When I saw some of the coverage of the Freewinds being quarantined in Saint Lucia for measles, I emailed the following to various media that appeared to be interested.
The situation also prompted Caroline and me to look at what Scientology inventor L. Ron Hubbard claimed in scripture about measles, polio, vaccinations, etc. What he said is whacked-out, and still cult scripture and still in force on the Freewinds. The people running Scientology sell and deliver on-board courses that indoctrinate Scientologists into this madness. See the “Infectious Disease Angle” on our Scientology Research site. 1
Dear ___:
Your story reminded me of how we dealt with vaccinations on the Apollo, which was Scientology’s Sea Organization “flagship” in the 1970s. The organization purchased the Freewinds in the 1980s.
I was the “Ship’s Representative” or “Legal Officer” on the Apollo and had to deal with crew and passenger vaccinations.
On multiple occasions on the Apollo, we received over 400 cholera vaccine doses from European health authorities. We dumped the vaccine, told the authorities we had vaccinated all the crew, and the authorities stamped all our vaccination books. Here’s my vac book from that period http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/writings/historical/vaccination.html
Following is an excerpt from an account of my Scientology years that I wrote in 1982, a few months after escaping the cult. It contains some history of the Scientologists getting around vaccination requirements that might be applicable to the current measles quarantine of the Freewinds. The bold red paragraphs describe our vaccination fraud.
My sites: http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50k/legal/index.php
https://gerryarmstrong.ca/
http://armstrong-op.gerryarmstrong.ca/
http://suppressiveperson.org/
Please feel free to contact me.
Sincerely,
Gerry Armstrong
The following numbered paragraphs describe roughly some of my duties as Ship’s Rep.
A 1. Clearing the ship in and out of port. I prepared the necessary documents for the port officials, such as the crew list, bonded stores list, declarable items list, motor vehicles list, etc. I met and entertained the port officials when the ship arrived in port and got the documents accepted, signed, or whatever and ship cleared into port. When the ship sailed from port the process was reversed.
2. Clearing passports. If a person left the ship on mission or to go home his passport had to be stamped by port immigration into the country. When arriving at the ship his passport, which had been stamped as entering the country when he had arrived at the airport, had to be stamped as leaving the country when he went on board. I also kept all the passports of all people on board locked up. These were collected from a person arriving as soon as he came on board and were only issued if the person had completed a lengthy routing form when leaving the ship which included sec-checks and “ethics approval”.
3. Clearing baggage or goods on and off the ship.The procedure varied port to port and according to what was being cleared. Sometimes documentation had to be prepared; often it was just opening the package or bag for the Customs guard on board. Generally a guard stayed on board while the ship was in port and I was responsible for his needs.
4. Dealing with the ship’s agent in port.
5. Making arrangements with shore suppliers for various services – water, telex machine use, fuel, garbage removal, etc.
6. Handling the documentation which kept us “legal” as a “yacht” – crew list, seaman’s books, vaccination books, SOLAS (Convention for Safety of Life at Sea) certificate, etc.
7. Arranging for pilot, tug boats, berth in port, etc.
8. Writing contracts for jobs to be done by shore companies or craftsmen, eg. construction on board, dry-docking, refit of the vessel, etc.
9. Renewal of passports and obtaining visas for crew members travelling to countries where they were needed.
10. Business with the Panamanian authorities and our agents in Panama. The ship was of Panamanian registry so normal ship consular services were handled by any Panamanian consul, and there were certain things which required direct contact with Panama.
11. Notarizations or legalizations. These were done with local notaries or consular officials.
12. Assisting with Port Captain’s office PR functions, such as visits to port officials, arranging gifts, entertaining on board or holding parties.
I was very good at the Ship’s Rep job, and much of what I did was valid and worthwhile. Some of my actions and what was expected of me, however, were part of the over-all scene of deceit and schizophrenia.
I learned early about whiskey and cigarette PR.
In the Port Captain’s office we kept cases of bonded whiskey and cigarettes which we used to “grease the lines” in port. Port guards were given a bottle or a carton if something was allowed on or off the ship without having to go through the customary clearance procedures. Given enough American cigarettes or English Scotch any port guard looked the other way.
Whiskey and cigarettes were given out liberally to immigration, police, customs, pilots, tug boat people, agents, chandlers, etc. It was all illegal, but “acceptable” public relations. It was tantamount to bribery.
A number of times people “blew” from the ship – left without permission and without going through the required lengthy routing off procedure. Their passports were locked up, so they would go to the nearest consulate or embassy of their country and apply for a passport for travel. There were a couple of times in Lisbon, Portugal, where I personally staked out the US and British Embassy to catch the person who had blown before he got to the Embassy and got a passport. Once I was successful, and brought the person back to the ship for “handling”.
