her child.  The
headlines told the story: `Cult Founder Accused of Tot Kidnap',
`"Dianetic" Hubbard Accused of Plot to Kidnap Wife', `Hiding of Baby
Charged to Dianetics Author'.  Most newspapers carried a picture of
the distraught mother, smiling broadly.

  After digesting this less than welcome news, Hubbard sat down and
wrote a letter to Sara.  It was dated 15 April and contained all the
pulp writer's flair for fantasy:

  `Dear Sara,

  I have been in the Cuban military hospital and I am being
  transferred to the United States next week as a classified scientist
  immune from interference of all kinds.

  Though I will be hospitalized probably a long time, Alexis is
  getting excellent care.  I see her every day.  She is all is have to
  live for.

  My wits never gave way under all you did and let them do but my body
  didn't stand up.  My right side is paralyzed and getting more so.  I
  hope my heart lasts.  I may live a long time and again I may not.
  But Dianetics will last 10,000 years -- for the Army and Navy have
  it now.

  My Will is all changed.  Alexis will get a fortune unless she goes
  to you as she would then get nothing.  Hope to see you once more.
  Goodbye -- I love you.

  Ron.

The next day, Hubbard marched into the US Embassy in Havana, insisted
on seeing the military attach and asked for protection from
Communists who, he said, were trying to steal his research material.
He appealed, as one officer to another, for help.  The attach,
clearly sceptical, murmured something about `seeing what he could do'
and cabled the FBI in Washington for `any pertinent information' about
his wild-eyed visitor.  Back came the reply that Hubbard had been
interviewed on 7 March last and that `agent conducting interview
considered Hubbard to be mental case'.[17]

  De Mille had not noticed the paralysis Hubbard mentioned in his

__________
17. Airgram to Legal Attach, Havana, 27 April 1951

                          -- end page 183 --

moving letter to Sara, nor indeed was he aware that Hubbard was
interned in a military hospital, but he certainly registered a
drooping in his spirits.  `He began to get very nervous again and
complained that be wasn't feeling well.  He said he had to move
downtown, so we broke our lease and moved into the Packard Hotel,
which faced the park and overlooked the entrance to the harbour and
the prison.  There he proceeded to get sick.  It was probably an
ulcer, but he said it was the result of pain-drug hypnosis which Sara
and Winter had done way back.'

  The news from Los Angeles was not calculated to make him feel any
better.  On 23 April, Sara filed for divorce, citing `extreme cruelty,
great mental anguish and physical suffering'.  Her allegations were
sensational.  Apart froth charging Hubbard with bigamy and kidnapping,
Sara claimed he had subjected her to `systematic torture, including
loss of sleep, beatings, and strangulations and scientific
experiments'.  Because of his `crazy misconduct' she was in `hourly
fear of both the life of herself and of her infant daughter, who she
has not seen for two months'.

  All the salacious details were included in the divorce complaint.
While they were living at the Chateau Marmont, Sara said Ron had told
her he no longer wanted to be married to her but did not want a
divorce as it might damage his reputation.  His suggestion was that
she `should kill herself if she really loved him'.  Subsequently he
prevented her from sleeping for a period of four days and then gave
her sleeping pills `resulting in a nearness to the shadow of death'.

  Sara accused her husband of frequently trying to strangle her; on
one occasion, shortly before Christmas 1950, be had been so violent he
ruptured the Eustachian tube in her left car.  The following month, at
Palm Springs, he had started his car in gear while she was getting out
and knocked her to the ground.  As a result of Hubbard's behaviour,
the divorce complaint continued, the `plaintiff and her medical
advisers ... concluded that said Hubbard was hopelessly insane, and,
crazy, and that there was no hope for said Hubbard, or any reason for
her to endure further; that competent medical advisers recommended
that said Hubbard be committed to a private sanatarian for
pshychiatric observation and treatment of a mental ailment known as
paranoid schizophrenia ...'[18]

  Caryl Warner, Sara's flamboyant Hollywood attorney, did his best to
ensure the case received maximum publicity.  The reporters covering
the Divorce Court for the *LA Times* and the *Examiner* were both
women and early feminists.  `Before the case I made stare they knew
what a bastard this guy Hubbard was,' said Warner.  `I told them he
was a sadist, that he'd kept his wife awake for days and burned her

__________
18. Divorce complaint No. D414498, 23 April 1951, Los Angeles Superior
    Court

                          -- end page 184 --

with cigarettes and that he was crazy, crazy like a fox.  They could
hardly wait for me to file the complaint.

  `I liked Sara and Miles a lot.  They eventually married and got a
house in Malibu and we became friends; I remember they introduced me
to pot.  I believed Sara absolutely; there was no question about the
truth in my opinion.  When she first came to me with this wild story
about how her husband had taken her baby I was determined to help her
all I could.  I telephoned Hubbard's lawyer in Elizabeth and warned
him: "Listen, asshole, if you don't get that baby back I'm going to
burn you."'[19]

  The first singe was inflicted by the damaging headlines in
newspapers across the country the day after the kidnapping complaint
was filed on 11 April.  (The only unforeseen setback to Warner's
carefully laid plans was that President Harry S. Truman inconveniently
chose the same day to sack General Douglas MacArthur for
insubordination in Korea and thus rather hogged the front page.)  The
divorce itself received more extensive coverage and was better
handled: the pictures of Sara smiling broadly were replaced by
pictures of her weeping pitifully and being comforted by her attorney.

  In Cuba, Hubbard's condition regressed.  `I think what really caught
up with him,' said de Mille, `was that he felt he was losing control
of the organization.  That's what it amounted to.'

  There was no question that Hubbard's fortunes had undergone a
radical revision in the twelve months since his emergence as the
adored founder of Dianetics.  His personal life was in disarray, the
Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundations in Elizabeth and Los Angeles
were disintegrating, most of the money had somehow been frittered
away, he was months behind with his second book and he was stuck in
Cuba with Alexis and he had no idea what to do with her.

  What he needed was a saviour, preferably a saviour with plenty of
ready cash.  And there was one obvious candidate -- Don Purcell, a
businessman in Wichita, Kansas.  Mr Purcell was not only an
enthusiastic Dianeticist, he also happened to be a millionaire.

  Towards the end of April, Hubbard sent a telegram to Purcell from
Havana saying he needed help.  De Mille followed up with a
long-distance telephone call urging Purcell to `do something' because
Ron was dying.  Purcell acted without delay.  He sent a private plane
to Cuba with a registered nurse on board to collect Ron and Alexis and
bring them back to Kansas.  (De Mille had been instructed to stay
behind and finish transcribing Ron's plastic recording discs.  )

  As a follower of Dianetics, Purcell was delighted and honoured to be
able to play host to L. Ron Hubbard in Wichita.  It was a pleasure
that would be short-lived.

__________
19. Interview with Caryl Warner, Hollywood, August 1986

                          -- end page 185 --

                             *Chapter 11*

                     *Bankrolling and Bankruptcy*

  `The money and glory inherent in Dianetics was entirely too much for
those with whom I had the bad misfortune to associate myself ...
including a woman who had represented herself as my wife and who had
been cured of severe psychosis by Dianetics, but who, because of
structural brain damage would evidently never be entirely sane ...
Two of the early associates, John W. Campbell and J.A. Winter, became
bitter and violent because I refused to let them write on the subject
of Dianetics, for I considered their knowledge too slight and their
own aberrations too broad to permit such a liberty with the science
... Fur coats, Lincoln cars and a young man without any concept of
honor so far turned the head of the woman who had been associated with
me that on discovery of her affairs, she and these others, hungry for
money and power, sought to take over and control all of Dianetics.'
(L. Ron Hubbard, *Dianetics: Axioms*, October 1951)

                              * * * * *

Don Purcell was a shy, unassuming man who was once a short-order chef
in a little fourteen-stool caf opposite the Orpheum Theater in
downtown Wichita before he made his fortune in oil and real estate
during the post-war boom.  Very tall and thin -- he was usually
described as all `skin and bones' -- he turned to Dianetics in the
hope of finding a cure for his chronic constipation.[1]

  He attended an auditor's course at Elizabeth with his wife in the
autumn of 1950 and returned to Wichita brimming with enthusiasm for
the new science.  Although he never mentioned if it had eased his
constipation, he did frequently claim that Dianetics had given him the
ability to work a twenty-two-hour day, which was useful to a real
estate developer in Wichita in 1951.  The farming town in the heart of
the winter wheat belt had been transformed by the arrival of the oil
and aircraft industries and it was expanding at a phenomenal rate.
Roads, houses, schools, churches, office blocks and factories were
being built everywhere.  Between 1950 and 1951, the population of
Wichita rose by more than 30,000, pushing the figure above 200,000 for
the first time.

__________
 1. Interview with de Mille

                          -- end page 186 --

  Purcell's real estate company, Golden Bond Homes, was building 150
houses in the south-west of the city, an ambitious development which
put him in the burgeoning ranks of Wichita's post-war millionaires.
Yet despite his success and wealth, he never aspired to social
prominence in the town; imbued with the quintessential hardworking,
god-fearing values of the mid-West, he preferred to remain quietly in
the background, perfectly content with his reputation as a businessman
of integrity and a good Christian.

  Like most early Dianeticists, Purcell was a true believer, both in
the efficacy of the science and the genius of its founder.  When he
heard the Elizabeth Foundation was in difficulties, he immediately
offered to `lend a hand', with both short-term finance and practical
business advice.  He also provided the funds to set up a branch of the
Foundation in Wichita, in a two-storey building sandwiched between
Hope's Hamburger Hut and an auto repair firm at 211 West Douglas
Avenue, Wichita's main street.[2]

  It was, then, entirely to be expected that Purcell would respond
unhesitatingly to Hubbard's dramatic plea for help.  Ron told him over
the telephone from Havana of his plans to set up the headquarters of
the Dianetics movement in Wichita and, as far as Purcell was
concerned, if the great L. Ron Hubbard chose to make his home in
Wichita, it could do the town nothing but good.

  Hubbard stepped from Purcell's chartered aeroplane at Wichita
airport wearing a lightweight tropical suit and a cream silk Ascot, an
item of apparel not often seen in Sedgwick County.  Purcell was
waiting to greet him, along with a reporter from the *Wichita Eagle*,
to whom Ron delivered a carefully prepared statement designed to
appeal to the good folk of Wichita.  After Los Angeles and Havana,
Wichita might have appeared somewhat lacking in glamour, but Hubbard
had the good sense not to make invidious comparisons.  `Dianetics is a
pioneer mental science,' he announced, `therefore it is only natural
that we should prefer to centralize where the American pioneering
spirit and cultural interests are still high.  It is impossible to
take Dianetics to every interested person, so we have established our
headquarters here where those interested can come to Dianetics.'[3] He
also took the opportunity to point out that seventy per cent of insane
people throughout the world could be returned to normality with
Dianetics.  `Hope for Insane is Claimed for Dianetics by Founder' was
the headline in the evening edition.

  Hubbard checked into the Broadview Hotel, where Purcell had reserved
and paid for a suite for him.  Alexis, who was becoming accustomed to
a succession of surrogate mothers, remained in the care of the nurse
who had looked after her on the plane from Havana.  The two men were
soon discussing plans for the consolidation of Dianetics

__________
 2. Diane Lewis research report, Wichita, January 1987
 3. FBI memo, 15 May 1951

                          -- end page 187 --

in Wichita, plans that would be speedily brought to the attention of
the FBI.

  On 4 May, 1951, the FBI agent in Wichita received an anonymous
letter: `Investigate No 211 West Douglas, under the "Hubbard Dianetics
Research Foundation", they are conducting a vicious sexual racket.
There are four women and a larger number of men.  If they have moved
go after them.  They are bad, I know because I am one of the victims
...'  This execrable piece of rumour-mongering was added to Hubbard's
FBI file, along with a memo from the special agent in charge in
Wichita noting: `General gossip at Wichita has it that the Los Angeles
branch of the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation went broke and the
cost of operation in New Jersey necessitated establishing headquarters
of the organization in the central United States ...'[4]

  Hubbard did not know he had been accused of running a `vicious
sexual racket', which was probably just as well because he already had
so much to worry about that he was finding it exceedingly difficult to
give his full attention to the affairs of the Foundation.  The main
problem, entirely of his own making, was that his private life
remained in complete turmoil.

  While his first wife was pursuing him for maintenance and he was
still involved in a messy divorce from Sara, Hubbard invited his lover
in Los Angeles to be his third wife.  Almost as soon as he arrived in
Wichita he had telephoned Barbara and asked her to join him, following
up with a cable: `DO NOT THINK I SHOULD OFFER YOU ANYTHING LESS
HONORABLE THAN MARRIAGE.  SHOULD YOU CONSIDER IT I MUST DOUBLY CLARIFY
EXISTING STATUS TO BE SURE.  WITH ALL MY HEART AND MUCH LOVE.  RON.'
Barbara realized that Ron remained as paranoid as ever, as a second
cable arrived at her Beverly Hills apartment two hours later: `BETTER
KEEP OUR PLANS A CLOSE SECRET AS I DO NOT KNOW WHAT THEY WOULD TRY TO
DO TO YOU IF THEY KNEW.  BE VERY CAREFUL.  ALL MY LOVE.  RON.'

  Barbara had no idea who `they' were and was understandably concerned
about marrying a man accused of bigamy, kidnapping and torture.
`Darling, yo sho is in a mess o' trouble,' she replied by letter.  `Do
you dare give me any idea of the sort of future awaiting us?  God
knows I don't want what could be a wonderful and productive
partnership between us to wind up with you in jail or continually on
the lam from the law ...'[5]

  While Barbara was pondering Ron's proposal, Sara filed a further
complaint in Los Angeles, claiming she had been unable to serve
divorce papers on her husband because he had fled to Cuba.  To support
her petition, she included the letter Hubbard had written to her from
Havana and a letter, dated 2 May, that she had received from his

__________
 4. *Wichita Eagle-Beacon*, 26 Mar 1983
 5. Interviews with Kaye

                          -- end page 188 --

first wife in Bremerton.  Polly had read about the divorce in the
newspapers and felt moved to offer her sympathy.  `Sara, if I can help
in any way, I'd like to,' she wrote.  `You must get Alexis in your
custody.  Ron is not normal.  I had hoped you could straighten him
out.  Your charges probably sound fantastic to the average person, but
I've been through it -- the beatings, threats on my life, all the
sadistic traits which you charge -- 12 years of it.'

  The newspapers were happy to report this further development in the
domestic troubles of the `mental-movement mogul', as Hubbard was
described with laboured alliteration in the *LA Times*.  In Wichita,
State Marshal Arthur W. Wermuth was surprised to read that Hubbard had
`fled to Cuba' because he had just read of his arrival in Wichita in
the *Evening Eagle*.  Wermuth, who happened to be a well-known local
war hero, sent a message to Los Angeles acquainting the authorities
with Hubbard's whereabouts.  Next day the newspapers reported that the
`missing mental-movement mogul' had been `discovered' in Wichita by
the `legendary one-man army of Bataan'.

  Prompted by the news from Wichita, on 14 May Sara's attorney filed
another petition asking for Hubbard's assets in Los Angeles to be
placed in receivership.  The petition noted that Hubbard had been
found `hiding' in Wichita `but that he would probably leave town upon
being detected'.

  Coincidentally, on the same day Hubbard despatched a seven-page
letter to the Department of Justice in Washington, clearly seeking
revenge against Sara.  Even for Hubbard, the rambling, venomous
missive was a breathtaking concoction of lies, vituperation and wild
allegations rendered all the more dangerous by the rise of
McCarthyism.

  Describing himself as `basically a scientist in the field of atomic
and molecular phenomena', he accused Communists of destroying his
half-million dollar business, ruining his health and withholding
material of interest to the US Government.  The architect of his
misfortune was none other than `a woman known as Sara Elizabeth
Northrup ... whom I believed to be my wife, having married her and
then, after some mix-up about a divorce, believed to be my wife in
common law'.

  Sara, he stressed, was responsible for breaking up the `American
Institute of Advanced Therapy', an organization he had established in
1949, and the following year she was the primary cause of all the
trouble at the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation, along with Art
Ceppos, who was `"formerly" a member of the Communist Party' and
Joseph Winter, who `seemed to have Communist connections' and was a
`psycho-neurotic' who had been discharged from the US Army Medical
Corps.

                          -- end page 189 --

  Playing the role of fearfully browbeaten husband, he said his
`alleged wife' had caused him to make out a will leaving her shares in
the copyrights and Foundations.  Later, when he was asleep at his home
in New Jersey he was `slugged'.  He had unwisely done nothing about it
at the time as he had no witnesses, but his health had been poor
thereafter.  Arriving in Los Angeles, his wife left their baby
unattended in a car and be was arrested for it -- `I could never
understand why.'

  Much worse was to come.  `On December 5, while asleep in my
apartment on North Rossmore in Los Angeles, I was again attacked and
knocked out.  When I woke I debated considerably about going to the
police but was again afraid of publicity for again I did not know who
might have done this.  It never occurred to me to suspect that my wife
had any part in this.

  `I had become so ill by January 1st and was so long overdue in
writing my second book that I went to Palm Springs.  I returned from
Palm Springs in late February to find my wife apparently ill, in bad
mental condition, and my baby more or less forgotten in a back room of
the Los Angeles Foundation.  I instantly took steps, what steps I
could, to give my wife help.  She seemed to recover.

  `I was in my apartment on February 23rd, about two or three o'clock
in the morning when the apartment was entered, I was knocked out, had
a needle thrust into my heart to give it a jet of air to produce
"coronary thrombosis" and was given an electric shock with a 110 volt
current.  This is all very blurred to me.  I had no witnesses.  But
only one person had another key to that apartment and that was Sara.'

  Hubbard went on to describe how he had found love letters to his
wife from Miles Hollister, a `member of the Young Communists', and an
ominous telegram containing the phrase `Lombardo should live so long'.
Lombardo, he explained, was a name Sara sometimes called him.  Then he
described how they had plotted to have him committed and how he had
tried to get his wife away by taking her to Palm Springs.  She
consented to go with him, he said, and he had her signed statement to
prove it.  Sara's real motive in filing for divorce, he claimed, was
to get control of the Foundation.

  All the attacks she had mounted against him had held up research he
was intending to offer to the Government.  `In August 1950 I found out
a method the Russians use on such people as Vogeler, Mindszenty and
others to obtain confessions.  I could undo that method.  My second
book was to have shown how the Communists used narcosynthesis and
physical torture and why it worked as it did.  Further, I was working
on a technology of psychological warfare to present it to the Defense
Department.  All that work was interrupted.  Each time I tried to
write, a new attack was launched.'

                          -- end page 190 --

  Hubbard declared his concern to prevent Dianetics falling into the
hands of Communists and appealed for a `round-up' of the `vermin
Communists or ex-Communists' who were trying to take over the potent
forces of the Foundation.  He suggested the `round-up' should start
with Sara:

  `I believe this woman to be under heavy duress.  She was born into a
criminal atmosphere, her father having a criminal record.  Her
half-sister was an inmate of an insane asylum.  She was part of a free
love colony in Pasadena.  She had attached herself to a Jack Parsons,
the rocket expert, during the war and when she left him he was a
wreck.  Further, through Parsons, she was strangely intimate with many
scientists of Los Alamo Gordos [Alamogordo in New Mexico was where the
first atomic bomb was tested].  I did not know or realize these things
until I myself investigated the matter.  She may have a record ...
Perhaps in your criminal files or on the police blotter of Pasadena
you will find Sara Elizabeth Northrop, age about 26, born April 8,
1925, about 5'9", blond-brown hair, slender ... I have no revenge
motive nor am I trying to angle this broader than it is.  I believe
she is under duress, that they have something on her and I believe
that under a grilling she would talk and turn state's evidence.'

  Hubbard made it clear he felt his life was in danger and concluded:
`Frankly, from what has happened, I am not certain I will live through
this.  If I do not, know that I have only these enemies in the entire
world.'[6]

  If Hubbard's letter had been a little more moderate and his FBI file
not already voluminous, his letter might easily have resulted in
Sara's arrest.  The `Red Scare' was at its height and the American
people had succumbed to an irrational fear of subversion and
disloyalty encouraged by McCarthy, the cold war, Korea, a series of
sensational spy trials and the Truman administration's loyalty
programme.  Many reputations and careers were destroyed by accusations
a great deal milder than those levelled by Hubbard against his wife.

  But by 1951, Hubbard was well known to the FBI.  The opinion of the
agent who had interviewed him in Newark that he was a `mental case'
figured prominently in his file, as did Sara's divorce allegations
that he was `hopelessly insane'.  It was a diagnosis with which the
FBI was inclined to concur and Hubbard's letter was tucked into his
file and ignored, no doubt after the filing clerks had had a good
laugh.

  At the end of May, Barbara Kaye arrived in Wichita, having decided
that she would marry Ron.  `If love can break men's hearts it can
restore them too,' she had written to him.  `Yours shall be
regenerated with my love and it will grow stronger.'

  She found a hand-written note from Ron waiting for her at the
Broadview Hotel: `Hello!  I am happy you are here!  I love you!  Ron.'

__________
 6. FBI file, 14 May 1951

                          -- end page 191 --

Its cheery tone encouraged her greatly and she was thus doubly shocked
by Hubbard's appearance when he showed up at the hotel soon after she
had checked in.

  `He had visibly deteriorated both physically and mentally.  He was
extremely unkempt, like a street person.  His fingernails were uncut
and his hair was long and stringy; he looked like Howard Hughes in his
last days.  He talked in a monotone all the time and seemed on the
verge of tears; he was obviously clinically depressed.  He told me he
had borrowed $50 from Purcell to pay for my room but no one was to
know I was in Wichita because Purcell had opposed me coming.'

  Hubbard took her out to a jewellery store to buy her an engagement
ring, but she was already having second thoughts.  `I felt extremely
distanced from him because he was so strange, he was like a different
person.  I began to think I could never marry this man; I was
frightened of him.'  Next morning, Barbara hurriedly returned to Los
Angeles, leaving Hubbard a note saying she didn't want to come between
him and his patron.

  As the prospective third Mrs Hubbard swept out of town, Sara arrived
to parley for the return of Alexis.  `She got the baby back', said
Richard de Mille, who had by then joined Hubbard in Wichita, `by
agreeing to let him divorce *her* and by not saying anything bad about
him.'[7]

  On 9 June 1951, Sara signed a handwritten statement scrawled on the
notepaper of The Hubbard Dianetic Foundation Inc of Wichita agreeing
to cancel her receivership action and divorce suit in California in
return for a divorce `guaranteed by L. Ron Hubbard' in mid-June.

  Two days later she signed a typed statement categorically retracting
the allegations she had made against her husband:

  I, Sara Northrup Hubbard, do hereby state that the things I have
  said about L. Ron Hubbard in courts and the public prints have been
  grossly exaggerated or entirely false.

  I have not at any time believed otherwise than that L. Ron Hubbard
  is a fine and brilliant man.

  I make this statement of my own free will for I have begun to
  realize that what I have done may have injured the science of
  Dianetics, which in my studied opinion may be the only hope of
  sanity in future generations.

  I was under enormous stress and my advisers insisted it was
  necessary for me to carry through an action as I have done.

  There is no other reason for this statement than my own wish to make
  atonement for the damage I may have done.  In the future I wish to
  lead a quiet and orderly existence with my little girl far away from
  the enturbulating influences which have ruined my marriage.

  Sara Northrup Hubbard.

__________
 7. Interview with de Mille

                          -- end page 192 --

The statement bore all the hallmarks of having been written by
Hubbard, even down to the use of one of his own invented words,
`enturbulating'.  The English language was insufficiently rich and
diverse for Hubbard and he often made up new words to compensate for
its inadequacies -- to `enturbulate' was a neologism meaning to `bring
into a confused state'.

  On 12 June, Hubbard was awarded a divorce in Sedgwick County Court
on the basis of Sara's `gross neglect of duty and extreme cruelty'.
The court agreed to an emergency hearing after Hubbard testified that
the breakdown of the marriage had brought about severe damage to his
health and peace of mind and he feared that any delay would cause him
to `suffer further nervous breakdown and impairment to health'.[8]

  Sara did not give evidence in court.  All she cared about was that
she was awarded custody of Alexis.  Clutching her baby, she caught the
first Greyhound bus out of Wichita and out of the life of L. Ron
Hubbard.

                                 -*-

It did not take Don Purcell long to discover the role Hubbard expected
him to play as president of the Hubbard Dianetic Foundation of Wichita
-- to provide money, uncomplainingly.

  Hubbard, the vice-president and chairman, was spending Purcell's
money at a prodigious rate.  He had moved into a large, comfortably
furnished frame house on North Yale opposite the snooty Wichita
Country Club and in the heart of a select residential area called
Sleepy Hollow.  Following Barbara's abrupt departure he hired a comely
housekeeper, a lady in her early forties, who very soon succumbed to
his advances and as a consequence was summoned to his bed most nights.
`Ron enjoyed women,' explained Richard de Mille.  `He didn't see any
point in having an attractive woman around without making use of her.'

  At the Foundation on West Douglas, staff were hired and fired
arbitrarily as Hubbard's attention and enthusiasm flitted from project
to project, from one grandiose scheme to another.  He had a fiction
writer's gift for dreaming up impressive titles for every venture,
even if it only existed as an idea.  Thus, courtesy of Hubbard,
Wichita was briefly the home of an organization called `The
International Library of Arts and Sciences', which no doubt caused
some head-scratching among the local farmers and factory workers.

  Five-hundred dollar training courses for Dianetic auditors were run
on a continuous basis and although there was still a reasonable number
of applicants making their way to Wichita, the excitement of the
previous summer had faded away.  To thousands of people across
America, Dianetics was no more than a passing whim.

__________
 8. Case no.  A36594, District Court of Sedgwick County, Kansas

                          -- end page 193 --

  A major conference of Dianeticists organized in Wichita at the end
of June 1951 only attracted 112 delegates, but Hubbard continued to
behave as if the movement was going from strength to strength.
Heedless of demand, the Foundation published a never-ending stream of
booklets, bulletins and pamphlets on arcane elements of the science --
`Child Dianetics', `Handbook for Pre-clears', `Lectures on Effort
Processing', etcetera -- which piled up at 211 West Douglas despite
the best efforts of the staff to press them on to every visitor.

  Hubbard's second book, *Science of Survival*, was published by the
Wichita Foundation in August.  Dedicated to `Alexis Valerie Hubbard,
For Whose Tomorrow May Be Hoped a World That Is Fit To Be Free,' it
delved into metaphysics and reincarnation and elaborated on what
Hubbard called the `tone scale', a device for measuring an
individual's emotional state and a key to the interpretation of
personality.  Hubbard provided a veneer of authority for the book by
acknowledging the influence of a long list of philosophers from
Aristotle and Socrates, through Voltaire and Descartes, to Freud and
Korzybski.  But despite their contribution, *Science of Survival*
significantly failed to follow *Dianetics* on to the *New York
Times*'s bestseller list.

  For students taking courses at the Foundation, the highlight of the
week was the lecture Hubbard delivered every Friday evening.  Helen
O'Brien, a young woman from Philadelphia who had negotiated a bank
loan in order to train as a professional auditor, described the scene:
`He would appear at the back of the crowded hall and walk down the
centre aisle to the platform, amid applause.  It was well staged.  He
spoke against a background of rich drapes, bathed in spotlights that
set off his red hair and weird, enthusiastic face ...

  `Hubbard was a marvellous lecturer, and he spoke quite frankly then,
introducing the soberest and wildest ideas without apology, seeming to
share the uproarious delight of some of the members of his audience at
his flights of intellectual audacity.  His rhetoric had a tempo that
usually carried everyone along in at least pseudo acceptance of
everything he said, although some of it was far afield of the "science
of mental health" which had brought us all together.'[9]

  Helen O'Brien soon became a member of Hubbard's `honour guard', a
small group of awed, intensely loyal admirers who considered it the
highest privilege to be in Ron's presence.  `It was not like being
with a human being,' she said.  `He was shaking with energy and there
was a sort of light around him, a cloak of power.

  `Sometimes at his house be would play the organ and sing songs he
had composed in college.  Ron told me quite a bit about his life.  He
said his father was some sort of conman, a very shadowy kind of
character, who he suspected was trying to take over Dianetics.  Ron

__________
 9. *Dianetics in Limbo*, Helen O'Brien, 1966

                          -- end page 194 --

said he'd destroy the whole thing if that happened.  He talked a lot
about Sara.  When she ran off with another man Ron followed them and
they locked him in a hotel room and pushed drugs up his nose, but he
managed to escape and went to Cuba.

  `He was not promiscuous, but he was available sexually.  I had sex
with him one night.  Several of us were working late with him, taking
notes and we all went out to a coffee shop.  Ron and I left the others
there and went up to bed.  It was real matter of fact.'[10]

  Among the motley collection of well-meaning people who trekked to
Wichita in the summer of 1951 was a slim, pretty girl from Houston,
Texas, by the name of Mary Sue Whipp.  Born in Rockdale, Mary Sue was
a nineteen-year-old coed at the University of Texas intent on making a
career in petroleum research.  She arrived in Wichita with a friend,
Norman James, who had read about Dianetics in *Astounding* and had
persuaded her to join him on the course.  Blue-eyed and auburn-haired,
Mary Sue aroused predictably mixed feelings at the Hubbard Dianetic
Foundation.  Most of the men liked her; most of the women did not.
`She was a nothing,' said Helen O'Brien sourly.  `Her favourite
reading was *True Confession*.'

  It did not take long for Hubbard to register the arrival of this
attractive pre-clear from Texas and he took a particular interest in
her progress.  Mary Sue was flattered by the great man's attention and
within a matter of a few weeks she had moved in with him at 910 North
Yale, to the fury of the housekeeper, who found herself relegated to
more conventional duties.  Mary Sue rapidly qualified for her Hubbard
Dianetic Auditor's Certificate and joined the staff of the Foundation
as an auditor, all thoughts of a career in the petroleum industry
abandoned.

  Auditing was the major activity at the Foundation, for staff and
students alike.  Everyone was auditing everyone else and someone,
naturally, had to audit Hubbard.  This dubious honour was variously
bestowed and on one occasion it passed to Perry Chapdelaine, who was
working as a research assistant at the Wichita Foundation.  `I assumed
I would have to stick rigidly to the techniques we had been taught at
the Foundation,' said Chapdelaine, `but it was very different from
what I expected.  He just lay down on the bed in his bedroom, closed
his eyes and started to talk.  I sat on a chair by the bed and snapped
my fingers a time or two, like we had been taught, directing him to go
back to the earliest moment he could recall but he opened his eyes,
glared at me, closed his eyes again and continued talking.  He was
relating, very vividly, what was happening to him as a clam or a
jellyfish, in terms of effort and counter-effort.  It was fascinating,
but I didn't know what to make of it.  I learned then,

__________
10. Telephone interviews with Helen O'Brien, Los Angeles, August 1986

                          -- end page 195 --

pretty well, what he meant by research -- it was him talking and the
auditor listening.

  `The problem for many people involved in Dianetics was that they
accepted every word Hubbard said as literal truth, rather than a
framework around which you could do things.  I remember at a lecture
one night he told people if they did this or that they would no longer
need to wear glasses and that they would be able to throw them away
forever.  He pointed to a big bowl at the bottom of the steps leading
up to the rostrum and at the end of the lecture people were throwing
their glasses into this bowl.  Don Purcell was one of them.

  `Hubbard thought it was a great joke.  He told me about it
afterwards, making a snide remark about Purcell and describing how he
took off his glasses, threw them into the bowl and groped his way out
of the lecture hall.  Hubbard was laughing that people would do
something like that just because of what he said.  Of course, it
didn't work.  Like every one else, Purcell had a new pair of glasses
in a couple of days.

  `There was no question Hubbard had an extraordinary ability to
transmit to other people.  He audited me once in his front room in
Wichita and it was the one and only time in my life I had a perfect
perception of being in embryo.  I'll never forget it, it was the most
amazing experience of my whole life.'[11]

  In August, Hubbard had to submit to the indignity of another medical
examination to avoid losing his pension from the Veterans
Administration.  `This veteran gives a long history of three years of
sea duty,' the examining physician noted in his report.  `It was
gathered from what he says that the duty was rather strenuous, his
first assignment in 1942 being with a merchant ship which was assigned
to transporting troops.  Later, he states, he served with escorts in
the North Atlantic.  On one occasion, in 1942, he fell down a ladder
and struck his right hip, but there were no facilities aboard ship and
it was necessary for him to go on without any aid ... He is a writer
by profession and states he has some income from previous writing that
helps take care of him.'

  Hubbard presented his usual laundry list of injuries and ailments,
but the doctors could find symptoms for none of them.  `This is a well
nourished and muscled white adult', the examination report concluded,
`who does not appear chronically ill.'[12]

  Understandably, the VA saw no cause to increase the veteran's
pension, but on this occasion the veteran was perhaps not too
concerned since Don Purcell was still providing ample funds for his
activities, even though their relationship was fraying.  It had been
agreed between them that Purcell would be responsible for the
management and business affairs of the Foundation while Hubbard

__________
11. Interview with Chapdelaine
12. Hubbard file, VA archives

                          -- end page 196 --

looked after training, processing and research, but a simple division
of responsibility proved to be unworkable.

  `Things went along fine for a while, then Ron began to encroach on
my territory,' Purcell recorded.  `The more he did this the ornerier I
got.  Ron established an overhead structure that far exceeded the
gross income.  I began to hold out for an organizational structure
that could exist within its income with the idea of expanding the
structure as our income increased.  This idea did not satisfy Ron.  He
kept telling me that I had agreed to pay off all the old debts and
underwrite a new start for the Foundation and why didn't I go ahead
and do it?'[13]

  Purcell's Wichita lawyer, Jean Oliver Moore, was present on many
occasions when money was discussed.  `The bills were reaching
astronomical proportions,' he said.  `Ron believed one thing should be
done and Don another and there was a divergence of opinion.  But in
the end it had to be a matter of prudent business judgement -- the
Foundation was losing money hand over fist at a rate faster than
Purcell could replace it.'[14]

  Money was not the only problem.  Purcell and Hubbard were in
fundamental disagreement over the issue of `past lives'.  From the
earliest days of auditing, pre-clears invited to travel back along the
time-track had occasionally progressed beyond birth or conception to
previous, often romantic, existences, recalling their adventures as
medieval knights or centurions in ancient Rome.  It happened to Helen
O'Brien, who received the experience of being a young peasant woman in
Ireland in the early nineteenth century who was killed by a British
soldier when she tried to prevent him raping her.

  Hubbard was at first ambivalent about the validity of `past lives',
but by the time he got to Wichita he had embraced the concept so
enthusiastically that he showed up for one of his regular Friday night
lectures with a dreadful limp; he explained to the audience that he
had returned on his genetic time-track to a moment when he was shot in
the leg during the Civil War and had not had time to complete
`running' the incident.

  Purcell, who was still hoping that Dianetics would achieve academic
and professional recognition, considered the notion of `past lives' to
be unscientific and wanted it dropped.  Hubbard resented his
interference in his `research' and was anyway disinclined to heed the
views of a pragmatic real estate developer.  `Ron's motive was always
to limit Dianetics to the authority of his teachings,' Purcell noted.
`Anyone who had the effrontery to suggest that others beside Ron could
contribute creatively to the work must be inhibited.'  Friction
between the two men increased markedly.

  Meanwhile, the FBI, ever vigilant, continued to fret about what
Hubbard was up to, at the same time displaying a remarkable talent

__________
13. *Dianetics Today*, Don Purcell, January 1954
14. Interview with Moore, Wichita, November 1986

                          -- end page 197 --

for obfuscation.  On 1 October 1951, for example, the FBI office in
Kansas City, which apparently did not read newspapers, asked
Washington for any information about a school or clinic of `Dyanetics'
operated by an L. Ron Hubbard in Wichita.  The reply indicated that
the FBI was quite as paranoid about Hubbard as Hubbard was about the
FBI.  Prominent mention was made of allegations that the activities of
the Foundation were of `particular interest to sexual perverts and
hypochondriacs' and that Sara had accused her husband of being
`mentally incompetent'.  The file failed to note that she had
retracted her accusations.[15]

  In November and December, Hubbard played a starring role in FBI
communications when he became enthused, temporarily, by an
extraordinary enterprise straight from the pages of his own science
fiction and smacking faintly of world domination.  His idea was to
establish an alliance of leading international scientists and to store
all the latest scientific research on microfilm in an atom-bomb-proof
archive somewhere in Arizona.  In this way, he argued somewhat
obscurely, individual nations would be denied the technical capacity
to wage a nuclear war.  Hubbard called the project `Allied Scientists
of the World' [the name of an organisation that had featured in his
novel `The End Is Not Yet'] and chose Perry Chapdelaine to supervise
its inauguration.

  `Ron telephoned me at three o'clock in the morning and said he
needed me real bad,' Chapdelaine recalled.  `I got dressed and went
over to his house and we sat in the front room where he told me all
about his plan for Allied Scientists of the World.  His stated goal
was to stop war in the world.  He thought with Allied Scientists he
could control war and in that way control the world.  That was what he
wanted, no question.'

  Chapdelaine was despatched in great secrecy -- `Hubbard told me to
make sure no one knew he was behind it, I've no idea why' -- to
Denver, Colorado, where the headquarters of Allied Scientists of the
World was to be established.  His orders were to organize a mass
mailing of scientists and technicians who would be informed that they
had been awarded fellowships in Allied Scientists of the World in
recognition of their scientific achievements and invited to send in
annual dues of $25.

  The timing could not have been worse.  `Thousands of leaflets went
out,' said Chapdelaine, `but only one or two came back.'  Instead, the
FBI was deluged with requests from recipients of the mail-shot to
investigate the organization as a possible Communist front
organization -- such was the power of McCarthyism.  The FBI soon
established that L. Ron Hubbard was behind Allied Scientists:
inter-Bureau memoranda now contained the information that `several
individuals' alleged he was `mentally incompetent' and a report from
the Kansas City office noted that he had `delusions of grandeur'.[16]

__________
15. US Govt memos, 1 Oct 1951 and 16 Oct 1951
16. FBI Dn File 100-6136

                          -- end page 198 --

  When Post Office inspectors began an investigation of Allied
Scientists for possible violation of mail fraud statutes, Hubbard beat
a rapid retreat and abandoned the venture.  But he was, as always,
untroubled by trouble.  At the Foundation's New Year party, which was
held in a Wichita hotel and featured a live orchestra and a floor
show, he was the life and soul of the festivities.  `He danced a great
deal,' said Helen O'Brien, `with a light and exact rhythm that was
completely without grace.  There was something attention-arresting in
the way he handled himself.  Many almost worshipped him in those days,
but there were other individuals who looked at him askance, with
something close to fear.'

  For Don Purcell, the Allied Scientists fiasco was almost, but not
quite, the last straw.  According to Chapdelaine, Purcell was
`frantic, almost hysterical' over the ill-starred enterprise.  `He was
scared to death that it would reflect on him,' said Chapdelaine.  `He
was afraid of what Hubbard might do next.'

  With the relationship between the two men at its lowest ebb, it full
to lawyers to deliver the final blow.  Ever since Hubbard's arrival in
Wichita, Purcell had been fending off creditors who had been left in
the lurch as, one after another, the original Hubbard Dianetic
Research Foundations closed their doors.  At one point he had had to
lodge an $11,000 bond with the district court to prevent the Wichita
Foundation being placed in State receivership.

  `During this time,' he noted, `I was negotiating with attorneys
trying to effect a settlement of the State receivership.  I purchased
all of the accounts involved in the deal and heaved a sigh of relief.
The mess was cleaned up.'[17]

  His relief was premature.  Early in 1952, a court ruled that the
Hubbard Dianetic Foundation in Wichita was liable for the very
considerable debts of the defunct Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation
in Elizabeth, New Jersey.  It was a disaster.  Purcell, now deeply
suspicious that his partner had all along deliberately suppressed the
truth about the financial situation in Elizabeth, believed the only
option was to file for voluntary bankruptcy.

  Hubbard would not countenance such a move, but was outvoted at an
emergency meeting of the board of directors held on 12 February.  He
resigned immediately and announced his intention to establish a
`Hubbard College' on the other side of town.  After some discussion,
he shook hands on a `gentlemen's agreement' to continue co-operating
with Don Purcell and the Wichita Foundation.

  The `gentlemen's agreement' was worthless, for Purcell had crossed
Hubbard and had thus become an enemy to be attacked and harassed

__________
17. Purcell, *op. cit.*

                          -- end page 199 --

at every opportunity.  The millionaire got a taste of what lay in
store ten days later when, on the day the Foundation filed for
bankruptcy, he received a telegram from Hubbard: `YOU ARE ADVISED THAT
A $50,000 BREACH OF FAITH AND CONTRACT SUIT IS BEING FILED AGAINST YOU
PURSUANT TO FAILURE TO DISCHARGE CREDITOR OBLIGATIONS AND THAT ANOTHER
SUIT FOR BAD MANAGEMENT FOR A SIMILAR AMOUNT IS BEING FILED.  I AM
SORRY TO BE PRESSED TO THIS EXTREMITY.  SORROWFULLY, L. RON HUBBARD.'

  The final accounts for the Hubbard Dianetic Foundation of Wichita
revealed an income of $142,000 and expenditure of $205,000.  Hubbard
had received fees amounting to nearly $22,000 while salaries for all
the remaining staff only accounted for $54,000.  The assets of the
Foundation largely comprised copyright of all the tapes, books,
techniques, processes and paraphernalia of Dianetics, including the
name.

  Both Purcell and Hubbard claimed ownership and during the bitter
feud that inevitably followed, Hubbard mounted a campaign of
vilification against his former partner and took to referring to him
as `that little flatulence'.  He accused Purcell of plotting to steal
Dianetics and of accepting a $500,000 bribe from the American Medical
Association to destroy the movement.  Purcell was out of his depth:
one day be arrived at the Foundation offices on West Douglas and found
that all the address plates for the mailing list were missing.  Later
James Elliott, a Hubbard aide, admitted `inadvertently' removing them.
(They were kept in three boxes, each two feet long and three feet high
and weighing more than twenty-five pounds.)  Subsequently a number of
taped lectures went missing and when a court ordered the tapes to be
returned Purcell discovered every third or fourth word had been
erased.[18]

  In March, Hubbard took a break from hostilities to marry Mary Sue
Whipp, who was by then two months pregnant.  To avoid the three-day
waiting period required by the state of Kansas, they drove across the
state line into Oklahoma where it was possible to be married instantly
by a Justice of the Peace.  Mary Sue would later provide friends with
two versions of the circumstances: one had Hubbard knocking on her
door in the middle of night shouting, `Susie, you're the girl I'm
going to marry.  Get your things, we're leaving.'  In the other, they
eloped with her parents in hot pursuit and got a JP out of bed to
perform the ceremony, still in his pyjamas.[19]

  Back in Wichita, the new Mrs Hubbard assumed partial responsibility
for running the Hubbard College, which occupied the second floor of a
modern office building on North Broadway.  It only stayed in business
for just six weeks, but it was long enough for the founder to gather
together, by telegram, as many loyal followers as he could find

__________
18. Hubbard Dianetic Foundation Inc. in Bankruptcy no.  379-B-2,
    District Court of Kansas
19. Non-attributable interviews in Los Angeles, August 1986, and
    Haywards Heath, Sussex, May 1986

                          -- end page 200 --

to attend a convention at which he promised to present `important new
material'.

  About eighty people turned up for the event, which was held in the
banqueting hall of a Wichita hotel.  Hubbard first introduced an
ingenious little gadget called an E-meter, which he claimed was
capable of measuring emotions accurately enough to `give an auditor a
deep and marvellous insight into the mind of his pre-clear'.  It was a
black metal box with a lighted dial, adjustment knobs and wires
connected to two tin cans.  He demonstrated how it worked by inviting
a member of the audience to hold the tin cans and then pinching him --
the needle of the dial flickered in response.  Then he asked him
simply to imagine the pinch and the needle fluctuated again!

  The excitement generated by the E-meter was as nothing compared to
Hubbard's next revelation.  He had, he said, discovered an entirely
new science which transcended the limitations of Dianetics.  It was a
science of *certainty* and he already had a name for it -- he was
going to call it Scientology.

                          -- end page 201 --

                             *Chapter 12*

                           *Phoenix Rising*

  `Many awards and honors were offered and conferred on L. Ron
Hubbard.  He did accept an honorary Doctor of Philosophy given in
recognition of his outstanding work on Dianetics and, as an
inspiration to the many people ... who had been inspired by him to
take up advanced studies in this field.'  (*Mission Into Time*, 1973)

                              * * * * *

At the beginning of April 1952, Hubbard packed his belongings into the
back of his yellow Pontiac convertible and headed out of Wichita on
the Kansas Turnpike with his teenage bride of four weeks beside him on
the front seat.  Their destination, one thousand miles to the west,
was Phoenix, Arizona, where loyal aides had already put up a sign
outside a small office at 1405 North Central Street, announcing it as
the headquarters of the Hubbard Association of Scientologists.

  Phoenix was so named because it was built on the ruins of an ancient
Indian settlement on the Salt River, which had risen like the
legendary phoenix.  Hubbard, who had had more than enough of Wichita,
could not think of a more appropriate location for the rise of his
astounding new science from the still-smoking ruins of Dianetics.

  The word Scientology was derived from the Latin *scio* (knowing in
the fullest sense) and the Greek *logos* (study).  Hubbard erroneously
believed it to be his own invention: but curiously and coincidentally,
almost twenty years earlier in 1934, a German scholar by the name of
Dr A. Nordenholz had written an obscure work of philosophical
speculation titled *Scientologie, Wissenschaft und der Beschaffenheit
und der Tauglichkeit des Wissens* (Scientology, the Science of the
Structure and Validity of Knowledge).  It was unlikely, however, that
Hubbard was plagiarizing Dr Nordenholz -- the book had not been
translated into English and Hubbard's knowledge of German was
rudimentary.

  Hubbard would introduce Scientology as a logical extension of
Dianetics, but it was a development of undeniable expedience, since it
ensured he would be able to stay in business even if the courts

                          -- end page 202 --

eventually awarded control of Dianetics and its valuable copyrights to
`that little flatulence', the hated Don Purcell.  The difference
between Dianetics and Scientology was that Dianetics addressed the
body, whereas Scientology addressed the soul.  With his accustomed
bombast, Hubbard claimed that he had `come across incontrovertible,
scientifically-validated evidence of the existence of the human
soul'.[1]

  To underpin his new science, Hubbard created an entire cosmology,
the essence of which was that the true self of an individual was an
immortal, omniscient and omnipotent entity called a `thetan'.  In
existence before the beginning of time, thetans picked up and
discarded millions of bodies over trillions of years.  They concocted
the universe for their own amusement but in the process became so
enmeshed in it that they came to believe they were nothing more than
the bodies they inhabited.  The aim of Scientology was to restore the
thetan's original capacities to the level, once again, of an
`operating thetan' or an `OT'.  It was an exalted state not yet known
on earth, Hubbard wrote.  `Neither Lord Buddha nor Jesus Christ were
OTs according to the evidence.  They were just a shade above
Clear.'[2]

  Throughout the early summer months of 1952, Hubbard promulgated the
theory of Scientology at a series of lectures delivered at the Hubbard
Association of Scientologists in Phoenix.  He was addressing, for the
most part, committed Dianeticists, people who truly believed him to be
a genius, and so the audiences tended to be somewhat uncritical.  But
if validation of the cosmology was needed, it was constantly provided
by the `past lives' which were by now a prominent and fascinating
feature of auditing.

  Thetans were obviously not restricted to this universe and auditing
sessions revealed innumerable accounts of space travel and adventures
on other planets very similar to those found in the pages of
*Astounding Science Fiction*, to which the founder of Scientology had
so recently been contributing.  One report described how a pre-clear
had arrived on a planet 74,000 years ago and battled `black magic
operators' who were using electronics for evil purposes.  `He now goes
to another planet by spaceship.  A deception is accomplished by
hypnosis and pleasure implants (rather like opium in their effects)
whereby he is deceived into a love affair with a robot decked out as a
beautiful red-haired girl ...'[3]

  `Past lives' were further confirmed by the flickering needle of the
E-meter, which was enthusiastically adopted as propitious
technological support.  Invented by a Dianeticist called Volney
Mathison, the E-meter was basically a device which measured galvanic
skin response -- the changes in electrical conductivity of the skin
that occur at moments of even quite slight excitement or emotional
stress.  It proved

__________
 1. *What is Scientology?*, 1978 ed.
 2. *Ability* no.  81, 1959
 3. *Have You Lived Before This Life?*, ed.  L. Ron Hubbard, 1968

                          -- end page 203 --

to be such a useful auditing tool that it would eventually become
invested with an almost mystical power to reveal an individual's
innermost thoughts.  It also provided a useful source of income, for
every self-respecting Scientologist wanted to have his own E-meter and
the only place to buy them was from the Hubbard Association of
Scientologists.

  In July, the Scientific Press of Phoenix (another Hubbard
enterprise) published a book originally titled *What To Audit* and
later re-named *The History of Man*.  Introduced as a `cold-blooded
and factual account of your last sixty trillion years', Hubbard
intended the book to establish the foundations of Scientology and he
had no desire to be unduly modest about its potential.  With the
knowledge gained by Scientology, he wrote in the third paragraph, `the
blind again see, the lame walk, the ill recover, the insane become
sane and the sane become saner.'

  Even judged by the standards of his science fiction, *The History of
Man* was one of Hubbard's most bizarre works and possibly the most
absurd book ever written, although it was treated with great reverence
by his followers.  An amalgam of mysticism, psychotherapy and pure
science fiction, the content invited the derision which was inevitably
forthcoming.  `To say it is an astonishing document does not
adequately convey the peculiar qualities or contents of *The History
of Man* ...'  one government report[4] noted.  `For compressed
nonsense and fantasy it must surpass anything theretofore written.'

  In a narrative style that wobbled uncertainly between schoolboy
fiction and a pseudo-scientific medical paper, Hubbard sought to
explain that the human body was occupied by both a thetan and a
`genetic entity', or GE, a sort of low-grade soul located more or less
in the centre of the body.  ('The genetic entity apparently enters the
protoplasm line some two days or a week prior to conception.  There is
some evidence that the GE is actually double, one entering on the
sperm side ...')  The GE carried on through the evolutionary line,
`usually on the same planet', whereas the thetan only came to earth
about 35,000 years ago to supervise the development of caveman into
homo sapiens.  Thus the GE was once `an anthropoid in the deep forests
of forgotten continents or a mollusc seeking to survive on the shore
of some lost sea'.  The discovery of the GE (Hubbard hailed every
fanciful new idea as a `discovery') `makes it possible at last to
vindicate the theory of evolution proposed by Darwin'.

  Much of the book was devoted to a re-working of evolution, starting
with `an atom, complete with electronic rings' after which came cosmic
impact producing a `photon converter', the first single-cell creature,
then seaweed, jellyfish and the clam.  This knowledge was important to
Scientologists since it enabled them to identify the kind

__________
 4. *Report of the Board of Inquiry into Scientology*, State of
    Victoria, Australia, 1965

                          -- end page 204 --

of engrams a GE might have picked up when occupying a prehistoric life
form.

  Many engrams, for example, could be traced back to clams.  The
clam's big problem was that there was a conflict between the hinge
that wanted to open and the hinge that wanted to close.  It was easy
to restimulate the engram caused by the defeat of the weaker hinge,
Hubbard pronounced, by asking a pre-clear to imagine a clam on a beach
opening and closing its shell very rapidly and at the same time making
an opening and closing motion with thumb and forefinger.  This
gesture, he said, would upset large numbers of people.

  `By the way,' he warned, `your discussion of these incidents with
the uninitiated in Scientology can cause havoc.  Should you describe
the "clam" to some one [*sic*], you may restimulate it in him to the
extent of causing severe jaw pain.  One such victim, after hearing
about a clam death, could not use his jaws for three days.'

  After the clam came the `Weeper' or the `Boohoo', a mollusc that
rolled in the surf for half a million years, pumping sea water out of
its shell as it breathed, hence its name.  Weepers had `trillions of
misadventures', prominent among them the anxiety caused by trying to
gulp air before being swamped by the next wave.  `The inability of a
pre-clear to cry,' Hubbard explained, `is partly a hang-up in the
Weeper.  He is about to be hit by a wave, has his eyes full of sand or
is frightened about opening his shell because he may be hit.'  Fear of
falling also had its origins in the luckless Weepers, which were
frequently dropped by predatory birds.

  Progressing along the genetic time-track, evolution arrived at the
sloth, which `had bad times falling out of trees', the ape and the
famous Piltdown Man, which was the cause of a multitude of engrams,
ranging from obsessions about biting to family problems.  These could
be traced back to the fact that `the Piltdown teeth were enormous and
he was quite careless as to whom and what he bit.'  Indeed, so
careless was the Piltdown Man, Hubbard recorded, that he was sometimes
guilty of `eating one's wife and other somewhat illogical activities'.

  (Unfortunately for Hubbard, just twelve months after *The History of
Man* was published, the supposed fossil remains of primitive man found
in gravel on Piltdown Common in the south of England were exposed as a
hoax.  The Piltdown Man had never existed.  Hubbard was describing
engrams caused by GEs occupying a fictitious early life form dreamed
up in 1912 by Charles Dawson, the English amateur archaeologist
responsible for the Piltdown fraud.  )

  *The History of Man* drifted into pure science fiction when Hubbard
came to the point of explaining how thetans moved from body to body.
Thetans abandoned bodies earlier than GEs, it appeared.  While

                          -- end page 205 --

the GE stayed around to see the body through to death, thetans were
obliged to report to a between-lives `implant station' where they were
implanted with a variety of control phases while waiting to pick up
another body, sometimes in competition with other disembodied thetans.
Hubbard revealed that most implant stations were on Mars, although
women occasionally had to report elsewhere in the solar system and
there was a `Martian implant station somewhere in the Pyrenees'.

  After publication of the epoch-making *The History of Man*, Hubbard
was not of a mind to rest on his dubious laurels.  The Hubbard
Association of Scientologists and the Scientific Press of Phoenix
produced a veritable avalanche of publications during 1952, including
another book, *Scientology: 8-8008*, which appeared only a few months
after *The History of Man*.  Continuing his tradition of audacious
introductions, the author wrote: `With this book, the ability to make
one's body old or young at will, the ability to heal the ill without
physical contact, the ability to cure the insane and the
incapacitated, is set forth for the physician, the layman, the
mathematician and the physicist.'

  Both books were required reading for new Scientologists and were
studied as if they were serious scientific textbooks, indicating the
extraordinary hold Hubbard was beginning to exert over his followers.
Non-Scientologists could never understand how he achieved a position
of such omnipotence, but the power he wielded was far from
unprecedented.  Scientology already exhibited the classic
characteristics of a religious sect, offering salvation through secret
knowledge and totally dominated by a leader claiming a monopoly over
the source of the knowledge.  Many such `manipulationist sects'
flourished at different periods of Christian history.[5]

  There were also striking parallels between Scientology and the
quirkier pseudo-sciences like phrenology, Count Alfred Korzybski's
general semantics and `iridiagnosis', which taught that all physical
ailments could be diagnosed through the iris of the eve.  Many such
pseudo-sciences were built on a structure of the wildest assumptions,
yet attracted a devoted following.  They were invariably the creation
of a single, highly charismatic, individual viewed by his followers as
a genius of divine inspiration.  Absolute power was vested in the
leader, critics were derided, successes loudly trumpeted and failures
ignored.  Opponents were darkly accused of ulterior motives in wanting
to prevent the advancement of the human race -- Hubbard's frequent
plaint.

                                 -*-

While Hubbard was writing and lecturing in Phoenix in the summer of
1952, a somewhat unexpected event occurred -- his son, L. Ron Hubbard
Junior, turned up in town apparently intent on becoming a

__________
 5. *Religious Sects*, Bryan Wilson, 1970

                          -- end page 206 --

Scientologist.  Nibs was then eighteen years old, a plump young man
with a shining, cherubic countenance topped by wispy curls of pale
orange hair.  He had been living with his grandparents in Bremerton
for the previous two years, but had been unable to settle down in high
school and had decided to join his father in Phoenix.  Mary Sue,
preoccupied with her thickening waistline, raised no objection when
her husband suggested that Nibs should move in with them, in the
modern house they had rented near Camel Back Mountain, on the
outskirts of town.  And since she was only about a year older than
Nibs, she felt under no obligation to be a dutiful stepmother.

  Nibs enrolled at a correspondence school in an attempt to complete
his high school education and his father gave him a job at the Hubbard
Association of Scientologists, at the same time arranging for him to
be audited intensively.  As the son and namesake of the founder, Nibs
was treated with some deference by other Scientologists and made rapid
progress in the organization -- he was soon designated as `professor'
of the `Advanced Clinical Course', one of a number of courses on offer
to ambitious Scientologists in Phoenix.  He also acquired a number of
initials after his name to support his professorial status.

  In September 1952, Hubbard and Mary Sue left Phoenix for their first
visit to Europe.  The trip was explained to follow Scientologists
somewhat illogically: `Amid the constant violence of the turncoat Don
J. Purcell of Wichita and his suits which attempted to seize
Scientology, Mary Sue became ill and to save her life, Ron took her to
England.'  It was never spelled out why taking Mary Sue to England
would save her life; indeed, since she was eight months pregnant it
would have been much safer not to travel.  But Hubbard wanted to go to
London to establish his control over the small Dianetics group which
had formed there spontaneously and Mary Sue insisted on accompanying
him.  The Hubbards' first impressions of London were gloomy.  As they
drove into the city from the airport, they were shocked by the extent
of the bomb damage which they could see from the back of their taxi.
The people on the streets seemed drab and dispirited, the shop windows
were empty -- rationing was still in force -- and Hubbard thought
there was an air of `quiet desperation' about the place.  He was also
quietly desperate himself, having discovered that American cigarettes
were unavailable.  However, their spirits lifted somewhat when the
taxi drew up outside 30 Marlborough Place, Maida Vale, the house that
had been rented for them by local Dianeticists.  It was a handsome,
double-fronted late Edwardian villa with light, airy rooms, not far
from Regent's Park and the West End.

  Two nights later, Ron and Mary Sue were guests of honour at a
welcoming dinner party arranged by a member of the Dianetics group who
had an apartment only ten minutes' walk from Marlborough

                          -- end page 207 --

Place.  Among the guests was a woman called Carmen D'Alessio who, like
most of those present, admitted to being `totally fascinated' by
Dianetics.  She was, of course, greatly looking forward to meeting
Hubbard, not least because she was hoping that he might be able to
cure her of the unexplained attacks of panic she had suffered since
she was a child.

  `My first impression was of a big, tall man with a highly coloured
face and brilliant red hair combed back from a high forehead.  He was
a very magnetic, powerful man, not really very attractive, but you
couldn't ignore him.  He dominated the evening, talking about energy,
electronics, tractor beams, etcetera.  I heard him say he'd been in
the Navy and had some trouble with his leg and got the impression he
was talking about a war injury.

  `After dinner, when we were all sitting around, I told him about my
problem and he immediately began to audit me.  I was sitting on a sofa
against a wall and he told me to do something that would prompt most
people to think he was mad, although I thought I knew what he was
talking about.  What he said to me was, "Be three feet back of your
head"- those were his exact words.  I thought I would have to go into
the wall, or the room behind, but I attempted to do it in my
imagination.  He gave me quite a long session, with everyone sitting
around completely silent, but it did nothing.'

  Not long afterwards, Carmen D'Alessio attended Hubbard's
introductory lecture at his house in Marlborough Place.  `About 30 or
40 people were foregathered in the sitting-room and when Hubbard
walked in it was obvious to me he had a bloody awful cold,' she
recalled.  `He had a very high colour, much more so than normal, he
was sweating profusely, his eyes were streaming and he kept blowing
his nose.  He even *talked* like man with a cold, but he told us that
he was suffering from the effect of leaving his body and visiting
another planet.  While he was advancing across the floor of this other
planet, he said, something like a bomb blew up in his face.  Everyone
was taking it very seriously, but I didn't believe it.  I thought,
"the man's a thumping liar."  I was right.  A nurse was living in the
house at the time because Hubbard's wife was extremely pregnant.  She
was a friend of mine and she told me afterwards that he had flu.
She'd even given him an injection for it.'

  The nurse was soon obliged to direct her ministrations elsewhere: on
24 September, less than three weeks after arriving in London, Mary Sue
gave birth to a daughter, Diana Meredith de Wolfe Hubbard.  Ron cabled
the good news back to Phoenix, adding a terse plea for cigarettes:
`SEND MORE KOOLS.'

  Miss D'Alessio, meanwhile, was continuing to be audited by Hubbard,
at his instigation, despite an unnerving experience during a

                          -- end page 208 --

second session at Marlborough Place.  `While I was sitting there
trying to do what he told me, I suddenly opened my eyes and saw that
he was sitting opposite me laughing silently.  I didn't like that at
all.'

  She was disappointed to register no improvement in her condition.
`It seemed quite useless, it wasn't helping at all.  Two or three days
afterwards I was feeling very disorganized, ragged and out of sorts.
Friends kept telling me to ring Ron, but I didn't want to bother him.
Eventually someone rang him and he said, "Put her on the line."  He
gave me a long session over the telephone lasting at least two hours,
possibly three.

