SECRET LIVES - L. Ron Hubbard

A self-proclaimed messiah

 

Channel 4, United Kingdom

Wednesday Nov 19th 1997 21:00 GMT

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Part 1 - RealAudio, 1709K (13m 50s)

VOICES: "We were saving the world, we were convinced that Hubbard was the returned saviour and that his techniques and his knowledge and his majesty would eventually bring all mankind to an enlightened state and that was what we were doing..."

"There were some things about him that I do feel were rather dangerous. I felt so much under his spell that I told my room-mate that if ever I told her that I was going to marry this man, she should tie me up and not allow me out of the house..."

"I was overwhelmed: here I am in the presence of the most important individual in the cosmos. I mean, this isn't just like meeting a film star or something, I'm meeting God with plus signs..."

Lafayette Ron Hubbard created one of the richest and most controversial cults of our time - the Church of Scientology. He spent much of his later life at sea, on the run from those who accused him of being a crook and a charlatan. But to the millions who at one time or another followed him, and to himself, he was the greatest guru who ever lived.

HUBBARD: "There is one thing you can say about Dianetics and Scientology, and I'm sorry if this sounds odd, but it isn't everybody who can write a book that turns the world on its ear"

But more remarkable still was the story of Ron Hubbard's life: the story of a science-fiction fantasist and self-proclaimed messiah.

Ron Hubbard was determined that from the start that his story would be the stuff of legend. He was born in 1911 and told of how he was brought up on his grandfather's ranch in Montana, which he said in a newspaper interview, covered a quarter of the state. As a small child he was breaking broncos and hunting coyotes. He claimed that he grew up with old frontiersmen, and even became a blood brother of the local Blackfoot Indians.

These were all splendid tales, but all that is known for sure is that while he did use to visit a small livery stable his grandfather owned, he was brought up in an ordinary home, the only child of ordinary American parents. Towards the end of World War I his father joined the American navy. The teenage Hubbard spent holidays in Guam, where the family was stationed. He travelled in China and the East. With a taste for adventure, he went prospecting for gold in Puerto Rico, and, as a student, even led a sea exploration to find pirates' hoards in the Caribbean. But he couldn't resist gilding the lily. A Scientology book later recorded his claim to have communed with native bandits in the high hills of Tibet. But there is no evidence he ever went to Tibet.

CYRIL VOSPER - Hubbard's Staff:
"He told so many stories of his exploits, in South America, the West Indies and places, that he would have to have been at least 483 years old to have had enough time to have done all those things, but that doesn't really matter. I mean, it was just very entertaining really, except that he turned it into a religion."

ROBERT VAUGHN YOUNG - Press Officer:
"In his diaries he was writing little stories, you know, sea adventures and yarns, but sometimes when some of his own representatives found them, they thought these were true. You know, there was an escapade of him fighting an octopus that once one of his personal representatives was telling as a true story, and I was trying to point out to her later that, no, this is just one of his stories that he's interspersing with his private life."

When he was 22, Hubbard married his first wife, Polly. They went to live on Puget Sound, in Washington State, and soon had two children. Hubbard's joy in life was sailing and exploring, but now he had to settle down, and earn some money. With such a prolific imagination, he became a writer, starting with adventures and fantasies in penny-dreadfuls. Then he turned to science fiction and became a best seller.

Two books, 'Final Blackout' and 'Fear', were considered sci-fi classics. But Hubbard's most amazing story was about himself. His literary agent was Forry Ackerman, himself a sci-fi fanatic. One night, deep into the small hours, Hubbard told Ackerman of a bizarre event in a hospital theatre that would shape his entire life.

FORREST ACKERMAN - Hubbard's literary agent:
"He said that he had died on the operating table, and that he rose in spirit form, and he looked at the body that he had previously inhabited and he shrugged the shoulders he didn't have any more and he thought 'well then, where do we go from here?' Off in the distance he saw a great ornate gate, and he wafted over to it, and the gate, as they do in supernatural films, just opened without any human assistance. He floated through and on the other side he saw an intellectual smorgasbord of everything that had ever puzzled the mind of man - you know, how did it all begin, where do we go from here, are there past lives, and like a sponge he was just absorbing all this esoteric information and all of a sudden there was a kind of swishing in the air and he heard a voice, 'no, not yet, he's not ready' and like a long umbilical cord he felt himself being pulled back, back, back and he lay down in his body and he opened his eyes, and he said to the nurse, 'I was dead, wasn't I?'. Then he bounded off the operating table - I don't know how you die, then you bound off an operating table. He got two reams of paper, and a gallon of scalding black coffee, and at the end of two days he had a manuscript called 'Excalibur' or 'The Dark Sword'. And he told me that whoever read it either went insane or committed suicide. And he said that the last time he had shown it to a publisher in New York, he walked into the office to find out what the reaction was, the publisher called for the reader, the reader came in with the manuscript, threw it on the table and threw himself out of the skyscraper window."

But was Hubbard's extraordinary story true? Excalibur became the stuff of mystery. Hubbard told friends it was too dangerous to publish. But forty years later, a treasure trove from Hubbard's early journals and manuscripts, believed to have been long lost, was discovered by his staff.

GERRY ARMSTRONG - Hubbard's household manager:
"There were two and a half versions of Excalibur. I read them and I didn't go mad and didn't die. They also include the information within related writings, that these came out of a nitrous oxide incident. Hubbard had a couple of teeth extracted, and it was while under the effect of nitrous oxide that he came up with Excalibur."

Hubbard's 'death' was in fact an hallucination under the effects of anaesthetic. So what was the intellectual dish he'd fed on?

GERRY ARMSTRONG:
"It was not anything particularly revolutionary. The key to Excalibur was this great realisation, by Hubbard, of 'Survive' as being the one command that all existence, and all life and all people, have. That became the basis for a lot of Dianetics and a lot of Scientology."

This idea had a profound impact on Hubbard. In a letter to Polly he wrote 'I have high hopes of smashing my name into history so violently that it will take a legendary form.'

The Second World War brought a new dimension to the Hubbard legend. He said that while serving in the U.S. Navy he had been blinded, but that inspired by the insights he had first glimpsed when he died on the operating table he had dramatically been able to cure himself.

HUBBARD IN 1968:
"By 1948 through my own processing, and use of the principles I had isolated up to that time, was able to pass a 100% combat physical, which was very mysterious to the government, how had I suddenly become completely physically well, from being blind and lame."

It was an odd story, because Hubbard's war record shows his recurring problem was a stomach ulcer. There are mentions of conjunctivitis, but none of blindness. Indeed, none of his medical reports, before, during, or after the war, contain any suggestion of blindness, only shortsightedness and astigmatism.

After the war, Hubbard went to Hollywood. As a successful science fiction author he was a welcome visitor to the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Association. Its members recalled that there was one power over the mind he undoubtedly did possess - hypnotism.

FORREST ACKERMAN:
"Ron Hubbard came to our club and he hypnotised all of the members except me. I wanted to remain in present time and watch what was going on. I remember it was fascinating, he told one boy he had a little kangaroo in the palms of his hands, and the boy was going all around the room showing everyone this little kangaroo that was hopping around."

In writings and conversations, Hubbard began to speak of his new science of the mind. As Scientology's literature would later depict, Hubbard claimed that in addition to himself, he cured eleven other war veterans and restored sanity to forty mental patients.

JEAN COX - Writer:
"Rumours were beginning to circulate that this new science of the mind or this new philosophy had a significance for mankind that was greater than the discovery of the wheel and equal in significance to the discovery of fire."

In the May 1950 edition of Astounding Science Fiction magazine, Hubbard published his stunning findings as fact. Dianetics was truly born. Thousands of letters poured in to the magazine. In the meantime Hubbard had been pounding the typewriter keys, putting his ideas into a 450-page book. It became a bestseller, and Dianetics a national craze.

Hubbard's theory was that the human mind was bedevilled by 'engrams', memories of painful events, often imprinted before birth on the foetus. He claimed that under the direction of a Dianetics therapist or auditor, as he called them these engrams could be relived and then cleared from the mind. At this stage, Dianetics seemed just an exaggerated form of psychotherapy.

FORREST ACKERMAN:
"Well, Dianetics was so popular because it promised a brave new world of everybody clear, no more colds, no more eyeglasses. It cured me of a fear of dogs."

JEAN COX:
"Among the various things it was said to be able to do was, one person had lost a tooth, and through Dianetic auditing he regrew the tooth. Almost any illness could be cured. Schizophrenia could be cured."

FORREST ACKERMAN:
"It opened up the whole world for everybody to become perfect human beings."

