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Aiding and Abetting Fair Game — 2015

I’m posting three email exchanges I had with Steve Cannane prior to the publication of his book Fair Game, which was in September 2016. These demonstrate certain relevant facts: he had my contact information; we were communicating; I had provided detailed, accurate data; he knew this to be true because he sought my data and credited it in his emails.

This thread from July 2015 concerns information Cannane had requested from me when we met during a conference in Toronto that took place between June 22 and 26, 2015. He interviewed me very briefly, and I agreed to send him materials he wanted after I had returned home from the conference. My mention at the end of my email about “Hubbard’s letter to the police,” is because Cannane had told me in Toronto that he would send me a copy of this letter.

On July 5, 2015 I emailed Cannane:

From: Gerry Armstrong
Sent: July 5, 2015 3:05 PM
To: Steve Cannane
Subject: Items discussed in Toronto

Hi Steve:

Great to meet you at the Toronto conference, and get to talk with you a few minutes.

There were 5 things I made a note to write to you about: 1. John Avery; 2. Scientology researcher “Margaret Lake;” 3. Hubbard in Princeton, NJ; 4. the Citizens Purity League, and 5. Hubbard’s WW II post-Australia injuries. I didn’t remember the name of the Citizens Purity League, an early Hubbard front, but remembered it as targeting the police, and thought it could relate to the letter from Hubbard to the police in Oz during the skirmish with Phillip Wearne.

I forwarded the contact information I have for Avery separately.

Here is Ms. Lake’s site: http://scientologymyths.com/hubbardww2.htm

I mentioned that she came up with the idea that Hubbard received his purple hearts from the US Army, not the navy, as a result of his “injuries” in Australia.

Here is an article I wrote in 2008 about Hubbard’s police caper that was based on a lecture of his on January 3, 1960 “Zones of Control and Responsibility of Governments.”  http://gerryarmstrong.ca/archives/526

On June 23, 1960, Hubbard published as a “technical bulletin” “The Special Zone Plan,” which the Anderson Report cites to in the “Scientology and Politics” chapter.

I don’t believe the Anderson Report mentions the Hubbard lectures/sermons from January 1960 that precede the HCOB. But they do appear to relate to the Australian situation at the time.

Anyway, take a look at my article and see if any of the material is new or useful.

Attached is a .pdf of the “State of Man Congress” transcripts where Hubbard introduces his Citizens Purity League idea.

I just spotted another event in Scientology’s history, and also my history, that reaches back to Wearne. Guardian Order 121669 “Programme: Intelligence: Internal Security,” which is issued over Mary Sue Hubbard’s name but almost certainly written by L. Ron, states:

OBSERVATION: The enemy has used the method of infiltration to obtain information against ourselves as known from incidences in South Africa, Edinburgh and Washington, D.C.

The enemy has also “turned” and used as double agents Staff members as  revealed by Maurice Johnson at Saint Hill and Barbara Peake in Melbourne.

Further, the enemy has used former disaffected staff members, Scientologists  or relatives of Scientologists in their attacks – Philip Wearne and Doug Moon in Australia, Jean Kennedy and Gene van Niekerk in South Africa, Michael Pernetta and Mrs. Henslow in England, Eleanor Turner and the former Mrs. Elmo Troup in America and the O’Donnell family in New Zealand, to name but a few of the outstanding examples.
http://www.suppressiveperson.org/sp/archives/3828

At my trial in 1984, GO 121669 came into evidence, my attorney Michael Flynn questioned Mary Sue Hubbard about it, and the judge referred to it in the judgment.

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 only other persons who were shown any of the documents were defendant’s attorneys, the Douglasses, the Dincalcis, and apparently some documents specifically affecting LRH’s son “Nibs,” were shown to “Nibs.” The Douglasses and Dincalcises were disaffected Scientologists who had a concern for their own safety and mental security, and were much in the same situation as defendant. They had not been declared as suppressive, but Scientology had their P.C. folders, as well as other confessions, and they were extremely apprehensive. They did not see very many of the documents, and it is not entirely clear which they saw. At any rate Mary Sue Hubbard did not appear to be so much distressed by this fact, as by the fact that Armstrong had given the documents to Michael Flynn, whom the Church considered its foremost lawyer-enemy. http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50k/legal/a1/283.php

This judgment was affirmed on appeal in 1991.

You read out what Hubbard wrote in his letter to the police about being trained, I believe, as Provost Marshal Korea.

Sometime after this, he claimed to have actually been the “Provost Marshal Korea.” See this from a report I wrote to Cirrus Slevin, HCO Cope Officer CMO International, dated November 25, 1981:

I’ve attached an item “Data Sheet on Lafayette Ronald Hubbard” in his handwriting which was for use by the PR’s and for publication. It contains a number of claims which are not totally accurate, or are flatly untrue.

[…]

b.” attended Princeton University Post Graduate”
He didn’t.

[…]

g.” Provost Marshall Korea 1945″.
Untrue
http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/writings/historical/armstrong-ltr-cirrus-1981-11-25.html

This letter to Slevin was also quoted from in the judgment after my 1984 trial:

Less than three weeks before Defendant Armstrong left Scientology, he wrote a letter to Cirrus Slevin on November 25, 1981, in which it is clear that his intentions in airing the inaccuracies, falsehoods, and frauds regarding Hubbard were done in good faith. In his letter he stated as follows:

“If we present inaccuracies, hyperbole or downright lies as fact or truth, it doesn’t matter what slant we give them, if disproved the man will look, to outsiders at least, like a charlatan. This is what I’m trying to prevent and what I’ve been working on the past year and a half.”…
http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50k/legal/a1/283.php

Princeton was where Hubbard was supposedly being trained at the Navy’s School of Military Government, which was apparently on the Princeton University campus. This is from his “Affirmations,” circa 1946:

I returned to sea as navigator of a large ship and was subsequently selected for the Military Government School at Princeton whither I went in 1944-45 for three months. During my Princeton sojourn I was very tired and harrassed (sp?) and spent week-ends with a writer friend in Philadelphia. He almost forced me to sleep with his wife. Meanwhile I had a affair with a woman named Ferne. Somehow, perhaps because I had constantly wet feet and no sleep at Princeton, I contracted a staphloceus infection. I mistook it for gonnhorea and until I arrived at Monterey, believed my old illness had returned. I consulted a doctor there who reassured me. This affair again depressed my libido. The staphloceus infection has not entirely vanished, appearing as rheumatism which only small doses of stilbestrol will remove. The hormone further reduces my libido and I am nearly impotent.
http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/writings/ars/ars-2000-03-11.html

See also this ESMB post from Caroline:
http://www.forum.exscn.net/showthread.php?31084-Robert-Heinlein-A-Stranger-in-a-Strange-Land-and-Ron-Hubbard/page2

Hubbard’s Provost Marshal Korea claim was discussed in my 1984 trial, see, e.g., June 6, 1984:

THE COURT: Seven I’s.