  `At that time he was very interested in energy.  He said, "I want
you to mock up a small amount of energy, like a little ball and tell
me when you have done it."  Then he said, "Now blow it up, make it
explode."  This was going on subjectively in my imagination; I had no
difficulty doing it.  Then he said, "Now you have exploded it, gather
it all together again and reduce it all down to the small ball of
energy, make it solid again."  I did that and he said, "Now explode it
again."  That is all the session consisted of.

  `After I had been doing this for a while, possibly half an hour, my
physical body began to react in an extraordinary way.  It began of its
own accord to jerk about unintentionally, first quite gently.  I told
him what was happening and he told me not to worry but continue doing
what he told me.  The jerking became stronger, almost out of my
control.  I felt quite frightened, but he remained very calm and
gentle.  Finally it seemed my body was being flung out of the chair
and I had to hold the chair and the telephone with might and main.  I
could not possibly have made my body do what it was doing, I would
have had to have been an acrobat or trained contortionist.  I thought
my heart was going to burst.  My friends sitting in the room watching
me were aghast, terrified.

  `The explosions, which had become more and more violent, became less
violent by degrees and in the end instead of violent explosions of
vast energy it was more like a stone thrown into pond sending out
ripples.  The ripples became very pleasant and as they did so my body
calmed down and became quite tranquil, as if I was lying in the sun on
a hot day.  All around me were beautiful colours like the Aurora
Borealis, colours out of this world, very soothing and harmonious and
completely restorative.  This went on until I felt quite all right and
then he said it was the end of the session.'

  Hubbard was clearly pleased by the results he had obtained with
Carmen D'Alessio and at his next public lecture, in a small hall near
Holland Park, he invited her to tell the audience about her
experience.  Unfortunately, Miss D'Alessio began her account by
describing how her heart had nearly stopped and Hubbard hastily
interrupted.  `He

                          -- end page 209 --

didn't want me to say any more,' she recalled.  `He never allowed
anyone to say anything negative about him.[6]

  In October, a British edition of *Scientology: 8-8008* was
published, with a note about the author from an unnamed editor: `Some
think of his work as the only significant enlargement of the mind
since Freud's papers in the late 19th century; others think of it as
the Western World's first workable organization of Eastern philosophy.
It has been called by two of the leading writers in America: "The most
significant advance of mankind in the 20th century" ... Probably no
philosopher of modern times has had the popularity and appeal of
Hubbard or such startling successes within his own lifetime.'

                                 -*-

At the end of November, Hubbard returned to the United States, with
Mary Sue and the baby, to deliver a series of lectures in
Philadelphia, where the Scientology franchise was being run by Helen
O'Brien and her husband, who paid ten per cent of their gross earnings
to Hubbard for the privilege.  The O'Briens agreed to pay Hubbard a
$1000 fee for the lectures; in addition they arranged a car for his
use and rented an ultra-modern terraced apartment at 2601 Parkway,
high above River Drive.  Hubbard was pleased with it, declared it to
be a `science-fiction writer's dream' and at the same time tried to
manoeuvre Helen O'Brien into signing the rental agreement.  She knew
him too well to be caught out like that.  `I told him, "It's your
apartment, you sign the lease,"' she said.  `He was tricky like
that.'[7]

  Hubbard lectured for a total of seventy hours in Philadelphia to an
audience of thirty-eight devotees, speaking without preparation or
notes on three evenings and six afternoons each week between 1 and 19
December.  Every word was recorded on high-fidelity tapes and later
lucratively marketed as the `Philadelphia Doctorate Course', along
with a spiral-bound book of the fifty-four crayon drawings with which
he illustrated his talks.  Many of the seventy hours were devoted to
elaborating the cosmology of Scientology, but he also talked about
ways of `exteriorizing' from the body and demonstrated a new auditing
technique called `creative processing', similar to the `mock-up'
routine he had tried out on Carmen D'Alessio.

  `What made it interesting,' said Fred Stansfield, one of the
students on the course, `was the feeling that you were involved in the
birth of a new, developing science.  It looked like something you
could do something with, not just some theory that was utterly
useless.'[8]

  The only small hiccup in the smooth running of the Philadelphia
Doctorate Course occurred on the afternoon of 16 December, when US
marshals thundered up the stairs of the Hubbard Dianetic Foundation at
237 North 16th Street, Philadelphia, waving a warrant

__________
 6. Interview with Carmen D'Alessio, London, Jan. 1986
 7. Interviews with Helen O'Brien
 8. Interview with Fred Stansfield, Burbank, July 1986

                          -- end page 210 --

for the arrest of L. Ron Hubbard.  Nibs, who was present and who had
inherited something of his father's talent for story-telling, would
later talk about an `incredible Western-style' fight ensuing, with two
hundred Scientologists battling on the stairs against FBI agents, US
marshals and Philadelphia police.[9]

  Helen O'Brien can recall no such mle. `I was on the door so I know
what happened.  There was no fight.  Two detectives in plain clothes
and a policeman in uniform came in.  I asked them what they wanted and
they said, "We are here to arrest Ronald Hubbard".  We were always
apprehensive about plots to arrest Ron and I ran upstairs and told him
what was happening.  He went up to the third floor, but there was no
escape.  One of the students who had only one arm waved his hook at
the cops and they backed down a bit, but they said, "We've got a
warrant for Hubbard and we are going to take him".  My husband and I
got in the paddy-wagon with Ron.  They fingerprinted him and put him a
cell -- it was the only time he was ever behind bars.  I called my
brother, who was a lawyer, and he got Ron out on $1000 bail later that
afternoon.'

  The cause of this spot of bother was Don Purcell, who was still
doggedly pursuing Hubbard through the courts in an attempt to get some
of his money back and keep the Wichita Foundation in business.  When
he heard Hubbard was in Philadelphia, Purcell filed an affidavit in
Pennsylvania District Court accusing him of wrongfully withdrawing
$9286 from the bankrupt Wichita Foundation.  `Throughout his Dianetic
career,' the affidavit noted, `Hubbard has displayed a fine talent for
profiting personally although his firms and institutions generally
fail.'[10]

  Hubbard was examined before the bankruptcy court on 17 and 19
December, agreed to make restitution and was discharged.  Very soon
afterwards he flew back to London, where the Hubbard Association of
Scientologists International, or HASI, had opened for business in a
couple of draughty rooms above a shop in Holland Park Avenue in West
London.  They were unprepossessing premises for a science offering
immortality, but Hubbard was not finding it easy to establish a base
for Scientology in Britain.  Helen O'Brien received a despairing
letter from a friend describing the HASI offices in London: `There was
an atmosphere of extreme poverty and undertones of a grim conspiracy
over all.  At 163 Holland Park Avenue was an ill-lit lecture room and
a bare-boarded and poky office some eight by ten feet, mainly infested
by long-haired men and short-haired, tatty women.'

  In February 1953, Hubbard decided it was necessary to bolster his
status with the phlegmatic British by acquiring some academic
qualifications.  He knew precisely where they were available -- from
Sequoia University in Los Angeles.  The `university' of Sequoia was
owned by

__________
 9. Evidence of L. Ron Hubbard Jr. at Clearwater hearings, May 1982
10. Bankruptcy file 23747, Federal Records Center, Philadelphia

                          -- end page 211 --

Dr Joseph Hough, a chiropracteur and naturopath who ran a successful
practice from a large house in downtown Los Angeles and conferred
`degrees' on whoever he thought merited them.  Richard de Mille was
awarded a Ph.D. from Sequoia, somewhat to his surprise, for a slim
volume he had written under the title *An Introduction to
Scientology*.

  On 27 February, de Mille, who was then living in Los Angeles,
received an urgent telegram from Hubbard in London: `PLEASE INFORM DR
HOUGH PHD VERY ACCEPTABLE.  PRIVATELY TO YOU.  FOR GOSH SAKES
EXPEDITE.  WORK HERE UTTERLY DEPENDANT ON IT.  CABLE REPLY.  RON.'  De
Mille found Hough thoroughly agreeable and replied the following day:
`PHD GRANTED.  HOUGH'S AIRMAIL LETTER OF CONFIRMATION FOLLOWS.  GOOD
LUCK.'  It was in this way that Hubbard acquired the distinction of
appending letters to his name -- a mysterious `Doctorate of Divinity'
would follow shortly, along with a `D. Scn'.

  It was clear from correspondence around this time that Hubbard was
beginning to ponder the future of Scientology.  Few of the franchises
in the United States were generating much income and the organization
had grown haphazardly into a cumbersome conglomeration of corporations
spread around the country and increasingly difficult to control.  He
was also facing the relentless, if covert, opposition of J. Edgar
Hoover and the FBI.  Hoover's agents rarely failed to mention, in
answer to inquiries about Hubbard, that his former wife claimed he was
`hopelessly insane'.[11]

  At the beginning of March, Hubbard wrote to Helen O'Brien from
London and asked her to go to Phoenix, close down the publishing
operation and move it to Philadelphia.  On the day she arrived, she
learned that burglars had broken into Hubbard's house on East Tatem
Boulevard, near Camel Back Mountain.  She drove out there and found
the house had been ransacked.  Although she had no way of knowing what
had been stolen, she assumed the thieves had been looking for the
fabled manuscript of *Excalibur*.  Two guns were certainly missing and
she reported their serial numbers to the FBI.

  With her usual efficiency, O'Brien packed up the `communications
center', shipped everything to Philadelphia and assumed editorship of
the bi-monthly magazine, the *Journal of Scientology*, which was the
primary channel of communication between Hubbard and his followers.
In truth, editing the magazine was not too onerous a task, since
almost everything was written by Hubbard.  (Whenever he wished to
discuss his own wondrous work in glowing terms, he signed the articles
`Tom Esterbrook'.)

  On 10 April, Hubbard wrote another long letter to Helen O'Brien
discussing the possibility of setting up a chain of HASI clinics, or

__________
11. Letter from office of J. Edgar Hoover to Senator Homer Ferguson, 2
    Mar 1953

                          -- end page 212 --

`Spiritual Guidance Centers'.  They could make `real money', he noted,
if each clinic could count on ten or fifteen pre-clears a week, each
paying $500 for twenty-four hours of auditing.  He had clearly
previously discussed the prospect of converting Scientology into a
religion.  `I await your reaction on the religion angle,' he wrote.
`In my opinion, we couldn't get worse public opinion than we have had
or have less customers with what we've got to sell.  A religious
charter would be necessary in Pennsylvania or NJ to make it stick.
But I sure could make it stick.'

  Perhaps inspired by such considerations, Hubbard's next published
work bore a distinctly Old Testament flavour.  *The Factors* was a
summation of his `30-year examination' of the human spirit and the
material universe: `Factor No. 1: Before the beginning was a Cause and
the entire purpose of the Cause was the creation of effect.'  At the
end of the thirty factors was a valediction reading, `humbly tendered
as a gift to Man by L. Ron Hubbard.'

  Three weeks later, the humble tenderer of gifts to mankind was
writing to Helen O'Brien in a rather less pious fashion about a
particular member of the species who continued to be a thorn in his
side -- Don Purcell.  `The obvious intention of Purcell is to attack
and wipe out by public odium anything and everything he can in
Dianetics, thus leaving him, he thinks, with a monopoly on the
subject.  Sooner or later it is quite obvious that this man ... who is
probably the most hated man in the city of Wichita because of his
business dealings, will run up against somebody insane enough to put a
bullet through him ... Patently the man is insane.  He has actively
refused processing many times.  He's about as safe to have around as a
mad dog ... The only surprising part of all this is that the American
public by their attention to Purcell and what he says, demonstrates
their complete incompetence and their desire to be swindled.'

  At the end of May, Hubbard announced his intention to stir up some
interest in Scientology on the continent and he left London for Spain
by car, with Many Sue, who had recently discovered she was pregnant
again, and baby Diana, then eight months old.  They stayed first in
Sitges, a small resort on the Mediterranean coast, then drove further
south to Seville.  It seems they did little other than enjoy an
extended holiday, although Helen O'Brien, who was virtually running
Scientology in the United States, continued to receive long, rambling
letters in Hubbard's untidy scrawl.

  On 19 July, he wrote nine pages asking her to get one of her
`electronic eager beaver' friends to construct an extraordinary
machine with which he believed he would be able to cure insanity.  The
device was to be disguised as an ordinary briefcase with the trigger
incorporated in the lock and it was to be capable of delivering a
concentrated

                          -- end page 213 --

supersonic beam alternating approximately between breathing and heart
rates, thus inducing hypnosis.  He wanted to be able, he said, to walk
into a sanatorium with his secret machine, confront an insane patient
and make him sane in a few seconds.  `This would mean', he wrote, `the
immediate end of psychiatric resistance to Scientology.'  O'Brien was
to get the machine made up as a matter of urgency and air-freight it
to him in Spain with a spurious explanation of its function for the
benefit of the Customs officials.

  On 15 August he wrote again, pleading with her to make sure the
machine was finished by the time he arrived back in the United States
in mid-September.  He added that he had been working with children
very successfully: `I can make kids walk in a few minutes who were
crippled ... I can solve any case and teach people to solve any case
without failure.  I know the mind like a surveyor knows a map.  That
sets me free, like the genie of the uncorked bottle.'

  The `genie' returned to Philadelphia at the end of September in time
to address the three-day International Congress of Dianeticists and
Scientologists at the Broadwood Hotel.  With more than three hundred
delegates attending, the event was a great success, but by this time
the organizers, Helen O'Brien and her husband, were exhausted and
disillusioned.  They had been at Hubbard's beck and call for most of
the year, receiving little in return.  `As soon as we became
responsible for Hubbard's interests,' Helen O'Brien recorded, `a
projection of hostility began, and he doubted and double-crossed us,
and sniped at us without pause.'  They had no desire to take it any
more and resigned.  Helen O'Brien would forever recall her parting,
regretful words to Hubbard: `You're like a cow who gives a good bucket
of milk, then kicks it over.'

  In October and November, Hubbard lectured to the Hubbard Association
in Camden, New Jersey, just actress the Delaware River from
Philadelphia.  Mary Sue would normally have been present at every
lecture, but she was forced by her pregnancy and the endless demands
of an active toddler, to spent most of the time at home -- yet another
rented house, this time at Medford Lakes, about twenty miles from
Camden.  Nibs, who had recently married his long-time girlfriend,
Henrietta, in Los Angeles, came to visit and was given a job in the
Camden `org', a Scientology abbreviation for organization.

  The Hubbards returned to Phoenix for Christmas, to the house near
Camel Back Mountain, and on 6 January 1954, Many Sue gave birth to her
second child, a son, Geoffrey Quentin McCaully Hubbard.

  Deprived of the services of Helen O'Brien, Hubbard tried to entice
Richard de Mille back into the fold, only to discover that he, too,
had become disillusioned.  `I wanted to find the true answer to
everything,'

                          -- end page 214 --

de Mille explained, `but I didn't like all the contradictions and I
was becoming more and more sceptical of the whole thing.  There was a
constant pyramiding of claims, but the performance was always
deficient.  The answer to the deficiency was that we didn't have a
particular step quite right, but now we had *another* step and this
time it's going to be right.

  `When Hubbard called me and said, "I miss you.  Why don't you come
back?"  I was somewhat critical and expressed my scepticism.  His
reaction was typical.  "Who's gotten to you, Dick?"  he asked.  To
him, there was no such thing as simply being unconvinced.'

  Despite the defections, Scientology prospered in Phoenix, so much so
that in April 1954, the HASI moved into sumptuous new premises on a
corner site at 1017 North Third Street.  Formerly an apartment
building, the new headquarters had wide Spanish-style colonnaded
porches offering shade from the fierce Arizona sun on both first and
second floors.  Outside there was a large parking lot lined with palm
trees and inside an auditorium with the latest recording facilities,
more than twenty auditing rooms, comfortable offices for the
executives and a swimming pool.  In a brochure printed to celebrate
the move, a picture of a beaming L. Ron Hubbard, C.E., D. Scn.,
D.D. could be found on the inside front cover and a similarly beaming
L. Ron Hubbard Jr., H.G.A., D.Scn., on the inside back cover.  `Ten
thousand years of thinking men have made this science possible,' the
introduction proclaimed.  `L. Ron Hubbard has spent more than 30 years
perfecting Dianetics and Scientology to the point of practical
application .'

  The house at Camel Back, where the Hubbards were enjoying an
unaccustomed period of residential stability, became a gathering place
for whichever courtiers happened to be in favour at the time.  One of
them was an Englishman by the name of Ray Kemp, who had no doubt that
Hubbard possessed supernatural powers.  `He could certainly move
clouds around in the sky,' said Kemp.  `I saw him do that.  If there
were a lot of little puffy clouds in the sky he could move one in one
direction and one in another and then get them to join up.  It was
nothing particularly special for him; it was just a fun thing to do.'

  Kemp liked to say he had found Scientology in a wastepaper basket.
He was serving as a Royal Navy radar technician in Malta and was
looking for something to read at a dull party when he spotted a
discarded copy of *Astounding Science Fiction*.  It was the Dianetics
issue.  He read it avidly, then bought the book and enrolled for an
auditing course at Holland Park Avenue when he was next in London on
leave.  By 1954 he had made his way to Phoenix, where he was working
for the org as an auditor.

  `I spent quite a bit of time with Ron and Mary Sue out at Camel

                          -- end page 215 --

Back.  We used to swap war stories and try to cap each other's yarns.
He was a wonderful story-teller and he'd make a story fit whatever
point he was trying to make.  I don't think he ever expected me to
take his war stories seriously, although I knew he had been wounded
because one night he kept complaining of a pain in his side and when
he stood up a little bit of shrapnel fell out from under his shirt.
He said it was something that often happened -- fragments of shrapnel
still in his body were slowly working their way out.

  `One of the things he liked to do was ride his motorcycle -- he had
an Indian, a real monster -- out into the desert.  He played a game he
called point to point.  He'd pick a spot on the horizon and go for it,
straight as he could, without deviating, regardless of what was in the
way, cactus or whatever.  Nibs and Dick Steves, from the org, used to
chase him on their motorcycles, but Ron's favourite trick was to put
up dust devils behind him.  That's another thing he could do --
manipulate dust devils.  He could whip them up and move them around at
will.  I often saw him do that.'[12]

  Ray Kemp exemplified a propensity in Hubbard's disciples to build
myths around him.  There was also a marked tendency to treat
everything he said as gospel, which led to frequent misunderstandings
as Hubbard liked to make jokes.  Once, during a lecture in Phoenix, he
made a crack about a Colt .45 being an `enormously effective' method
of exteriorization.  As this ludicrous piece of wisdom was
disseminated, a story grew that Hubbard had drawn a gun during the
lecture and fired a round into the floor.  Nibs swore later that he
had seen the hole in the floorboards.

  Jack Horner joined the circle close to Hubbard that summer of '54.
Like so many of the early Dianeticists he had fallen out with Hubbard,
in his case after Hubbard had accused him of fiddling the accounts,
but typically he found he could not stay away.  He pretended he was in
Phoenix to see some friends who were working for the org and naturally
ran into Hubbard.

  `He asked me what I was doing and I said "teaching school" and he
said, "we'll soon fix that" and he began to run a process on me right
there and then.  He told me to go and touch certain things in the room
and then sit down at a desk.  Then he said, "Now *you* go touch them"
and I knew exactly what he meant.  While I was sitting there I
suddenly found myself looking at the underside of the desk.  I had a
definite, certain reality of myself out of my body.  I said "Oh my
God, I'm out of my body!"  At that point I knew what he meant by
exteriorization.

  `Later, when I was working for him doing research in Phoenix, I was
out at his home late one afternoon with Jim Pinkham, who did all the
recording at the org, and someone knocked at the door.  Ron went

__________
12. Interview with Ray Kemp, Palomar, CA., Aug 1986

                          -- end page 216 --

and talked to a guy outside for about five minutes and came back with
a big grin on his face.  He said the guy at the door wanted to give
him a cheque for $5000 for a copy of *Excalibur*.  Then he laughed out
loud and said, "One of these days I'll have to get round to writing
it."  We cracked up.  It was the only time Ron ever admitted there was
no such book.

  `It didn't matter too much to us.  From our standpoint at that time
Scientology was the only game in town and it was Ron's game.  It was
like exploring the moon, like being in the space programme, except
that we were exploring the mind instead of space.  Religion didn't cut
it, psychology didn't cut it.  If Ron wanted to tell tall stories
about himself to make himself look good, so what?  We didn't worry a
whole lot about it.  His genius outflowered his craziness.'[13]

  Many of Ron's most fervent admirers, Horner included, found it
difficult to include Mary Sue in their devotion.  `I hated her,' said
Horner.  `She was a real tight-lipped Baptist.  One night I got into a
fight with her because she called my girlfriend a whore.  I really
tore into her verbally and Hubbard threw me out of the house.'

  Hubbard would never allow anyone to criticize Mary Sue and although
he rarely showed much affection for her in public, it seemed, after
two failed marriages and innumerable affairs, that he had at last
formed a stable relationship, improbable as it had first appeared.
They were indeed an unlikely couple -- a flamboyant, fast-talking
extrovert entrepreneur in his forties and a quiet, intense young woman
twenty years his junior from a small town in Texas.  But anyone who
underestimated Mary Sue made a big mistake.  Although she was not yet
twenty-four years old, she exercized considerable power within the
Scientology movement and people around Hubbard quickly learned to be
wary of her.  Fiercely loyal to her husband, brusque and autocratic,
she could be a dangerous enemy.  She also had a remarkable capacity
for motherhood; only four months after Quentin was born, she was
pregnant again.

  In June, the Hubbard Association of Scientologists International
produced an imaginative re-working of Hubbard's biography in a letter
to the Better Business Bureau in Phoenix, clearly designed to improve
HASI's standing in the town.  Much new information was included, not
all of it entirely comprehensible.

  The mysterious Commander Tompson [*sic*], for example, was said in
the letter to have `instituted psychoanalysis in the US Navy for use
in flight surgery'.  A Dr William Alan White, superintendent of St
Elizabeth's, a government asylum in Washington, made his debut as
someone under whom Hubbard had trained and mention was made of a
hitherto unmentioned book: `In 1947 Hubbard published a book for the
Gerontological Society and the American Medical Association called
*Scientology.  A New Science*.'

__________
13. Interview with Horner

                          -- end page 217 --

  This non-existent publication, it seemed, was `politely received',
but thereafter events had conspired against the scientist-author.
Like `almost any nuclear physicist' be had often written science
fiction `for amusement' and unscrupulous publishers took advantage of
this fact.  While poor Ron wanted nothing for himself but to be left
in peace to continue his study and research, he was pressurized to
produce a popular book for Hermitage House, who then `unwisely'
published an article in a pulp magazine.  The sorry tale continued
with Hubbard constantly being taken advantage of by all and sundry,
with everyone but Ron trying to make money out of his discoveries and
his wicked estranged wife threatening to stir up a `great deal of
scandal'.

  However, the biography had a happy ending in Phoenix in the Hubbard
Association of Scientologists -- the first organization in the field
to be under Hubbard's sole control and therefore untainted by all the
previous manoeuvrings.  It had established a two-year record of good
repute and responsibility, paid its bills promptly `as any Phoenix
business firm with which it deals can attest' and was following a
policy of quiet, orderly business.  It was soon intending to make
Scientology available to the disabled `as a public service'.

  The letter was signed by John Galusha, the secretary of the HASI
board of directors.  It was, no doubt, written in good faith, for
Galusha was a thoroughly decent, deeply committed Scientologist.  He
had been working on the railroad in Colorado when he first heard about
Dianetics and had thrown himself into it wholeheartedly.  `I thought
it was a privilege to work for Ron,' he said.  `Maybe he was a
charlatan and a liar -- I didn't care.  The point was that the tech
was good.  It *worked*.'[14] The `tech' was the commonly used
contraction for what Hubbard, the engineer, liked to describe as `the
technology' of Scientology.

  Galusha did not get to know Hubbard particularly well, but then very
few people did.  Jack Horner recalled a strange remark Hubbard once
made: `We were out the back of his house and he was draining the
radiator of his car because it was going to be unexpectedly cold that
night.  I said to him, "You know Ron, it would be nice if we could be
closer friends."  There was a silence for a moment, then he replied,
"Yeah, it would be nice, but I can't have any friends."'

  For Hubbard, the best news of 1954 came towards the end of the year
when he heard from Wichita that Don Purcell was giving up the fight
for control of Dianetics.  Purcell had tired of the seemingly endless
litigation and the constant attacks from Scientologists.  He had also
became interested in an offshoot of Dianetics called Synergetics and
when he decided to devote his future resources to Synergetics he
handed the Wichita Foundation's copyrights and mailing lists back to
Hubbard, thankful to disentangle himself from the man he had once
considered a saviour.

__________
14. Interview with Galusha, Denver, Colorado, March 1986

                          -- end page 218 --

  Purcell's retreat could not have come at a more apposite moment.
With Dianetics and Scientology at last firmly under his control,
Hubbard was ready to follow his own often-voiced advice: `If a man
really wanted to make a million dollars, the best way to do it would
be to start a religion.'

                          -- end page 219 --

                             *Chapter 13*

                     *Apostle of the Main Chance*

  `A historic milestone in the personal life of L. Ron Hubbard and in
the history of Dianetics and Scientology was passed in February 1954,
with the founding of the first Church of Scientology.  This was in
keeping with the religious nature of the tenets dating from the
earliest days of research.  It was obvious that he had been exploring
religious territory right along.'  (*Mission Into Time*, 1973)

                              * * * * *

Hubbard had been quietly planning the conversion of Scientology into a
religion for more than twelve months, ever since his return from
Europe in the autumn of 1953.  It made sense financially, for there
were substantial tax concessions available to churches, and it made
sense pragmatically, for he was convinced that as a religion
Scientology would be less vulnerable to attack by the enemies he was
convinced were constantly trying to encircle him.

  Furthermore, religion was booming in post-war America.  All the
churches were increasing their membership, there was a new interest in
revivalism, epitomized by Billy Graham's spectacular crusades, and
even theologians were fostering the concept of the church as integral
to contemporary culture, reflected in the popularity of songs like `I
Believe' and epic films like *The Ten Commandments*.  Politicians,
too, spoke of `piety on the Potomac' and President-elect Dwight D.
Eisenhower declared in late 1952: `Our government makes no sense
unless it is founded on a deeply felt religious faith -- and I don't
care what it is!'  In 1954 Congress boosted the new piety by adding
the phrase `under God' to the pledge of allegiance.

  Hubbard was quick to recognize there was a religious bandwagon
rolling and equally quick to leap nimbly aboard.  In December 1953, he
incorporated three new churches -- the Church of American Science, the
Church of Scientology and the Church of Spiritual Engineering -- in
Camden, New Jersey.  On 18 February 1954, the Church of Scientology of
California was incorporated.  Its objects, inter alia, were to `accept
and adopt the aims, purposes, principles and creed of the Church of
American Science, as founded by L. Ron

                          -- end page 220 --

Hubbard'.  Another Church of Scientology was incorporated in
Washington DC and throughout 1954 Hubbard urged franchise holders
around the United States to convert their operations into independent
churches.  Executives of the Hubbard Association of Scientologists
International henceforth described themselves as `ministers', and some
of the more flamboyant even took to wearing clerical collars and
pre-fixing their names with `Reverend'.

  At the beginning of 1955, Hubbard moved his headquarters from
Phoenix to Washington DC, declaring his belief that the church's
constitutional rights were safer under the jurisdiction of Federal,
rather than State, courts.  Travelling with him to Washington was a
veritable family entourage, including his heavily pregnant wife and
their two small children, his son Nibs and his wife, Henrietta, also
pregnant.  On Sunday, 13 February, Mary Sue gave birth to a daughter,
Mary Suzette Rochelle Hubbard, her third child in rather less than
three years of marriage.

  The Hubbards moved into a two-storey house in the leafy Maryland
suburb of Silver Spring, just outside the Washington DC metropolitan
area, and it was from there that Ron resumed his correspondence with
the Communist Activities Division of the FBI.  On 11 July 1955, he
wrote a maundering three-page letter, about Communists and wicked
accountants conspiring with renegade IRS agents to destroy him, so
inane that the recipient at the FBI scribbled on it a notation
`appears mental'.[1] Thereafter, the FBI no longer acknowledged
communications from Hubbard `because of their rambling, meaningless
nature and lack of any pertinence to Bureau interests'.[2] No doubt
somewhat to the Bureau's chagrin, Hubbard was not in the least
deterred from writing.

  Two weeks later, on smart new printed notepaper headed `L. Ron
Hubbard D.D., Ph.D.', he wrote again to say he had received an
invitation to go to Russia.  It had come from an `unimpeachable
source' who suggested that as he was about to be ruined by the IRS he
might as well accept the offer.  `It seems I can go to Russia as an
adviser or a consultant and have my own laboratories and receive very
high fees.  And it is all so easy because it has already been
ascertained that I could get my passport extended for Russia and all I
had to do was go to Paris and there a Russian plane would pick me up
and that would be that.'  He did not wish to reveal the name of his
contact, he added, `because he is a little too highly placed on the
[Capitol] Hill'.

  It seemed Hubbard was able to resist blandishments from beyond the
Iron Curtain, for through the sweltering summer months in Washington
DC he could be found lecturing at the `Academy of Religious Arts and
Sciences', in a ten-roomed house at 1845 R Street, in the north-west
section of the city.  He was still maintaining a

__________
 1. FBI memo, 11 October 1957
 2. FBI memo, 27 February 1957

                          -- end page 221 --

one-way communication with the FBI and on 7 September, he wrote to
complain about the persecution of Scientologists, some of whom he
alleged were being mysteriously driven insane, possibly by the use of
LSD, `the insanity producing drug so favoured by the APA [American
Psychological Association]'.  Another poor wretch, a `half-blind deaf
old man' had been arrested for practising medicine without a licence
in Phoenix by a County attorney promising to `get to the bottom of
this thing about Hubbard and Scientology'.

  On a personal basis, Hubbard pointed out that it was not uncommon
`to have judges and attorneys mad-dogged about what a terrible person
I am and how foul is Scientology ... All manner of defamatory rumours
have been scattered around me, questioning even my sanity ...'

  It certainly was a question in the forefront of the FBI file,
although Hubbard was not to know that.  He continued: `I am trying to
turn out some monographs on matters in my field of nuclear physics and
psychology for the government on the subject of alleviating some of
the distress of radiation burns, a project I came east to complete.'
He also promised to forward information about the latest brain-washing
techniques in Russia.

  The horror of `brain-washing' had been an emotive talking point in
the United States ever since the end of the Korean war and the
revelation that United Nations prisoners had been brain-washed for
propaganda purposes.  Timely as always, Hubbard entered the debate by
distributing a pamphlet entitled `Brain-Washing: A Synthesis of the
Russian Textbook on Psychopolitics', which he claimed was a transcript
of a lecture delivered in the Soviet Union by the dreaded Lavrenty
Pavlovich Beria, architect of Stalin's purges.

  It was this pamphlet he forwarded in due course to the FBI with a
note explaining that it was the Church of Scientology's printing of
`what appeared to be a Communist manual'.  The Bureau's Central
Research Section examined it and concluded that its authenticity was
doubtful, since it lacked documentation of source material, did not
use normal Communist words and phrases and contained no quotations
from well-known Communist works, as would be expected.  Had the
Central Research Section been familiar with the works of L. Ron
Hubbard, they might have noted certain similarities in the narrative
style.

  The FBI did not acknowledge receipt of the pamphlet, but this did
not dissuade the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation of Silver
Spring, Maryland, from mailing the pamphlet to influential individuals
and organizations around the country with a covering letter claiming
that `authorization' had been received to release the material after
the FBI had been supplied with a copy.

                          -- end page 222 --

  While Hubbard was skirmishing with the FBI, he was also tightening
his grip on the Scientology movement and urging his followers to take
action against anyone attempting to practise Scientology outside the
control of the `church'.  He derided apostates as `squirrels' and
recommended merciless litigation to drive them out of business.  `The
law can be used very easily to harass, and enough harassment on
somebody who is simply on the thin edge anyway, well knowing that he
is not authorized, will generally be sufficient to cause his
professional decease,' he wrote in one of his interminable bulletins,
casually adding, `If possible, of course, ruin him utterly.'

  In the same bulletin he offered the benefit of his advice to any
Scientologists unlucky enough to be arrested.  They were instantly to
file a $100,000 civil damages suit for molestation of `a Man of God
going about his business', then go on the offensive `forcefully,
artfully and arduously' and cause `blue flames to dance on the
courthouse roof until everybody has apologized profusely'.  The only
way to defend anything, Hubbard wrote, was to attack.  `If you ever
forget that, you will lose every battle you are ever engaged in.'[3]
It was a philosophy to which he would adhere ardently all his life.

  At the end of September, the Hubbards packed their bags once again,
closed the house at Silver Spring and departed the United States with
their three young children for another extended visit to London.
Hubbard had taken a lease on a large apartment in Brunswick House, a
mansion block in Palace Gardens Terrace, a few minutes walk from
Kensington Gardens.  It became, temporarily, the address of the
Hubbard Communications Office, which maintained links with embryonic
Scientology groups in other countries (satellite churches had already
been established in South Africa, Australia and New Zealand).

  Hubbard immediately took over the day-to-day running of the Hubbard
Association of Scientologists International, which was still operating
from its dreary premises at 163 Holland Park Avenue, although it had
grown considerably in size.  There was now a full-time staff of twenty
auditors, most of them young, like Cyril Vosper, who had been a
nineteen-year-old biology student when he first read about Dianetics
and was a qualified professional auditor by the time he was twenty.

  `I had no doubt that Hubbard's arrival in town was a historic
event,' he recalled.  `I believed in him totally, believed he was a
genius and was convinced he knew a lot more about the human species
and the human condition than anyone else.  The only reason I had any
slight difficulty in accepting that he was the world's greatest human
being was that, to English eyes, he didn't *look* like a Messiah.  He
used to wear very brash American clothes -- loud check jackets and
bootlace

__________
 3. *HCO Technical Bulletin*, Vol.  II, 1955

                          -- end page 223 --

ties and brothel-creepers.  It wasn't quite the image we expected.
But he gave a number of public lectures around town and was
interviewed by the media and was pretty well received.  The newspapers
at that time were quite complimentary, they viewed him as an oddball
who might just have come up with something good.

  `Ron presided over the staff meeting at the HASI at five o'clock
every afternoon.  It was all Christian names at the HASI, everyone
called him Ron, but there was no doubt he was absolutely in charge.
He wouldn't brook any other input: all the books were written by him,
all the policy letters were written by him.  No one would ever
question anything he said or wrote.  I had read *The History of Man*
and I knew, as a biology student, that it was a load of bleeding
nonsense but I explained it to myself as an allegorical work.  In any
case, I could never have said to him, "Now listen, Ron, that's just
not true."  No one would ever have done that.

  `One of the things that began to worry me about Ron was that he was
unpredictable.  He could be very thoughtful and kind one minute and
quite hideous the next.  We were auditing about 50 hours a week and I
remember one afternoon a girl auditor burst into tears when she was
telling Ron about a particularly difficult case she had.  He put his
arm round her and said, "Jenny, anything we can do for this pre-clear
is better than doing nothing.  She needs help and a bit of attention
and that is what you are giving her.  Just keep on doing the same
thing you're doing and you will resolve it in due course.  You can't
expect miracles overnight."  That struck me as a very humane and
comforting thing to say to her.  There was no question he had
something to contribute in the psychological area.  I mean, just to
sit down with someone and listen to them for a couple of hours did
them good.

  `But then I have also seen him behave in a grotesque fashion.  One
afternoon during a lecture a woman in the audience was coughing rather
badly and he walked to the front of the stage, red-faced and visibly
angry, and shouted, "Get that woman out of this lecture hall!"  She
was one of his most fervent supporters and she was also desperately
ill -- she died three weeks later of lung cancer.'[4]

  Aside from occasional temper tantrums, Hubbard considered things
were going very well in London.  `I am busy at a headlong rate of
speed,' he wrote to Marilyn Routsong, an aide left behind in
Washington to keep an eve on his interests, `really got things rolling
off over here.  Hope to have some films that will help us before long,
and am now dickering around on an international radio'.  He ended the
letter with a titbit of information that must have made Miss
Routsong's nerves tingle: `Just between ourselves, I actually do have
a method of as-ising the atom bomb.  Anyway I'm not quite as far away
as you think.  Love, Ron.'

  In the peculiar argot of Scientology, `as-isness' was a process of

__________
 4. Interview with Cyril Vosper, London, December 1985

                          -- end page 224 --

making something disappear.  What Hubbard was apparently saying was
that he was well on the way towards removing nuclear weapons from the
face of the earth.  However, something must have gone wrong since he
would soon be applying his awesome imagination to the problem of
dealing with radiation.

                                 -*-

The Hubbards' closest friends in London were Ray Kemp, now back home
from Phoenix, and his pretty girlfriend, Pam, both of whom worked at
the HASI.  Hubbard, as a minister of the Church of American Science,
performed the ceremony when they married in February 1956, in the
lecture room at the HASI, and Mary Sue was Pam's maid of honour.  `Ron
and Mary Sue had dinner with us the night before the wedding,' Pam
said, `and Ron told us he had written the ceremony specially for us.
He was a very good friend -- he even fixed our honeymoon, made
arrangements for us to use an apartment in Tangier owned by a friend
of his and paid for our air tickets.

  `When we got back, we used to see a great deal of them, two or three
times a week.  Ron would telephone and say, "I'm coming over to dinner
and I'm bringing a chicken."  Then we would sit up for hours playing
Cluedo and the men would start telling stories and there would be lots
of laughter.  It was a lot of fun -- I'd usually end up falling asleep
and Mary Sue would go to bed.  Their relationship seemed OK, but there
never seemed to be a lot of love between them.  She was not the
affectionate type, she was more efficient than affectionate.  They
used to have fierce husband and wife domestic arguments.

  `We had a big old apartment in Palace Court, Kensington, with a huge
living-room with a full-size concert grand in the corner and we used
to have parties every night.  Ron was always the life and soul, great
fun.  He loved to dance, play the guitar or ukulele; he was a real
actor.  He would drag me up to sing with him and then we'd make up
rude songs about him and auditing and he would top each verse and roar
with laughter and think it was terribly funny.  I thought he was
always very *aware* as an individual.  He would make a comment about
something and he'd invariably be right and I'd look at him and think
"How did you know that?"'[5]

  At the end of March 1956, Ray Kemp accompanied Hubbard on a trip to
Dublin.  `He wanted to see if there was something he could do for
Ireland,' Kemp explained.  `He felt that Ireland's troubles were based
on the fact that it was a bit like a Third World nation and had never
been able to apply the skills of its people.  We were there for two or
three days and he spent the whole time talking to people.  We'd be

__________
 5. Interview with Pam Kemp, Palomar, CA, August 1986

                          -- end page 225 --

walking down the street and all of a sudden he wasn't there.  I'd look
back and see him deep in conversation with someone, asking them if
they had a job, what their skills were, things like that.  Believe it
or not, he'd actually run a little process on them there and then and
they'd feel better and he'd walk away.  His idea was to open a
Personal Efficiency Foundation in Dublin to teach people how to apply
whatever skills they had got, but I don't think anything ever came of
it.'

  Back in London, Hubbard applied himself to proselytizing for his
fledgling church.  Never short of ideas, he told Kemp to try putting
an advertisement in the London evening newspapers with a telephone
number and the offer, `I will talk to anyone about anything.'  It
instantly tapped the deep well of loneliness which exists in every big
city and generated an extraordinary response.  `We were inundated with
calls,' said Kemp.  `Everyone from potential suicides to a girl who
couldn't decide which of three men to marry.'

  So successful was this campaign that Hubbard then tried targeting
specific, and potentially vulnerable, groups, starting with the
victims of one of the most feared diseases of the 'fifties.  The
classified columns of the evening newspapers soon began carrying the
following, apparently innocuous, advertisement: `Polio victims.  A
research foundation investigating polio desires volunteers suffering
from the effects of that illness to call for examination ...'  The
`research foundation' followed up with similar advertisements aimed at
asthmatics and arthritics.

  `Casualty Contact' was another thoroughly distasteful recruiting
method advocated by Hubbard.  He recommended that ambitious auditors
looking for new pre-clears should cut out stories in the newspapers
about `people who have been victimized one way or the other by life.
It does not much matter whether that victimizing is in the manner of
mental or physical injury ...'  Then they should make a call on the
bereaved or injured person as speedily as possible, representing
themselves as `a minister whose compassion was compelled by the
newspaper story'.

  By the summer of 1956, Scientology was prospering mightily and so,
at last, was its founder.  Hubbard's gross receipts for the fiscal
year ending June 1956 amounted to $102,604 -- a handsome income by any
standards.[6] His salary from the Church of Scientology was only $125
a week, but he earned commission from the sale of training processes
and E-meters, in addition to substantial royalties from his
innumerable books.  More than sixty books on Scientology by L. Ron
Hubbard were in print by this time and a new one was appearing
approximately every two months, usually containing new processes and
procedures superseding those currently in use.

__________
 6. Founding Church of Scientology *v.* US Court of Claims No. 22-61

                          -- end page 226 --

  The church could easily afford the expense of allowing its founder
to become an early transatlantic commuter and Hubbard made frequent
visits back to Washington during the year, collecting lecture fees on
each trip.  In November, the Academy of Religious Arts and Sciences
(also known as the Academy of Scientology) moved to 1810-1812 19th
Street, adjoining grey-brick townhouses with two flights of stone
steps leading up to the front door in a tree-lined street of eminent
respectability.  The Hubbards took a lease on a handsome four-storey
brownstone on the other side of the street for their use when they
were in Washington.

  In March 1957, the Church of Scientology adopted a compensation
scheme known as a `proportional pay plan' under which Hubbard would
henceforth receive, in lieu of salary, a percentage of the church's
gross income.  The effect was dramatic: before the end of the 'fifties
the founder of the Church of Scientology would be coining around
$250,000 a year, a great deal more than the President of the United
States.

  By April it seemed that Hubbard had given up his heroic,
single-handed attempt to rid the world of nuclear weapons by
`as-ising' the atomic bomb, for in that month he hired the Royal
Empire Society Hall in London in order to preside over the `London
Congress on Nuclear Radiation and Health'.  The various lectures
delivered at this extraordinary event were later condensed into an
even more extraordinary book titled *All About Radiation* and written
by `a nuclear physicist' and `a medical doctor'.

  The doctor was anonymous, but the `nuclear physicist' was none other
than L. Ron Hubbard offering the benefit of his advice with customary
scant recourse to the laws of science.  He asserted, for example, that
a sixteen-foot wall could not stop a gamma ray whereas a human body
could, an assertion later described by an eminent radiologist as
`showing complete and utter ignorance of physics, nuclear science and
medicine'.[7] In line with his philosophy that most illnesses were
caused by the mind, Hubbard avowed, `The danger in the world today in
my opinion is not the atomic radiation which may or may not be
floating through the atmosphere but the hysteria occasioned by that
question.'  Radiation, he added, was `more of a mental than a physical
problem'.

  Fortunately, however, no one needed to worry about radiation, since
Hubbard had devised a vitamin compound called `Dianazene' (after his
first child by Mary Sue?)  which provided protection: `Dianazene runs
out radiation -- or what appears to be radiation.  It also proofs a
person against radiation to some degree.  It also turns on and runs
out incipient cancer.  I have seen it run out skin cancer.  A man who
didn't have much liability to skin cancer (only had a few moles)

__________
 7. *Report of Board of Inquiry into Scientology*, State of Victoria,
    Australia, 1965

                          -- end page 227 --

took Dianazene.  His whole jaw turned into a raw mass of cancer.  He
kept on taking Dianazene and it disappeared after a while.  I was
looking at a case of cancer that might have happened.'

  The doctor, writing under the pseudonym Medicus, confirmed in his
section of the book that `some very recent work by L. Ron Hubbard and
the Hubbard Scientology Organization has indicated that a simple
combination of vitamins in unusual doses can be of value.  Alleviation
of the remote effects and increased tolerance of radiation have been
the apparent results ...'

  The Food and Drugs Administration in the United States was inclined,
after studying a copy of *All About Radiation*, to disagree.  FDA
agents swooped on the Distribution Center Inc, a Scientology company
in Washington, seized 21,000 Dianazene tablets and destroyed them,
alleging that they were falsely labelled as a preventative treatment
for `radiation sickness'.

  In July 1957, Hubbard addressed the `Freedom Congress' at the
Shoreham Hotel in Washington; during the lecture he carried out a
christening ceremony for the first time.  Its function, he explained,
was simply to help get the thetan oriented in its new body and
informality was the keynote, as was made evident in a booklet titled
`Ceremonies of the Founding Church of Scientology'.  After introducing
the child to its parents and godparents, the ceremony proceeded: `Here
we go.  (To the child): How are you?  All right.  Now your name is
---.  You got that?  Good.  There you are.  Did that upset you?  Now,
do you realize that you're a member of the HASI?  Pretty good, huh?'
Thereafter the parents and godparents were introduced to the child and
the ceremony concluded: `Now you're suitably christened.  Don't worry
about it, it could be worse.  OK.  Thank you very much.  They'll treat
you all right.'

  His image as a family man was a pose, since he evinced little
interest in his own children.  Nibs rarely managed to please his
father and his sister, Catherine, then twenty-one, had started working
for the organization in Washington but saw little of Hubbard.  She
married a Scientologist in 1956 which would have pleased her father
except he did not like the man; the marriage could not survive his
disapproval and she divorced in 1957.  Hubbard made no attempts to see
Alexis.

  The same month as the Freedom Congress, the Central Intelligence
Agency opened a file, No. 156409, on L. Ron Hubbard and his
organization.  CIA agents trawled through police, revenue, credit and
property records to try and unravel Hubbard's tangled corporate
affairs.  It was a task of herculean difficulty, for the Church of
Scientology was a cryptic maze of ad hoc corporations.  The printed
notepaper of the Academy of Scientology gave only a hint of its
labyrinthine structure -- on the left-hand side of the page was a list
of no

                          -- end page 228 --

less than seventeen associated organizations, ranging from the
American Society for Disaster Relief to the Society of Consulting
Ministers.

  Agents traced a considerable amount of property owned either by
Hubbard, his wife, son, or one of the daunting number of `churches'
with which they were associated, but the report quickly became bogged
down in a tangle of names and addresses: `The Academy of Religious
Arts and Sciences is currently engaged as a school for ministers of
religion which at the present time possesses approximately thirty to
forty students.  The entire course consists of $1500 to $1800 worth of
actual classroom studies ... The public office is located at 1810-12
19th Street N.W. The corporations rent the entire building ...

  `The Hubbard Guidance Center, located at 2315 15th Street, N.W.,
occupies the entire building which consists of three floors and which
was purchased by the SUBJECT Organization.  The center also rents farm
property located somewhere along Colesville Road in Silver Spring,
Maryland, on a short-term lease.  The center formerly operated a
branch office at 8609 Flower Avenue, Silver Spring, Maryland.  In
addition to the Silver Spring operation, the center has a working
agreement with the Founding Church of Scientology of New York, which
holds classes at Studio 847, Carnegie Hall, 154 West 57th Street, New
York City.  Churches of this denomination number in excess of one
hundred in the United States ...'

  One agent was assigned the thankless task of reading through all
Hubbard's published work at the Library of Congress in order to gain
an `insight' into Scientology.  `Hubbard's works', he noted glumly,
`contain many words, the meaning of which are not made clear for lay
comprehension and perhaps purposely so.'

  The District of Columbia Income Tax Division reported that the
`church' had applied for a licence to operate as a religion in
Washington DC probably in an attempt to claim tax-free status, and the
Personal Property Division reported that it was having difficulty
persuading the church to produce its records so that a personal
property tax could be levied.  Repeated telephone calls had produced
nothing but excuses as to why the records could not be produced.

  In the end, the CIA file could do no more than chronicle a multitude
of vague suspicions; it certainly uncovered no hard evidence of
wrong-doing and it revealed curiously little about the remarkable
career of the founder of the Founding Church of Scientology.  `Dr
Hubbard', it noted simply, `received a Doctor of Divinity degree in
1954 and throughout his adult career has been a minister.'

  The increasingly obvious success of Scientology from 1957 onwards
unquestionably prompted federal agencies to keep a closer eye on
Hubbard.  The Washington Field Office of the FBI, for example,
maintained an extensive file which included film and sound recordings

                          -- end page 229 --

as well as photographs and doggedly noted every example of Hubbard's
exuberant irreverence to authority.

  When the Academy of Scientology delivered twelve thousand feet of
film to a Washington laboratory for processing, outraged technicians
forwarded it to the FBI for investigation, alleging that the speaker
on the film was anti-American.  The film covered six one-hour lectures
by Hubbard, during which he made a crack about the Government
developing the hydrogen bomb in order to `kill more people faster'.

  He also talked about his experience, when `he was a policeman', in
dealing with the criminal mind.  `The FBI thinks there's such a thing
as the criminal mind -- always a big joke,' he said.  `There's a
criminal mind and a non-criminal mind.  The FBI have never shown me a
non-criminal mind.  Of course, these are terrible things to say --
simply comments on J. Edgar who is an awfully good guy, stupid, but
awfully good.'  The Washington Field Office, which perhaps lacked
Hubbard's sense of humour, solemnly took note of this analysis of
their director and diligently forwarded to him the advice that L. Ron
Hubbard thought he was `stupid'.[8]

  Largely unaware of the extent of federal interest in his activities,
Hubbard had remained in Washington after the Freedom Congress to
lecture on a more permanent basis at the Academy of Scientology.  Mary
Sue and the children joined him from London and they all moved into
the brownstone house on 19th Street.  Although she was soon pregnant
once more, Mary Sue was appointed `Academy Supervisor' and remained a
powerful figure in the organization.  On 6 June 1958, she gave birth
to her fourth child -- a son, Arthur Ronald Conway Hubbard.  Like his
other brothers and sisters, Arthur emerged into the world with a wispy
topping of bright red hair.

  Through most of 1958 Hubbard lectured in Washington at the Academy.
In one famous lecture, taped for posterity and marketed for profit, he
recounted the colourful `story of Dianetics and Scientology',
interlacing the resum with anecdotes and jokes, all delivered with a
fine sense of timing and generating roars of laughter from an
appreciative audience.  It was essentially the story of his own life
as it had come to be compiled in his mind, with extraordinary
adventures tagged on to a slender framework of facts.

  `The story starts when I was 12 years old', he began, `and I met one
of the great men of Freudian analysis, Commander Thompson, a great man
and explorer.  He was a commander in the US Navy.  His enemies called
him Crazy Thompson and his friends called him Snake Thompson.  He was
a personal friend of Freud and had no kids of his own.  On a big
transport on a long cruise he started to work me over.  He had a cat
by the name of Psycho with a crooked tail.  The cat would do tricks
and the first thing he did was teach me to train cats ...'

__________
 8. FBI Airtel, 7 August 1958

                          -- end page 230 --

  He continued the story in similar vein.  Finding himself in Asia
while still a teenager, he discovered he was able to `operate in the
field of Asian mysticism'; in college he was `never in class' but got
through by persuading other students to take his mathematics
examinations while he did their psychology papers.  It was easy, he
said.  He simply read the textbooks the night before and sat the exam
next morning.  During the Prohibition years he knocked around with
newspaper reporters and drank bathtub gin acquired from the `very best
gangsters'.

  In 1938, having `associated rather thoroughly with twelve different
native cultures, not including the people in the Bronx', he identified
the urge to survive as the common denominator of all forms of life.
In hospital at the end of the war, `recuperating from an accumulation
of too much wartime Scotch and overdoses of lead', he continued his
research.  `I found out that by taking off one collar ornament I
became an MD.  They don't let anybody in a medical library except
doctors but by stopping off with one collar ornament and for a couple
of bucks having a marine on crutches come by and say, "Good morning,
doctor", I was able to get in a year's study at the medical library.'

  After leaving hospital he bought a yacht, took a cruise to the West
Indies, then used his wartime back pay to finance further research --
`I went down to the middle of Hollywood, rented an office, wrapped a
towel round my head and became a swami.'

  Perhaps the most revealing thing Hubbard said about himself during
the lecture was a comment on one of Commander Thompson's favourite
little aphorisms.  It appeared that the Commander used to tell Ron,
`If it's not true for you, it's not true.'  It aligned with his own
personal philosophy, Hubbard explained, `because if there is anyone in
the world calculated to believe what he wants to believe it is I'.
Never did L. Ron Hubbard speak a truer word.

  In October, Hubbard flew back to London to preside over a six-week
`Advanced Clinical Course' at HASI's smart new West End offices in
Fitzroy Street.  Cyril Vosper was one of the students on the course
hoping for a Bachelor or Doctorate of Scientology and he noticed a
marked change in Hubbard's appearance: `The flashy American clothes
were gone.  Now he was wearing grey tweed suits and silk shirts.  He
looked like a well-dressed professional gentleman and there was a feel
of money and class about the whole thing.'[9]

  Much of the course, Vosper recollected, was devoted to students
investigating each other's past lives.  As Hubbard made frequent
mention in his lectures of past lives on other planets, with zapp
guns, flying saucers, mother ships, galactic federations, repeller
beams and suchlike, Vosper reported that many of the past lives
excitedly revealed during the course sounded like `Flash Gordon'
adventures.

__________
 9. Interview with Vosper

                          -- end page 231 --

  Nibs, who was one of the instructors, proved to be enormously
resourceful in the past lives area.  `When a student was having
difficulty in making his past life gel,' said Vosper, `Nibs would
helpfully fill in bits.  Students knew that unless they could bring
forth a past life with full recall, pain, emotion, full perception,
the lot, they would be regarded as something less than real
Scientologists.  There was a good deal of rivalry as to who could dig
up the most notable or extraordinary past life.  Jesus of Nazareth was
very popular.  At least three London Scientologists claimed to have
uncovered incidents in which they were crucified and rose from the
dead to save the world.  Queen Elizabeth I, Walter Raleigh and the
venerable Bede were also popular.  Funnily enough, I never met anyone
who claimed to know anything about Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan or
Pontius Pilate.'

  Hubbard returned to Washington for Christmas, but in the New Year he
began making plans to move back to London with his family.  Pam and
Ray Kemp wrote to say that they were moving and that their house in
North London, on the Finchley Road in Golders Green, would be
available if Ron was looking for somewhere to live.  The Hubbards --
Ron, Mary Sue, Diana, aged six, Quentin, five, Suzette, four and
Arthur, eight months -- arrived in London at the end of February and
agreed to rent the Kemps' house in Golders Green.

  `My daughter Suzanne was born on Ron's birthday,' said Pam Kemp.
`Ron came over with a beautiful, bright orange, angora shawl for me.
He said everyone brings presents for the baby but everyone forgets it
is the mother that has been doing all the work so he was bringing a
present for the mother.  That was typical of him.

  `It was also typical of him that he stiffed us for the rent and he
stiffed the greengrocer.  Before they moved in, the greengrocer on the
other side of the road asked us if he could trust the new tenants and
we said "Of course."  Ron proceeded to run up a huge bill which he
never paid.  And he never paid us any rent.  We asked him dozens of
times for the money.  He told us to ask Mary Sue and she always said
they didn't have any money.

  `Then one day Ron came over on his motorcycle, very excited and
pleased with himself.  He said, "Guess what I've done?"'[10]

  The Kemps were dumbfounded by their friend's news.  He announced
that he had bought the Maharajah of Jaipur's estate in Sussex.

__________
10. Interview with Kemp

                          -- end page 232 --

                             *Chapter 14*

                         *Lord of the Manor*

  `My own life is rather dull these days.  I sort of won the Maharajah
of Jaipur's luxury Sussex estate in a poker game ...'  (Note in the
Explorers Log from Dr L. Ron Hubbard, *Explorers Journal*, February
1960)

                              * * * * *

Saint Hill Manor was a Georgian mansion on a landscaped estate two
miles from the little market town of East Grinstead in Sussex.  The
countryside thereabouts was much favoured by the landed gentry in the
eighteenth century for the beauty of its verdant, gently rolling hills
and its proximity to the court in London, only a few hours away by
horse and carriage, and Saint Hill was one of a number of large
country houses in the area.

  Built for a wealthy landowner in 1733, the manor could not be
described as one of the glories of Georgian architecture (indeed, its
sandstone faade had a faintly brooding aspect), but it was
sufficiently imposing to merit a ballroom with marble columns and
grounds of fifty acres with a lake, surrounded by a dense boundary
hedge of rhododendrons.  By the time it passed into the ownership of
the Maharajah of Jaipur, the house boasted eleven bedrooms, eight
bathrooms and an outdoor swimming-pool.  While the Maharajah spent a
considerable sum on interior improvements, including commissioning the
artist John Spencer Churchill to paint a mural in one of the
first-floor rooms, he only lived in the house intermittently.  When
the fortunes of the Indian princes wavered after Independence in 1947,
he decided to put his English estate on the market and was happy to
find a buyer in the unlikely shape of L. Ron Hubbard.

  The arrival of an American family at Saint Hill Manor in the spring
of 1959 occasioned almost as much excitement in East Grinstead as that
of the exotic Maharajah had done some years earlier.  Alan Larcombe, a
young reporter on the East Grinstead *Courier* was despatched to
interview the new owner and found him to be extremely co-operative,
happy to pose for a photograph with his wife and children and more
than willing to talk about himself.

                          -- end page 233 --

  `An American and his delightful family find a haven at Saint Hill',
the *Courier* reported in its issue of 29 May 1959.  Describing `Dr
Hubbard' as a `tall, heavily built man whose work for humanity is
known throughout the world', Larcombe made no attempt to explain the
nature of Dr Hubbard's work, but contented himself with a recap of his
subject's career, starting, naturally, with breaking broncos and
hunting coyotes on his grandfather's cattle ranch.  `When he inherited
his grandfather's cattle estates in Montana and all its debts, he
wrote it into solvency, turning his hand to anything: essays, fiction
and film scripts.'

  The inheriting of his grandfather's insolvent cattle estates was a
titbit of information Hubbard had not previously disclosed, as was his
revelation that he was deeply involved in the study of plant life.
`The production of plant mutations is one of his most important
projects at the moment.  By battering seeds with X-rays, Dr Hubbard
can either reduce a plant through its stages of evolution or advance
it.'

  It was, perhaps, inevitable that Hubbard would become an expert
gardener the instant he moved into the English countryside and the
fact that Saint Hill Manor had well-stocked greenhouses undoubtedly
helped fire his interest.  But his horticultural experiments also
helped divert attention from the real reason he had bought the estate:
his intention was that it should become the world-wide headquarters of
Scientology.  Hubbard surmised, no doubt correctly, that the people of
East Grinstead were not quite ready for this piece of information.

  In August, the *Courier* reported that the experiments being
conducted at Saint Hill by the `nuclear scientist, Dr Hubbard'
promised to revolutionize gardening.  By treating seeds with
`radioactive rays' he was growing tomato plants 16 feet high, with an
average of 15 trusses and 45 tomatoes on each truss.  He had also
discovered that an `infra-red ray lamp' provided complete protection
against mildew, a discovery that was likely to save market gardeners
`thousands of pounds'.

  The reporter, again, was Alan Larcombe: `He showed us some very big
tomatoes and I remember thinking at the time that anyone could have
grown them that size with fertilizers, but he was very keen we should
take a photograph of them, so we did.'[1] The picture the newspaper
used was of little Quentin, five years old, standing on duckboards in
his father's greenhouse, staring solemnly at the camera through a
forest of tomato and maize plants.

  Dr Hubbard's experiments soon came to the attention of *Garden
News*, to which publication he revealed, gardener to gardener, his
conviction that plants felt pain.  He demonstrated by connecting an
E-meter to a geranium with crocodile clips, tearing off its leaves and
showing how the needle of the E-meter oscillated as he did so.  The

__________
 1. Interview with Alan Larcombe, East Grinstead, November 1985

                          -- end page 234 --

*Garden News* correspondent was enormously excited and wrote a story
under the sensational headline `PLANTS DO WORRY AND FEEL PAIN',
describing Hubbard as a `revolutionary horticultural scientist'.[2]

  It was not long before television and Fleet Street reporters were
beating a path to Saint Hill Manor demanding to interview Hubbard
about his novel theories.  Always pleased to help the gentlemen of the
press, he was memorably photographed looking compassionately at a
tomato jabbed by probes attached to an E-meter -- a picture that
eventually found its way into *Newsweek* magazine, causing a good deal
of harmless merriment at his expense.  Alan Whicker, a well-known
British television interviewer, did his best to make Hubbard look like
a crank, but Hubbard contrived to come across as a rather likeable and
confident personality.  When Whicker moved in for the kill,
sarcastically inquiring if rose pruning should be stopped lest it
caused pain and anxiety, Hubbard neatly side-stopped the question and
drew a parallel with an essential life-preserving medical operation on
a human being.  He might have whacky ideas, Whicker discovered, but he
was certainly no fool.

  Scientologists around the world could have been forgiven for
wondering what their beloved leader was up to, but an explanation was
soon forthcoming.  The purpose of Ron's experiments, they were told,
was to `reform the world's food supply'.  He had already produced
`ever-bearing tomato plants and sweetcorn plants sufficiently
impressive to startle British newspapers into front-page stories about
this new wizardry'.[3]

  Soon after Hubbard moved into Saint Hill, the Church of Scientology
commissioned a bust of its founder from the sculptor Edward Harris.
Harris liked his sitters to talk while he was working and asked his
friend, Joan Vidal, to attend the sittings and chat with Hubbard.  `My
first impression of him', she said, `was that with his very pink skin
and light red hair he looked like a fat, pink, scrubbed pig.  I
remember one of the first things he told me was that you could hear a
tomato scream if you cut it and that's why he never ate tomatoes.  He
talked a lot about whether vegetables could feel pain and about all
his past lives.  It was very entertaining; it was obvious he had a
good mind and was widely read.