Hubbard sold Dianetics auditing courses at $500 a go. The money was rolling in. But he was about to be accused of being a con-man.

Source: http://www.xenu.net/entheta/entheta/media/tv/secret/secret.html

 SECRET LIVES - L. Ron Hubbard

Part 2

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Part 2 - RealAudio, 1962K (16m)

With his book, Dianetics, a best-seller, Ron Hubbard was America's new guru. In August 1950, at a lecture hall in Los Angeles he presented to a crowd of 6,000 the first person to be what he called a 'clear'. She was a student called Sonya Bianca. As a clear, she was supposed to have total recall.

JEAN COX:
"Various members of the audience called questions at her. Could she remember what was said on page 217 of her physics textbook? She couldn't. Could she remember what she had for breakfast on the morning of August 17, 1946? She couldn't. Then various people called out for Hubbard to turn his back on her and see if she could remember the colour of his tie. She couldn't. At that moment, the whole business sort of collapsed. People started leaving the auditorium."

Suddenly Hubbard was in trouble. He was accused of being a con-man and Dianetics a form of hypnotism., a technique at which he was so expert. He recruited a bright young PR woman, Barbara Kaye.

BARBARA KAYE:
"Well, I've always found that it's the mind of a man that is most sexy. He was not really terribly physically attractive. And he had a brilliant mind, no question about that. I surely thought this was a man who is interested in marrying me, and who I might be interested in marrying."

The intellectual attraction turned into an affair and Barbara stayed with the 40 year old Hubbard in an apartment in Hollywood. But by now Hubbard had left Polly and was married to his second wife, Sara. He had led Barbara to believe that the marriage with Sara was over. It wasn't.

BARBARA KAYE:
"It was quite shocking when shortly after moving some of my things into the apartment, suddenly Sara turned up with the babies and moved in. I believe he was just as dismayed as I, because the next day when he came to the office with some of my belongings, like my cologne and toothbrush and so forth, he looked very downtrodden and apologetic and not happy about the situation at all"

Nevertheless, Barbara was kicked out. Dianetics was still in trouble. After the initial success of the book, money had rolled in, and rolled out just as fast. Hubbard went to Palm Springs to try and recoup his fortune with a follow-up book. But the business, his marriage with Sara, and his writing were in crisis. He asked Barbara to come to him.

BARBARA KAYE:
"He was certainly very depressed, He had lost the colour in his face. His voice was hardly audible. He told me that he was totally blocked, he was working under a publisher's deadline that he was failing to meet. He believed that his inability to write was due to the sinister interventions of other people, such as Sara hypnotizing him in his sleep and telling him that he would never write again. I found him paranoid, you know. He was clearly going through a clinical depression."

Worse followed. Hubbard and Sara finally split up. Their divorce became a public sensation. Sara accused Hubbard of torturing her, and declared him insane. Hubbard denounced Sara as a Russian spy and kidnapped their 13-month-old daughter. Hubbard ended up in Wichita in Kansas and got back in touch with Barbara.

BARBARA KAYE:
"He sent me a wire telling me that he had been very ill and saying that he wanted to marry me. I went to Wichita. He looked terrible. He had hair down to his shoulders and his fingernails were like talons. And I found a note, a very sweet note in my hotel room saying 'glad you are here, I love you' but I saw a man there who had no prospects, for one thing, and that he had some psychiatric difficulties and I didn't see much of a life for myself with that sort of individual. So I left."

But Hubbard bounced back. He got married for the third time, to one of his students, Mary Sue Whipp. This marriage lasted, and Mary Sue would become his devoted deputy. Sara, his second wife, was 'cleared' from his memory, just like an engram.

HUBBARD:
"How many times have I been married? I've been married twice. And I'm very happily married just now. I have a lovely wife, and I have four children. My first wife is dead."

INTERVIEWER:
"What happened to your second wife?"

HUBBARD:
"I didn't have a second wife."

In 1952 Hubbard launched a revolutionary new product, Scientology. Dianetics originally covered this life only. But in a new book, Scientology - A History of Man, Hubbard revealed that wasn't enough. Human bodies were in fact inhabited by immortal souls or 'thetans' going back to primeval times. Hubbard's son from his first marriage, Nibs claimed the book stemmed from an unusual piece of drug-driven research.

JIM DINCALCI - Ron Hubbard's Medical Officer:
"LRH gave his son Nibs some amphetamines, and Nibs started talking, he said, started really going talking fast, from the speed. And he kept talking, he kept talking, and his dad kept giving him speed and all of a sudden he was talking about his history, when he was a clam and all these different situations in early Earth. And out of that came 'History of Man'."

FORREST ACKERMAN:
"Suddenly you were nobody - 'Oh, I've been back three lives, you know, I've been back seven, you know, I was in the time of Pharaoh'. Well, when I got back to the individual who was a clam, lying on a primordial seashore with a grain of sand irritating a pearl inside it, I decided that was as far back as I wanted to go and I just departed from Scientology altogether."

In late 1952, Hubbard came to London. He was still in financial trouble back home. A business partner had just issued a warrant for the return of $9,000 Hubbard had borrowed. To make money, he needed to go international, and here, instead of creditors, he found a new group of adoring fans.

PAM KEMP - friend and ex-scientologist:
"He was really flamboyant, I mean he was full of life and he rode about on his Harley motorcycle, and we threw parties and he would play his guitar and sing and put on his cowboy hat and he was just lots and lots of fun. We would all get together and then we would do various exercises and we would go out and see if just with thoughts we could knock off policemen's hats. What kind of power did we have in terms of thinking and thought and energy and that sort of thing. I mean, it was great fun."

CYRIL VOSPER - Ron Hubbard's Staff:
"I thought it would give me total control over my own life. It sounds ridiculous, doesn't it, but put in those terms, that is basically what Hubbard was saying. He was saying that you and everyone else, with the use of Scientology (or Dianetics at that time) could become a god. And we were all, if you like, fallen gods."

The next step was to create a church for his new gods. A writer friend called Lloyd Eschbach later recalled how after a dinner in the late 1940's Hubbard had said "I'd like to start a religion. That's where the money is'. Now, a few years later the Church of Scientology was born. In America, in particular, there were sound practical reasons.

RAYMOND KEMP - friend and ex-Scientologist:
"There are tax advantages and there are advantages in the Constitution which says that the Government must not abridge the operations of a church. I think that that more than anything else made him agree to using that vehicle because it is and has to date proved to be very difficult for any government to abridge the activities of a church."

Hubbard found the perfect cathedral for his church: Saint Hill Manor, in East Grinstead in Sussex. He played his new role, the country squire. He told the locals that he was a scientist, researching plants, and their reaction to pain. He and his young family settled into Sussex society, bringing American razzmatazz into East Grinstead's Road Safety Campaign.

But the locals hadn't realised that Saint Hill was to become the Mecca of Scientology. Devotees arrived from all over the world to study at their master's feet. They paid thousands of pounds for Hubbard's courses. Virginia Downsborough was on the first Saint Hill clearing course.

VIRGINIA DOWNSBOROUGH - Ron Hubbard's Personal Assistant:
"Ron had such an amazing ability for making you feel that you were just so important to him and so valued. So many people wanted to do what he wanted, wanted to show him their best efforts, wanted to be part, you know it was 'wait for me, let me come along with this wonderful game you're playing'."

Central to the game was Hubbard's E-meter, a form of lie-detector which he claimed could electrically detect emotional charge. Students spent hours, days, months, sometimes years going over painful events or engrams in this or their past lives trying to make the needle float - proof that the engram was now cleared from their memories.

Hubbard had designed an ingenious commercial product. The more past lives, the more memories, the more engrams to be cleared, all in a complex series of expensive courses.

HANA ELTRINGHAM - Hubbard's Deputy at Sea:
"Making money, I think, to Hubbard was paramount. He wasn't that interested in it for himself. He did have perks, he did have his cars, his motorbikes, his books, his good food and things like that and eventually he had his villas and he had his estates and so on but the money that he wanted predominantly was for power." Hubbard wanted to create a world-wide army of Scientologists. Going clear was only the first step. After that, further courses could improve your IQ, improve your work, turn you into a superman.

PAM KEMP:
"The purpose of Scientology was to make the able more able, and he was always striving for that, and in everything he did I think he was looking at that. Now his idea was that if you could get everybody looking in the same direction then you'd have a very powerful nation, you see."

This photograph, composed by Ron Hubbard himself, betrays an extraordinary ambition he held for Scientology.

HANA ELTRINGHAM:
"The entire objective was to find a place that Hubbard could eventually turn into his own kingdom, with his own government, his own passports, his own monetary system, in other words his own principality, that he would be the benign dictator of. That was the objective."