FLYNN: That relates to the claim that he was a Provost Marshall of Korea. That claim is made in that data sheet.

LITT: I don’t have anything to add on seven I’s, Your Honor.

THE COURT: It will be received.
http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50k/legal/a1/4814.php

This is Hubbard’s request to be appointed to the School of Military Government: http://www.solitarytrees.net/cowen/warhero/1944/440909.gif

His “qualifications” are really something.

Hubbard also mentioned his Princeton sojourn in a 1946 appeal of the amount of his disability award to the Veterans Administration, which was read into the record in the Christofferson v. Scientology trial in Portland, OR in 1985:

BY MR. McMURRY: (Continuing)

Q. Mr. Armstrong, would you start with reading the typed portion of the appeal forms signed by Mr. Hubbard on July 4, 1946.

A. “My service-connected disability amounts to more than the ten percent awarded. No disability whatever was allowed for service-connected eye trouble. No disability was allowed for a chronic and incapacitating bone infection which was also service connected and not due to misconduct.

“Ulcers: Ten percent was awarded for duodenal ulcers. This stomach condition was demonstrated as chronic and was advanced as wholly incapacitating — ‘unfit for further service’ — by the retiring board of the USN Hospital, Oakland, California, where I was hospitalized for the second time within two years on the same diagnosis. Necessity to obtain milk and a very narrow diet — I cannot tolerate a general diet — results in my having to abandon my old profession as ship master and explorer, and seriously hampers me as a writer. I can do nothing which involves nervous strain without becoming dangerously ill. I cannot undertake a routine job because of resulting nervous exhaustion followed by a painful flare-up of my ulcers. My income has been zero since my release from service due to my physical condition.

“Eyes: An author must research a great deal to write. This has always entailed a great deal of reading with me. I cannot now read for more than three to four minutes without suffering from headache. I have attempted to have glasses fitted by such an eminent ophthalmologist as the head of the Mount Sinai Eye Clinic without any relief. The condition was stated by Navy doctors (see health record and hospital record) as chronic and unremediable, noting that the present glasses could not be increased in strength. My eyesight when I entered the service was very good. It began to fail after prolonged exposure to tropical sunlight in the Pacific in the spring of 1942. The diagnosis was ‘conjunctivitis actinic’ and I was hospitalized for it at the Brooklyn Naval Hospital, before returned to duty on my own” —

COOLEY: “being returned to duty”.

THE WITNESS: — “being returned to duty on my own request. My eyesight failed until I found it very difficult to read. When I was mustered out of the service at San Francisco Separation Center, December 5, 1945, my eyesight was registered as being about thirty percent of normal with glasses. I have no copy of this record. Occupational fitness due to failed eyesight is at a point where I have written nothing since release from service due to my inability to research, and my lack of finances to enable me to hire research done.

“Infection: A chronic infection in my right hip has lamed me. It has been treated by private physicians and yields to no known therapy which could be applied. Naval doctors refuse treatment on the grounds that it was not curable, ‘but might go away sometime.’ After a year and a half it is worse. This infection was contracted at Princeton University in 1945, January, according to record. Sudden transition from the tropics to the slush and icy cold of Princeton caused dramatic chills which seem to have settled in the right hip. Warm weather slightly mitigates but does not banish this injury. I cannot walk on pavement without suffering severely. Naval doctors sought to label this as writer’s syndrome, but had no proof, and its diagnosis has been disproved. Surgery is not indicated. This also prevents me from working at sea where one must stand much of the time.

“My earning power, due to injuries, all service connected, has dropped to nothing. I earned one thousand dollars a month prior to the war as a writer. I cannot now earn money as a writer, and attempts to find other employment have failed because of my physical condition. Occupational disability is one hundred percent. L. Ron Hubbard.”
http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50k/legal/related/5208.php

I think I mentioned to you that in my opinion Hubbard started lying about his navy career upon his return from Australia, where he really had been sent off in relative disgrace. He obviously contacted John W. Campbell after arriving in New York, told Campbell of his action and heroism, faked a limp, and Campbell wrote to Heinlein:

May 13,1942

Dear Bob:—

A brief note during business hours, concerning something of some interest.

Ron Hubbard’s in town–temporarily confined to the Sick Officer’s Quarters. He’s angry, bitter,  and very such afraid—afraid he’ll get assigned to some shore job, which he does not want, and kept from going to sea again.

Angry and bitter because, I suspect, he was among those licked. He collected a piece of Jap bomb in his thigh dureing the battle of the Java Sea, as far as I can make out. He was aboard ship at the time, apperantly, and Allied air power was not giving adequate coverage.

He is a graduate C.E., but is also rather competent in several lines. He was barnstorming for a living for a while, and has a private pilot’s license. He did some fairly useful mapping along the Alaska coast by a new radio-beam survey/method. And he has imagination, of course.

If the guy is hooked for shore duty–he’s got a limp; how permanent I don’t know, nor how bad—he might be useful. His own feeling is that his direct experience with Jap weapons, methods and tactics might be his prime asset. Mebbeso–I don’t know. But there must be several thousand American men, several hundred American officers, who have that by now.

If Scoles would be interested, you might pass on the information. At present, at least, Ron’s unassigned. One present existent negative asset is a cross-combination of an active temperament, an active temper, and a most active resentment at having been licked. His red hair seems to mean something, but if the Navy doesn’t want him in fighting service, he could do much better than as a parachute snap-fastner inspector in Kankakee, Kansas.

His medical condition I don’t know exactly, but the San Francisco medicos released him as fit for service; the New Yorkers grounded him again. A limp and a boiling temper seem to be his only momentos now.  [Heinlein archives: CORR218-3:146]

If you send me Hubbard’s letter to the police, it would be great. And if there are any other areas or questions I might be able to help with, please let me know.

All the best.

Gerry

I received back a notification that my email exceeded the Australia Broadcasting Corporation’s size limit:

From: alert…com
Sent: Sunday, July 05, 2015 3:12 PM
To: gerry…gerryarmstrong.org
Subject: ABC Email size limit exceeded

This is an automatically generated notification.

A message sent by you has triggered the ABC filtering rule for email size. The attachment you are trying to send is too large.

Please reduce the size of the attachment and try again.

I resent my email to Cannane with this note:

From: Gerry Armstrong
Sent: July 5, 2015 3:40 PM
To: Steve Cannane
Subject: FW: ABC Email size limit exceeded

Hi again Steve:

My email text is below this notification. And I will excerpt the relevant lecture transcripts from the oversize “State of Man Congress” pdf, and will send separately.

Gerry

[snip oversize email notification and my email “Items discussed in Toronto”]

I emailed Cannane the subject lecture transcripts:

From: Gerry Armstrong
Sent: July 5, 2015 3:43 PM
To: Steve Cannane
Subject: Items discussed in Toronto

Attached are the relevant lectures from the State of Man Congress, January 1960.

