Camacho has signaled that he will not answer my requests for evidence supporting his fact statements in his black propaganda piece. (( https://cesnur.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/tjoc_5_4_1_camacho.pdf; https://gerryarmstrong.ca/a-rum-time-for-ron-in-old-town-las-palmas-part-1/ ; https://gerryarmstrong.ca/a-liar-walks-into-a-barrier/ ))
It is the common and cowardly practice of Scientologists to not respond responsibly to legitimate challenges to their false claims or lies, but to ignore challenges and keep on lying. The Scientologists teach this in their scripture and call it their “standard practice.” This has been Camacho’s common, cowardly and standard practice in his communications with me over the last three years.
Consequently, I will simply do my best to identify and refute his lies and his deranged logic without any expectation that he will do the right thing, provide the requested information, correct his BS, and repair his illogic. I similarly can have no expectation that Massimo Introvigne, the editor and publisher of the Journal of CESNUR who published Camacho’s black PR, will ever acknowledge the facts and truth and repudiate this sick article. Introvigne has for years demonstrated a dearth of conscience, and a refusal to grow one, or a pair.
This part of my effort against Camacho’s massive “academic” black PR screed concerns only his “Introduction,” pp. 4-6
Camacho writes:
The claim that L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) told his wife Mary Sue (1931–2002) “I’m drinking lots of rum and popping pinks and greys” traces back to Gerald “Gerry” Armstrong. According to L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman? Armstrong first made this claim to author Bent Corydon sometime before the end of his 1984 trial (Corydon and DeWolf 1987, 59).
Messiah or Madman at p. 59 states:
Armstrong, told me, among other things, of a letter from Hubbard to his third wife Mary Sue when Hubbard was in Las Palmas during 1967 at the inception of the Sea Org. This letter is now in the custody of the court. In it Hubbard tells his wife: “I’m drinking lots of rum and popping pinks and greys.”
It is certainly possible that I first told Corydon about Hubbard’s RP&G letter before the end of my 1984 trial. It is irrelevant as to the letter’s existence, but nevertheless might have happened. The letter was in the documents that were the subject of the Scientologists and Mary Sue Hubbard’s lawsuit against me that was then being tried in Los Angeles Superior Court. Including pre-trial motions, the trial ran from April 19 to June 8, 1984, and Corydon attended several days. He wrote:
June of 1984 the trial began.
[…]
I was fascinated by the procedures and disclosures on the day when I first attended, and after that I took off almost every day from my other pursuits and drove the fifty miles to L.A. to attend. (Messiah or Madman, 1987, 238, 239)
Corydon is wrong about the trial beginning date. But he did attend a lot of the sessions, and he talked with my lawyers and me on several occasions during recesses or adjournments.
In what Camacho cited to in Messiah or Madman, however, Corydon did not identify when I first made this alleged claim to him, that in a letter to his wife Hubbard told her, “I’m drinking lots of rum and popping pinks and greys.” It is likely that Camacho just invented this “fact;” which is his bad habit.
As I observed in Part 1 of my set of requests to Camacho, his writing is in many instances unclear because of his syntactic ignorance or screw-ups, or his penchant for generating confusion. His assertion that I “first made this claim to author Bent Corydon sometime before the end of his 1984 trial” could mean that the first time I told Corydon about the RP&G letter was before the end of my 1984 trial. If so, Camacho implies that I made the same claim to Corydon on other later occasions, or at least one later occasion. Camacho provides no evidence of such occasions. He could also mean that Corydon was the first person to whom I ever made this claim, and the time of this first ever claim was before the end of the trial. If so, Camacho implies here that I subsequently made this claim, or these claims (sic) to people other than Corydon; but Camacho does not identify anyone who actually repeated what Corydon wrote about lots of rum.
It is also possible that I told Corydon that Hubbard wrote that he was not just drinking rum but drinking lots of rum, as Messiah or Madman quotes me as saying. Or Corydon might have thought from his notes or memory I’d said “lots,” or that lots sounded better in print than just plain rum.
When I think about it, Hubbard did make it sound like he was on a curative program and reporting to his concerned wife who was also his regimen supervisor. So he might have said he was drinking lots of rum like someone might report on his health: “I’m getting lots of fresh air,” or “I’m drinking lots of fluids, and popping vitamin C.”