RAY KEMP:
"He had been having some auditing and doing some investigative auditing and looking at past lives and past experiences and he ran into what he thought might be the past life of Cecil Rhodes so he went to Rhodesia to check out what he had discovered in his auditing."

HANA ELTRINGHAM:
"He was there to attempt to create a Scientology community in the country and eventually turn the country over into a Scientology country. He was looking for a homebase for Scientology."

Hubbard's vision of becoming a latter-day Rhodes failed. The Rhodesian Government became suspicious of him and his visa was not renewed. Back in England, Hubbard was also under attack. Parents were worried by strange communications from children who had fallen under Scientology's thrall.

MRS HENSLOW - parent of Scientologist:
"There was a letter from her saying that she was disconnecting from me. You're probably familiar with this, you've seen it in the papers, but that I was destroying her and that she didn't want to see me again. That was it. Karen, it was signed."

The newspapers were accusing him of being a fraud and lobbied the government to launch an enquiry. Hubbard decided there was only one answer. He would take to the high seas. With his loyal band of disciples he would move himself and his empire outside any government's jurisdiction.

HANA ELTRINGHAM:
"At one point he turned round and said to us in a very masterful way, in a very, almost ambassadorial sort of way, he said, 'It's perfectly all right to step outside the law, because the law itself is aberrated, so in order to achieve our ends, that gives us licence to step outside the law."

Hubbard's followers were about to see the consequences of life beyond the law as their messiah became their dictator.

Source: http://www.xenu.net/entheta/entheta/media/tv/secret/secret2.html

SECRET LIVES - L. Ron Hubbard

Part 3

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Part 3 - RealAudio, 2607K (21m 10s)

In 1967, with his own navy of Scientologists, the Sea Organisation of Ron Hubbard set sail. Hana Eltringham, then 24, went with him. She had never crewed on a large ship before, but Hubbard detected that she was unusually well equipped for naval command.

HANA ELTRINGHAM:
"Hubbard called me in to his cabin and stood right in the doorway of his cabin, fiddling with his E-meter and started asking me questions about when I had last been a captain. This could only be past lives because I had never been a captain in this life. So I started, you know, thinking back and came up with this past experience about being a space captain of a space ship and being blown up in space and the planet was being invaded and all this fighting and blasting going on and so forth, and at the end of it he peered over the E-meter at me and he said 'Were you one of the Loyal Officers?' and at that point I got this up-rush and I felt good. I must have been one of these Loyal Officers, I must have been one of the elite, you know."

The young Hana was appointed captain of Hubbard's number 2 ship, a 400-ton trawler. His flagship was a 3,000 ton converted cattle ferry. On board, Hubbard had a personal guard, called the Commodore's Messengers.

GERRY ARMSTRONG:
"They took care of everything for him, they dressed him, they got him ready for bed, they lit his cigarettes, they held his ashtray."

MIKE GOLDSTEIN - Hubbard's financial controller:
"Most of the messengers were young girls - 13,14,15. They were an extension of his communication, so when somebody saw them on the ship or they came up to them, it was like you were talking to him."

On one occasion, Gerry Armstrong, who had been sent on a shore errand, was visited by one of Hubbard's messengers.

GERRY ARMSTRONG:
"This was Terri, who was later to be my wife. She came to me where I was working and said 'The Commodore wants to know, is it true that when you were ashore, you went to the US Embassy and applied for some 30-some-odd visas?' And I said 'Yes sir' because that's how you respond to the messenger Her next message was, 'The Commodore says you're a fucking asshole!' "

The attacks on Scientology had pitched Hubbard into one of his periodic depressions. His response was to take it out on his followers, on sea and land. He designed a new disciplinary code called 'Ethics' which put many of them into what he called 'lower conditions of existence' like 'Liability', 'Doubt', or 'Treason'. To rise out of these conditions, penances were required. Liability, for example, required you to 'deal an effective blow to Scientology's enemies'.

VICTORIA DOWNSBOROUGH - crew member, Avon River:
"Everybody was supposedly in one of these lower conditions, which was quite astonishing because everybody really loved Ron, and wanted to contribute to having whatever his dreams might be come true."

PAM KEMP:
"What happened was it became a very heavy, almost military organisation. People changed. I think people became scared. They were scared of 'Ethics', scared of what would happen, so they became very intimidated."

At sea the cruelty extended to children. On one occasion, Hubbard was infuriated by a small boy who had unwittingly chewed a telex.

HANA ELTRINGHAM:
"He put this 4� year old little boy - Derek Greene - into the chain locker for two days and two nights. It's a closed metal container, it's wet, it's full of water and seaweed, it smells bad. But Derek was sitting up, on the chain, in this place, on his own, in the dark, for two days and two nights. He was not allowed to go to the potty. I mean he had to go in the chain locker on his own, soil himself. He was given food. And I never went near it, the chain locker while he was in there, but people heard him crying. That is sheer, total brutality. That is child abuse."

GERRY ARMSTRONG:
"People were frightened of him. He was the boss, he was the dictator. He could order anyone to do anything on board. He was ruthless, he could be, at times, charming. But he could also be very belligerent, and he could also be very uncaring and cruel."

Yet Hubbard's disciples continued to believe in him. In 1968, he took a select few around the Mediterranean on his yacht, the Enchanter, on a project he called the 'Mission into Time'. The task was to find treasure that Hubbard had buried during his previous lives.

HANA ELTRINGHAM:
"We were in a tizzy, you know, all was excitement at this upcoming, very exciting mission. And I was amongst one of the chosen, and we sailed off with our metal detectors and went to a variety of locations and did find some metal at the basement of what he claimed used to be a temple in which he had liaisons with some priestess during his trips to Sardinia. There was metal buried down below. He was very triumphant during those times. It was very heady stuff for us people, it had a very magical, magnetic, hypnotising effect on the followers."

Hubbard was also engaged on a further great expansion of Scientology. Once a Scientologist reached the state of 'clear' he became an Operating Thetan or OT. Hubbard now designed a series of secret OT levels. Each one was part of an unfolding saga which revealed that we are all infested by 'thetans' - the souls of exiles from the Galactic Federation, which under Prince Xenu ruled this sector of the Galaxy 95 million years ago.

If you ever reach the top OT level you will have crossed the 'Bridge to Total Freedom.' As always in Scientology, each OT level could only be reached after an expensive course. Did Hubbard believe it, or was he having his followers on?

CYRIL VOSPER:
"He probably always knew he was running a con. He must have known that much of the stuff he was talking about was a lot of rubbish. But I think that after a while, when he found there were thousands of people, with the adulation around the planet for this man, I think they started to take him over. I think he began to believe that he was, if not God, then very close to God."

Hubbard's new cosmology was accompanied by new forms of punishment on board ship. Crew members who displeased him were liable to be thrown overboard before being retrieved from the harbour below. If they re-offended they were tied up and blindfolded first.

HANA ELTRINGHAM:
"I saw one woman, Julia Lewis Salmon, from the United States, thrown overboard. This woman must have been in her fifties. She was - had her hands and I think her feet tied, maybe only her hands tied and a blindfold, but she went over. She was so panicked by the thought of being thrown over this way - she was standing on the edge of the deck, panicked, beside herself, shouting. And I was standing on the A deck with Hubbard and his other aides, watching this going on. And Julia didn't jump over, she had to be pushed over, because she was incapable, she was in such a fit."

JIM DINCALCI:
"He saw everyone suspiciously and assumed everyone was intentionally attacking him. Governments were attacking him, and then everyone around, who made a mistake, were attacking him, and the only thing he could do would be to attack back."

In 1973 a French court started proceedings against Hubbard for fraud. He had left his ship, which was berthed in Morocco and went to live in hiding in New York, where he was looked after by Jim Dincalci.

To turn the tables on his enemies he devised a bizarre plan called 'Snow White'. Its stated aim was to correct false reports about Scientology. It led to Scientology members infiltrating government departments. Hubbard even issued a reading list for learning the black arts of espionage.

ROBERT VAUGHN YOUNG:
"He believed that there was an international cabal that was in control of the attack on him around the world as well as all the attacks in various countries. And so 'Snow White' was written to find this cabal, find all the connections between these enemy groups, and to expose them, to destroy them. It was done through infiltration, in some cases it was done through burglary. It was just pure military intelligence."

Having instigated 'Snow White' Hubbard rejoined his ship in the Canary Islands. There he had a serious motorbike accident. His mood dramatically worsened.

HANA ELTRINGHAM:
"This was his period which I called the pouting, the crying, the mad period where he would cry and throw things against the wall, the bulkheads and pout and scream. Right towards the tail end of that he created the RPF, the 'Rehabilitation Project Force'."

