Dear Margaret:
I just came across this statement by you published on December 14, 2013 on Mike Rinder’s blog:
I remember having an email conversation with Gerry Armstrong and Jon Atack back in 2011/2012, when I was digging into LRH’s war record. I was trying to get some documentation that Jon mentioned in his book, and he brought Gerry Armstrong into the conversation.
Now mind you, I had just said I had left the CoS and was trying to get to the truth of LRH’s war record. I remained cordial, but the moment that I didn’t walk in lock-step with their “L. Ron Hubbard was the devil incarnate thinking”, they instantly went into thought-stopping mode. And refused further communication since. I guess I was their SP that they were disconnecting from.
The perfect mind trap — just on the opposite end of the love-hate L. Ron Hubbard spectrum.
http://www.mikerindersblog.org/begging-for-staff-christmas-bonuses/#comment-28690
You present yourself as an unbiased researcher, and challenge and criticize other people’s research and conclusions. Now I am challenging yours.
Your assertion that I possess ““L. Ron Hubbard was the devil incarnate thinking”” is false, and black propaganda. Please prove your assertion.
You say that “the moment that [you] didn’t walk in lock-step with [what you say is my] “L. Ron Hubbard was the devil incarnate thinking” [I] “instantly went into thought-stopping mode.” This is false. And again I ask you to please prove your assertion.
You say that Jon Atack did the same thing, and I believe your charge against him is also false. I am not, however, speaking for him here, but will cc him.
Please identify when was that “moment” that you say you “didn’t walk in lock-step with [what you say is my] “L. Ron Hubbard was the devil incarnate thinking.”
Please show where prior to this alleged “moment” you were “walk[ing] in lock-step with [what you say is my] “L. Ron Hubbard was the devil incarnate thinking.”
You say you “guess [you were my] SP that [I was] disconnecting from.” That is black propaganda. Hubbard and Scientologists’ “Suppressive Person” doctrine is antisocial, dangerous and logically morally indefensible. SPs are people who tell the truth they know about Hubbard, Scientology, Scientologists, and their victims, despite attacks on these truth-telling people for doing so. I do not disconnect from such people.
The email I am now sending you demonstrates that your charge is false that I refused further communication since “the moment that [you claim that you] didn’t walk in lock-step with [my] “L. Ron Hubbard was the devil incarnate thinking”, [and I] instantly went into thought-stopping mode.” Please correct your false charge.
You connect me in some way to what you call “The perfect mind trap,” which comes across as black propaganda. Please explain what you mean, and support that claim with evidence and facts.
It is far more important that Hubbard was a liar and lied to Scientologists and to wogs than whether he called the Secretary of the Navy and asked for a flight back to the US rather than take a ship, or any of the other points you claim to be researching and proving. So I ask of you as a researcher of Hubbard’s life these questions:
1. What lies have you found that L. Ron Hubbard told in his life?
2. What lies have you found that I told about L. Ron Hubbard in my life?
3. Hubbard stated in scripture in 1954:
How did this come apart? How did it come about? Well, I’d heard that story when I was a kid and I fortunately had heard it, otherwise I simply would have dragged out my .45 and slid back the slide and put the muzzle of it against the roof of my mouth and pulled the trigger when I reported to Boston in the very early part of the war to take command of a corvette. They had emptied Portsmouth and that was my crew. Anybody who even vaguely could be let off from serving seven years and accessories, which is to say denial of citizenship. Anybody who had any vaguest idea that he might not immediately kill an officer, you know he might wait for a few days, why, they had scraped together and thrown together one corvette crew. Oh, dear.
It was quite amusing. I saw them come aboard and they were dirty and they were ragged and their hammocks were all muddy and, ooh boy, this was a real foul bunch. Well, I looked through their service records. Summary court-martial, court-martial, summary court-martial, general court-martial, general court-martial, summary court-martial and sentence suspended. Sentence suspended in view of the fact that he has volunteered for sea duty.