It definitely sounds like Hubbard when he writes that he was drinking rum and popping pinks and greys. But it also sounds like Hubbard if he had written, “I’m drinking lots of rum and popping pinks and greys.” He wrote a lot as a street magus, with a pulp writer’s argot, wit and snappy dialogue. See, e.g., this letter to science fiction editor Forrest Ackerman a decade after Hubbard started Scientology and while he was developing his “science of mental health,” Dianetics. (( https://scientology-research.org/letter-hubbard-to-forrest-ackerman-1949/ ))
Camacho should have asked Corydon where the lots of rum comes from, and I guess I can ask him now. The song says, “Jamaica,” but the sugar cane came from Gran Canaria, which has been famous for its rum and its contribution to international rum production for centuries. ((See, e.g. https://www.gran-canaria-info.com/en/content/eat-drink-fun/was-rum-invented-in-gran-canaria ))
Hubbard’s statement that he was drinking rum, or lots of rum, with his pinks and greys, is pretty solid evidence he was writing from Las Palmas and not from Morocco, where rum production wasn’t much if anything in 1966 or 1967. Nor was rum consumption. You didn’t travel to Morocco for the booze or to write about it to your wife back home with the kids and running the GO for you. But from Las Palmas you could, as Hubbard pretty well proved.
Camacho writes:
Since then, other Scientology opponents, including Jon Atack, Janet Reitman, and Lawrence Wright, repeated Armstrong’s claims with almost no investigation into them.
Here Camacho has suddenly multiplied what he said is my claim – a single claim — that Hubbard told his wife “I’m drinking lots of rum and popping pinks and greys.” Without proving that I actually said “lots,” or when I ever said it, Camacho has me making multiple claims which, inter alios, Atack, Reitman and Wright repeated with almost no investigation into them. Camacho, of course, will not identify these multiple claims he claims I made. He just alleges it, or lies.
It is most likely that Camacho has no clue how large, deep or long an investigation Atack, Reitman, Wright and others made into the claims Camacho says I made, but which he doesn’t identify. I am sure it has already have dawned on Camacho that all his months of investigating did not yield the truth; or at least he has not told the truth that an honest investigation could not but lead an investigator to. It is obvious to me that Atack, Reitman and Wright got it more or less right very quickly, without much investigation because not much is needed. Camacho, on the other hand, investigating his head off enormously, deeply or lengthily, got it very wrong.
Camacho writes:
Armstrong did not introduce this purported letter into trial evidence, nor does it appear in any court transcripts, which Armstrong himself admits on his website (Armstrong 2018a).
Camacho’s asserted facts here, even if true, are irrelevant. Despite their irrelevance, however, they create a false picture and paint me in a false light.
Hubbard’s RP&G letter was one of several letters between him and his wife that Omar Garrison gave me, along with other Hubbard documents, in the summer of 1982. I delivered these documents to my lawyers, Michael J. Flynn in Boston, MA and Contos & Bunch in Woodland Hills, CA. These are what are commonly known as “the Armstrong documents.”
After the Scientologists filed suit in August 1982, my lawyers sent the Armstrong documents, still including letters between Hubbard and his wife, to the Los Angeles Superior Court, where they were held by the Clerk of the Court.
Note where Corydon writes: “This letter is now in the custody of the court.” That was not true, but understandable, when Corydon’s book was published, which was in 1987. The Armstrong documents, which had been in the custody of the LA Superior Court since 1982, had been released to the Scientologists in December 1986 at the time of the supposed settlement of my claims against them. Corydon spent some days with me in Boston earlier in 1986 when he was researching and writing Messiah or Madman, and Hubbard’s RP&G letter was in the custody of the court at that time. The last date of any event Corydon mentioned in his book, on the last page, is September 16, 1986, and the letter was still under seal in the court on that date.
As I observed in Part 1 of my set of requests to Camacho, letters do not appear in court transcripts. “Discussions of letters can appear in transcripts; testimony about letters can appear. Quotes from letters can appear; or the complete text from letters can appear; or rulings or judgments about letters can be rendered and such rulings or judgments can appear in court transcripts. But not letters; not in this case.”
Letters between Hubbard and his third wife Mary Sue, which included the RP&G letter, were in the Armstrong documents, and were discussed in court during my 1984 trial. Mrs. Hubbard, of course, was a “Plaintiff in Intervention” in the Scientologists’ case against me; so she had a prima facie “spousal communication privilege” regarding communications between her and her husband.
It is also called the “marital communications privilege,” which is the term Black’s Law Dictionary defines:
In most jurisdictions private communications between the spouses during the marriage are privileged at the option of the witness spouse and hence inadmissible in a trial. ln some jurisdictions the communications are disqualified, and hence not admissible, even with the consent of the witness spouse. This privilege is subject to certain limitations; e.g. prosecutions for crimes committed by one spouse against the other or against the children of either.