On July 7, 2015, I received a reply from Cannane:

From: Steve Cannane
Sent: July 7, 2015 9:48 AM
To: Gerry Armstrong
Subject: Re: Items discussed in Toronto

Hi Gerry, great to meet you in Toronto. It was a terrific week. Thanks for all these leads – much appreciated. If you ever have difficulties with emails to big for my abc email I have another address [  ]

Regards,

Steve

I emailed Cannane:

From: Gerry Armstrong
Sent: July 7, 2015 10:03 AM
To: ‘[  ]’
Subject: Lecture transcripts.

Thanks for the gmail address. Here is the .pdf of the whole set of State of Man Congress transcripts.

Gerry

I received a reply from Cannane:

From: Steve Cannane
Sent: July 7, 2015 11:31 AM
To: Gerry Armstrong
Subject: Re: Lecture transcripts.

thanks Gerry, that’s great. Steve

by

Aiding and Abetting Fair Game — 2014

I’m posting three email exchanges I had with Steve Cannane prior to the publication of his book Fair Game. These demonstrate certain relevant facts: he had my contact information;  we were communicating; I had provided detailed, accurate, useful data; and he knew this to be true because he sought my data and credited it in his emails.

This thread from early 2014, which concerns L. Ron Hubbard’s “pinks & greys” letter to Mary Sue Hubbard, started when Cannane emailed Jon Atack.

On 29 Jan 2014, at 08:33, Cannane wrote:

Sent from my iPhone

Hi Jon, another question about the great man. Pinks and Grays….what exactly was the old man popping in Tangiers? Was it Benzedrine? whats’ the difference between a ‘pink’ and a ‘gray’?

cheers,

Steve

Atack replied and cced me:

From: jon atack
Sent: Wednesday, January 29, 2014 7:05 AM
To: Steve Cannane
Cc: Gerry Armstrong
Subject: Re: enquiry request

Dear Gerry,

Steve is working on a book about the clut in Oz and has some lovely new discoveries to share. If you can add anything to the tale of Ron: The Multiple Drug Abuser, I’d be grateful,

best,

jon

Dear Steve,

as you’ll see, I’ve copied Gerry on this, as the world’s leading expert on pinks and greys. There are good quotes on phenobarbital and benzedrine from the early fifties:

Hubbard said that sedative drugs cause “the individual to walk around in a light hypnotic trance” (SOSII, p.222), and said “Continuous application of sedatives to an individual … make him more suggestible.” (SOSI, p.163).  Hubbard admitted testing drugs and gave as one of his conclusions: “So far soporifics have been tested and rejected … That whole block of sedatives like scopolamine, opium, phenobarbital … are of no assistance in Dianetics” (R&D4, p.137).  Hubbard’s understanding of this was personal, having explained the damage caused in the highly suggestible state brought about by constant use of phenobarbital, Hubbard said “I know because I made myself a guinea pig on one of those experiments, and trying to get off a soporific was a tough job.” (R&D 1, p.124).  He named the barbiturate drug phenobarbital as the soporific to which he had been addicted. It was probably prescribed to him for his purported ulcer in San Diego in 1943. He was still trying to obtain phenobarbital in East Grinstead (as “Dr. Hubbard”) as late as 1965 (Atack, p.185, where the drug is given its British name “nembutal”).

Hubbard also claimed to have administered nitrous oxide to three people (R&D1, p.123).  He termed it “a first class hypnotic” (DMSMH, p.363).  While he condemned the use of soporifics (though his attitude seems to have been ambivalent in light of his positive comments about narcosynthesis), Hubbard encouraged the use of amphetamines, recommending benzedrine in particular (DMSMH, p.363, p.389 in later editions; R&D1, pp.124, 305, 313; R&D4, p.37). Curiously, although Scientology sponsors Narconon and claims to be drug free, its best-selling publication says “Making one drug immoral and another taxable is a sample of the alcohol engram in society” (DMSMH, p.365). On the same page, Hubbard says that opium, marijuana and phenobarbital are all less dangerous than alcohol. There is no prohibition on Scientologists drinking, however.

On January 31, I replied to Atack and cced Cannane:

From: Gerry Armstrong
Sent: January 31, 2014 7:20 AM
To: ‘jon atack’
Cc: [Steve Cannane]
Subject: RE: enquiry request

Dear Jon, Dear Steve:

I have dealt with the pinks and greys question a bit over the last couple of years, mainly because Tommy Davis and his coconspirators told Lawrence Wright and other persons at The New Yorker that I had forged Hubbard’s letter where he stated he was popping those pills.

Steve, do you want me to forward what I wrote or assembled earlier about this? Or what is your need?

My short conclusion was that Hubbard was referring to Darvon or Dextropropoxyphene.

Best,

Gerry

On January 31, Atack emailed:

From: jon atack
Sent: January 31, 2014 8:08 AM
To: Gerry Armstrong
Subject: Re: enquiry request

Hi Gerry,

I’d like to see your more extensive investigation. David Mayo told me that on her deathbed, Virginia Downsborough listed the pharmaceuticals on Hub’s shelf when she rescued him (‘Scientology is here to rescue you’) form Gran Canaria. But he hasn’t revealed this information to me (Virginia got as far as telling me that Hub was subsisting on a ‘shelf-full’ of pharmaceuticals, but became bashful when asked precisely what. In fact, she claimed not to know).

Trust all is well, and that you are planning to visit me in the nearness of time – the first two years of our arty biography of you have been entirely developed by me – so much for Godot!

love,

j

On February 2, Cannane emailed:

From: Steve Cannane
Sent: Sunday, February 02, 2014 4:46 PM
To: Gerry Armstrong
Subject: Re: enquiry request

Dear Gerry, thanks so much for the email – I’d love to see what you’ve previously written about this. Am I able to quote from it? Or is it background only?  I thought Hubbard was more into amphetamines and booze than opioids…

Regards,

Steve

On February 12, Cannane emailed:

From: Steve Cannane
Sent: February 12, 2014 7:13 PM
To: ‘gerry@gerryarmstrong.org’
Subject: FW: enquiry request

Dear Gerry,

Just following up on this email. Am I able to have a look at what you assembled for The New Yorker?

Regards,

Steve

On February 14, I emailed Cannane and cced Atack:

From: Gerry Armstrong
Sent: February 14, 2014 9:40 PM
To: ‘Steve Cannane’
Cc: [Jon Atack]
Subject: RE: enquiry request

Dear Steve:

Following are three emails dated January 20 and 26 and February 4, 2011 to Katia Bachko, a New Yorker fact checker, and Lawrence Wright.

I included the complete emails so you can see the context in which I wrote about Hubbard’s pinks and greys comment during his Wall of Fire period. No dark night of the soul for Ron, no abyss. For Ron a flaming wall of fire.

