Let's Sell These People a Piece of Blue Sky: Hubbard, Dianetics and Scientology (59 page)

The whole restructuring had to be engineered without a
single appearance by Hubbard. The CMO had to persuade the management organizations
of the Church that they were acting with Hubbard’s authority, but with no
signed orders from him, nor even orders issued over his name. At the same time,
a new management structure had been created through an elaborate series of
supposedly separate corporations. Author Services Incorporated looked after
Hubbard’s finances, in reality causing millions to be transferred from the
Church into his personal accounts. The Religious Technology Center controlled
the use of the trademarks. The International Finance Police, part of the new
Church of Scientology International, monitored income.

To add insult to injury, the CMO announced monthly price
rises starting in January 1983, and distributed a newsletter with extracts from
the San Francisco Mission Holders’ Conference. Photographs of the uniformed and
beribboned speakers glared out ferociously. Most Scientologists had conceived
themselves part of a crusade to bring sanity to the world. The savage rhetoric,
the aggressive attitude and the perplexing new corporate titles, especially the
International Finance Police and their Dictator, did not fit easily into that
concept of sanity.

The problems were not just with the faithful. In March 1983,
there was a huge raid on Scientology premises in Toronto. The warrant ran to
158 pages, and described the earlier theft of files from the Ontario hospital,
¹
the Committee on Healing Arts, the Toronto Sun, and the Ontario government.
²

A few days before the raid, on March 2, the Religious
Technology Center began to publish Information Letters. The first Information
Letter claimed that Hubbard “saw in this group [RTC] the willingness and
ability to do whatever is necessary, no matter now unpleasant or unsocial it
may seem.” After quoting Hubbard liberally, the Information Letter continued,
“The importance of the white taped road out for man can in no way be
underrated. To in any way encroach upon the Church or to distract one from
moving up the Bridge to Total Freedom is the ultimate crime.” This first
Information Letter ended with the rather confusing statement:

To be very blunt, if not for LRH, the Religious
Technology Center and the Church of Scientology, one could never obtain Scientology
Technology. There is no one else. Think about it.

They lay the very Bridge we all must travel upwards.
There is no “second chance.” Don’t allow anyone to wreck the chance you do
have. Travel up that Bridge with our best wishes. We will be happy to know you
are doing so and you can be assured of the Standard Technology by which to do
so. As with that, we all win - many times over.

The second RTC Information Letter contained an attack upon
“squirrels”:

You may have heard of some such fellows (now removed
from the Church). They hoped to create considerable damage to the Church and
internal discord so they could then “valiantly emerge” upon the scene to “save
Scientology technology” (from the damage they themselves created).

Intent upon achieving some sort of “notoriety,” false
status, and some fast bucks these squirrels denigrated Standard Tech and the
Church and encouraged others to join them in the establishment of their own
“way” against the long existing structure of the Church. Their plans never bore
fruit however, and they were easily nixed.

It is longstanding Scientology Policy that any Suppressive
Person declare order should detail the offenses of the alleged Suppressive. Although
the CMO usually ignored an accused’s supposed right to a Committee of Evidence
prior to Suppressive declare, they did issue written orders. These made
puzzling, and often bizarre, reading, as an order concerning a former senior
Sea Org executive clearly shows:

When Neville first entered the Church he had behind him a
trail of criminal acts which kept him from realizing the miraculous gains of Scientology
Tech from the very beginning. His horrendous criminal acts per his own ...
write-ups extend as far back as 1965 and span the entire scale of criminality
from assault and battery, brutal violence, theft, armed robbery, drug pushing,
smuggling, seducing minors, illegal gambling, car theft, arson, accessory to
illegal abortions, embezzlement, using false credentials, pimping, violence for
hire, forgery and fraud.
³

In reality, the Scientologist who was the subject of the
order had actually first “entered the Church” at the age of eight, working at
Saint Hill before joining the Sea Org when he was 18. He has never been
convicted of a crime, and spent no time in juvenile institutions for this
remarkable display of criminality, all purportedly undertaken before he was
eight years old.
⁴