Mrs. Hubbard’s lawyers, Scientology’s lawyers, my lawyers and the trial judge all recognized that Hubbard’s “private” comments to his wife, for example that he was drinking rum and popping pinks and greys, were protected or potentially protected from disclosure by the spousal privilege. The trial judge balanced Mrs. Hubbard’s privilege against my right to explain why I went to Garrison and obtained the Armstrong documents that I sent to my lawyers, were under seal in the clerk’s office, and for which the plaintiffs sought damages from me for conversion and invasion of privacy.
As can be seen from the excerpts from the June 6 and 7, 1984 trial transcripts that follow, it was Mrs. Hubbard’s lawyer Barrett Litt who offered the letters between her and Hubbard for identification, but not for entry into evidence, and not to be unsealed.
Also note that as well as personal matters that might be privileged, the letters between Hubbard and his wife contained “business matters,” including statements relating to his control or direction of Scientology through her. Since drinking rum and popping pinks and greys are not formal Scientology practices and do not directly relate to his control of Scientology, Hubbard’s letter to his wife reporting he was doing so, if it had been referred to specifically, would assuredly have been objected to as privileged and not admitted into evidence.
Hubbard’s control of the Sea Org and Scientology was an important issue in the Scientologists’ case against me, and in the trial, whereas Hubbard’s drug use was not an issue. This can be seen in the testimony throughout the trial, and in the judgment:
Obviously, he is and has been a very complex person, and that complexity is further reflected in his alter ego, the Church of Scientology. Notwithstanding protestations to the contrary, this court is satisfied that LRH runs the Church in all ways through the Sea Organization, his role of Commodore, and the Commodore’s Messengers.3 He has, of course, chosen to go into “seclusion,” but he maintains contact and control through the top messengers. Seclusion has its light and dark side too. It adds to his mystique, and yet shields him from accountability and subpoena or service of summons. (( https://legal.gerryarmstrong.ca/1984/06/22/memorandum-of-intended-decision-june-22-1984/ ))
Hubbard’s lying was an issue obviously, and so was his hypocrisy, the contradictions between his scripture and his actions, and the myriad contradictions within his scripture. There was testimony about other Scientologists’ similar scriptural and behavioral pharisaism, and this is reflected in the judgment:
The organization clearly is schizophrenic and paranoid, and this bizarre combination seems to be a reflection of its founder LRH. The evidence portrays a man who has been virtually a pathological liar when it comes to his history, background, and achievements. The writings and documents in evidence additionally reflect his egoism, greed, avarice, lust for power, and vindictiveness and aggressiveness against persons perceived by him to be disloyal or hostile. At the same time it appears that he is charismatic and highly capable of motivating, organizing, controlling, manipulating, and inspiring his adherents
[…]
LRH’s wife, Mary Sue Hubbard is also plaintiff herein. On the one hand she certainly appeared to be a pathetic individual. She was forced from her post as Controller, convicted and imprisoned as a felon, and deserted by her husband. On the other hand her credibility leaves much to be desired. She struck the familiar pose of not seeing, hearing, or knowing any evil. Yet she was the head of the Guardian Office for years and among other things, authored the infamous order “GO 121669″ which directed culling of supposedly confidential P.C. files/folders for purposes of internal security. In her testimony she expressed the feeling that defendant by delivering the documents, writings, letters to his attorneys, subjected her to mental rape. The evidence is clear and the court finds that defendant and Omar Garrison had permission to utilize these documents for the purpose of Garrison’s proposed biography.
[…]
The court is satisfied that he did not unreasonably intrude upon Mrs. Hubbard’s privacy under the circumstances by in effect simply making his knowledge that of his attorneys. It is, of course, rather ironic that the person who authorized G.O. order 121669 should complain about an invasion of privacy. The practice of culling supposedly confidential “P.C. folders or files” to obtain information for purposes of intimidation and or harassment is repugnant and outrageous. The Guardian’s Office, which plaintiff headed, was no respector of anyone’s civil rights, particularly that of privacy. Plaintiff Mary Sue Hubbard’s cause of action for conversion must fail for the same reason as plaintiff Church. The documents were all together in Omar Garrison’s possession. There was no rational way the defendant could make any distinction.
Hubbard had announced on September 1, 1966 his “resignation from all director posts and the conducting of organizations by myself.” The Scientologists were still claiming that this was true in 1984, and that he had no control of Scientology organizations, finances or personnel. These were lies known by every Sea Org member. Hubbard’s control was demonstrated in my trial, and Scientology was ruled his alter ego. His Tangier-Las Palmas sojourn was right after his resignation ruse, so his letters to his wife at that time that showed, as the judge noted, “that he was directing the Church through her or some of the activities of the Church through her,” were not “to be treated as privileged communications.”