The RPF was yet another correctional regime. Its orders were fearsome. As ship's captain it was Hana Eltringham's job to implement them.

HANA ELTRINGHAM:
"I was absolutely horrified when I read them, because they talked about the creation of this - pretty much like a slave labour camp. Those weren't the words used but that was the impression given. Where the unwanteds, those found wanting, seriously wanting were sent, and they were to be kept in this with no rights, no freedoms, no privileges of any kind. Pretty much the only rights they were allowed were a little bit of sleep each day, food leftovers. The harshest treatment, they were not allowed to speak to any of the crew. It was very, very, very bad that this was going on, but Hubbard's statement to us was that it is going to take a lot more Ethics, a lot more punishment than anyone has, can easily face up to, to get this whole world back in shape, and at that point, I believed that statement."

JIM DINCALCI:
"Human emotion and reactions is the way humans were. And he didn't specially regard humans very highly. He liked the idea of the 'doll bodies' that were in other civilisations. Doll bodies didn't have human emotions and reactions . They were, I guess, like Spock, you know. Just very analytical, you just get the job done. No emotion there. Love is not a sentiment that's known or cared for, and to me that's the tragedy because he put that, I feel, into the organisation, into the way of being in the organisation."

Hubbard even consigned his own son, Quentin, who was a senior auditor on the ship, to the RPF.

MIKE GOLDSTEIN:
"Quentin really was a real sweet kid. He was a real nice guy, and very soft-spoken and it was very difficult for him being Hubbard's son, and being put in a very high position, and I don't think he was that interested in it. He just wanted to be a pilot and also the fact that he was gay and that's a very tough thing in Scientology, to be gay. Especially that kid, to be Hubbard's son, to be this top technical person, and to be gay. Oh, that would be a horrible thing to be wrestling with."

Quentin was sent to the RPF, after he committed the sin of trying to commit suicide. Two years later, he succeeded.

JIM DINCALCI:
"Hubbard saw it as a betrayal, because everything was referenced around him, the world was doing everything to him. This technology that was supposed to work, didn't even work on the senior person of all Scientology, you know, Hubbard and his son. No, he just saw that as an attack from his son. You know, the love was gone. He had lost love."

In 1975 Hubbard decided it was time to come ashore. He sent scouts to look for a suitable land base. They settled on Clearwater, in the rich state of Florida.

HANA ELTRINGHAM:
"He stated coming ashore would be profitable. Because we could get so many more people to the Flag Land Base, as it was to be called, for auditing and training. And he also wanted to concentrate on getting professionals to the Land Base because of course they had more accessible money. They had pension funds, they had children's education funds, and some of these he named that were accessible."

Hubbard knew Scientology would be unwelcome, so he devised a top-secret battle plan. He called it 'Operation Goldmine". Using a covername - 'United Churches of Florida' - Hubbard issued secret orders to take over the town.

GABRIEL CAZARES - former Mayor of Clearwater:
"These orders, in effect, very clearly stated, move into this area. Find out who your friends are, develop them, find out who your enemies are, destroy them. And then move into every possible area of community life, business, social, religious, education."

The plan worked. Clearwater is a Scientology bastion. Scientology owns many prime sites. Big-name Scientologists like Lisa-Marie Presley have moved in.

MIKE GOLDSTEIN:
"You could get all the big high-rollers, you could get the people with the dollars, and you could make a fortune. And I believe the income for a week, this was like in 1978/1979 would be somewhere, sort of half a million dollars a week. I mean, that's where the big bucks started to be made, when you could do that."

With the money rolling in, Hubbard moved to California, where he'd play his last great role. His ambition was to film sci-fi blockbusters based on his books, but he ended up making Scientology training films.

JIM DINCALCI:
"The movie mogul - Cecil B DeMille. You know, it was like he was. He tried to be bigger than life. But he just wasn't. So he would make these extravagant sets. They were ludicrous. They were not big productions. They were just silliness. They were egomaniac. He tried to be blustery and big and powerful, but if you looked, just stepped and observed, you could see that he had fear about everything. And finally the fear came down to dust particles, little teeny dust particles."

GERRY ARMSTRONG:
"He had phobias about dust, he had phobias about smells, he had phobias about sounds. He would hear sounds that weren't there and he would scream at the sound technician. He would see things that weren't there and he would scream at the people who were framing the shot. And he would smell smells that weren't there and he would have people rinse his clothing some 13 or 15 or however many times."

In 1977, while Hubbard was away making movies, the FBI caught up with the Snow White operation and raided Scientology headquarters in Los Angeles and Washington. Hubbard's wife, Mary Sue and eight other Scientology executives were convicted and sentenced for conspiracy and stealing government documents.

Hubbard disappeared, never to be seen publicly again. After living in a succession of hiding places, he ended up on this secluded ranch in the California hills. Secrecy has veiled his final years. But one man, Robert Vaughn Young, who was then a Scientology public relations officer, was later given a description of Hubbard by one of his guardians. This and evidence from Hubbard's autopsy report, paint a sad picture.

ROBERT VAUGHN YOUNG:
"He had grown a beard, he had grown his long hair, the nails were long, very much in the same problem as they found with Howard Hughes, unkempt nails. Neighbours - there was a neighbour that walked in on him one day and he had become very frightened, and suddenly scurried out of the barn. He was frightened to meet people, he was terrified of meeting any new people. He was disappearing down, down, down into this little strange world of his. The irony of this is that this was a man who was promulgating and telling the world that 'with my technology and ideas, you can get bigger and bigger and bigger,' and yet he was shrinking down until finally he was hiding."

On January 24th 1986, Ron Hubbard died. The Church of Scientology said he'd simply "quit his body to continue his work elsewhere".

ROBERT VAUGHN YOUNG:
"Him dying suddenly made him very mortal. And the last thing we could have was for Hubbard to be mortal. So a story had to be designed and the story is that he went off to research the next level. What is amazing is how the Scientologists bought this. Without any question, they bought it."

Today the L. Ron Hubbard image is carefully protected by the Church of Scientology. It says he is the greatest humanitarian in history. Hollywood has named a street after him and millions of dollars roll into Scientology every year. It continues to preach that Hubbard's teachings are the best solution to the mental problems of the world. The personal tragedy is that one mind Scientology did not appear to help was that of its founder.

 

 

Transcripted by Jon Ritson

Converted to HTML by Chris Owen

Produced and directed by Jill Robinson

Source: http://www.xenu.net/entheta/entheta/media/tv/secret/secret3.html

«THE FALSE PROPHECY OF L. RON HUBBARD»

L Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, gives a lecture on the 3rd October 1968 on board his ship: 'Apollo.' This lecture is the tenth in the series and it is titled: 'Assists.' I've omitted the first 43 minutes and approximately the latter 20 minutes of this lecture. So what you hear is just the unedited middle section of this idiotic lecture.

This audio was made to educate the public about religious deception and false prophecy. So with regard to copyright I appeal to the United States Fair Use Act of 1976 (code 17).

Un messie auto-proclamé

Télévision: Channel 4, ANGLETERRE

Part 1

Mercredi 19 Novembre 1997, 21 heures

En 1967, dotée de sa marine de scientologues, l'Organisation Maritime du Commodore Hubbard prit la mer. Hana Eltringham avait 24 ans. Elle n'avait jamais navigué sur un navire, mais Hubbard crut savoir qu'elle serait particu- lièrement capable pour le commandement maritime.

John Ritson a transcrit une partie de l'émission parue fin 1997 sur Hubbard, dans "Channel 4" Le titre:

Les vies secrètes d'Hubbard, par quelques uns de ceux qui l'ont connu

VOIX OFF: "Nous sauvions le Monde, nous étions persuadés qu'Hubbard était le nouveau Sauveur, que ses techniques et sa connaissance jointes à sa majesté mèneraient finalement l'humanité à un stade d'illumination : c'est ce que nous faisions."

"Je ressentais en lui des choses que je croyais dangereuses. Dominé par son magnétisme, j'avais toutefois dit à ma compagne de chambrée que si jamais j'avais à l'épouser, il faudrait qu'elle me ligote et m'emprisonne à la maison..."

"J'étais subjuguée: j'étais là, en face de l'homme le plus puissant du cosmos: ce n'était pas seulement une superstar, c'était Dieu que je rencontrais , avec tous ses signes."

Lafayette Ron Hubbard a créé l'une des sectes les plus riches et les plus controversées de notre époque : l'église de scientologie. Il passa une bonne part de sa vie sur mer, fuyant ceux qui l'accusaient d'être un charlatan doublé d'un escroc. Mais, que ce soit pour lui-même, ou pour les millions de gens qui le suivirent à un moment ou à un autre, il était  le plus grandiose des gourous ayant jamais existé.
 