In January 1983, the Scientology Church published a list of
611 individuals who had been declared Suppressive.
⁵
The CMO had
overplayed their “ruthless” efficiency. Too many people had been expelled in
too short a period of time. It was inevitable that groups of these Suppressives
would form an independent Scientology movement. The new snarling face of
management, the price rises, and Hubbard’s conspicuous absence from public view
created a climate in which members questioned the authority of the new Church
management, and moved towards splinter groups. The sheer quantity of
Suppressive Declares could only assist such a movement. Perhaps a few individuals
had been attacking the Church from within, but hundreds of long-term and popular
Church members, many of whom had worked with Hubbard for years? It was too much
to believe. Many of the new Suppressives had good reputations among
Scientologists, not readily destroyed by the vague Declare Orders.

In 1983, a loose, independent Scientology network came into
being. Letters describing the bizarre events within the Church were written anonymously,
or under pen-names.
⁶
Sympathizers would redistribute them. Some Church
members receiving such letters would either destroy them, or send them to the
Ethics Officer at their local Org, often unread. It was a strange response,
bearing in mind the oft-repeated Hubbard maxim “more communication not less is
the answer.” It seemed that many Scientologists had been so conditioned to
accept the authority of Church publications that they chose to ignore even the
most obvious abuses.

There were also tapes. In the summer of 1983, John and
Jeanny Hansen visited Gilman Hot Springs, and were startled by its military
atmosphere. The Hansens interviewed various key figures of the CMO take-over
who had since been excommunicated. A Los Angeles Field Auditor, Jon Zegel,
produced a series of tapes at six-month intervals, explaining the events behind
the purge. He released his first tape in August 1983. His excellent sources,
grasp of the situation, and persuasive delivery made the tapes very important
in convincing many Scientologists of the trouble within their Church. The tapes
were distributed, copied and recopied almost to the point of inaudibility.

By design, there was very little to connect Hubbard with the
new regime, as written communications were signed by the Watchdog Committee or
the Religious Technology Center. The speeches had been made by Messengers
largely unknown outside top management circles. The familiar faces were gone.
Paradoxically, Scientologists’ loyalty to Hubbard was a main force in the mass
exodus from the Church. Many Scientologists resigned believing that Hubbard was
either dead or a captive of the CMO. They were sure the Church had been
infiltrated by hostile forces, and that the Tech was being used to intimidate,
harass and possibly even brainwash members. Hundreds resigned, and, with great
fervor, set about creating a new Scientology movement outside the confines of
the Church. It was to be a Scientology without “gang sec-checks,” without
enforced “disconnection” and mass Suppressive Person declares. It would also be
far more affordable.

The CMO was quick to respond to the threat. One of the first
splinter groups, the Church of Scio-Logos in Omaha, Nebraska, was soon
struggling against a suit brought by the RTC. The group in Kansas City had
disappeared without trace. Bent Corydon had managed to keep his Center afloat,
despite the defection of most of his staff back to the Church after his
decision to splinter in November 1982. For a short while, Corydon was an
apostle of the new movement, travelling from his Center in Riverside to Denmark
and to England. Many members simply retreated from the Church and quietly set
up counseling practices, without advertising. If there was to be a movement, it
would have to find a focal point. By issuing a torrent of abuse against David
Mayo, the Church created such a focal point.

David Mayo had been involved in Scientology since 1957. He
had devoted his life to L. Ron Hubbard’s Tech, working in the Auckland Org in
New Zealand, and joining the Sea Org in January 1968, shortly after its
inception. For over 10 years, Mayo had held increasingly senior positions in
the Church. When he left the Happy Valley Running Program, in February 1983, he
was penniless, homeless, without a job, and ostracized by most of the people he
had known and worked with.
⁷
He wanted to forget Scientology for a
while and recover his health. He joined forces with John Nelson, who had been
the first to leave Happy Valley, and they started a tiling business. One of
their customers was another of Hubbard’s former Personal Staff, Harvey Haber.
They inevitably discussed Scientology. Julie Gillespie, Mayo’s former
assistant, also participated in these long and painful discussions which led to
the decision to form a splinter group. In July 1983, the Advanced Ability
Center (AAC) of Santa Barbara came into being.
⁸