  `After the bust was finished we were invited to dinner with him and
his wife at Saint Hill.  When we arrived we were met by Mary Sue.  She
was a rather drab, mousy, nothing sort of person quite a bit younger
than him.  She showed us into a book-lined study and he waited a few
minutes, rather theatrically, before making an entrance.  I don't
think they had finished work on the house because we had dinner in the
kitchen.  It was all white tiled, very antiseptic, and the meal was
served by a woman wearing a white overall, white shoes and stockings.
There

__________
 2. *Garden News*, 18 December 1959
 3. *A Piece of Blue Sky*, Jon Atack, 1992

                          -- end page 235 --

was nothing to drink but Coca-Cola or water and the food was awful --
we had frozen plaice fillets, a few vegetables and ice-cream, but he
had an enormous steak overhanging his plate.  It was obvious that
everything revolved around him.  He was almost like Oswald Mosley, he
had the same sort of power.  Both of them talked a lot about past
lives; they told me that their daughter had previously been a
telephone operator who had died in a fire.  We didn't stay late and
when we got back to Victoria Station Eddie and I were both so hungry
that we went in the buffet and had delicious roast lamb
sandwiches.'[4]

  In October, Dr Hubbard unveiled yet another of his interests.
Learning that East Grinstead had been unable to fill a vacancy for a
Road Safety Organizer, he volunteered for the job.  As he explained to
a meeting of the East Grinstead Road Safety Committee, he was anxious
to make a contribution to the community and he felt that the
experience he had gained serving on `numerous' road safety committees
in the United States could be put to good use in East Grinstead.  He
gave an interesting talk on road safety campaigns in the United
States, put forward many ideas on how to reduce accidents locally,
confidently answered questions and was unanimously elected as the
town's new Road Safety Organizer by a grateful committee.

  He was not able to give road safety considerations his attention for
too long, however, for he had arranged to visit Australia in November
to lecture the Scientologists in Melbourne.  He left London on 31
October, flying first-class on BOAC via Calcutta and Singapore.  At
the Hubbard Communications Office in Spring Street, Melbourne, he was
greeted by an ecstatic crowd of Scientologists who cheered noisily
when he announced his belief that Australia would be the first `clear
continent'.  Between lectures, he spent hours with local HASI
executives discussing ways of persuading the Australian Labour Party
and trades union movement to adopt Scientology techniques.  Hubbard
was convinced that Scientology could help Labour win the next election
in Australia, thus creating a favourable climate for the development
of the church and neutralizing the unabated hostility of the
Australian media.

  While he was still in Melbourne, Hubbard received an urgent
telephone call from Washington with bad news.  Nibs, he was told, had
`blown'.  To Scientologists, `blowing the org' (leaving the church)
was one of the worst crimes in the book: it was almost unbelievable
that the highly-placed son and namesake of the founder would take such
a step.  Nibs had simultaneously held five posts in Scientology's
increasingly cumbersome bureaucratic structure: he was Organizational
Secretary of the Founding Church of Scientology, Washington DC;
Hubbard Communications Officer-in-Charge, Washington DC; Chief
Advanced Clinical Course Instructor; Hubbard Communications Office
World Wide Technical Director; and a Member of the International
Council.

__________
 4. Interview with Joan Vidal, London, January 1986

                          -- end page 236 --

  Despite his portentous titles, Nibs was frustrated by not being able
to make any money out of Scientology and he left a letter to his
father explaining that this was the only reason for his resignation:
`Over the past few years, I have found it increasingly difficult to
maintain basic financial survival for myself and my family.  This I
must remedy.  I fully realize that I have not handled my financial
affairs in the most optimum manner.  But for six years I have managed
to provide, at least the basic necessities, in some manner.  In doing
so I have depleted all my reserves and have become deeply in debt ...'

  Hubbard, who was not exactly a pillar of rectitude in fiscal
matters, was nevertheless furious with his son.  Nibs had been in and
out of debt ever since he had first turned up on Hubbard's doorstep in
Phoenix.  The problem was that he had his father's casual attitude
towards money, but none of his talent for making it and none of his
luck.  In his resignation letter, Nibs said he was going to look for a
full-time job, but hoped to be able to continue practising Scientology
in his spare time.  He failed to take into account the fact that his
father would automatically view his defection as an act of treachery.
Hubbard would never have allowed Nibs to continue trying to make money
out of Scientology.  He quickly scribbled an airmail letter to Marilyn
Routsong on 25 November: `Nibs was trying to get more money by loans
from us.  This may make a field upset but we'll survive.  If he goes
into practice anywhere or starts up a squirrel activity have HCO
cancel all certificates and awards of his.  He won't ever be hired
back.'

  A few days later Hubbard received more, equally unwelcome, family
news when his Aunt Toilie telephoned from Bremerton to say that his
seventy-four-year-old mother had had a stroke, was very ill and not
expected to live.  Hubbard had had little contact with his parents, or
the Waterbury family, since the end of the war.  Toilie was the only
one who tried to keep in touch, writing to him once or twice a year,
and it fell to her to find Ron when May was taken to hospital.
Hubbard told her, over a crackling inter-continental telephone line
that he could not get away, he was too busy.

  Toilie was quite as forceful a personality as a grey-haired old lady
as she had been as a young woman.  `You're coming home,' she told him.
`I want you to catch the next flight out.  That is orders, Ron.  You
owe that much to your mother and I pray to God you get here before
she's dead.'

  By the time Hubbard arrived in Bremerton, his mother was in a coma.
He went in to see her, held her hand and talked to her; he told the
family afterwards he was sure she knew he was there.  She died the
following day.  `Ron didn't stay for the funeral,' said his Aunt
Marnie.  `He organized the burial, ordered the stone, paid all the
expenses and

                          -- end page 237 --

made arrangements for a man from the Church of Scientology to come up
and accompany the body with Hub and Toilie to the funeral in Helena.
Then he flew back to England from Bremerton.  I thought he should have
stayed for the funeral.  I don't know what could have been so pressing
that he had to get back to England.'[5]

                                 -*-

In March 1960, the gentle burghers of East Grinstead learned a little
more about their Road Safety Organizer when he published a book titled
*Have You Lived Before This Life?* in which were described a number of
startling `past lives' revealed during auditing.  One case history
concerned a previous existence as a walrus, another as a fish, a third
had witnessed the destruction of Pompeii in AD 79 and a fourth had
been a `very happy being who strayed to the planet Nostra
23,064,000,000 years ago'.

  The *Courier* reported that the book caused a `storm of controversy'
in the town, as might have been anticipated, and Hubbard was prompted
to issue a statement seeking to explain something of Scientology:
`Scientific research work on Dianetics and Scientology has been
carried out by Dr L. Ron Hubbard, and skilled persons employed by him,
over the past 30 years.  Only since 1950 has the knowledge gleaned
from this exacting and penetrating work into the functions of the mind
been released to the general public in the form of special and skilled
treatment ... In connection with Dr Hubbard's book *Have You Lived
Before This Life?* the contents are merely reported from an observer's
point of view ...'

  In an internal memo to his press officer, Hubbard stressed the need
to emphasize constantly that he was working in the field of `nuclear
physics on life sources and life energy' in order to avoid being
tagged as a psychiatrist or spiritualist.  `This will take some doing,
perhaps,' he added, in a rare moment of candour.[6]

  Hubbard need not have worried overmuch as far as East Grinstead was
concerned, since the weather and the Royal Family were topics of much
greater perennial interest than whatever was going on at Saint Hill
Manor.  The cast list of the upcoming, absorbing and long-running
British royal soap opera was just being drawn up in spring 1960 -- the
Queen's third child, Prince Andrew, was born in February and Princess
Margaret was due to marry in May.  To add a little spice to the
conversation in East Grinstead pubs, there was also the forthcoming
obscenity trial of D. H. Lawrence's masterpiece, *Lady Chatterley's
Lover*.

  This last event was being followed closely by Mary Sue as her
husband had recently uncovered a previous life coincidentally
revealing her to have been none other than D. H. Lawrence!  In a
letter to her friend, Marilyn Routsong, Mary Sue explained the
considerable

__________
 5. Interview with Mrs. Roberts
 6. *A Piece of Blue Sky*, Jon Atack, 1992

                          -- end page 238 --

problems she had experienced as D. H. Lawrence.  It seemed the great
writer had difficulty constructing plots, thought poetry was a joke
and believed little of what he wrote.

  On the strength of this previous incarnation, Mary Sue confessed
that she, too, was going to write a book and outlined the plot with a
somewhat unpromising grasp of grammar and spelling.  She wrote that it
would be completely anti-Christ.  The first sentence begins `In the
small town of Balei, a bastard child was born.'  She then intended to
show how he was really a mongrel and the son of three fathers (a joke
on the Trinity of God) because the mother had, the night in question,
slept with three of the town's most virile men and not knowing whose
sperm had reached her womb, had thereupon decided to call him Ali, Son
of ----, Son of ----, and Son of ---- which impressed the local
inhabitants and created a stir throughout the country.  She concluded
that she wouldn't have it in her name, for obvious reasons.

  In the same letter, Mary Sue mentioned the rumpus that had been
caused when Ron ordered all the staff at Saint Hill to be checked out
on an E-meter.  She noted that three office staff refused and five
domestic staff refused.  She was surprised and wrote that they were
all scared to death of the E-meter and pretending that it was
something that would only happen in America, adding that they
evidently have something to hide because of their fear to go on the
E-meter.[7]

  Hubbard's insistence that everyone who worked for him be
interrogated on the E-meter was part of the routine `security
checking' he deemed necessary to identify potential trouble-makers,
dissidents and spies.  No one in Scientology now doubted the
capability of the E-meter to expose visceral emotions and ever more
elaborate `sec-checks' would become a common feature of life in the
Scientology movement -- evidence of Hubbard's persistent paranoia
about his enemies, both those that existed in reality and those that
thronged his imagination.

  Despite the not unreasonable reluctance of some of the servants at
Saint Hill Manor to be interviewed about their private lives while
grasping tin cans attached to a mysterious electric machine, the
Hubbards had settled in comfortably by the spring of 1960.  The
painters and decorators had finished their work and the family was
enjoying the Elysian delights of gracious living in an English country
house.  On their `personal staff' there were a secretary, housekeeper,
cook, butler, valet, nanny and tutor for the children.

  The former billiards room, leading directly from the grand entrance
hall, had been re-modelled into Hubbard's private office, with a bench
seat upholstered in red leather down one side of the room and a
personal teleprinter installed alongside his desk.  Also accessible
from the hall was the family dining-room, which included a bar stocked

__________
 7. Letter from Mary Sue Hubbard to Marilyn Routsong, 4 February 1960

                          -- end page 239 --

with Coca-Cola (Hubbard's preferred drink), a large lounge and a
television room.  Upstairs, Hubbard had his own suite comprising a
sitting-room, bedroom and bathroom, adjoining Mary Sue's office,
bedroom and bathroom.  The children had bedrooms at the other end of
the house and the `Monkey Room', named after the murals painted by
John Spencer Churchill, was converted into a school-room and equipped
with trampoline.  Apart from the kitchen, most of the remaining rooms
in the manor were used as offices.

  It was the first time that the Hubbards as a family had remained in
one place for any length of time and the children were particularly
enchanted by Saint Hill Manor, with its maze of rooms and sweeping
grounds.  At weekends the four of them could usually be found,
muddy-kneed, exploring the estate or paddling in rubber boots on the
fringes of the lake; twice a week Diana and Suzette attended dancing
lessons at the local Bush Davies school.

  Hubbard, too, liked to stroll the grounds at weekends, taking
photographs with one or the other of his new cameras.  Photography was
a recently acquired hobby and his framed pictures could be found in
many of the rooms at Saint Hill.  Mainly landscapes and portraits,
they were of course universally praised, even those that were slightly
out of focus.

  All in all, visitors to Saint Hill at this time would have observed
little amiss with the nice American family who had taken up residence.
Certainly no one would have guessed that Hubbard possessed the dubious
distinction of being probably the only owner of an English country
house under the continuous surveillance of the FBI.  His file, Number
244-210-B, was much thumbed and even included an interview with his
first wife, Polly, by then re-married, who was able to say very little
except that her first husband was a `genius with a misdirected mind'.

  To some extent, the FBI's interest in Hubbard was a situation of his
own making, for the frequently intemperate bulletins and policy
letters which flowed from Saint Hill in an endless stream for
distribution to Scientologists around the world were bound to generate
the attention of J. Edgar Hoover's staff.  On 24 April 1960, for
example, Hubbard issued a bulletin to US franchise holders asking them
to do everything in their power to deny the presidency to `a person
named Richard M. Nixon'.

  He claimed that after an innocent reference to Nixon in a
Scientology magazine, two armed secret service agents, acting on
Nixon's orders, had threatened staff on duty at the founding church in
Washington: `Hulking over desks, shouting violently, they stated that
they daily had to make such calls on "lots of people" to prevent
Nixon's name from being used in ways Nixon disliked ... They said
Nixon

                          -- end page 240 --

believed in nothing the Founding Church of Scientology stood for ...

  `We want clean hands in public office in the United States.  Let's
begin by doggedly denying Nixon the presidency no matter what his
Secret Service tries to do to us now ... He hates us and has used what
police force was available to him to say so.  So please get busy on it
...'

  Nixon was indeed denied the presidency, although it was possible
that the famous televised debates with John F. Kennedy had more to do
with it than the HCO Bulletin.  But it was becoming evident that the
owner of Saint Hill Manor considered he had an important role to play
in political and international affairs and it was a responsibility he
had no intention of shirking.

  An HCO Bulletin in June promulgated the `Special Zone Plan -- The
Scientologists Role in Life', in which Hubbard explained how
Scientologists could exert influence in politics.  `Don't bother to
get elected,' he wrote.  `Get a job on the secretarial staff or the
bodyguard.'  In this way positioned close to the seat of power, he
argued, Scientology would be advantageously situated to transform an
organization.  `If we were revolutionaries,' he added, `this HCO
Bulletin would be a *very* dangerous document.'

  In August, the `Special Zone Plan' was absorbed into a new
`Department of Government Affairs' made necessary, Hubbard gravely
explained, because of the amount of time senior Scientology executives
were having to devote to governmental affairs, as governments around
the world disintegrated under the threat of atomic war and Communism.
`The goal of the Department', he wrote `is to bring government and
hostile philosophies or societies into a state of complete compliance
with the goals of Scientology.  This is done by high-level ability to
control and in its absence by a low-level ability to overwhelm.
Introvert such agencies.  Control such agencies.'

  Returning to a familiar theme, Hubbard urged his followers to defend
Scientology by attacking its opponents: `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 ... Don't ever defend, always attack.  Don't ever do
nothing.  Unexpected attacks in the rear of the enemy's front ranks
work best .'

  The Department of Government Affairs never existed other than as a
`policy letter',[8] but then much of Hubbard's private world only
existed on paper.  In HCO Bulletins and Policy Letters replete with
the trappings of bureaucratic red tape -- colour-coded distribution
lists, elaborate references, innumerable abbreviations, etc --
Scientology flourished as an international organization of enormous
influence

__________
 8. Interview with George Hay, London, March 1987

                          -- end page 241 --

waiting in the wings to save the universe from the combined perils of
Communism, nuclear weapons and its own folly.

  Sitting at an electric typewriter in his study at Saint Hill Manor,
often clicking away all night just as in the days when he was writing
science fiction, Hubbard demonstrated his extraordinary range as a
writer by effortlessly producing sheaves of documents that appeared to
have been drafted by committees of bureaucrats and lawyers.  Laid out
and printed like official government papers, they conferred dry
authority on content which, frequently, would not have withstood too
close scrutiny.  But of course no Scientologist would question the
literal truth of anything Hubbard wrote, no matter how improbable --
if Ron said it was so, it was so.

  Hubbard's blossoming omnipotence was bolstered by the stately
fashion in which he now travelled, always first-class, usually
accompanied by a faithful courtier and greeted at every destination by
an awed welcoming party of admirers.  In October and November 1960 he
visited South Africa to lecture Scientologists in Cape Town and
Johannesburg; in December he flew to Washington DC, spent Christmas
and the New Year there, returned to Johannesburg to deliver more
lectures in mid-January, and arrived back at Saint Hill Manor towards
the end of February 1961.

  In March, Hubbard announced the launch of the `Saint Hill Special
Briefing Course' for those auditors who wished to train personally
under his auspices.  The cost of the `SHSBC' was 250 per person and
the first student to enrol was Reg Sharpe, a retired businessman who
had become so enamoured with Scientology that he bought a house in the
little village of Saint Hill, adjoining the estate, in order to be
close to Ron.  For the first couple of weeks there were only two
students on the course, but more soon began to arrive from around the
world, lured by the promise that `Ron, personally, would discover and
assess with the aid of an E-meter' each student's goal `for this
lifetime'.

  Mary Sue, who was the course supervisor, also held out the prospect
of material rewards: `I want you to make money.  If any one of you
cannot conceive of an auditor driving around in a gold-plated Cadillac
or Rolls you had better reorientate yourselves.  I like the idea.[9]

  As the numbers on the Briefing Course increased, accommodation
became a problem.  The greenhouses where Ron had conducted his
pioneering horticultural experiments were demolished to make way for a
`chapel' which in reality was used as a lecture hall.  Other buildings
went up around the manor without a moment's thought for obtaining
planning permission -- Hubbard's strongly held opinion was that what
he did on his own land was his own business.  It was a view

__________
 9. HCO News Letter, 7 May 1962

                          -- end page 242 --

the local authority was disinclined to share when someone pointed out
what was going on at Saint Hill and Hubbard was eventually prevailed
upon to employ an architect and apply for planning approval like
everyone else.

  The Briefing Course would eventually comprise more than three
hundred taped lectures by L. Ron Hubbard, its longevity sustained by
`technical breakthroughs' that followed closely one upon the other,
each new technique replacing the last and requiring dedicated
Scientologists to trek back to Saint Hill time and time again in order
to keep up to date.

  When Hubbard was not lecturing he was writing directives covering
everything from how to save the world to how to clean his office.  No
detail was too insignificant to merit his attention: one HCO Policy
Letter covering two pages was posted prominently in the garage at
Saint Hill explaining how cars should be washed and another was
addressed to the Household Section headed `Flowers, Care Of'.  He also
dashed off a new potted biography of himself adding further gloss to
his already well-burnished career.  It was included in a handout
headed `What Is Scientology?':

  `For hundreds of years physical scientists have been seeking to
apply the exact knowledge they had gained of the physical universe to
Man and his problems.  Newton, Sir James Jeans, Einstein, have all
sought to find the exact laws of human behaviour in order to help
Mankind.

  `Developed by L. Ron Hubbard, C.E., Ph.D., a nuclear physicist,
Scientology has demonstrably achieved this long-sought goal.  Doctor
Hubbard, educated in advanced physics and higher mathematics and also
a student of Sigmund Freud and others, began his present researches
thirty years ago at George Washington University.  The dramatic result
has been Scientology ...'

  The laudable aim of `helping mankind' sat rather uncomfortably with
the requirement for security checks, which were stepped up during
1961.  An even more intrusive questionnaire was introduced which
appeared to have been designed with perverts and criminals rather than
potential trouble-makers in mind.  Many of the questions reflected
Hubbard's morbid preoccupation with sexual deviation ('Have you ever
had intercourse with a member of your family' and `Have you ever had
anything to do with a baby farm?')  and a wide range of crimes were
also probed ('Have you ever murdered anyone?'  and `Have you ever done
any illicit diamond buying?').  In addition Hubbard specifically
wanted to know if the individual being checked had ever `had any
unkind thoughts' about himself or Mary Sue.  Every check sheet was
forwarded to Saint Hill on Hubbard's orders.  When combined with the
individual folders in which details of auditing

                          -- end page 243 --

sessions were recorded, they made up a comprehensive dossier in which
the innermost thoughts of every member of the Church of Scientology
were filed.

  Three days after Christmas 1961, Hubbard flew to Washington DC to
attend a congress and publicize the benefits to be obtained by
enrolling in the Saint Hill Briefing Course.  He asked Reg Sharpe to
accompany him on the trip and Sharpe was very soon made aware of his
leader's little foibles.  When their aeroplane stopped for re-fuelling
at Boston, Hubbard scurried across the passenger terminal and stood
with his back pressed against a wall for the duration of the stop,
explaining to his bemused companion that there were people `out to get
him'.

  In Washington, Sharpe was astonished by the adulation with which
Hubbard was received.  He lectured for about four hours on each day of
the congress to a spellbound audience and had refined his speaking
technique to a fine art, shamelessly borrowing the tricks of show
business and political conventions.  He liked to appear at the back of
the hall to the accompaniment of a drum roll and stride through the
audience, waving his arms in greeting and shaking hands on the way to
the rostrum.  His timing, the essence of a good speaker, was faultless
and he could hold an entire auditorium in thrall for hours.  Like a
cabaret artiste doing two spots a night, he got into the habit of
changing his clothes during a break, appearing for the second half of
his lecture in a silk suit of a different colour, or sometimes a gold
lam jacket.  It held the interest of the audience, he explained, and
also solved his perspiration problems.

  Hubbard's vigorous promotion of Saint Hill as the Mecca of
Scientology resulted in hundreds of young Americans making their way
to East Grinstead, somewhat to the surprise of the townspeople, who
still had very little idea of what was going on.  `Dr Hubbard' had
recently adopted a rather lower profile locally: he resigned from his
position as the town's Road Safety Organizer, pleading pressure of
business, was very rarely seen outside the grounds of Saint Hill Manor
and no longer courted publicity from the local newspapers.  By and
large, the influx of American visitors to the town was welcomed: they
were quiet, polite and spent freely.  If they were less than
forthcoming about what they were doing in the area, that was all right
with the locals, who instinctively respected the rights of folk who
wanted to `keep themselves to themselves'.

  Members of East Grinstead Urban Council expressed some faint concern
inasmuch as Saint Hill Manor was restricted, by planning regulations,
to private residential use, but such was Dr Hubbard's reputation that
they resolved to do no more than urge him, in confidence, to apply for
planning permission regularizing the use of

                          -- end page 244 --

the manor for office and research purposes.  He responded by slapping
in a planning application to build a seventy-five-room administration
centre in the grounds of the manor and circularizing a `Report to the
Community' appealing for support.

  In the report, Hubbard revealed to the people of East Grinstead that
as a result of his experiments on plants and `living energies' he was
able to reduce the physiological age of an individual by as much as
twenty years and increase the average life span by as much as
twenty-five per cent.  `We have not announced anything of this to the
press,' he confided, `as we are already overworked in centres of the
world for discoveries such as these.  But we wanted you as a friend to
be aware of this, and consider you have the right to know what is
happening here.'

  In August, Hubbard turned his attention to the broader arena of
international affairs by offering to help President Kennedy narrow the
gap in the space race.  The young president had committed the United
States to landing a man on the moon before the decade was out and, as
a loyal American, Hubbard obviously wanted to do what he could to
help.  On 13 August 1962, he wrote a long letter to the White House to
advise Kennedy that Scientology techniques were peculiarly applicable
to space flight and that the perception of an astronaut could be
increased far beyond human range and stamina to levels hitherto
unattained in human beings.

  To establish his bona fides, Hubbard claimed to have coached the
`British Olympic team', producing unheard-of results.  He added that
he had been fending off approaches from the Russians for years, ever
since he was offered Pavlov's laboratories in 1938.  The first
manuscript of his work had been stolen in Miami in 1942, the second in
Los Angeles in 1950 and `only last week' Communist interests had
stolen forty hours of tape containing the latest research work from
the Scientology headquarters in South Africa.

  Although he was convinced that there was a growing library on
Scientology in Russia, fortunately the Russians did not yet have the
advanced knowledge that would be applicable to the space programme.
All the US Government need do, he said, was turn over anyone needing
conditioning for space flight and Scientology would do the rest.  Each
man would need processing for about 250 hours and the cost would only
be $25 an hour, with the possibility of a discount for large numbers.
`Man will not successfully get into space without us ...'  he warned.
`We do not wish the United States to lose either the space race or the
next war.  The deciding factor in that race or that war may very well
be lying in your hands at this moment, and may depend on what is done
with this letter ... Courteously, L. Ron Hubbard.'

                          -- end page 245 --

  It seemed that Hubbard seriously expected his offer to receive
proper consideration in the Oval Office, for two weeks later he was in
Washington discussing with the staff at the Hubbard Communications
Office how to handle the expected inflow of astronauts.  It was agreed
that any dealings with the US Government would be on a cash basis
only, that they would reserve the right to reject anyone they
considered to be unsuitable and that if Government officials wanted to
investigate Scientology techniques they would be told, pleasantly, to
`go up the spout'.  If there was a flood of astronauts arriving for
processing, Ron would come over from Saint Hill and set up a special
operation to handle them.[10]

  On the voyage back to England, travelling first-class on the *Queen
Elizabeth* with Reg Sharpe, the two men passed their time auditing
each other.  Hubbard told his friend that in a past life on another
planet he had been in charge of a factory making steel humanoids which
he sold to thetans, offering hire purchase terms if they could not
afford the cash price.

  Back at Saint Hill, Hubbard was baffled to discover that the
President had not replied to his letter, but everything was made clear
to him a few months later when agents of the Food and Drugs
Administration staged a raid on the Scientology headquarters in
Washington.  It was *obvious* to Hubbard that the President had asked
the FDA to look into Scientology as a result of his letter and the
FDA, wishing to promote its own programmes, had attempted to turn the
tables on Scientology.

__________
10. Minutes of special staff meeting, HCO Washington, 29 August 1952

                          -- end page 246 --

                             *Chapter 15*

                          *Visits to Heaven*

  `Well, I have been to heaven ... It was complete with gates, angels
and plaster saints -- and electronic implantation equipment.'  (L. Ron
Hubbard, HCO Bulletin 11 May 1963)

                              * * * * *

The FDA raid on the Church of Scientology on 4 January 1963, was a
farce better suited to the Keystone Cops than a federal agency.  Two
unmarked vans, escorted by motor-cycle police, screeched to a halt
outside 1810-12 19th Street, Washington NW, in the middle of the
afternoon and as police blockaded both ends of the quiet residential
street, FDA agents and US marshals in plain clothes jumped out of the
vans and ran into the building.  Passers-by might well have assumed
they were after terrorists of the most dangerous order.  It would then
have been something of a surprise when the brave officers began
staggering out shortly afterwards with nothing more menacing than
piles of books and papers and stacks of boxed E-meters.  Such was the
haul that two more trucks had to be called in before the afternoon's
work was complete, by which time the FDA was able to announce, with an
evident sense of triumph, that it had seized more than three tons of
literature and equipment.

  The feeble justification for these heavy-handed tactics was unveiled
when the FDA filed charges accusing the Church of Scientology of
having `false and misleading' labels on its E-meters.  As it would
have been perfectly feasible to file a similar charge by purchasing a
single E-meter from any Scientology office, the raid exposed the Food
and Drug Administration to considerable derision and provided the
church with a wonderful opportunity to capitalize on its newly
martyred status.  FDA agents were portrayed as armed thugs bursting
into `confessional and pastoral counselling sessions' and desecrating
the sanctity of a church.  Scientology press releases described the
raid as a `shocking example of government bureaucracy gone mad' and a
`direct and frightening attack upon the Constitutional rights of
freedom of religion'.[1]

  On 5 January, L. Ron Hubbard issued a statement from Saint Hill

__________
 1. `The Findings on the US Food and Drug Agency' [*sic*], Church of
    Scientology, 1968

                          -- end page 247 --

Manor: `All I can make of this is that the United States Government
... has launched an attack upon religion and is seizing and burning
books of philosophy ... Where will this end?  Complete censorship?  A
complete ignoring of the First Amendment?  Are churches to be attached
and books burned as a normal course of action?'

  There had been no suggestion that the material carted away by the
FDA would be burned, but that did not prevent Hubbard returning to the
theme in a second statement the following day, as well as making the
connection between the FDA raid and his letter to President Kennedy.
He claimed that `twice in recent years' the White House had asked for
a presentation of Scientology and he had thought it only courteous to
make the same offer to Kennedy, not realizing that lesser officials
were `imbued with ideas of religious persecution'.  He was still
hoping for a conference with the president, he said, slyly alluding to
recent events by adding that he would expect to be given some
guarantee for his `personal safety'.  Hubbard ended on an almost
jocular note: `As all of my books have been seized for burning, it
looks as though I will have to get busy and write another book.'

  In fact, 1963 was one of the few years in which Hubbard did not
produce a single book.  Instead, he chose to remain at Saint Hill
issuing increasingly bizarre proclamations.  On 13 March -- his
fifty-second birthday -- he bestowed a general amnesty on his
followers, in the fashion of some middle-eastern potentate: `Any and
all offences of any kind before this date, discovered or undiscovered,
are fully and completely forgiven.  Directed at Saint Hill, on March
the thirteenth, 1963, in the 13th year of Dianetics and Scientology.
L. Ron Hubbard.'

  The amnesty was followed in May by the foudroyant revelation that
Hubbard had twice visited heaven, 43 trillion and 42 trillion years
earlier.  In a four-page HCO Bulletin -- dated 11 May AD 13 (meaning
`After Dianetics') -- he claimed the first visit had taken place
43,891,832,611,177 years, 344 days, 10 hours, 20 minutes and 40
seconds from 10.02pm Daylight Greenwich Mean Time 9 May 1963.
Nit-pickers might have pointed out that `Daylight Greenwich Mean Time'
was a term unknown in horology and that, in any case, at 10.02pm on a
May evening in Britain it would be dark, but this was a trifling
matter compared with what was to come.

  The first surprise was that heaven was not a floating island in the
sky as everyone imagined, but simply a high place in the mountains of
an unnamed planet.  Visitors first arrived in a `town' comprising a
trolley bus, some building fronts, sidewalks, train tracks, a boarding
house, a bistro in a basement and a bank building.  Although there
seemed to be people around -- in the boarding house, for example,

                          -- end page 248 --

there was a guest and a landlady in a kimono, reading a newspaper --
Hubbard quickly discovered they were only effigies and probably
radioactive, since `contact with them hurts'.  However, he was able to
report he saw `no devils or satans' [perhaps because he was supposed
to be in heaven].

  The bank was the key point of interest in the town.  It was an
old-fashioned corner building of granite-like material with a
revolving door.  Inside, to the left of the door, was a counter and
directly opposite was a flight of marble stairs leading to the Pearly
Gates!  `The gates ... are well done, well built,' Hubbard wrote.  `An
avenue of statues of saints leads up to them.  The gate pillars are
surmounted by marble angels.  The entering grounds are very well kept,
laid out like Bush Gardens in Pasadena, so often seen in the movies.'

  On his second visit to heaven, a trillion years later, Hubbard
noticed marked changes: `The place is shabby.  The vegetation is gone.
The pillars are scruffy.  The saints have vanished.  So have the
angels.  A sign on one side (the left as you "enter") says "this is
Heaven".  The right has a sign "Hell" with an arrow and inside the
grounds one can see the excavations like archeological diggings with
raw terraces, that lead to "Hell".  Plain wire fencing encloses the
place.  There is a sentry box beside and outside the right pillar ...'

  Hubbard's visits to heaven would become something of an
embarrassment to Scientologists in future years and they would strive
to explain that he had intended his description to be allegory, but
Hubbard himself attached a note to the bulletin seeming to deny its
contents were allegorical.

  `This HCO Bulletin', he stressed, `is based on over a thousand hours
of research auditing ... It is scientific research and is not in any
way based upon the mere opinion of the researcher.'[2]

  In August, Hubbard turned his attention to more temporal issues by
re-defining Scientology policy towards the media.  Typically, he did
not mince words.  Almost all Scientology's bad publicity, he asserted,
could be blamed on the American Medical Association, which wanted to
cause maximum harm to the movement in order to protect its private
healing monopoly.  `The reporter who comes to you, all smiles and
withholds, wanting a story,' he said, `has an AMA instigated release
in his pocket.  He is there to trick you into supporting his
preconceived story.  The story he will write has already been outlined
by a sub-editor from old clippings and AMA releases ...'

  Hubbard's sensitivity towards newspapers was understandable, since
Scientology was an easy target and wherever it flourished it was
attacked by a universally unsympathetic press.  In Australia, the
church had suffered a great deal of unfavourable publicity, in

__________
 2. HCO Bulletin, 11 May 1963

                          -- end page 249 --

particular from a Melbourne newspaper, *Truth*, which published a
series of hostile features about Scientologists being `brainwashed'
and alienated from their families.  The media attacks led to questions
in the Parliament of Victoria, allegations of blackmail and extortion,
and accusations that Scientology was affecting the `mental well-being'
of undergraduates at Melbourne University.  In November 1963, the
Victoria government appointed a Board of Inquiry into Scientology.

  At Saint Hill Manor, Hubbard at first professed himself to be
pleased about the Australian inquiry and even hinted that it bad been
set up at his instigation.  But it soon became evident that the
inquiry was basically antagonistic to Scientology and when an
invitation arrived from Melbourne for him to appear, he contrived to
find compelling reasons to refuse.

  In March 1964, the *Saturday Evening Post* published what would be
one of the last full-scale media interviews with L. Ron Hubbard, even
though he would be pursued by reporters for the rest of his life.  It
was an unusually objective feature, although little new was revealed
except for Hubbard's claim that he had recently been approached by
Fidel Castro to train a corps of Cuban Scientologists.  The founder of
the Church of Scientology appeared willing to discuss any subject
except money.  He was, he said, independently wealthy and drew only a
token salary of $70 a week, Scientology being a `labour of love'.

  Certainly the *Saturday Evening Post* reporter was deeply impressed
by Hubbard's lifestyle -- the Georgian mansion, the butler who served
his afternoon Coca-Cola on a silver tray, the chauffeur polishing the
new Pontiac and the Jaguar in the garage, and the broad acres of the
estate.[3] But while it might have seemed to a visiting journalist
that Hubbard had acquired many of the traditional tastes of an English
country gentleman, the reality was very different, as Ken Urquhart, a
dedicated young Scientologist who worked as the butler at Saint Hill,
explained: `Neither Ron nor Mary Sue lived the way one might have
expected in a house like that.  They spent most of their time working;
there was very little socializing.  They would go to bed very late,
usually in the small hours of the morning, and get up in the early
afternoon.

  `Ron used to audit himself with an E-meter as soon as he got out of
bed.  When he called down to the kitchen I would take him up a cup of
hot chocolate and stay with him while he drank it.  He used to sit at
a table at the end of his four-poster bed chatting about the news or
the weather or the latest goings-on at Saint Hill.  I remember he used
to talk a lot about his childhood.  He seemed to want to give the
impression that he was rather upper-class; he liked to use French
expressions, for example, although his accent was *dreadful*.  He said
his mother was a very fine woman.  He told me that when she was in

__________
 3. *Saturday Evening Post*, 21 March 1964

                          -- end page 250 --

hospital desperately ill he got there just in time to tell her that
all she had to do was leave her body and go down to the maternity ward
and pick up another one.  He didn't say what her reaction was.

  `When he went to have a bath I'd extricate myself and rush
downstairs to cook breakfast for him and Mary Sue.  She had a separate
bedroom, but usually had breakfast with him -- scrambled eggs,
sausages, mushrooms and tomatoes.  After breakfast he would go into
his office and I would rarely see him again until six-thirty when I
had to have the table laid for dinner.  At six-twenty-five I would go
into his office with a jacket for him to wear to table and after
dinner they would spend an hour or so watching television with the
children and then he and Mary Sue would return to work in their
separate offices.

  `I really loved working for Ron; I would have done anything for him.
To me he was superhuman, a very unusual, very great person who really
wanted to help the world.  I was less sure about Mary Sue; I never
quite knew where I stood with her.  She could be very sweet and
loving, but also very cold.  The first time I had any contact with her
was on the first Sunday I was at Saint Hill.  She came into the
kitchen where I was preparing dinner and did not say a word to me.  I
thought that was very strange.  She was fiercely protective of her
children and I liked them a lot.  Arthur had a few problems because he
was the youngest and the others wouldn't play with him.  Diana was
heavily into ballet lessons.  They were nice.'

  Urquhart was a Scot who had been studying music at Trinity College
in London when he was introduced to Dianetics.  `It was as if someone
had swept the cobwebs out of my mind,' he said.  He was working
part-time as a waiter when Ron asked him if he would help out at Saint
Hill as a butler.  `I wouldn't have done it for anyone else.  I used
to cook all the meals, sweep the floors, make the beds, rush around
all day long, for 12 a week plus room and board.  I was perfectly
happy, but things changed quite a bit early in 1965 when "ethics" came
in.  I was assigned a "condition of emergency" because I served him
salmon for dinner that was not quite fresh.  I was shocked.  You had
to go through a whole formula, write it up and submit it with an
application to be up-graded.'[4]

  `Conditions' were an essential part of the new `ethics technology'
devised by Hubbard in the mid-sixties, effectively as a form of social
control.  It was his first, tentative step towards the creation of a
society within Scientology which would ultimately resemble the
totalitarian state envisaged by George Orwell in his novel *1984 *.
Anyone *thought* to be disloyal, or slacking, or breaking the rules of
Scientology, was reported to an `ethics officer' and assigned a
`condition' according to the gravity of the offence.  Various
penalties were attached to each

__________
 4. Interview with Ken Urquhart, Maclean, VA., April 1986

                          -- end page 251 --

condition.  In a `condition of liability' for example, the offender
was required to wear a dirty grey rag tied around his or her left arm.
The worst that could happen was to be declared an `SP' (suppressive
person), which was tantamount to excommunication from the church.  SPs
were defined by Hubbard as `fair game' to be pursued, sued and
harassed at every possible opportunity.

  `What happened with the development of ethics,' said Cyril Vosper,
who worked on the staff at Saint Hill, `was that zeal expanded at the
expense of tolerance and sanity.  My feeling was that Mary Sue devised
a lot of the really degrading aspects of ethics.  I always had great
warmth and admiration for Ron -- he was a remarkable individual, a
constant source of new information and ideas -- but I thought Mary Sue
was an exceedingly nasty person.  She was a bitch.

  `Hubbard had this incredible dynamism, a disarming, magnetic and
overwhelming personality.  I remember being at Saint Hill one Sunday
evening and running into him and as we started to talk people gathered
round.  People had a wonderful feeling with him of being in the
presence of a great man.'[5]

                                 -*-

In October 1965, the Australian Board of Inquiry into Scientology
published its report.  Conducted by Kevin Anderson QC, the inquiry sat
for 160 days, heard evidence from 151 witnesses and then savagely
condemned every aspect of Scientology.  No one needed to progress
beyond the first paragraph to guess at what was to follow:

  `There are some features of Scientology which are so ludicrous that
there may be a tendency to regard Scientology as silly and its
practitioners as harmless cranks.  To do so would be gravely to
misunderstand the tenor of the Board's conclusions.  This Report
should be read, it is submitted, with these prefatory observations
constantly in mind.  Scientology is evil; its techniques evil; its
practice a serious threat to the community, medically, morally and
socially; and its adherents sadly deluded and often mentally ill.'

  In many cases, the report continued, mental derangement and a loss
of critical faculties resulted from Scientology processing, which
tended to produce subservience amounting almost to mental enslavement.
Because of fear, delusion and debilitation, the individual often found
it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to escape.  Furthermore,
the potentiality for misuse of confidence was great and the existence
of files containing the most intimate secrets and confessions of
thousands of individuals was a constant threat to them and a matter of
grave concern.

  As for L. Ron Hubbard, the report suggested that his sanity was to
be `gravely doubted'.  His writing, abounding in self-glorification
and grandiosity, replete with histrionics and hysterical, incontinent

__________
 5. Interview with Vosper

                          -- end page 252 --

outbursts, was the product of a person of unsound mind.  His teachings
about thetans and past lives were nonsensical; he had a persecution
complex; he had a great fear of matters associated with women and a
`prurient and compulsive urge to write in the most disgusting and
derogatory way' on such subjects as abortions, intercourse, rape,
sadism, perversion and abandonment.  His propensity for neologisms was
commonplace in the schizophrenic and his compulsion to invent
increasingly bizarre theories and experiences was strongly indicative
of paranoid schizophrenia with delusions of grandeur.  `Symptoms', the
report added, `common to dictators.'

  It continued in similar vein for 173 pages, concluding: `If there
should be detected in this report a note of unrelieved denunciation of
Scientology, it is because the evidence has shown its theories to be
fantastic and impossible, its principles perverted and ill-founded,
and its techniques debased and harmful.  Scientology is a delusional
belief system, based on fiction and fallacies and propagated by
falsehood and deception ... Its founder, with the merest smattering of
knowledge in various sciences, has built upon the scintilla of his
learning a crazy and dangerous edifice.  The HASI claims to be "the
world's largest mental health organization".  What it really is
however, is the world's largest organization of unqualified persons
engaged in the practice of dangerous techniques which masquerade as
mental therapy.'[6]

  It was not difficult to `detect' a note of unrelieved denunciation
in the Anderson report; indeed, in its intemperate tone, its use of
emotive rhetoric and its tendency to exaggerate and distort, it bore a
marked similarity to the writings of L. Ron Hubbard.  In his
determination to undermine Scientology, Anderson completely ignored
the fact that thousands of decent, honest, well-meaning people around
the world believed themselves to be benefiting from the movement.  To
condemn the church as `evil' was to brand its followers as either evil
or stupid or both -- an undeserved imputation.

  Bloodied but unbowed, Hubbard began fighting back against the
Anderson report on the day of its publication, beginning with a
rebuttal written exclusively for the East Grinstead *Courier*,
accusing the Australian inquiry of being an illegal `kangaroo court'
which had refused to allow him to appear in his own defence.  Its
findings were `hysterical', he said, and not based on the facts.  He
compared the inquiry to the heresy trials which had led to witches
being burned at the stake in the dark ages.

  However, Dr Hubbard -- described as `the son of a Montana cattle
baron' -- still found it in his heart to be munificent: `Well,
Australia is young.  In 1942, as the senior US naval officer in
Northern Australia, by a fluke of fate, I helped save them from the
Japanese.  For the sake of Scientologists there, I will go on helping
them ... Socrates said,

__________
 6. Anderson, *op. cit.*

                          -- end page 253 --

"Philosophy is the greatest of the arts and it ought to be practiced."
I intend to keep on writing it and practicing it and helping others as
I can.'

  For his fellow Scientologists, Hubbard had a slightly different
message.  What had gone wrong in Australia, he explained, was that he
had approved co-operation with an inquiry into *all* mental health
services.  ('We could have had a ball and put psychiatry on trial for
murder, mercy killing, sterilization, torture and sex practices and
could have wiped out psychiatry's good name.')  Unfortunately, because
of bungling somewhere along the line, the inquiry had been narrowed to
Scientology only, `so it was a mess'.

  He laid out the procedure to be followed if there were further
official inquiries into Scientology.  The first step was to identify
the antagonists, next investigate them `for felonies or worse' and
then start feeding `lurid, blood sex crime actual evidence on the
attackers' to the press.  `*Don't ever* tamely submit to an
investigation of us,' he warned.  `Make it rough, rough on attackers
all the way.'[7]

  Hubbard soon showed he was prepared to take the lead.  The storm
caused by the Anderson report was not merely restricted to ephemeral
headlines: it provoked further and continuing media investigation into
Scientology and prodded governments into taking punitive measures
against the church.  The reaction, sociologist Roy Wallis noted, was
comparable to an international moral panic: `The former conception of
the movement as a relatively harmless, if cranky, health and
self-improvement cult, was transformed into one which portrayed it as
evil, dangerous, a form of hypnosis (with all the overtones of
Svengali in the layman's mind), and brainwashing.'[8]

  The Australian government was first to act: in December 1965, the
State of Victoria passed the Psychological Practices Act which
effectively outlawed Scientology and empowered the Attorney General to
seize and destroy all Scientology documents and recordings.  Then the
country playing host to the `evil Dr Hubbard' could hardly be expected
to ignore the Anderson report and on 7 February 1966, Lord Balniel,
MP, then chairman of the National Association for Mental Health, stood
up in the House of Commons and asked the Minister of Health to
initiate an inquiry into Scientology in Britain.

  Two days later, Hubbard issued an instruction from Saint Hill Manor:
`Get a detective on that Lord's past to unearth the titbits.  They're
there.'[9] On 17 February he set up a `Public Investigation Section'
to be staffed by professional private detectives.  Its function was to
`help LRH [Hubbard became known in Scientology by his initials]
investigate public matters and individuals which seem to impede human
liberty' and `furnish intelligence'.  The first private investigator
hired to head the section was told to find at least one bad

__________
 7. *Enquiry into the Practice & Effects of Scientology*, Sir John
    Foster, 1971
 8. *The Road To Total Freedom*, Roy Wallis, 1976
 9. Secretarial Executive Director, Office of LRH, 9 February 1966

                          -- end page 254 --

mark ('a murder, an assault, or a rape') on every psychiatrist in
Britain, starting with Lord Balniel.  Unfortunately for Hubbard, the
gallant detective promptly scuttled off and sold his story to a Sunday
newspaper, creating more unfavourable publicity for Scientology.[10]

  Scientology's `official' reply to the Anderson report was a
forty-eight-page document, bound in black and gold, and titled
`Kangaroo Court.  An investigation into the conduct of the Board of
Inquiry into Scientology.'  It was hardly designed to win the hearts
and minds of the average Australian.  `Only a society founded by
criminals, organized by criminals and devoted to making people
criminals, could come to such a conclusion [about Scientology] ...'
the introduction declared.  `The foundation of Victoria consists of
the riff-raff of London's slums -- robbers, murderers, prostitutes,
fences, thieves -- the scourings of Newgate and Bedlam ... the
niceties of truth and fairness, of hearing witnesses and weighing
evidence, are not for men whose ancestry is lost in the promiscuity of
the prison ships of transportation ...'

  After airing the manifold grievances of the church, `Kangaroo Court'
returned to its initial theme: `The insane attack on Scientology in
the State of Victoria, can best be understood if Victoria is seen for
what it is -- a very primitive community, somewhat barbaric, with a
rudimentary knowledge of the physical sciences.'  There followed a
defiant quote from L. Ron Hubbard: `The future of Scientology in
Australia is bright and shiny.  We will continue to grow and progress.
No vested interests or blackhearted politicians, no matter how much
power they seem to ally themselves with, can stop our thoughts or our
communications ... We will be here teaching and listening when our
opponents' names are merely mis-spelled references in a history book
of tyranny.'

  Despite his apparent confidence, Hubbard recognized that
Scientologists needed a boost to their morale in the face of the
concerted attacks from the media following the Anderson report.  In
February 1966, rumours began to circulate among Scientologists that
one of their number had at last achieved the fabled state of being
`clear' (Sonya Bianca's performance at The Shrine in Los Angeles
having been long forgotten).  To become `clear' was still the goal of
every Scientologist, but it was proving an extraordinarily elusive
one.  New levels of processing were continually introduced at Saint
Hill, each with the promise that it would result in `clearing', only
to be replaced by another level and yet more promises.

  Among the students completing the Level VII course in February 1966
was John McMaster, a South African in his mid-thirties who worked on
the staff at Saint Hill as director of the Hubbard Guidance Center.
McMaster had been a medical student in Durban when he

__________
10. The *People*, 20 March 1966

                          -- end page 255 --

first came across Scientology in 1959.  He had had part of his stomach
removed because of cancer and was in more or less continuous pain
until his first auditing session, after which the pain disappeared.
Totally converted, he arrived at Saint Hill to take the Briefing
Course in 1963 and was subsequently invited by Hubbard to join the
staff.

  After he had graduated as a Level VII auditor, McMaster was sent to
Los Angeles by Hubbard to spread the news of the latest `technology'
being taught at Saint Hill.  He had only been there a couple of days
when he received a cable: `Congratulations, world's first clear'.  He
was ordered to return to Saint Hill immediately for a final check on
an E-meter by the `qualifications secretary'.  On 8 March he passed
the check without a quiver on the needle of the E-meter, proving that
he had completely erased the memory bank of his reactive mind.  He was
clear!

  `It's with greatest joy and happiness,' the qualifications secretary
advised Hubbard, `I have to report to you that John McMaster has
passed the Clear check and no doubt exists that he has erased his bank
completely ... Thank you for the honour and privilege of checking out
the first Clear.'[11]

  The excitement this event caused within Scientology was further
heightened when the gratifying word was spread that McMaster possessed
all the attributes prophesied by Ron sixteen years earlier in
*Dianetics, The Modern Science of Mental Health*.  Indeed, it was said
that the world's first clear was actually *glowing*!

  The *Auditor*, the journal of Scientology, trumpeted the joyous
event in its next issue and quoted McMaster: `It is a great privilege
to have been able to follow the stepping stones paved in the wake of
Time by such a man as L. Ron Hubbard, for although I have worked for
it, I could never have realized it without the great gift he has
given, not only to me, but all Mankind.'  To celebrate the great
occasion, Hubbard proclaimed another `general amnesty'.

  On the same day McMaster was checked out as `clear', a curious
advertisement appeared in the personal column of *The Times*: `I, L.
Ron Hubbard, of Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead, Sussex, having
reviewed the damage being done in our society with nuclear physics and
psychiatry by persons calling themselves "Doctor" do hereby resign in
protest my university degree as a Doctor of philosophy (Ph.D.),
anticipating an early public outcry against anyone called Doctor; and
although not in any way connected with the bombs of "psychiatrics
treatment" or treatment of the sick, and interested only and always in
philosophy and the total freedom of the human spirit I wish no
association of any kind with these persons and do so publicly declare,
and request my friends and the public not to refer to me in any way
with this title.'

__________
11. *Saxon Hamilton Journal*, Summer 1985

                          -- end page 256 --

  Next day, the *Daily Mail* rather churlishly pointed out that the
title Hubbard had publicly renounced was bogus anyway.  Mr Hubbard was
not available for comment; his personal assistant, Reg Sharpe, told
the newspaper that Ron was abroad on holiday and was not to be
disturbed.

  Hubbard was not on holiday, he was on his way to Rhodesia, where
Prime Minister Ian Smith had recently signed a Unilateral Declaration
of Independence in defiance of the British Government.  Now that he
had no reason to hope that Australia would be the first `clear'
continent, Hubbard had scaled down his ambitions and was looking for a
country which would provide a `safe environment' for Scientology.  He
chose Rhodesia firstly because he thought he could create a favourable
climate by helping to solve the UDI crisis and secondly because he
believed he had been Cecil Rhodes in a previous life.  He told Reg
Sharpe that he hoped to be able to recover gold and diamonds he was
convinced Rhodes had buried somewhere in Rhodesia.

  On 7 April 1966, the CIA headquarters in the United States received
a cable from an agent in Rhodesia: `Request traces of L. Ron Hubbard,
US citizen recently arrived.'  The reply confirmed that Headquarters
files contained no derogatory information about the subject, but a
memo was attached giving excerpts from press reports.  It concluded:
`Individuals who have been connected with the organizations headed by
Hubbard or who have had contact with him and the organizations, have
indicated that Hubbard is a "crackpot" and of "doubtful mental
background".'[12]

  The `crackpot' meanwhile had bought a large four-bedroomed house
with a swimming-pool in the exclusive Alexander Park suburb of
Salisbury and opened negotiations to acquire the Bumi Hills Hotel on
Lake Kariba.  His plan was to use the hotel as a luxury base from
which to spread the influence of Scientology.  He believed the Lake
Kariba site would attract well-heeled followers who wanted to be
instructed in the highest levels of Scientology and were willing to
pay around $10,000 for the privilege.

  Nothing of this was revealed to the people of Rhodesia, to whom he
represented himself as a `millionaire-financier' interested in pumping
money into the crippled economy of the country and stimulating the
tourist industry.  In an interview in the Rhodesia *Sunday Mail* he
said he had left his stately home in Britain on doctor's orders after
a third attack of pneumonia.  `I am really supposed to be on
vacation,' he explained, `but I have had so many invitations to invest
in businesses here and this country is so starved of finance that I
have become intrigued.'

  Hubbard was careful to distance himself from what the newspaper

__________
12. CIA files obtained via FOI

                          -- end page 257 --

called `the controversial Scientology movement'.  It had never really
been pushed in Rhodesia, he said, and added: `I am still an officer of
the corporation that administers the movement but it is very largely
autonomous now.'[13]

  In early May, Hubbard produced, uninvited, a `tentative
constitution' for Rhodesia which he felt would satisfy the demands of
the blacks while at the same time maintaining white supremacy.  It
embodied the principle of one man one vote for a lower house, while
real power was vested in an upper house elected by qualified citizens
with a good standard of English, knowledge of the constitution and
financial standing verified by a bank.  Hubbard was apparently
convinced that Rhodesia's black population would welcome his ideas,
even though it was patently obvious that the qualifications required
to cast a vote for the upper house would exclude most blacks.

  With his inimitable talent for adopting the appropriate vernacular,
Hubbard's proposals were written in suitably constitutional prose,
beginning: `Before God and Man we pledge ourselves, the Government of
Rhodesia and each of our officers and men of authority in the
Government to this the Constitution of our country ...'

  Copies were despatched to Ian Smith and to Saint Hill Manor in
England with instructions to forward the document to the British Prime
Minister, Harold Wilson, when Hubbard gave the word.  Ian Smith's
principal private secretary replied politely to Hubbard on 5 May
saying that his suggestions had been passed to a Cabinet sub-committee
examining proposals for amending the constitution.

  Still as paranoid as ever, Hubbard then wrote to the Minister of
Internal Affairs asking if the investigation of his activities and
background had been completed and if he could have confirmation that
everything was in order.  He added a jaunty postscript: `Why not come
over and have a drink and dinner with me one night?'

  This provoked a frosty response from the Minister's private
secretary: `My Minister has asked me to thank you for your letter of
5th May 1966 and to say that he has no knowledge of his Ministry
carrying out an investigation into your activities.  He regrets he is
unable to accept your invitation to dinner.  Yours faithfully ...'

  Hubbard continued to try and ingratiate himself with the leading
political figures in Rhodesia, but with little success.  In June, he
arranged for John McMaster to visit him from Johannesburg, where he
was teaching a clearing course.  `He cabled me and asked me to bring
all the clearing course students to Salisbury to take part in a film
he wanted to make,' said McMaster.  `I was also to be sure to bring
with me two bottles of pink champagne, which was not available in
Rhodesia.

  `I had no idea why he wanted it but I knew it was important because

__________
13. Rhodesia *Sunday Mail*, 22 May 1966

                          -- end page 258 --

I was met by one of Hubbard's assistants at Salisbury airport and the
first thing she said to me was, "Have you brought the champagne?"  It
turned out he wanted to give it to Mrs Smith as a present in order to
try and get in with the Prime Minister.  Next morning his chauffeur
drove him round to Government House and he swaggered up to the front
door with a bottle under each arm thinking he was going to take Mrs
Smith by storm.  But they wouldn't let him past the front door and he
came back very upset, really disgruntled.'[14]

  Hubbard's high profile as the `millionaire-financier' who boasted
that he could solve the UDI crisis won him few friends among
Rhodesia's deeply conservative white society.  He often spoke of his
willingness to help the government, pointing out that he had been
trained in economics and government at Princeton, and seemed surprised
that his services were not welcomed.  On television, in newspaper
interviews and in all his public pronouncements, Hubbard professed
support for Ian Smith's government, although in private he thought
Smith was a `nasty bit of work' who was incapable of leadership.[15]
Similarly, he publicly espoused sympathy for the plight of the black
majorities in both Rhodesia and South Africa, while privately
admitting contempt for them.  Blacks were so stupid, he told John
McMaster, that they did not give a reading on an E-meter.[16]

  At the beginning of July, Hubbard was invited to address the Rotary
Club in Bulawayo.  He delivered a rambling, hectoring speech telling
the assembled businessmen how they should run their country, their
businesses and their lives and when it was reported in the local
newspaper it appeared to be faintly anti-Rhodesian.  A couple of days
later, Hubbard received a letter from the Department of Immigration
informing him that his application for an extension to his Alien's
Temporary Residence Permit had been unsuccessful: `this means that you
will be required to leave Rhodesia on or before the 18th July, 1966.'

  Hubbard was stunned.  Up until that moment he had believed himself
to be not just a prominent personality in Rhodesia, but a *popular*
one.  He asked his friends in the Rhodesian Front party to make
representations on his behalf to the Prime Minister, but to no avail.
`Smith ranted and raved at them,' he reported later, `told them I had
been deported from Australia, was wanted in every country in the
world, that my business associates had been complaining about me and
that I must go.'[17] The Rhodesian Government refused to make any
comment on the expulsion order, but Hubbard had few doubts about who
was behind it -- it was obviously a Communist plot to get him out of
the country because he was the man most likely to resolve the UDI
crisis.

__________
14. Interview with McMaster, London, March 1986
15. CIA memo, 22 August 1966
16. Interview with McMaster
17. CIA memo

                          -- end page 259 --

  On 15 July, Hubbard lined up his household staff on the lawn in
front of his house on John Plagis Avenue and bade them an emotional
farewell for the benefit of Rhodesian television, whose cameras were
recording the departure of the American millionaire-financier.  At the
airport there were more reporters waiting to interview him before he
left and one of them warned him to expect a posse from Fleet Street to
greet him in London.  He was quite cheered by the prospect and began
to think that his expulsion might actually increase his status as an
international personality.

  As Hubbard's plane lifted off the tarmac at Salisbury, frenzied
preparations were being made in Britain to give him a hero's welcome
on his return.  The news that the revered founder of Scientology was
being kicked out of Rhodesia had initially been greeted with dismay
and disbelief at Saint Hill Manor.  `We were shocked,' said Ken
Urquhart, `no one could understand how such a thing could happen.  It
was an even bigger surprise for the other orgs because none of them
knew he was in Rhodesia.  It was supposed to be a big secret.  I was
by then working as LRH Communicator World-Wide and it was my job to
code and decode the telexes that were going backwards and forwards and
between Saint Hill and Rhodesia.  He didn't want anyone to know he was
away because he thought everyone would start slacking.'

  Coaches were laid on to transport every available Scientologist from
East Grinstead to Heathrow on the morning of Saturday, 16 July.  They
took with them hastily prepared `Welcome Home' banners but neglected
to obtain the necessary permission to wave them; airport police
politely insisted they should remain unfurled.  Some six hundred
Scientologists, including Mary Sue and the children, were gathered in
the terminal by the time Hubbard's flight landed.  They had to wait
while he sorted out a problem about his vaccinations with immigration
officers and two hours passed before he emerged from Customs, wearing
a lightweight suit and sun-hat, looking tired, but smiling broadly.
`I'm glad to be back,' he shouted as police forced a path through his
cheering supporters to a yellow Pontiac convertible parked in front of
the terminal.  He sat on the back, waving presidential style, as the
car was slowly driven away.

  No one could have asked for a more enthusiastic welcome, although
Hubbard was disappointed that Fleet Street had failed to turn out.
Only one reporter was at the airport and he only seemed to want to ask
about the events in Australia, to which query Hubbard snapped, `That's
past history.'

  Pam and Ray Kemp were among the first visitors to Saint Hill after
Hubbard's return from Rhodesia.  `He told me everything that had
happened,' said Ray Kemp.  `It seems there was a chief of police who

                          -- end page 260 --

was very bullying to the blacks and Ian Smith was very wimpish.  Smith
couldn't make decisions about anything and would rely on the chief of
police to tell him what to do.  Ron was at dinner one night with Smith
and he warned him that if he continued to be wimpish and not put his
foot down the probability was that he would be assassinated.  About
two days later there was an assassination attempt, although I don't
remember whether it was on Smith or the chief of police.  The bullet
went through his mouth and out the side.  Ron somehow got the blame
because of what he had said.  That was why he was asked to leave.'[18]

  Ken Urquhart got a slightly different version: `He inferred the
problem was that he knew what to do about the blacks and be became
very popular with them.  That's why the government kicked him out.  I
heard him tell Mary Sue that he had lost 200,000 in investment in
Rhodesia.'

  Back in the familiar surroundings of Saint Hill Manor, Hubbard had
plenty of time to review Scientology's current situation and
prospects.  It was a far from rosy picture.  Apart from the problems
in Australia and Rhodesia, trouble was also brewing in the United
States, where the Internal Revenue Service was challenging the Church
of Scientology's tax-exempt status.  In Britain there was another rash
of hysterical headlines when the police found a girl wandering the
streets of East Grinstead in a distressed condition in the early hours
of the morning.  It transpired she was a schizophrenic who had been
institutionalized before being recruited as a Scientologist.

  There were further demands in Parliament for an inquiry into
Scientology, to which the Minister of Health tartly replied: `I do not
think any further inquiry is necessary to establish that the
activities of this organization are potentially harmful.  I have no
doubt that Scientology is totally valueless in promoting health ...'

  Scientology even seemed to be wearing out its welcome in East
Grinstead, where the locals were complaining they were being
overwhelmed.  As if it was not bad enough having strange Americans
walking round the streets wearing badges saying `Don't speak to me,
I'm being processed', Scientologists were snapping up all available
rented accommodation, crowding the pubs and straining everyone's
patience.