HUBBARD:

"Vous pouvez dire au moins une chose à propos de la Dianétique et de la Scientologie, désolé si ça vous semble curieux, mais n' importe qui n'est pas forcément capable d'écrire un livre qui ouvre les oreilles au monde".

Plus étonnante encore fut l'existence de Ron Hubbard: c'est celle d'un écrivain de science-fiction s'auto-proclamant Messie.

Dès le début, Ron Hubbard avait décidé que son histoire deviendrait légendaire. Né en 1911, iil il disait lors d'une émission radiophonique avoir été élevé dans le ranch de son grand-père au Montana, ranch supposé couvrir le quart de l'état. Tout jeune, il dressait les mustangs et chassait le coyote, ajoutant avoir été élevé avec les gardes frontière et être devenu frère de sang des indiens  Blackfoot (Pieds-Noirs) locaux.

Tous ces contes étaient mervceilleux - mais ce qu'on sait à coup sûr,  c'est qu'il allait à la petite étable où son grand-père prenait des chevaux en pension et qu'il fut élevé dans une maison ordinaire, fils de parents américains ordinaires. Son père s'était engagé dans la Marine américaine vers la fin de la Première Guerre Mondiale. Adolsecent, Hubbard a passé ses vacances à l'île de Guam où se son père était en garnison.

Il a voyagé en Chine et en Orient. Prèt à l'aventure, il alla prospecter l'or à Porto-Rico ; encore étudiant, il mena même une expédition d'exploration en mer pour découvrir des pirates dans les Caraïbes . Mais il ne pouvait s'empècher d'en faire trop: un livre scientologue annonçait quelques années plus tard qu'il avait séjourné avec des bandits du Tibet - où il ne mit jamais les pieds.

CYRIL VOSPER - Membre du personnel d'Hubbard:

"Il en a tant dit à propos de ses exploits en Amérique du Sud, aux Indes Orientales ou ailleurs, qu'il lui aurait fallu vivre au moins 483 ans pour avoir eu le temps de tout faire, mais ce n'est pas l'essentiel: tout cela était très distrayant, tant qu'il n'en profita pas pour len faire une religion."

ROBERT VAUGHN YOUNG - Porte-Parole de la scientologie, chargé des relations avec les médias:

"Vous savez, il écrivait de petites histoires dans ses agendas, des aventures en mer, des contes; et quand certains de ses acolytes les trouvèrent, ils y crurent. Par exemple, une anecdote dans laquelle il racontait son combat avec une pieuvre géante: un de ses gars la disait authentique, mais j'avais rectifié ensuite en affirmant qu'il s'agissait seulement d'une de ces historiettes qu'il mélangeait avec la réalité de son existence."

Il se maria à 22 ans avec sa première épouse, Polly; ils partirent vivre à Puget Sound, dans l'Etat de Washington [nord des USA] et eurent très vite deux enfants. Ce qu'aimait Hubbard à l'époque, c'est la voile, les voyages: mais il dût se calmer et gagner un peu d'argent. Doté de cette imagination fertile, il devint écrivain , passant des histoires d'aventure au fantastique pour faire quelques sous. Puis il passa à la science-fiction où il se vendit bien.

Deux de ses ouvrages, "Final Blackout" et "Fear" furent considérés comme des classiques. Mais son roman le plus surprenant restait sa propre vie. Son agent littéraire, Forry Ackerman était un fana de la science-fiction: Hubbard lui raconta un soir une chose bizarre qui s'était déroulée dans un hopital: c'est ce qui allait transformer toute son existence.

FORREST ACKERMAN - Agent littéraire d'Hubbard

"Il disait être mort sur la table d'opération, s'être élevé au plafond sous forme d'esprit, avoir regardé le corps qu'il avait habité, avoir haussé les épaules en pensant "Bon, et qu'est-ce que je fais, maintenant ?" Au loin, il vit un portail ornementé dont il s'approcha; le portail s'ouvrit alors comme dans un film, sans qu'on y touchât." I

l flotta dans l'ouverture et aperçut alors un condensé de tout ce qui avait jamais pu poser problème à l'humanité - vous savez, des choses du genre "d'où venons-nous, où allons-nous, les vies antérieures existent-t'elles"; et il abosrba tout le contenu de ces informations ésotériques comme une éponge, puis entendit soudain un souffle et une voix qui disait "non non, tu n'es pas encore prêt, ce n'est pas le moment"; il redescendit alors, comme s'il suivait un long cordon ombilical, jusque dans son corps: il ouvrit les yeux et dit à l'infirmière "J'étais mort, non?"

Puis il bondit de la table d'opération - j'ignore comment vous mourez, pour ensuite bondir d'une table d'opération. Il prit deux rames de papier, quelques litres de café noir bouillant, et deux jours plus tard, il avait écrit un ouvrage: "Excalibur" ou "l'Épée Noire". Et il me raconta que ceux qui le lisaient devenaient fous ou se suicidaient, ajoutant que la première fois qu'il l'avait soumis à un éditeur de New York, il était allé lui rendre visite ensuite pour savoir ce que devenait son manuscrit: l'éditeur appela le lecteur qui arriva avec le manuscrit, le balança sur le bureau et se balança ensuite par la fenètre du gratte-ciel.

L'histoire racontée par Hubbard était-elle vraie ? Excalibur devint une mystérieuse affaire. Hubbard raconté à ses amis que ce serait dangereux de le publier. Ce n'est que quarante ans plus tard que des employés d'Hubbard tombèrent sur le manuscrit qu'on croyait perdu depuis longtemps.

GERRY ARMSTRONG - Gérant de la Maison d'Hubbard

"On avait deux versions et demier d'Excalibur. Je les ai lues, je ne suis ni fou, ni mort. Il y raconte qu'Excalibur est le fruit d'un accident lors d'une extraction dentaire faite sous peroxyde d'azote.Le "décès" d'Hubbard n'était que l'effet d'une hallucination sous anesthésiques. De quelle soupe intellectuelle s'était-il donc nourri?

GERRY ARMSTRONG:

"Ca n'était pas vraiment révolutionnaire. Toute la clé qu'Hubbard avait découverte se résumait dans le fameux "Survivre" qui serait selon lui  l'unique raison d'être de toute existence, de toute vie, de tous les gens. C'est de ça qu'il fit une des bases essentielles d'une bonne part de la Dianétique et de la scientologie."

Cette idée eût beaucoup d'impact sur Hubbard. Il écrivit à Polly: "J'avais de grands espoirs de coller mon nom en lettres de feu dans l'Histoire de l'humanité, et que cela prenne un forme légendaire."

La Seconde Guerre Mondiale amena une nouvelle dimension à la légende hubbardienne. Il raconta être devenu aveugle pendant son service dans l'US Navy, mais qu'inspiré par ce qu'il avait entr'aperçu sur cette table d'opération, il s'était magnifiquement guéri lui-même.

HUBBARD EN 1968:

"Grâce à mon propre procédé et en me servant des principes que j'avais su reconnaître à l'époque, je fus en mesure de passer les tests de combat physique à 100%: le gouvernement se demanda comment c'était possible d'avoir réussi à être en forme alors que j'étais estropié et aveugle."

Voilà une affaire bien étrange, car les dossiers de guerre d'Hubbard montrent qu'il souffrait surtout d'un ulcère à l'estomac. Il y a bien quelques notes à propos de conjonctivite, rien sur la perte de la vue. Aucun rapport médical avant, pendant ou après la guerre ne contient la moindre trace de perte des yeux: on y trouve seulement des mentions concernant myopie et astigmatisme.

Après la guerre, Hubbard vint à Hollywood. Auteur de science-fiction connu, il fut admis à l'association des auteurs de Fantastique Fiction de Los Angeles. Les membres se souviennent très bien qu'il avait un pouvoir sur le mental: il était indubitablement doué pour l'hypnotisme.

FORREST ACKERMAN:

"Ron Hubbard vint au Club et réussit à hypnotiser tous les gars, moi excepté. Je tenais à rester présent et à observer. Je me souviens que ce fut fascinant: il avait dit à un type qu'il était un kangorou posé dans ses mains, et le type sautillait comme un kangourou dans la pièce."

Par écrit et lors de discussions, Hubbard commença à parler de sa nouvelle science du mental. La scientologie continuerait à affirmer les propos d'Hubbard qui prétendait non seulement s'être soigné lui-même, mais avoir guéri onze autres vétérans et quarante patients ayant des problèmes mentaux.