From the June 6, 1984 trial transcript (( https://legal.gerryarmstrong.ca/1984/06/06/reporters-transcript-of-proceedings-june-6-1984/ )) :
THE COURT: I guess it is something that is capable of interpretation.
I’ll overrule the objection. It will be received.
Six B’s is a letter to his wife, I guess.
FLYNN: This letter, Your Honor, shows — it is reflective of six inches of letters of the same type downstairs. We took one letter.
It shows financial transactions between HEC and Mr. Hubbard; payments into Swiss accounts; the receipt of 10 percent of Church funds, all after his resignation.
And as I indicated, there is another six inches of similar type letters downstairs.
There was extensive testimony by Mr. Armstrong, nearly all of the correspondence was of that type.
Six C we are not offering, Your Honor, the blue binder.
There was testimony about it. It is the White House and the Russians and brainwashing. There is testimony about it. So rather than offer it –
HARRIS: First Amendment, privacy in respect to 500- –
LITT: And spousal privilege.
THE COURT: I will sustain the privileged communication, spousal objection, but Mr. Armstrong’s testimony that he believed this was relevant and necessary to his defense will stand uncontradicted. Sustain the objection.
LITT: We will just argue at the time as to whether or not privileged material can be taken in that context. That is fine.
From the June 7, 1984 trial transcript (( https://legal.gerryarmstrong.ca/1984/06/07/reporters-transcript-of-proceedings-june-7-1984/ )) :
THE COURT: Yes. It will be received in evidence, four K’s.
All right. Are there any of these that you are aware of that you have any objection to, Mr. Flynn?
FLYNN: Our general view, Your Honor, is what Mr. Litt is doing is introducing all of these letters of Mary Sue Hubbard and L. Ron Hubbard.
LITT: I haven’t introduced anything yet. I only have them marked. I’m going to offer many of them, but let me tell you how I would like to do it.
THE COURT: All right.
LITT: Any spousal letters, I do not wish to enter. I wish a ruling that they are spousal communications and are privileged because I want a record of that. And I don’t intend to introduce those documents.
I do intend —
THE COURT: We have a problem with her letters. She was, obviously a spouse, but she was also a Guardian Controller of this Church. And he was the founder. And there is a lot of other evidence that he was directing the Church through her or some of the activities of the Church through her.
So it seems to me that communications between them that are in that general capacity, certainly, aren’t to be treated as privileged communications.
LITT: I think unless, Your Honor, it can be demonstrated that these were formal organizational communications, if a husband and wife have communication about, say, business matters which are not transmitted through the business, but are done between the two of them, they are confidential even though they discuss, for example, business matters.
The letters clearly are not addressed to her post; nor are they signed in the way that normal organizational letters are signed. They are private correspondence that may discuss Church matters and may give his opinion on Church matters.
THE COURT: The problem that I have is that if you are going to contend that on the one hand these are private and personal and can’t be read by anybody or considered by them, but on the other hand you are going to contend that Mr. Armstrong was wrong in taking this without giving an explanation for whatever purposes that he took them, then I think that is rather — you can’t have it both ways.
It seems to me that if he took these, he is not a lawyer; he was not a lawyer and has a right to explain or demonstrate why he took any particular letter. If you want it sealed and not disclosed, then I am not going to consider it. I can’t consider it as a basis for any cause of action here.
LITT: I’m not asking as such that the Court consider the contents.
It is our position, among other things, that certain types of things, even in the context of this defense, simply should not be permissible. We’ll argue that in argument.
The Court may not agree with that. And that is fine. I understand that if the Court doesn’t agree with that.
On the other hand, they are, in fact, I believe, privileged. And so all we are asking for at this point is a determination reflecting that. And we don’t intend to introduce into evidence —
THE COURT: If you take the position it is privileged, the Court is going to deem that you are making no claim for any damages based on Mr. Armstrong taking the particular letters because there is no way for me to evaluate his claims without having the contents in evidence.
LITT: I understand that is the Court’s position. We disagree with it, of course, and would like not now, but in the context of argument, to, at least, have the opportunity to argue that further.
But if that is how the Court rules, that is —
THE COURT: That will have to be my position so that if you want these to remain, for example, as a privileged communication and confidential and sealed, I’m willing to do that. But I am also going to deem that, assuming that the Court concludes he may have a privilege to take some of these matters, that there is a reasonable cause to believe that there is something in these letters which warrant his taking them.