  `There was a lot of resentment and alarm in the town,' said Alan
Larcombe of the East Grinstead *Courier*.  `People felt that
Scientology could not be allowed to continue expanding.  There was a
feeling they were trying to take over -- an estate agent, dentist,
hairdresser, jeweller's, finance company and a couple of doctors were
all Scientology run.  People didn't like it.  They felt that if you
had problems you ought to go and have a chat with your vicar.'

  Larcombe paid another visit to Saint Hill Manor and was astonished

__________
18. Interview with Kemp

                          -- end page 261 --

at the numbers of people who were there.  `It was quite an eye opener.
As I pulled up outside the house a bell sounded somewhere and people
began pouring out, hundreds and hundreds of them, like wasps leaving a
nest.  It was an incredible sight.  I was completely taken aback by
how much the place had grown.  I discovered there were so many
students there that the sewage system could not cope.'

  Hubbard, musing on Scientology's multitude of problems in the autumn
of 1966, arrived at a daring and original solution.  He kept it a
secret, because he loved secrets, although he hinted at what was on
his mind in a remark to John McMaster, recently returned from South
Africa.  `You know, John,' he said, `we have got to do something about
all this trouble we are having with governments.  There's a lot of
high-level research still to be done and I want to be able to get on
with it without constant interference.  Do you realize that 75 per
cent of the earth's surface is completely free from the control of any
government?  That's where we could be free -- on the high seas.'[19]
McMaster had no idea what he meant and Hubbard did not choose to
elaborate.

  Soon, senior Scientologists were arriving from the United States to
take part in a top-secret project under Ron's personal direction.
They could sometimes be seen scrambling in and out of a rubber dinghy
on the lake or pouring over navigational charts in a classroom.  Some
evenings they met behind closed doors in the garage and it was said
that they spent their time practising tying knots.

  By December it was known they were involved in something called the
`Sea Project'.  But still no one could imagine what it was.

__________
19. Interview with McMaster

                          -- end page 262 --

                             *Chapter 16*

                       *Launching the Sea Org*

  `Hearing of L. Ron Hubbard's plans for further exploration and
research into, among other things, past civilizations, many
Scientologists wanted to join him and help.  They adopted the name
"Sea Organization" ... Free of organizational duties and aided by the
first Sea Org members, L. Ron Hubbard now had the time and facilities
to confirm in the physical universe some of the events and places he
had encountered in his journeys down the track of time ...'  (*Mission
Into Time*)

                              * * * * *

In 1967, L. Ron Hubbard was fifty-six years old, the father of seven
children and a grandfather several times over.  With a loyal wife, a
home in England and four children still at school, he was at an age
when most men put down roots and plan nothing more ambitious than a
comfortable retirement.  But he was not like most men.

  In 1967, L. Ron Hubbard raised a private navy, appointed himself
Commodore, donned a dashing uniform of his own design and set forth on
an extraordinary odyssey, leading a fleet of ships across the oceans
variously pursued by the CIA, the FBI, the international press and a
miscellany of suspicious government and maritime agencies.  He had
begun making secret plans to set up the `Sea Organization' on his
return from Rhodesia in the summer of 1966, shrouding the whole
operation with layer upon layer of duplicity.  His intention was that
the public should believe that he was returning to his former
`profession', that of an explorer, and accordingly, in September 1966,
Hubbard announced his resignation as President of the Church of
Scientology.  This charade was supported by the explanation that the
church was sufficiently well established to survive without his
leadership.  In preparation for his anticipated resignation a special
committee had been set up to investigate how much the church owed its
founder; it was decided the figure was around $13 million, but
Hubbard, in his benevolence, forgave the debt.

  Still a member of the Explorers Club, Hubbard applied for permission
to carry the club flag on his forthcoming `Hubbard

                          -- end page 263 --

Geological Survey Expedition'.  Its purpose, he explained, was to
conduct a geological survey from Italy, through Greece and Egypt to
the Gulf of Aden and down the east coast of Africa: `Samples of rock
types, formations, and soils will be taken in order to draw a picture
of an area which has been the scene of the earlier and basic
civilizations of the planet and from which some conclusions may
possibly be made relating to geological dispositions requisite for
civilized growth.'

  This highfalutin nonsense sufficiently impressed the Explorers Club
for the expedition to be awarded the club flag.  [The club could not,
however, be said to examine such applications very scrupulously --
Hubbard had also been awarded the flag in 1961 for another entirely
fictitious venture -- the `Ocean Archaeological Expedition', allegedly
set up to explore submerged cities in the Caribbean, Mediterranean and
adjacent waters.[1]]

  On 22 November 1966, the Hubbard Explorational Company Limited was
incorporated at Companies House in London.  The directors were L. Ron
Hubbard, described as expedition supervisor, and Mary Sue Hubbard, the
company secretary.  The aims of the company were to `explore oceans,
seas, lakes, rivers and waters, lands and buildings in any part of the
world and to seek for, survey, examine and test properties of all
kinds'.

  Hubbard had no more intention of conducting geological surveys than
he had of relinquishing control of the Church of Scientology and its
handsome income.  His real objective was to shake off the fetters on
his activities and ambitions imposed by tiresome land-based
bureaucracies; his vision was of a domain of his own creation on the
freedom of the high seas, connected by sophisticated coded
communications to its operations on land.  Its purpose would be to
propagate Scientology behind a screen of business management courses.

  Before the end of 1966, the `Sea Org' -- as it would inevitably
become known -- had secretly purchased its first ship, the
*Enchanter*, a forty-ton sea-going schooner.  To further obscure his
involvement, Hubbard asked his friend Ray Kemp to be a part owner.
Kemp was the man who believed that Hubbard could move clouds with the
power of his mind and when he showed up at Saint Hill to sign for the
*Enchanter* he swore that Hubbard played a little magical trick on
him: `We'd been sitting talking for hours and it was getting dark when
he said, "Well I guess we'd better get this thing signed."  I said,
"Do you have a pen?"  and he said, "Yes, it's over there."  I went to
pick up the pen on his desk and it disappeared.  I thought at first it
was the light, but I tried three times to pick up the pen and each
time it was not there and I realized he was making it disappear.  In
the end I said to Ron, "If you'll just leave the bloody pen still for
a moment, I'll sign".  He could do fun things like that, he was just
playing a game.'[2]

__________
 1. Letter from assistant secretary, Explorers Club, 8 December 1966
 2. Interview with Kemp

                          -- end page 264 --

  Shortly after the purchase of the *Enchanter*, the Hubbard
Explorational Company bought an old, rusty North Sea trawler, the
414-ton *Avon River*, moored at Hull, a busy seaport on the north-east
coast of England.  Hubbard then flew to Tangier in Morocco, where he
planned to continue his `research', leaving his family at Saint Hill
Manor.  Mary Sue wanted to stay behind because Diana, star pupil at
the local dancing school, had been chosen to present a bouquet to
Princess Margaret, who was due to open the Gene Theatre in East
Grinstead a few weeks later.

  Before being driven to the airport, Hubbard scribbled instructions
for various members of the `sea project'.  One of them was Virginia
Downsborough, a plump and cheerful New Yorker who had been working as
an auditor at Saint Hill for nearly three years.  Virginia was never
entirely sure why she had been honoured with an invitation to join the
project, unless it was because she came from a sailing family and knew
a little about ships and knots.  `At that time the sea project was
just a few of us who would get together in the garage and learn how to
tie knots and read a pilot.  I bought a little sailing boat and sailed
it at weekends, but that was about it.  Ron always worked way down the
line -- he knew what he intended to do, but he never laid it out for
us.

  `After he had gone I was given a sealed envelope with his initials
on.  Inside were my orders.  I had to go to Hull, get the *Enchanter*
ready for sea and sail her to Gibraltar for a refit.  Ron gave me a
list of things he wanted from Saint Hill, mainly personal possessions
and clothes, which I was to bring with me.  I left for Hull next day.'

  Scientologists were in the habit of following Ron's orders
unhesitatingly, no matter how difficult the task, or how ill-equipped
they were to carry them out.  Virginia Downsborough held a masters
degree in education and had run a child development department in a
New York school before coming to Saint Hill; nevertheless she set out
for Hull without a second thought.  `A lot of things needed to be done
before the *Enchanter* was ready to sail,' she recalled, `so I lived
on the *Avon River*, which was moored alongside and was absolutely
filthy, for a couple of weeks while the work was being carried out.'

  The *Enchanter* sailed in the New Year with a hired skipper and a
novice crew of four Scientologists, including Downsborough.  In the
light of forthcoming Sea Org voyages, it was a comparatively
uneventful trip, apart from losing most of the fuel at sea somewhere
off the coast of Portugal.  After putting in briefly at Oporto, the
*Enchanter* arrived safely in Gibraltar, only to discover there was no
room in the ways.  A message arrived from a Hubbard aide in Tangier
saying that Ron was ill and they were to continue to Las Palmas, in
the Canary Islands.

                          -- end page 265 --

  `We got the *Enchanter* on the ways in Las Palmas,' said
Downsborough, `and we had not been there very long before Ron turned
up.  Bill Robertson -- another Scientologist -- and myself went to the
post office to post some letters and discovered a telegram there from
Ron saying that he was arriving in Las Palmas almost at that minute
and wanted to be met.  We jumped into a taxi and got to the airport
just in time to pick him up as he was coming through Customs.  We
found him a hotel in Las Palmas and next day I went back to see if he
was all right, because he did not seem to be too well.

  `When I went in to his room there were drugs of all kinds
everywhere.  He seemed to be taking about sixty thousand different
pills.  I was appalled, particularly after listening to all his
tirades against drugs and the medical profession.  There was something
very wrong with him, but I didn't know what it was except that he was
in a state of deep depression; he told me he didn't have any more
gains and he wanted to die.  That's what he said: "I want to die."'

  It was important for Hubbard to be discovered in this dramatically
debilitated condition at this time, for it would soon be announced to
fellow Scientologists that he had completed `a research accomplishment
of immense magnitude' described, somewhat inscrutably, as the `Wall of
Fire'.  This was the OT3 (Operating Thetan Section Three) material, in
which were contained `the secrets of a disaster which resulted in the
decay of life as we know it in this sector of the galaxy'.[3] Hubbard,
it was said, was the `first person in millions of years' to map a
precise route through the `Wall of Fire'.  Having done so, his OT
power had been increased to such an extent that he was at grave risk
of accidental injury to his body; indeed, he had broken his back, a
knee and an arm during the course of his research.

  Virginia Downsborough did not observe any broken limbs, but
recognized that Ron needed nursing.  `I moved into an adjoining room
in the hotel to take care of him.  He refused to eat the hotel food,
so I got a little hotplate and cooked meals for him in the room,
simple things, things that he liked.  My main concern was to try and
get him off all the pills he was on and persuade him that there was
still plenty for him to do.  He was sleeping a lot and refused to get
out of bed.

  `I don't know what drugs he was taking -- they certainly weren't
making him high -- but I knew I had to get him over it.  I discussed
it with him and gradually took them away.  He didn't carry on about
it.  He had brought a great pile of unopened mail with him from
Tangier, a lot of it from Mary Sue, and I got him to start reading her
letters.  After about three weeks he decided he would get out of bed
and he started taking little walks and then he got interested in what
was happening on the *Enchanter* and after that he was all right.'

__________
 3. *Mission into Time*, L. Ron Hubbard, 1973

                          -- end page 266 --

  Mary Sue flew in to Las Palmas as soon as Ron was back on his feet
and Virginia Downsborough was instructed to find the Hubbards a house.
She rented the Villa Estrella, a pretty white-painted hacienda with a
red-tiled roof on a rocky promontory facing the sea, about forty-five
minutes drive from Las Palmas.  `I cooked dinner for them at the house
every evening,' she said.  `Ron used to like to sit up and talk half
the night long after Mary Sue had gone to bed.  He had this intense
ability to communicate and it was fascinating to listen to him.  I was
intrigued by the concept he presented of himself as being a constant
victim of women.

  `He talked a lot about Sara Northrup and seemed to want to make sure
that I knew he had never married her.  I didn't know why it was so
important to him; I'd never met Sara and I couldn't have cared less,
but he wanted to persuade me that the marriage had never taken place.
When he talked about his first wife, the picture he put out of himself
was of this poor wounded fellow coming home from the war and being
abandoned by his wife and family because he would be a drain on them.
He said he had planned every move along the way with Mary Sue to avoid
being victimized again.'[4]

  When the *Enchanter* came off the ways in the harbour at Las Palmas,
Hubbard took her out on extended cruises round the Canary Islands to
search for gold he had buried in previous lives.  `He would draw
little maps for us,' said Virginia Downsborough, `and we would be sent
off to dig for buried treasure.  He told us he was hoping to replace
the *Enchanter*'s ballast with solid gold.  I thought it was great fun
-- the best show on earth.'

  All these activities were supposed to remain a closely guarded
secret and Hubbard insisted on the use of elaborate codes in Sea Org
communications.  In a despatch to Saint Hill he urged his followers
not to feel '007ish and silly' about security.  `When you have had the
close calls I have had in intelligence through security failures,' he
said, `you begin to believe there is something in the subject.  I was
once in 1940 ordered out on a secret mission by the US to a hostile
foreign land with whom we were not yet at war.  It was vital to mask
my purpose there.  It would have been fatal had I been known to have
been a naval officer.  On a hunch I didn't leave at once and the
following day the US sent a letter to me that had I left would have
been forwarded to me in that land, addressing me with full rank and
title, informing me to wear white cap covers after April 15 in
Washington.  Had I departed, that letter, following me, would have
sentenced me to death before a firing squad!'[5]

  While Hubbard was in Las Palmas he developed phobias about dust and
smells which were the cause of frequent explosive temper tantrums.  He
was always complaining that his clothes smelled of soap or he was
being choked by dust that no one else could detect.  No

__________
 4. Interview with Virginia Downsborough, Santa Barbera, CA., August
    1986
 5. Despatch from LRH, 22 April 1967

                          -- end page 267 --

matter how frequently the *Enchanter*'s decks were scrubbed, she was
never clean enough for the Commodore.  Similarly, the routine drive
between the harbour and the Villa Estrella became an ordeal for
everyone in the car.  `Sometimes I thought we'd never get there,' said
Virginia Downsborough.  `Every few miles he would insist on stopping
because there was dust in the air conditioner.  He would get into such
a rage that on occasions I thought he was going to tear the car
apart.'

  In April 1967, the *Avon River* steamed into the harbour at Las
Palmas after a voyage from Hull which the skipper, Captain John Jones,
later described as the `strangest trip of my life'.  Apart from the
chief engineer, Jones was the only professional seaman on board.  `My
crew were sixteen men and four women Scientologists who wouldn't know
a trawler from a tramcar,' he told a reporter from the *Daily Mirror*
on his return to England.

  Captain Jones should perhaps have foreseen the difficulties when he
signed on for the voyage and was informed that he would be expected to
run the ship according to the rules of *The Org Book*, a sailing
manual written by the founder of the Church of Scientology and
therefore considered by Scientologists to be infallible gospel.  `I
was instructed not to use any electrical equipment, apart from lights,
radio and direction finder.  We had radar and other advanced equipment
which I was not allowed to use.  I was told it was all in *The Org
Book*, which was to be obeyed without question.'

  Following the advice in this esteemed manual, the *Avon River*
bumped the dock in Hull as she was getting under way and had barely
left the Humber estuary before the Scientologist navigator, using the
navigational system advocated by Hubbard, confessed that he was lost.
`I stuck to my watch and sextant,' said Captain Jones, `so at least
*I* knew where we were.'

  As the old trawler laboured into the wind-flecked waters of the
English Channel, a disagreement arose between the senior Scientologist
on board and the Captain about who was in command.  By the time the
*Avon River* put into Falmouth to re-fuel, both the Captain and the
chief engineer were threatening to pack their bags and leave the ship.
Frantic telephone calls to East Grinstead eventually led to the
protesting Scientologist being ordered to return to Saint Hill and the
smoothing of Captain Jones's ruffled feathers.  The rest of the trip
passed off without incident, although the two seamen remained utterly
mystified by their crew and in particular by the hours they spent
fiddling with their E-meters.[6]

  At Las Palmas, the *Avon River* was hauled up on the slips recently
vacated by the *Enchanter* and prepared for a major re-fit.  A working
party of bright-eyed sea project members had already arrived in the

__________
 6. *Cults of Unreason*, Christopher Evans, 1973

                          -- end page 268 --

Canaries, among them Amos Jessup, a philosophy major from Connecticut.
The son of a senior editor on *Life* magazine, Jessup had gone to
Saint Hill in 1966, while he was studying in Oxford, to try and get
his young brother out of Scientology and instead had become converted
himself.  `I was soon convinced', he said, `that instead of being some
dangerous cult it was an important advance in philosophy.

  `I was clear by the spring of '67 and when I heard that LRH was
looking for personnel for a communications vessel I immediately
volunteered and was sent to Las Palmas.  We were all given a "shore
story" so that no one would know that we were Scientologists; we were
told to say that we were working for the Hubbard Explorational Company
on archaeological research.

  `On the day we arrived, the *Avon River* was being hauled up on the
slips.  She looked like what she was -- an old, worn-out, oil-soaked,
rust-flaked steam trawler.  Our job was to give her a complete
overhaul.  We sand-blasted her from stem to stern, painted her, put
bunks in what had been the rope locker, converted the liver oil
boiling room into additional accommodation, put decks in the cargo
holds to make space for offices.  LRH designed a number of
improvements -- a larger rudder and a system of lifts to hoist small
boats aboard.'[7]

  Hubbard would show up every couple of days to check on the progress
of the work, but it was never going ahead fast enough and more sea
project members were constantly being flown in to Las Palmas to join
the work-force.  Hana Eltringham, a former nurse from South Africa,
arrived in August.  `At first sight the ship looked terrible, all
streaked with rust,' she said.  `You had to climb a long, shaky ladder
to get up on to the deck and as I got over the side I could see
everything was covered in sand from the sand-blasting and then were
people sleeping on the sand, obviously exhausted.

  `Nevertheless, it was a tremendous thrill to be there.  It was a
great honour to be invited to join the sea project; we were an elite,
like the Marine Corps.  All of us were true and tried Scientologists,
highly motivated, and to me it was high adventure.'

  After working as a deck hand for a couple of weeks, Hana was
promoted to ethics officer.  `My job was to run round making sure the
crew weren't goofing.  I felt I was responsible for catching errors
before he did because he would get very upset -- he would literally
scream and shout -- if something was not being done right.  I was
mostly scared of him in those days.

  `One afternoon I was standing on the deck with a clipboard waiting
for him to come on board and I knew something was wrong because I saw
his face start to contort when he was still 15 or 20 yards away,
walking towards the slips.  As he came up to the ship he started

__________
 7. Interview with Amos Jessup, San Diego, July 1986

                          -- end page 269 --

shouting, filling his lungs and bellowing "*What are they doing?  Why
are they doing that?*" and pointing to the side of the ship.  He came
up the ladder still screaming in a kind of frenzy.  I didn't know what
was the matter and he told me to look over the side of the ship.  I
stuck my head over to see what the hell he was screaming about.  The
painters who were putting white paint on the hull were using old
rollers and the paint had a kind of furry coat on it from the rollers.
He'd seen that from many yards away.  It was extraordinary.  I was
awed.'[8]

  Such incidents inevitably led to the offenders being assigned a
`lower condition', the penalties for which were by then routinely
formalized.  The least serious was `emergency' followed by
`liability', in which hapless state the miscreant forfeited pay, was
confined to `org premises' and had to wear the infamous dirty grey rag
on one arm.  In a condition of `treason', all uniforms and insignia
were removed and the rag was replaced by a black mark on the left
check.  In `doubt', the offender was fined, barred from the org and
could not be communicated with.  Lastly came the dreaded `enemy' --
`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.'

  Even though Hubbard had `resigned' as president of the Church of
Scientology, the flow of edicts continued uninterrupted and he
reminded Scientologists of the penalties for lower conditions in a
policy letter dictated at the Villa Estrella in Las Palmas.  He also
found time to record a taped lecture in which he warned of a
world-wide conspiracy to destroy Scientology.  The resourceful Mary
Sue had apparently traced the conspiracy to the very highest levels,
to a cabal of international bankers and newspaper barons sufficiently
powerful to control many heads of state, among them the British Prime
Minister, Harold Wilson.

  While Hubbard was fulminating against international conspiracies and
bellowing at his amateur work-force as they struggled to prepare the
*Avon River* for sea, good news arrived from a `mission' in Britain
(tasks undertaken on Hubbard's behalf were always aggrandized as
`missions').  For many months two senior Scientologists, Joe van
Staden and Ron Pook, had been scouring European ports for a big ship,
something like a cruise liner, which could be used as the Sea Org's
flagship.  In September, they reported by telex that they had found,
laid up in Aberdeen, just the ship that Ron was looking for.  She was
the *Royal Scotsman*, a 3280-ton motor vessel built in 1936 and most
recently in service as a cattle ferry on the Irish Channel crossing.
Despite her age, she was in good condition and could probably be
bought, von Staden and Pook thought, for not much more than 60,000.
To Hubbard, the money was insignificant; Saint Hill alone was taking
in around 40,000 a week in fees.  He immediately

__________
 8. Interview with Hana Eltringham, Los Angeles, March 1986

                          -- end page 270 --

instructed von Staden and Pook to start negotiating the purchase and
to make arrangements for the *Royal Scotsman* to join the other ships
in Las Palmas, although *Avon River* was still high and dry on the
slips.

  It was only natural that the Commodore, who was not the most patient
of men, would want his fleet assembled at the earliest opportunity and
he was constantly irritated by what he considered to be unnecessary
delays in the *Avon River*'s refit.  By this time there were
thirty-five Scientologists working on the ship from dawn to dusk,
sawing, painting, chipping, scrubbing and polishing.  The bridge had
been completely reconstructed and fitted with new compasses and
navigation equipment, all the cabins had been steam cleaned, the fish
hold was converted into auditing space with rows of built-in desks,
and there was a research office for the Commodore just forward of the
bridge.

  When at last she was ready for service, the re-launching was rather
less than an outstanding success.  As the trawler, sprucely
whitepainted, slid down the ways, it was realized too late that no
precautions had been taken to restrain her; she drifted helplessly in
the bay until a boat could be found to push her towards a mooring
buoy.  To compound this embarrassing indignity, the *Enchanter*
appeared over the horizon under tow, having broken down while out
searching for the treasure buried by the Commodore in previous lives.
Two days later, both ships set sail, somewhat uncertainly, for
Gibraltar.

  The *Royal Scotsman*, meanwhile, had left Aberdeen but had run foul
of the Board of Trade, the British agency responsible for the safety
of ships registered in the United Kingdom.  On 7 November, a solicitor
acting for the new owners of the *Royal Scotsman*, had telephoned the
Board of Trade in London and asked if the ship could be re-registered
as a pleasure yacht and cleared for a voyage to Gibraltar.  He was
told that such a re-classification would entail considerable
modifications -- under the Safety of Life at Sea Convention of 1960,
the ship would need valid load-line, cargo ship construction, safety
equipment and radio certificates.

  The Sea Org decided to try another tack: a couple of days later, the
*Royal Scotsman* put in to Southampton on the south coast and an
attempt was made to clear her with the port authorities as a whaling
ship.  This sudden transformation not unnaturally aroused suspicions
and the authorities responded by slapping a provisional detention
order on the ship, preventing her from putting to sea until necessary
safety provisions had been complied with.

  This news, nervously conveyed to L. Ron Hubbard in Gibraltar,
produced a predictable explosion.  Hubbard railed at the stupidity of
the people who were supposed to be helping him and fumed about the
injustice of being prevented from doing what he wanted with his own

                          -- end page 271 --

ship.  When he had calmed down, he decided that the only solution was
to fly to England with a hand-picked crew, take command of the *Royal
Scotsman* and sail her away, protests from the Board of Trade
notwithstanding.

  Shortly afterwards, a curious party of sailors in blue serge suits,
white polo neck sweaters and little tar hats arrived at Gatwick
airport on a flight from Gibraltar.  They were led by a large,
red-faced man wearing a white peaked cap and carrying a letter of
authority explaining that they were the delivery crew for a vessel
under the seal of the Hubbard Explorational Company.  In the customs
hall, an officer of HM Customs and Excise glanced briefly at the
letter brandished by the red-faced man and casually inquired: `Is this
the same Hubbard who has the place at East Grinstead?'  `Oh yes,' the
red-faced man boomed, `Mr Hubbard is an explorer himself.'  Amos
Jessup, who was standing directly behind Hubbard, marvelled at his
composure.

  The improbable sailors boarded a coach waiting outside the airport
and were driven straight to Southampton Docks, to the berth occupied
by the *Royal Scotsman*.  `Everyone climbed out and stared up at this
huge ship,' Jessup recalled.  `I was startled and amazed by the size
of it.  It was three stories high and 357 feet long.  I was assigned
to be the bos'n.  I didn't know all I should have known about bos'ning
and I was rather shocked at the magnitude of what I'd been handed.

  `After we got on board, LRH called everyone together and had us sit
on the staircase between A deck and B deck.  He stood at the bottom of
the stairs and said, "This may look like a big and overwhelming thing,
but don't let it scare you.  I've handled ships bigger than this.  She
handles like a dream, drives like a Cadillac with big twin screws.
There's nothing to it."  We were already a can-do kind of group, but
everyone felt a bit better after that.'

  Over the next few days, there was constant activity at the *Royal
Scotsman*'s berth.  Every few hours a truck would arrive from Saint
Hill loaded with filing cabinets which were humped on board.  Taxis
disgorged eager Saint Hill volunteers, clutching their bags and the
`billion-year contract' which Hubbard had recently introduced as a
condition of service in the Sea Org.  Mary Sue and the children
arrived and took over the upper-deck accommodation which had been
reserved for the Hubbard family.

  Diana Hubbard was then fifteen, Quentin thirteen, Suzette a year
younger and little Arthur just nine years old.  They would have the
company of a few other children on the ship and a notice was pinned in
the saloon explaining how they were to be treated: `A tutor will be
provided for the children, who will be assigned regular hours of work
and play.  Anyone who deprives a child of his or her work or play will

                          -- end page 272 --

be assigned to a condition of non-existence.  (Penalties for
non-existence -- Must wear old clothes.  May not bathe.  Women must
not wear make-up or have hair-do's.  Men may not shave.  No lunch hour
...)'[9]

  Not everyone joining the crew was a volunteer.  John McMaster, whom
Hubbard had earlier described as the first Pope of the Church of
Scientology, had recently fallen into disfavour, probably because he
was beginning to become too influential.  Slight and golden-haired,
McMaster had been touring the world as an evangelist for Scientology,
attracting huge audiences, considerable popularity and the dangerous
enmity of L. Ron Hubbard.  On a brief return visit to Saint Hill, he
was abruptly assigned a lower condition, deprived of all his awards
and ordered to re-train from scratch.

  He would recall his experiences years later with enormous
bitterness, contemptuously referring to Hubbard as `Fatty': `All of a
sudden I was ordered to appear at Saint Hill Manor at nine o'clock on
a Sunday morning with all my clothes.  There was a big open truck
outside being loaded with files and filing cabinets and I was told to
get in the back.  I had no idea where I was going.  By the time we got
to Southampton Docks I was frozen, I could hardly move.  This was
November, don't forget.  They got me on to the poop deck and this big
fat body appeared.  It was Fatty.  "Oh, so you've deigned to come,
have you?"  be said.  "Well I'm here, aren't I?"  I said.  "If you've
come to join us, I'll come down and shake your hand," he said.  He
stepped down, grabbed my hand, realized I was frozen and started
screaming and shouting to get me into a warm cabin.  I sat in the
cabin for about three hours until I had thawed out.  I was told that I
was going to be a galley hand.  By this time I was well used to
Hubbard's insanity and there was no way I was going to succumb to it.
I wasn't bothered.  If they wanted me to clean the heads and scrub the
decks, that was fine by me.'[10]

  To supplement his inexperienced crew, Hubbard hired a couple of
professional seamen, including a chief engineer, but it did not
prevent mishaps occurring even before the *Royal Scotsman* had put to
sea.  One of the recruits was on duty at the gangplank as
Quartermaster and failed to notice until it was too late that the
ship's rubbing strake had caught on the edge of the dock as the tide
ebbed.  A small crowd of stevedores watched with undisguised amusement
as the crew of the *Royal Scotsman* tried to lever their enormous ship
off the dock.  It was hopeless: the rubbing strake creaked, splintered
and finally broke away from the hull.

  Hubbard took the opportunity to parade the entire crew on the
dockside to point out what had happened and remind them that as
thetans all of them must have had seafaring experience in one or
another of their past lives.  `The truth of the matter is that you
have all

__________
 9. HCO Policy Letter, 26 Sept 1967
10. Interview with McMaster

                          -- end page 273 --

been around a long time,' he stressed.  `Stop pretending you don't
know what it is all about, because you *do* know what it is all
about.'  Amos Jessup said everyone felt better afterwards.

  While all this was going on, Hubbard had despatched Hana Eltringham
on a top secret mission to re-register the *Royal Scotsman* in Sierra
Leone in order to circumvent the attention of the Board of Trade.
Hana first flew back to Las Palmas, where she collected a Spanish
lawyer who had previously worked for the church, and then together
they took a flight to Sierra Leone, a tiny, mosquito-ridden republic
on the west coast of Africa.  In Freetown, the capital, it took
thirty-six hours to complete the paperwork, during which time Hana
bought a large Sierra Leonese flag.  On 28 November, less than three
days after leaving Britain, she was on her way back to Gatwick
carrying the ship's new documents.  She took a cab from the airport
direct to Southampton Docks.

  `I arrived back on board at about four o'clock in the afternoon and
took the papers straight to LRH, who was having tea in the main
dining-room with the ship's officers.  He was delighted to see me and
very pleased to get the new registration, but as he was reading
through the papers his eye caught something and he started to frown.
I felt the familiar terror rising.  "Did you notice this?"  he said,
pointing to the name of the ship on the papers.  I looked and saw the
"s" had been missed out and it was spelled "Royal Scotman".  I began
to stammer an apology, but he suddenly smiled, grabbed my hand and
began pumping it.  "Double congratulations," he said.  "Now the ship
has a new name as well."'  He instantly ordered painters to black out
the second `s' in the name on the bows, stern, lifeboats and
lifebelts.

  The following day, the *Royal Scotman* applied for clearance to sail
to Brest in north-west France, for repairs.  The port authorities in
Southampton had no powers to detain a vessel registered in Sierra
Leone and the ship sailed at dusk, raising the Sierra Leonese flag and
banging into the fenders in the inner harbour on her way out into
Southampton Water.  It was to be a hair-raising maiden voyage for the
Sea Org's flagship, as Hana Eltringham recounted:

  `We sailed out of the channel that evening into an awful storm.  The
engine room was in a very bad condition; the main engines were not
running very well and neither were the generators and because the
paint was so dirty in the engine room you couldn't follow which were
the water lines and which were the fuel lines.  Half-way between
Southampton and Brest, one of the generators conked out.

  `I was on bridge watch as officer of the deck.  We were between
three to five miles off the north-west tip of France and I could see
ahead, on the port side, the buoys marking the rocky coastline going
south.  But as we came around to try and get into the estuary towards
Brest I

                          -- end page 274 --

noticed that the red-flashing buoys were swinging across the bows of
the ship and I realized we were caught in a rip tide and were being
pushed towards the rocks.

  `The ship started to wallow very badly and each time she went over
she took longer to recover.  Although she had stabilizers, she went
from a five degree roll to almost a twenty-five degree roll and on the
last roll to port she staggered.  We were all hanging on to the bridge
and at that moment the old man [Hubbard] began screaming at Bill
Robertson, the navigator, "Get us on a course out of here!  Get us on
a course out of here!"  He was really bellowing.  The ship started to
stagger around, very slowly and painfully.  It was scary.  I was
terrified and I think LRH was too, the way he was screaming and
holding on to the bridge and glaring at us.

  `Once we had got out of it and were about ten miles off the coast
steering south, he took the entire bridge watch into the cabin just
behind the bridge and told us that due to what had happened and the
ship being at risk and not truly seaworthy he had decided not to go
into Brest, even though it would be defying orders.  We were going to
continue south down to the Mediterranean.  The way he was telling us
was like he was convincing us it was the right thing to do.  He went
over and over it, to make sure we understood.  Then he entered what
had happened in the log book, a two- or three-page entry explaining
the reasons for not going into Brest, and we all signed it.

  `The following day there was another near catastrophe.  We were
planning to put into Gibraltar to meet up with the *Avon River*.  It
was about five or five-thirty in the afternoon and getting dark as we
approached the Gibraltar Strait.  We were in the northernmost lane
entering the Med and we could see there was a storm brewing.  The
storm came up quickly and the sea was very wild and as we were
battling to control the ship the oil lines from the bridge to the
engine room lost pressure and the hydraulic steering on the bridge
gave way.

  `The ship started to drift across the southernmost outgoing lane
towards the Moroccan coast.  We put our "Not under command" lights on
so other ships could see we were drifting and started to work
frantically on the back of the poop deck to rig up the emergency
steering.  It was pouring with rain and very cold.  In the middle of
all this we were in radio communication with Gibraltar asking for
help, for a tug to be sent out to bring us in.  They refused.  They
said that because we had failed to comply with our sailing orders we
would not be allowed into any English port.  I can remember LRH
pleading with them on the radio: "We have wives and children on board,
we are at risk."  But they would not come to our aid.  I was appalled.
It was my first major shock.

  `We had managed to find all the component parts to hook up the

                          -- end page 275 --

emergency steering on the aft docking bridge and there we were, Ron,
Pook and myself, hanging on to the manual steering wheel trying to
steer the ship while someone stood holding an umbrella over us,
another shone a torch on a little hand compass and someone else talked
on a walkie-talkie to the bridge to the person watching the gyro
compass.  Mary Sue was running backwards and forwards with cups of
steaming hot cocoa.

  `I could still hear snatches of LRH talking to Gib on the
ship-to-shore radio and I remember standing there, holding on to the
steering wheel with aching arms and tears streaming down my face,
thinking nobody wants us, where can we go?  To be refused help by a
British port brought home to me the enormity of our situation and my
empathy for the old man increased a thousand fold.  He was not wanted
in England and he had been kicked out of various places around the
world.  All I could think about was that no one wanted this brilliant
man and the treasures he had to offer.'

  Denied entry into Gibraltar, the *Royal Scotman* continued into the
Mediterranean under her emergency steering and set a course for the
little principality of Monaco, where Hubbard hoped he would be more
welcome.  Food and water was running low and the cook was reduced to
serving soup made with seawater by the time the ship hove to off Monte
Carlo in early December.  She was too big to enter the harbour, but
the port authorities agreed to her being "re-fuelled and
re-provisioned by lighters, and engineers were brought on board to
repair the steering.  From Monaco, the *Royal Scotman* sailed to
Cagliari in Sardinia, where she docked for the first time since
leaving Southampton.

  If Hubbard had a reason for visiting Sardinia, he kept it to
himself.  While they were there, he received a cable which brought on
another paroxysm of uncontrolled rage and sent everyone around him
diving for cover.  The *Avon River* had been caught in hurricane-force
storms north of the Balearic Islands: much of the deck gear had been
swept overboard and the terrified crew were very shaken up.  As
Hubbard read the cable his face began to twitch.  He strode to the
chart table, stabbed at it madly with his finger and bellowed, `*What
were they doing up there?*'

  John O'Keefe, the unhappy Scientologist who had been given command
of the *Avon River*, had muddled his instructions and was miles off
course when he ran into the storm.  He should have been far to the
south of the Balearics, heading for a rendezvous with the *Royal
Scotman* in Cagliari.  Hubbard was still seething when the *Avon
River* finally limped into the harbour at Cagliari.  He refused to
speak to O'Keefe and ordered a Committee of Evidence (a Com-Ev in
Scientology-speak) to be convened, which inevitably found O'Keefe

                          -- end page 276 --

guilty of dereliction of duty.  He was assigned a lower condition,
stripped of his post and given a lowly job in the engine room.
O'Keefe, who thought he had done well to save his ship, was
devastated.

  This humbling ritual cast something of a pall over the Christmas
celebrations, after which the Commodore ordered both ships back across
the Mediterranean to Valencia in Spain -- a five hundred-mile voyage
completed without incident, no doubt to the relief of both crews.
Tied up alongside in Valencia harbour, O'Keefe sought out his friend
Hana Eltringham.  `I was shocked by his condition,' she said.  `He had
lost about twenty pounds and looked like a skeleton with hollow eyes
and sunken cheeks.  It was unbelievable.  He told me he was thinking
of leaving and I began to think about it too.  It was the first time I
really questioned what was going on.  I mulled it over for about a
week, but in the end I couldn't go.  I came back to the view that I
was a solid Sea Org member and that in order to achieve freedom I had
to fight for it, that it wasn't necessarily an easy road and that I
would have to overcome obstacles and encounter suppression.  It was a
critical moment, but I managed to suppress any desire to leave and get
away from the insanity.'

  No such doubts assailed Stanley Churcher, one of the three
professional seamen on the *Royal Scotman*.  Hired as the ship's
carpenter in Southampton, he was thoroughly sick of his ship-mates by
the time they reached Valencia.  Placed in a `condition of doubt' for
`defying an order, encouraging desertion, tolerating mutinous meetings
and attempting to suborn the chief engineer', Mr Churcher employed a
few choice words to tell the Scientologist officers what he thought of
their `mumbo-jumbo' and was promptly sacked.

  Back in England, Churcher told his story to the *People*, one of
Britain's saucier Sunday newspapers, who gleefully published it under
the headline `AHOY THERE -- It's the craziest cruise on earth' along
with pictures of the ship and L. Ron Hubbard, described as the `boss'
of the `mind-bending cult' of Scientology.  Mr Churcher was withering
in his disdain.  `There were seven officers of this Scientology lot,'
he said, `who used to swank about in blue and gold-braid uniforms, but
I reckon they knew next to nothing about seamanship.  Four of them
were women.  Hubbard called himself the Commodore and had four
different types of peaked cap.  Hubbard's wife, who had an officer's
uniform made for her, seemed to enjoy playing sailors.

  `Every day they went below for lectures, but we seamen were never
admitted.  It was all so blooming mysterious I tried to find out more.
I offered to give them seamanship lectures and they were so pleased at
these they gave me a free beginner's course in Scientology.  I was
give a test on their E-meter, a sort of lie detector, and a woman
officer asked me a lot of personal questions, including details of my
sex life.  The

                          -- end page 277 --

oldest student was a woman of seventy-five who told me she was
convinced that Mr Hubbard would fix her up with a new body when she
died.

  `I couldn't make head nor tail of it.'[11]

__________
11. *The People*, 21 February 1968

                          -- end page 278 --

                             *Chapter 17*

                      *In Search of Past Lives*

  `USIS OFFICER STATES HUBBARD RUNS FLOATING UNIVERSITY OF
QUESTIONABLE MORAL CHARACTER, NOT ACCREDITED ANY US UNIVERSITIES AND
POOR REPRESENTATIVE FOR US ABROAD ... FLOATING COLLEGE PROBABLY PART
OF CHARLATAN CULT.'  (CIA cable traffic, June/July 1968)

                              * * * * *

Soon after the *Royal Scotman* docked in Valencia a group of students
flew in from Saint Hill to take a `clearing course' on board the ship.
One of them was a pretty, dark-eyed New Yorker called Mary Maren:

  `I had a friend in dance class in New York who was into Scientology
and he told me about it.  They sounded like an interesting group of
people and I thought it would be useful to have this exact scientific
technology at my disposal.  I read *Dianetics* and it made a lot of
sense to me.

  `By 1967 I was doing the briefing course at Saint Hill and I saw
some people who had come back from this mysterious sea project.  One
of the guys was terrified, really scared; I had no idea why he was in
such a state.  Two weeks later more came back.  They had lost a lot of
weight and looked overwhelmed, as if they had seen some kind of
monster in the sea.  Later I discovered that they had been cleaning
cattle dung out of the ship's hold for two weeks, but I didn't know it
at the time.  I said to my husband, Artie, I'm never going to join the
Sea Org.

  `I forgot all that when we all got on a plane to do the clearing
course.  It was called the New Year Freedom Flight.  I'd never been to
Spain before and it all seemed very exciting.  At that time the ship
looked clean, kinda nice.  The stateroom I was given was very small
and cramped, but everything looked kinda spiffed up.  The atmosphere
was very congenial.

  `LRH was on the ship and in a real jolly mood.  He used to stay up
late at night on the deck and talk to us into the wee hours about his
whole track adventures, how he was a race-car driver in the Marcab
civilization.  The Marcab civilization existed millions of years ago
on another planet; it was similar to planet earth in the 'fifties,
only they

                          -- end page 279 --

had space travel.  Marcabians turned out later not to be good guys so
it wasn't a compliment that their civilization was similar to ours.
LRH said he was a race driver called the Green Dragon who set a speed
record before he was killed in an accident.  He came back in another
lifetime as the Red Devil and beat his own record, then came back and
did it again as the Blue Streak.  Finally he realized all he was doing
was breaking his own records and it was no game any more.

  `People would stand around listening to these stories for hours,
very over-awed.  At the time it seemed a privilege and honour to share
these things, to hear him talking about things that went on millions
of years ago like it was yesterday.  It was usually entertaining, but
I sometimes found it very stressful to take it all in, this powerful,
booming outflow, and it was hard to get away.  One night I was getting
dizzy and dared to ask if I could leave early.  I could hear my voice
echoing in the cosmos as I said, "If you'll excuse me, I have to go to
bed, sir."  He said, "OK, sure."'[1]

  Talking about his past lives to an adoring, captive audience was one
of Hubbard's favourite recreational activities.  His stories, no
matter how outrageous, were always treated seriously, for everyone on
the ship was a dedicated Scientologist committed to the concept of
past lives and immortality.  It was not in the least improbable to
Mary Maren, or any of the others who listened to Hubbard talking on
the deck of the *Royal Scotman* on those warm Spanish nights, that he
had been a Marcabian racing driver.

  One of the recurring features of Hubbard's past lives on this planet
was a penchant for secreting his worldly goods underground and one of
the frustrations of his present life was his inability to find them.
He was deeply disappointed that his cruises round the Canary Islands
in the *Enchanter* had not resulted in replacing the schooner's
ballast with gold bars, but now he had more time, more ships and more
personnel at his disposal and in February 1968, he asked for
volunteers to accompany him on a special mission on the *Avon River*.

  Amos Jessup was among the first to step forward.  `He didn't tell us
ahead of time what we were going to do, but it didn't matter to me,
I'd have followed him through the gates of Hell if I had to.  I was
glad to do anything for him because I felt that what he had done to
help others was so great an accomplishment he deserved whatever help I
could offer.  People felt he was a miracle worker, someone who had
demonstrated a far higher level of competence than anything we could
aspire to.  It was as exciting and stimulating as hell to be with him.
You had to be on your toes, put out your maximum effort, but it was
always very refreshing and therapeutic.'[2]

  Hubbard accepted thirty-five volunteers for the mission and for the
next few weeks conducted daily training sessions on the deck of the

__________
 1. Interview with Mary Maren, Los Angeles, August 1986
 2. Interview with Jessup

                          -- end page 280 --

*Avon River*, often watched by envious students hanging over the rails
of the *Royal Scotman* moored alongside in Valencia harbour.  With a
stop watch in one hand, the Commodore put the crew through innumerable
drills to rescue men overboard, fight fires, handle lines, launch and
retrieve small boats and repel boarders -- he told them he was worried
about piracy in the Mediterranean and wanted to be sure they would not
panic if that circumstance arrived.

  At the beginning of March the *Avon River* set sail, leaving the
*Royal Scotman* seething with speculation about the nature of her
mission.  She headed east, back across the Mediterranean once again,
and anchored in a sheltered bay off Cap Carbonara, on the south-east
coast of Sardinia, where Hubbard mustered the crew on the well deck
for a briefing.  Standing on a hatch cover so that he could be seen,
he told them he was on the threshold of achieving an ambition he had
cherished for centuries in earlier lives.  This was the first lifetime
he had been able to build an organization with sufficient resources,
money and manpower to tackle the project they were about to undertake.
He had accumulated vast wealth in previous lives, he explained, and
had buried it in strategic places.  The purpose of their present
mission was to locate this buried treasure and retrieve it, either
with, or without, the co-operation of the authorities.

  Several members of the crew were unable to suppress gasps of
excitement at this prospect and he smiled broadly before continuing.
To the best of his recollection, when he was the Commander of a fleet
of war galleys two thousand years ago, there was a temple somewhere on
the coast close to where they were anchored.  It was called the Temple
of Tenet and the high priestess was a charming lady who, he said with
a wink, had `warmed the hearts of sailors'.  His intention was to put
several parties ashore next morning to search for the ruins of the
temple and the secret entrance where he had buried a cache of gold
plates and goblets.

  `It was an electrifying idea,' said Jessup.  `We all thought it was
high adventure.  Here was this guy who had cracked through the age-old
mystery of the human condition, had dug into, and uncovered, every
aspect of human shortcoming, now broaching into a new area, going to
sea with a bunch of people in the Mediterranean and digging up buried
treasure.  It didn't matter to me if it was true or not, what mattered
was being able to play a game that LRH had designed.  If it was
important to him, I would do the best I could.'

  The ruins of the Temple of Tenet at first proved difficult to trace,
until Hubbard realized that his recollection was based on ancient
sailing instructions whereas he had selected the search area using a
modern chart.  Once this obstacle had been overcome the ruins were
soon found, an event which caused a predictable stir on board the

                          -- end page 281 --

*Avon River* only marginally spoiled by the discovery that the site
was clearly marked as an ancient monument -- it might have been more
sensible to locate the temple by looking at a guide book.

  The fact that the temple was a known ruin also made it rather
difficult for the Scientologists to begin sweeping the area with their
metal detectors, let alone starting to dig, without arousing the
suspicion of the locals.  Although one group reported encountering
what appeared to be the hidden entrance and a surreptitious probe with
a metal detector was positive, Hubbard decided merely to note their
findings and move on.

  While the search parties wrote up detailed reports of everything
they had found, the *Avon River* headed south towards the coast of
north Africa, to Tunis, where the ancient civilization of Carthage
flourished before the birth of Christ.  Hubbard said he knew a
Carthaginian priest who had hidden a treasure trove of jewels and gold
in a temple which he thought he could find.  Moored in the harbour of
the Tunisian port of Bizerte, the Commodore briefed his eager search
parties by making a clay model of what he could recall of the
topography around the temple; they were told to scour the coastline
for a `matching' landscape.  He was almost always waiting on the deck
when the shore parties returned, impatient to know what they had
discovered.  Sure enough, they found the site of the temple just as he
had described it, but erosion had destroyed the secret tunnel which
led to where the treasure was hidden.  Hubbard went out to the site,
confirmed that they had found the right place and pointed out where
the erosion had taken place.

  Although they had not yet retrieved any treasure, there was not a
man or woman on the mission who was not encouraged by what they had
discovered thus far.  From Bizerte, the *Avon River* moved along the
coast to La Goulette, the outer harbour of Tunis, where an attempt was
made to explore the ruins of an underwater city.  Their scuba
equipment proved unequal to the task and Hubbard mocked up another
clay model of yet another temple site, which this time was found to be
occupied by a government office building.

  While at La Goulette, Joe van Staden, the captain of the *Avon
River*, offended the Commodore in some way, was promptly dismissed and
replaced by Hana Eltringham.  `I was working in the between decks
area,' she recalled, `when LRH called me over and said, "You're going
to be the new Captain."  I went completely numb; I was terrified.  I
can remember sitting at my desk with my head in my hands muttering,
"Oh my God, oh my God."  As I sat there I suddenly became aware of him
standing in the doorway of his cabin beckoning to me.  I got up and
walked over to him.  He had an E-meter in one hand and he thrust the
cans at me and said, "Hold these."  I stood there

                          -- end page 282 --

in the doorway while he was fiddling with the meter and then he said,
"I want you to recall the last time you were Captain."

  `Through the confusion and fear I was experiencing, my first thought
was that this was ridiculous.  Then I started to get vague impressions
of a time in some past life when I was the Captain of a ship and there
was a storm at sea.  He said, "Very good, very good" and asked me to
go back earlier and I got a very vivid flash of space ships and space
travel.  It was very real, not an imaginary thing at all.  I told him
what I had seen, that I was on some space ship being called urgently
to my land base.  We were going back as fast as we could when we were
blown up in space by some enemy.  That was followed by confusion and
some spinning motion as if the space ship was disintegrating.  He had
me go through it again and the effects of the experience subsided a
lot.  "Good," he said, "very good."  That was it.

  `I went up on the deck and felt the fear and terror in my stomach
just disappear.  I suddenly felt very able, very competent to tackle
anything that came along.  Next morning I had to take the ship from
one side of La Goulette harbour to the other for re-fuelling, then
pick up a pilot to take us out.  I thought he would come out and help.
No way.  I saw him open the curtains of his cabin for a moment, smile
to himself a little bit, then close them.  I thought, "The old sod
isn't even going to give me a hand."'[3]

  A few hours out of La Goulette, on an easterly course towards
Sicily, steam began pouring from the hatches over the engine room.
Cabbie Runcie, the ship's chief engineer, who was the only `wog' (the
Scientologist's name for a non-Scientologist) on board, appeared on
the bridge wiping his hands with an oily rag to announce that a piston
ring in the high-pressure cylinder had blown and that they would have
to stop for repairs.  Runcie was nearly seventy years old, a bald,
toothless, taciturn, pipe-smoking Scot who preferred to keep his own
counsel and Hubbard was both surprised and irritated by his temerity,
particularly as he was a `wog'.  The Commodore ordered Hana to stay on
course at the same speed, whereupon Runcie disappeared down the steps
to the engine room muttering, `This is madness, this is stupidity.'
It was his only recorded comment on the entire voyage.

  Steam was still pouring from the engine hatches when the *Avon
River* dropped anchor off the little fishing port of Castellammare on
the north coast of Sicily.  Thoroughly unconcerned by the banging and
swearing from the engine room, Hubbard gathered a small group on the
deck and pointed out their next objective -- an old watch tower just
visible on a high promontory overlooking the harbour.  He decreed that
the search should take place under cover of darkness and at dusk that
evening the search party set out in a rubber dinghy to reconnoitre the
watch tower.

__________
 3. Interview with Eltringham

                          -- end page 283 --

  They returned several hours later in a state of high excitement,
having registered strong readings on a metal detector in one corner of
the watch tower.  The following night another expedition was mounted,
this time armed with shovels.  The crew of the *Avon River* waited
with nerves on edge, but there was no brass-bound chest in the bottom
of the dinghy when it bumped against the side of the ship -- the rocky
foundations of the watch tower had proved too much for shovels.
Hubbard, who appeared quite as disappointed as everyone else, said he
did not think it was worth wasting any more time at the site.  He
promised to send the *Enchanter* back at a later date to find the
owner of the land and negotiate its purchase in order to conduct a
thorough excavation.

  From Sicily, the *Avon River* sailed across the Straits of Messina
to the `toe' of Italy, anchoring off the barren, rocky coastline of
Calabria, which had been Hubbard's territory when he was a tax
collector at the time of the Roman empire.  Not an entirely honest tax
collector, however, for he said he had hidden gold in sacred stone
shrines along the coast, figuring that they were less likely to be
vandalized.

  Two small boats were put ashore with search parties, but none of the
shrines could he found.  The *Avon River* steamed up and down the
coast while look-outs swept the shore with binoculars, but still to no
avail.  Hubbard concluded that the coast had been eroded and the
shrines washed into the sea, along with all his hidden gold.

  There was, nevertheless, a palpable aura of anticipation building up
on board the *Avon River* for everyone knew the climax of the mission
was still to come -- a visit to a secret space station on the island
of Corsica.  Hubbard had shown a few favoured members of the crew,
including Hana Eltringham, several pages of handwritten and typed
notes describing the existence and location of the station in
mountainous terrain to the north of the island.  It occupied a huge
cavern which could only be entered by pressing a specific palm print
(the crew had no doubt it was Hubbard's) against a certain rock, which
would cause a rock slab blocking the cave to slide away and instantly
activate the space station.  Inside, there was an enormous mother ship
and a fleet of smaller craft, constructed from non-corrosive alloys as
yet unknown to earthlings, and everything needed for their operation,
including fuel and supplies.

  Sadly, the Corsican space station was to remain no more than the
subject of thrilling rumours, for towards the end of April an urgent
radio message arrived from Mary Sue asking the Commodore to return
immediately to Valencia, where there was a `flap' (the euphemism
employed to describe any clash between Scientologists and `wogs').
Hubbard acquiesced, leaving the crew speculating wildly about what
might have happened at the space station.  There was

                          -- end page 284 --

strong support for the view that Ron was intending to use the `mother
ship' to escape from earth and continue his work elsewhere, perhaps in
a more rewarding environment.  The Sea Org, it was hopefully
suggested, was perhaps nothing more than a step towards a `Space Org'.

  Such considerations had to be put aside for the time being, for
*Avon River* ran into a series of storms as she ploughed towards the
Mediterranean coast of Spain.  Hubbard's temper worsened with the
weather.  One dark night, in a gale force wind, Hana became concerned
that the ship was being blown too close to the shore and dared to
change course without asking the Commodore's permission.  As the old
trawler turned, she began to buck and wallow.  `She was just coming
round nicely', Hana recollected, `when there was this great bellow
from LRH's cabin, which was under the bridge.  I heard his feet
pounding up the companionway and then the bridge door burst open.  He
stood there like a madman, with his hair all over the place, glared
around and shouted, "What's going on?"  I almost leapt at him, grabbed
him by both shoulders and told him as clearly as I could what I had
done, after which he began to calm down and stopped glaring at
everyone like some ferocious beast.  It always struck me as odd that a
man of his calibre would behave like that; I expected him to be more
God-like.'

  Hubbard was further displeased, on arriving in Valencia, to discover
that the `flap' had been caused by the port Captain of the *Royal
Scotman*, who had consistently refused requests from the Spanish port
authorities to move the ship from the dock to a mole in the harbour.
The situation had deteriorated to such an extent that the Spaniards
were threatening to tow the ship out to sea and deny her re-entry.
Hubbard sent a mission ashore to heal the rift and transferred six
officers from the *Avon River* to the *Royal Scotman* to report on how
the ship was being run.

  A few days later, the *Royal Scotman* dragged her anchor in the
outer harbour as a storm began to blow up.  Hubbard heard what was
happening over the radio on the *Avon River*.  He grabbed the nearest
available officers, jumped into the barge and hurried across to the
*Royal Scotman*, running up on to the bridge to take command.  The
ship was still secured to the harbour wall by wire hawsers which were
under enormous pressure; if they snapped, nothing could prevent her
being swept on to the rocks.  Hubbard managed to slip the hawsers and
re-anchor the ship, but not before her rudder had been damaged against
the mole.

  When the emergency was over, the furious Commodore demanded an
`ethics investigation' to find out who had `goofed' and meanwhile
assigned the entire ship a `condition of liability'.  Since there were
so

                          -- end page 285 --

few people he could trust, he appointed Mary Sue to be the new Captain
of *Royal Scotman*.  Her orders were to take the ship to Burriana,
north of Valencia, for repairs and then to cruise up and down the
Spanish coast to train the crew.  She was to stay at sea until both
the crew was sufficiently well trained and the ship sufficiently
spruce to qualify for upgrading; until then, the *Royal Scotman* would
remain in `liability'.

  So it was that Spanish fishermen working their nets off the coast of
Valencia were treated to an unforgettable spectacle over the next few
weeks -- a large passenger ship cruising offshore with a band of dirty
grey tarpaulins knotted around her funnel.  Had the fishermen been
allowed on board, they would have been even more surprised to see that
all the crew, including the diminutive lady Captain, wore grey rags
tied to their left arms.  It was even said, although perhaps in jest,
that Mary Sue's pet corgi, Vixie, was obliged to sport a grey rag tied
to her collar.

  Hubbard remained on the *Avon River* and sailed south to Alicante,
where the students who had been on the *Royal Scotman* were now
accommodated in a `land base', a hotel.  His plan to pay them a visit
was thwarted by the untimely discovery that the *Avon River* was too
big to enter the harbour.  For a while he seemed at a loss to know
what to do, but after studying a chart he decided that they should go
to Marseilles, the second largest city in France and her chief
Mediterranean port.  As always, no one dared ask why they were going
where they were going.

  Sailing north, the *Avon River* came across the unhappy *Royal
Scotman* apparently anchored for the night, still with her grey rag
round the funnel.  Hubbard ordered his ship to manoeuvre within
hailing distance and bellowed into a bullhorn, `Well, well, here's a
ship in liability that thinks it can anchor for the night, taking it
easy.'  Mary Sue's voice came drifting back across the water, but the
crew of the trawler could not hear what she was saving.  `It might be
better training to keep your ship moving at night,' Hubbard boomed,
`or are you scared to keep going in the dark?'  Mary Sue's reply
remained unintelligible, although it seemed somewhat heated to Hana
Eltringham, who was on the bridge with Hubbard.

  Friends who were on the `liability cruise' told Hana later that the
conditions on board were appalling.  The crew worked to the point of
exhaustion, the food was meagre and no one was allowed to wash or
change their clothes.  Mary Sue enforced the rules rigidly but shared
the privations, and was scrupulously fair and popular.

  In Marseilles, Hubbard moved into a rented villa on shore while the
engine of the *Avon River* was overhauled.  A telex was installed in
the villa so that he could stay in touch with Saint Hill, from where
the

                          -- end page 286 --

news was of increasingly vociferous opposition to Scientology from
both press and public.  Hubbard was warned that more questions were
expected in Parliament about their activities.

  At the beginning of June a radio message arrived from Mary Sue to
say that the *Royal Scotman* was ready for reassessment.  Her husband
graciously agreed to up-grade the ship to the next level --
`non-existence' -- and gave his permission for her to sail to
Marseilles for his inspection, after which he would decide if she
could resume operations unhindered by the stigma of a lower condition.
The *Royal Scotman* arrived in the harbour at Marseilles looking
better than she had at any time since going into service for the Sea
Org -- she had been painted white from stem to stern, her brasswork
was gleaming and the entire crew bad been fitted out with smart new
uniforms.  Hubbard was all smiles, presided over a ceremony to remove
all lower conditions and promptly moved back into his cabin on board.
A few days later the *Royal Scotman* sailed for Melilla in Spanish
Morocco, eight hundred miles distant.  No one knew why.

  The Commodore's sunny disposition was not to endure.  The *Avon
River* was stranded in Marseilles harbour by a general strike in
France which had paralyzed the country and brought repair work on the
ship's engines to a halt.  Hubbard began sending messages from the
*Royal Scotman* urging Hana Eltringham to somehow get the repair work
completed as he needed her urgently.  One evening the radio operator
told Hana that LRH wanted to speak to her alone; she was to clear the
bridge and close the doors.  `I did what I as told,' she said, `and as
I picked up the radio I could hear him sobbing openly.  He was weeping
with frustration over what was going on on the *Royal Scotman*.  He
said the new Captain was so incompetent that he had had to take over
and he couldn't cope any longer.  It shook me like nothing else could.
He was my everything.  I loved him like a father or a brother, he was
part of my family.  I really loved him that much I would have done
anything for him and there he was weeping over the radio and pleading
with me to do everything in my power to get my ship to sea to join
him.  "I need you to take over as Captain," he said.  I was
bewildered.  I didn't think I was capable of doing it but I knew I
would have to try.  Part of his brilliance was that he motivated you
to do extraordinary things.'

  Two days later, when the bridge blocking the harbour was opened in
an emergency, the *Avon River* made a dash for the open sea with her
engine repairs still incomplete.  She got as far as Barcelona before
the piston rings blew again.  She re-fuelled and limped down to
Valencia, where more repairs were undertaken, then a radio message
arrived ordering Hana to meet the *Royal Scotman* in Bizerte.

  The old trawler arrived at the Tunisian port a few hours before the
*Royal Scotman*.  John McMaster, who had been away on a promotional

                          -- end page 287 --

tour and had re-joined the *Avon River* in Valencia, watched the
arrival of the Sea Org's flagship in Bizerte.  `I'll never forget it,'
he said.  `We had been warned over the radio that she was coming and
about the time she was due a cruise ship from the Lloyd Tristina line
came in to the river.  She was like a beautiful swan, gliding in,
coming alongside and docking effortlessly.  Perfect!  Then our rust
bucket chunters in making a huge noise and begins manoeuvring too far
out.  Someone throws a line from the deck without the faintest hope of
reaching the dock and the rope splashes into the water.  It was almost
twilight and I could hear Fatty's voice coming across the water.  He
was standing on the bridge screaming: "I've been betrayed, the
bastards have betrayed me again!"  The Arabs waiting on the dock to
take the lines must have wondered what the hell was going on.'[4]

  When *Royal Scotman* was eventually moored, Hubbard's first act was
to place the *Avon River* in a condition of `liability' for taking so
long to catch up with him.  He refused to speak to Hana Eltringham and
had no desire to hear how she had risked arrest by slipping out of the
strike-bound harbour in Marseilles in order to join him, or how she
had sailed more than five hundred miles with steam pouring out of the
hatches and the engines threatening to seize up at any moment.  `There
was no more talk of me becoming Captain of the *Royal Scotman*,' Hana
said.