JEAN COX - Ecrivain

"Commencèrent à circuler des rumeurs à propos de cette nouvelle science du mental ou de cette philosophie, rumeurs accréditant l'idée qu'elle avait plus d'importance pour l'humanité que l'invention de la roue ou du feu."
.
Dans l'édition d'Astounding Magazine en Mai 1950, Hubbard publia ses découvertes époustouflantes sous forme de faits avérés. La Dianétique était enfin née. Des milliers de lettres aboutirent au Magazine. Entretemps, Hubbard avait forcé sur les touches de sa machine à écrire, plaquant ses idées dans un livre de 450 pages qui devint un best-seller, et "la Dianétique" devint  tocade nationale.

Dans sa théorie, Hubbard annonçait que le mental humain était ensorcelé par des "engrammes" - des souvenirs d'évènements douloureux - souvent imprimés sur le foetus dès avant la naissance . Il clamait qu'avec l'aide d'un thérapeute dianéticien nommé "auditeur", on pourrait soulager ces engrammes et les effacer du mental (to clear en anglais, d'où le mot Clair utilisé par les scientologues pour désigner ceux dont les engrammes auraient été effacés). A ce stade, la Dianétique n'était encore qu'une forme caricaturale de psychothérapie.

FORREST ACKERMAN:

"Bon, la Dianétique devint très populaire puisqu'elle promettait un brave monde de braves gens, tous clairs, n'ayant plus de rhumes ou plus besoin de lunettes...

Elle m'a guéri de ma peur des chiens."

 

JEAN COX:

"Parmi les choses promises sous traîtement dianétique, on croyait pouvoir faire repousser les dents perdues - n'importe quelle maladie serait guérie. Même la schizophrénie."

FORREST ACKERMAN:

"Cela ouvrait un nouveau monde, où tous les êtres seraient parfaits".

Hubbard vendit de cours de Dianétique à 500 dollars; l'argent afflua. Mais on l'accusa d'être un arnaqueur.

L. Ron Hubbard - Un messie auto-proclamé

Part 2

---

Avec son livre "La Dianétique", L. Ron Hubbard devenait le nouveau gourou de l'Amérique. Août 1950, il présentait lors d'une conférence devant 6000 spectateurs, la première "CLAIRE", selon ses données. C'était Sonya Bianca. Elle était censée se souvenir de tout, puisqu'elle était claire.

JEAN COX:

"Des membres de l'audience lui posèrent des questions. Pouvait-elle se souvenir de ce que disait le texte de la page 217 de son livre de physique? Elle ne put. Pouvait-elle se rappeler ce qu'elle avait mangé le matin du 17 Août 1946? Pas plus de succès. Alors, quelques uns des spectateurs demandèrent qu'Hubbard lui tournât le dos, et  demandèrent à Sonya la couleur de la cravate d'Hubbard. Elle ne sut pas le dire. C'est à ce moment que tout s'effondra: les gens commencèrent à quitter la salle."

Les ennuis commençaient pour Hubbard. On l'accusa de charlatanerie, la dianétique fut qualifiée d'hypnose, technique où il excellait.

BARBARA KAYE:

"Oui, j'ai toujours trouvé que c'est ce que l'homme a dans la tête qui est vraiment sexy. Il n'était pas très attirant phyisquement. Il avait la tête brillante, pas de doute. J'ai certainement pensé qu'il voulait m'épouser, et que j'aimerais l'épouser."

Cette attirance intellectuelle se transforma en une affaire; Barbara habita avec Hubbard, 40 ans,  dans un appartement d' Hollywood. Mais Hubbard avait déjà quitté Polly et s'était remarié avec sa seconde épouse, Sara. Il avait fait croire à Barbara que son mariage avec Sara était terminé, ce qui était faux.

BARBARA KAYE:

"J'ai été plutôt effarée de voir débarquer Polly avec les gosses peu après avoir aménagé. je crois qu'il était aussi embèté que moi, car quand il est venu me rapporter des choses le lendemain - l'eau de Cologne, la brosse à dents et ces trucs, il avait vraiment l'air très penaud et pas du tout content que ça se passe ainsi."

Barbara fut néanmoins rejetée. La Dianétique continuait à souffrir. Avec le succès du livre, l'argent avait commencé à rentrer - mais il ressortait aussitôt. Hubbard alla à Palm Springs pour tenter de refaire le coup du premier ouvrage avec une suite, mais les affaires, son mariage avec Sara et sa plume étaient en crise. Il demanda à Barbara de l'accompagner.

BARBARA KAYE:

"Il était tout à fait déprimé. Plus de couleur au visage, la voix à peine audible. Il m'a dit qu'il était carrément bloqué, qu'il ne travaillait qu'à cause de la date limite imposée par l'éditeur. Il pensait que son incapacité à écrire provenait des interventions malfaisantes des autres, par exemple, que Sara l'hypnotisait pendant son  sommeil et lui disait qu'il n'écrirait plus jamais. Je trouvais qu'il était paranoïaque, vous savez? Il était manifestement en pleine dépression clinique."

Ce n'était pas tout. Hubbard et Sara finirent par se séparer: leur divorce fit scandale: Sara accusait Hubbard de la torturer et disait qu'il était fou. Hubbard dénonçait Sara; la prétendant espionne à la solde des rouges, et kidnappa leur fille de treize mois. Hubbard finit par aboutir à Wichita au Kansas, et reprit contact avec Barbara.

BARBARA KAYE:

"Il m'envoya un cable, disant qu'il avait été très malade et qu'il voulait m'épouser. Je suis partie pour Wichita. Il avait l'air vraiment mal; les cheveux jusqu'aux épaules, ses ongles comme des sabots. Et j'ai trouvé une gentille note à l'hôtel pour me dire qu'il était vraiment heureux que j'arrive, qu'il m'aimait... mais j'ai aussi trouvé un type sans avenir, souffrant de problèmes psychiatriques, et je ne me suis pas vue passer mon existence avec un type pareil. Je suis repartie."

Mais Hubbard rebondit encore: il se maria pour la troisième fois, épousant une de ses étudiantes, Mary Sue Whipp. Ce mariage-là dura, Mary Sue devint son alter ego. Sa seconde femme, Sara,  fut "effacée de sa mémoire"- comme on efface un engramme.

HUBBARD:

"Combien de fois me suis-je marié? Deux fois. Je suis très heureux avec ma seconde femme, elle est adorable, et j'ai quatre enfants. Ma première épouse est décédée."

INTERVIEWER:

"Qu'est-il arrivé à votre seconde femme?"

HUBBARD:

"Je n'ai pas eu de seconde femme".

C'est en 1952 qu'Hubbard lançait son nouveau produit révolutionnaire, la scientologie. A l'origine, la Dianétique ne traîtait que de cette vie-ci. Mais dans son nouvel ouvrage, Scientologie, Une Histoire de l'Homme, Hubbard n'en restait pas là. Les corps humains étaient en fait habités par des âmes immortelles, les "thétans", dont l'origine remontait à la nuit des temps. Le fils aîné d'Hubbard a déclaré que cet ouvrage avait été élaboré à partir d'une recherche plutôt étrange: il s'agissait d'une expérimentation sous drogue.

JIM DINCALCI - Officier médical de Ron Hubbard

"LRH a donné des amphétamines à son fils Nibs, et Nibs a commencé à parler, parler, parler, poussé par le speed; il a continué comme ça, et son père continuait à le bourrer, et brusquement, il a commencé à raconter cette histoire, qu'il avait été un clam (coquillage) et il a parlé de tous ses états antérieurs sur la planète. Et qu'en a fait Hubbard? Une Histoire de l'Homme, le bouquin."

FORREST ACKERMAN:

"Soudain, vous n'êtes plus personne; "Oh oui, je suis il y a trois vies, vous savez, ou sept vies avant, ou au temps des Pharaons. Aussi, quand je me suis retrouvé à l'individu qui était un clam perdu sur une plage avec un grain de sable qui l'irrite et une perle qui pousse, j'ai décidé que j'en avais assez vu, et j'ai quitté la scientologie immédiatement."

Fin 52, Hubbard vint à Londres. Il avait encore des ennuis financiers chez lui. Un de ses partenaires financiers venait de lui envoyer l'huissier pour une dette de 9000 dollars empruntés par Hubbard. Pour faire de l'argent, il lui fallait faire de l'international, si bien qu'au lieu des créditeurs, il rencontra un nouveau groupe de fans admiratifs.