So that will be the way I’m going to call it.
500-1, do you want to offer that, or do you want that —
LITT: May I make a couple of preliminary inquiries before I decide, Your Honor?
THE COURT: Very well.
LITT: One, if these are offered will the Court place these under seal, or are they being offered in a public record?
THE COURT: If it is going to be received into evidence, it will be a matter of public record.
On the other hand, if it is something that would only be for identification and I conclude it is confidential, I’ll seal it, order it to remain sealed.
LITT: My second inquiry would be, is the Court going to find any waiver of any other spousal privilege claims by — if we determine to introduce these?
THE COURT: No, no. The Court will take the same position as to any exhibits to which you contend is confidential and can’t be divulged and you don’t want to put it in evidence. If I agree with you that it is confidential, at least it would be subject to a privilege; I’ll order it sealed and remain as an exhibit for identification. But I am not going to consider it in substance as a basis for any claimed damages unless I change my mind and conclude that there is no defense based upon privilege.
LITT: Then I think the way I would like to do it, Your Honor, is I would basically like a determination so that, at least the record is clear that it is privileged based on the Court’s ruling and statement that it could not consider the contents unless — cannot consider whether Mr. Armstrong was entitled to take them unless we move them into evidence. We would move them into evidence on that basis, but we would like a determination that it is privileged.
And we would move it into evidence based on the Court’s determination as to how it would treat the privileged matter; is that agreeable with the Court?
THE COURT: Yes.
FLYNN: Your Honor, as I understand it, they are not going to be in evidence?
THE COURT: Well I guess we will take one step at a time.
I think this letter, the 500-1 probably would in general fall within the privilege as a confidential communication. It does not appear to me to be a letter which was in the chain of command.
On the other hand, I can see why Mr. Armstrong took it from some of the language in here consistent with some of the other testimony he has given toward other exhibits.
Now, if Mr. Litt wants to offer this in evidence, it will be received in evidence and will remain as any other exhibit in evidence.
If, on the other hand, if he wants it simply to be left as an exhibit for identification, then I will so leave it and it will be ordered sealed based upon the conclusion that it was a confidential communication.
FLYNN: We only add, Your Honor, that there is extensive evidence that Mrs. Hubbard knew and even acknowledged that personal letters were in the possession of Mr. Armstrong in January, 1980. In fact, it is even in some of the initial documents.
THE COURT: Well, I think it goes to the weight. I don’t think there is any waiver.
Let’s go forward.
LITT: Can I just take a quick look at it?
THE COURT: Surely.
LITT: Your Honor, so I don’t repeat it, any requests for exhibits that we move in would be that they be sealed.
THE COURT: All right. Well that request will be denied as a general proposition.
FLYNN: There is one further consideration. Your Honor. If Mr. Litt picks and chooses one or two of these letters which are the more innocuous type in a six-inch pile of which 95 percent of the others relate to almost all financial entanglements of Mr. Hubbard and the organization and because he ran the organization as if it was his, the informality of the communication between him and the second in command would be evidence of the way he ran it, and if he picks and chooses several innocuous ones while the great bulk of them are of a totally different character, it would be highly misleading in the record.
THE COURT: Well, we will do one thing at a time.
LITT: Well, we will introduce it, Your Honor.
I want to make clear, I guess it is, but just in case it is not that we are only moving documents in because the court has adopted this defense and permitted documents to be moved in.
THE COURT: Very well. That is understood.
I will receive 500-1.
500—2, I suppose goes along with 500—3 to do with the tentative constitution of the nation of Rhodesia, and the letter to Mr. Hubbard from Mr. Thomspon, principal private secretary to the prime minister of Rhodesia.
Are you offering this into evidence, Mr. Litt?
LITT: Yes, Your Honor.
THE COURT: Any objection, Mr. Flynn?
FLYNN: No, no objection to that exhibit, Your Honor.
THE COURT: All right, receive 500-2 and 500-3.
500-4, another letter to Susie from Mr. Hubbard from Tangiers, at least it is on the letterhead of the hotel in Tangiers.
LITT: We would like a spousal privilege ruling on this, Your Honor.
THE COURT: I would think — I’d find this would be a privileged communication.
LITT: And based on the previous discussion and the court’s ruling in that regard, we will move it in.
THE COURT: Any objection?
FLYNN: Well the same objection. Your Honor, to any spousal communication, Your Honor. Your Honor excluded spousal communication that we had offered which is more reflective, we think, of the six inches of letters down there to allow —
THE COURT: As I have indicated, if they objected to it, they can’t claim any element of damages based upon it as far as I am concerned.