  Beset by traitors and incompetents, Hubbard felt obliged to
introduce new punishments for erring Sea Org personnel.  Depending on
his whim, offenders were either confined in the dark in the chain
locker and given food in a bucket, or assigned to chip paint in the
bilge tanks for twenty-four or forty-eight hours without a break.  A
third variation presented itself when Otto Roos, a young Dutchman,
dropped one of the bow-lines while the *Royal Scotman* was being moved
along the dock.  Purple with rage, Hubbard ordered Roos to be thrown
overboard.

  No one questioned the Commodore's orders.  Two crew members promptly
grabbed the Dutchman and threw him over the side.  There was an
enormous splash when he hit the water, a moment of horror when it
seemed that he had disappeared and nervous speculation that he might
have hit the rubbing strake as he fell.  But Roos was a good swimmer
and when he climbed back up the gangplank, dripping wet, he was
surprised to find the crew still craning anxiously over the rails on
the other side of the ship.

  `It was not really possible to question what was going on,'
explained David Mayo, a New Zealander and a long-time member of the
Sea Org, `because you were never sure who you could really trust.  To
question anything Hubbard did or said was an offense and you never
knew if you would be reported.  Most of the crew were afraid that if

__________
 4. Interview with McMaster

                          -- end page 288 --

they expressed any disagreement with what was going on they would be
kicked out of Scientology.  That was something absolutely untenable to
most people, something you never wanted to consider.  That was much
more terrifying than anything that might happen to you in the Sea Org.

  `We tried not to think too hard about his behaviour.  It was not
rational much of the time, but to even consider such a thing was a
discreditable thought and you couldn't allow yourself to have a
discreditable thought.  One of the questions in a sec-check was, "Have
you ever had any unkind thoughts about LRH?"  and you could get into
very serious trouble if you had.  So you tried hard not to.'[5]

  On 25 July 1968, while Hubbard was still in Bizerte, the government
in Britain finally decided to take action against Scientology.
Kenneth Robinson, the Health Minister, stood up in the House of
Commons and announced a ban on Scientology students entering the UK.
`The Government is satisfied,' he said, `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 practices are a potential menace to the personality and
well-being 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.'

  A few days later, the Home Secretary announced that L. Ron Hubbard
was classified as an `undesirable alien' and would consequently not be
allowed back into Britain, a decision that prompted Hubbard to send a
telex to Saint Hill complaining that `England, once the light and hope
of the world, has become a police state and can no longer be trusted.'

  These developments spurred British newspapers to renewed efforts to
find and interview the elusive Mr Hubbard.  The *Daily Mail*, which
had recently been pleased to publish the numbers of Hubbard's bank
accounts in Switzerland, was first to track him down in Bizerte.
Hubbard affected an attitude of nonchalant indifference to events in
Britain and did his best to charm the *Mail* team.  He invited the
reporters on board, showed them his sixteen war medals in a framed
case behind his desk and politely answered questions for more than two
hours.

  He claimed he was no longer in control of Scientology, said he was
abroad for health reasons and insisted he was still welcome in
Britain.  `My name inspires confidence,' he asserted.  `I'm persona
grata everywhere.  If I wanted to return to Britain, I'd walk in the
front gate and the Customs officer would say, "Hullo, Mr Hubbard."
That's how it's always been and always will be.'

  It was a public relations tour de force; almost the worst thing the

__________
 5. Interview with David Mayo, Palo Alto, August 1986

                          -- end page 289 --

newspaper could find to say about him was that he chain-smoked menthol
cigarettes and `fidgeted nervously'.[6] He performed with similar
confidence when a British television crew arrived the following day,
even when the interviewer asked him, `Do you ever think you might be
quite mad?'  Hubbard grinned broadly and replied `Oh yes!  The one man
in the world who never believes he's mad is a madman.'

  He explained that most of his wealth derived from his years as a
writer rather than from Scientology :'Fifteen million published words
and a great many successful movies don't make nothing.'  He was in the
Mediterranean, he said, studying ancient civilizations and trying to
find out why they went into decline.[7]

  After the television interview, Hubbard decided not to stay in
Bizerte to entertain further media representatives.  The *Royal
Scotman* rapidly weighed anchor and headed back to sea, leaving
latecomers to disconsolately kick their heels in the dust on the
Tunisian dockside and wonder what the trip was worth in expenses.

                                 -*-

The arrival of the *Royal Scotman* on the Greek island of Corfu two
days later aroused little interest locally.  Corfu was a popular port
of call fur cruise liners and a busy harbour, with ships plying in and
out all the time.  Apart, perhaps, from her Sierra Leonese flag, there
was nothing special about the *Royal Scotman*; word went round that
she was one of those floating schools that had become popular of late
and vague dockside curiosity was satisfied.

  Emissaries from the ship paid a visit on the harbourmaster, Marius
Kalogeras, and explained that they were representatives of the
`Operation and Transport Corporation Limited', an international
business management organization.  They would shortly be joined by two
other ships and intended, they said, to stay in Corfu for some time
while students attended courses on the ships.  Their logistic
requirements, they pointed out, would result in a considerable
injection of funds into the island's economy, not to mention the
contribution made by their free-spending students.

  The harbourmaster quickly grasped the message, allocated choice
berths for the `OTC' ships in a secluded section of the newly extended
quay and promised to provide full facilities.  Appraised of this warm
welcome, the Commodore began to look upon the island and the Greek
people with particular favour, even to the extent of granting an
interview to *Ephimeris ton Idisseon*, one of Corfu's daily
newspapers, on the subject of the recent coup d'tat in Greece by a
clique of military officers known as the `Colonels'.

  The interviewer's obsequiousness was only surpassed by Hubbard's
obvious desire to ingratiate himself, as fawning answer followed
fawning question:

__________
 6. *Daily Mail*, 6 August 1968
 7. *Scientology: The Now Religion*, George Malko, 1970

                          -- end page 290 --

  `Q. Mr Hubbard, as the international personality that you are, are
you following the new situation in Greece and what do you think of the
work of the present National Government?

  A. The government is the mirror of the people.  Where I go and
wherever the students go, the people continually say how safe they
feel.  The decision to form a company to establish its headquarter
offices here shows our confidence in Greece.

  Q. I have been told, Mr Hubbard, that you have read the whole of the
new Greek Constitution from beginning to end.  If that's true, what do
you think of it?

  A. Yes, I've read it with much interest.  The rights of man have
been given great care in it.  I have studied many constitutions, from
the times of unwritten laws which various tribes have followed, and
the present constitution represents the most brilliant tradition of
Greek democracy.  Out of all the modern constitutions the new Greek
Constitution is the best ...'

  Hubbard's interpretation of the ruling military junta as a democracy
was somewhat at odds with international opinion, but the interviewer
failed to take issue with it.

  By the time the *Avon River* joined the flagship in Corfu, Hubbard
was so enamoured with Greece that he decided to change the names of
all his ships in honour of his new hosts.  The *Royal Scotman* became
the *Apollo*, the *Avon River* the *Athena* and the *Enchanter*, which
had been pottering around the Mediterranean on various missions for
the Commodore and frequently breaking down, was re-named the *Diana*.

  At the end of August, the first students arrived in Corfu from Saint
Hill, many of them carrying large sums of smuggled cash (the British
government had recently introduced restrictions on the export of
currency and it was causing some cash-flow problems for the Sea Org,
which routinely paid its bills in cash).  `They gave me about 3000 in
high-denomination notes to take out to the ship,' said Mary Maren.  `I
hid it in my boots.'

  Smuggling was entirely consistent with the Sea Org's cavalier
disregard for the tedious rules of the `wog' world.  Leon Steinberg,
for example, supercargo on the *Avon River*, was the acknowledged
expert at forging documents of authorization to satisfy the voracious
appetite of maritime bureaucracy, using potato-cuts to replicate the
essential rubber stamp.  They were almost always accepted, to the huge
enjoyment of the Scientologists, who called them `Steinidocuments'.[8]

  The course being offered in Corfu was for advanced Scientologists to
train as `operating thetans' at Level VIII, the highest that could be
attained at that time.  To become a Class VIII auditor was the
ambition of every self-respecting Scientologist, although none of them
was prepared for the new autocracy that had developed within the Sea

__________
 8. Interview with Jessup

                          -- end page 291 --

Org.  `The atmosphere was very unfriendly when we arrived,' said Mary
Maren.  `One of our group was a bit drunk and he was grabbed by one of
the officers who really roughed him up, yelling at him, "This is a
ship of the Sea Org and it's run by L. Ron Hubbard ..."  I knew it was
not going to be like Valencia and I didn't like it.'

  Students were outfitted with a sparse uniform of green overalls,
brown belt and brown sandals and were humiliated at every opportunity.
`We were told we were lower than cockroaches and didn't even have the
right to audit Mary Sue's dog,' said Maren.  The working day began at
six o'clock every morning and ended at eleven o'clock at night after a
ninety-minute lecture delivered by Hubbard in the forward dining-room
on B Deck.  `We were always terrified of falling asleep.  LRH would be
carried away dramatizing different topics and we'd be pinching each
other to stay awake.  We were terrorized; it was continuous stress and
duress.'

  The course had not been going long before Hubbard decided that too
many mistakes were being made during auditing and he announced that in
future those responsible for errors would be thrown overboard.
Everyone laughed at Ron's joke.

  Next morning, at the regular muster on the aft well deck, two names
were called out.  As the students stepped forward, Sea Org officers
grabbed them by their arms and legs and threw them over the side of
the ship while the rest of the group looked on in amazement and
horror.  Hubbard, Mary Sue and their sixteen-year-old daughter Diana,
all in uniform, watched the ceremony from the promenade deck.  The two
`overboards' swam round the ship, climbed stone steps on to the
quayside and squelched back up the ship's gangplank, gasping for
breath.  At the top, they were required to salute and ask for
permission to return on board.

  `Overboarding' was thereafter a daily ritual.  The names of those
who were to be thrown overboard were posted on the orders of the day
and when the master-at-arms walked through the ship at six o'clock
every morning banging on cabin doors and shouting `Muster on the well
deck, muster on the well deck!'  everyone knew what was going to
happen.  `Anyone to be thrown overboard would be called to the front,'
said Ken Urquhart, `and the chaplain would make some incantation about
water washing away sins and then they would be picked up and tossed
over.  People accepted it because we all had a tremendous belief that
what Ron was doing would benefit the world.  He was our leader and
knew best.'[9]

  `I thought it was terrible, inhumane and barbaric,' said Hana
Eltringham.  `Some of the people on the course were middle-aged women.
Julia Salmon, the continental head of the LA org, was fifty-five years
old and in poor health and she was thrown overboard.

__________
 9. Interview with Urquhart

                          -- end page 292 --

She hit the water sobbing and screaming.  LRH enjoyed it, without a
doubt.  Sometimes I heard him making jokes about it.  Those were the
moments when I came closest to asking myself what I was doing there.
But I always justified it by telling myself that he must know what he
was doing and that it was all for the greater good.'

  Diana Hubbard also appeared to enjoy the ceremony and often ordered
overboards.  `I remember coming out on deck one day when I was chief
officer,' said Amos Jessup, `and finding my whole division of four or
five people being thrown overboard.  I didn't know anything about it
and said, "What the hell's going on here?"  Then I noticed Diana
looking down at me from the deck above and I thought, "Jesus Christ!"'

  Of the four Hubbard children on the ship, only Diana had so far been
appointed an officer in the Sea Org.  She was a `lieutenant commander'
at the age of sixteen and wore a uniform with a mini-skirt and a
peaked hat, habitually perched on the back of her head in order not to
muss her long auburn hair.  Quentin, who was 14, was supposed to be an
auditor but could summon up little interest compared to his teenage
passion for aeroplanes: he was often to be seen walking along the deck
with both arms outstretched, wheeling and diving in some imaginary
dogfight, lips vibrating to simulate appropriate engine noises.
Suzette and Arthur, who were thirteen and ten respectively, seemed
perfectly content to make the best of their strange lives and enjoy
the influence their name bestowed.

  Diana was perhaps the least liked of the Hubbard children, certainly
as far as John McMaster was concerned.  McMaster, still working as a
galley hand, was overboarded five times on the *Apollo* and nursed a
deep resentment against Hubbard and his officious daughter.  `The last
time someone called down and said, "John, you're wanted on the poop
deck, the Commodore wants to give you a special award."  I had some
misgivings, but I went up anyway and when I stepped on to the poop
deck I realized it was all a nasty little trick.  The whole crew was
marshalled there and up on the promenade deck there was Fatty and the
royal family and all the upstart lieutenants.  Hubbard was leaning
over the railings with a sorrowful, I've-been-betrayed-again look on
his face.

  `I began to seethe.  I was made to stand immediately below the
"royal family" and Diana comes down and stands in front of me and
reads out a list of my crimes, things like trying to take over and
undermining this and that.  It was all lies.  I was so mad I nearly
picked her up and threw *her* overboard.  Then she chants, "We cast
your sins and errors to the waves and hope you will arise a better
thetan."

  `I nearly said, "Go and fetch that fat bastard up there!  *He's* the
dishonest one!  Throw *him* overboard."  I should have done; I wish I

                          -- end page 293 --

had, it would have broken the spell they were all under.  I was
grabbed by these four big thugs and flung over and I started laughing
and laughing.  I thought, "Jesus, I'm going to get off this floating
insanity even if I have to swim to Yugoslavia."'  [10] He left the
ship several months later.

                                 -*-

It was predictable that a `school ship' which tossed its students
overboard every morning would attract a certain amount of attention.
Corfiot dock workers could hardly believe their eyes when the first
people went over the side of *Apollo*, although they soon treated the
whole business as a huge joke and regularly gathered to watch the fun.
But interest was also stirred in other quarters.

  The Nomarch (mayor) of Corfu asked Major John Forte, the honorary
British vice-consul on the island, what he knew about this strange
ship.  Forte, a retired army officer who had made his home on Corfu,
knew a lot.  He had reported the arrival of the *Royal Scotman* in
Corfu to the Foreign Office in London, correctly deducing that it was,
in his words, the `sinister Scientology ship'.  Subsequently he had
been instructed to deliver a letter to Hubbard to inform him that he
had been declared persona non grata in Britain.  It had proved to be
far from easy.

  `I was met at the gangway', the major reported, `by a small boy aged
about twelve with a very intent but far off expression on his face who
politely but firmly inquired my business.  I asked where I could find
the Captain.  In all seriousness, the lad insisted, "*I* am the
Captain."  Apparently the children take it in turns to act the role of
different officers on the ship and are indoctrinated into actually
believing they really are the character they happen to be portraying.
After an interesting conversation with the lad, I was whisked away by
one of the staff to the dirty and evil-smelling bowels of the ship
where I was introduced to an outsize female character known as
"supercargo", who looked as if she might have been a wardress in a
Dickensian reformatory in a bygone age.  "Supercargo" signed a receipt
for the letter and promised to get it delivered to Hubbard who was
alleged to be away cruising on the *Avon River*.  About a month later,
the letter, which had been crudely opened and resealed, was returned
to me with a note from "supercargo" saying that Hubbard could not be
traced, his whereabouts being unknown.'[11]

  Hubbard was on board all of this time, lying low and waiting for an
appropriate moment to step ashore.  While the rumours built up about
the `mystery ship' in the harbour, local traders unashamedly welcomed
the estimated $50,000 the Sea Org was spending in Corfu every month
and on 16 November, Hubbard was invited to a reception in his honour
at the Achilleon Palace, a lavish casino on the island.  It was

__________
10. Interview with McMaster
11. *The Commodore and the Colonels*, John Forte (pub.  Corfu Tourist
    Publications and Enterprises, 1981)

                          -- end page 294 --

the first time he had left the ship since its arrival in August and he
was accorded a standing ovation as he entered the palace.

  Much gratified, Hubbard returned the hospitality by inviting local
dignitaries to a re-naming ceremony on board the *Apollo*.  All the
Sea Org officers paraded on the quayside in their best uniforms and
Diana Hubbard, her hat on straight for once, climbed a rostrum and
broke a bottle of champagne against the ship's stern, proclaiming, `I
christen this yacht *"Apollo"*.'  As the new gold name on the stern
was unveiled, Hubbard joined his daughter on the rostrum and said, `I
wish to thank you very much because you are here and because you have
honoured us with your presence, O Citizens of Corfu ...'

  Behind these cordial scenes, problems were fermenting.  The Greek
Government had instituted inquiries about Scientology through its
Embassy in London.  Security agents acting for the Colonels had been
instructed to check out the ship, but were assured by the
harbourmaster that the Scientologists were harmless people who abided
by the law and gave no trouble.  `I have seen people being tossed into
the sea,' he admitted, `but they have told me this is part of their
training course.'  Major Forte complained that he was besieged by
people objecting to Scientologists being `harboured' on the island and
Corfu's leading daily newspaper, *Telegrafos*, published a highly
critical feature about Scientology which really raised Corfiot
suspicions with a passing mention of `black magic'.

  By January 1969, Corfu traders were so alarmed by the prospect of
action being taken against the Scientologists that a delegation sent a
telegram to Prime Minister Papadopoulos submitting its `warmest plea'
for `Professor Hubbard's Philosophy School' to be allowed to remain in
Corfu.  The Secretary General of the Ministry of Merchant Marine
replied that there was `never any objection' to the *Apollo* remaining
in Corfu.

  Hubbard, meanwhile, was promising to lavish further largesse on the
island.  In a typically magniloquent manifesto headed `Corfu Social
and Economic Survey' he envisaged building hotels, roads, factories,
schools, a new harbour, three golf courses, seven yacht marinas and
various resort facilities, as well as establishing a Greek University
of Philosophy funded by Operation and Transport Corporation.  The
headline on the front of *Ephimeris ton Idisseon* next day was `CORFU
WILL KNOW BETTER DAYS OF AFFLUENCE'.

  Deputy Prime Minister Patakos hastily issued a statement emphasizing
that `no permission had yet been granted to the Scientologists to
become established on Greek soil'.  Hubbard responded by announcing
that his Scientology School in Corfu would open `within two or three
weeks'.

  By this time Major Forte was convinced that Hubbard's intention

                          -- end page 295 --

was to take over partial control of the island and establish the world
headquarters of Scientology and he was lobbying assiduously against
allowing him a foothold.  Hubbard, on the other hand, was convinced as
usual that there was a conspiracy and that Forte was an agent of
British intelligence working a `black propaganda' section.  He would
later allege that the major had spread vicious rumours about black
magic rites being held on board the *Apollo* and Scientologists
poisoning wells and casting spells on local cattle.[12] In reality,
decisions were being made at a level far above that of an
insignificant honorary vice-consul; the Greek Minister for Foreign
Affairs had lodged an official request with the UK and Australian
Governments for information regarding the status of Scientology in
their countries.

  On 6 March, Hubbard's opponents received unexpected support from the
US Sixth Fleet when a task force arrived off Corfu and a detachment of
Marines set up sentry posts around the berths occupied by the Sea Org
ships apparently in order to prevent US Navy personnel from coming
into contact with Scientologists.  `Somehow it seemed', said Major
Forte `that this was a carefully planned operation designed to bring
forcibly home to the authorities the grave danger of contamination by
this undesirable cult.'

  Unlikely as this theory was, less than two weeks later the Nomarch
of Corfu ordered Hubbard and his ships to leave Greece within
twenty-four hours.  `The old man almost had a heart attack when he got
the news,' said Kathy Cariotaki, a Sea Org member who was on the
bridge with Hubbard at the time.  `He went absolutely grey with
shock.'[13]

  At five o'clock on the afternoon of 19 March 1969, with the harbour
sealed by police, the *Apollo* slipped her lines and sailed out into
the Aegean Sea.

  Major John Forte watched her leave front the waterfront and realized
he was standing next to one of the island's notorious Lotharios.  He
commiserated with him on the departure of so many pretty young girls.
`As a matter of fact I'm not sorry they're gone,' the man replied.
`They were a lot of cockteasers.  When it came to the point they all
tell you they are only allowed to have sexual relations with fellow
Scientologists.'

  Forte laughed.  It was, he thought, an intriguing aspect of the
philosophy of the Church of Scientology.

__________
12. Letter from Mary Sue Hubbard to Sir John Foster, 6 November 1969
13. Interview with Kathy Cariotaki, San Diego, July 1986

                          -- end page 296 --

                             *Chapter 18*

                         *Messengers of God*

  `It is possible that Commodore Hubbard and his wife ... are
philanthropists of some kind and/or eccentrics, but if one does not
accept this as an explanation, there has to be some other gimmick
involved in this operation.  What this gimmick might be is unknown
here, although people in Casablanca have speculated variously from
smuggling to drug traffic to a far-out religious cult.'  (Cable from
US Consul General, Casablanca, to Washington, 26 September 1969)

                              * * * * *

At the time of her ignominious departure from Corfu, the *Apollo*
informed the port authorities that she would be making for Venice,
information which was doubtless passed to the CIA and to the Foreign
Office in London, since both the United States and the United Kingdom
were anxious to keep track of the wily Commodore of the Sea Org.  But
once the ship was out of sight of the Greek mainland, Hubbard ordered
a change of course.  The *Apollo* turned west towards Sardinia, where
she was rapidly re-fuelled and re-provisioned before heading for the
Strait of Gibraltar and sailing out of the Mediterranean.

  For the next three years, the *Apollo* patrolled the eastern
Atlantic, aimlessly sailing from port to port at the Commodore's
caprice and rarely stopping anywhere for longer than six weeks.  She
ventured out into the Atlantic as far as the Azores and once put in to
Dakar, the capital of Senegal, but most of the time she criss-crossed
a diamond shaped patch of ocean bordered by Casablanca, Madeira,
Lisbon and the Canaries, with no objective other than to stay on the
move.

  `LRH said we had to keep moving because there were so many people
after him,' explained Ken Urquhart, who was by then the Commodore's
personal communicator.  `If they caught up with him they would cause
him so much trouble that he would be unable to continue his work,
Scientology would not get into the world and there would be social and
economic chaos, if not a nuclear holocaust.'[1]

  US intelligence services were mystified by what Hubbard was up to
and cables arriving in Washington began speculating on a variety of

__________
 1. Interview with Urquhart

                          -- end page 297 --

illicit activities ranging from white slavery to drug-running.  In
September 1969, while the *Apollo* was in Casablanca, the local US
consul cabled Washington with an account of a visit to the ship.  All
concerned, he noted, have been `perplexed by the vagueness of the
replies' to simple questions about the ship's activities.  The consul
had picked up a brochure which was no more forthcoming, explaining
that trainees on board were learning `the art and the culture of
navigation, the theory of which, when applied, demonstrates a very
useful practice at sea'.

  Since the ship was registered in Panama, the Panamanian consul tried
his luck, but with no better results.  He found the ship `in a very
bad state of repair' and believed that `the lives of the crew had been
in jeopardy' while the vessel was at sea.  `The Panamanian consul has
tried unsuccessfully to meet Commodore Hubbard, who has taken a suite
at the El Mansour Hotel and has instructed the hotel personnel to
refuse all telephone calls.'[2]

  In frequent communiqus from the ship to his faithful disciples,
Hubbard expounded on the enemy forces ranged against Scientology and
elaborated on the `international conspiracy' theory of which he had
always been enamoured.  Out in the Atlantic, cruising on his flagship,
the Commodore's pre-occupation with Communist conspiracies developed
into a fixation about something called the `Tenyaka Memorial' -- a
name he gave to the mysterious agency he claimed was co-ordinating the
attacks on Scientology.  His hunt for the Tenyaka Memorial was the
subject of a rambling thirty-one-page monologue, dated 2 November 1969
and headed `Covert Operations', in which he said that he and Mary Sue
had `just discovered' that members of the World Federation of Mental
Health were working for British and US intelligence agencies.  `These
bastards who are in charge of security in these Western countries,' he
wrote, `ought to be simply electric shocked to death.  I'm not
kidding.  Because these same guys ... have meetings with the Russians
every year.'  Later the Commodore decided that the Tenyaka Memorial
was run by a Nazi underground movement intent on world domination.[3]

  Both Hubbard and Mary Sue, who rejoiced in the titles of `Deputy
Commodore', `Commodore Staff Guardian' (CSG) and `Controller',
peppered their memoranda with military terminology and intelligence
jargon.  Mary Sue ran the powerful Guardian's office, which was
Scientology's intelligence bureau.  In a `Guardian Order' dated 16
December 1969, she warned that the `enemy' was infiltrating double
agents into the church and urged the use of `any and all means' to
detect infiltration.  One of the `operating targets' was to assemble
full data by investigation for use `in case of attack'.[4] `Smersh'
even figured in one of Hubbard's `flag orders', which defined
Scientology's second

__________
 2. *Los Angeles Times*, 29 August 1970
 3. *The Guardian*, 12 February 1980
 4. Guardian Order, 16 December 1969

                          -- end page 298 --

zone of action thus: `To invade the territory of Smersh, run it
better, make tons of money in it, to purify the mental health
field.'[5]

  The need for security was made very real to those Scientologists who
were flown out to join the ship at its various ports of call.  They
were briefed and repeatedly drilled on their `shore stories' -- that
they were employees of Operation and Transport Corporation, a business
management company.  They were warned not to use Scientology-speak on
shore, to deny any link between OTC and Scientology and, in
particular, to feign ignorance of L. Ron Hubbard.

  All outgoing private mail had to be left, unsealed, with the
master-at-arms and every letter was read by an ethics officer to check
for possible breaches of security.  Approved mail was shipped in bulk
to Copenhagen for posting.  Lest curiosity prompted enemies ashore to
sift through the ship's garbage for incriminating paperwork, all
papers were bundled up and dumped at sea.  And on the rare occasions
when `wogs' were allowed on board, the crew carried out a `clean ship
drill', which involved hiding any Scientology materials from view and
turning all the pictures of L. Ron Hubbard to the wall.

  Hubbard's persistent reiteration that Scientology was beset by dark
forces, seeking to destroy anything that helped mankind, fostered a
siege mentality among the crew of the *Apollo* and provided spurious
justification for the harsh conditions on board.  Throughout the Sea
Org, the need for dedication, vigilance and sacrifice was constantly
stressed and it generated fierce loyalty which was blind to logic or
literal truth.  The `shore story', which everyone knew was a pack of
lies, was a regrettable necessity if the world was to be saved by
Scientology.

  It was also a regrettable necessity to prevent anyone from `blowing
the org'.  Although all the passports were locked in a safe, attempts
to jump ship were not unknown.  Whenever it happened, Sea Org
personnel were rushed ashore to stake out the relevant local
consulate, where the fugitive was likely to try and obtain a new
passport.  If they were too late, a `dead agent caper' was activated.
The runaway was accused of being a thief or a trouble-maker in order
to discredit whatever story he was telling in the Consulate; in the
parlance of wartime spies, he would be neutralized and considered a
`dead agent'.[6]

  Despite the continuing restrictions on personal liberty, life on
board improved somewhat after the *Apollo* left the Mediterranean.
The `heavy ethics' were eased -- there was no more overboarding, for
example -- and the Commodore's demeanour was markedly sunnier.  `He'd
often take a stroll along the promenade deck and stop to talk to
people,' said Urquhart.  `He normally wore a white silk shirt with a
gold lanyard, a cravat and naval cap with lots of scrambled egg on the
peak and you could always see him in the centre of the crowd that

__________
 5. Flag Order no.  1890, 26 March 1969
 6. Affidavit of Gerald Armstrong, 16 March 1986

                          -- end page 299 --

gathered round him whenever he stopped to talk.  But there was still a
lot of tension on board and the very real possibility that somebody
would make a mistake that would cause a flap.  Someone might upset a
harbourmaster, or say the wrong thing in answer to a question, or let
slip something about Scientology.  Some shit was going to hit the fan
every day, you could count on it.'

  No attempt was made on board ship to maintain the myth that Hubbard
was no longer in charge of Scientology.  Between forty and fifty feet
of telex messages arrived every day from Scientology offices around
the world and he received weekly reports detailing every org's
statistics and income.  Money was, without question, one of the
Commodore's primary interests, although he liked to profess a lofty
disregard for such matters as financial gain.  Loyal members of the
Sea Org, who were paid $10 a week, believed the Commodore drew less
than they did, because that is what he told them.  The reality was
that Hubbard was receiving $15,000 a week from church funds through
the Hubbard Explorational Company and that huge sums of money were
being creamed from `desk-drawer' corporations and salted away in
secret bank accounts in Switzerland and Liechtenstein.  When one of
these accounts had to be closed in 1970, $1 million in cash was
transferred on board the *Apollo*.[7]

  There was also a considerable disparity between the way the Hubbards
lived on the ship and the conditions endured by everyone else.  Most
of the crew lived in cramped, smelly, roach-infested dormitories
fitted with bunks in three tiers that left little room for personal
possessions.  Hubbard and Mary Sue each had their own state-rooms in
addition to a suite on the promenade deck comprising an auditing-room,
office, an elegant saloon and a wood-panelled dining-room, all
off-limits to students and crew.  Hubbard had a personal steward, as
did Mary Sue and the Hubbard children, who all had their own cabins.
Meals for the Commodore and his family were cooked in a separate
galley by their personal chef, using ingredients brought by couriers
from the United States.

  When Mike Goldstein, an anthropology major from the University of
Colorado, was sent out to join the Sea Org, he was pressed into
service as a courier.  `I was briefed in Los Angeles and drilled on my
shore story.  It was all made to seem very mysterious and cloak and
dagger.  It was scary.  I was warned to follow my instructions to the
letter and given a box to take out with me to the ship.  I was to say
it contained company papers of the Operation and Transport
Corporation.  Going through the security control in Los Angeles
airport, the box set the buzzer off.  I nearly died.  They opened it
up and discovered it contained Hubbard's underpants, tied in a bag
with metal clips.

__________
 7. Testimony, Armstrong *v.* Church of Scientology, 1984

                          -- end page 300 --

  `When I got to New York I found I was expected to courier something
else -- fourteen boxes which had to be maintained at a certain
temperature.  No one would tell me what was in them, only that it was
vital they arrived intact at the ship.  In London I had to change
planes.  Transferring from one terminal to another with these fourteen
boxes was murder.  I arrived in Madrid and was taken by Sea Org
members to an apartment, where the boxes were put in refrigeration.
Next day I caught a plane for Casablanca, only to discover the ship
had moved on further south to Safi.  By then I was completely paranoid
about the boxes, terrified that the heat would get to whatever was in
them.  I got them wrapped up and found a bus to take me to Safi, where
I finally arrived at the ship and handed over the boxes.  I was
wondering what the hell was in them, but I didn't find out until
later.  I was carrying fourteen boxes of frozen shrimps for the
Hubbard family.'[8]

  Like all Scientologists, it had been Goldstein's long-time ambition
to meet L. Ron Hubbard and when he first got to the ship he used to
contrive excuses to walk past Hubbard's research room on the promenade
deck just so that he could catch a glimpse of the great man at work.
He was amazed at the amount of paperwork that Hubbard seemed to get
through, although many of his preconceptions about the Sea Org were
soon shattered.  `I had been told that Flag [the *Apollo*] was
perfection and that everyone was super-efficient.  But then I was
appointed Flag Banking Officer and handed a real dog's breakfast: the
ship's finances were in a mess.  There were drawers full of money
everywhere and more than a million dollars in the safe, but no proper
accounts.  We paid for everything in cash and were working with three
different currencies -- Spanish, Portuguese and Moroccan -- and it
seemed that if anyone wanted money for something they just asked for
it.  I decided it had to be done by the book and told everyone they
would have to account for what they had already spent before they
could have any more.  The ship was a different world, you have to
understand.  It was supposed to run Scientology for the whole planet,
but it was a world unto itself.'

  It was also a world entirely of Hubbard's creation and he added to
it, at around this time, a bizarre new element -- an elite unit made
up of children and eventually known as the Commodore's Messenger
Organization.  The CMO was staffed by the offspring of committed
Scientologists and its original, apparently innocuous, function was
simply to serve the Commodore by relaying his verbal orders to crew
and students on board the *Apollo*.  But the messengers, mainly
pubescent girls, soon recognized and enjoyed their power as teenage
clones of the Commodore.  In their cute little dark blue uniforms and
gold lanyards, they were trained to deliver Hubbard's orders using his

__________
 8. Interview with Michael Goldstein, Denver, CO, March 1986

                          -- end page 301 --

exact words and tone of voice; if he was in a temper and bellowing
abuse, the messenger would scuttle off and pipe the same abuse at the
offender.  No one dared take issue with whatever a messenger said; no
one dared disobey her orders.  Vested with the authority of the
Commodore they came to be widely feared little monsters.

  From 1970 onwards, messengers attended Hubbard day and night,
working on six-hour watches around the clock.  When he was asleep, two
messenger sat outside his state-room waiting for the buzzer that would
signal he was awake.  Throughout his waking hours, they sat outside
his office waiting for his call.  When he took a stroll on the deck,
they followed him, one carrying his cigarettes, the other an ashtray
to catch the ash as it fell.  Every minute of the Commodore's
existence had to be recorded in the `Messenger Log' which noted when
he woke, ate, slept, worked and the details of every message he had
required to be run.

  It was, of course, the greatest possible honour to be selected as a
messenger and it was perhaps understandable that the girls would vie
with each other to curry favour with the Commodore and dream up ways
of pleasing him, by springing forward to light his cigarette, perhaps,
or reverently dusting the individual sheets of his writing paper,
particularly since they were awarded extra points for little acts of
thoughtfulness.

  Doreen Smith was just twelve years old, a skinny kid with long blond
hair, big eyes and smeared make-up, inexpertly applied, when she
arrived in the Azores in September 1970, to join the crew of the
*Apollo*.  Born into Scientology, she had wanted to be a messenger for
as long as she could recall.  `I remember sitting on my luggage on the
dockside and looking up at the ship.  She was the biggest ship in the
port, painted all white, with these huge gold letters, Apollo, and she
made a real awesome impression on me.  We had to wait on the dock to
be cleared by the medical officer.  I spotted LRH, or thought I did,
standing with his hand on the shoulder of a young girl in a shiny blue
short-sleeved pullover with a gold lanyard.  He gave her a little
shove and she went running down deck after deck to the gangway,
skidding to a stop at the bottom to welcome us on board on behalf of
the Commodore.  It was the first time I'd seen a messenger.'[9]

  Two days later, Doreen received a nasty taste of life at sea.
Weather reports indicated that a hurricane was heading straight for
the Azores.  It was too dangerous for a ship the size of the *Apollo*
to remain in the harbour and there was no time to sail out of reach.
Hubbard took the ship to sea and sailed up and down in the lee of the
island, changing course as the wind changed direction.  `It was a very
impressive feat of seamanship,' said Hana Eltringham.  `I was on the
bridge for almost all the time and I was petrified.  Day didn't look
much different from

__________
 9. Interview with Doreen Gillham, Malibu, CA, August 1986

                          -- end page 302 --

night, the wind was howling continually and you could hardly see the
bow of the ship because of breaking waves and spray.  LRH sat at the
radar for thirty-six hours without a break, except to go to the
bathroom.  He was very calm throughout, constantly reassuring everyone
it was going to be all right.'[10]

  When the hurricane had passed, Doreen was put to work washing dishes
in the galley while she trained first as an `able seaman', then as a
`page', before she could qualify to join the CMO.  She had to appear
before a board of fourteen-year-old messengers, win its approval and
run sample messages before she was accepted.  The most exciting
morning of her life was when she was taken ashore in Morocco to buy
her uniform -- dark blue stretch pants and a blue tunic.  `I was
thrilled to death,' she said.  `It was what I had wanted from day one.
LRH was my hero.  We'd always had his picture hanging on the wall at
home and we listened to his tapes all the time.  I was his greatest
fan.'

  Hubbard so much enjoyed the company of his pretty young messengers
that it inevitably put a strain on his relationship with his wife and
children.  It was obvious to Mary Sue, as it was to everyone on board,
that the Commodore favoured his messengers above his own children, for
whom he seemed to have little time or consideration.  Diana, the
eldest, had inherited her father's self-confidence and was least
affected by his lack of regard.  Then eighteen she was one of the
Commodore's staff Aides, who formed the senior management body
directly under Hubbard.  She was engaged to another Sea Org officer
and had a reputation on board for being cold and authoritarian,
although she was much admired by the messengers for her long auburn
hair, her beauty and her status; they called her `Princess Diana'.

  None of the children had had a proper education since leaving
England in 1967.  On the bridge, Diana could handle the ship with
brisk efficiency, but she read nothing more demanding than romantic
novels and in conversation she rivalled Mrs Malaprop.  Her latest
malapropisms were the source of much secret merriment among her fellow
officers.

  Her brother, Quentin, was seventeen in January 1971 and was deeply
unhappy.  He was working as an auditor, but all his life he had longed
to be a pilot and frequently pleaded with his father to be allowed to
leave the ship to take flying lessons.  Quiet and introverted, Quentin
was furtively described as `swishy' because no one wanted to say out
loud what everyone suspected -- that he was homosexual.  Hubbard's
loathing of homosexuals was well documented in his voluminous writings
and there was not a Scientologist alive who would risk suggesting to
him that his son's sexuality was in doubt.

  Suzette and Arthur were less troubled by the sacrifice of their
childhood.  Suzette was fifteen, a cheerful, uncomplicated teenager

__________
10. Interview with Eltringham

                          -- end page 303 --

with a great sense of fun and none of her older sister's drive or
ambition.  Moved from post to post around the ship, she performed
tolerably well and displayed no executive aspirations.  All the
children had to stand watch along with the rest of the crew and
Suzette could always be relied upon to be on duty on time.  Not so her
twelve-year-old brother, Arthur, who often refused to get out of bed
when he was supposed to be on night watch.  If the watchkeeper going
off duty tried to rouse him, he would threaten to make a noise and
wake his father.  Anyone who woke Hubbard was in serious trouble and
it was often less troublesome to do Arthur's duty than chance waking
the slumbering Commodore.

  Arthur was commonly described as a `holy terror' and rampaged
through the ship at will, playing practical jokes, like throwing
buckets of water into occupied toilet cubicles, without fear of
retribution.  Yet there were moments when even the irrepressible
Arthur experienced a sense of loss.  Doreen Smith and Arthur were the
same age and the firmest of friends.  `He'd often say to me that be
wished his father had more time for him,' Doreen said.  `I suppose, at
one time or another, we all wished we had more ordinary lives.'

  Arthur's special responsibility on board ship was to look after his
father's motor-cycles, in particular a huge Harley Davidson that had
been given to Hubbard by the Toronto org.  One afternoon, the
Commodore told Doreen to make sure Arthur had cleaned the Harley
Davidson properly by wiping a tissue over the mudguards and petrol
tank and bringing it back to show him.  She returned with a black
smudge on the tissue.  Hubbard was incensed.  `You go and assign
Arthur liability,' he roared at Doreen, `he's not doing his duty.'

  Doreen was relieved that Arthur didn't seem to be too worried by his
father's reaction, or by the need to tie a grey rag round his arm, but
it was not the end of the matter.  Mary Sue, who was fiercely
protective of her children, felt it was Doreen's fault that Arthur had
been assigned liability.  Later that afternoon, she grabbed her by the
arm and starting shaking her.  `You little fiend,' she hissed, sinking
her nails into the girl's arm, `you're destroying my family.'

  The messengers were nothing if not loyal to each other.  While
Doreen was still sobbing, one of them ran to tell the Commodore what
had happened.  As Doreen got back to her post outside Hubbard's
office, she saw Mary Sue going in and heard him roar, `Close the
fucking door!'  Through the engraved glass, she could see Mary Sue's
silhouette standing to attention in front of the desk while the
Commodore ranted.  Doreen could not make out everything he said, but
she distinctly heard him bellow at the top of his lungs, `Nobody
manhandles my messengers, is that clear?'  Mary Sue mumbled her
agreement.  `Yes *what*?'  he bellowed.  `Yes *sir*!'  she replied
smartly.

                          -- end page 304 --

Outside, the messengers were trying hard not to put their ears to the
keyhole, but they heard enough to be *thrilled*.

  A few months later, Diana upset her father in some way.  Hubbard
reeled off a long reprimand to the messenger on duty, adding at the
end of it: `OK, go and spit in Diana's face.'  The messenger was a
little dark-eyed girl called Jill Goodman, thirteen years old.  She
ran along the deck to Diana's office, burst in, spat in her face with
unerring accuracy and began shouting her message as Diana let out a
scream of fury.  Mary Sue, who was in an adjoining office, burst in as
her daughter was wiping the spittle from her face.  She grabbed Jill
round the throat as if she was going to strangle her and also began
screeching.  Jill started crying and when Mary Sue let her go, she
immediately rushed off to tell the Commodore.  Another acrimonious
husband and wife row followed, which ended with Mary Sue throwing her
shoes at the luckless messenger Hubbard despatched to chastise her
further.

  The Commodore was soon embroiled in another domestic drama of a
different, and totally unexpected, nature.  He received word from Los
Angeles that his daughter Alexis was trying to make contact with him.
Now twenty-one years old, Alexis lived with her mother and stepfather,
Miles Hollister, on the Hawaiian island of Maui.  Although her mother
rarely spoke about her father -- Sara was still frightened of her
first husband and looked back on her divorce as a lucky escape from
his clutches -- Alexis had read enough about L. Ron Hubbard to begin
to think of him as a rather romantic figure and she was naturally
curious to meet him.  In 1970, on a visit to England, she called at
Saint Hill Manor in the hope of seeing him and was disappointed to
discover he was not there.  A year later, while she was home from
college for the summer vacation, she wrote to him care of the Church
of Scientology in Los Angeles.

  Hubbard acted swiftly when he heard about Alexis' inquiries.  He
scribbled a note to her and dispatched detailed instructions to Jane
Kember who was running the Guardian's Office at Saint Hill, about how
the matter was to be handled.  The messengers had got into the habit
of standing beside the Commodore when he was writing at this desk and
whipping away each sheet of paper as he reached the bottom of the
page.  Doreen Smith was on duty when the Commodore was writing to
Alexis and she was shocked by what she was surreptitiously reading as
his hand flew over the page.  He ended his instructions to Kember with
a little homily, `Decency is not a subject well understood.'

  When Alexis returned to college in the United States she learned
that there was a man staying in the local motel who had been asking to
see her.  She invited him to her dorm, where he introduced himself as

                          -- end page 305 --

L. Ron Hubbard's agent and said he had a statement to read to her.
While Alexis sat stunned, the man read out a statement in which
Hubbard categorically denied he was her father: `Your mother was with
me as a secretary in Savannah in late 1948 ... In July 1949 I was in
Elizabeth, New Jersey, writing a movie.  She turned up destitute and
pregnant.'  Hubbard implied that Alexis's father was Jack Parsons, but
out of the kindness of his heart he had taken her mother in to see her
through `her trouble'.  Later he said he came up from Palm Springs,
California, where he was living, and found Alexis abandoned; she was
just a toddler, a `cute little thing', and so he had taken her along
on his wanderings for a couple of years.

  Hubbard told Alexis that her mother had been a Nazi spy during the
Second World War and suggested that the divorce action was a spurious
ploy on her part to win control of Scientology -- `They [Sara and
Miles Hollister] obtained considerable newspaper publicity, none of it
true, and employed the highest priced divorce attorney in the US to
sue me for divorce and get the foundation in Los Angeles in
settlement.  This proved a puzzle since where there is no legal
marriage, there can't be any divorce.'

  When the agent had finished reading, he asked Alexis if she had any
questions.  She asked in a small voice if she could sec the statement.
He refused.  Mustering what composure she could, she said that what
she had heard was self-explanatory and asked him to leave.  Alexis
made no further attempts to see her father.[11]

                                 -*-

At around this time, another young woman began causing problems for
the Commodore.  Susan Meister, a twenty-three-year-old from Colorado,
had joined the crew of the *Apollo* in February 1971, having been
introduced to Scientology by friends while she was working in San
Francisco.  When she arrived on the ship she was a typically eager and
optimistic convert and wrote home frequently, urging her family to
`get into' Scientology.  `I just had an auditing session,' she wrote
on 5 May.  `I feel great, great, *great* and my life is expanding,
*expanding* and it's *all Scientology*.  Hurry up!  Hurry, hurry.  Be
a friend to yourselves -- get into this stuff *now*.  It's more
precious than gold, it's the best thing that's ever ever ever ever
come along.  Love, Susan.'

  By the time of her next letter, on 15 June, the Commodore's
conspiracy theories had clearly made an impression.  `I can't tell you
exactly where we are.  We have enemies who ... do not wish to see us
succeed in restoring *freedom* and *self-determination* to this
planet's people.  If these people were to find out where we were
located they would attempt to destroy us ...'

  Ten days later, when the *Apollo* was docked in the Moroccan port of

__________
11. Letter from Sara Hollister; testimony Armstrong *v.* Church of
    Scientology, 1984

                          -- end page 306 --

Safi, Susan Meister locked herself in a cabin, put a .22 target
revolver to her forehead and pulled the trigger.  She was found at
7.35 pm lying across a bunk, wearing the dress her mother had sent her
for her birthday, with her arms crossed and the revolver on her chest.
A suicide note was on the floor.

  Local police were called, but the death of an American citizen
inevitably alerted US consular officials and exposed the *Apollo* to
the kind of attention that Hubbard had been trying to avoid for years.
Following the Commodore's oft-repeated doctrine, the Sea Org went on
to the attack.  Susan Meister, who had seemed a rather quiet and
reserved young woman to her friends, was portrayed as an unstable
former drug addict who had made previous attempts at suicide; Peter
Warren, the *Apollo*'s port Captain, hinted that compromising
photographs of her had been found.

  These smear tactics were soon extended to embrace William Galbraith,
the US vice-consul in Casablanca, who had driven to Safi to make
inquiries into the incident.  On 13 July, he had lunch with Warren and
Joni Chiriasi, another member of the crew, at the Sidi Bouzid
restaurant in Safi before being taken to look round the ship.
Afterwards, Warren and Chiriasi both signed affidavits accusing
Galbraith of threatening the ship -- `He said that if the ship became
an embarrassment to the United States, Nixon would order the CIA to
sink or sabotage it.'  Galbraith also allegedly referred to the Church
of Scientology as a `bunch of kooks' and speculated that the ship was
being used as a brothel or a casino or for drug-trafficking.

  Next day, Norman Starkey, captain of the *Apollo*, forwarded copies
of the affidavits to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in
Washington, with a covering letter complaining that Galbraith had
threatened `to murder the vessel's company of 380 men, women and
children, many of whom are Americans'.  Letters were also sent to John
Mitchell, the Attorney General, and to the Secret Service, all with
copies to President Nixon, who was yet to be engulfed by Watergate.

  A few days later, Susan Meister's father arrived in Casablanca to
investigate his daughter's death but found it impossible to make
headway with the disinterested Moroccan authorities, who were somewhat
more concerned with a recent attempted coup d'tat than a lone
American making inquiries about his daughter.  Meister, who refused to
believe that Susan had committed suicide, could not even discover
where her body was being kept and in desperation he turned to L. Ron
Hubbard for help.

  He later wrote a dispiriting account of his visit to the ship,
escorted by Peter Warren: `Passing the guarded gates into the port
compound, we had our first look at Hubbard's ship *Apollo*.  It
appeared to be old

                          -- end page 307 --

and as we boarded it, the girls manning the deck gave us a hand
salute.  All were dressed in work-type clothing of civilian origin.
Most appeared to be young.  Upon boarding, we were shown the stern of
the ship, which was used as a reading-room, with several people
sitting in chairs reading books.  The mention of Susan seemed to meet
with disapproval from those on board ... we were shown where Susan's
quarters were in the stern of the ship below decks where it appeared
fifty or so people were sleeping on shelf-type bunks.  Susan's letter
had mentioned she shared a cabin all the way forward with one other
person.  Next we were shown the cabin next to the pilot house on the
bridge where the alleged suicide had taken place ... We were not
allowed to see any more of the ship.  I requested an interview with
Hubbard as he was then on board.  Warren said he would ask.  He
returned in about half an hour and said Hubbard had declined to see
me.'

  After his return to America, Meister discovered to his anger and
astonishment that his daughter had been buried even before he arrived
in Morocco.  He arranged to have the body exhumed and returned to the
United States, but before the remains of Susan Meister were put to
rest, a final dirty trick was played: Meister's local health authority
in Colorado received an anonymous letter warning of a cholera epidemic
in Morocco that had so far caused two or three hundred deaths.  `It's
been brought to my attention,' wrote the poison pen, `that the
daughter of one George Meister died in Morocco, either by accident or
cholera, probably the latter.'[12]

                                 -*-

At the beginning of 1972, Hubbard fell ill, suddenly and inexplicably,
with a sickness that defied diagnosis and presented a bewildering
range of symptoms.  Towards the end of January, the Commodore sent a
pathetic note to Jim Dincalci, the ship's medical officer: `Jim, I
don't think I'm going to make it.'

  Dincalci, who had been appointed medical officer on the strength of
six months' experience as a nurse before joining Scientology, was
unsure what to do.  He had been deeply shocked when he first arrived
on the ship in 1970 to realize that Hubbard became ill just like
ordinary mortals, since he clearly remembered reading in the first
Dianetics book that it was possible to cure most ailments with the
power of the mind.  In his first week as medical officer, Hubbard
began complaining of feeling unwell and Dincalci was very surprised
when a doctor was called.  He prescribed a course of pain-killers and
antibiotics, but Dincalci naturally did not bother to collect the
pills because he was convinced that Ron would not need them.

  `I thought', he said, `that as an operating thetan he would have
total control of his body and of any pain.  When he discovered I
hadn't got

__________
12. Jon Atack archives

                          -- end page 308 --

him the pain-killers, he flew off the handle and started screaming at
me.'[13]

  Fearful of making another mistake, Dincalci sought advice about the
Commodore's illness from Otto Roos, who was one of the senior
`technical' Scientologists on board.  Roos ventured the view that the
problem stemmed from some incident in his past which had not been
properly audited.  The only way to find it would be to comb through
all the folders in which Ron's auditing sessions were recorded.

  Hubbard gave his approval to this course of action, adding a note to
Otto Roos: `I'm delighted that somebody is finally going to take
responsibility for my auditing.'  Roos began calling in the folders
from Saint Hill and from all the Scientology branches in the United
States where Hubbard had been audited.  There were hundreds of them,
dating back to 1948; Roos calculated they would make a stack eight
feet high.  He began working through the folders, discovering, to his
disquiet, numerous `discreditable reads' -- moments when the E-meter
revealed that Hubbard had something to hide.

  Towards the end of March, while Roos was still poring over the
folders, a messenger arrived at his cabin saying that the Commodore
wanted to see all the folders.  Roos was dumbfounded: it was an
inviolable rule of Scientology that no one, no matter who he was, was
allowed to see his own folder.  He told the messenger it was out of
the question.  A few minutes later, the door burst open and two hefty
members of the crew barged in, picked up the filing cabinets and
staggered out with them.

  Two days passed before a messenger told Roos he was wanted by the
Commodore.  From the moment the Dutchman entered Hubbard's office, it
was apparent the Commodore had made a dramatic recovery.  Hubbard
leapt up from his desk with a roar and struck out at Roos with his
fist, following up with a furious kick.  He was shouting so wildly
that Roos was unable to make out what he was saying apart from that it
was something to do with the `discreditable reads'.  Mary Sue was
sitting in the office with a long face watching what was going on.
When Hubbard had calmed down a little he turned to her and asked her,
as his auditor, if he had ever had `discreditable reads'.  Mary Sue's
expression did not alter.  `No sir,' she said, `you never had such
reads.'

  Roos could see folders scattered across Hubbard's desk, open at the
pages where he had noted the `reads' that Mary Sue denied existed.  He
said nothing.  Hubbard paced the room, fretting that Roos had
`undoubtedly told this all over the ship' and that everyone was
talking and laughing about it.  In fact, Roos had informed no one,
although it did not prevent him from being put under `cabin arrest'.

  After he had been dismissed, Mary Sue kept running down to his

__________
13. Interview with Jim Dincalci, Berkeley, CA, August 1986

                          -- end page 309 --

cabin with different folders, trying to explain away the
`discreditable reads'.  He had been using outdated technology, she
said, and `should have known about it'.  Later Diana Hubbard also
stopped by, pushed opened Roos's door, screamed, `I hate you!  I hate
you!'  and stalked off.[14]

  The *Apollo* was docked in Tangier throughout this drama and Mary
Sue was busy supervising the decoration and furnishing of a
split-level modern house, the Villa Laura, on a hillside in the
suburbs of Tangier.  The Hubbards planned to move ashore while the
ship was put into dry dock for a re-fit and Mary Sue was looking
forward to it.

  Hubbard was still dreaming of finding a friendly little country
where Scientology would be allowed to prosper (not to say take over
control) and he had begun casting covetous eyes on Morocco, at whose
Atlantic ports he had been calling regularly ever since leaving the
Mediterranean.  The Moroccan monarchy was going through a period of
crisis and Hubbard felt that King Hassan would welcome the help that
Scientology could offer in identifying potential traitors within his
midst and be suitably grateful thereafter.

  Some months previously, the Sea Org had set up a land base in a
small huddle of office buildings on the airport road outside Tangier.
The erection of a sign on the road announcing, in English, French and
Arabic, the arrival of `Operation and Transport Corporation Limited,
International Business Management' immediately attracted the attention
of Howard D. Jones, the local American consul general.  He became even
more interested a few days later when, at a party in Tangier, he met a
nervous American girl who admitted working for OTC but would say
nothing about it.  `I am here with a Panamanian corporation,' she
said, `but that is all I can tell you.'

  Nothing could have been more calculated to prompt the consul to make
further inquiries.  He soon made the connections between OTC, the
`mystery ship' *Apollo* and L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of
Scientology, but he discovered very little more, to judge by a
frustrated cable he despatched to Washington on 26 April 1972: `Little
is known of the operations of Operation and Transport Company here,
and its officers are elusive about what it does.  However, we presume
that the Scientologists aboard the *Apollo* and in Tangier do whatever
it is that Scientologists do elsewhere.

  `There have been rumours in town that *Apollo* is involved in drug
or white slave traffic.  However, we doubt these reports ... The
stories about white slave traffic undoubtedly stem from the fact that
included among the crew of the *Apollo* are a large number of
strikingly beautiful young ladies.  However, we are skeptical that a
vessel that stands out like a sore thumb, in which considerable
interest is

__________
14. *The O.J. Roos Story*, 7 September 1984

                          -- end page 310 --

bound to be generated, and with a crew numbering in hundreds, would be
a reasonable vehicle for smuggling or white slaving.'[15]

  The US consul, although he had no way of knowing it, was looking in
the wrong direction.  Very little was happening on the ship that would
have been of interest to Washington, but a great deal was happening
ashore.  The Operation and Transport Corporation was relentlessly
trying to make inroads into Moroccan bureaucracy, undeterred by
numerous setbacks.  It acquired an inauspicious foothold with a
government contract to train post office administrators on the
assurance that Scientology techniques would accelerate their training,
but the pilot project soon foundered.  `We took half the students,'
said Amos Jessup, `while the other half were trained in the
traditional way.  We spent a month trying to teach them certain study
techniques but they got so anxious that the others were forging ahead
learning post office techniques that they walked out.'

  Jessup, who spoke French, led OTC's next assault -- on the Moroccan
army.  He and Peter Warren made friends with a colonel in Rabat and
demonstrated the E-meter to him.  `He was properly amazed by it,' said
Jessup, `and arranged for us to give a presentation to a general who
was said to be a friend of the Minister of Defence and the right hand
man of the King.  We were taken to this gigantic, luxurious house,
where we did a few drills.  The general said he was very interested
and would get back to us.  We waited in a little apartment in Rabat
the Sea Org had rented to us, but didn't hear anything so went back to
the ship.  Shortly afterwards, the general led an unsuccessful coup
and committed suicide.  We realized then that he wouldn't have passed
word about the E-meter to the King.'

  Another OTC mission was having more success with the Moroccan secret
police and started a training course for senior policemen and
intelligence agents, showing them how to use the E-meter to detect
political subversives.  The *Apollo*, meanwhile, sailed for Lisbon for
her re-fit and Mary Sue and Ron moved into the Villa Laura in Tangier.
Hubbard seemed strangely depressed; Doreen Smith reported that he
often talked about `dropping his body', which was Scientology-speak
for dying.

  Loyal wife that she was, Mary Sue took it upon herself to deal with
one of the sources of her husband's troubles -- his estranged son,
Nibs.  After `blowing the org' in 1959, fortune had not smiled on
Nibs.  He had drifted from job to job, finding it ever more difficult
to support his wife and six children, and as the realization dawned
that he would never be allowed back into Scientology, he became an
even more prominent critic of his father and his father's `church'.
When the church was locked in litigation with the Internal Revenue
Service, Nibs testified on behalf of the IRS.

__________
15. *Los Angeles Times*, 29 August 1978

                          -- end page 311 --

  In September 1972, Mary Sue orchestrated a campaign to `handle'
Nibs, instituting a search through all the Sea Org files and
instructing the Guardian's office to do the same.  She told an aide
that Nibs' `big button' was money and that it was time to start
hunting through the old files to dig up former complaints about
him.[16]

  The church never revealed what it found out about the Founder's son,
but on 7 November Nibs recorded a video-taped interview with a church
official retracting his IRS testimony and all allegations he had
previously made against father.  They were made `vengefully', he
explained, at a time when he was undergoing a great deal of personal
and emotional stress: `What I have been doing is a whole lot of lying,
a whole lot of damage to a lot of people that I value highly.

  `I happen to love my father, blood is thicker than water, and
basically it may sound silly to some people but it means a great deal
to me that blood is thicker than water and another thing, as a matter
of interest too, would be I made some pretty awful statements about
the Sea Org and none of these are true.  I've no personal knowledge of
any wrong doing or illegal acts or brutality or anything else against
people by the Sea Org or any member of the Scientology organization.'

  At the Villa Laura in Tangier, Hubbard had little time to reflect on
this filial declaration of love.  Indeed, it was more likely he was
reflecting on the curious inevitability with which his plans were
ending in tears.  The OTC training course for Moroccan secret
policeman was breaking up in disarray under the stress of internecine
intrigue between pro-monarchy and anti-monarchy factions and the fear
of what the E-meter would reveal.  `It was a crazy set up,' said
Jessup, `you couldn't tell who was on which side.'

  It was possible that the Sea Org might have staved to try and
unravel this complication, had not word arrived from Paris that the
Church of Scientology in France was about to be indicted for fraud.
There was a suggestion that French lawyers would be seeking Hubbard's
extradition from Morocco to face charges in Paris.

  The Commodore decided it was time to go.  There was a ferry leaving
Tangier for Lisbon in forty-eight hours: Hubbard ordered everyone to
be on it, with all the OTC's movable property and every scrap of paper
that could not be shredded.  For the next two days, convoys of cars,
trucks and motor-cycles could be observed, day and night, scurrying
back and forth from OTC `land bases' in Morocco to the port in
Tangier.

  When the Lisbon-bound ferry sailed from Tangier on 3 December 1972,
nothing remained of the Church of Scientology in Morocco.  Hubbard
left behind only a pile of shredded paper, a flurry of wild rumours
and a scattering of befuddled US consular officials.

__________
16. Letter from Mary Sue Hubbard to Jane Kember, 2 September 1972

                          -- end page 312 --

                             *Chapter 19*

                         *Atlantic Crossing*

  `REVIEW OF AVAILABLE INFO REGARDING OVERSEAS ACTIVITIES CHURCH OF
SCIENTOLOGY REVEALS ONLY THAT ITS FOUNDER L. RON HUBBARD IS ECCENTRIC
MILLIONAIRE WHO HAS BEEN EXPELLED FROM RESIDENCE IN SEVERAL COUNTRIES
BECAUSE OF HIS ODD ACTIVITIES AND BEHAVIOUR.  HE IS OWNER OF SEVERAL
SHIPS WHOSE APPEARANCE IN PORTS IN VARIOUS PARTS OF WORLD HAVE
STIMULATED QUERIES ... FROM OTHER GOVERNMENTS ASKING INFO RE VESSELS
MISSION AND CREW.  RESPONSES INDICATE WE KNOW VERY LITTLE ...'
(Outgoing signal from CIA headquarters, Langley, Virginia, 16 October
1975)

                              * * * * *

Hubbard did not join the exodus on the Lisbon-bound ferry from
Tangier; he was driven from Villa Laura to the airport, where there
was a direct flight leaving for Lisbon that afternoon.  Sea Org
personnel were waiting to meeting him in the Portuguese capital and
they hurried him through the airport to a waiting car which headed
downtown to the Lisbon Sheraton.  The Commodore then sat fretting in
his hotel suite for several hours while lawyers in Paris, Lisbon and
New York assessed the risk of his extradition to face fraud charges in
France.  Ordinarily, he would have avoided such legal imbroglio by
sailing away from it in his flagship, but the *Apollo* was in dry dock
and thus provided no sanctuary.

  With Hubbard in the hotel were Ken Urquhart, Jim Dincalci and Paul
Preston, a former Green Beret recently appointed as the Commodore's
bodyguard.  Urquhart said that Hubbard was `fairly relaxed' and gave
them a little briefing on the need to maintain `safe spaces'.[1]
Dincalci disagreed: `He was very nervous and afraid of what might
happen.  I could see he was shredding.  After two or three hours there
was a telephone call from the port Captain.  When he put the phone
down he said, "This is really serious.  I've got to get out of here
*now*".'[2]

  Urquhart was sent out to book seats on the first available flight to
the United States and collect some cash.  It was agreed that Preston
would travel with Hubbard and Dincalci would `shadow' them so that

__________
 1. Interview with Urquhart
 2. Interview with Dincalci

                          -- end page 313 --

he could inform the ship immediately if there were any problems.  The
loyal Urquhart returned with three Lisbon-Chicago tickets on a flight
leaving early next morning.  Although he had booked them through to
Chicago, the flight stopped in New York and he suggested they got off
there in case there was a `welcoming party' waiting at Chicago's
O'Hare airport.  He also had a briefcase stuffed with banknotes in
different currencies -- escudos, marks, francs, pounds, dollars and
Moroccan dirhams, about $100,000 in total; it was the best he could
do, he told Ron.