If a person made it to the Embassy or Consulate, and if as a result of his being questioned about the loss of his passport, the fact that he had been on board the “Apollo” was mentioned, and word got back to the ship, someone in the Port Captain’s office would soon contact the Embassy or Consulate to discredit the person who had left the ship.
Usually such a person would claim that his passport was locked up, and that he couldn’t get it and wasn’t allowed to leave the ship (which was true). A Port Captain’s Office person would deliver the passport to the Embassy and claim that the person was lying. I was personally involved in one such operation against a blown crew member, John Batson, who went to the American Consular official on Madeira.
The basis for this kind of operation was Hubbard’s policies the “Dead Agent” technique, This was an essential part of the training in the Port Captain’s office. The theory was that you showed an agent or someone attacking you to have lied on some point and the enemy he has lied about you to kills him, hence dead agent. Through many years in the SO I became personally proficient at discrediting anyone who caused the organization problems, and I became hardened to the fact.
That was the way it worked. In truth it has been Hubbard’s modus operandi for many years:
One of the things which caused me the most anxiety on the ship’s rep post was keeping the ship at a berth while in port. For some reason Hubbard evaluated how well the Port Captain’s office or I was doing by the ship’s not having to move while in port. If we had to go to anchor or move the ship at all because another vessel needed the berth I had failed at my job.
The fact was that the port authorities operated on a strict commercial basis. Their job was to make money for the port and country. The “Apollo,” being a yacht, did not pay anywhere near the port fees a passenger or cargo vessel did. Additionally a passenger or cargo ship had to be alongside a dock in order to operate at all. You couldn’t load or unload cargo or passengers at anchor. So when the port was full, usually the “Apollo,”being a lower priority commercially, would be moved, either to anchor or to another berth. Since we often stayed several weeks at a time in a port, we sometimes had to move a number of times. In contrast to a passenger or cargo ship, there was most of the time absolutely no reason why we had to have a berth. I can only conclude that it was another of Hubbard’s insanity-makers.
Any move would upset Hubbard and he would come down hard on the Port Captain’s office, sometimes with ethics conditions, sometimes just with message runs to us or derogatory comments. He also invented stories that I was to tell to the port authorities as to why it was essential for the ship to have a berth. These were false attempts to make the ship’s value to the port greater than it actually was. One of his ideas was to tell how much the four hundred odd crew would not be spending in the port if the ship was at anchor. I was to continually bring the ship’s monetary value to the port and country to the officials‘ attention. It was a lie, since the crew spent very little in port, got paid far less than I could ever admit to (part of the shore story drill was to give a false impression about how much the crew got paid), and rarely, if ever, got off the ship to town anyway.
[…]
I accepted getting forgeries notarized as part of my SO duties as I thought I was helping LRH, and thus all mankind. His time was too valuable for him to sign papers. Only many years later did I deduce that the practice of having others sign his name to all sorts of documents was not only countenanced by him, but was an essential part of his personal plan. “Forgeries” have been an out for him for almost forty years. He could deny anything as a forgery, get out of any situation, so he thought.
In Morocco, Portugal and Spain we were in cholera areas and the international health regulations required that crew on ships in these areas be vaccinated for the disease every six months. It was one of my duties to ensure each crew member had the proper stamps in his vaccination book so the ship was never quarantined in one of these ports. Altogether I arranged for six vaccinations of the entire ship’s complement (these are shown in my vac book – attachment B) in Portuguese ports, yet nobody on board was vaccinated.
At the request of the Medical Officer (either Kima Dunleavy or Jim Dincalci at different times)2 I conned the port medical authorities into giving me the vaccine and needles, with my promise that the medical “doctor” on board would perform the “vaccinations.” After all, it was, in the port medical authorities’ opinion, in our interest to have the vaccinations done. We had even requested the vaccine. It probably never entered their minds that this could be a con job.
I would take all the vaccination books to the port medical authorities and get from them the vaccine and needles. I would take the vaccine and needles on board where the vaccine would be dumped, and the needles kept by the medical officer. Then I would report back to the port medical authorities that all crew had been vaccinated. These authorities would stamp and sign the vac books making us “legal” in the eyes of all other port medical authorities for the next six months.
I learned from Kima at the time that LRH had approved this plan and was very pleased with my performance. He had of course participated as he, like the rest of the crew and passengers, did not get his required shots. All this was part of the disregard and disdain LRH had, and what became instilled in all on board, for regulations outside of Scientology. Health regulations were something you got around. Laws of the country or international laws were “suppressive rules” made by suppressives and only applicable to wogs.
Notes
- The Infectious Disease Angle: http://scientology-research.org/the-infectious-disease-angle/ ↩
- Jim has confirmed that he was not on the Medical Officer post on the Apollo at the times when the vaccination fraud was perpetrated. This comports with my memory of dealing specifically with Kima Dunleavy. ↩