PAM KEMP - Amie et ex-scientologue
"Vous savez, il était vraiment flamboyant, je veux dire qu'il était vraiment vivant, et il promenait son Harley Davidson, on se payait des soirées, il jouait de la guitare, chantait avec son chapeau de cow-boy, et on s'amusait bien. On allait tous ensemble faire des exercices et essayer de faire tomber les képis des flics, simplement avec la pensée, et essayer de voir quel genre de pouvoirs on pouvait exercer comme ça, quelle énergie ça développait, tout ça. On s'amusait vraiment."

CYRIL VOSPER - Employé de Ron Hubbard:
"Je croyais que ça me donnerait un contrôle total sur ma propre existence. Ca a  l'air ridicule, non? mais dit comme ça...  c'est en fait ce que disait Hubbard. Il disait que tout le monde pouvait devenir dieu, rien qu'en se servant de la scientologie (ou de la dianétique, à cette époque). Et qu'on était tous en quelque sorte des Dieux déchus."

Il fallait donc créer une nouvelle église pour ces nouveaux dieux. Un des amis écrivains d'Hubbard, Lloyd Eschbach, s'est souvenu qu'à la fin d'un dîner un peu avant 1950, Hubbard avait dit qu'il "aimerait démarrer une nouvelle religion, que c'était là qu'on faisait de l'argent." Quelques années plus tard, l'Eglise de Scientologie était sur le fonts baptismaux. Il ne manquait pas de bonnes raisons pratiques de faire ainsi, surtout en Amérique.

RAYMOND KEMP - ami et ex-scientologue

"Il y a tous ces avantages fiscaux, et ces avantages constitutionnels, puisque le Gouvernement ne peut s'impliquer dans les opérations d'une église. Je crois que c'est surtout ça, plus que toute autre chose, qui l'a décidé à utiliser ce "véhicule" religieux, car on peut voir qu'il a toujours été difficile pour n'importe quel gouvernement de s'en prendre aux activités des églises."

Hubbard trouva cathédrale parfaite pour son église: le Chateau de St Hill (Saint Hill Manor) à East Grinstead, dans le Sussex. Il y jouait son nouveau rôle de hobereau. Il disait aux manants qu'il était savant et faisait des recherches sur les plantes et leurs réactions à la douleur. Sa famille et lui s'installèrent dans la société du Sussex, amenant leur clinquant américain au coeur de la Campagne pour la Sécurité Routière d'East Grinstead.

Mais les gens du cru n'avaient pas encore réalisé que St Hill deviendrait la Mecque de la Scientologie. Des "dévôts" arrivèrent du monde entier pour étudier aux pieds de leur maître.Ils payaient des milliers de £ivres pour les cours d'Hubbard. Virginia Downsborough fut l'une des pionnières du premier Cours de Clearing de St Hill.

VIRGINIA DOWNSBOROUGH - Assistante personnelle de Ron Hubbard:

"Ron avait une telle aptitude à vous faire sentir que vous comptiez beaucoup pour lui... on se sentait valorisé. Il y en avait tant désirant faire ce qu'il voulait, ou lui prouver leurs efforts, et tant qui voulaient faire partie du système... c'était quelque chose comme "attendez-moi, moi aussi j'aimerais faire partie du merveilleux jeu que vous jouez !"

Au coeur du jeu, on trouva l'électromètre de Hubbard, genre de détecteur de mensonges qu'il disait capable de détecter les charges émotionnelles. Les étudiants passèrent des heures, des jours, des mois ou des années à traverser ces engrammes douloureux de leur existence présente ou passée, tentant de faire "flotter leur aiguille" - la preuve finale que l'engramme était enfin effacé de leurs souvenirs.

Hubbard avait dessiné un produit commercial ingénieux. Plus il y avait de vies passées, plus on trouvait d'engrammes et de souvenirs à "mettre au Clair", le tout dans une série de cours chers et compliqués.

HANA ELTRINGHAM - Député d'Hubbard en Mer:

"Je crois que pour lui, il n'y a que l'argent qui ait compté. Ce n'est pas qu'il s'y intéressait tant pour lui - il avait ses joujoux, ses voitures, ses motos, ses livres, sa bouffe de luxe et des choses de ce genre, et finalement ses villas et ses terres etc, mais il voulait surtout de l'argent pour le pouvoir."Hubbard voulait créer une armée mondiale de scientologues. Devenir Clair ne fut qu'une première étape de la série menant à davantage de QI, un meilleur job, ou à vous transformer en Superman.

PAM KEMP:

"Le but de la scientologie était de rendre encore plus capable les gens capables, et c'est ce qu'il essayait, ce qu'il recherchait dans tout ce qu'il faisait. L'idée ici, c'était que si l'on pouvait faire regarder tout le monde dans la même direction, on aurait un pays vraiment puissant.

Cette photographie composée par Hubbard démontre l'extraordinaire ambition qu'il a pour sa scientologie.

HANA ELTRINGHAM:

"Toute l'affaire consistait à trouver un endroit où Hubbard puisse finalement fonder son royaume, avec son propre gouvernement, ses passeports, son propre système monétaire - en fait, sa principauté - dont il serait devenu le gentil dictateur. C'était bien le but."

RAY KEMP:

"Ayant fait de l'audition, et de l'audition de recherche/enquète, et regardé dans ses vies passées, il avait pensé avoir pu être Cecil Rhodes, si bien qu'il partit  en Rhodésie pour vérifier ce qu'il avait découvert en audition."

HANA ELTRINGHAM:

"Il y venait pour tenter de créer une communauté scientologique; en fait, il voulait tansformer le pays en pays scientologue. Il lui fallait une base pour la scientologie.

Sa vision de redevenir un Cecil Rhodes échoua. Le gouvernement Rhodésien commença à se montrer tatillon, et ne renouvela pas son visa. De retour sur le sol anglais, Hubbard y était devenu la cible de parents très ennuyés des communications bizarres reçues de leurs enfants tombés sous envoûtement scientologue.

MRS HENSLOW - parente d'une Scientologue:

"Il y avait cette lettre où elle disait qu'il déconnectait de moi! Vous comprenez probablement de quoi il s'agit, vous l'avez déjà lu dans les journaux - mais moi, lire que je détruisais ma fille et qu'elle ne voulait plus me voir... c'était comme ça. Et signé Karen."

Les journaux l'accusaient ausssi d'être un escroc: ils exigèrent une enquète de la part du gouvernement. Hubbard décida qu'une seule réponse conviendrait: il prendrait la mer. Accompagné de ses loyaux disciples, il mènerait son empire hors de toute juridiction territoriale.

HANA ELTRINGHAM:

"Une fois, il se tourna et nous annonça sur un ton excessivement solennel: 'Puisque la loi elle-même est aberrante, il est tout à fait normal désormais que nous nous situions hors de la loi si nous voulons atteindre nos buts'."

Les adeptes d'Hubbard allaient bientôt se rendre compte des conséquences de cette vie de hors-la-loi, quand leur Messie devint finalement leur dictateur. 

L. Ron Hubbard - Un messie auto-proclamé

Part 3

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Cyril Vosper, ex employé de L. Ron Hubbard:

"Il en a tant dit sur ses exploits en Amérique du Sud, aux Indes Occidentales ou ailleurs qu'il lui aurait fallu vivre au moins 483 ans pour les avoir vécus pour de bon; mais ce n'est pas le plus important: tout ça était très distrayant, tant qu'il n'en avait pas fait une religion."

Jim Dincalci, ex officier médical d'Hubbard:

"LRH a donné des amphétamines à son fils aîné (Nibs), et Nibs a commencé à parler, parler, parler, poussé par le speed. Et il a continué comme ça, et son père continuait à lui en refiler, et brusquement, il a commencé cette histoire, qu'il était un clam (un coquillage bivavlve, ndt), et il a parlé de tous ses états antérieurs sur terre. Et qu'en a fait Hubbard? Une Histoire de l'Homme, le bouquin."

Hana Eltringham, Députée d'Hubbard en Mer:

Je crois qu'Hubbard était le champion pour faire du fric. Ce n'est pas que ça l'intéressait peut-être tant que ça en soi: il avait sa gratte, ses bagnoles, ses motos, ses livres, sa bonne bouffe  et d'autres trucs de ce genre, villas, biens fonciers etc., mais ce qu'il voulait surtout, c'était avoir de l'argent pour  le pouvoir.

Tout le truc, c'était de trouver un endroit où Hubbard puisse faire son royaume, avec son gouvernement, ses propres passeports, son système monétaire, sa propre principauaté en quelque sorte, dont il aurait été le gentil dictateur. C'était son but.