Well, you’d have thought that’d been the crummiest ship in the navy. Funny part of it was that individually these people were terrible, but collectively they presented a front which could be very dangerous to an environment. You see that? All they had to do was simply look around and recognize in themselves that we had a social group here that might, because of its numerical superiority, have a chance. They had to recognize that. When they recognized that they straightened up and you never saw such a crew in your life. [5ACC-23 – 5404C29]
I am not a Hubbard researcher, and have not been for thirty-two years, but these are facts:
“Portsmouth” is, of course, Portsmouth Naval Prison in Kittery, Maine.
A “corvette” was, during the relevant time period, a British-built military patrol or escort vessel of the “Flower” class.
The YP-422, which Hubbard did take command of in Boston in the early part of the war, was a converted fishing trawler.
Hubbard could not but have known that the YP-422 was not a corvette. Unless you can show that he commanded a second vessel, a corvette, in Boston in the early part of WW II, he lied in 1954.
More importantly, what evidence do you have that the US Navy or anyone else emptied Portsmouth Prison to form Hubbard’s crew, either on the YP-422, or on a corvette?
You are able to get crew lists, so you should have no trouble proving that Hubbard’s crew from either the YP-422 or a corvette came from the Portsmouth Naval Prison.
Occam’s razor says that Hubbard, who has been shown to have lied about so much to so many, was lying about his command of a corvette in Boston and lying about his crew of any vessel being prisoners from Portsmouth Prison.
Please immediately address the issues I’ve raised above.
Thank you.
Gerry
From: Margaret
Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2014 7:16 PM
To: Gerry Armstrong
Cc: Jon Atack
Subject: Re: Be honest nowGerry,
Good to hear from you!
I haven’t dug into the Boston/YP-422 era in too much detail yet. My current view is that the “corvette” comment is fairly harmless. The ship that Hubbard commanded out of Boston (the YP-422) had roughly the same functions and armaments as a British flower-class corvette. It’s largely irrelevant that the YP-422 was repurposed and given armaments, after being a fishing trawler. Re-purposing civilian ships for military purposes was standard practice by the Navy during the early part of the war. The fact is, the YP-422 that Hubbard commanded had roughly the same use and capabilities as a small corvette. Now, if Hubbard had said something like “I commanded a destroyer” or said he commanded a ship but in reality never did, then I’d agree one could validly criticize him for lying. But calling the YP-422 a corvette? Eh. Harmless. (And by the way, flower-class corvettes were often wimpy little patrol boats, relatively speaking, just like the YP-422.) On the Portsmouth stuff, I haven’t looked into the crew records yet, so don’t have much to add to that one.
To me, the most relevant supposed lies were centered around the Australia/South Pacific period. The question of his seeing combat, being injured and then the method of transport home – those were really the big ones. But I think it can now be fairly concluded that he was telling the truth about these. He doesn’t seem to have mentioned the Java episode in his lectures (at least that I have found), but he does seem to have seen combat at some point, which likely led to his injuries. I go into this in more detail at my website http://scientologymyths.com/hubbardww2.htm .
As to my comments on Mike’s blog … put yourself in my shoes. I was told to expect a nice Socratic debate. And I got silence for two years after laying out my findings which began to vindicate Hubbard. A little strange, no? But listen, I’ve studied enough of the back story to know that your sincere intentions to get to the truth about Hubbard’s life – back when you were in the SO – were fought by the SO-bots in charge. And when questions came up, they attacked you instead of helped you. Definitely suspicious. And when you guys saw such things as “I was flown home in the Secretary of the Navy’s plane” vs. the Navy records which suggested that he was sent home by boat, what other conclusion was there to draw? So I get the early distrust.
And by the way, if you’ve read my website above, you know that I mention a Mr. Hess. Turns out that Mr. Hess was actually Michael Shannon. In other words, one of the original researchers into Hubbard’s life – Michael Shannon – was fed misinformation (probably completely unintentionally) by the Navy. And these sorts of discrepancies got the whole thing rolling.
