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First groups in Costa Rica, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tahiti, Guatemala and
Zambia formed. (CofS)
In Founding Church of Scientology v Webster, the church sued FBI director
William Webster, alleging that the FBI was harassing Scientologists for no
permissable reason.
The church filed this complaint in 1978, the same year in which MSH and
eight other high ranking Church officials admitted in a plea agreement that
“the network of Scientology organizations had conducted a broad campaign
against US government entities particularly the IRS.” The court noted that
the same government investigations the Church complained about were justified
by, and a result of, the church’s own illegal behavior. (Criminal
Time Track: Issue III, (15))
A rough quote from an FBI memorandum obtained through the Freedom of Information Act in 1978:
"To infiltrate the Church and move our agents up to Board of Director positions. We must also prevent the spread of Scientology to China and Japan as it is so similar to Bhuddism it would spread like wildfire".
(CBR: SOB 12)
LRH is convicted in absentia in Lyon, France. Sentenced to 4 years in
prison for fraudulent claims he could cure physical illness.(Criminal
Time Track: Issue III, (54))
Hubbard arrived back at the ranch. 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.
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 (also called "Cine
Org"). (Miller:
"Bare-faced Messiah", pg. 353)
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... 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. (Miller:
"Bare-faced Messiah", pg. 353)
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'. (Miller:
"Bare-faced Messiah", pg. 356)
Church of Scientology of Milano, Italy founded. (CofS)
The first Hubbard Communications Office Bulletin on New Era Dianetics
(NED) was written, introducing an effective refinement of Dianetics by L. Ron
Hubbard, based upon thirty years of experience in the application of the
subject. (CofS)
Church of Scientology of Bern, Switzerland founded. (CofS)
Anyway, 1978, the Cedars refit mission was still going on and
then I got qualified to go to SU. Now SU is a Special Unit were
LRH was making the films. They needed some more people out there,
some execs and so on. And I went out there in August, 1978. Now,
just before I arrived there - the first thing I found out there
when I arrived is - there's no GO there, there's absolutely no GO
there, and the GO is prohibited from being there and the CMO and
the SU people are prohibited from talking to the GO, or any GO
terminal, or having any written comm to the GO, or any kind of
connection with the GO. And this is because LHR had kicked out
any GO terminals from SU. (CBR-debrief from 1982)
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. (Miller:
"Bare-faced Messiah", pg. 356)
On 29 August, all nine 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.
David Mayo was called to give assists.
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 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.'
Hubbard slowly recovered....
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.'
'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".' (Miller:
"Bare-faced Messiah", pg. 358)
David Mayo: In September 1978, I was called from the Flag Service Org to
California to audit LRH and there I stayed on, as his auditor. In
October 1978, LRH appointed me to the post of Senior C/S International. I remained in California auditing LRH on audited
NOTs until he advanced onto Solo NOTS. In mid-1979, I assisted
him with technical research and with the export and training of
the first auditors and C/Ses on new tech. Apart from some return
visits to Flag (and other Orgs) to handle out-tech, I remained on
the post of Senior C/S International in California from 1978.
Throughout that period, I was being trained and briefed by LRH on
current tech and on his research of new tech, as yet unreleased.
(David Mayo, Open Letter)
LRH has another stroke. (He had his first stroke in June 1975.) Mayo
arrived to give LRH assists and LRH was barely conscious. Dr. (Gene) Denk
told Mayo that LRH could die at any moment because his heart was not beating
normally. The assists went on for 3 weeks and from those assists came the
seeds that became NOTS.
Ron’s illness was an additional excuse to further edit incoming
communication to him to keep all this “bad news” off of his lines.
NOTS is released this year.(Criminal
Time Track: Issue III, (8, 34))
Audited New Era Dianetics for OTs (New OT V) released. (CofS)
Dianetic Clear Hubbard Communications Office Bulletin released. (CofS)
By the middle of October, the Commodore was back on his feet, back making
movies. Gilman Hot Springs - 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... (Miller:
"Bare-faced Messiah", pg. 359)
... in late '78 the
location where the boss was filming got blown by two people that
went to Las Vegas.
They blew from SU Area, from the film area. They were like new
recruits. They blew. They were "family" of some
messenger or something and they blew and they went to Las Vegas
and tried to get $10,000 from the FBI to reveal the location. The
FBI said "No, reveal it anyway", and they did.
And they went to the newspapers, and they tried to get money
from the newspapers, and the next thing you know, people from Las
Vegas Org were over there running around in their cars trying to
see LRH. So he said "We've got to get a new
location." So we did. We got another new secret location
for filming so we wouldn't be bothered. And it's still in
California. And this one was where the current CMO INT people
are, and the Watchdog Committee, and all that stuff. (CBR-debrief from 1982)
The Hartwells... had disentangled themselves
by the end of 1978 and returned to Las Vegas... Ernie Hartwell
did not particularly want to stir up any trouble but he thought that the church
was trying to entice Dell (Adelle) 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... 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.'
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.'
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. (Miller:
"Bare-faced Messiah", pg. 360/61)
LRH fled from Olive Tree Ranch... Kima and Mike Douglas were again chosen to go with him.
(Miller:
"Bare-faced Messiah", pg. 361)
   
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