  The flight left next morning after only a short delay, with Dincalci
sitting several rows away from Hubbard and Preston.  At J.F. Kennedy
airport in New York, Dincalci stood behind them in the Customs queue
and looked on in horror as a Customs officer told Hubbard to open his
briefcase.  Having looked inside he promptly invited Hubbard to step
into an interview room.

  `As they took him away I thought, oh God, that's it, now everyone
will know L. Ron Hubbard is back in America,' said Dincalci.  `He came
out about fifteen minutes later looking like a zombie.  He'd had to
give them a lot of information about the money.  He got into a taxi
outside and I said, "Where are we going?"  He said, "I can't think."
He was literally in shock.  We drove into Manhattan and he pointed to
a hotel, it was a Howard Johnson's or something like that, and said,
"We'll stay there."'

  The three of them checked in using false names: Hubbard was Lawrence
Harris, Preston was Don Shannon and Dincalci was Frank Morris.
Dincalci then went across the street to a deli and bought lunch.  Back
in the hotel, he asked the Commodore if he should return to the ship,
but Hubbard did not seem to understand the question.  Next day, he
sent Dincalci out to buy clothes for all of them and to look for a
place to live; the question of Dincalci returning to the ship was
never mentioned again.

  Dincalci soon found a suitable apartment in Queens, in a
fifteen-storey building with its own heated swimming-pool called `The
Executive'.  It was in a safe, upper middle-class residential area
close to Forest Hills and convenient for the subway.  For the first
few weeks, Hubbard did nothing but watch television all day long,
switching from channel to channel, absorbed by everything from soap
operas to rock music shows.

  The America to which Hubbard had returned after an absence of nearly
a decade had changed beyond his recognition, particularly when viewed
through a colour television screen.  It was a country obsessed with
the unfolding revelations of Watergate, haunted by a war
incomprehensibly lost in Vietnam and beset by crises, not least in
confidence.  The Commodore of the Sea Org knew little of the black

                          -- end page 314 --

crisis, the urban crisis, the drugs crisis, the energy crisis or any
of the events that were branded into the American conscience by place
names such as Kent State, Attica and Chappaquiddick.

  While Preston stayed in the apartment to look after Hubbard,
Dincalci went out every day to the United Nations building to research
international extradition laws.  A few days before Christmas 1972, he
returned to the apartment and told Ron he was in the clear; he had
established beyond doubt that the United States would not extradite
its own citizens.  Hubbard began making plans to travel, to visit the
org in Los Angeles.  He even thought about throwing a party, but
within a couple of days a message arrived from the Guardian's Office
in California telling him he was still not safe and to stay
undercover.  It was a cheerless Christmas.

  The Guardian's Office was the conduit for communications with the
Commodore and the strictest security prevailed to prevent his
whereabouts being discovered.  Preston picked up and delivered the
mail every other day at a post office box in New Jersey.  Everything
was in code and no personal mail of any kind was forwarded.  Telephone
calls were similarly coded, using the page numbers of the *American
Heritage Dictionary* -- 345/16 was the sixteenth word from the top on
page 345.  Preston would go to a payphone well away from the
apartment, call the Guardian's Office in Los Angeles and reel off the
numbers.  If there was an incoming message he used a small tape
machine to record it and transcribed it when he got back to the
apartment.

  When they were out and about in New York, both Dincalci and Preston
went to inordinate lengths to ensure they were not being tailed,
frequently back-tracking and crossing from an uptown to a downtown
train.  Travelling on the subway, they would choose a stop at random,
hold open the doors as they were beginning to close and leap out at
the last moment.

  Inside the apartment, a routine was soon established.  Dincalci got
up early and went out to do the day's food shopping and buy the
paperback books that the Commodore read voraciously.  `I soon got to
know what he liked,' said Dincalci.  `It was all blood and thunder
escapist stuff.  I'd choose them by the cover -- the more lurid the
cover, the more he liked them.'  Hubbard woke at about ten or eleven
o'clock; the television was turned on immediately and stayed on for
the remainder of the day, even if he was reading or writing.

  While Dincalci was out running errands for the Commodore, Preston
stayed in the apartment to prepare breakfast and lunch.  Dincalci
cooked dinner when he got back in the evening.  For the first two
months it was always fishsticks, breaded chicken, steaks or
hamburgers, until Hubbard tired of the diet and encouraged Dincalci to
try other dishes.

                          -- end page 315 --

  After dinner Hubbard had a single tot of brandy and sometimes talked
into the night.  `He'd jump around from subject to subject,' said
Dincalci.  `One minute he'd be talking about how an angel had given
him this sector of the universe to look after and next minute he'd be
talking about the camera he wanted me to buy for him next day.  I used
to watch him talking; sometimes his eyes would roll up into his head
for a couple of minutes and he'd be kinda gone.  One of the things
that upset him was that he'd never gotten back the money that he had
stashed away in previous lives.  There was some inside the statue of a
horse in Italy which he had hidden in the sixteenth century.  He was a
writer and had written *The Prince*.  "That son-of-a-bitch Machiavelli
stole it from me," he said.  He talked a lot about his childhood and
all the horses he had ridden when he was little, how he would get on
them before he could walk.  I didn't get the impression that it was a
happy childhood, not at all.  There was a lot of bitterness there
about his parents.  He said, over and over, he had graduated from
George Washington University.  "They say I didn't," he used to
complain, "but I did."  He said that he was editor of the University
paper for four years and that would prove it.

  `He said that when Pearl Harbor was bombed he was on some island in
the Pacific and he was the senior person in charge because everyone
else had been killed.  He was controlling all the traffic through the
island until a bomb exploded right by him at the airport and he was
sent home, the first US casualty of World War Two.  He had a big fatty
tumour, a lymphoma, on the top of his head which he said had slivers
of shrapnel in it.  We had it X-rayed once and had the film enlarged
fifty times to find the shrapnel, but there was nothing there.  When
he came back from the war his first wife didn't go to see him, even
though he was wounded.  He had nothing good to say about her.  His
second wife, whom he never really married, was a spy who had been sent
by the Nazis to spy on him during the war.

  `Most nights I'd give him a massage before he went to bed and he
always said he felt better for it.  In my mind I never questioned
anything he said except once when he was talking about out-of-the-body
experiences and how beautiful it was to sit on a cloud.  I was always
running about New York looking at things for him and I thought if he
was such hot shit, why did I have to go and look?  Why couldn't he go
out of his body and take a look himself?'

  In February, Hubbard began to get jittery about the security in the
Executive building and Dincalci was asked to look for somewhere with a
`lower profile'.  He found a large apartment in a scruffier
neighbourhood of Queens -- a nondescript second-floor walk-up in the
middle of a block on Codwise Place -- owned by a Cuban family who
lived on the first floor of the house.  Dincalci paid three months'
rent in advance, in

                          -- end page 316 --

cash, and said his brother and his uncle would be moving in
immediately.

  Soon after the move, Hubbard decided to go out for a walk.  Dincalci
was concerned that the preparations the Commodore was making to pass
unnoticed in the street would almost certainly mark him out for
attention.  `His hair had grown very long, almost down to his
shoulders and he looked pretty unkempt.  He insisted on wearing this
big hat with the brim turned up.  It made him look like Bozo the
clown.  If he had walked into any org they would have kicked him out.'
After being cosseted by central heating for three months, Hubbard
stepped out into a freezing February day, immediately got a chill in
his tooth and attracted a retinue of jeering street kids.  It
discouraged him from venturing out again by himself.

  His aching teeth appeared to trigger other complaints and Dincalci
was driven to distraction trying to nurse an intractable and irritable
elderly patient who was at first reluctant to consult either doctor or
dentist.  When one of Hubbard's rotten teeth dropped out, Dincalci
painstakingly ground all his food.  Eventually Hubbard agreed to seek
professional medical help.  On visits to a chiropractor in Greenwich
Village he always wore a wig as a disguise and on one occasion
Dincalci and Preston took the be-wigged Commodore to a local Chinese
restaurant for his favourite dish, egg foo yong.  It was their only
social outing.

  On the recommendation of an allergist, Hubbard began a regular
course of injections, administered by Dincalci, which seemed to help
him.  As his health improved, he started taking more interest in the
affairs of the Church of Scientology, even writing bulletins with some
of his old enthusiasm.  `He wrote tremendously fast by hand,' said
Dincalci.  `It was like automatic writing you get in the occult.  He'd
have a glazed look, as if he was kinda gone, his eyes would roll up
and the corners of his mouth would turn down and he'd start this
frenzied writing.  I've never seen anyone write so fast.'

  Now sixty-two, Hubbard was also beginning to ponder his place in
posterity.  The Church of Scientology had been swift to make use of
the recently enacted Freedom of Information Act, which had revealed
that government agencies held a daunting amount of material about
Scientology and its founder in their files, much of it less than
flattering.  Hubbard, who had never been fettered by convention or
strict observance of the law, conceived a simple, but startlingly
audacious, plan to improve his own image and that of his church for
the benefit of future generations of Scientologists.  All that needed
to be done, he decided, was to infiltrate the agencies concerned,
steal the relevant files and either destroy or launder any damaging
information they contained.  To a man who had founded both a church
and a

                          -- end page 317 --

private navy this was a perfectly feasible scheme.  The operation was
given the code name Snow White -- two words that would figure ever
more prominently over the next few months in the communications
between the Guardian's Office in Los Angeles and the Commodore's
hiding place in Queens, New York.

  In September 1973, Hubbard got word from the Guardian's Office that
the threat of extradition had diminished and it was safe for him to
return to the ship and, coincidentally, to his wife and children.  He
left next day, with Paul Preston, on a Boeing 747 bound for Lisbon,
leaving Dincalci behind to pack up all their belongings and close the
apartment at Codwise Place.

                                 -*-

No one on the ship knew where Hubbard had been for the previous ten
months, nor that he was returning, but his arrival back on board was
predictably cause for celebration.

  `When he came back on board he looked better than I had ever seen
him look,' said Hana Eltringham.  `He was bright and bouncy, busting
out all over.  He had lost weight and could hardly contain his
happiness at being back.'[3]

  If there was an emotional reunion with Mary Sue and the children, it
was not widely observed.  Instead, Hubbard gathered the crew on A deck
to explain that he had been away touring the orgs in the United
States, raising quite a laugh when he said that he had walked into
some of them without being recognized.  Preston, sitting at the back
of the room, knew it was a lie but obviously said noticing; he had
once driven Hubbard past the New York org but all the Commodore had
said was that he thought it needed a bigger sign.

  While Hubbard had been away, his accommodation on the *Apollo* had
been extended and improved and his research room had been totally
encased in lead, insulated from contact with the hull, to make it
sound-proof.  A working party had spent three months crawling through
the ventilation shafts and scrubbing them with toothbrushes in order
that he would no longer be troubled by his well-known allergy to dust.
In the previous few weeks the ship had been cleaned from stem to stern
and every deck subjected to a `white glove inspection'.  Any ledge or
fiat surface that produced a smudge on the fingers of a white cotton
glove resulted in the entire area being cleaned again.

  The Commodore soon had the ship on the move and there were many
light hearts on board when the *Apollo* weighed anchor and set sail,
after almost a year in dock in Lisbon.  She headed north along the
Atlantic coast of the Iberian peninsula, stopping for a few days at
the historic cities of Oporto and Corunna, then turning south again to
Setubal and Cadiz.  At the beginning of December, she returned to
Tenerife in the Canary Islands, one of her regular ports of call
before the Lisbon re-fit.

__________
 3. Interview with Eltringham

                          -- end page 318 --

  Hubbard wanted to spend some time ashore in Tenerife taking
photographs, and his cars and motor-cycles were unloaded on to the
dock.  He had at his disposal a big black Ford station wagon, a 1962
yellow Pontiac Bonneville convertible and a Land Rover, but as often
as not he chose to make his forays ashore astride his monstrous Harley
Davidson, on which no doubt he cut a particular dash.

  One afternoon, snaking round the switchback curves up in the
volcanic mountains of Tenerife, Hubbard skidded on a patch of loose
gravel, lost control and fell off, smashing several cameras that were
on straps round his neck.  Although in considerable pain, he managed
to get back on the bike and ride it down to the port.  He let it drop
on the quayside and staggered up the gangway of the *Apollo* with his
trousers torn and the mangled cameras still around his neck.  Jim
Dincalci, back on board as medical officer, was summoned immediately.
Only too well aware that he was not qualified to deal with broken
bones or possible internal injuries, he suggested that the Commodore
should be taken to a hospital for a check-up.  Hubbard refused
adamantly, but huffily agreed to be examined by a local doctor.  He
prescribed rest and pain-killers, to be taken two at a time as
required.

  After the doctor had left the ship, Dincalci, who still clung to the
remnants of a conviction that an operating thetan had no need for
anything as mundane as a pain-killer, offered the Commodore a single
pill and a glass of water.

  `Why only one?'  Hubbard snapped, his eyes bulging with anger.
Dincalci hastily produced a second pill, but Hubbard's temper gave
way.  He leapt up from his chair and began pacing the room in a fury,
shouting unintelligible abuse at the fools in his midst who cared
nothing for the fact that he was dying.  Suddenly he turned on
Dincalci.  `It's *you*,' he roared.  `*You're* trying to kill me.'

  Dincalci was shattered by the accusation.  `I felt I had rapport
with him, I felt like a son to him.  It was like having my father say
I was trying to kill him.  No, it was worse.  Here was the man who was
trying to save the universe saying I was trying to kill him.  I was
crushed.  I felt I had lost everything; what little self-esteem I had
was gone in that moment.'

  Dincalci very quickly found himself chipping paint and the ticklish
task of nursing the Commodore was handed over to Kima Douglas, a
strikingly attractive artist from South Africa who had had two years'
nursing experience in the labour ward of the British hospital in
Bulawayo.  `I think he had broken an arm and several ribs,' she said.
`He certainly had massive black bruises everywhere.  We strapped up
his arm and strapped his ribs, but he couldn't lie down so he slept in
a chair as best he could.  He must have been in agony.  He screamed
and hollered and yelled.  It was absolutely ungodly; six weeks of pure
hell.

                          -- end page 319 --

  `He was revolting to be with -- a sick, crotchety, pissed-off old
man, extremely antagonistic to everything and everyone.  His wife was
often in tears and he'd scream at her at the top of his lungs, "Get
out of here!"  Nothing was right.  He'd throw his food across the room
with his good arm; I'd often see plates splat against the bulkhead.
When things got really bad, I'd go and make him English scrambled
eggs, well salted and peppered, and toast and butter and take it up to
him.  I even fed him once.

  `He absolutely refused to see another doctor.  He said they were all
fools and would only make him worse.  The truth was that he was
terrified of doctors and that's why everyone had to be put through
such hell.'[4]

  She could not help but recall how he had changed in the months since
she first joined the ship.  `My expectation of L. Ron Hubbard was that
he would be a psychic person who could look at me and see every evil
thing I had ever done in my whole life.  I was still searching for
something, although I didn't know what, and the thought of someone
being able to look into my head both terrified and excited me.  I'd
been indoctrinated with all the things he could do.  There were wild
stories that if an atomic bomb was about to go off in Nevada, Ron
could defuse it with the power of his mind.  At that time everyone was
talking about atomic warfare and I truly believed he had come to save
the planet.  As I walked up the gangway to the ship, he stepped out of
his office wearing a white uniform and his Commodore's hat with two
messengers close behind him.  I was introduced to him and he shook my
hand and was very charming.  He seemed to be a jovial, happy, golden
man.  I felt I had arrived.'

  Kima called on her unlovable patient every two days, but the burden
of day-to-day care fell on the messengers.  `Before the motor-cycle
accident he was a very nice, friendly person,' said Jill Goodman [who
was thirteen years old when she became a messenger].  `Afterwards, he
was a complete pain in the ass.  It was like having a sick, crotchety
grandfather.  You never knew what he was going to be like when you
went in there.'[5]

  `He didn't get out of that red velvet chair for three months,' said
Doreen Smith.  `He'd sleep for about forty-five minutes at a time,
then be awake for hours, screaming and shouting.  It was impossible to
get him comfortable.  None of us got any sleep.  I was better with a
cushion, someone else was better with a footstool, someone else with
cotton padding, so every time he woke up we all had to be in there,
fussing around him while he was screaming at us that we were all
"stupid fucking shitheads" ... he was out of control and even the
toughies were in tears at times.  The red chair to us became a symbol
of the worst a human being can be -- all we wanted to do was chop it
up in little pieces and throw it overboard.'[6]

  While Hubbard was still fuming in his red velvet chair, still

__________
 4. Interview with Kima Douglas, Oakland, CA, Sept 1986
 5. Interview with Jill Goodman, New York, March 1986
 6. Interview with Doreen Gillham

                          -- end page 320 --

ascribing sinister motives to every mishap and imagined slight, he
issued an edict that would introduce another Orwellian feature to life
on board the *Apollo*.  Convinced that his orders were not being
carried out with sufficient diligence, he established a new
disciplinary unit called the Rehabilitation Project Force.  Anyone
found to have a CI (a `counter-intention' to his orders or wishes) was
to be assigned to the RPF, along with all trouble-makers and
back-sliders.  `I was shocked when I heard about it,' said Hana
Eltringham.  `To me it was like setting up a penal colony within our
midst.'

  Since it was only necessary to incur the Commodore's disfavour to be
assigned to the RPF, its numbers swelled rapidly.  RPF inmates wore
black boiler suits, were segregated from the rest of the crew and
slept in an unventilated cargo hold on filthy mattresses that were due
to be thrown out before the Commodore decided they would be suitable
for his new unit.  Seven hours' sleep were permitted, but there was no
leisure time during the day and discipline was harsh.  Meal breaks
were brief and the RPF was obliged to eat whatever food was left from
the crew meal.

  `Things took a real downhill turn around that time,' said Gerry
Armstrong, who was then the ship's port captain.  `He became much more
paranoid and belligerent.  He was convinced there were evil people on
board with hidden evil intentions and he wanted to get them all in the
RPF.  The RPF was used as an incredible daily threat over everyone.
If he could smell something cooking from the vents, whoever was the
current vents engineer would be assigned to the RPF.  If the cook
burned his food -- RPF.  If a messenger complained about someone --
RPF.

  `His actions definitely became more bizarre after the motor-cycle
accident.  You could hear him throughout the ship screaming, shouting,
ranting and raving day after day.  He was always claiming that the
cooks were trying to poison him and he began to smell odours
everywhere.  His clothes had to be washed in pure water thirteen
times, using thirteen different buckets of clean water to rinse a
shirt so he wouldn't smell detergent on it.

  `At that time no one would have dared to think that the emperor had
no clothes.  He controlled our thoughts to such an extent that you
couldn't think of leaving without thinking there was something wrong
with you.'[7]

  To the relief of the entire crew, the Commodore was more or less
recovered from his accident by the time of his sixty-third birthday in
March 1974 and the ship resumed its aimless wandering, this time on a
triangular course between Portugal, Madeira and the Canaries.  But a
subtle and bizarre change had taken place in the pecking order on
board: after the Commodore and his wife, the most powerful people

__________
 7. Interview with Gerald Armstrong, Boston, February 1986

                          -- end page 321 --

on the ship were now little girls dressed in hot pants and halter tops
-- the new uniform of the Commodore's faithful band of messengers.

  While Hubbard had been suffering so vociferously, the messengers had
assumed many extra little tasks on his behalf.  They washed and combed
his hair, helped him dress and undress, massaged his back, mixed his
special night-time vitamin drink and smeared on his fleshy features
the cream he mistakenly believed kept him looking youthful.  When he
recovered, the messengers continued with these duties and constantly
competed with each other to find further little ways of pleasing the
Commodore.

  The ritual of his ablutions, as devised by the messengers, set the
tone for Hubbard's increasingly baroque lifestyle.  `At first I was
surprised at all the things we had to do,' said Tanya Burden, who had
joined the ship in Madeira as a trainee messenger at the age of
fourteen.  `But then I thought this man has studied for fifty years to
help the world and has done so much for mankind, why should he have to
do anything for himself?

  When he woke up he would yell "Messenger" and two of us would go
into his room straight away.  He would usually be lying in his bunk in
his underwear with one arm outstretched, waiting for us to pull him up
to a sitting position.  While one of us put a robe round his
shoulders, the other one would give him a cigarette, a Kool
non-filter, light it and stand ready with an ashtray.  I would run
into the bathroom to make sure his toothbrush, soap and razor were all
laid out in a set fashion and I prepared his bath, checked the
shampoo, towel and the temperature of the water.

  `When he went into the bathroom we would lay out his clothes, powder
his socks and shoes and fold everything ready to get him dressed.
Everything had to be right because if it wasn't he would yell at us
and we didn't want to upset him.  The last thing we wanted to do was
upset him.  When he came out of the shower, he would be in his
underwear.  Two of us held his pants off the floor as he stepped into
them.  He didn't like his trouser legs to touch the floor, God forbid
that should happen.  We pulled up his pants and buckled his belt,
although he zipped them.  We put on his shirt, buttoned it up, put his
Kools in his shirt pocket, tied his cravat and combed his hair.  All
this time he'd be standing there watching us run around him.  Then
we'd follow him out on to the deck carrying anything he might need --
cloak, hat, binoculars, ashtray, spare cigarettes, anything he could
possibly *think* of wanting.  We felt it was an honor and a privilege
to do anything for him.'[8]

  The messengers were all potential high school cheerleaders in
appearance -- pretty blondes with even white teeth and red lips, pert
little breasts straining against knotted halter tops, bare midriffs,
tight hot pants, long tanned legs, bobbysox and platform-soled
sandals.

__________
 8. Interview with Tanya Burden, Boston, February 1986

                          -- end page 322 --

They had devised the uniform themselves, with the Commodore's
approval, and it gave them maximum opportunity to flaunt their
pubescent assets to advantage.

  While male members of the crew competed avidly to deflower the
messengers, Hubbard himself never once exhibited any sexual interest
in them.  `He never tried anything with me,' said Tanya, `and as far
as I know he never did with any of the other girls.  He didn't sleep
with Mary Sue; we thought perhaps he was impotent.  I think he got his
thrills by just having us around.'

  `I once asked him why he chose young girls as messengers,' said
Doreen Smith.  `He said it was an idea he had picked up from Nazi
Germany.  He said Hitler was a madman, but nevertheless a genius in
his own right and the Nazi Youth was one of the smartest ideas he ever
had.  With young people you had a blank slate and you could write
anything you wanted on it and it would be your writing.  That was his
idea, to take young people and mould them into little Hubbards.  He
said he had girls because women were more loyal than men.'

  The more the messengers did for the Commodore, the more he came to
think of them as the only members of the crew he could trust.  At
nights, when they were undressing him and going through the elaborate
business of getting him ready for bed, he liked to talk to them,
sharing confidences and telling them about his adventures.  They would
sit on the carpet at the end of his bed listening to his stories,
wide-eyed, for hours.  The special status they enjoyed did nothing for
their characters.  `We became', Jill Goodman admitted, `poisonous
little wenches.  We had power and we were untouchable.'  It was not in
the least unusual for a fourteen-year-old messenger to march up to a
senior executive on the ship and scream: `You fucking asshole, you're
going to the RPF.  That'll teach you to fuck up.'  It was unthinkable
to answer back; it would have been like answering back to Hubbard.

  `A sort of "*Lord of the Flies* syndrome" began working with the
messengers,' said Rebecca Goldstein, who had been recruited into
Scientology by her brother, Amos Jessup.  `They were so drunk with
their own power that they became extremely vengeful, nasty and
dishonest.  They were a very exclusive, dangerous little group.'

                                 -*-

In May 1974, Hubbard did a very curious thing which perhaps indicated
that he was losing his facility to distinguish, even in his own mind,
between fact and fiction: he applied to the US Navy for the war medals
he had always claimed he had been awarded but knew he had never won.

  On 28 May, the ship's liaison office in New York wrote to the Navy
Department enclosing an authorization from Hubbard to obtain his
medals and asking for them to be forwarded as soon as possible.  The

                          -- end page 323 --

letter provided some helpful background data on Mr Hubbard, quoted
from one of his spurious `official' biographies: `He served in the
South Pacific and in 1942 was relieved by fifteen officers of rank and
was rushed home to take part in the 1942 battle against German
submarines as Commanding Officer of a Corvette serving in the North
Atlantic.  In 1943 he was made Commodore of corvette squadrons and in
1944 he worked with amphibious forces.'  There followed a list of
seventeen medals awarded to Mr Hubbard, including the Purple Heart and
the Navy Commendation Medal, many of them with bronze stars.

  On 18 June, the Navy Department replied, enclosing the four routine
medals awarded to former Lieutenant Lafayette R. Hubbard, US Naval
Reserve, and noting, `The records in this Bureau fail to establish Mr
Hubbard's entitlement to the other medals and awards listed in your
request.'[9]

  The Commodore apparently had no difficulty circumventing this little
problem: he quickly put into circulation an eight-by-ten colour
photograph of twenty-one medals and palms he had won during the war.
Some were missing, he explained to the crew.  He had actually won
twenty-eight medals, but the remainder were awarded to him in secret
because naval command were embarrassed that he had sunk a couple of
subs in their own `back yard'.

  In the summer, the Commodore turned his attention from his own image
to that of his ship.  He was taken with an idea to improve the
*Apollo*'s public relations by staging free concerts and dance
performances for the local residents at her regular ports of call.
After hours of watching television in Queens, he considered himself an
expert on popular music and modern dance and believed he had made
important `discoveries' about the nature of rock music and the need
for a strong heavy beat.  He often demonstrated his theories to a
mystified Jim Dincalci.  On the ship, he was able to put his ideas
into practice with his own band, the `Apollo Stars', made up of
volunteers from the crew chosen at auditions conducted by the
Commodore with all the confidence and aplomb of a man who had spent a
lifetime in show business.

  Ken Urquhart, who probably knew more about music than anyone on
board, resolutely refused to become involved.  `My favourite composer
was Mozart, not the horrible, raucous noise they were making.  They
practiced on the deck most afternoons, playing music made up by LRH
with a very primitive, animal beat.  There was no way I was going to
go near them.'  Mike Goldstein, who had played drums in a
semi-professional group while he was at university, volunteered to
play with the Apollo Stars in order to get out of the RPF.  `LRH had
said anyone in the RPF who was accepted for the

__________
 9. L.R. Hubbard navy record

                          -- end page 324 --

band or the dance troupe would be let out.  I volunteered because I
thought anything was better than running around in a black boiler
suit.  I was wrong.  The band was terrible, awful; it was the most
embarrassing thing I have ever done.'

  Hubbard's idea was that the Apollo Stars would be playing on the aft
well deck each time the ship entered a harbour and that bookings for
both the band and dance troupe would be arranged in advance at every
port of call.  Since he would be making appearances himself, he had a
new uniform designed with a suitably theatrical flair.  It featured a
powder blue kepi with a lavishly gold-braided peak and a cloak in the
same hue, lined with scarlet silk.  He looked, Urquhart reported,
`most peculiar'.

  Quentin Hubbard, now twenty, began rehearsing with the dance troupe
and enjoyed it so much he made the mistake of telling his father he
would like to be a dancer.  `Oh no you wouldn't,' Hubbard replied.  `I
have other plans for you.'  There was no further discussion and
Quentin was no longer allowed to perform.  Not long afterwards, he
made a feeble attempt at suicide while the ship was docked at Funchal
in Madeira.

  `He'd gone missing ashore for a while,' said his friend Doreen
Smith, `and while people were out looking for him he just walked back
on board.  I went to see him in his cabin to make sure he was OK and
found him lying on his bunk.  He smiled at me and I said, "Hi, how are
you feeling?"  He said, "Not so good, my stomach's real upset."  Then
he said, "Doreen, I've done the most awful thing.  I've taken a whole
lot of pills."  I said, "Oh shit.  Get out of the bunk and don't go to
sleep."  I began walking him around the cabin and said, "You know I'm
going to have to tell your Dad, don't you?"  He nodded and said, "I
know.  He'll know what to do."'

  Doreen ran to the Commodore's cabin and said `Quentin's taken some
pills.'  Hubbard did not need it spelled out.  He told Doreen to fetch
some mustard from the galley and mixed it into a drink which he made
Quentin gulp down.  The boy vomited repeatedly and was taken to the
sick bay to recover.  His father sent down a message that as soon
Quentin was well enough to leave the sick bay, he was to be assigned
to the RPF.  Mary Sue, who had a reputation for protecting her
children against the excesses of the ship's regime, was powerless to
intervene.  She was supposed to be responsible for welfare on board --
indeed, she had won a special dispensation from the Commodore to allow
married couples in the RPF to spend one night together a week -- but
knew her husband was in a towering rage over Quentin and there was
nothing she could do.

  Rebecca Goldstein was among the inmates of the RPF when Quentin
arrived.  `It was real tough for him,' she said.  `He was very

                          -- end page 325 --

delicate and refined, not at all self-important, very unlike his
father.  He had hardly any facial or body hair and it was very hard to
say whether he had started shaving.  There were rumours that he'd
attempted suicide before.  He cringed from his father, he was
completely overwhelmed by him.'

                                 -*-

The valiant attempts of the Apollo Stars and its associated dance
troupe to win the hearts and minds of the Spanish and the Portuguese
people did not meet with overwhelming success, although the political
climate did not help.  There had been a military coup in Portugal
earlier in the year and the subsequent unease tended to make the
Portuguese nervous of mysterious foreign ships calling at its ports
for no apparent reason.  The *Apollo* had also managed to upset the
Spaniards by mistakenly attempting to enter a major naval base at El
Firol.

  The ship's real problem, however, was that its `shore story' was
wearing thin.  Portuguese and Spanish port authorities were still
being told that the *Apollo* was owned by a highly successful business
consultancy firm, but all they could see was an old, rust-streaked
ship, often festooned with ragged laundry and crewed by young people
in tattered, ill-assorted uniforms.  It was little wonder that
suspicions mounted about its activities and rumours took hold that the
ship was operated by the CIA.

  Jim Dincalci, who had been put ashore to run a port office in
Funchal, Madeira, became alarmed by the rumours.  `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.  I had
made friends on the island and had contacts in local Communist cells.
The word was that the Communists were out to get the ship next time
she arrived in Madeira.  I sent telexes to LRH warning him what was
happening and advising him not come to Madeira until things had calmed
down.  I was absolutely shocked to see the ship come into the harbor.'

  The *Apollo* arrived in Funchal on 7 October and moored in her usual
berth.  Emissaries were sent ashore to advertize a `rock festival' to
be held at the weekend, featuring the Apollo Stars.  Late on the
afternoon of Wednesday, 9 October, while Mary Sue and several members
of the crew were ashore, a small crowd of young men began to gather on
the quayside.  By the way they were glowering and gesticulating at the
ship, it was obvious to those on board that this was not a social
call.  Soon the crowd, which was growing all the time, began chanting
`C-I-A, C-I-A, C-I-A.'

  Nervous Scientologists lining the rails of the ship tried chanting
`CIA' back at the crowd, but it did nothing to lower the tension.
Then

                          -- end page 326 --

the first stone clanged against the *Apollo*'s hull and a bottle
smashed on the fore deck.  More stones and bottles followed as the
crowd's anger spread.  The crew scattered to take shelter and began
picking up the stones from the deck and throwing them back into the
crowd.  In a matter of moments it became a pitched battle.

  Hubbard, who was watching what was going on from the bridge, got out
a bullhorn and boomed `Communista, Communista' at the crowd.  Then he
began taking photographs of the stone-throwers with a flash unit,
further inflaming their tempers.  Several of the crew were hit by
flying stones, including Kima Douglas, whose jaw was broken by a large
lump of rock that hit her full in the face.  On the quayside, one of
the crowd opened his trousers, waggled his penis and took a direct hit
with a well-aimed stone from the ship.

  With stones and sticks and bottles flying in all directions, there
was total confusion on board the *Apollo*.  Some crew members would
later describe the Commodore as being perfectly cool through the whole
incident, others said he appeared to be terrified.  Whatever his
state, no one was taking charge and everyone was screaming orders.  In
one part of the ship someone was trying to get together a party to
repel boarders; in another, the sea hoses were being run out and
trained on the crowd in an attempt to persuade them to disperse.

  Any remaining vestige of control among the rabble-rousers vanished
when the ship turned its hoses on them.  On the quayside there were
several motor-cycles belonging to members of the crew and two of the
ship's cars -- a Mini and a Fiat.  All the motor-cycles were hurled
into the harbour, then both cars were pushed over the edge of the
quay, hitting the water with an enormous splash and quickly
disappearing under the surface.  Meanwhile, others in the crowd
slipped the *Apollo*'s mooring-lines from the bollards and she began
to drift away from the quayside.

  At this point, the Portuguese authorities belatedly appeared on the
scene to restore order.  Armed militia were put on board to provide
protection, a pilot assisted with anchoring the ship in the harbour
and a launch rescued those members of the crew who had been stranded
ashore, including Mary Sue.  The police demanded the film that Hubbard
had been taking during the riot and the Commodore, mighty pleased with
himself, dutifully handed over two rolls of unexposed film from
cameras he had not been using.  It was nightfall before the decks had
been cleared of the broken glass and rubble.

  Since it rather appeared as if the people of Madeira were no longer
interested in a rock concert featuring the Apollo Stars, the ship
sailed next day, leaving information with the harbour authorities in
Funchal that she was heading for the Cape Verde Islands, 1500 miles to
the south.  She departed on a purposeful southerly course until she
was

                          -- end page 327 --

out of sight.  She then turned west, equally purposefully, prompting
the crew to speculate with mounting excitement that the Commodore had
decided to return to the United States.

  For the next six days, in glorious weather, the *Apollo* sailed due
west across a glassy ocean, followed by sporting dolphins and whales.
On 16 October, she put into St George, on the northern tip of Bermuda,
to re-fuel and Hubbard announced to the crew that their next port of
call would be Charleston, South Carolina.  There was an enormous cheer
at this news: many of the crew were US citizens and some of them had
not been home for years.

  Eight miles off Charleston, a coded radio message from the
Guardian's Office warned the Commodore that the FBI were waiting on
the dock to meet the ship.  Hubbard's instinct was to go ashore and
brazen it out; Mary Sue was terrified at the prospect and convinced
that her husband would be immediately arrested.  A furious argument
followed.  `Everyone could hear them screaming at each other for about
two hours,' said Hana Eltringham.  `She was adamant that we should not
go ashore.  She said he would be indicted ten or fifteen times and it
would be the end of him and she wasn't going have it.'

  For once, Mary Sue won.  Hubbard called his senior aides together on
the promenade deck and said there was to be a change of plans.  He was
going send a signal to Charleston to say that the ship was heading
north to pick up spare parts in Halifax, Nova Scotia.  Then they were
going to sail south, to the Caribbean.

  The *Apollo* docked at Freeport in the Bahamas two days later, while
FBI agents waited patiently in Halifax, Nova Scotia.  It did not take
them long to find out what had happened, however, and the ship was
doggedly tracked as she meandered from island to island around the
Caribbean for the next twelve months.  If no one in Washington could
make out what L. Ron Hubbard was up to, it was hardly surprising,
because L. Ron Hubbard did not know himself.

  It seemed the Commodore was simply enjoying a Caribbean respite
while he decided on his next move.  He had a set of tropical uniforms
made for himself in white silk and the messengers were also kitted out
in tight white uniforms, with mirrored sunglasses -- an innovation
suggested by the Commodore which gave them an appropriately sinister
appearance.  At most ports of call, the Apollo Stars trundled ashore
to perform for apathetic audiences with nothing better to do than sit
in the sun at a free concert and wonder where the musicians had come
from.  The Commodore took up photography again and attempted to
ingratiate himself with local politicians by offering to take their
portraits.  He photographed the Prime Minister and members of the
opposition in Curaao and spent some time at a convent taking pictures
of nuns.  He was very pleased with the result and sent a

                          -- end page 328 --

framed enlargement, and a cheque for $1000, to the convent to thank
the nuns for their co-operation.

  He could well afford it, as Kima Douglas knew better than anyone.
`While we were in the Bahamas, a story came out that the Swiss were
going to change the tax laws in some way that would affect the money
we held there.  The old man went crazy.  I heard him screaming and
yelling and ran upstairs to find what was wrong.  He was pacing up and
down and shouting at the top of his voice, "Do you know what they're
doing?  Everything's gone.  Gone!  Gone!  We're going to lose
everything."'  When he had calmed down a little, Kima suggested that
perhaps the money should be moved.  Three hours later, she was on a
plane to Zurich, with two other Scientologists, carrying handwritten
instructions from Hubbard authorizing the transfer of all his assets
to a bank in Liechtenstein.

  When they arrived, they were taken down into the vault of the bank
and shown the money.  Kima Douglas, who thought she could no longer be
surprised by anything in Scientology, was awestruck.  `Everyone's eyes
widened.  There was a stack, about four feet high and three feet wide,
of dollars, marks and Swiss francs in high-denomination notes.  I
couldn't begin to guess how much was there, but it was certainly more
than the three of us could carry.'

  It took nearly two weeks to make arrangements to move the cash to a
bank in Liechtenstein and then the serial numbers -- the first and
last note of each bundle -- had to be noted.  When the mission
returned to the Bahamas, Kima had to describe to the Commodore the
exact size of the various piles of money.  `He was very pleased,' she
said.  `He thought he'd outdone the Swiss.'

  Hubbard's mood, as always, remained mercurial and very much subject
to his notorious phobias.  He discovered that the unfortunate Hana
Eltringham possessed a particularly acute sense of smell and employed
her as a `sniffer dog' to root out the source of the smells that
plagued him.  `Whenever he complained of bad smells,' she said, `I
would be called out of my office by a messenger to go to his quarters
and crawl around on my hands and knees to try and locate where the
smell was coming from.  I would trace it to one corner, then we would
rip off the wall cladding and very often find something like mildew.'

  It was in the interests of every member of the crew to bend over
backwards to keep the Commodore sweet, none more so than Kathy
Cariotaki, head of the ship's `household unit', a position which,
because of its proximity to the Commodore, almost guaranteed an
extended assignment in the RPF.  But Kathy had won considerable praise
for extracting an apology of sorts from the Greek government after the
Corfu debcle and she used her innate diplomatic skills to good
advantage while running the `household unit'.

                          -- end page 329 --

  `If a cycle started up when he began claiming things tasted funny,
you had to be ready to handle it.  If a dish didn't taste right, he'd
start hollering and yelling that we were starving him and everyone
would be under the gun.  My solution was to have two back-up meals
prepared at dinner every night so that there was always something else
to put in front of him quickly.

  `Mary Sue was a diet addict, she was always trying this diet or that
diet.  One day she sent orders down to the galley about what she
wanted to eat that evening according to her latest diet.  When the
meal was served I'd usually listen to see if there was going to be an
upset, but this night everything seemed fine so I went into my office.
Then a messenger came round and said the Commodore wanted to see me on
A Deck lounge.  By the time I got there he was hollering at the top of
his lungs.  I couldn't understand what in the world he was saying
until he brought it down several decibels and shouted that the cooks
were starving Mary Sue.  He'd given her his dinner and I saw that she
was shovelling it down like it was the end of the world.  She gave me
a look which said, "Don't open your mouth."

  `Their relationship was very strange.  I got them to celebrate their
wedding anniversary, organized a special dinner with candles and made
sure she had a present for him and he had one for her.  Mary Sue was
close to the children, but he wasn't -- he hardly ever saw them.
Diana was married by then and ate with her husband, while the younger
children ate with the crew.  I initiated Sunday dinners for the whole
family and took every opportunity to get them together at birthdays
and anniversaries, otherwise they hardly ever saw each other.'[10]

  When the Commodore went ashore on photo-shoots, Kathy Cariotaki
acted as his driver and always checked the route the day before.  In
Kingston, Jamaica, Hubbard decided he wanted to take some pictures in
the slum areas.  At his insistence, Kathy had hired an old Pontiac
convertible which was bright red and inevitably attracted attention,
much of it overtly hostile.  Hubbard, sitting on the back of the car,
seemed oblivious to the atmosphere and continued shooting pictures
while a group of black youths jeered and cat-called at the `whiteys'.
At one point a boy on a bicycle rode up behind the car and made a loud
whooping noise; Hubbard turned round and whooped back so fiercely that
the boy fell off his bicycle.  Kathy sensed that the Commodore did not
appreciate the danger, but back on the ship he banged on Mary Sue's
door and said, `Guess what, honey?  I almost caused a riot this
afternoon.'

  In St Vincent, in the spring of 1975, the ship was prepared to
receive a surprise visitor from Bremerton, Washington -- the
Commodore's father.  Harry Ross Hubbard was eighty-eight years old and

__________
10. Interview with Kathy Cariotaki, San Diego, July 1986

                          -- end page 330 --

very frail, but determined to make peace with his estranged son.  The
old gentlemen arrived on the quayside in a taxi and the Commodore went
down the gangway to meet him -- the first time anyone had ever seen
him leave the ship to welcome a visitor.

  The crew had been ordered to conceal all evidence of Scientology
from the Commodore's father, but he was too old and confused to care
about such things.  He sat talking with his son for hours and wandered
amiably about the ship evincing very little curiosity about what was
going on.  With a plentiful supply of beer and a couple of fishing
trips, he was content.  When he got back home to Bremerton, he told
Marnie, his sister-in-law, that he had had `a wonderful trip'.[11] He
died a few months later.

                                 -*-

The *Apollo* had not been in the Caribbean for long before she again
began to arouse suspicions at her various ports of call.  She cruised
from the Bahamas to the West Indies to the Leeward and Windward
Islands, the Netherlands Antilles and back again and rumours of
illicit or clandestine activity followed her as tenaciously as the
seagulls.  In Trinidad, a weekly tabloid newspaper speculated that the
ship was connected to the CIA and suggested that the crew was somehow
linked with the horrific Sharon Tate murders in Los Angeles.  As the
American Embassy drily cabled to Washington: `The controversial yacht
*Apollo* seems to have worn out its welcome in Trinidad'.[12]

  To those on board ship, it was obvious that a conspiracy was at
work.  The Captain, Bill Robertson, explained that Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger, who was `one of the top SMERSH guys', had been
bringing pressure to bear and threatening to cut foreign aid to any
island that welcomed the *Apollo*.[13] It made perfect sense to a
Scientologist.

  Courses were still being held on the ship for senior Scientologists
and in June 1975, one of the new students was Pam Kemp, Hubbard's old
friend from Saint Hill days.  She was shocked to see how much he had
aged.  `I saw this figure coming on board in a big hat and red-lined
Navy Cloak and I thought if I'm not mistaken that's LRH, although he
was very slow and old looking.  I went up to him and said, "Hi, Ron."
He looked through me like he didn't know who I was.  I thought maybe
he was a little deaf so I went around another way and as he was coming
towards me I said, "Hi, Ron.  How are you?"  He didn't recognize me,
didn't know who I was.  I thought, how weird.  Later I discovered he
probably didn't see me properly because he needed glasses, but would
never wear them.'[14]

  Not long afterwards, Hubbard suffered a minor stroke while the ship
was in harbour in Curaao.  He was rushed to the local hospital, kept
in intensive care for two days and then transferred to a private

__________
11. Interview with Mrs Roberts
12. *Los Angeles Times*, 29 August 1978
13. Capt. Bill Roberts Debrief transcript, May 1982
14. Interview with Kemp

                          -- end page 331 --

room, where he stayed for three weeks, with messengers on duty day and
night outside his door.  `To keep him in the hospital,' said Kima
Douglas, `we had to bring food from the ship.  He wouldn't touch the
hospital food, so we ferried every meal out in hot and cold boxes, ten
miles each way.'  When he had recovered sufficiently to leave
hospital, he moved into a cabana bungalow in the grounds of the
Curaao Hilton to convalesce.

  While he was there, he despatched an aide, Mark Schecter, to the
United States on a top secret mission.  Schecter carried a suitcase
full of money.  His orders were to hand it over to another
Scientologist, Frankie Freedman, who had found a motel for rent in
Daytona Beach, Florida.

  Although only a handful of people were aware of it, the Sea Org's
seafaring days were over.

                          -- end page 332 --

                             *Chapter 20*

                          *Running Aground*

  `I don't think I will ever regret making my discoveries public.  My
sole purpose was to serve and give man the knowledge I had ... I've
never looked to quarrel with anybody.'  (First statement to the press
by L. Ron Hubbard for five years, read by Diana Hubbard at a reception
in Quebec, to launch a new edition of *Dianetics*, 28 April 1976.)

                              * * * * *

Frankie Freedman, a former pit boss in a Las Vegas casino and a
Scientologist of ten years' standing, knew the Sea Org was going
ashore because he had been scouring South Carolina, Georgia and
Florida for a property with a security perimeter which could be used
as a staging-post until a permanent land base was established.  His
`shore story' was that he was a representative of a phoney corporation
-- Southern Land Sales and Development -- which was looking to lease
properties for church-organized retreats.  `LRH knew that if we went
into town and said we were Scientologists,' said Freedman, `we'd be
out on our asses.'[1]

  Early in August 1975, Freedman found a run-down motel, the Neptune,
on the shore at Daytona Beach in Florida.  He contacted the owner,
presented his Southern Land Development business card, and offered to
rent the entire motel for three months.  They agreed on a figure of
$50,000.  Two days later, Mark Schecter arrived with the money in a
suitcase.

  In his cabana at the Hilton in Curaao, Hubbard summoned the
faithful Dincalci, who was once more restored to favour, and told him:
`We're going to leave the ship.  Get some money, go to Daytona Beach
and find me a place close to the Neptune motel.  They have those
condomiums all over the place -- pick up one of them.'  Dincalci
remembered being rather touched by Hubbard's mis-pronunciation of
condominium which seemed to emphasize how long the Commodore had been
absent from his own country.[2]

  On board the *Apollo*, it was by this time common knowledge that the
Commodore was planning to return to the United States.  Sea Org
officers were already making plans to get the crew ashore in small

__________
 1. Interview with Frankie Freedman, Sherman Oaks, CA, Aug 1986
 2. Interview with Dincalci

                          -- end page 333 --

groups through the international airports at Miami, Washington DC and
New York so as not to alert federal agencies to what was happening.
Non US-citizens were provided with return tickets and told to enter
the United States as tourists.  The ship was to be left at Freeport in
the Bahamas with a skeleton crew until she could be sold.

  Hubbard, meanwhile, slipped out of Curaao on a direct flight to
Orlando, Florida, accompanied by Mary Sue and Kima Douglas.  They were
driven to Daytona Beach, where Jim Dincalci had rented adjoining
suites in a modern seafront hotel a couple of hundred yards down the
road from the Neptune motel.  Within a few days, the first Sea Org
personnel began moving into the Neptune.  None if them was supposed to
know the Commodore was living just down the road.

  `We all used to pretend not to know where he was,' said David Mayo,
`although it was pretty obvious.  We could see his hotel from the
balcony of the motel, but everyone was told to stay away, not even go
in there for a drink, because there were SPs [suppressive persons]
there.  Nobody believed that; it was too outlandish.  Then he used to
visit us every day and he would arrive in a gold Cadillac which we had
seen leave the hotel a few minutes earlier.  It would turn in the
opposite direction, go round the block and then come in the motel as
if it had come from somewhere else.[3]

  Hubbard seemed in good spirits in Daytona and his health was much
improved.  `He was really happy, was eating well and didn't curse so
much,' said Dincalci.  `I guess it was the first time he'd been able
to put himself out and about.  There were things to do and people to
see.  He went out and bought some cars for the org -- a couple of
Matadors and a Chevy station wagon -- and he enjoyed doing that; he
liked wheeling and dealing.  He liked the fact that he could see the
org from where we were, but that no one knew we were there.  Sometimes
Sea Org people would take a swim from the beach right in front of our
hotel and that meant he wouldn't go out until late in the evening.
When he visited the org in his flash gold Cadillac, everyone would be
out saluting him.  He always arrived from an inland direction and said
he'd driven half a day to get there.'

  Holidaymakers at Daytona Beach observed the comings and going at the
Neptune motel without much curiosity and the Scientologists were not
around long enough to make their presence felt, for in October a
perfect location was found for a permanent land base, on the other
side of the Florida panhandle.

                                 -*-

Clearwater was a quiet retirement resort, just north of St Petersburg,
which liked to refer to itself as `sparkling Clearwater'.  It was a
sobriquet derived more from its location, straddling a peninsula
between Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, than from the nature of

__________
 3. Interview with Mayo

                          -- end page 334 --

its social life: more than a third of Clearwater's 100,000 residents
were over the age of sixty-five and so there was a leisurely, faintly
antiquated, ambience about the place.  Shuffleboard was the most
popular afternoon recreation, after snoozing in the shade of trees
draped with Spanish moss, and it was still possible to enjoy that rare
delight, a real chocolate malt, at Brown Bros luncheonette.

  Change was not a welcome phenomenon in a place like Clearwater, yet
the town had suffered, to a certain extent, from the urban blight that
had afflicted so many American cities in the 'sixties and 'seventies.
Downtown residents had moved out to the suburbs, stores migrated to
the shopping malls and tourists favoured the new hotels in the beach
areas across the causeway.  The centre of Clearwater was fast becoming
an empty shell, epitomized by the fading grandeur of the town's major
landmark, the eleven-storey Fort Harrison Hotel.  With its
chandeliered lobby overlooking a kidney-shaped swimming pool and its
tier upon tier of forlornly empty rooms, the Fort Harrison marked the
passing of an era and it was a surprise to no one that it was up for
sale.

  Its purchase, in October 1975, by Southern Land Sales and
Development Corporation, occasioned no more than passing interest,
although the attorney acting for the owners confessed that it was `one
of the strangest transactions' he had ever been involved in.[4] Not
only did Southern Land pay the $2.3 million purchase price in cash,
the corporation was so secretive it would not even admit to having a
telephone number.  A few days later, Southern Land also bought the old
Bank of Clearwater building, not far from the Fort Harrison, for
$550,000, also in cash.

  Reporters on the two local newspapers, the *Clearwater Sun* and the
*St Petersburg Times*, naturally began making routine inquiries about
Southern Land's intentions and were surprised to discover there were
no records anywhere of a Southern Land Sales and Development
Corporation.  Then a middle-aged man wearing, it was reported, a
`green jump-suit', arrived in Clearwater and announced that an
organization called United Churches of Florida had leased both
buildings for ecumenical meetings and seminars.  This failed to clear
up the mystery, because there were no records of United Churches,
either.

  Although Hubbard had not yet seen his latest real estate
acquisitions, he had little doubt, from the detailed reports he had
been receiving at Daytona Beach, that Clearwater would be an ideal
headquarters for Scientology and a base from which the church could
grow and prosper.  He considered moving into the penthouse at the Fort
Harrison -- there was a drive-in garage on the ground floor and direct
elevator access to the upper floors -- but decided it would be safer
to stay out of town.  Frankie Freedman found four empty

__________
 4. *Clearwater Sun*, 5 Dec 1975

                          -- end page 335 --

apartments in a condominium complex called King Arthur's Court in
Dunedin, a small town on the coast about five miles north of
Clearwater.  Hubbard and Mary Sue, accompanied by a discreet entourage
of messengers and aides, moved in on 5 December 1975.  That location,
too, was supposed to remain a closely-guarded secret.

  There were a number of compelling reasons why Hubbard wanted to stay
in hiding and continue the charade, for public consumption, that he
had no influence or responsibilities in Scientology.  One of them was
that he had no desire, at the age of sixty-four, to risk going to
prison.

  Operation Snow White, the impudent plan to launder public records
that he had dreamed up three years earlier, was progressing rapidly
and with a degree of success that few would have believed possible.
By the beginning of 1975, the Guardian's Office had infiltrated agents
into the Internal Revenue Service, the US Coast Guard and the Drug
Enforcement Agency.  By May, Gerald Wolfe, a Scientologist working at
the IRS in Washington as a clerk-typist, had stolen more than thirty
thousand pages of documents relating to the Church of Scientology and
the Hubbards .  He was known to the Guardian's Office by the
code-name, `Silver'.

  Within the hierarchy of the Church of Scientology, ultimate
responsibility for the activities of Operation Snow White rested with
Mary Sue Hubbard, the controller, but it was inconceivable that she
was acting on her own initiative or not discussing progress with her
husband.  And although the amateur agents had discovered it was
ridiculously easy to infiltrate, bug and burgle US government offices,
the risks were considerable, both to the agents themselves and their
church superiors.  Hubbard was not too worried about who would take
the rap if Operation Snow White was exposed, as long as it was not
him.

  A few days before he moved to Dunedin, he approved a Guardian's
Office proposal to infiltrate agents into the US Attorney's offices in
Washington DC and Los Angeles with the specific task of providing an
early warning of any legal moves against him.  In its usual clumsy
prose, the Guardian's Office defined the first priority of `Program
LRH Security' as `Maintain an alerting Early Warning System throughout
the GO N/W [Guardian's Office network] so that any situation
concerning govts or courts by reason of suits is known in adequate
time to take defensive actions to suddenly raise the level on LRH
personal security very high.'[5]

  Confident that the Guardian's Office would protect him, Hubbard
planned to insinuate himself into Clearwater society by posing as a
photographer with an interest in taking scenic pictures for the
tourist industry.  `Taking pictures of "beautiful CW" is the local
button,' he

__________
 5. GO Order 261175, 26 Nov 1975

                          -- end page 336 --

wrote in a letter to Henning Heldt, a deputy guardian.  `My portrait
of the mayor will hang in city hall never fear.'

  The mayor of Clearwater, Gabriel Cazares, had more important things
on his mind than having his portrait taken.  Like many of the good
citizens of Clearwater, he was concerned by the sudden influx of
strangely incommunicative young people.  They were busily scrubbing
and cleaning the Fort Harrison Hotel and the old bank building, wore a
form of uniform and appeared to be guarded.  `I am discomfited,' the
perplexed mayor finally announced, `by the increasing visibility of
security personnel, armed with billy clubs and mace, employed by the
United Churches of Florida.  I am unable to understand why this degree
of security is required by a religious organization.'

  For his discomfiture, the mayor was instantly placed on
Scientology's `enemies list'.  He would have been even more
discomfited had he seen a directive issued in December outlining plans
to take control of `key points in the Clearwater area'.  The aim of
`Project Power' was to `establish the indispensability of United
Churches' in the community and the means of achieving the objective
involved classic Hubbardian strategy.

  `The overall plan is to locate opinion leaders -- then, their
enemies, the dirt, scandal, vested interest, crime of the enemies
(with overt data as much as possible).  Then turn this over to UC
[United Churches] who will approach the opinion leader and get his
agreement to look into a specific subject (which will lead to the
enemies' crimes).  UC then "discovers" the scandal, etc, and turns it
over to the opinion leader for his use.  Ops [operations] can be done
as a follow up to remove or restrain the enemy.'[6]

  Before United Churches' cover was blown, Hubbard made a foray into
Clearwater to direct the taping of a radio show in which three local
ministers had been invited to participate.  The Commodore had
abandoned his gold-embossed naval whites in favour of a beret and
khaki fatigues and in this freakish outfit, topped by headphones, he
bustled about, twiddling knobs, adjusting microphones and directing
where everybody should stand.  `They introduced him to me as Mr
Hubbard,' said the Reverent R. L. Wicker, of Clearwater's Calvary
Temple of God.  `But that didn't mean anything to me.  They said he
was an engineer.'

  In January, the Guardian's Office discovered that local newspapers
were moving closer to discovering the real identity of United
Churches.  Silver reported that a Bette Orsini of the *St Petersburg
Times* was asking questions about the tax-exempt status of the Church
of Scientology.  And June Byrne, a Scientologist who had got a job as
a clerk in the newsroom at the *Clearwater Sun*, told the GO that
reporter Mark Sableman seemed to be making a connection between

__________
 6. *St Petersburg Times*, 9 Jan 1980

                          -- end page 337 --

United Churches and Scientology.  He had been checking the
registration plates of cars used by United Churches officials and had
discovered one was licensed in the name of `R. Hubbard'.

  On 28 January 1976, the `Reverend' Arthur J Maren, a striking figure
with an Old Testament beard, arrived in Clearwater from Los Angeles to
announce at a news conference that the Church of Scientology were the
owners of the Fort Harrison Hotel and the Bank of Clearwater building.
Its involvement had not previously been revealed only out of an
altruistic desire to avoid overshadowing the work of its subsidiary
organization, United Churches.  On 5 February, five hundred citizens
attended an open day at the Fort Harrison Hotel to view the renovation
work that had already been completed.  Maren reassured those present
that there was nothing to fear from Scientology.  `Scientologists are
people who don't drink or violate laws,' he said.  `They are friendly
and want to contribute.'  Next day, the Church of Scientology filed a
$1 million lawsuit against Mayor Gabriel Cazares, accusing him of
libel, slander and violation of the church's civil rights.

  Hubbard thought it was unlikely that his own security in King
Arthur's Court had been compromised, since his location was known to
so few people and all of them were well-trained and fanatically loyal.
But there was a kind of perfidious inevitability that he would
eventually be wrong-footed, as had happened so often in his singular
career.  This time it was no one's fault but his own.  He decided he
needed a new wardrobe for his new life on shore.  His usual habit was
to order what he wanted from a tailor in Savile Row, via his secretary
at Saint Hill Manor, but on this occasion he was impatient and decided
to call in a local tailor from Tarpon Springs, the next town up Route
19A, north of Dunedin.  The tailor turned out to be a science-fiction
fan and while he was measuring his new client they got talking about
science fiction.  Hubbard let slip his identity and the tailor was
delighted to be able to shake the hand of the great L. Ron Hubbard,
whose sci-fi stories he had for so long admired.  Back in Tarpon
Springs, he told his wife, `You'll never guess who I was just
measuring for a suit ...'  News travelled fast thereabouts and it was
not long before a reporter began knocking on the doors of King
Arthur's Court in Dunedin.

  Hubbard bolted.  `We're leaving right *now*,' he shouted at Kima
Douglas, then head of the household unit.  `What do you want to take
with you?'  Kima, who was accustomed to handling crises, suggested her
husband, Mike.  Hubbard agreed he could be their driver.  `He was more
agitated than I had seen him for years,' Kima recalled.  `We did not
have time to do anything but pack a small bag.'  Hubbard had five
suitcases already stowed in the trunk of his gold Cadillac and they

                          -- end page 338 --

swept out of King Arthur's Court as the sun was setting in the gulf.
With Mike Douglas at the wheel, Kima on the front seat beside him and
Hubbard cowering in the back to avoid being seen, they headed across
the Florida panhandle on Route 4 in the direction of Orlando.

  It was a journey that Kima Douglas would never forget: `Somewhere
near Orlando we stopped at a hotel, I think it was a Great Western,
and checked in under false names.  LRH was supposed to be my father.
We got adjoining rooms and then LRH sent Mike out to telephone Mary
Sue from a payphone to find out what had happened.  When he came back,
he said he had not been able to get through because she had moved her
office.  The old man just broke down and wept; tears poured out of his
eyes.  We didn't know what the hell was happening.  He started to
wail, "Don't you see?  If she's moved her office it means that
someone's been there.  The whole thing's broken down.  Don't you
understand?"  It looked like he was going to have a heart attack right
there, so Mike went out to the payphone again to try and get some more
information.  When he got back he said everything was OK.  Mary Sue
had moved her office from one apartment to another because she thought
she would be more comfortable.'

  Early next morning Hubbard apprised his travelling companions that
they were going to drive the 1200 miles to New York, but they were
going to ditch the Cadillac because it was too noticeable.  He gave
Douglas $5000 to go out and buy another car; Douglas returned an hour
later with a second-hand Chevrolet hatchback, big enough for their
suitcases and suitably nondescript.  They left immediately.

  `We were on the road for three or four days,' said Kima.  `It was a
horrendous trip.  He sat in the back smoking cigarettes like mad and
every time he saw a police car he'd scream, "There they are, they're
after us!"  We had to keep turning off the highways and freeways,
stopping continually, to avoid police cars.  We went through some real
hokey places.  One time he got out of the car and started beating the
roof with frustration.  I said to him very quietly, "Get back in the
car, sir.  Everything's all right ."

  `He kept saying we had to get to New York, we had to get to New
York, but as we were driving through New Jersey I could see he was
getting more and more affected by the pollution.  He was
hyperventilating, panting for breath.  It was scary, really scary.  We
headed for Queens, where he had stayed before, and an aeroplane went
overhead throwing out all kinds of shit.  I pointed to it and said,
"Sir, I'm not going to do this to you.  There's no way you're going to
stay here."  By then he was like a child and mumbled something about
do whatever you want.  I said we should turn round and go back to
Washington DC.  He just said, "Do whatever you have to do."'[7]

  Mike Douglas swung the wheel on the Chevrolet and turned back in

__________
 7. Interview with Douglas

                          -- end page 339 --

the direction from which they had just come, south along the New
Jersey turnpike, across the Delaware river into Maryland as far as the
outskirts of Washington DC.  They found rooms for the night in a hotel
just off the Capital Beltway.  Next morning, Kima drove downtown to
look for more permanent accommodation.  She found a comfortable
brownstone on Q Street in Georgetown, only nine or ten blocks from the
Washington org, and signed a $1300-a-month rental agreement.