You asked if I’ve found any lies stated by Hubbard about his life. I haven’t. At worst, I’ve found that he put the true events of his life in the best light possible. And he left out plenty of the negatives and embarrassing moments. Which of course is only human. And far different than being a liar. But in the end, didn’t he (and Mary Sue) hand over those personal papers that contained plenty of embarrassing material? The Affirmations? Seems there was a desire to get the full truth of his journey eventually told. Why else would he have saved them, let alone hand them over to a biographer.
There’s plenty to criticize about Hubbard, but I don’t think his credibility is among them. I think Hubbard blew it organizationally. He could have used some real-world experience in actual civilian groups of various shapes and sizes. He brought far too much militarism and unwavering structure to his organizational ideas, and not nearly enough real-world free-market experience and compassion (despite the depth of compassion that exists in the underlying philosophy and technology). And of course, this went into overdrive in the Sea Org. And Gerry, you are absolutely right: the misuse of the “SP” label for organizational purposes was simply wrong. Not only has it backfired in numerous ways, but it undermines the real meaning of Suppressive Person (as defined by the original 12 characteristics).
All mistakes, in my view, that Hubbard thought were the most expeditious and practical way forward at the time … which should have been jettisoned by any competent management in later years. And in any normal organization, they would have been.
Yet despite all these organizational flaws, I do think that 90% of policy is harmless and sometimes useful, and I also think the underlying philosophy and its practice have tremendous value. But that’s just me.
Margaret
From: Gerry Armstrong
Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2014 8:26 PM
To: ‘Margaret’
Cc: Jon Atack
Subject: RE: Be honest now
If in researching Hubbard, you haven’t found one lie he told, you’ve made yourself a joke researcher.
I didn’t communicate more with you in 2012 because of the same sort of dissimulation and mealy-mouthedness you’re using on me now. That did not motivate or excuse your lies and black PR, which you have not dealt with.
Yes, I knew Hess was Shannon. Blaming him for Hubbard’s false navy record is creepy.
Hubbard was a monstrous liar. His purple hearts are stolen valor. I understand that it doesn’t matter to Scientologists like you, in fact some Scientologists revere Hubbard because he lied, just as satanists revere satan for his lying, indeed for being the father of lies. But Hubbard’s lying mattered to me, and I couldn’t revere him for it. It shocked me and pained me, and Scientologists’ lying in defense of his lying disgusted me. And I’m putting his lying and your lying in the best light possible.
I accept that you will not tell the truth about Hubbard’s lying, his credibility or his character, and I accept you won’t tell the truth about me. If I don’t communicate again, it will be for that reason, not for the nasty reasons you invent.
Gerry
From: Margaret
Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2014 11:30 PM
To: Gerry Armstrong
Cc: Jon Atack
Subject: Re: Be honest nowAh, disconnecting *again* from the big bad SP. I guess that explains why you remain such an extremist. Normal, rational conversation doesn’t seem to be possible with you.
And oh yes, “stolen valor”. Just as SO-bots want to believe desperately that Hubbard was perfect in every way, you fly into a frenzy at the thought that Hubbard might have done something good or heroic. Or told the truth! Heavens! How dare someone believe that. And of course, his being injured during WW II is simply out of the question. Hate to break it to you, Gerry, but the evidence shows that he was injured. I actually went into the whole thing thinking that he *wasn’t* – and the documentation showed just the opposite.
Oh, and I wasn’t blaming Shannon for anything. Calm down and re-read what I wrote.
So yeah, my comments on Mike’s blog stand. You live on the other irrational end of the love-hate Hubbard spectrum. This last message of yours demonstrates it perfectly. And of course you are oblivious to it, with all those who disagree with you being evil liars. Pretty pathetic.
Margaret