I am not, as Jon jokes, the world’s leading expert on pinks and greys.

Hugh Urban doubtlessly asked me about the reference in 2010 because of mentions in Bent Corydon’s and Jon’s Hubbard biographies.

The New Yorker asked me about the reference because the Scientologists were telling Lawrence Wright that I forged, and disseminated, Hubbard’s letter to Mary Sue Hubbard in which, as I recall, he wrote that he was drinking rum and popping pinks and greys.

I am the world’s leading expert on my alleged forgery of the pinks and greys letter. I am guessing that you are not so much interested in chasing down the forgery charge, but what was going through Hubbard’s mind when he tripped through the wall of fire.

I probably last read the letter in 1982, and it was not referred to in my 1984 trial. During the time I possessed Hubbard’s archive, 1980-81, I got the idea that when Hubbard wrote “pinks and greys” in 1967, he had in mind two-toned caps. I already had an awareness of two-toned narcotic capsules in the 1960’s. There was so much Darvon around that I had probably seen pink and grey caps before I got into Scientology. Then sometime after leaving, I saw some pink and grey Darvon caps, learned about their availability in the 1960’s and just thought they were what Hubbard was talking about.

Maybe he was talking about pink pills and grey pills, I don’t know. And who knows how many pinks pills and grey pills were being sold around the world, and how indicated they were with rum.

I hope this helps. I’ve written Tommy Davis some letters about the forgery BS. But here are the New Yorker emails.

Best regards,

Gerry Armstrong
[address]

-A-

From: Gerry Armstrong
Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2011 5:55 PM
To: ‘Katia Bachko’
Cc: ‘Lawrence Wright’
Subject: RE: Thank you!

Hi Katia:

Thanks. Images for the two Ability Magazines I think you’re looking for are attached. Will this do for your purposes? I do not have hard copies that I can easily put my hands on, but if necessary I’ll try.

Here are items I said I’d send you links for:

1. The Breckenridge Decision, filed June 22, 1984 after trial in LA Superior Court in the first Scientology v. Armstrong case:  http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50k/legal/a1/283.php

Image of the decision: http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/ga/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/breckenridge-decision1.pdf

This became the judgment in the case, and was affirmed on appeal in 1991:  http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50k/legal/a1/3112.php

The Appendix to the LA Court’s Decision contains the history that leads to Scientology suing me and the provenance of the subject documents:

From his extensive knowledge of the covert and intelligence operations carried out by the Church of Scientology of California against its enemies (suppressive persons), Defendant Armstrong became terrified and feared that his life and the life of his wife were in danger, and he also feared he would be the target of costly and harassing lawsuits.

In addition, Mr. Garrison became afraid for the security of the documents and believed that the intelligence network of the Church of Scientology would break and enter his home to retrieve them. Thus, Defendant Armstrong made copies of certain documents for Mr. Garrison and maintained them in a separate location.

It was thereafter, in the summer of 1982, that Defendant Armstrong asked Mr. Garrison for copies of documents to use in his defense and sent the documents to his attorneys, Michael Flynn and Contos & Bunch.

2. Scientology’s injunction against me filed October 17, 1995 in the fourth Scientology v. Armstrong case:  http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50k/legal/a4/2623.php
Image of the injunction: http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/ga/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/injunction-1995-10-17.pdf

3. This site deals with the injunction’s “in concert” issue, and proposes to organize the class of persons acting in concert with me: http://inconcert.xenu.ca/

By making it possible for me to respond to Scientology’s statements about me, you, and of course the New Yorker, are acting in concert with me; for which I thank all of you very much.

4. Scientology’s charge that I had forged the 1967 letter Hubbard wrote to his wife Mary Sue, in which he mentioned drinking lots of rum and popping pinks and greys, is brand new to me, and both bizarre and disturbing. I can kind of see why Scientology would take that position at this point, because the phrase has gone semi-viral. I just did this search:
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22popping+pinks+and+greys%22&hl=en&num=100&lr=&ft=i&cr=&safe=off&tbs=

A Ohio State University Professor of Religious Studies Hugh Urban asked me last summer about the pinks and greys and the letter, and I’ll copy the part of my e-mail to him that relates to this issue:

The only copy of the letter that I know of would be inside Scientology. There’s no way of knowing with absolute certainty what Hubbard meant, but I’ve for some time thought “pinks and grays” are Darvon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dextropropoxyphene

Darvon had been around since the 1950’s. See image: http://www.everydayhealth.com/drugs/images/multum/Darvon%20Compound%2065.jpg

In his letter to Mary Sue, he wrote about drinking rum along with popping pinks and grays. It’s likely he was self-medicating to produce the necessary manic state.

He wrote that in 1938 he stayed up for 4 days straight drinking beer while he cranked out Excalibur. And the thesis for Excalibur came to him, he claimed, while under nitrous oxide for a tooth extraction.

This is from Ron’s Journal 67:

Tape #6709 C2

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.

Hubbard was a bit of a whiner, and invented a number of injuries and illnesses for himself over the years despite what he said in his Admissions.

People dislike cripples. You need never be a cripple. You have never done anything for which you need feel guilty. You never need punish yourself about anything. You are in wonderful glowing health. You never have accidents because you are prudent and poised.

You will live to be 200 years old, both because you are calm and because of modern discoveries to be made in your lifetime. [Ole Doc M]

[…]

When you tell people you are ill it has no effect upon your health. In the Veterans examination you will tell them how sick you are. You will look sick when you take it. You will return to health one hour after the examination and laugh at them.

No matter what lies you may tell others they have no physical effect on you of any kind. You never injure your health by saying it is bad. You cannot lie to yourself. Disgust not sympathy is generated in others by bad health. Injuries are not romantic. They are disgusting in you. You are a child of God. You are perfect. Health is a passport to friends. Women are not impressed by your injuries. Clear exuberant good health is your passport to their hearts. Adventure heroes may sound romantic when injured but it is really a bad comment on their expertness. The truly great adventurer is so expert he is never injured by anything. Dragging a wing is not romantic, it is silly. You will always be in wonderful health and well-being. http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/writings/ars/ars-2000-03-11.html

It is nevertheless quite possible that in 1966-67 Hubbard really was ill, was in some discomfort, and did dose himself with a diet of Darvon and rum.

5. Attorney Ford Greene’s web site: http://www.fordgreene.com/
and contact data:

711 Sir Francis Drake Boulevard
San Anselmo, California 94960-1949
[telephone]
[email]

I worked with Ford as his paralegal/sole office help in 1991-1995 and he represented me against Scientology during that period. He’s had some major cult cases in his career, got appropriately fair gamed, and he’s now the Mayor of San Anselmo!

I let him know that you might contact him.