I’ll receive 4 in evidence.
They want it in evidence; it will be just another exhibit.
Exhibit 500-5 is another one of 8 January, ’67. This, again, appears to be a privileged communication.
LITT: We would move it in based on the same understanding previously discussed.
FLYNN: We would just make the same objection.
THE COURT: I’ll overrule the objection. I’ll receive it.
6 is another letter. This would also appear to be a privileged communication.
LITT: Move it in on the same understanding.
FLYNN: Same objection, Your Honor.
THE COURT: All right. It will be received.
All right. This would appear to be a privileged communication.
LITT: Move it in on the same understanding.
THE COURT: I’ll deem the same objection raised; overruled.
It will be received.
500-8, Rosie has a note here, “has no page number.”
LITT: Page 5 is missing, Your Honor. It looks like it is just misnumbered.
THE COURT: All right. It appears to be another communication which will be privileged.
LITT: Move it in on the same understanding.
THE COURT: I’ll deem the same objection; overruled. I’ll receive it.
Camacho’s assertion that I didn’t introduce Hubbard’s RP&G letter into evidence in the trial is irrelevant. He presents this irrelevancy throughout his article as high value evidence that I lied about ever seeing the letter. He first asserted this irrelevancy and its supreme importance in his “Abstract,” and I challenged him in my July 26 requests to him for explanation or justification:
You write that I never introduced the letter into court as evidence, nor did it appear in any court transcript, and that I freely admit to these facts.
Whether I ever introduced it into any court as evidence or if it ever appeared in any court transcript is, of course, irrelevant as to whether such letter ever existed.
There are approximately five quadrillion, two hundred trillion pages of other paper documents in the world, which, along with the subject letter from Hubbard to his wife, were never specifically or individually introduced into court as evidence in my case, and none of these incalculable documents appeared in the trial transcript.
You have never shown that these “facts” — my non-introduction into evidence of the subject letter, and its nonappearance in any court transcript — are relevant to the determination of whether Hubbard ever wrote his wife stating (without considering whatever else he stated in said letter) that he was drinking and using drugs at Las Palmas when he researched OT III.
Camacho implies throughout his article that he has read, and understood, the whole Scientology v. Armstrong trial transcript. Yet, while pillorying me, and essentially pronouncing me a liar, for not introducing the RP&G letter into evidence, he does not mention Mrs. Hubbard’s spousal privilege, which sufficiently explains why the letter was not introduced. Camacho does not cite to the in-trial discussion of the privilege quoted above, which crucially occurred during the two trial days when documents from the sealed Armstrong documents, or from elsewhere, were being offered into evidence and admitted or not just before closing argument.
It is obvious by the judgment after the trial that there was no need by my lawyers to try to get the RP&G letter quoted or into evidence. The judge ruled in my favor, condemned the Scientology practices of “fair game” and “culling PC folders,” and exposed Hubbard’s antisociality. The judge said nothing in the judgment about Hubbard’s alcohol or drug history or habits or scriptural communications. My lawyers did not introduce or fight to introduce the RP&G letter into evidence because it was not needed to prevail; not because, as Camacho conjures up, the letter doesn’t exist.
Camacho also does not mention Omar Garrison, the contracted Hubbard biographer who gave me the Armstrong documents. The judgment detailed the chain of possession of the documents and ruled that I had the necessary permissions to do with them as I did. Even though the judgment is freely available, and Corydon, Atack, Reitman, Wright, et al. all quote from it, Camacho does not even mention it. He omits apposite facts to make black propaganda points.
It is a standard black PR narrative of the Scientologists and their collaborators to omit Garrison from the chain of possession of the Hubbard biography documents and the sub-collection known as the Armstrong documents. With this bold omission of Garrison as Hubbard biographer and authorized possessor of Hubbard’s documents, the Scientologists and their collaborators generate the lie that I appropriated these documents.
Camacho writes:
The only items possibly fitting the description of such a letter would appear in a court inventory list of items appropriated by Armstrong: Hubbard’s undated letters to Mary Sue, and four handwritten letters dated between January to February 1967 without descriptions or addressees, three of which Hubbard wrote in one week.
Well there we go. “Appropriate” means, as Camacho uses the term here, “to take without permission : PILFER, PURLOIN.” (Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary) The fact is, as the facts were, as the court found, as Camacho knows, and as the Scientologists and all their collaborators know, I did not appropriate the Armstrong documents. The truth is ironic, and even “impossible” from the Scientologists’ perspective, but, of course, not from God’s. I did not take the Armstrong documents without permission. I did not pilfer or purloin them. Camacho’s accusation is libel per se. His reckless indifference to the truth is obvious. His bias is obscene.