  Within a few days of moving into the brownstone, Hubbard had
recovered his composure.  Telex communications were set up and the
usual retinue of messengers and aides moved in, including Jim
Dincalci, who drove up from Florida towing a U-Haul trailer loaded
with the Commodore's personal possessions and private papers.  Daily
reports began arriving from Mary Sue, many of them detailing the
activities of Operation Snow White.  `It was strange to think', said
Kima, `that while we were lying low in Washington, other
Scientologists were going through the files in government buildings
not far from where we were living.'

  In the bustling streets of Georgetown, Hubbard felt safe to go out
and about, although he grew a beard and took to wearing a curious
assortment of old clothes in the fond belief that he would merge into
the cosmopolitan atmosphere.  `He bought clothes from Salvation Army
stores, real gungey stuff,' said Alan Vos, one of the aides who had
moved into the Q Street brownstone.  `It was strange because on the
ship he had had all these phobias about dust and smells and how his
clothes had to be washed, but that all vanished when we were living
together in Washington.

  `He used to go out walking and sit in the sidewalk cafs on
Connecticut Avenue.  The Scientology office was just a couple of
blocks away and he was often handed flyers by people recruiting for
Scientology; he thought it was very funny.  One day he got talking to
a woman in a restaurant about Scientology and he suggested she should
go round to the org on S Street.  I heard later that when she got
there they asked who had sent her and she pointed to LRH's picture on
the wall and said, "That man over there."  They went crazy and started
an investigation on her, thinking she was some kind of government
plant.

  `It seemed to me that LRH was happy in Washington, happy to be
getting out, mixing with other people, going to the movies.  On the
ship he had no idea what was happening in the world.  He thought about
moving his headquarters to Washington and looked at a property --
there was a hotel for sale on Dupont Circle -- but Mary Sue talked him
out of it.  She didn't like Washington and convinced him it was too
dangerous.  That's the kind of thing she used to do -- play on his
fears and psychoses about violence and police.'[8]

__________
 8. Interview with Alan Vos, Maclean, VA, March 1986

                          -- end page 340 --

  Hubbard spent quite a bit of time researching in the library of
Congress, reading up on black magic and the occult, and most days he
took a walk in Rock Creek Park, where he believed that FBI agents were
trained.  He bought a trick camera with a lens that looked sideways
and amused himself by taking pictures of trainee agents for future
reference.  Kima Douglas thought he was mad to take the risk.

  Coincidentally, Rock Creek Park was also the chosen venue for a fake
hit-and-run accident which the Guardian's Office set up in an attempt
to end the political career of the troublesome mayor of Clearwater.
Gabriel Cazares by then figured prominently on the Church of
Scientology's hit-list and the Guardian's Office had been trying to
dig up some dirt on him for weeks.  Scientologists had gone back to
his home town of Alpine, Texas, trawled through public records, nosed
around the courthouse and even checked the headstones in the local
graveyard, without success.  But then it was disclosed that Cazares
would be attending the national mayors' conference in Washington from
13-17 March and the Guardian's Office made hasty plans to give him a
welcome.

  A Scientologist posing as a Washington reporter sought an interview
with Cazares and introduced him to a friend, Sharon Thomas, who
offered to show the mayor the sights of Washington.  Miss Thomas was,
of course, working for the Guardian's Office.  Driving with the mayor
through scenic Rock Creek Park, she temporarily lost control of her
car and ran into a pedestrian, who crumpled dramatically.  To the
mayor's horror, Miss Thomas accelerated away without stopping, leaving
the injured man lying on the road.

  A Guardian's Office memo the following day discussed ways of using
the accident to discredit Cazares and concluded: `I should think the
mayor's political days are at an end.'  Curiously Cazares was also on
the Commodore's mind.  On the very same day, Hubbard scrawled a note
to the GO: `Cazares -- is there still some possibility the Cubans in
Miami might get the idea he is pro-Castro?'

  The `victim' of the hit-and-run accident was a young man called
Michael Meisner, a Scientologist since 1970.  Meisner was the key
figure in Operation Snow White: he was `running' all the GO agents who
had been infiltrated into government agencies in Washington, had
personally taken part in several burglaries at the Department of
Justice and organized the copying of tens of thousands of secret
government files.  For almost eighteen months, GO agents had been
sneaking in and out of government buildings without hindrance, but on
the evening of 11 June 1976, things started to go wrong when the FBI
discovered Meisner and Silver in the US Courthouse Library at the foot
of Capitol Hill.  They were waiting for cleaners to vacate an office
from which they were going to steal files, but they told the FBI

                          -- end page 341 --

agents they were doing legal research.  They presented fake
identification documents and were allowed to leave.

  Next day, in the brownstone on Q Street, an agitated Hubbard showed
Kima Douglas a telex from Mary Sue and asked, `What am I going to do
about this?'  `The essence of the report,' said Kima, `was that they
had caught the man who had been getting all this great information for
us from the tax files.'  Although no arrests had yet been made,
Hubbard surmised, correctly, that there was trouble in store.  His
instinct, once again, was to flee.

  A bolthole had been established on the other side of the country in
anticipation of just this eventuality.  On the following morning, Kima
Douglas checked in at National Airport with her elderly "father", for
a flight to Los Angeles.  Travelling under false names, they sat
together in the first-class cabin and watched an adventure movie,
featuring a spectacular hang-glider rescue, which the old man very
much enjoyed.  At LAX, they were met by a limousine and driven to
Overland Avenue in Culver City, where Gerry Armstrong had rented four
adjoining apartments.  Back at the brownstone on Q Street in
Georgetown, the occupants were toiling in and out of the house,
loading boxes into two U-Haul trailers parked outside.  They would
leave that night for the long drive across the continent to Los
Angeles.

  Overland Avenue was a wide tree-lined street with low-rise apartment
blocks on one side and the usual American suburban parade of shopping
plazas, filling stations and used-car lots on the other.  It was
middle-class and anonymous, the kind of place where people could come
and go for months without ever being noticed by their neighbours.
Armstrong had already set up a telex link before the Commodore
arrived.  Special decoder equipment was installed to provide direct
secure communications with Clearwater and the Guardian's Office in Los
Angeles, code-named Beta.  Overland Avenue's code name was Alpha.

  Among early telex messages to arrive at Alpha was the news that
Gerald Wolfe, agent Silver, had been arrested at his desk at the IRS
building in Washington and a warrant had been issued for the arrest of
Michael Meisner, who was missing from his home.  Hubbard was not
surprised by Meisner's disappearance -- he was staying at Beta, where
he was being provided with a new appearance and identity.  Mary Sue's
plan was that he should `lose himself' in some large city.

  Mary Sue soon joined her husband at Overland Avenue to discuss the
situation and some pressing family problems.  She persuaded him that
they would be able to resume family life in safety if they could find
a remote ranch somewhere in southern California, but the truth was
that the family had already disintegrated under the stress of
constantly being `on the run'.  Diana's marriage was in trouble,

                          -- end page 342 --

Quentin was supposed to be working for the org in Clearwater but was
constantly absent, reckless Suzette was dating `wogs' and Arthur had
dropped out of the California Institute of the Arts after gentle Jim
Dincalci had pulled strings to get him a place.  `I took his portfolio
along,' said Dincalci, `made up a story about him and gave him a false
hyphenated name to disguise who he was.  He was accepted on the
strength of his portfolio and his mother and father were very happy
with it, but he didn't last long.'

  Not unreasonably, Mary Sue longed for some kind of stability and
missions were despatched to find a property for the family, although
Hubbard insisted that there had to be enough space to accommodate his
messengers and his ever-changing court of loyal aides.  The Commodore
could not countenance life without a bevy of nubile messengers at his
beck and call.

  Kima Douglas went to look over a beautiful farm with its own beach
not far from Santa Barbara and pleaded with him to buy it, but he said
it was too expensive at $4 million.  Then a mission scouring the Palm
Springs area reported back on a promising property in the desert at La
Quinta, on the east side of the San Jacinto Mountains, which was on
the market for $1.3 million.  Hubbard drove down to look at it in his
new red Cadillac Eldorado convertible, wearing a jaunty little cap
pulled down over his straggling long hair, which had at last turned
grey.  It was not a car that guaranteed him a low profile, but he had
insisted on having it.  He swept in through the high gates of the
Olive Tree Ranch at La Quinta, took a quick look round, professed
himself satisfied and returned immediately to Los Angeles.

  La Quinta was about twenty minutes' drive from Palm Springs and was
a quiet little community of cheap low-roofed houses that simmered on a
flat patch of sun-scorched earth between the mountains.  Olive Tree
Ranch occupied the land behind the seedy La Quinta Country Club and
perversely grew dates and citrus fruit rather than olives.  The main
house was a sprawling white adobe hacienda with a red-tiled roof built
around a courtyard.  There was a swimming-pool with an island in the
middle sporting a single, surprising, palm tree and two other smaller
houses, one called Rifle and the other The Palms.

  As soon as the purchase papers had been signed, a working party from
the Los Angeles RPF moved in to begin renovations and improvements.
Hubbard had decided he would live in Rifle and wanted the house
painted white throughout, with white tiles on the floor and all white
furniture.  Telex machines were installed in the main house, but it
was intended that the ranch would be insulated as much as possible
from the Church of Scientology.  Everyone living and working there was
given a cover name, warned not to use Scientology words or bring
Scientology books on to the property.

                          -- end page 343 --

  The Hubbards moved in at the beginning of October 1976 and began to
enjoy a new life of tranquillity on their ranch in the desert.  The
messengers noticed a change in the Commodore; he was much more relaxed
than formerly and usually in good spirits.  But on the morning of
Wednesday, 17 November, as Doreen Smith was running across the Rifle
to begin her watch, she could hear him shouting at the top of his
voice: `That stupid fucking kid!  That stupid fucking kid!  Look what
he's done to me!  Stupid fucking ...'  As she got closer, she could
hear another unearthly, chilling noise.  It was Mary Sue keening,
barely drawing breath, but emitting a terrible endless scream.

  When she entered the house, the messenger she was relieving was in
tears.  She sobbed out the awful news: `Quentin's killed himself.'

                                 -*-

Quentin had been found in Las Vegas at 0832 hours on 28 October,
slumped over the steering-wheel of a white Pontiac parked off Sunset
Road alongside the perimeter fence of McCarran Airport at the end of
the north-south runway.  All the car windows were rolled up and a
white vacuum cleaner tube led from the passenger's vent window to the
exhaust tail pipe.  Tissue papers had been stuffed into the window
opening around the tube and the car's engine was still running.

  Officer Bruns of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department was
first on the scene.  He wrenched open both the car doors and
ascertained that the young man inside was still alive, though
unconscious, probably because the tube had fallen off the tail pipe.
He carried no identification of any kind and there were no licence
plates on the car.  There was nothing in the car but a Grundig
portable radio, a black tote bag containing miscellaneous clothing and
an open, partly consumed, bottle of tequila.  `The vehicle appeared as
though the subject might have been sleeping in it,' the police report
noted.  `The subject himself was very unkempt, his clothing was dirty,
and would be possibly described as a vagrant type subject.  A white
male, appeared in his mid to late 20s.  The subject was transported to
Southern Nevada Memorial Hospital via Mercy Ambulance ...'[9]

  As no one knew who he was, Quentin was admitted to hospital as `John
Doe'.  The only identifying marks that the hospital could record were
his red hair and red moustache.  He never regained consciousness and
died at 2115 on 12 November.  The police records listed him as a
`possible suicide'.

  On Monday, 15 November, the Las Vegas coroner's office began making
attempts to establish `John Doe's' identity.  His car, which had been
impounded, was re-checked and a Florida Highway Patrol smog sticker
was found, along with a vehicle identification number.  A telex to the
Florida department of motor vehicles came up with the

__________
 9. Officer's Report, D.R. No 76-57596, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police
    Department

                          -- end page 344 --

information that the vehicle was registered to a Quentin Hubbard of
210 South Fort Harrison Avenue, Clearwater.  Descriptions of the car
and the dead man were telexed to Clearwater police department with a
request that the information be checked.

  At 8.40 pm that same day, a man called Dick Weigand telephoned the
deputy coroner from Los Angeles airport, said he was leaving for Las
Vegas in five minutes and hoped to be able to identify John Doe.  They
agreed to meet at ten o'clock that night at the Medical Examiner
Facility on Pinto Lane.  Weigand was a senior Guardian's Office agent.
He arrived at Pinto Lane five minutes late and explained that he had
been contacted by a Kathy O'Gorman, who lived at the same address in
Clearwater as Quentin Hubbard.  However, he said he had only seen
Quentin a couple of times and could not be sure of making a positive
identification.  Weigand viewed the body twice, stared into Quentin's
white face, with his unmistakable red hair and moustache, then shook
his head and said he was not sure.  He could give no more help and he
did not even know the telephone number of Kathy O'Gorman in
Clearwater.  Weigand disappeared into the garish Las Vegas night and
immediately put a call through to the Guardian's Office to give them
the bad news: it was Quentin, all right.

  Mary Sue screamed for ten minutes when she heard the news.  `It was
horrendous,' said Kima Douglas.  `It kept on going.  I couldn't
believe she could get that much air in her lungs.  The only time I had
ever really seen her cry before was when Vixie, her Corgi, died and I
had to give it mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to try and revive it.  The
old man didn't cry or get emotional.  He was furious -- really angry
that Quentin had done it.'

  That same morning, a detective from Clearwater police department
telephoned Las Vegas to say that 210 South Fort Harrison Avenue was
the address of the US headquarters of the Church of Scientology, but
that the church's public affairs officer, one Kathy O'Gorman, had
refused to give him any information about Quentin Hubbard.  The
detective said that the Clearwater police had had `many problems' with
the church; as far as he knew, the founder, L. Ron Hubbard, lived on a
yacht in the bay.

  The Guardian's Office, meanwhile, had moved swiftly to `handle' the
situation.  Its local representative in Las Vegas was a pit boss at
the Sands Hotel by the name of Ed Walters.  `I had been working as a
covert operator for about eight years,' he said.  `I had secretly
tape-recorded a psychiatrist and got him to talk about lobotomies to
try and discredit him and I had bugged the meetings of Clark County
Mental Health Association, things like that.  I worked on anything
that org conceived to be a threat to the Hubbards.

  `When they found out Quentin was here, I was told to get hold of all

                          -- end page 345 --

his medical files.  There was apparently evidence that he had had a
homosexual encounter shortly before he was found and they didn't want
anything like that to get out.  There was a girl Scientologist working
in the hospital in a very secure position and she got all the reports
on Quentin and gave them to me and I handed them over to the
Guardian's Office.'[10]

  On the morning of Thursday, 18 November, Arthur Maren arrived at the
coroner's office in Las Vegas and introduced himself as director of
public affairs for the Church of Scientology.  He said he would be
able to make a positive identification of the body and at 11.25 he
confirmed that John Doe was, indeed, Geoffrey Quentin McCaully
Hubbard, aged twenty-two.  Maren said that Quentin's parents were not
in the United States, but were away on a trip round the world.

  Maren went backwards and forwards to the coroner's office over the
next few days providing information designed to deter any further
investigation into Quentin's death.  He even persuaded the coroner to
describe the cause of death as `undetermined' in a press release.
Quentin was said to have been on vacation and in Las Vegas to check
out enrolment requirements for a flying school.

  On Monday, 22 November, a young woman called Mary Rezzonico turned
up with an authorization signed by L. Ron Hubbard and Mary Sue Hubbard
for the release of their son's remains and his personal effects.
Rezzonico said she had personally obtained the signatures over the
weekend at `an unspecified location in Ireland'.

  Quentin was cremated next day at Palm Crematory in Las Vegas.  `I
knew he had homosexual problems,' said Ed Walters, `but he was a good
kid.  He was just a young, soft boy, not the ruthless, hard-nosed
type.  He had wanted to get out of Scientology for some time, but you
don't just leave something like Scientology.  You quit and then
instantly become an enemy.  He knew his father violently attacked
anyone who betrayed him and he knew that the Guardian's Office would
be after him as a traitor.  He had grown up in Scientology and would
have been tremendously afraid of the world out there, full of wogs and
evil people.  I guess he just couldn't handle it.'

  `He was just a miserable, miserable boy,' said Kima Douglas.  `He
was a little kid out of his depth who knew he could never compete with
his father.'

  A final macabre chapter was still to be enacted.  Quentin had chosen
to die at the end of an airport runway, watching the aircraft he had
longed to fly landing and taking off.  It was thus resolved that his
ashes should be scattered from a light aircraft over the Pacific.
Frank Gerbode, a Scientologist in Palo Alto, had his own aeroplane.

  `The Guardian's Office telephoned and asked me to help with a
special project,' Gerbode said.  `I was to fly my plane out over the

__________
10. Interview with Ed Walters, Las Vegas, Aug 1986

                          -- end page 346 --

Pacific with a couple of GO people who were going to scatter Quentin's
ashes.  I wasn't supposed to tell anybody, of course.  It turned out
to be a gruesome business.  It's not easy to throw particulate matter
out of a light aircraft and the ashes blew back into the plane.  I was
taking little bits of Quentin Hubbard out of the upholstery for months
afterwards.'[11]

__________
11. Interview with Dr. Frank Gerbode, Palo Alto, Aug 1986

                          -- end page 347 --

                             *Chapter 21*

                           *Making Movies*

  `The crime committed by these defendants is of a breadth and scope
previously unheard of.  No building, office, desk or file was safe
from their snooping and prying.  No individual or organization was
free from their despicable conspiratorial minds.  The tools of their
trade were miniature transmitters, lock picks, secret codes, forged
credentials, and any other device they found necessary to carry out
their conspiratorial schemes.  It is interesting to note that the
founder of their organization, unindicted co-conspirator L. Ron
Hubbard, wrote in his dictionary entitled *Modern Management
Technology Defined* that, "Truth is what is true for you."  Thus, with
the founder's blessings, they could wantonly commit perjury as long as
it was in the interests of Scientology.'  (Government sentencing
memorandum on Mary Sue Hubbard, et al, October 1978)

                              * * * * *

At Olive Tree Ranch, everything changed after Quentin's death.  The
Commodore's all-too-brief bonhomie disappeared and he reverted to the
familiar bellowing, foul-mouthed tyrant, plagued by phobias,
surrounded by fools and besieged by enemies.

  When he was in the throes of a tantrum, he often looked deranged,
with his long, unkempt hair, glaring eyes and flecks of saliva around
his mouth.  But no one would risk even *thinking* such a thing, lest
it show up during auditing.  There was a particularly feared
phenomenon on the E-meter called a `rock slam', when the needle
wavered violently, apparently indicating a discreditable thought.
`Rock slams' almost inevitably led to long periods of incarceration in
an RPF, by then a feature of most of the major orgs.

  For those Scientologists who had only ever seen the dozen official
pictures of L. Ron Hubbard, seeing him for the first time at La Quinta
was something of a shock, as Anne Rosenblum discovered when she
arrived to start training as a messenger: `The first night I was there
I didn't talk to LRH since he was busy, but I saw him.  He had long
reddish-gray hair down past his shoulders, rotting teeth and a really
fat gut.  He didn't look anything like his pictures.  The next day I
met

                          -- end page 348 --

him.  He was doing exercises in his courtyard and called me over.  I
was nervous meeting him.  I was really surprised that I didn't feel
this "electric something or another" that I was told happens when you
are around him.'

  Anne had been told that both Mary Sue's pet dogs were `clear' and
that they would bark at anyone who had committed `overts' (crimes)
about the Hubbards.  She was dismayed when she walked into Rifle for
the first time and one of the dogs came tearing out of Mary Sue's
room, barking furiously at her.  `I started walking around wondering
what deep, dark terrible overts I had committed on LRH or Mary Sue in
this life or past lives.'[1]

  Because their loyalty was unquestioned, the messengers knew more
about what was going on in Scientology than anyone other than Hubbard
and Mary Sue.  They knew all about Operation Snow White, for example,
because the Hubbards often discussed its Machiavellian twists and
turns over dinner.  They were also privy to the family's intimate
secrets.  One afternoon, while Hubbard was away from his office,
Doreen Smith came across a pile of letters Quentin had written to his
father.  She was surprised: she knew the Commodore had not replied to
any of them because all his mail went out via the messengers.

  `Out of curiosity, I pulled the letters out and read a couple,' she
confessed.  `It sounded like Quentin had gone crazy.  He was talking
about people coming from outer space and what we were going to do
about it and how he knew the Marcabs were coming every five thousand
years to check on our development.  It seemed like he had taken his
father's space odyssey stories and plumped them in his own reality.
It was real loony tune stuff.'  She told no one about this except, of
course, all the other messengers.

  Doreen was close to the younger Hubbard children and was shocked by
Quentin's letters.  She was even more shocked by what happened when
the Commodore fell out with his youngest daughter, Suzette.  `She was
dating another Scientologist but for some reason the Commodore didn't
approve of him and so he sent a messenger with $5000 in cash to buy
him off.  The messenger was told to threaten the guy that he would be
declared SP if he didn't take the money and sign an agreement to stop
seeing Suzette.

  `But the agreement also made it look as if the guy was blackmailing
Hubbard and threatening to take her away.  That's what Hubbard told
Suzette was happening.  I was in his office when he called her in and
showed her the agreement, shouting things like, "I told you so."
Suzette might have seen through it, but she was a toughie.  She
started dating wogs and then, when she was being audited -- auditing
is like a confessional -- she would describe everything she had done
on the date in great detail, knowing that her father would read her
folder.  It was

__________
 1. Affidavit of Anne Rosenblum

                          -- end page 349 --

her way of getting back at him.  The only form of communication she
could have with her father was through her auditor.

  `He went purple with rage when he read her folder with all that
stuff in it and her saying things like, "If my father doesn't like
what I'm doing, I don't give a damn."  When he had finished reading
it, he threw it across the room and then threw a yellow legal pad at
me and told me to take down a letter.  He started dictating a letter
disinheriting Suzette and I began to cry.  In the end I said, "I can't
do this."  I put down the pad and let him have it.  "Quentin's dead,"
I said, "and now you're tearing your family apart.  You can't do this
to your family and to Mary Sue.  If you want to send this letter,
write it yourself."  Then I excused myself from the watch and ran out.
Afterwards, I discovered he tore up the letter.  He never did
disinherit Suzette.'  (Doreen was a particular favourite with the
Commodore and one of the few people at Olive Tree Ranch who would have
dared suggest he might have made a mistake.  He called her `Do', had a
little engraved dog-tag made for her and in rare moments of amiability
he would give her an affectionate pat her on the head and say, `That's
my Do.')

  Arthur, the youngest of the Hubbard children, was in rather better
favour with his father, although he made a pest of himself with
everyone else at Olive Tree Ranch by riding his motor-cycle around the
property at breakneck speed.  `He was a brat,' said Jim Dincalci.
`All the time.'  His talent as an artist was being employed to paint a
series of watercolours illustrating incidents in his father's early
life, which were to be used in a glossy, coffee-table tome published
by the church under the title, *What Is Scientology?*

  There were pictures of little Ron riding on his grandfather's cattle
ranch, sitting by a campfire with the Pikuni Indians, journeying
`throughout Asia' at the age of fourteen, as a university student
attending one of the first nuclear physics courses and supporting
himself as an essayist and technical writer (the caption somehow
failed to mention his science fiction).  Two paintings showed him
crippled and blinded in a naval hospital after the war and a third
depicted him miraculously restored to health by the power of mind.
Arthur's pictures were unremarkable art, but fascinating inasmuch as
they illustrated most of the significant lies told by his father about
his life before Scientology.

                                 -*-

In the early part of 1977, Hubbard became enthused by a project called
the `Purification Rundown' which he believed would rid the world of
drug addiction.  His debut as an authority on the subject was marked
by the issue of a bulletin in which he warned about the effects of LSD
and listed its characteristics, as if after months of research.  `All
the information came from one person who had taken LSD once,' said Jim
Dincalci.  `That was how he did his research.'[2]

__________
 2. Interview with Dincalci

                          -- end page 350 --

  At Hubbard's request, Dincalci put together the elements of the
Purification Rundown, a regimen of exercise, diet and vitamins
designed to rid the body of toxic substances.  Dincalci never thought
of it as much more than a simple plan for healthier living, but in the
grand arena of the Commodore's fantasies it was transformed into a
sensational discovery, the instant solution to the international drugs
crisis, the salvation of the world's youth, a beacon of hope for drug
addicts everywhere.

  Strenuous attempts were made to provide scientific evidence to back
up the vivifying claims made for the Purification Rundown and Hubbard
was so carried away by his own brilliance that he soon began to dream
of a suitable award for his contribution to humanity -- a Nobel Prize,
for example.  He issued a written order to Laurel Sullivan, his
personal public relations officer, allocating `unlimited funds' to a
project aimed at getting him a Nobel Prize and inquiries were
immediately instituted to see if there were any Scientology
connections, or strings that could be pulled, with members of the
Nobel nominating committee.

  Poor Mary Sue, meanwhile, was floundering in the aftermath of
Operation Snow White.  The real problem was what do with Michael
Meisner, who was growing restive as a fugitive and disenchanted with
the efforts of his superiors to resolve his quandary.  At one point
Mary Sue had considered trying to make him the scapegoat, suggesting
he had organized the burglaries in a fit of jealous pique because his
wife was doing better as a Scientologist than he was.  Another
Guardian's Officer suggestion was that the authorities should be told
that Meisner was trying to blackmail the church.

  After eight months on the run, moving from one secret address to
another, Meisner threatened to `blow'.  He was immediately placed
under guard.  The fugitive had become a captive.  On 20 June 1977,
while being held at an apartment in Glendale, he gave his guards the
slip, changed buses twice to avoid pursuit and went into a bowling
alley, from where he telephoned the FBI.  He said he wanted to give
himself up.

  Two days later, the Guardian's Office received a letter from
Meisner, postmarked San Francisco, saying that he was lying low for a
while to think things over.  This information was passed to Mary Sue,
who responded: `I frankly would not waste Bur 1 [Bureau One, the GO
investigative division] resources looking for him, but would instead
utilize resources to figure out a way to defuse him should he turn
traitor.'[3] It was too late.  Meisner was already in Washington
describing to dumbfounded FBI agents the scope and success of
Operation Snow White.

  At six o'clock on the morning of 8 July 1977, 134 FBI agents armed

__________
 3. *Religion, Inc.*, Stewart Lamont, 1986

                          -- end page 351 --

with search warrants and sledgehammers, simultaneously broke into the
offices of the Church of Scientology in Washington and Los Angeles and
carted away 48,149 documents.  They would reveal an astonishing
espionage system which spanned the United States and penetrated some
of the highest offices in the land.

  Hubbard's reaction to the raid was true to form: he immediately
assumed the Guardian's Office had been penetrated by suppressives.  It
was clear to him he could now trust no one but the messengers.  He
also realized that the documents seized by the FBI would inevitably
implicate Mary Sue in Operation Snow White and he was acutely aware of
the need to put some distance between himself and his wife.

  On 15 July, in the middle of the night, a Dodge station wagon pulled
out through the high gates of Olive Tree Ranch.  To ensure it was not
followed, the car showed no lights until it reached Highway 111, the
main road between Indio and Palm Springs.  Hubbard was slouched on the
back seat of the car, grasping his midriff and complaining of stomach
pains.  With him were three messengers, Diane Reisdorf, Claire
Rousseau and one of the few male messengers, Pat Broeker.  They headed
north on Interstate 5, turning east at Sacramento, across the Sierra
Nevada and the state line, through Reno to Sparks, a city of low-rent
houses, casinos and motels, situated on the Truckee River.  The sun
was just rising when they checked into a motel under false names.
Their story was that Pat and Claire were married, Diane was their
cousin and Hubbard their elderly uncle.

  While Hubbard stayed in his room at the motel, Pat went out to look
for an apartment.  He quickly found somewhere suitably anonymous, paid
cash and equipped it with everything they would need for an indefinite
stay.  The four of them moved in a few days later.

  For the remainder of 1977, Hubbard stayed in hiding at Sparks.  He
cut off all direct communications with the Guardian's Office and his
family and relied on his three messengers to maintain secret links
with the Church hierarchy.  It was not long before they began to run
out of money and elaborate arrangements were made for the transfer of
cash from Clearwater.  Pat Broeker met the DCO/CMO/CW (Deputy
Commanding Officer, Commodore's Messenger Organization, Clearwater) at
Los Angeles airport where they exchanged identical suitcases.  Broeker
collected a case containing one million dollars in hundred-dollar
bills and returned to Sparks, frequently doubling back to ensure he
was not being followed.  To further launder the money, the bills were
broken down into lower denomination notes in local casinos.

  For a man whose activities were under intense investigation by the
FBI, Hubbard seemed remarkably insouciant.  Most mornings he took a
long walk, then spent the rest of the day writing film scripts.  He
had

                          -- end page 352 --

an idea for a feature film called *Revolt in the Stars*, a
dramatization of high-level Scientology training about events which
happened seventy-five million years ago when an evil ruler by the name
of Xenu massacred the populations of seventy-six planets, transported
their frozen spirits back to earth and exploded them in volcanoes.  He
also wanted to make films that could be used for recruiting and
instruction within the church and the more he thought about the idea
of being a film director, the more he liked it.  He was sixty-six
years old and had only ever shot home movies, but he did not consider
his age or lack of experience to be any kind of drawback.

  A few days after Christmas 1977, word arrived at Sparks that the
Commodore was unlikely to be indicted as a result of the FBI raid and
he decided it was safe to move back to La Quinta.  There was just one
problem.  He suspected that Mary Sue was still under FBI surveillance,
so if he returned to Olive Tree Ranch, she would have to move out.

  Hubbard arrived back at the ranch on the morning of 2 January 1978
to the ritual rapturous welcome from his followers.  He spent a number
of hours with Mary Sue behind the closed doors of his study.  No one
knew what passed between them, but Mary Sue left the ranch that
evening at the wheel of her BMW.  Next day, Doreen Smith was sent to
Los Angeles to help her look for a house.

  With the Commodore's return, security was stepped up.  Guards with
walkie-talkies patrolled the property day and night and were drilled
on how to deal with process servers.  If a visitor asked for Mr
Hubbard, they were to deny all knowledge of him; if someone tried to
press papers on them, they were to kick them away.  In a real
emergency, a button on every walkie-talkie would set off alarms all
around the property.  At the back of Rifle, a tan-coloured Dodge Dart
with a souped-up engine and a full tank of petrol was kept ready for a
getaway at all times.

  Behind the security screen, the Commodore was directing the setting
up of a full-scale film unit.  More property was purchased around La
Quinta -- a ten-acre ranch, code-named Munro, became a barracks for
the film unit personnel and a studio was built in a huge barn on the
Silver Sand Ranch, a 140-acre grapefruit farm.  Lights, dollies,
cameras and a vast range of technical equipment were all moved into
the new studio.  Hubbard took to wearing a cowboy hat, suspenders and
a bandana, which he imagined gave him an artistic mien appropriate to
a film director.

  The Cine Org was to cut its teeth making simple promotional films
illustrating various situations in which Scientology could be used
beneficially.  Hubbard wrote all the scripts and knew exactly what he
wanted, but found it infuriatingly difficult to transfer his vision on
to

                          -- end page 353 --

celluloid.  Surrounded by an army of enthusiastic amateurs running
around desperate to please, nothing seemed to go right.  If the actors
remembered their lines, the lighting was botched; if the lighting was
all right, the sound failed; if the sound was satisfactory, the sets
fell down ... The Commodore's temper worsened day by day.

  An appeal had gone out to Scientology branches around the world for
volunteers with acting and film-making experience to help Ron in a
special project.  Among the first to arrive was a middle-aged couple
from Las Vegas whose show business experience extended to four
performances of their own dance and comedy act at the Sahara Showcase.
Adelle and Ernie Hartwell were champion ballroom dancers who had taken
a few Scientology courses and had been led to believe that joining the
Cine Org would give them their big break.

  They were disillusioned from the moment of their arrival.  `I was
absolutely shocked', said Ernie, `to see every one running around in
shorts, ragged clothes, dirty and unkempt.  They put us in a little
three-room shack on the edge of the ranch.  We go inside and what a
mess!  The place was over-run with bugs and insects.'

  `The main thing I disliked,' said Adelle, `was that when we first
got there we were programmed on the lies we had to tell.  If we ran
into one of our friends, we had to tell a lie to them and tell them we
were just there for a vacation ... We were schooled on how to get away
from process servers, FBI agents, any government officials or any
policeman who wanted anything to do with Hubbard.'

  Adelle's introduction to the Commodore was unforgettable.  She was
working in the wardrobe department when she heard a barrage of abuse
from behind a screen: `You dirty goddam sons of bitches, you're so
goddam stupid.  Fuck you, you cock-suckers ...'  It seemed to go on
for several minutes.  `I had something in my hand and it fell to the
floor,' she recalled.  `I said, "Who in the world is that?"  They said
it was the Boss -- we weren't allowed to use the name Hubbard for
security reasons.  "You mean the leader of the church speaks like
*that*?"  I asked.  "Oh yes," was the reply.  "he doesn't believe in
keeping anything back."'

  Adelle Hartwell was supposed to be a make-up assistant on a movie
called *The Unfathomable Man*, which chronicled Hubbard's view of
mankind from the beginning of time to the present day.  She soon
learned that Hubbard was a director who like plenty of gore, and
gallons of fake blood had to be prepared in advance of every day's
shooting.  `Did he ever like those films to be bloody,' she said.  `It
was enough to make you sick.

  `We'd be shooting a scene and all of a sudden he'd yell, "Stop!
Make it more gory."  We'd go running out on the set with all this Karo
Syrup and food colouring and we'd just dump it all over the actors.
Then

                          -- end page 354 --

we'd film some more and he'd stop it again and say, "It's still not
gory enough," and we'd throw some more blood on them.'[4]

  On one occasion, when filming a bombing raid on an FBI office -- a
scene Hubbard very much enjoyed -- he ordered so much blood to be
poured over the unhappy actors that their clothes became glued to
their bodies and had to be cut off by wardrobe assistants.

  When the Cine Org was shooting in the studio, all the sets had to be
cleaned and scrubbed with special soap every morning before Hubbard
arrived and the messengers would go round with white gloves to ensure
that it had been done properly.  Hubbard had a director's chair that
no one else was allowed to sit in and as he was walking around the set
a messenger would follow close behind him, ready to put the chair
underneath him if he chose to sit down.  One unfortunate girl got the
positioning wrong by a few inches and as the Commodore sat down he
missed the chair and sprawled on the floor.  No one laughed: it was
not wise to laugh at the Commodore.  The girl was immediately
despatched to the RPF.

  Despite the somewhat desperate desire on everyone's part that the
Cine Org should succeed, its films were in no danger of winning
Oscars.  One of the fundamental problems was that the scripts,
although no one would admit it, were as amateurish as everything else.
Narratives tended to begin, `From the beginning of history, Man has
searched for truth ...'  and many of the roles were wooden stereotypes
or ludicrous caricatures reflecting Hubbard's multitude of prejudices.
One film, titled *The Problems of Life*, featured a perplexed young
couple searching for a meaning to their lives.  They first consulted a
psychiatrist, predictably portrayed as a demented sadist, then sought
advice from a scientist, who was shown madly scribbling theorems on a
blackboard as if completely insane.  Finally they approached a beaming
Scientologist and concluded they were at last in the right place.
Subtlety was not one of Hubbard's more obvious talents as a
scriptwriter.

  `The trouble was that he wanted to make movies that would take over
Hollywood,' said Kima Douglas, `but they were terrible, really
terrible.  The crew would have to do scenes over and over again before
he was satisfied.  Occasionally the day would end up with a "Fine,
well done everybody", but more often there were tantrums and he'd
storm off the set screaming that it had better be right tomorrow.'[5]

  Gerry Armstrong was put in charge of set building.  `It was all
hokey, worse than high school,' he said.  `When we were shooting films
he was the most abusive I have ever seen him, screaming and yelling
all the time.  People were running around terrified.  He'd cover up
his own incompetence by attacking everyone else.  The guy had poor
eyesight and he was running the cameras, so the shots were often out

__________
 4. Affidavits of Adelle & Ernest Hartwell, *St Petersburg Times*, 9
    Jan 1980
 5. Interview with Douglas

                          -- end page 355 --

of focus and he'd scream at the cameraman, "You can't frame a shot!"
Or he'd hear a hum on the microphone and start yelling, "Sound!
Sound!  You fucking idiots!  Get off the set!"'[6]

  Faithful Jim Dincalci was by this time convinced that Hubbard was
unbalanced and he asked to be relieved of his post on the Commodore's
staff.  He was immediately ostracized.  `For two months Hubbard would
not even acknowledge my existence.  He would not say hello or even nod
at me.  On the set in the morning he would say hello to everyone and
deliberately skip me.'  Dincalci was also less inclined to believe the
Commodore's stories of his past life adventures: `A friend of mine,
Brian Livingstone, told me one time that Hubbard had finished
[reading] a book and passed it on to him to read.  He started reading
it that night and next day he heard Hubbard talking about a lifetime
where he had done these various things and Brian had just read about
*the same things in the book*!'

                                 -*-

Hubbard knew little of what was happening to Mary Sue during this
period because the messengers censored her letters in order to avoid
upsetting the Commodore.  If Mary Sue sent bad news, the messengers
cut out the offending passages with a razor blade, believing it to be
their duty to keep such problems `off his lines'.  But they naturally
read all Mary Sue's communications themselves and were certainly not
above gossip.  On one occasion she wrote to ask, plaintively, why Ron
spent so much time with `his people' and so little time with her.  `I
understand you're trying to save the world,' she wrote, `but I need
some time, too.'  The contents of that letter were soon common
knowledge all round Olive Tree Ranch.

  In truth, Mary Sue had much to complain about, because she had no
doubt that she was going to have to take the rap for Operation Snow
White.  `Hubbard abandoned her', said Ken Urquhart, `and made it quite
clear within the org that he had abandoned her.  It's the one thing I
find hard to forgive -- that he was prepared to allow his wife to go
to jail for crimes he was equally guilty of.  After the FBI raid I was
put to work making up reports to show that he did not know what was
going on.  In other words, I was to cover his ass.  He was privy to
almost all of it and was as guilty as Mary Sue.[7]

  On 15 August 1978, a federal grand jury in Washington indicted nine
Scientologists on twenty-eight counts of conspiring to steam
government documents, theft of government documents, burglarizing
government offices, intercepting government communications, harbouring
a fugitive, making false declarations before a grand jury and
conspiring to obstruct justice.  Heading the list of those indicted
was Mary Sue Hubbard.  She faced a maximum penalty, if convicted, of
175 years in prison and a fine of $40,000.  On 29 August, all nine

__________
 6. Interview with Armstrong
 7. Interview with Urquhart

                          -- end page 356 --

defendants were arraigned in the federal courthouse at the foot of
Capitol Hill and pleaded not guilty.

  A few days later, Hubbard collapsed while he was filming on location
in the desert.  `The temperature was somewhere between 118 and 122
degrees,' said Kima Douglas.  `I had been watching the old man out
there wheezing and struggling for breath, with flecks around his
mouth.  It was crazy; I knew he wouldn't be able to take it much
longer.  We always had a motor home at the location -- he'd have his
lunch in it and sometimes have a lie-down while the set was being
prepared.  This particular day he came back to the motor home and said
he didn't feel well.  His pulse was extremely erratic and his blood
pressure was way up.  I thought he was going to die and said that we
ought to get him to hospital.  He gripped my arm and said, "This time,
*no*!"'

  Hubbard was taken back to Olive Tree Ranch, apparently slipping in
and out of a coma.  At one point he muttered to Kima, `If I die, bury
me in the date field.'  A Scientologist doctor, Gene Denk, was
summoned from Los Angeles and driven to the ranch blindfolded but he
seemed unsure what was wrong with the Commodore.  Hubbard had always
said that he only got ill because his enemies were pushing bad energy
on him; it was just something saviours had to put up with, he would
explain with a shrug.  Auditing was the way to exorcize bad energy.

                                 -*-

David Mayo, the senior case supervisor in Clearwater, did not know
where he was going or what he had to do.  All he was told was that an
urgent, top-secret telex had arrived at the CMO instructing him to be
on the next flight to Los Angeles.  He was given twenty minutes to get
to the airport and didn't even have time to say goodbye to his wife.
No one was to know that he had gone.  It was nightfall when he arrived
at Los Angeles airport.  He was met by a Scientologist he vaguely
recognized and hurried out to a waiting car, which swept out of the
airport complex and up on to Los Angeles' bewildering network of
freeways.  Neither of the men in the car would tell Mayo where they
were taking him.  Somewhere on the outskirts of the city they stopped
at a parking lot and switched cars.  Half an hour later, in another
parking lot, Mayo was bundled into a third car and this time he was
blindfolded.  He asked what was going on and the driver replied:
`We're taking you to LRH.  He's sick.  Keep the blindfold on until we
arrive.'

  Mayo was dismayed when he was at last ushered into the Commodore's
room at Rifle.  `He was obviously very ill, lying on his back almost
in a coma.  He could talk a little, but very slowly and quietly.
There was medical equipment all round him, including an electric pulse
machine to re-start his heart.  Denk told me he thought LRH

                          -- end page 357 --

was close to death.  He would have moved him into a hospital but he
thought the ride in the ambulance might finish him off.  I was given
his PC folders and told to solve the problem.  I started looking
through the folders that night and began auditing him next day.'[8]

  Hubbard slowly recovered, proving the wondrous efficacy of auditing
to everyone at Olive Tree Ranch except, perhaps, the Commodore's
auditor.  Mayo was deeply disturbed by what he learned during his
daily auditing sessions with Hubbard: `He revealed things about
himself and his past which absolutely contradicted what we had been
told about him.  He wasn't taking any great risk because I was a loyal
and trusted subject and had a duty to keep such things confidential.

  `It wasn't just what I discovered about his past.  I didn't care
where he was born or what he had done in the war, it didn't mean a
thing to me.  I wasn't a loyal Scientologist because he had an
illustrious war record.  What worried me was when I saw things he did
and heard statements he made that showed his intentions were different
from what they appeared to be.  When I was with him messengers often
arrived with suitcases full of money, wads of hundred-dollar bills.
Yet he had always said and written that he had never received a penny
from Scientology.  He would ask to see it, the messenger would open
the case and he'd gloat over it for a bit before it was put away in a
safe in his bedroom.  He didn't really spend much, so I guess it was
getaway money.  I didn't mind the idea of him having money or being
rich.  I thought he had done tremendous wonders and should be well
paid for it.  But why did have to lie about it?

  `I slowly began to realize that he wasn't acting in the public good
or for the benefit of mankind.  It might have started out like that,
but it was no longer so.  One day we were talking about the price of
gold, or something like that, and he said to me, very emphatically,
that he was obsessed by an insatiable lust for power and money.  I'll
never forget it.  Those were his exact words, "an insatiable lust for
power and money".'

  By the middle of October, the Commodore was back on his feet, back
making movies.  Mayo was ordered to be an actor and was appalled by
Hubbard's behaviour on the set.  `He walked around with an electric
bullhorn yelling orders through it even if the person was only a few
feet away.  The crew were in a constant state of fear.  He'd say he
wanted a certain set built and describe it.  Everyone would work in a
frenzied state to get it done, often through the night, not stopping
for meals and praying it would be right and that they would not get
into trouble.  When he arrived to begin shooting he invariably decided
he didn't like it.  It had been altered; he wanted it blue, not green.
Some of the crew would be sent to the RPF and others would be

__________
 8. Interview with Mayo

                          -- end page 358 --

running around trying to find some blue paint.  Then he'd want to know
why it was blue and not yellow.

  `When I was trying to be an actor I'd have to do the same line over
and over again.  It was never right.  It was too loud, too quiet, too
intense, not intense enough.  Then he'd scream, "Why aren't you doing
it *enthusiastically*?"  He'd end up stamping off, screaming that it
was all impossible and that no one would do what he said.  One of the
main reasons why he got sick, I think, was that he had so many
failures and so much frustration and upset over the movies.  Everyone
was tip-toeing around waiting for explosions.

  `One incident was quite dramatic and revelatory.  During a period
when things had got very, very bad, some of the crew tried to lighten
things up by making a little video recording intended as a joke.  It
was a humorous skit on an incident that had happened a couple of days
earlier.  They thought it would amuse him and sent him the video tape.
I was standing outside his office waiting to see him when he played
it.  There was a tremendous explosion.  He started yelling and
screaming and messengers began running in and out.  He was literally
*shouting* at the television.  He didn't think it was funny at all.
He thought he was being held up to ridicule and that the crew were
mocking him and he was furious.  Messengers were sent to find the
names of everyone involved and they were all sent to the RPF.  Then he
thought that there were people who were not directly involved but
might know about it and he wanted their names and they were sent to
the RPF as well.'

  Cine Org members assigned to the RPF were sent to work on quarter
pay -- $4.00 a week -- at a recently acquired property about forty
miles from La Quinta which was to be the Commodore's `summer
headquarters'.  Gilman Hot Springs was a faded resort straddling Route
79 between Riverside and Palm Springs.  Its 550 acres boasted a
yellowing golf course, a decrepit motel, the Massacre Canyon Inn, and
a collection of miscellaneous buildings in various states of
disrepair, one of them a house satirically named `Bonnie View'.  The
entire property had been purchased for $2.7 million cash and local
people were told it was going to be used by members of an organization
called the `Scottish Highland Quietude Club'.

  Hubbard had not seen the place but declared an ultimate intention to
move into Bonnie View and the RPF was toiling to prepare the house for
him, ripping out the vents, tiling the floors, painting and decorating
and vainly attempting to create a dust-free and odourless habitat.  It
was honest labour much preferable to the stress and hysteria prevalent
in the Cine Org, which by then employed around 150 people.

  Like almost every episode in Hubbard's life, the Cine Org ended in

                          -- end page 359 --

sudden collapse and farce.  The Hartwells, the stage-struck ballroom
dancers who thought they were breaking into show business, had
disentangled themselves by the end of 1978 and returned to Las Vegas,
poorer but wiser.  Ernie Hartwell did not particularly want to stir up
any trouble but he thought that the church was trying to entice Dell
back and break up his marriage.  He was a straight-talking Navy
veteran who worked in a casino and was not the kind of guy to be cowed
by `kids running around in sailor suits', which was his favourite
description of Scientologists.  He began threatening to go to the FBI
and the newspapers and telling everything he knew.  Actually he did
not know much, other than the best-kept secret in Scientology -- the
whereabouts of L. Ron Hubbard.

  Ed Walters, the agent who had `handled' Quentin's suicide, was
ordered to `handle' Hartwell.  `I'll never forget sitting in the local
Guardian's Office the day I brought Ernie in,' said Walters.  `These
two young kids who've never met Hubbard are sitting there and they
obviously think that Hartwell's a liar.  One of them says, "You don't
know what you're talking about.  You say you actually met Ron Hubbard
..."  Ernie says, "Yeah, I was with him down in the desert."  "Well,
if you met him," says the GO guy, "how would you describe him?"  I
knew that what he meant was how did Hubbard look, but Ernie says, "How
would I describe him?  I'd describe him as fucking nuts."

  `My heart was pumping.  No one talks like that about LRH.  The GO
people were stunned.  To them it proved that Ernie was a liar.  I
said, "Well, Ernie, you don't really *mean* that he's nuts, do you?"
He says, "Yeah!"  So I asked him to give me an example, hoping to tone
it down a bit.  "Are you kidding?"  He says.  "One day we get there
and he's playing director with all these kids following him around.
He starts screaming at the wall, he says there's supposed to be
shelves there and why aren't there shelves there.  So one of his
people turns to me and says put some shelves there.  So I say OK, I
need a hammer, nails and wood.  Then this fucking kid just says to me
make it go right."

  `To tell someone "make it go right" was typical Scientology-speak.
I knew then that he was telling the truth.'[9]

  Walters liked Ernie Hartwell and tried, over the next couple of
days, to dissuade him from carrying out his threats.  `Next thing that
happens,' he said, `was that the GO sent some people to tell me to
stay out of it.  They were going to handle Hartwell.  They were not
going to allow Hubbard to be exposed by this man and they insinuated
they would destroy him if they had to.  Ernie was just a troubled old
guy off the street who should never have been in Scientology in the
first place.  How could they think of destroying someone like that?
Something just went off inside me.'

__________
 9. Interview with Walters

                          -- end page 360 --

  Walters began telephoning his closest friends in Scientology, among
them Art Maren, to tell them he was thinking of getting out.  Maren
rushed to Las Vegas and begged Ed to re-consider.  It dawned on
Walters, with a sense of deep shock, that his friend Artie was
*frightened*.  Next day Walters went to the FBI.

  Alarm bells were already ringing at Olive Tree Ranch, where someone
had been seen taking photographs of the property.  Hubbard reacted as
he always reacted in a crisis: he fled.

  The chosen getaway vehicle was a white customized Dodge Ram van with
darkened windows, fitted out inside with a bed, CB radio and the
latest stereo system.  Hubbard had had it made so that he could sleep
on long journeys by road, but it served the purpose for which it was
now needed -- to get him out of Olive Tree Ranch unseen.

  Kima and Mike Douglas were again chosen to go with him.  They left
at nightfall, with the Commodore in his usual state of paranoid
hysteria.  `As we drove up into the San Jacinto Mountains,' said Kima,
`he was lying on the bed in the back, alternately urging Mike to drive
faster and complaining that he was feeling sick.  We were already
tearing round these hairpin bends as fast as we could, but he kept
repeating, "We've got to get out of here.  Go faster, Go faster."'

  They checked into an isolated motel up in the mountains and Hubbard
stayed in his room while the Douglas's went out every day looking for
a place where they could set up yet another secret base for the
Commodore.  They eventually found several adjoining apartments for
rent in new building just off the main street in Hemet, a small town
on the west side of the mountains.  Hubbard moved in at the end of
March 1979, along with a slimmed-down staff of messengers and aides.

  In many ways, Hemet was an ideal place to hide.  It was a sleepy
little farming town, surrounded by orange groves and unremarkable in
every way except perhaps for its resemblance to a Rockwell painting.
Its main street signs reflected quiet respectability, small-town
values and quintessential Americana: Sun-up Milk Drive-In; Dollar
Saver; Smile Jesus Loves You; Hemet Retirement Home; Happy Birthday
Doug & Laura; Virgin Mortuary; Hemet Hotel Pets Welcome; Gun Shop;
Church of the Open Bible ... The Commodore's new base was behind Lee's
Acupuncture Clinic, adjacent to a Pick 'n' Save supermarket and a
drive-in McDonald's.

  In this amiable suburban setting, an extraordinary security cordon
was tightened around the man whose name was not now allowed to be
mentioned.  Within Scientology, Hubbard's new location was known only
as `X'.  The summer headquarters at Gilman Hot Springs was only
fourteen miles distant, to the north, but no one was allowed to travel
directly between the two places.  Mike Douglas, one of the few

                          -- end page 361 --

people with authority to make regular journeys between Hemet and
Gilman, clocked up 120 miles each time.

  Inside the apartments behind the acupuncture clinic, a skilful alarm
system was devised, with buzzers and red lights everywhere.  All the
staff were drilled regularly so they knew what to do if strangers
arrived at the door -- they had to deny all knowledge of L. Ron
Hubbard, of course, but they also had to try and act normally while
the Commodore was being hustled out through a back escape route to a
getaway car that would always be ready in a garage opening on to a
different street.

  Once all the security precautions were in place, Hubbard relaxed and
settled down to enjoy life in Hemet.  Although he occasionally threw
his food across the room when he believed the cook was trying to
poison him, by and large he was better tempered than he had been when
he was trying to make movies.  He usually got up about midday, audited
himself for an hour and then dealt with whatever correspondence the
messengers had decided he should see.  In the afternoons he devoted
several hours to taping lectures and mixing suitable background music,
and in the evenings he watched television and reminisced to a small,
but always attentive, audience.

  `I believed the stories he told were true for him,' said Kima
Douglas.  `He was a good story-teller and it was nice to listen to
him.  He told us once how he was Tamburlaine's wife and how he had
wept when Tamburlaine was routed in his last great battle.  Another
time he vas on a disabled spaceship that landed here before life began
and realized the potential and brought seeds back from another planet
to fertilize planet earth.  I didn't see why that couldn't be true.'

  David Mayo recalled sitting on the floor with a couple of messengers
while the Commodore played hill-billy songs on his guitar and talked
bout the time he had earned his living as a troubadour in the Blue
Mountains.  `I think he made up the songs as he went along,' said
Mayo.  `Afterwards, everyone clapped.'

  After several weeks at Hemet, Hubbard began venturing out into the
town in a variety of extraordinary disguises.  He had a baseball cap
with false hair sewn into it, plastic padding to change the shape of
his face and stage make-up to alter the colour of his eyebrows and
sideburns.  `He always thought he looked wonderful,' said Kima, `but
he usually looked like a funny old man.  I always thought it would
have been safer to dress him up like a nonentity, but he would never
have it.  He always wanted to wear his hat at an angle, kind of
jaunty, display a bit of panache.  He was fun like that.  He'd walk
down the main street, always followed by a couple of messengers,
little girls in white shorts or tight, tight jeans and he thought he
looked like one of he locals, but he never did.'

                          -- end page 362 --

  Hubbard knew so little about contemporary America that he considered
shopping malls to be a wondrous innovation and he would spend hours
wandering around them, buying plastic trinkets.  Although he never
spent much when he was out shopping, he was investing huge sums in
stocks, precious stones and gold.  Michael Douglas had been appointed
the Commodore's `finance officer' and was managing an enormous
portfolio of stocks running into millions of dollars.  There were bags
of gold coins and diamonds stuffed in two safes at the Hemet
apartments and more jewels were lodged in the vaults of a local bank.

  Through the summer months of 1979, Hubbard followed closely the
progress of the battery of lawyers which was fighting to prevent Mary
Sue and her co-defendants from being brought to trial.  In the
intimacy of the Hemet hideaway, he made no secret of his intention to
sever all his connections with his wife.  He frequently asserted that
he had never known anything about what Mary Sue was doing and whined
about the fact that she was getting him into trouble.  Everyone knew
it was a lie.

  David Mayo was sent to see Mary Sue at her house off Mulholland
Drive in Los Angeles, to suggest that she might consider a divorce.
`She was really offended and very upset,' said Mayo.  `I thought she
was going to blow my head off.  I went back several times later to
make sure that she wasn't going to rat on him.  That's what he was
really worried about, that she would reveal during the case that she
was only relaying his orders.  She had covered up for him so much, and
there had been so many opportunities for her to betray him, that she
couldn't believe he would think that.  She kept saying to me, "What is
he worried about?"  I thought to myself, "My God, I can't tell her."'

  Hubbard, still not convinced that he could trust his wife, decided
to risk meeting her himself at Gilman Hot Springs.  At summer
headquarters, no one was supposed to know that the Commodore was
visiting, although it was not hard to guess since a working party was
assigned to spend two days scrubbing `Bonnie View' and polishing all
surfaces by hand.  Mary Sue was told to go to a hotel in Riverside and
wait to be picked up by Kima Douglas, who drove her on a roundabout
route to Gilman, checking all the time that they were not being
followed.  Hubbard arrived on the bed in the back of the Dodge Ram,
which drove through the gates of the resort at high speed.  Waiting
guards immediately put a chain across the entrance.  No messengers
were present during the meeting, so no one knew what was discussed and
no one saw either the Commodore or his wife leave the property.

  Mary Sue never betrayed her husband, but then she had never intended
to.  The trial was scheduled for 24 September in Washington,

                          -- end page 363 --

but the government prosecutors and defence attorneys were still
bargaining at that date and a stay was granted.  On 8 October, in an
unusual legal manoeuvre, an agreement was reached that the nine
defendants would plead guilty to one count each if the government
presented a written statement of its case, thereby avoiding a lengthy
trial.

  On 26 October, US District Judge Charles R. Richey accordingly found
the nine Scientologists guilty on one count each of the indictment.
Mary Sue and two others were fined the maximum of $10,000 and jailed
for five years.  The remaining defendants received similar fines and
prison sentences of between one and four years.  Sentencing Mary Sue,
the judge told her: `We have a precious system of government in the
United States ... For anyone to use those laws, or to seek under the
guise of those laws, to destroy the very foundation of the government
is totally wrong and cannot be condoned by any responsible citizen.'
All the defendants indicated an intention to appeal on the grounds
that the evidence against them had been obtained illegally.

  Scientology lawyers were still hoping to prevent the damning
documents seized in the FBI raids, currently under seal, from being
released.  But on 23 November, the day after Thanksgiving, the
appellate court ordered the seal to be lifted and began releasing the
documents, much to the delight of newspapers and television stations
throughout the United States.  At last they were able to report the
astonishing details of Operation Snow White and give the public a peek
into the strange and secretive world of the Church of Scientology.

  Exposed and vilified in headlines across the nation, Hubbard became
morose, suspicious and fearful once again for his safety.  Kima and
Mike Douglas had finally asked themselves what they were doing at
Hemet and had `blown the org'.  The departure of two such
long-standing and trusted aides made the Commodore nervous about the
loyalty of everyone around him, except for Pat Broeker, the messenger
who had accompanied him to Sparks, Nevada, and his new wife Annie,
also a messenger.  The Broekers were flattered and pleased to become
the Commodore's closest confidantes.

  Hubbard's grip on reality, always tenuous, slipped further.  He
issued orders for plans to be prepared for a new house somewhere near
Hemet.  It was to be, an aide reported, in `a non-black area,
dust-free, defensible, with no surrounding higher areas and built on
bedrock'.  It was also to be surrounded by a high wall with `openings
for gun emplacements'.[10]

  At the end of February 1980, a few days before his sixty-ninth
birthday, Hubbard disappeared with Annie and Pat Broeker.

  He was never seen again.

__________
10. Jon Atack archives

                          -- end page 364 --

                             *Chapter 22*

                       *Missing, Presumed Dead*

  `I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about
his own life is false.'  (Ron DeWolf, formerly L. Ron Hubbard Junior,
May 1982)

                              * * * * *

For nearly six years, no one knew where L. Ron Hubbard was hiding or
whether he was dead or alive.  He was hunted high and low by
television and newspaper reporters, federal investigators and law
officers: none of them unearthed a single clue to his whereabouts.
Mary Sue, his loyal and loving wife for more than twenty-five years,
did not know where her husband was, neither did their children.  The
Commodore had effectively vanished.

  After Hubbard skipped from Hemet with the Broekers, the apartments
were closed.  Once all the papers and personal effects had been packed
and moved out, a working party cleaned each apartment with an alcohol
solution to remove fingerprints, carefully wiping down all the walls,
fixtures, door knobs, shelves, windows and mirrors.  Pat Broeker,
acting on Ron's orders, supervised the operation.

  Broeker also directed, apparently at the behest of the absent
Commodore, a massive corporate reorganization of the Church of
Scientology, ostensibly designed to further shield Hubbard from legal
liabilities and to ensure that the income flowing to him from the
church, then running at about $1 million a week, could never be
traced.[1] He was assisted by his friend and fellow messenger David
Miscavige, a ruthless and ambitious nineteen-year-old who had learned
management technique at the Commodore's knee, as a cameraman in the
Cine Org.  Miscavige was small, slight and asthmatic, but his lack of
stature did not prevent him from adopting Hubbard's principle that the
way to get things done was to browbeat subordinates by bellowing and
threatening.  His strutting figure became widely feared at Gilman Hot
Springs and at the former Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles,
recently purchased by the church for its new headquarters.

  Many long-serving senior Scientologists were purged during the

__________
 1. *Forbes*, 26 October 1986

                          -- end page 365 --

re-structuring and none had redress to Hubbard, for the messengers
controlled his communication lines.  Apart from the Broekers,
Miscavige was said to be the only other Scientologist privy to the
Commodore's location, although most of the staff at Gilman knew that
Ron could not be far away because it only took Pat Broeker four or
five hours to make the round trip from Gilman to Ron's hide-out.