6. Organization of United Renunciants section on my site: http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/media/our/index.html
As mentioned, the idea is to peacefully move society off the money standard. Note the Marin IJ article: http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/media/marin-independent-journal-1992-11-11.html
We talked about currency: http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/media/our/present-currency.html

7. Also see this recent note that mentions Lawrence Wright’s article, Tommy Davis, pre-emptive black PR, and my nude newspaper posing activities: http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/archives/4805

8. Regarding the Armstrong Operation, I mentioned this declaration, which, upon re-reading now, remains a pretty good statement of what went on:
http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/legal/decl-1994-02-20.html

There are a bunch of related documents here: http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/cult/illegal-videotaping.html

And a whole page full of links to black PR and extralegal ops, with some info on “dead agent” you asked about: http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/cult/index.html

These are the best copies of the videos I’ve got:

Day One. Gerry meets with David Kluge: http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/archives/25

Day Two David Kluge Returns: http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/archives/24

Day Three Enter Mike Rinder: http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/archives/23

Day Four Mike Rinder returns: http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/archives/22

Because this matter involves document authenticity and accuracy, as well as litigation, could you please send me a scan of what documents relating to me Scientology provided New Yorker people, so that I can know for certain what I’m being asked to respond to.

Best for now,

Gerry Armstrong

[address]

 

From: Katia Bachko
Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2011 10:23 AM
To: gerry…gerryarmstrong.org
Subject: Thank you!

Hi Gerry,
It was really nice to speak with you earlier. So, the issues of Ability that we’re looking for are Issue 81 from 1959, and March 1955. Will you let me know if you might have those in your possession, or could connect us with someone else who does? And, feel free to send as much material as possible regarding the other topics we covered.
Thanks again!
Katia
—
Katia Bachko
fact checker
The New Yorker
4 Times Square
New York, NY 10036

[telephone]

-B-

From: Gerry Armstrong
Sent: Wednesday, January 26, 2011 2:14 PM
To: ‘Katia Bachko’
Cc: Lawrence Wright
Subject: RE: Pinks and grays

Hi Katia:

I haven’t been able to find where it’s stated that the letter was admitted into evidence. If you could send me a link to such a reference it would be helpful.

The earliest published reference I can find is in Corydon’s Hubbard biography first published in 1987:

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.”

There was no discussion of the content of this letter at my 1984 trial that I’ve been able to find, and I’ve not been able to determine if it was admitted into evidence. It is most likely, from what Corydon wrote in his book in the 1980’s and from my memory, that the letter remained under seal in the custody of the LA Superior Court Clerk until the Hubbard documents were delivered to Scientology in December 1986.

Scientology and Mary Sue Hubbard’s attorneys acknowledged correspondence between Hubbard and Mary Sue that was included in the sealed documents, and argued that this correspondence was private and privileged. But they never claimed that any of these materials were forgeries. These attorneys moved some of that correspondence into evidence themselves, but the documents are not identified well enough in the record for me to be able to determine if the pinks & greys letter was among them.

See, e.g., this discussion at p. 4662, when exhibits are being moved into evidence:

Six B’s is a letter to his wife, I guess.
MR. 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.

So here, my attorney Michael Flynn is identifying a letter (Ex, No. 500-BBBBBB) between Hubbard and Mary Sue as reflective of six inches of similar type letters downstairs. “Downstairs” refers to the Clerk’s office in the basement of the LA Superior Court where the bulk of the subject documents remained during the trial.

As far as I know, only Scientology possesses the pinks & greys letter, and it has never been made public. In that Scientology’s representatives are claiming the letter is forged, they should produce it. Good luck, huh.

I hope this helps.

Gerry

 

From: Katia Bachko
Sent: Wednesday, January 26, 2011 10:52 AM
To: Gerry Armstrong
Subject: Pinks and grays

Hi Gerry,
A quick question for you: I keep reading on the web that the ‘pinks and grays’ letter was supposedly admitted into evidence during some court proceedings. Do you know anything about that?
Thanks,
Katia
—
Katia Bachko
fact checker
The New Yorker
4 Times Square
New York, NY 10036

[telephone]

-C-

From: Gerry Armstrong
Sent: Friday, February 04, 2011 10:23 PM
To: Katia Bachko ([  ]); Lawrence Wright
Subject: More pinks & greys

Hi Katia, Hi Larry:

As I understand it, Scientology’s basic or key charge against me to The New Yorker, which I’ve been asked about a number of times in the past couple of weeks, is that I forged documents and inserted these forgeries into the documents that were delivered to Scientology from the office of the Clerk of the LA Superior Court at the time of the settlement of the Scientology v. Armstrong case in December 1986. The one such allegedly forged document that has been identified is the pinks-and-greys (p & g) letter from L. Ron Hubbard to Mary Sue Hubbard during the period when he was in Morocco and the Canaries supposedly developing OT III and starting the Sea Project.

To me it’s obvious that Scientology has the responsibility of producing these documents it claims are forgeries. The charge is serious enough to me that I will also communicate about it to Miscavige, et al. I would think they’d be more than anxious to provide The New Yorker with documents they say I forged. In fact, if Miscavige and his attorneys really believed I forged any of those documents, they would have long since tried to have me prosecuted for such a fraud, and certainly would have made the claim in earlier black PR and in legal proceedings.

Following are some facts and references to documents that support my denial of the forgery charge.

Corydon’s Messiah or Madman was published in 1987. This appears to be the earliest published mention of the p & g letter.

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.”

Miller’s Bare-Faced Messiah was published in 1987. He doesn’t mention the letter, and he had something better, an interview with Virginia Downsborough who was with Hubbard in Las Palmas.

‘We got the Enchanter on the ways in Las Palmas,’ said Downsborough, ‘and we had not been there very long before Ron turned up. Bill Robertson – another Scientologist – and myself went to the post office to post some letters and discovered a telegram there from Ron saying that he was arriving in Las Palmas almost at that minute and wanted to be met. We jumped into a taxi and got to the airport just in time to pick him up as he was coming through Customs. We found him a hotel in Las Palmas and next day I went back to see if he was all right, because he did not seem to be too well.

‘When I went in to his room there were drugs of all kinds everywhere. He seemed to be taking about sixty thousand different pills. I was appalled, particularly after listening to all his tirades against drugs and the medical profession. There was something very wrong with him, but I didn’t know what it was except that he was in a state of deep depression; he told me he didn’t have any more gains and he wanted to die. That’s what he said: “I want to die.”‘

It was important for Hubbard to be discovered in this dramatically debilitated condition at this time, for it would soon be announced to fellow Scientologists that he had completed ‘a research accomplishment of immense magnitude’ described, somewhat inscrutably, as the ‘Wall of Fire’. This was the OT3 (Operating Thetan Section Three) material, in which were contained ‘the secrets of a disaster which resulted in the decay of life as we know it in this sector of the galaxy’.[3] Hubbard, it was said, was the ‘first person in millions of years’ to map a precise route through the ‘Wall of Fire’. Having done so, his OT power had been increased to such an extent that he was at grave risk of accidental injury to his body; indeed, he had broken his back, a knee and an arm during the course of his research.