They worked out of Haber’s house at first. In the Church,
personal auditing from David Mayo would have cost perhaps $1,000 dollars an
hour. After all, he had been Hubbard’s own Auditor. The AAC’s first client cut
the grass in exchange for counseling. To promote their endeavor the group
mailed a letter in which Mayo explained his background in Scientology. They had
all been in the Sea Org, and claimed that between them they could only muster
the names and addresses of 25 Scientologists who might be interested in counseling.
To their amazement, the letter was picked up and redistributed throughout the
world. They began to receive requests for counseling from as far away as South
Africa, Britain and Japan. Soon they had their own center, thronged with
Independent Scientologists either taking services or demanding explanations of
the perplexing events in Scientology.

The Scientology Church responded swiftly: Ray Mithoff,
Mayo’s replacement as Senior Case Supervisor International, wrote a 17-page
attack called “Story of a Squirrel: David Mayo,” which quoted extensively from
Hubbard dispatches, and was distributed to the Church’s full mailing list. It
was this issue, the transcript of the San Francisco Mission Holders’
Conference, and a harangue from the Saint Hill Ethics Officer which drove me
out of the Church.

By now the reader is familiar with the term “squirrel.”
Inside the Church, the term has almost demonic connotations. David Mayo had
become Scientology’s Lucifer. To quote from “Story of a Squirrel”
⁹
:

Betrayals like this are not new. Groups and organizations have
had to contend with covert attacks such as this since ancient times. And over
the past 33 years our group has weathered its share of those who sought to
infiltrate and sabotage our activities, gaining positions within the Church
through deception in order to halt the expansion of Scientology or disrupt its
organizational structure.

Quoting from Hubbard, the Directive continued: “Mayo was the
boy they were relying on. He is a very clever fellow in that he could lie to me
consistently, convincingly report, this that or the other thing ... He directly
lied and was found to be squirreling the simplest process there ever was.”
Hubbard went on to call Mayo “that Mr. SP [Suppressive Person] Mayo, the
darling of the psych[iatrist]s,” a “criminal” and “a dramatizing megalomaniac.”

Without explanation, Mithoff accused Mayo of “sexually
perverted conduct.” Mayo had worked with Hubbard for several years on the as
yet unreleased Operating Thetan levels above OT7. In a clumsy attempt to
discredit any use by Mayo of these materials, Mithoff said: “He knows that
there are many OT levels above Solo NOTs [OT7] which have been fully
researched, and knows that he does NOT have any of the data on these nor has he
ever seen them.”

There was also a simple message for Scientologists thinking
of receiving counseling from Mayo: “The actions of Mayo and the little group he
has joined amount to
not only
an attempt to lure some people off the
Bridge, but an attempt to deny that Bridge to them for eternity (because once
they become involved with this squirrel practice they will thereafter be denied
access to the upper levels) [sic] ... those few who might fall for his PR
should be forewarned.”

Foreseeing that Scientologists would question Hubbard’s
failure during their long association to notice that Mayo was Suppressive
(after all, Hubbard had “discovered” the characteristics of the Suppressive,
and if he couldn’t spot one, who could?), Mithoff continued: “It is a testimony
to LRH’s refinement of the tech and streamlining of the Bridge, with
Scientologists becoming more aware and more perceptive in less time, that we’re
discovering bird dogs such as this faster now than ever before.”

“Story of a Squirrel” did nothing to contain the move
towards independence. Soon after the independent Santa Barbara Center opened,
former Mission Holder Eddie Mace set up the first independent Australian
Center, and others followed in Denmark and England. The English group’s first
public meeting was held in October 1983, with “Captain” Bill Robertson as the
main speaker. Robertson was a former Sea Org Captain, who had been a Hubbard
aide at various times since the 1960s. Captain Bill, as he was commonly known,
had been declared Suppressive in 1982. Since that time he had been preaching
his own elaboration of Hubbard’s conspiracy theory.