Une fois, il  nous a parlé très cérémonieusement, le ton d'ambassade, quoi, et il nous a sorti "Ce fut tout à fait convenable d'être hors la loi, car la Loi est aberrée, si bien que si nous voulons atteindre nos buts, cela nous donne toute latitude de nous situer hors de la Loi."

Voix Off

Les attaques contre la scientologie avaient précipité Hubbard dans une de ses dépressions habituelles: en réaction, il s'en prit à ses adpetes, sur terre et sur mer. il fabriqua un nouveau code disciplinaire nommé Ethique, mettant ses staffs dans des conditions inférieures, telles que : ennemi, trahison, Risque ou Doute. Sortir de ces conditions basses exigeait qu'on fasse pénitence; par exemple, la condition de Doute exigeait que le scientologue "délivre un coup efficace aux ennemis de la scientologie".

Victoria Downborough, membre du staff sur l'Avon River (premier yacht d'Hubbard)

"Tout un chacun était supposé se trouver dans l'une de ces conditions, ce qui est plutôt surprenant, car tous ces gens aimaient vraiment Ron Hubbard, et se seraient fait couper en quatre pour faire réaliser les rèves qu'il avait."

Hana Eltringham:

Il a collé ce gamin de 4 ans et demi - Derek Greene - dans le puits d'ancre du bateau, pendant deux jours et deux nuits. C'est une sorte de local en fer, fermé, plein d'humidité et d'eau de mer, ça pue. Mais Derek était assis là, sur la chaîne, et ça a duré deux jours. On ne lui permettait même pas d'aller faire ses besoins: il a fallu qu'il reste là, à se faire dessus. On lui donnait à manger; je n'étais pas dans les parages, mais les gens l'ont entendu pleurer. Ca, c'est du pur sadisme, c'est de la violence gratuite contre un gosse."

Voix Off

"En 1973, un tribunal français a commencé un procès pour escroquerie envers Hubbard. Il avait quitté le bateau, amarré au Maroc, pour se cacher à New-York, où Jim Dincalci s'occupait de lui. Pour en finir avec les attaques des ennemis, il a imaginé une plan, "Blanc comme Neige" (Snow White): le but annoncé était de faire corriger les faux rapports sur la scientologie. Les scientologues sont allés s'infiltrer dans les services gouvernementaux; Hubbard a même fait une liste de choses pour apprendre l'art de l'espionnage."

Robert Vaughn Young (ancien porte parole de la secte pour le Monde entier)

Il croyait qu'il existait une cabale internationale aux commandes d'un moyen pour  démolir la scientologie. Snow White était supposé découvrir qui était derrière la cabale, trouver les relations et connections entre ces groupes ennemis de la sciento, les faire connaître et les détruire. On cambriolait pour y parvenir. C'était du service secret militaire, tout simplement.

Gerry Armstrong

Il souffrait de phobies quant à la poussière, aux odeurs, aux sons: il entendait des sons qui n'existaient pas, et engueulait le technicien du son; il voyait des choses qui n'étaient pas là, et hurlait contre ceux qui prenaient les photos; et il sentait des odeurs inexistantes, si bien qu'il fallait rincer son lige douze ou quinze fois...

Robert Vaughn Young:

Il s'était laissé pousser la barbe, les cheveux, les ongles; à peu près comme Howard Hugues: ses ongles étaient mal entretenus. Les voisins? Un jour, il y en a un qui était entré le voir, Hubbard était effrayé, il a carrément déguerpi... il avait peur de rencontrer des gens, surtout les nouveaux, ça le terrifiait. Il disparaissait là-bas, au fond de son propre univers étrange. L'ironie, c'est que c'ait été le même homme qui promulgât ses lois et technologies au monde, qui dise aussi qu'on pouvait devenir de plus en plus grandiose, et que ce soit lui  qui rétrecisse et qu'il ait  fini par se terrer et ne voir presque plus personne."

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LA CONTRE ATTAQUE DES SCIENTOLOGUES...

Eugène Ingram et les bras enquêteurs de la secte continuent à harceler les gens qui font ce documentaire: voir à ce propos l'article du Daily Telegraph.

"Il avait répandu l'idée que les producteurs de films pouvaient se trouver impliqués dans une sombre affaire de conspiration internationale, d'extorsion et blanchiement d'argent. Simon Berthon, producteur du film sur Hubbard qu'on a pu voir hier soir sur Channel 4 a qualifié les méthodes du détective Ingram comme "forme particulièrement vicieuse de harrassement". il a dit que les agents scientologues se sont débrouillés  pour établir quels numéros de téléphone lui-même et son assistante Jill Robertson avaient composé sur leurs propres lignes. Ensuite, ces numéros avaient été appelés par une femme se prétendant chargée d'une enquète sur les habitudes télévisuelles.

"La femme promettait un an d'abonnement à un magazine si on répondait à cette enquète - elle forçait ainsi les contacts du producteur à révéler leurs adresses. Peu après, le détective Ingram de Los Angelès arrivait auxdites adresses, disant enquèter sur M. Berthon et Mme Robinson, en relation avec un affaire de conspiration internationale, extorsion et blanchiement de fonds. M. Berthon dit qu'il semble que ces affirmations soient parties de l'achat par sa société d'un fonds d'archives valant 20000 F, sur la scientologie.

Mme Robinson, 45 ans, a dit hier que huit de ses relations avaient reçu des visites d'Ingram, y compris ses parents et son coiffeur. Quatre d'entre eux avaient reçu auparavant des appels de la femme qui enquêtait sur la télévision.

Dimanche, une ami de M. Berton recevait un homme disant être détective privé, pour découvrir qui avait mis de l'argent dans une affaire de blanchiement. Il a montré une photo de M. Berthon montant en voiture, et a demandé à cette dame si elle le connaissait; puis il a afffirmé que M. Berthon blanchissait de l'argent, et que c'était un grave délit. L'amie a dit "J'ai répondu que ça m'étonnait, car M. Berthon était tout à fait honorable, et jouissait d'une bonne réputation. " Pas une fois il n'a  mentionné la scientologie.

Je me demandais "Mais comment diable a-t'il pu avoir mon numéro?" - nous avons ensuite remonté la piste. Ce qui m'intrigue beaucoup, c'est la façon dont il s'y est pris pour avoir les numéros que Simon avait appelés."

Graeme Wilson, Directeur des affaires publiques de l'église pour le Royaume-Uni, dit que M. Ingram a été engagé par un des avocats américains de l'église, Elliot Abelson, lui-même travaillant pour l'église. Il a faxé une lettre d'Abelson au Telegraph,  à DJ Freeman, fondé de pouvoir de M. Berthon, lui affirmant que rien dans la conduite de M. Ingram ne paraissait anormal. M. Abelson affirmait dans cette lettre avoir engagé M. Ingram pour une affaire internationale de conspiration avec tentative d'extorsion de fonds aux Eglises de Scientologie, en usant de l'appui des médias. M. Berthon et Mme Robinson ayant été en contact avec certaines des personnes en cause, M. Abelson disait "En conséquence, j'ai demandé à M. Ingram, pour les besoins de l'affaire, de déterminer si certaines personnes, dont Mme Robinson et le producteur Simon Berthon, avaient conscience de quelque chose qui puisse prouver ces allégations."

La Scientologie menace de porter plainte contre Channel 4, d'après un message reçu sur le net, en provenance de Chris Owen:

"Ils ont aussi annoncé leur intention de poursuivre Channel 4 sur ce programme: ils disent que c'est " extrêmement incorrect, qu'il s'agit d'une vulgaire caricature négative d'Hubbard. La secte a engagé l' avocat dur à cuire spécialisé dans les poursuites en diffamation "Peter Carter-Ruck", dans ce but. Ils l'ont  laissé tomber  en raison d'une dispute survenue au sujet de la campagne de leur contre-attaque publicitaire.La scientologie entreprend une grande campagne de pub dès lundi pour tenter de contrer Channel 4 et 3BM productions, producteur de l'émission. Les avocats travaillant pour eux les ont cependant avertis que leurs annonces étaient nettement diffamatoires et qu'ils se feraient copieusement enviander s'ils passaient leurs annonces. Le porteur du message s'est fait mettre dehors, et Carter Ruck avec lui.

Carter-Ruck est l'un des avocats anglais les mieux payés: il a une réputation phénoménale en matière de procès en diffamation. Pas de doute que les finances scientologues en aient pris un coup, mais pas autant que s'ils avaient perdu leur procès!

Les ennuis ne se sont pas pour autant arrètés: les avocats de Channel 4 se sont saisis de l'affaire et ont prévenu la scientologie qu'ils lui feraient la vie dure s'ils passaient les annonces. On en les pas vues jusque là! (Chris Owen)

 

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