Virginia Downsborough did not observe any broken limbs, but recognized that Ron needed nursing. ‘I moved into an adjoining room in the hotel to take care of him. He refused to eat the hotel food, so I got a little hotplate and cooked meals for him in the room, simple things, things that he liked. My main concern was to try and get him off all the pills he was on and persuade him that there was still plenty for him to do. He was sleeping a lot and refused to get out of bed.

‘I don’t know what drugs he was taking – they certainly weren’t making him high – but I knew I had to get him over it. I discussed it with him and gradually took them away. He didn’t carry on about it. He had brought a great pile of unopened mail with him from Tangier, a lot of it from Mary Sue, and I got him to start reading her letters. After about three weeks he decided he would get out of bed and he started taking little walks and then he got interested in what was happening on the Enchanter and after that he was all right.’

I had never spoken to Downsborough and didn’t know of her knowledge of Hubbard’s drugs in Las Palmas until I read about it in Bare-Faced Messiah.

Atack’s A Piece of Blue Sky was published in 1990.

Hubbard had spent the last weeks of 1966 “researching” OT3 in North Africa. In a letter of the time, he admitted that he was taking drugs (“pinks and grays”) to assist his research.

Atack’s reference for this statement is:

16. Interview with Gerald Armstrong, East Grinstead, June 1984.

It’s likely that this interview with Atack was the earliest time I mentioned the p & g letter to any writer who later wrote about it.

The Scientology v. Armstrong trial ended June 8, 1984. The Breckenridge decision is June 20, and the same day I flew to London to testify in the B & G Wards case. While in the UK, I met Atack and spent some time talking with him. He’s an ex-Scientologist, and smart guy, and we had lots to talk about. This would have been when the p & g letter was fresh in my mind.

I met Corydon, I believe, before the 1984 trial, and he attended a number of days of the trial. He lived in Riverside, CA, which is about 50 miles from LA. We communicated a number of times about many subjects during that period and afterward. I think, however, that the p & g letter would have come up in our conversations, and Corydon would have recorded or noted my language, after he began his research and interviews for his book.

During that period, I was in Boston, working for attorney Mike Flynn. I was there from September 1985 to January 1987. Bent came out to Boston and stayed with me for a few days in 1986. He spent a lot of time talking to me, and also interviewed Sara Northrup on that trip.

I also met Miller in Boston in 1986 and spent several hours talking with him over two days.

During the years the documents were under seal, 1982 through 1986, Scientology had access to them at any time the Court House was open, and Scientology inventoried all the Armstrong documents. At no time during that period did Scientology claim that it found any forged or even possibly forged documents.

Please see the set of five affidavits executed by Scientology representative Kenneth Long in October 1987 that were filed in the Scientology v. Miller case in the UK.

http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/legal/other-sworn-testimony.html

Scroll down to “Long.”

http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/legal/affi-long-1987-10-05-1.html

http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/legal/affi-long-1987-10-05-2.html

http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/legal/affi-long-1987-10-05-3.html

http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/legal/affi-long-1987-10-07-4.html

http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/legal/affi-long-1987-10-08-5.html

There are also links to images of these affidavits at the bottom of each document.

Long accuses me of violating court sealing orders by retaining possession of and disseminating certain documents, which I didn’t, and supports his accusation with his logic. But there is no mention in this in any of the Long affidavits that I had forged any of the documents that had been used at trial or remained sealed in the LA Superior Court Clerk’s office.

It should be understood that while Scientology was filing these affidavits in court in the UK, the cult also considered that I was silenced by contract and not permitted to respond to clear my name. In fact, I was threatened with enforcement of the contract during the Miller proceeding if I talked to Miller or his publisher’s attorneys.

The affidavits describe the security actions Long and Scientology took with the Armstrong documents, which Long personally inventoried. Scientology went to extraordinary lengths to make sure that what it’s now claiming happened couldn’t happen. See, e.g.,
http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/legal/affi-long-1987-10-05-2.html

3. I have been deeply involved in the litigation of the case of {Church of Scientology of California and Mary Sue} {Hubbard v. Gerald Armstrong}, Los Angeles Superior Court case number C 420153, since the inception of that litigation on August 2, 1982. During the course of my participation in that litigation, I personally inventoried the materials surrendered pursuant to court order to the Clerk of the Los Angeles Superior Court in September 1982 by Gerald Armstrong and his counsel. I also attended almost every deposition and/or pre-trial proceeding held in that case, and was present as an assistant to counsel throughout each day of the trial proceedings in May and June, 1984.

[…]

[Para. 9] Between the end of trial on June 8, 1984, and the issuance of the temporary stay on June 25, 1984, I caused a watch to be maintained over the area in the courthouse wherein the trial exhibits were stored to ensure that no one, other than trial court personnel, had access to said materials. Additionally, I later personally confirmed with Ms. Rosie Hart, the clerk for the Honorable Paul Breckenridge Jr., the trial judge for the Church’s case against Mr. Armstrong, that none of the trial exhibits were made available to anyone at any time prior to the issuance of the temporary stay order of June 25, 1984.

[…]

[Para. 11] Thereafter, no further public inspection of the trial exhibits was ever allowed by the court, and I have personally confirmed with the court personnel responsible for the caretaking of the exhibits that absolutely no inspection or copying of the trial exhibits was allowed. The final order, which maintained the seal on the trial exhibits until they were returned to the Church in December 1986, is also attached to my previous Affidavit in Exhibit “KDL 19.”

And, e.g., http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/legal/affi-long-1987-10-07-4.html

6. After the Church brought suit against Mr. Armstrong, a Temporary Restraining Order was issued on August 24, 1982. Pursuant to that Order, Mr. Armstrong and his counsel surrendered to the Clerk of the Court approximately 10,000 documents contained in five boxes. I inventoried all of the surrendered materials immediately upon their arrival with the court. These documents were placed under seal and then maintained under seal thereafter by the Clerk pursuant to the preliminary injunction issued on September 24, 1982. From this point onward, all such documents were to be only in the possession of the court.

[…]

10. In reviewing Exhibit “KDL 34” attached hereto, the Court will no doubt note what appear to be “windows,” or gaps between the vacating of one order and the issuance of the next. These “windows” are far more apparent than they were real. To begin with, I maintained, along with my staff, a daily check with each court in which a temporary stay order was pending in order to ensure that I learned the minute a ruling was issued. So before the trial court received any order vacating a sealing order, the Church obtained another order sealing them up again. In actuality, it took 3-5 days for the trial court to receive a vacating order from the Higher Court and before recript I would personally, hand deliver a new stay order. In addition, I also had my staff maintain a watch over the area of the court where these documents were kept during each so called “window” period and no one viewed and/or copied the materials.