Although Camacho displays a bad habit of not knowing what he’s saying, or not knowing what he’s talking about, he actually supports my facts and position with his assertion that multiple items on “a court inventory list” of the Armstrong documents fit the description of Hubbard’s RP&G letter. Throughout his article, he debunks his own position that there is no evidence supporting my claim of the existence of such a letter.
Camacho writes:
Tracing Hubbard’s whereabouts during early 1967 proves difficult, as varying and conflicting perspectives emerge. Records from the Church of Scientology only further complicate matters, as these often contradict other information.
Tracing Hubbard’s whereabouts during early 1967, no matter how easy or difficult it proves to be, is irrelevant as to his RP&G letter’s existence. There is sufficient evidence to acknowledge his location where he wrote his RP&G letter was Las Palmas. In the matter of the letter’s existence, where he was after that, and for the fifty-six-or-so years before that, is irrelevant.
There are as many varying and conflicting perspectives emerging, if perspectives indeed emerge, as there are people with perspectives. Perspectives all vary and conflict to whatever degree, and their varying and conflicting is so universal as to render it ludicrous to use their varying and conflicting to obfuscate an irrelevance. The relevant perspective concerns my reading a letter from Hubbard to his third wife in which he wrote that he was drinking rum and popping pinks and greys.
Camacho does not identify exactly what records from the Church of Scientology only further complicate matters. He doesn’t identify what “matters” he’s talking about. He doesn’t identify what “other information” the Scientologists’ records contradict. His two sentences here constitute a form of babbling that sounds reasonable, and even sagacious, but is actually and simply babbling.
Camacho writes:
The clearest indicator of what occurred comes from Hubbard himself in RJ 67 (Ron’s Journal 1967) dated 20 September 1967, in which he stated:
[I]n January and February of this year, I became very ill, almost lost this body, and somehow or another brought it off and obtained the material, and was able to live through it. I am very sure that I was the first one that ever did live through any attempt to attain that material. This material I’m talking about, of course, is very upper level material and you will forgive me if I don’t describe it to you in very broad detail because it’s very likely to make you sick, too (Hubbard 2005).
All that can actually be known from this Hubbard quote — if the date is correct, if the words are his, and if the transcription is accurate — is that on that date he said it. Accepting Hubbard’s date for his audio recording of “RJ 67,” it was seven or eight months after the January and February 1967 period when he says he was very ill, the same couple of months Camacho acknowledges Hubbard was writing to his wife.
In this quote, Hubbard says nothing about his whereabouts; although that has already been reasonably determined from facts adduced from various other, even clearer, more probative reports and documents. The best evidence is that he recorded RJ 67 from “Villa Estrella” somewhere on the Gran Canaria coast near Las Palmas. Hubbard says nothing in this quote about what motivated him, very ill, almost dead, or not, to tell his wife in his letter that he was drinking rum and popping pinks and greys. If he had in fact been very ill and at death’s door, of course, that easily could be a motivating factor for such a statement. And the statement could have been a motivating factor in Mrs. Hubbard’s arrival in Las Palmas not long afterward.
As I noted above, Hubbard’s whereabouts, or tracing his whereabouts, are irrelevant to his having written and my having read his RP&G letter. Both Hubbard and I had motive, opportunity and means for our roles in the Case of Rum and Pinks and Greys as I have presented it. Our respective “time tracks” in the case coincide smoothly and as expected. While charging throughout his article that I lied about reading Hubbard’s statement that he was drinking rum and popping pinks and greys, Camacho has produced no uncontroverted fact that is relevant and supports this charge. The uncontroverted facts he has provided support my statements he says are lies; and these facts support the conclusion that his charge is false, and he knows it.
As I also stated, there is sufficient evidence to acknowledge that his location where he wrote the letter was Las Palmas. Camacho’s quote from Hubbard’s “RJ 67,” although not the clearest indicator in the indicator drawer, actually indicates the soundness of my simple statement that I had read Hubbard’s letter, he had told his wife he was drinking rum and popping pinks and greys, and I had remembered that phrase.
Obviously, Corydon, Atack, Wright, Reitman and others found the phrase memorable. It has become a meme, a joke, a song, a parody, an entry on a slew of famous quotes lists, and even a Hubbard vs. Hegel quiz question. Now Camacho has written a fifty-five page academic-looking article all about Hubbard’s rum, pinks and greys jag, Massimo Introvigne has published the article in his claimed double-blind peer-reviewed journal, and I have probably produced just as many pages rebutting their bunkum.