  During this upheaval, no one could be sure if it was really Hubbard
who was issuing the orders or, indeed, if it was his ultimate
intention that the messengers should take over control.  In letters to
those who had formerly been close to him, he gave no hint that he was
juggling with the massive and complex structure of Scientology.
`Dearest Do,' he wrote to Doreen Smith in June 1980, `life is a bit
dull for me ... I'll have to get up and get my wits to work to find
something advantageous to do, so this is just a hello really.  I hope
you and the others are well and doing well ...'[2]

  David Mayo also received a number of letters from Hubbard and began
to worry about his state of mind.  `In the first paragraph of one
letter he said something like, "You might think I've gone crazy, but
I'm still OK, just believe what I say is true."  I remember thinking,
God, whatever's coming must be pretty weird.  It was real demented
stuff, berating psychiatrists and claiming they were the root of all
evil, not just on this planet but since time immemorial.  He had it
figured out that back in the beginning of the universe, psychiatrists
created evil on a particular star system.  When I read it I thought my
God, he *is* crazy!  He can exhort me not to think he's crazy, but
this letter belies it.'[3]

  In May 1981, when the purge was well under way and the messengers
were consolidating their power, Miscavige moved to oust Mary Sue as
Controller.  He first chipped away at her position by making it known
among her friends that Ron wanted her out.  Then, at a stormy meeting
in Mary Sue's office, Miscavige told the Commodore's wife that she was
an embarrassment to the church, that she was certain to lose the
appeal against her prison sentence and that it was important for the
public image of the church that she be disciplined.  Mary Sue lost her
temper, screamed and raged at the upstart messenger and at one point
threw an ashtray at him.  But Miscavige stood his ground in the full
knowledge that Mary Sue's position was hopeless.  Without being able
to count on her husband's support, she had no alternative but to step
down.  Afterwards she wrote bitter letters of complaint to Ron, but
she suspected they were never delivered.[4] Miscavige would later
complete his humiliation of the Hubbard family by having Arthur and
Suzette ejected from Gilman Hot Springs as `security risks' and
appointing Suzette as his personal maid at the Cedars complex.[5]

__________
 2. Interview with Gillham
 3. Interview with Mayo
 4. Testimony, *Church of Scientology v. Armstrong*
 5. Newsletter of Center for Personal Achievement, 13 February 1984

                          -- end page 366 --

  Mary Sue's resignation as Controller was not announced until
September, when the church issued a press release piously justifying
the `shake-up' as a reaction to the indictments resulting from
Operation Snow White and admitting that the Guardian's Office `went
adrift' by engaging in a battle with the federal government.

  In April 1982, David Mayo received another long letter from the
Commodore in which he said he did not expect to live much longer -- a
few months at the least, a few years at the most.  Until he was able
to pick up a new body, grow to adulthood and resume his rightful
position as the head of Scientology, Hubbard was assigning
responsibility for safeguarding the `purity' of the technology to his
friend Mayo.  David Mayo believes that Miscavige and his cohorts
interpreted this news as a threat to their position and began making
plans to remove him.

  Meanwhile, yet another enemy stepped into the arena to do battle
with the church.  A commission had been set up in Clearwater to
investigate Scientology and its star witness was to be none other than
L. Ron Hubbard Junior, who had recently changed his name to DeWolf in
order to further disassociate himself from his father.  Pink-faced and
bespectacled, Nibs told the commission that his father was a habitual
liar, paranoid, schizophrenic and megalomaniac who had fabricated most
of his qualifications and written *Dianetics* off the top of his head
without doing any research.

  Worse was to come.  In July, Nibs gave an interview to the Santa
Rosa *News-Herald* in which he portrayed his father as a wife-beater
who had experimented in black magic and fed him and his sister bubble
gum spiked with phenobarbitol.  `He had one of those insane things,
especially during the '30s, of trying to invoke the devil for power
and practices.  My mother told me about him trying out all kinds of
various incantations, drugs and hypnosis ... He used to beat her up
quite often.  He had a violent, volcano-type temper, and he smacked
her around quite a bit.  I remember in 1946 or 1947 when he was
beating up my mother one night, I had a .22 rifle and I sat on the
stairway with him in my sights and I *almost* blew his head off.'

  It was not quite the pre-publication publicity St Martin's Press
might have wished to launch *Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year
3000*, L.  Ron Hubbard's first science-fiction book for more than
thirty years.  It was evident that the Commodore, wherever he was, had
been busy, for the eight hundred-page *Battlefield Earth* was
trumpeted not only as the longest science-fiction book ever written
but merely the prelude to *Mission Earth*, an epic work of more than
one million words due to be published in ten separate volumes over the
next four years.

  *Battlefield Earth* was the story of how Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, one
of the few surviving human beings still on earth, turned the tables on

                          -- end page 367 --

the huge, shambling, hairy aliens who had taken control of the planet.
Many science-fiction buffs did not feel the work matched the pace and
excitement of Hubbard's earlier fiction.  Indeed, his agent, Forrie
Ackerman, wondered if it had really been written by Ron and took the
trouble to have the dedication on his personal copy ('To 4E, my
favourite monster and long-time friend') verified by a handwriting
expert.  Hubbard's fellow sci-fi writer, A.E. van Vogt, whose
endorsement of the book as a `masterpiece' appeared prominently on the
cover, later confessed that he had been daunted by its size and had
not actually bothered to read it.[6] Hubbard always sent van Vogt and
his wife a Christmas card and that year he included a note boasting
that it had only taken him a month to write *Battlefield Earth*.

  If Hubbard had lost his touch as a fiction writer, he was still
perfectly capable of adding, even at this late stage in his life,
further embellishments to his early career.  `I had, myself, somewhat
of a science background,' he wrote in the introduction, `had done some
pioneer work in rockets and liquid gases, but I was studying the
branches of man's past knowledge at that time ... For a while, before
and after World War Two, I was in rather steady association with the
new era of scientists, the boys who built the bomb ...'

  It was essential for Hubbard's reputation that *Battlefield Earth*
became a bestseller.  The Church of Scientology guaranteed to buy
50,000 hardback copies, mounted a massive publicity campaign to
support the book and instructed Scientologists throughout the United
States to go out and buy at least two or three copies each.
*Battlefield Earth* duly made its debut on the major bestseller lists.
Those Scientologists who were beginning their prison sentences at
around that time no doubt found sufficient leisure hours in their
cells to enjoy their leader's latest oeuvre.  Mary Sue's second in
command, Jane Kember, was driven to prison by her friend Virginia
Downsborough.  `It was pathetic really,' said Downsborough, `even when
she was actually on her way to prison Jane still thought that Ron was
going to surface and fix everything.  All she had done was what he had
told her to and she couldn't believe that he would betray her.  It was
incredible.'[7]

  Attorneys acting for Mary Sue had appealed, unsuccessfully, to the
Supreme Court to have her conviction overturned and in January 1983 a
US district judge in Washington rejected her request to be sent to a
half-way house instead of prison.  Mary Sue, who was then fifty-one,
sobbed in the courtroom and said she wanted to `sincerely and publicly
apologize', but Judge Norma H. Johnson was unsympathetic, describing
the offences as not only serious but heinous.  `Because of your
leadership role,' she said, `I find your degree of culpability was
great.'  Mary Sue reported next day to the Federal

__________
 6. Interview with van Vogt
 7. Interview with Downsborough

                          -- end page 368 --

Correctional Institution in Lexington, Kentucky, to begin serving a
four-year term.

  Meanwhile, Mary Sue's stepson had filed a petition in Riverside,
California, for the trusteeship of his father's estate, claiming that
Hubbard was either dead or mentally incompetent.  Nibs, who was then
working as the manager of an apartment block in Carson City, Nevada,
and taking home $650 a month, estimated the estate was worth $100
million, which was an indication of how little anyone knew of how much
the Commodore was making out of the Church of Scientology -- during
1982 alone, Hubbard raked in at least $40 million from various
Scientology corporations.[8]

  The petition claimed Hubbard `has lived a life characterized by
severe mental illness ... consistent failure ... and the use of false
and fraudulent, oftentime criminal means, to cover up these failures
and to acquire wealth, fame and power in order to destroy his
perceived "enemies".'  DeWolf further alleged that the church leaders
were stealing millions of dollars' worth of gems and cash from his
father's estate.[9] Attorneys acting on Mary Sue's behalf filed a
counterpetition asserting that Nibs was `simply trying to get his
hands on his Dad's money'.

  This intriguing litigation generated a flurry of media speculation
about the fate of the founder of Scientology, but the question of
whether Hubbard was dead or alive was quickly settled when the church
produced a signed declaration with the Commodore's fingerprints on
every page, authenticated by independent experts.  Hubbard described
his son's allegations as malicious, false and ill-founded.  `With
respect to Ronald DeWolf,' he wrote, `I consider him neither a friend
nor a family member in the true sense of the word.  Although
biologically he is my son, his hostility and animosity to me are
apparent and have been for years ... I am not a missing person.  I am
in seclusion for my own choosing.  My privacy is important to me, and
I do not wish it or my affairs invaded in the manner permitted by this
action.  As Thoreau secluded himself by Walden Pond, so I have chosen
to do in my own fashion.'

  The court accepted the documents as proof that Hubbard was still
alive and dismissed DeWolf's suit, but in his determination to blacken
Hubbard's name, Nibs had clearly inherited something of his father's
perseverance.  He surfaced again in the June 1983 issue of *Penthouse*
magazine, making even more sensational allegations -- that Hubbard had
been involved in black magic since the age of sixteen, believed
himself to be Satan, wanted to become the most powerful being in the
universe, smuggled gold and drugs, was a sadist and a KGB agent.  He
had bought Saint Hill Manor, Nibs claimed, with money obtained from
the Russians.  `Black magic is the inner core of Scientology,' Nibs

__________
 8. *Forbes*, 27 October 1986
 9. Case No. 47150, *re: the Estate of L. Ron Hubbard*, Superior Court
    for the County of Riverside

                          -- end page 369 --

stressed, `and it is probably the only part of Scientology that really
works.  Also, you've got to realize that my father did not worship
Satan.  He thought he *was* Satan.'

  It was wild stuff, perhaps a little too wild.  Just like his father,
Nibs lacked subtlety.  Had he been more restrained, the interview
might have made an impact.  Instead, it simply strained the reader's
credulity to such an extent that it was hard to decide who was the
most deranged -- L. Ron Hubbard Senior or L. Ron Hubbard Junior.  In
November 1983, an optimistic letter from Ron was distributed to
Scientologists around the world to tell them how well everything was
going.  He described himself as `ecstatic' with the state of
management and confident that their legal problems were behind them.
`Those who were harassing Scientology in the past', he wrote, `are
beginning to present a panorama of coattails.'  He explained that he
had been working on very advanced research for the last two years
which was `opening the sky to heights not previously, envisioned' and
concluded, `So I wanted to say hello and to tell you the results of an
overview of the game and, boy, does that future look good ... Love,
Ron.'

  Ron did not bother to mention how Mary Sue was making out at the
Federal Correctional Institution in Kentucky, neither did he comment
on the time-bomb ticking away under the church in the slight form of
his disenchanted archivist and biographer Gerry Armstrong, who had
taken thousands of documents with him when he left Scientology --
documents that *proved* the founder of Scientology was a charlatan and
a liar.

  For many months church attorneys had been trying to force Armstrong
to return the material, having initially succeeded in having the
documents placed under court seal.  In May 1984, the issue went to
trial at Los Angeles Superior Court before Judge Paul G. Breckenridge.
A procession of witnesses trooped into the courtroom to tell their
dismal stories about life in Scientology, at the end of which the
judge refused to order the return of the documents and delivered a
damning verdict on Scientology: `The organization clearly is
schizophrenic and paranoid, and this bizarre combination seems to be a
reflection of its founder.  The evidence portrays a man who has been
virtually a pathological liar when it comes to his history, background
and achievements.  The writings and documents in evidence additionally
reflect his egoism, greed, avarice, lust for power, and vindictiveness
and aggressiveness against persons perceived by him to be disloyal or
hostile.

  `At the same time it appears that he is charismatic and highly
capable of motivating, organizing, controlling, manipulating and
inspiring his adherents.  He has been referred to during the trial as
a "genius", a "revered person", a man who was "viewed by his followers

                          -- end page 370 --

in awe".  Obviously, he is and has been a very complex person and that
complexity is further reflected in his alter ego, the Church of
Scientology ... He has, of course, chosen to go into seclusion, but
... seclusion has its light and dark side too.  It adds to his
mystique, and yet shields him from accountability and subpoena or
service of summons.'

  The judge then turned to Mary Sue, who had been released after
serving a year of her prison sentence and had given evidence during
the hearing: `On the one hand she certainly appeared to be a pathetic
individual.  She was forced from her post as Controller, convicted and
imprisoned as a felon, and deserted by her husband.  On the other hand
her credibility leaves much to be desired.  She struck the familiar
pose of not seeing, hearing, or knowing any evil ...'

  The Church of Scientology immediately appealed against the decision
of the court, ensuring that the documents remained under seal and
unavailable to hordes of waiting newspapermen, at least for the time
being.

  Three weeks later, a judge in the High Court in London joined in the
attack by memorably branding Scientology as `immoral, socially
obnoxious, corrupt, sinister and dangerous' and describing the
behaviour of Hubbard and his aides as `grimly reminiscent of the
ranting and bullying of Hitler and his henchmen'.

  Mr Justice Latey had been hearing a case involving a custody dispute
over the children of a practising Scientologist and his wife, who had
broken away from the cult.  Awarding custody to the mother, the judge
gave Scientology short shrift: `It is corrupt because it is based on
lies and deceit and had as its real objective money and power for Mr
Hubbard, his wife and those close to him at the top.  It is sinister
because it indulges in infamous practices both to its adherents who do
not toe the line unquestioningly and to those outside who criticize or
oppose it.  It is dangerous because it is out to capture people,
especially children and impressionable young people, and indoctrinate
and brainwash them so that they become the unquestioning captives and
tools of the cult, withdrawn from ordinary thought, living and
relationship with others.'  As to the Hubbards, the judge considered
the evidence clear and conclusive: `Mr Hubbard is a charlatan and
worse, as are his wife Mary Sue Hubbard and the clique at the top,
privy to the cult's activities.'

  Following the teaching of L. Ron Hubbard, most Scientologists
assumed that such attacks were orchestrated and engineered by their
multitude of enemies.  In 1985, when CBS's `60 minutes' investigated
Scientology and presenter Mike Wallace quoted the `schizophrenic and
paranoid' decision of Judge Breckenridge, the Reverend Heber Jentzsch,
president of the Church of Scientology, had a ready, if

                          -- end page 371 --

incomprehensible, reply: `I traced back where that came from, this
whole schizophrenic paranoia concept that he has.  It came from
Interpol.  At that time, the president of Interpol was a former SS
officer, Paul Dickopf.  And to find that Judge Breckenridge quoted a
Nazi SS officer as the authority on Scientology, I find unconscionable
...'

  On 19 January 1986, Scientologists around the world received their
last message from L. Ron Hubbard.  In Flag Order number 3879, headed
`The Sea Org and The Future', he announced that he was promoting
himself to the rank of Admiral.  Alongside the proclamation, in a
Scientology magazine, was a colour photograph of the grey-haired
Commodore in his Sea Org peaked cap.  He was grinning broadly, with a
definite twinkle in his eyes.  He had never looked more like Puck.

                                 -*-

Creston, population 270, elevation 1110 feet, straddles a dusty road
junction twenty miles north of the old mission town of San Luis Obispo
in California.  On the main street, which at most times of the day is
deserted, there may be found the Loading Chute Steak Dining-Room,
Creston Realty, a post office with a flagpole and two phone booths
outside and a ramshackle wooden building with peeling red paint and a
slipped sign proclaiming it to be the Long Branch general store.
Rusting automobile hulks sprouting weeds, flea-bitten tethered horses
and satellite dishes are a common feature in the gardens of the
unassuming houses thereabouts.

  On O'Donovan Road, which runs south off the main street, there is a
small library, a school, the Creston Community Church Bible Classroom
and the meeting hall of Creston Women's Club.  Attached to the front
of the meeting hall is a notice board offering for sale a horse, a
pick-up and a '69 sedan, both these last `needing work'.  It is
evident that the good people of Creston have yet to share the
affluence to be seen displayed so ostentatiously elsewhere in
California.

  But further along O'Donovan Road, the rural landscape is clearly
manicured by money.  Rolling hills of green velvet are stitched with
white picket fences and the houses stand well back from the road
behind meadows sprinkled with wild daisies and studded with twisted
oak trees.  Four miles out of the town there is a graded track off to
the right and a metal sign indicates it is a private road leading to
the Emmanuel Conference Centre.  This track winds up the hillside
along the edge of the Whispering Winds Ranch, a 160-acre spread which,
according to local gossip, was once owned by the actor Robert Mitchum.
The gates to the ranch may be found after about 400 yards and the
track then forks to a small cedarwood house on the right, continuing
on the left up the hill to the Camp Emmanuel ecumenical retreat.  It
is a quiet place, a perfect place to hide.

                          -- end page 372 --

  In the summer of 1983 the ranch was bought by a young couple who
called themselves Lisa and Mike Mitchell.  The San Luis Obispo real
estate agent involved in the sale guessed by his accent that Mitchell
was from New York.  He walked into the office straight off the street
and said he wanted to buy a large, secluded ranch where he could breed
Akitas, a rare Japanese dog.  The realtor took Mitchell out to look at
Whispering Winds, which was on the market for $700,000.  He examined
the ranch house with great care, even climbing up into the roof, where
he seemed disconcerted by the insulation.  `I'll have to get that out
of there,' he told the agent, explaining that his wife was allergic to
fibreglass.  Nevertheless, he liked the property and said he would buy
it.  Money was no problem -- he had just come into an inheritance
worth several million dollars.  Good as his word, Mitchell paid the
full price in cash, with thirty cashier's cheques drawn on several
California banks.[10]

  The Mitchells moved into the ranch shortly afterwards, along with
their elderly father.  They kept very much to themselves, avoiding all
contact with their neighbours.  Maxine Kuehl and Shirley Terry, who
ran Camp Emmanuel, rarely spoke to either of them and knew nothing of
the old man except that his name was Jack.  Robert Whaley, a retired
marketing executive from New York who lived in the cedar house
overlooking Whispering Winds, similarly saw little of them, although
he was intrigued by what was going on.

  It seemed to Whaley that his new neighbours had more money than
sense.  The three-level ranch house was gutted and re-modelled not
once, but several times.  A lake in front of the house was widened and
deepened and stocked with bass and catfish.  A race-horse track, with
an observation tower and viewing stands, was built to one side of the
house and never used.  Miles of white picket fence went up, either
following the contours of the land or running absolutely straight.
One section of fence was torn down three or four times, apparently
because it was not straight enough.  Thoroughbred horses, buffalo and
llamas were soon grazing in the fenced paddocks, and swans and geese
graced the lake.

  `I was amazed how much they were spending on the place,' said
Whaley.  `There was absolutely no regard for expense.  When they were
having new irrigation lines installed, they put in a twelve-inch pipe,
big enough for a town.  None of them was very friendly, but I once
asked Mitchell who was doing all the planning and he said his wife's
father, Jack, was handling most of it as he used to be a civil
engineer.'[11]

  While the renovations were under way, Jack lived in a $150,000
Bluebird motor home parked on the property, but he could often be seen
pottering around in baggy blue pants and a yellow straw hat,

__________
10. *San Luis Obispo Telegram-Tribune*, 30 January 1986
11. Interview with Robert Whaley, Creston, August 1986

                          -- end page 373 --

taking photographs.  He was overweight, and with his white hair and
white beard, reminded Whaley of Kentucky Chicken's Colonel Sanders.
Once Whaley walked across to Whispering Winds to see if he could
borrow a tool and surprised the old man in the stable.  Jack was busy
filing a piece of metal and was evidently not pleased to see his
neighbour: he glared suspiciously at Whaley for a second, then
scurried off into a workshop without a word, locking the door behind
him.

  The incident did not bother Whaley overmuch; he preferred to keep to
himself anyway.  He used to work in the magazine business in New York
and was accustomed to oddball characters.  Before the war, he had been
a marketing executive for science-fiction pulps and had known most of
the leading writers, although there was nothing about the old man with
a beard that struck a chord.

  One other thing he thought was rather odd about the folk across the
way was that they rarely had visitors, except at night.  He would
often see headlights coming up the track late and turning through the
gates of Whispering Winds.  Usually it was just one car, but on the
evening of 24 January 1986 there seemed to be cars coming and going
all night ...

                                 -*-

The telephone was already ringing when Irene Reis, co-owner of the
Reis Chapel in San Luis Obispo, arrived for work on the morning of
Saturday 25 January.  A voice at the other end of the line identified
himself as Earle Cooley, an attorney, and asked if they did
cremations.  Mrs Reis replied that they did, although the crematory
was usually closed at weekends.  Special arrangements could be made if
necessary.  Cooley then asked if a body could be collected from the
Whispering Winds Ranch on the O'Donovan Road in Creston.  Irene's
husband, Gene, drove the hearse out to Creston, not imagining it was
anything but a routine job.

  Cooley accompanied the body back to San Luis Obispo.  At the Reis
Chapel, a tasteful white adobe building with a red pantile roof on
Nipomo Street, he asked Mrs Reis if arrangements could be made for an
`immediate cremation'.  He presented a death certificate signed by a
Gene Denk of Los Angeles certifying the cause of death as cerebral
haemorrhage and a certificate of religious belief forbidding an
autopsy.  It was not until Mrs Reis looked at the documents that she
realized the body lying in her chapel was that of L. Ron Hubbard.

  Mrs Reis knew enough about Hubbard to insist on informing the San
Luis Obispo Country sheriff-coroner.  Deputy coroner Don Hines arrived
at the Reis Chapel within a few minutes.  No one had had any idea that
Hubbard was in the vicinity and Hines wanted to make sure that
everything was done by the book -- it was not every day

                          -- end page 374 --

that a `notorious recluse' turned up in San Luis Obispo.  Hines said
that no cremation could take place until an independent pathologist
had examined the body.  He also ordered the body to be photographed
and fingerprinted to ensure positive identifications.  (Later the
fingerprints were revealed to match those on file at the FBI and the
Department of Justice.)  It was three-thirty in the afternoon before
Hines was satisfied and agreed to release the body for cremation.  On
the following day, the ashes of L. Ron Hubbard were scattered on the
Pacific from a small boat.

  The news of the death of the founder of Scientology was broken to
1800 of his followers hastily gathered in the Hollywood Palladium on
the afternoon of Monday, 27 January.  David Miscavige made the
announcement that Ron had moved on to his next level of research, a
level beyond the imagination and in a state exterior to the body:
`Thus, at 2000 hours, Friday 24 January 1986, L. Ron Hubbard discarded
the body he had used in this lifetime for seventy-four years, ten
months and eleven days.  The body he had used to facilitate his
existence in this universe had ceased to be useful and in fact had
become an impediment to the work he now must do outside its confines.
The being we knew as L. Ron Hubbard still exists.  Although you may
feel grief, understand that he did not, and does not now.  He has
simply moved on to his next step.  LRH in fact used this lifetime and
body we knew to accomplish what no man has ever accomplished -- he
unlocked the mysteries of life and gave us the tools so we could free
ourselves and our fellow men ...'

  At a press conference later that day, it was revealed that Hubbard
had made a will on the day before his death leaving the bulk of his
fortune, `tens of millions of dollars', to the church.  Generous
provision had been made, it was said, for his wife and `certain of his
children'.  Nibs, predictably, got nothing.  Nor did Alexis, the
daughter he denied was his.

                                 -*-

There are those who still believe that Hubbard died years earlier and
that his death was covered up by the messengers while they
consolidated their control over the church.

  There are those who still believe that Hubbard will soon be entering
another body, or might even have done so already, 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 men.

  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 twentieth century.

                             THE END (?)

                          -- end page 375 --

                               *Notes*

[For the plaintext, the chapter notes on pp. 376-381 have been moved
to footnotes within pages.]

                            *Bibliography*

Aldiss, Brian 1973, *Billion Year Spree* (Weidenfeld & Nicholson,
  London)
Anderson, Kevin V. 1965, *Report of the Board of Inquiry into
  Scientology* (Government Printer, Melbourne)
Asimov, Isaac 1979, *In Memory Yet Green* (Doubleday, New York)
Atack, Jon *Hubbard through the Looking Glass: Scientology Exposed*
  (Unpublished manuscript)
Beckstead, Gordon, (ed) 1952, *Prologue to Survival* (Psychological
  Research Foundation, Phoenix, Arizona)
Braddesdon, Walter 1969, *Scientology for the Millions* (Sherbourne,
  Los Angeles)
Burrell, Maurice 1970, *Scientology: What it is and what it does*
  (Lakeland, London)
Chapedelaine, Perry et al 1985, *The John W. Campbell Letters, Volume
  I* (AC Projects, Franklin, Tennessee)
Cohen, David 1971, *Masters of the Occult* (Dodd Mead)
Colbert, John 1951, *An Evaluation of Dianetic Theory* (Thesis for MSc
  in Education, City College, New York)
Cooper, Paulette 1971, *The Scandal of Scientology* (Tower, New York)
Dalton, David R. 1973, *Two Disparate Philosophies* (Regency, London)
De Camp, L. Sprague 1966, *Spirits, Stars and Spells* (Publisher not
  known)
De Mille, Richard 1953, *Introduction to Scientology* (Scientology
  Council, Sequoia University, California)
Ellwood, Robert S. 1973, *Religious and Spiritual Croups in Modern
  America* (Prentice Hall, New Jersey)
Evans, Christopher 1973, *Cults of Unreason* (Harrap, London)
Fischer, Harvey Jay 1953, *Dianetic Therapy: An Experimental
  Evaluation* (Unpublished PhD dissertation, School of Education, New
  York University)
Foster, Sir John 1971, *Enquiry into the Practice and Effects of
  Scientology* (HMSO, London)
Gardner, Martin 1957, *Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science*
  (Dover Publications, New York)
Garrison, Omar V. 1957, *Hidden Story of Scientology* (Arlington
  Books, London)
Goodstone, Tony (ed) 1970, *The Pulps: Fifty Years of American Pop
  Culture* (Chelsea House, New York)
Grant, Kenneth 1972, *The Magical Revival* (Muller, London)
Gruber, Frank 1967, *The Pulp Jungle* (Sherbourne Press, Los Angeles)
Horner, Jack 1970, *Dianology: A Better Bridge to Personal Creative
  Freedom* (The Association of International Dianologists, California)
-- 1956, *Summary of Scientology* (HASI, London)
Hubbard, L. Ron 1950, *Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health*
  (Hermitage House, New York)
-- 1950, *Science of Survival* (Hubbard Dianetic Foundation, Wichita)
-- 1953, *Scientology 8-8008* (Publications Organisation World-Wide)
-- 1958, *The Story of Dianetics and Scientology* (Hubbard
  Communications Office, London)
-- 1965, *Scientology -- A New Slant on Life* (AOH DK Publications,
  Denmark)
-- 1968, *Dianetics: The Evolution of a Science* (Publications
  Organisation World-Wide)

                          -- end page 382 --

-- 1970, *The Organisation Executive Course* (Scientology Publications
  Organisation, Denmark)
-- 1973, *Mission Into Time* (American St Hill Organisation, Los
  Angeles)
-- 1976, *Volunteer Ministers Handbook* (Church of Scientology,
  California)
-- 1978, *What Is Scientology?* (Church of Scientology, California)
-- 1982, *Notes on the Lectures of L. Ron Hubbard* (Hubbard
  Communications Office, East Grinstead)
-- 1983, *The Dynamics of Life* (New Era Publications, Denmark)
-- 1982, *Battlefield Earth* (NE Publications, Tonbridge, Kent)
Kaufman, Robert 1972, *Inside Scientology* (Olympia Press, London)
King, Francis 1968, *Ritual Magic in England* (Neville Spearman,
  London)
-- 1970, *Magical World of Aleister Crowley* (Neville Spearman,
  London)
Kotze, G. P. C. et al 1973, *Report of the Commission of Inquiry into
  Scientology* (Government Printer, Pretoria, South Africa)
Lamont, Stewart 1986, *Religion Inc* (Harrap, London)
Lee, John A. 1970, *Sectarian Healers and Hypnotherapy* (Queens Press,
  Toronto)
Lifton, Robert 1961, *Thought Reform and Psychology of Totalism*
Malko, George 1970, *Scientology: The Now Religion* (Dell, New York)
Martin, Walter 1984, *The Kingdom of the Cults* (Bethany House,
  Minneapolis)
O'Brien, Helen 1966, *Dianetics in Limbo* (Whitmore, Philadelphia)
Powles, Sir Guy Richardson and Dumbleton, E. V. 1969, *Report of the
  Commission of Inquiry into the Hubbard Scientology Organisation in
  New Zealand* (Government Printer, Wellington)
Reynolds, Quentin 1955, *Fiction Factory* (Random House, New York)
Rogers, Alva 1964, *Requiem for Astounding* (Advent Publishing,
  Chicago)
Sargant, William 1959, *Battle for the Mind* (Pan Books, London)
Symonds, David 1965, *Neurotic Styles* (Basic Books, New York)
Sharpe, Reg 1966, *This is Life* (Publications Organisation
  World-Wide)
Symonds, John 1971, *The Great Beast* (MacDonald, London)
van Vogt, A. E. 1975, *Reflections* (Fictioneer Books, Lakemont,
  Georgia)
Vosper, Cyril 1971, *The Mind Benders* (Neville, Spearman, London)
Wallis, Roy 1976, *The Road to Total Freedom* (Heinemann, London)
Williamson, Jack 1984, *Wonder's Child: My Life in Science-Fiction*
  (Blue Jay Books)
Wilson, Bryan R. 1970, *Religious Sects* (Weidenfeld & Nicholson,
  London)
Winter, Joseph A. 1951, *A Doctor's Report of Dianetics: Theory and
  Therapy* (Julian Press, New York)
Wollheim, Donald 1972, *The Universe Makers* (Victor Gollancz, London)
Zaretsky, Irving, and Leone, Mark (eds) 1974, *Religious Movements in
  Contemporary America* (Princeton University Press)

                          -- end page 383 --

                               *Index*

Academy of Religious Arts and Sciences (also known as Academy of
       Scientology), 221, 227, 228, 229, 230
Ackerman, Forrest, 135-7, 139, 140, 143, 144, 158-9, 166, 173, 368
*Adventure*, 63, 68, 69
*Air Trails and Science Frontiers*, 133
Alaska, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 94, 96, 99, 107
Aldiss, Brian, 85-6
*All About Radiation*, 227, 228
Allied Enterprises, 120-1, 124, 125, 127, 128
Allied Scientists of the World, 198, 199
*All Western*, 71
*Amazing*, 77
American Fiction Guild, 66, 67, 92
American Medical Association (AMA), 200, 249
American Psychological Association, 161
Anderson Report, 252, 253, 254, 255
*Apollo* (formerly *Royal Scotman*), 291, 293, 294, 295, 296, 297,
       298, 299, 300, 301, 302, 306, 307, 310, 311, 313, 318, 319,
       321, 324, 326, 327, 328, 331, 333
       *see also* *Royal Scotman*
Apollo Stars, 324-5, 326, 328
Armstrong, Gerry, 2, 3, 4, 5, 321, 342, 355, 370
Asimov, Isaac, 77, 78, 84, 110, 152
as-isness, 224-5, 227
*Astounding* (later known as *Astounding Science Fiction*), 76, 77,
       78, 84, 86, 133, 134, 135, 137, 145, 147, 148, 151, 152, 153,
       155, 158, 159, 174, 195, 203, 215
*Athena* (formerly known as *Avon River*) *see* *Avon River*
auditing, 157, 158, 159, 161, 164-5, 169, 173, 195-6, 197, 203, 204,
       208, 210, 213, 224, 309, 349-50, 358
*Auditor*, 256
Australia, 223, 236, 249-50, 252-5, 257, 260, 261, 296
*Avon River* (later known as *Athena*), 265, 268, 269, 270, 271, 275,
       276, 280, 281, 282, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288, 291, 294
Azores, 297, 302

Bahamas, 53, 328, 329, 331, 334
Balniel, Lord, 254, 255
*Battlefield Earth* (Hubbard), 367-8
Bay Head, 147, 149, 150, 151, 152
Bermuda, 54, 328
Bianca, Sonya, 165-6, 255
Bizerte, 282, 287, 288, 289, 290
black magic, 112-30, 182, 369-70
*Blue Water II*, 127
Bodin, Ed, 72
*Book of Babalon* (Parsons), 120, 121, 122, 124
*Book of the Law, The* (Crowley), 113, 119, 124
Boomershine, Raymond, 50
brain-washing, 222
Braisted, Rear-Admiral F.A., 107
Breckenridge, Judge Paul G., 370, 371, 372
Bremerton, 27, 33, 34, 37, 70, 73, 74, 75, 88, 89, 90, 91, 101, 112,
       125, 129, 134, 207, 237, 238, 330, 331
Britain, 254, 260, 261, 270, 271, 277, 289, 290, 291, 294, 296, 297
       *see also* East Grinstead; London; Saint Hill Manor
Britton, Jimmy, 90, 91, 92
Broeker, Annie, 364
Broeker, Pat, 352, 364, 365, 366
Browning, Philip, 49, 51
Bruns, Officer, 344
Bryan, Captain, 93
*Buckskin Brigades* (Hubbard), 7, 72
Burden, Tanya, 322, 323
Burks, Arthur J., 66, 67, 79, 80, 139, 140
Burnett (later known as Tilden), 8-9,
       *see also* Tilden
Byrne, June, 337

Cameron, Marjorie, 121, 123, 129
Campbell, Dona, 152
Campbell, John W., 76-7, 78, 82, 84, 133, 134, 145-6, 147-9, 150, 151,
       152, 153, 158, 159, 181, 186
Campbell, Stuart, 11, 12
Camp Parsons, 27, 33, 37
Canary Islands, 265, 267, 269, 280, 297, 318, 321
       *see also* Las Palmas; Tenerife
Capital City Coal Company, 18, 20, 22
Caribbean Motion Picture Expedition, 40, 52-6, 101
Cariotaki, Kathy, 296, 329-30
Casablanca, 297, 298, 301, 307
*Case of The Friendly Corpse, The* (Hubbard), 91
*Cataline Islander*, 132
Catskills, 8
Cavite, 30, 31
Cazares, Gabriel, 337, 338, 341
Ceppos, Art, 151, 152, 159, 169-70, 176, 189
*Ceremonies of the Founding Church of Scientology*, 228
Chapdelaine, Perry, 169, 195-6, 198, 199
Chariffton, 328
*Chee-Chalker, The* (Hubbard), 137
China, 4, 26, 34, 37, 41, 42, 43, 167
       *see also* Shanghai
Chiriasi, Joni, 307
christening ceremony, scientologist, 228
Churcher, Stanley, 277
Church of American Science, 220, 225
Church of Scientology *see* Scientology
Church of Spiritual Engineering, 220

                          -- end page 384 --

CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), 167, 228, 229, 257, 263, 279, 297,
       313, 326, 331
Cine Org, 353, 354, 355, 359-60, 365
       *see also* films
clears, 163, 165-6, 225-6
Clearwater, 334-8, 341, 342, 343, 345, 352, 357, 367
Commodore's Messenger Organization *see* messengers
Communism, 170, 171, 175, 180, 181, 183, 189, 190, 191, 199, 221, 222,
       241, 242, 245, 259, 298, 326
conditions, 251-2, 270, 277, 285, 286, 287, 288
Cooley, Earle, 374
Coolidge, Calvin, President, 24, 25
Corfu, 290, 291, 294-6, 297, 329
Coronados Islands, 106
Corsica, 284
*Courier* (East Grinstead), 233, 234, 238, 253, 261
Cox, Arthur Jean, 140, 164
Cox, Bill, 140, 141
Crail, Charlie, 171
Creston, 372, 374
Crowley, Aleister, 113, 114, 115, 119, 120, 121, 124, 126, 127, 132,
       182
Cuba, 182, 183, 185, 188, 195, 250
Culling, Louis, 126
Curaao, 328, 331-2, 333, 334

*Daily Mail*, 257, 289
*Daily Mirror*, 145, 268
*Daily News* (Los Angeles), 162
D'Alessio, Carmen, 208-10
*Darker Than You Think* (Williamson), 115
Daytona Beach, 332, 333, 334, 335
De Camp, L. Sprague, 84, 87, 91, 110, 155
De Mille, Richard, 174, 177, 178, 179, 181, 182, 183-4, 185, 192, 193,
       212, 214-5
Denk, Gene, 357, 374
Department of Government Affairs, 241
Derickson, Dick, 33
Dessler, Frank, 176-7, 178, 179, 181
*Detective Fiction*, 71
Dewey, G. Gordon, 135, 137
DeWolf, Ronald (formerly known as Nibs Hubbard) *see* Hubbard, Nibs
DeWolfe, Ida *see* Waterbury, Ida Corinne
DeWolfe, John (also referred to as 'Captain' I.C. DeWolfe), 7, 8, 9,
       101
*Diana* (formerly known as *Enchanter*) *see* *Enchanter*
Dianazene, 227-8
*Diane*, 127
Dianetics, 145-74, 181, 182-3, 185-8, 191, 193-201, 202-3, 207-8, 211,
       213, 218, 219
       *see also* Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundations; names of
       individuals connected with Dianetics
Dincalci, Jim, 308, 309, 313, 314, 315, 316, 317, 318, 319, 324, 326,
       333, 334, 340, 343, 350, 351, 356
*Dive Bomber, The*, 3-4
*Doris Hamlin*, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56
Douglas, Kima, 319-20, 327, 329, 332, 334, 338, 339, 340, 341, 342,
       343, 345, 346, 355, 357, 361, 362, 363, 364
Douglas, Mike, 338, 339, 361, 363, 364
Downsborough, Virginia, 265, 266, 267, 268, 368
drug addiction, 350-1
Dunedin, 336, 338
Durant, 11, 12, 13
Durant, Will, 155

East Grinstead, 233, 234, 236, 238, 244, 245, 253, 260, 261, 265, 268
       *see also* Saint Hill Manor
*Edsel*, 100
Eissler, Dr Kurt, 25
Elizabeth, 152, 158, 159, 160, 167, 169, 170, 174, 175, 176, 179, 181,
       185, 186, 187, 199, 306
Elkon, 59, 60, 61, 129
Elliott, James, 200
Eltringham, Hana, 269, 274, 277, 282-3, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288, 292,
       302, 318, 321, 328, 329
E-meter, 201, 203-4, 234, 235, 239, 242, 247, 250, 256, 259, 268, 278,
       282, 309, 311, 312, 348
*Enchanter* (later known as *Diana*), 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269,
       271, 280, 284, 291
*End Is Not Yet, The* (Hubbard), 134, 135, 137
engrams, 151, 154, 155, 156, 157, 161, 173, 205
*Ephimeris ton Idisseon*, 290, 295
ethics, 251-2, 285
*Excalibur*, 79, 80, 81, 136, 139, 144, 212, 217
Explorers Club, 4, 84-5, 88, 90, 94, 96, 101, 108, 151, 181, 263, 264
exteriorization, 210, 216

*Factors, The* (Hubbard), 213
Family Theater, Helena, 15, 16
*Famous Western*, 144
fantasy writing, 82-3
FBI, 2, 87, 170, 179, 180, 181, 183, 188, 191, 198-9, 212, 221, 222,
       223, 229, 230, 240, 263, 328, 341, 351-2, 353, 354, 355, 356,
       360, 361, 364, 375
films, 69, 352-6, 357, 358-60
*Final Blackout, The* (Hubbard), 85-6
*Five Novels Monthly*, 64, 137
Fletcher, Admiral Frank Jack, 105
flying, 48-50, 51, 57, 60, 62, 65
Food and Drugs Administration (FDA), 228, 246, 247, 248
Ford, Nancy, 73, 74, 75
Ford, Robert MacDonald (Mac), 73-4, 75, 80, 91, 93, 134, 143
Forte, Major John, 294, 295-6
France, 274, 286, 287, 312, 313
Freedman, Frankie, 332, 333, 335
Freedom Congress, 228
Freedom of Information Act, 4, 317
Freud, Sigmund, 24, 25, 149, 164, 230, 243
Funchal, 325, 326, 327

Galbraith, William, 307
Galusha, Ellen, 35
Galusha, John, 218
*Garden News*, 234, 235
Garfield, Captain Fred, 52, 54, 55
GE (genetic entity), 204, 205, 206
George Wsshington University, 4, 40, 46, 47, 48, 50, 57, 65, 93, 243,
       316
Gerbode, Frank, 346-7

                          -- end page 385 --

Germer, Karl, 124, 126
Gibraltar, 265, 271, 272, 275, 276
Gilman Hot Springs, 2, 3, 359, 361, 362, 363, 365, 366
gliding *see* flying
Goldstein, Mike, 300-1, 324-5
Goldstein, Rebecca, 323, 325
Goldstone, Lou, 116
Goodman, Jill, 305, 320, 323
Grainger, Peter, 135, 137
Gratis, 49, 51
Greece *see* Corfu
Grubb, Polly *see* Hubbard, Polly
Grubb, Mr, 60
Gruber, Frank, 66, 67
Guam, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 35, 37, 38, 40, 41, 43, 44, 45, 98
Guardians Office, 298, 312, 315, 318, 336, 337, 341, 342, 345, 346,
       351, 352, 360, 367
GUK programme, 173

Hacker, Dr Frederick, 161
Halsey, Admiral, 117
*Harpoon*, 127, 128, 129
Harris, Edward, 235
Hartwell, Adelle and Ernie, 354, 360
HASI *see* Hubbard Association of Scientologists International
*Hatchet, The*, 40, 48, 51-2, 54, 56
Havana, 182, 183, 185, 187, 188
*Have You Lived Before This Life?* (Hubbard), 238
HCO (Hubbard Communications Office), 223, 236, 237, 241, 242, 243,
       246, 248, 249
heaven, visits to, 247, 248-9
Heimburger, Ray A., 48, 49, 52, 56
Heinlein, Robert, 77, 109, 110
Heldt, Henning, 337
Helena, 4, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 23, 28, 29, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 41,
       45, 46, 49, 70
*Helena Independent*, 16, 18, 20, 36
Hemet, 361, 362, 363, 364, 365
Hemingway, Greg, 174, 176
Hermitage House, 151, 154, 155, 158, 159, 170, 218
Himmel, Nieson, 116-7
Hines, Don, 374-5
*History of Man, The* (Hubbard), 204, 205, 206, 224
Hollister, Miles, 170-1, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 185, 190, 305,
       306
Hollywood, 4, 69, 77, 135, 160, 231
Hong Kong, 30, 43
Honolulu, 29, 166
Hoover, J. Edgar, 87, 180, 212, 230, 240
Homer, Jack, 158, 159, 171, 216, 217, 218
Hough, Dr Joseph, 212
Hubbard, Alexis Valerie, 152, 162, 174, 175, 176-9, 181, 182, 183,
       185, 187, 189, 192-3, 194, 305-6, 375
Hubbard, Arthur Ronald Conway, 230, 232, 251, 272, 293, 303, 304, 343,
       350, 366
Hubbard, Diana Meredith de Wolfe, 208, 213, 232, 240, 251, 265, 272,
       292, 293, 295, 303, 305, 310, 330, 333, 342
Hubbard, Harry Ross (Hub), 7, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15-6, 17, 18, 19-20,
       22-3, 27, 28, 31, 32, 33, 38, 41, 45, 47, 57, 70, 73, 97, 125,
       134, 238, 330-1
Hubbard, Henrietta, 214, 221
Hubbard, James, 11
Hubbard, Katie (Catherine May), 70, 88, 89, 97, 125, 180, 228
Hubbard, Lafayette Ronald
Hubbard, Lafayette Ronald
       For persons, places or subjects connected with L. Ron Hubbard
       see name of person, place or subject
Hubbard, Lafayette Ronald, Jnr *see* Hubbard, Nibs
Hubbard, Mary Sue (ne Whipp), 195, 200-1, 207-8, 214, 217, 221, 225,
       230, 235, 238-9, 242, 250, 251, 252, 264, 270, 272, 284, 286,
       287, 298, 300, 303, 304-5, 309-10, 311-2, 325, 328, 330, 336,
       340, 342, 344, 345, 346, 349, 351, 352, 353, 356, 363-4, 366-7,
       368-9, 371
Hubbard, May (ne Waterbury), 9, 10-1, 12-5, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22-3,
       28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 41, 45-6, 57, 70, 73, 134, 237-8
Hubbard, Nibs (Lafayette Ronald, Jnr; known later as Ronald DeWolfe),
       64-5, 70, 88, 89, 90, 97, 125, 180, 206-7, 211, 214, 215, 216,
       221, 231-2, 236-7, 311-2, 365, 367, 369-70, 375
Hubbard, Polly (ne Grubb), 59-61, 63, 64-5, 70, 71, 72-3, 74, 75,
       81-2, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 97, 101, 125, 129, 134, 180, 240
Hubbard, Quentin (Geoffrey Quentin McCaully), 214, 232, 234, 272, 293,
       303, 325-6, 343, 307, 349
Hubbard, Sara Northrup *see* Northrup, Sara
Hubbard, Suzette (Mary Suzette Rochelle), 221, 232, 240, 272, 293,
       303-4, 343, 349-50, 366
Hubbard Association of Scientologists, 202, 203, 204, 206, 207, 214,
       218
Hubbard Association of Scientologists International (HASI), 211, 212,
       215, 217, 218, 221, 223, 224, 225, 231, 236, 253
Hubbard College, 200, 201
Hubbard Communications Office *see* HCO
Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundations
       Elizabeth, 152, 159, 169, 170, 174, 179, 181, 185, 187
       Los Angeles, 163, 166, 167, 170, 171, 173, 174-5, 181, 185, 188
       Philadelphia, 210
       Silver Spring, 222
       Wichita, 187, 188, 193, 194, 195, 196-7, 198, 199, 200
       mentioned, 176, 189
Hubbard Explorational Company Limited, 264, 265, 269, 272, 300
Hubbard Geological Survey Expedition, 263-4
Hubbard Guidance Center, 229, 255
Hunter, Hank and Marge, 176
Hydrographic Office, 40, 56, 85, 90, 93, 96

International Congress of Dianeticists and Scientologists, 214
*Introduction to Scientology, An* (de Mille), 212
Ireland, 225-6

Jaipur, Maharajah of, 232, 233
Jamaica, 53, 330

                          -- end page 386 --

James, Norman, 195
Japan, 29-30
Jentzsch, Rev. Heber, 371-2
Jessup, Amos, 269, 272, 274, 280, 281, 293, 311, 312, 323
Johnson, Professor Arthur, 93
Johnson, Judge Norma H., 368
Jones, Howard D., 310
Jones, Captain John, 268
*Journal of Scientology*, 212

Kalispell, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 22
Kalogeras, Marius, 290
*Kangaroo Court*, 255
Kaye, Barbara, 166-7, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172-3, 174, 175, 176, 188,
       191-2
Kember, Jane, 305, 368
Kemp, Pam, 225, 232, 260, 331
Kemp, Ray, 215-6, 225, 226, 232, 260, 264
Kennedy, John F., 241, 245, 248
Ketchikan, 89, 90, 91, 99
*Ketchikan Alaska Chronicle*, 89
KCBU Radio, 90, 91, 92
Kilner, Brigadier General Walter G., 82-3

La Goulette, 282, 283
Laguna Beach, 131, 132
La Quinta, 343-4, 348, 353
       *see also* Olive Tree Ranch
Larcombe, Alan, 233, 234, 261
Las Palmas, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 274
Las Vegas, 344, 345, 346, 354, 360, 361
Latey, Mr Justice, 371
Lewis, H. Latane, 11, 65, 82-3
Liechtenstein, 300, 329
Lisbon, 297, 311, 312, 313, 314, 318
Little, Frank, 19
Livingstone, Brian, 356
London, 207, 208, 211, 212, 215, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 230, 231,
       232, 251, 260, 301, 371
London Congress on Nuclear Radiation and Health, 227
*Look* magazine, 173-4
Los Angeles, 3, 4, 113, 131, 135, 137, 158, 159, 161, 162, 163, 166,
       170, 171, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 179, 180, 181, 183, 184,
       185, 188, 189, 190, 192, 211, 212, 214, 245, 256, 300, 305,
       306, 315, 318, 331, 338, 342, 343, 345, 352, 353, 357, 363,
       365, 370
Los Angeles Fantasy and Science Fiction Society, 114-5, 139, 140, 145,
       164
*Los Angeles Times*, 160, 163, 184, 189

McCain, W.E., 31, 92
McCarthy, Joe, Senator, 170, 191
McGonigel, Melba, 177
McMaster, John, 255-6, 258, 259, 262, 273, 287-8, 293-4
Madeira, 297, 321, 325, 326, 327
*Maggie (Magician)*, 73, 74, 75, 84, 88, 89, 91
Magnuson, Warren G., 92, 93, 96
Maloney, Jack, 176
Manila, 30, 31, 41
Maren, Arthur J., 338, 346, 361
Maren, Mary, 279, 280, 291, 292
Marseilles, 286, 287, 288
Martinique, 53, 54, 55
Mathison, Volney, 203
May, Rollo, 160
Mayo, David, 288-9, 334, 357, 358-9, 362, 363, 366, 367
Meisner, Michael, 341, 342, 351
Meister, George, 307-8
Meister, Susan, 306-8
Merwin, Sam, 133
messengers, 5, 301-3, 304-5, 320, 322-3, 328, 332, 349, 355, 366, 375
Mexico, 106
Miami, 99, 100, 126, 127, 128, 245, 333
Michigan, University of, 40, 53, 56, 85
Miscavige, David, 365, 366, 367, 375
Mitchell, Lisa and Mike, 373
Monaco, 276
Montana, 4, 7, 12, 13, 14, 15, 18, 19, 22, 36, 45, 72, 143, 234
       *see also* Helena
Montana National Guard, 35
Moore, Jean Olivier, 197
Morgan, Parker C., 152
Morocco, 265, 287, 303, 306, 307, 308, 310, 311, 312
Moulton, Thomas, 100, 101, 105, 106

Navy *see* US Navy
Neponset, 98, 99
*New Detective*, 137
New Jersey Board of Medical Examiners, 174
*New Republic*, 161
*News-Herald* (Santa Rosa), 367
*Newsweek*, 161, 235
New York, 9, 11, 23, 47, 65, 66, 67, 70, 71, 72, 75, 78, 81, 84, 85,
       87, 97, 133, 134, 136, 145, 159, 166, 179, 229, 279, 301, 314,
       315, 316, 318, 323, 334, 336, 339
*New York Times*, 53, 56, 160, 161, 194
Nixon, Richard, 240, 241, 307
Nordenholz, Dr A., 202
Northrup, Sara (also known as Betty), 116, 117, 118, 120, 125-6,
       127-8, 128-9, 132, 133, 134, 142, 143, 144, 147, 150, 152, 168,
       170, 171-2, 174-5, 176-9, 180, 183-5, 188-93, 195, 198, 267,
       305, 306
*Nugget, The*, 35

Oak Knoll Naval Hospital, 95, 110, 112, 118, 143
O'Brian, Helen, 194-5, 197, 199, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214
Ocean Archaeological Expedition, 264
O'Gorman, Kathy, 345
O'Keefe, John, 276-7
Olive Tree Ranch, 343-4, 348, 350, 352, 353, 356, 357, 358, 361
Operation and Transport Corporation Limited (OTC), 290, 299, 300, 310,
       311, 312
Operation Snow White, 318, 336, 340, 341, 349, 351, 352, 356, 364, 367
Oregon, 100, 102, 103, 105, 107
*Oregon Journal*, 101
*Org Book, The* (Hubbard), 268
Orsini, Bette, 337

                          -- end page 387 --

OTC *see* Operation and Transport Corporation Limited
OTO (Ordo Templi Orientis), 113, 114, 116, 117, 124, 126
overboarding, 288, 292-4, 295
Overland Avenue (Alpha), 342

Palm Springs, 174, 175, 176, 177, 184, 190, 306, 343
Panama, 298
Parade, 162
Parsons, Helen, 113, 115
Parsons, John Whiteside (Jack), 113-130, 140, 141, 143, 182, 191, 306
Parsons, Ruth Virginia, 129
Pasadena, 112, 113, 121, 127, 128, 129, 141, 143, 191
       *see also* South Orange Grove Avenue
past lives, 197, 231-2, 238, 246, 279-85, 316, 362
Peking, 41, 42
Penthouse, 369
*People*, 277
Phantom Detective, The, 64
Philadelphia, 109, 110, 210, 211, 212, 214
Philadelphia Doctorate Course, 210
Philippines, 26, 30-1, 95, 97, 109
Phoenix, 202, 203, 204, 206, 207, 208, 212, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218,
       221, 222, 237
Pilot, 65
Pinkham, Jim, 216
plants, 234-5
Pook, Ron, 270, 271, 276
*Popular Detective*, 64
Portland, 100, 101, 106, 107, 108
Portugal, 313, 321, 326, 327
       *see also* Lisbon
Pratt, Fletcher, 87
*Preble County News*, 49, 50
*President Madison*, 28, 29, 30, 31
Preston, Paul, 313, 314, 315, 317, 318
*Problems of Life, The*, 355
Public Investigations Section, 254
Puerto Rico, 40, 53, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 85
pulp fiction, 59, 63-4, 65-8, 69, 71, 72, 76
Purcell, Don, 185, 186-7, 192, 193, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 203, 207,
       211, 213, 218
Purification Rundown, 350-1

Radiation, 227-8
Rankin, Jeanette, 18, 19
recruiting methods, 226
Red Cross, 57, 58
Rehabilitation Project Force *see* RPF
Reis, Irene, 374
Reisdorf, Diane, 352
*Revolt in the Stars*, 353
Rezzonico, Mary, 346
Rhodesia, 257-60, 261, 263
Richardson, Andrew, 18
Richey, Judge Cherles R., 364
road safety, 236
Roberts, A.J., 36, 41
Roberts, Gorham, 34, 36
Robertson, Bill, 266, 275, 331
Rogers, Alva, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 143
Rogers, Don, 151, 152
Roos, Otto, 288, 309-10
Rosenblum, Anne, 348-9
Rousseau, Claire, 352
Routsong, Marilyn, 224, 237, 238
*Royal Scotman* (later known as *Apollo*), 270, 271, 272, 273, 274-5,
       276, 277, 279, 280, 281, 285, 286, 287, 288, 290, 291, 294
       *see also* *Apollo*
RPF (Rehabilitation Project Force), 2, 321, 323, 324, 325, 329, 343,
       348, 355, 358, 359
Runcie, Cabbie, 283
Russia, 181, 190, 221, 222, 245, 298, 369

Sableman, Mark, 337-8
Safi, 301, 307
Saint Hill Manor, 233, 234, 235, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244,
       245, 246, 247-8, 250, 251, 252, 254, 255, 256, 258, 260, 261,
       264, 265, 267, 268, 269, 271, 272, 273, 279, 286, 289, 291,
       305, 309, 338, 369
Saint Hill Special Briefing Course (SHSBC), 242, 243, 244
*St Petersburg Times*, 335, 337
St Vincent, 330
Salmon, Julia, 292-3
Sanborn, John, 174, 176, 177
San Diego, 22, 23, 38, 102, 106, 107
San Francisco, 23, 29, 31, 37, 98, 113, 118, 168, 306
San Luis Obispo, 142, 372, 373, 374, 375
Santa Catalina Island, 132
Sardinia, 276, 281, 297
*Saturday Evening Post*, 250
Savannah, 143, 144
Schecter, Mark, 332, 333
Schuman, Frederick L., 161
science fiction, 76-9, 84, 86-7, 114-5, 135, 139, 140, 367-8
       *see also* name of author
*Science of Survival* (Hubbard), 174, 194
*Scientific American*, 160
scientology/scientologists, 201-375
*Scientology 8-8008*, 206, 210
scouting, 23, 24, 25, 27, 47
Sea Org, 263-2, 372
Seattle, 23, 27, 28, 33, 36, 37, 70, 71, 91, 101, 105, 106
*Secret of Treasure Island, The* (Hubbard), 69
security checking, 239, 243-4
Sequoia University, 211-2
Shanghai, 30, 43
Sharpe, Reg, 242, 244, 246, 257
Shrine Auditorium, 163-6, 182
Sicily, 283, 284
Sierra Leone, 274
Silver (Gerald Wolfe), 336, 337, 341, 342
Silver Spring, 221, 222, 223, 229
*Slan* (Van Vogt), 158
*Smashing Novels*, 71
Smith, Doreen, 302-3, 304, 305, 311, 320, 323, 325, 344, 349, 350,
       353, 366
Smith, Ian, 257, 258, 259, 261
South Africa, 223, 242, 245, 259, 262
Southampton, 271, 272, 273, 274
South Colby, 70, 71, 73, 84
Southern Land Sales and Development, 333, 335
South Orange Grove Avenue, Pasadena, 113, 114,

                          -- end page 388 --

       115, 116, 118, 120,
       121, 122, 125, 126, 129
       *see also* Pasadena
space flight, 245-6
Spain, 213, 214, 277, 279, 285, 286, 326
       *see also* Valencia
Sparks, 352, 353, 364
Special Zone Plan, 241
*Sportsman Pilot*, 51, 57, 60, 61, 62, 63, 68
*Stagecoach*, 69, 74
Stansfield, Fred, 210
Starkey, Norman, 307
*Startling Stories*, 144
Steinberg, Leon, 291
Stewart, Governor Samuel, 14, 16
Street and Smith, 66, 77, 78, 84, 133, 144
Sturgeon, Theodore, 77
Sullivan, Laurel, 351
Sullivan, Lieutenant Commander, 105
*Sunday Mail* (Rhodesia), 257
Survival (Burke), 139-40
*Swavely Sentinel*, 46
Swisher, George, 49-50
Switzerland, 289, 300, 329
Synergetics, 218

Tampa, 181
Tangier, 265, 310, 311, 312, 313
*Telegrafos*, 295
Tenerife, 318, 319
Tenyaka Memorial, 298
thetans, 203, 204, 205, 206
*Thing From Outer Space, The*, 77
Thomas, Sharon, 341
Thompson, Commander 'Snake', 23-4, 25, 164, 230, 231
*Thrilling Adventure*, 64, 71-2
*Thrilling Detective*, 64
*Thrilling Westenn*, 144
*Thrilling Wonder Stories*, 77
Tilden (formerly known as Burnett), 10, 11, 12
       *see also* Burnett
*Times, The*, 256
Tremaine, F. Orlin, 78
Trinidad, 331
*Truth*, 250
Tsingtao, 41-2
*Typewriter In the Sky* (Hubbard), 85, 86

*Unfathomable Man, The*, 354
United Churches of Florida, 335, 337, 338
*Unknown*, 82, 84, 85, 86, 91
Urquhart, Ken, 250, 251, 260, 261, 292, 297, 299, 313, 314, 324, 325,
       356
US Navy
       Harry Hubbard and, 7, 11, 19, 20, 22, 28
       L. Ron Hubbard and, 4, 23, 30, 33, 37, 46, 57, 92-111, 112,
       296, 323-4
*USS Algol*, 107, 108, 109, 110
*USS Cold Star*, 30, 31, 41, 42, 43, 44
*USS Henderson*, 37, 38, 40
*USS Kittery*, 57
*USS Nitro*, 33, 34
*USS Oklahoma*, 23
*USS PC-815*, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107
*USS U.S. Grant*, 23
*USS YP-422*, 98, 99

Valencia, 277, 279, 281, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288
Van Staden, Joe, 270, 271, 282
Van Vogt, A.E., 77, 141, 158, 164, 166, 167, 173, 368
Veterans Administration (VA), 125, 128, 131, 132, 137, 138, 139, 196,
       197
Vidal, Joan, 235
Vos, Alan, 340
Vosper, Cyril, 223, 231, 232, 252

Wake Island, 33
Wallace, Mike, 371
Wallis, Roy, 254
Wall of Fire, 266
Walters, Ed, 345-6, 360, 361
Warner, Caryl, 184, 185
Warner Brothers, 3, 4
Warren, Peter, 307, 308, 311
Washington, 4, 23, 24, 27, 38, 45, 46, 47, 49, 50, 51, 54, 55, 59, 61,
       62, 87, 90, 93, 96, 98, 99, 129, 166, 189, 198, 221, 224, 227,
       228, 229, 230, 232, 236, 241, 242, 244, 247, 297, 298, 307,
       310, 311, 328, 331, 333, 336, 339, 340, 341, 342, 351, 352,
       356, 363, 368
*Washington Daily News*, 55, 61
*Washington Star*, 63
Wsterbury, Abram, 8
Waterbury, Hope, 10, 14, 49, 89
Waterbury, Ida Corinne (ne DeWolfe), 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15,
       17, 21, 70
Waterbury, June, 10, 14, 18, 20
Waterbury, Lafe (Lafayette), 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16-7,
       18, 20, 21, 22, 45, 49, 101
Waterbury, Louise, 10, 14, 15
Waterbury, Margaret, 8
Waterbury, Marnie (Margaret), 10, 12, 13, 14, 18, 19, 20, 22, 36, 64,
       70, 88, 89, 90, 91, 134, 237, 331
Waterbury, May *see* Hubbard, May
Waterbury, Midgie (Ida Irene), 10, 14, 15, 36, 70, 134
Waterbury, Ray, 10, 11, 13, 14, 18, 49
Waterbury, Toilie, 9, 10, 11, 12, 17, 18, 21, 46, 70, 89, 237, 238
Weigand, Dick, 345
Wermuth, Arthur W., 189
Westerns, 82
*Western Story*, 82
West Indies Minerals Survey, 40, 56-7, 58
Westwood Nurses Registry, 177, 179
Whaley, Robert, 373, 374
*What Is Scientology?*, 350
Whicker, Alan, 235
Whipp, Mary Sue *see* Hubbard, Mary Sue
Whispering Winds Ranch, 372, 373, 374
White, Dr William Alan, 217
Wichita, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198,
       199, 200, 201, 202, 207, 211, 213, 218
*Wichita Eagle*, 187
Wicker, Rev. R.L., 337

                          -- end page 389 --

Williamson, Jack, 77, 110, 115, 153
Wilson, Henry (later known as Harry Hubbard) *see* Hubbard, Harry Ross
Winchell, Walter, 145
Winter, Dr Joseph, 147, 148-51, 152, 169-70, 176, 184, 186, 189
Wolfe, Gerald (Silver), 336, 337, 341, 342
*Writers' Markets and Methods*, 144

                          -- end page 390 --