[…]

12. Following the issuance of the “Roes” order on December 20, 1984, the 178 trial exhibits were never again unsealed. These 178 trial exhibits, the other tiral exhibits which had been left sealed throughout, and the 9,000 documents nver entered into the trial, were then returned to the Church in December 1986.

Please also see this declaration I executed March 15, 1990 and filed in the appeal Scientology had taken from the 1984 Breckenridge decision: http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50k/legal/a1/2149.php

Particularly, see paras. 20 – 39.

Also see my declaration executed December 25, 1990 and filed in the same Armstrong I appeal

http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50k/legal/a1/2173.php

Note particularly, paras. 17 – 20, which deal with Long’s false charges that I violated court orders.

Then see this declaration executed by Long March 26, 1990 and filed in the Armstrong I appeal:

http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50k/legal/a1/2167.php

Ken Long inventoried the subject Armstrong documents while they were in the possession of the LA Superior Court Clerk, and obviously checked these documents against his inventory, or could/should have checked them against his inventory, to come up with the facts he alleges in his affidavits filed in Scientology v. Miller.

The Long affidavits’ false charges against me of violating court orders were instrumental in bringing me back into public opposition to Scientology following the December 1986 “settlement.”

Maybe before The New Yorker prints, you could ask Scientology/Davis/Miscavige/et al. to be able to interview Ken Long on his knowledge of what was contained in the Armstrong documents, his inventory, etc., to get to the bottom of the narrow and apparently pivotal issue and charge that I had forged some of those documents, specifically the pinks-and-greys letter.

Best regards,

Gerry

On February 15, I received an email from Atack:

From: jon atack
Sent: February 15, 2014 3:43 PM
To: Gerry Armstrong
Subject: Re: enquiry request

Thanks Gerry. David told me a year ago that Virginia D had told him the contents of the famous OT3 drug shelf on her deathbed. But he didn’t remember, and my attempts to remind him have fallen on stony ground. If you are in touch with him, he might be willing to tell you. He did say that they were psychiatric drugs and that he would take contra-indicated medicines (Nibs said that he used to give uppers and downers to groupies as a date rape drug, but we all know how reliable Nibs is). I imagine he was taking speed with the Darvol.

love (and to Caroline),

On February 17, I replied to Atack and cced Cannane:

From: Gerry Armstrong
Sent: February 17, 2014 8:25 AM
To: ‘jon atack’
Cc: [Cannane]
Subject: RE: enquiry request

Hi Jon:

I don’t think I’m close enough to David Mayo to question him to get an ancient third hand memory of old mother Hubbard’s drug cupboard.

I didn’t mention to Steve, and it isn’t in what I sent to the New Yorker, because their interest was in the alleged forgery of the pinks and greys letter, but it’s fairly common knowledge that Hubbard was dosing himself with testosterone. It might have been his drug of choice among other drugs of choice, but testosterone was in his drug diet as early as the 1940’s and well past his wall of fire incident in the 1960’s. I think he sought the aggression and swinish suspicion it could give him, and didn’t interpret his paranoia as paranoia.

Gerry

On February 17 I received an email from Cannane who cced Atack:

From: Steve Cannane
Sent: February 17, 2014 5:14 PM
To: ‘Gerry Armstrong’
Cc: [Jon Atack]
Subject: RE: enquiry request

Dear Gerry,

Thanks very much for all of this, a great help. That is some very thorough referencing.  Yes, I was more interested in what Hubbard was on at the time, than the cult’s allegations.

You both may be interested to know I just tracked down an 82 year old former private eye living in the Australian outback, who in 1968 spied on the then emerging newspaper publisher Rupert Murdoch and 12 Australian parliamentarians. No wonder Murdoch called them a creepy evil cult recently.

The private eye played double agent and fed information back to Murdoch and the politicians. And he’s kept his affidavit from the time detailing his work for the cult…. A researcher’s dream!

Thanks again.

Best,

Steve

by

Goodbugger

Jon Atack asked if I would write down something about the name “Jonnie Goodbugger” that Omar Garrison came up with for L. Ron Hubbard.

Atack spelled it Johnny Goodbugger, but I believe it should be Jonnie, after Jonnie Goodboy Tyler.

In October 1980, right after Garrison signed his contract to write the LRH biography, I gave him a copy of Hubbard’s manuscript for Man the Endangered Species, which was published in 1982 as Battlefield Earth. The hero in the book is the humanoid stone age villager Jonnie Goodboy Tyler.

Hubbard had sent a copy of the ms to his PR Bureau, and I got assigned to copyedit his introduction. I also read the ms version around the same time Garrison read it, and we talked about the book on many occasions.

Garrison recognized very early in his reading and research in the biography project that Hubbard standardly made the heroes in his fiction physically astonishing versions of himself. “Jonnie Goodboy stood […] a muscular six feet shining with the bronzed health of his twenty years […] wind tangling his corn-yellow hair and beard, looking […] with his ice-blue eyes.”

No doubt Jonnie’s surname came to Hubbard from the famous American children’s novel Toby Tyler; or, Ten Weeks with a Circus. He had read it in his childhood, just as I had. He signaled his affection for the book, to me at least, when in the early 1970’s he started addressing Toby Young as “Tyler” in his communications to her. She was then the LRH Communicator US, and they communicated directly for a while, mainly about children in the orgs in the US. He invented cute pet names for a few female messengers or juniors who got close to him at different times, and “Tyler” was such a name for Toby Young. Perhaps Hubbard was feeling a little sentimental when, on the lam and hiding out in 1980, he called the hero in the monumental science fiction book he was writing “Tyler.” Or maybe it was marketing, or garden variety luciferian cynicism.

“Goodbugger” replacing “Goodboy” arose in Garrison’s mind, I am quite sure, from reading a page of Hubbard handwriting about Leon Brown and buggery. Hubbard implicated them both in something unsavory, and then commanded himself in this writing to “plow up Leon Brown.” I interpreted this to mean that for his health or progress in life he would have to confront the whole truth of whatever he and Brown had been into.

Leon Brown is recognizable to every on-board Scientologist from one of Hubbard’s most famous scriptural policy letters, HCOPL 7 December 1969 “Ethics, the Design of:”

To give you an example, when a little boy this life, the neighborhood a block around and the road from home to school were unusable. A bully about five years older than I named Leon Brown exerted a very bad influence over other children. With extortion by violence and blackmail and with corruption he made the area very dangerous. The road to school was blocked by the 5 O’Connell kids, ranging from 7 to 15 who stopped and beat up any smaller child. One couldn’t go to school safely and was hounded by the truant officer, a hulking brute complete with star, if one didn’t go to school.

When I was about six I got very tired of a bloody nose and spankings because my clothes were torn and avidly learned “lumberjack fighting” a crude form of judo from my grandfather.