Drinkin’ rum and poppin’ pinks and greys
I visit my boat on de Las Palmas ways.
It’s real, not HMS Pinafore
I’m gonna become de Commodore.
The quote Camacho selected from RJ 67 answers half of the question he asks in his article’s title: “Was L. Ron Hubbard Drugged Out When He Developed OT III?” How drugged out he might have been I have no idea. But that he was “developing” OT III in those couple of months at the start of 1967, when he said was sick and dying, even Camacho appears to agree. This is not news. I had listened to RJ 67 the first time in1971, discussed it many times in the Sea Org, and I have mimicked some of Hubbard’s lines from it. I had also quoted from it, more extensively than Camacho has here, in a post that he cites to and quotes liberally from in his article:
And this is a tape of 20 September 1967, made on an island in the sea, and it is addressed to all staff and students of Scientology organizations.
[…]
And so I decided that I had better go out and contact an exact point or two, not so much for me, but where things had happened in ages past which were really the beginning of the demise — or were the demise for this civilization as it then existed. Without telling anyone about this – or what I intended to do – I went out and took my life in my hands, you might say, and brought the matter off. The mystery of this universe and this particular area of the universe has been – as far as its track is concerned – completely occluded. No one has ever been able to make any breakthrough and come off with it and know what happened. As a matter of fact, it is so occluded that, if anyone tried to penetrate it, as I’m sure many have, they died.
The material involved in this sector is so vicious that it is carefully arranged to kill anyone if he discovers the exact truth of it.
So in January and February of this year, I became very ill, almost lost this body, and somehow or another brought it off and obtained the material, and was able to live through it. I am very sure that I was the first one that ever did live through any attempt to attain that material. This material I’m talking about, of course, is very upper level material and you will forgive me if I don’t describe it to you in very broad detail because it’s very likely to make you sick, too.
[…]
It is quite aside from the point, but maybe a slight matter of interest, that all of this recent career has been relatively hard on this poor body. I have broken its back, broken its knee, and now have a broken arm because of the strenuousness of these particular adventures. One wonders, then, well, if he is in such good shape, then what is he doing breaking up these bodies? Well, that is the trouble! I have — I have a great difficulty in getting down to the small power level of a body and if suddenly – if something happens in its vicinity – I will suddenly move it or yank it in some direction, and it is very very difficult to keep it in any kind of condition. I’m keeping it alive because it is a symbol and because it is still needful and because it would be upsetting, at least to the wog side of the world, if a symbol of this body were to disappear.
Camacho identifies my post in his “References” section:
Armstrong, Gerald. 2018a. “Aiding and Abetting Fair Game—2014” in Gerry Talks… Created August 29, 2018. Accessed October 9, 2019. (( https://gerryarmstrong.ca/aiding-and-abetting-fair-game-2014.))
Camacho cherry-picks my post, which contains a series of emails relating to Hubbard’s RP & G letter, for facts he implies support his false charge that I lied about reading the letter. Camacho also studiously ignores the glaring facts in my post that show his false charge is false. Even his cherry-picked facts do not support his false charge.
Camacho writes:
Although Armstrong claims to have seen a letter detailing Hubbard’s drug and alcohol use, given the evidence, nothing indicates that this occurred, outside of Armstrong’s own claims.
I have never claimed to have seen a letter detailing Hubbard’s drug and alcohol use. To “detail” as Camacho is using the word, means “to relate in particulars : report minutely and distinctly.” (MWUD) From the relevant period, Las Palmas in 1967, the only somewhat related letter I saw or ever claimed I saw is the one from Hubbard to his wife stating, “I’m drinking rum and popping pinks greys,” or very similar. That I saw a letter containing these few details about Hubbard’s drug and alcohol use is a long way from seeing a letter that detailed his drug and alcohol use.
It is very easy for Camacho to assert, and it is actually factual, that “nothing indicates that [my seeing a letter detailing Hubbard’s drug and alcohol use] occurred. That is because I never made such a claim. Camacho is using the two-bit, asinine strawman argument, or straw letter argument.
Camacho would have people believe, however, that his strawman pronouncement applies to what I actually claimed, and what his article is actually about: that I had read Hubbard’s letter to his wife in which he had shared the details that he was drinking rum and popping pinks and greys. Camacho’s position, and his black PR thesis, is that he possesses and has presented evidence that nothing supports the truth, my actual unadorned claim. He is lying.