With this “superior tech” under my belt I searched out and found alone the youngest O’Connell kid, a year older than I, and pulverized him. Then I found alone and took on the next in size and pulverized him. After that the O’Connell kids, all 5, fled each time I showed up and the road to school was open and I convoyed other little kids so it was safe.

Then one day I got up on a 9 foot high board fence and waited until the 12 year old bully passed by and leaped off on him boots and all and after the dust settled that neighborhood was safe for every kid in it.

So I learned about justice. Kids would come from blocks away to get help in their neighborhood. Finally for a mile around it was a safe environment for kids.

At one time I had the O’Connell kids’ ages, and Leon Brown’s too. I’ve posted and spoken years ago about all the details I could recall, I think. It is probably quite easy to check in the Helena, Montana records. The youngest O’Connell kid that young Hubbard said he’d pulverized might have been younger than Hubbard. I do not possess this information now. I don’t think Leon Brown was five or six years older than Hubbard, but closer in age.

Hubbard issued “Ethics, the Design of” on December 7, 1969, while he was probably in Casablanca, Morocco. I was in Vancouver, Canada and enrolled on his Standard Dianetics Course. This PL would become basic and essential throughout my years in the SO. Here were the “psychopathic personality,” “psychopathic criminals,” “people who suppress,” who got away with it because nobody said “No.”

This PL also identified the cult’s command channel:

It occasionally happens that [the SP] is someone high up in the org. It sometimes happens [the Ethics Officer’s] seniors or the EC scold him for daring to report on things or to them. Then he knows the suppression is high up and he is delinquent in duty if he does not report it to the next highest org and if no action there right on up to the Sea Org.

Although Garrison was every inch a wog, he also picked up the organizational and historical importance of Hubbard’s public PL “Ethics, the Design of.” It contrasted dramatically with Hubbard’s private writing I had given Garrison that revealed something about the real relationship with Brown. Garrison was also familiar with Hubbard’s notoriously homophobic scriptural precepts and attitude, and it was in their light he viewed the Brown thing, and coined the name Jonnie Goodbugger. There were a few of us who had known Hubbard and occasionally would refer to him after that, I think always kind of kindly, as Jonnie Goodbugger, or just Goodbugger.

Hubbard’s childhood ethics heroics are noted in Russell Miller’s Bare-Faced Messiah, and Jon Atack’s A Piece of Blue Sky:

On 2 January 1917 Ron was enrolled at the kindergarten at Central School on Warren Street, just across from the new cathedral which, with its twin spires and grey stone facade, towered reprovingly over the city. Most days he was walked to school by his aunts, Marnie and June, who were at Helena High, opposite Central School. Ron, who was known to the neighbourhood kids as ‘brick’ because of his hair, would later claim that while still at kindergarten he used the ‘lumberjack fighting’ he had learned from his grandfather to deal with a gang of bullies who were terrorizing children on their way to and from the school. But one of Ron’s closest childhood friends, Andrew Richardson, has no recollection of him protecting local children from bullies. ‘He never protected nobody,’ said Richardson. ‘It was all bullshit. Old Hubbard was the greatest con artist who ever lived.’ 1

Hubbard was certainly an enthralling story-teller. He once told an audience that when he was six, his neighborhood was terrorized by a 12-year-old bully called Leon Brown, and by “the five O’Connell kids,” aged from 7 to 15. Ron learned “lumberjack fighting” from his grandfather, and took on the two youngest O’Connell kids one after the other. The O’Connell kids “fled each time I showed up … Then one day I got up on a nine-foot high board fence and waited until the 12 year old bully passed by and leaped off on him boots and all and after the dust settled that neighborhood was safe for every kid in it.”

Shannon located school registration cards for five Helena boys called O’Connell. When Ron was six, the oldest O’Connell boy was 16, and the youngest five. Shannon did not find Leon Brown, but he did exist, living a few doors away from Ron, and he was 12 in 1917. Ron Hubbard must have been a very tough six-year-old!2

Somewhere I heard or read that our Leon Brown had been killed in Seattle. But I have never confirmed this, or pursued the story further.

Notes

  1. Miller, Russell. Bare-Faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard (Kindle Locations 465-469). Silvertail Books. Kindle Edition. ↩
  2. Atack, Jon. Let’s sell these people A Piece of Blue Sky (Kindle Locations 1238-1244). Richard Woods. Kindle Edition. ↩

by

Sounding the Sheep Dip for Bubbles

I cannot find where anyone at Tony Ortega’s blog has spoken up to correct inaccuracies in Jon Atack’s September 10, 2016 article about Scientology cult collaborator L. Fletcher Prouty, so I am doing my best now. The article and the inaccuracies I’m correcting also concern testimony in the 1984 trial in the case the Scientologists brought against me in Los Angeles Superior Court. The Scientologists and their collaborators still black PR me and wage lawfare against me relating to this case, and inaccuracies in the public record about the Scientology v. Armstrong war can often serve their hostile purposes.

Jon Atack: Indeed, Scientology produced Thomas Moulton to support its case against Gerry Armstrong, back in 1984. Moulton’s testimony agreed entirely with the Navy record – they had fought a 55-hour battle off the Oregon coast against a known magnetic deposit on the ocean floor and gone on to shell the Los Coronados Islands, for which Hubbard was censured.1

Good old Captain Moulton’s testimony definitely did not agree with the US Navy’s record.

Moulton did not testify about Hubbard’s shelling of the Coronado Islands (Islas Coronado o Islas Coronados), other than to state that he was not on the PC 815 and did not know anything about the incident, having already transferred off the ship.

Here attorney Michael Flynn is questioning Moulton at p. 3973:

Q Now, shortly after this incident, in July 1943 do you recall whether Mr. Hubbard was relieved of command for firing on the Mexican coast?

A That did not occur while I was on her, sir. I wouldn’t know.

Q You don’t know anything about that?

A No.2

Moulton did not testify that he and Hubbard and the 815 had fought a battle against a magnetic deposit. Moulton’s testimony agreed with the Scientologists that the engagement off Cape Lookout was against two Japanese subs. The Navy’s position and its official record disagreed with Hubbard and Moulton on the existence of the subject subs and the actions taken to attack whatever they thought they were attacking.

Here, Scientology attorney John Peterson is questioning Moulton starting at p. 3920:

Q And did you, after listening to the return sound on the sonar reach a conclusion?

A After we had evaluated it, there was more to it than just listening to the return echo.

You checked the width of the target. Because you knew the tapered width of the beam, you could estimate the length of the target that you were getting a return from.

You also checked it for a doppler which would be an indication of whether the range was opening or closing.

This, you detect in the sound. You listen for screw noises or anything else that could help you evaluate the contact.

In this case, after evaluation, we had determined it was a submarine.

[…]

Q And could you tell if the ship, the under water target was coming toward you, away from you, or moving in what direction?

A We would have been able to know from the doppler effect on the sound as well as once we began an evaluation, sooner or later we would start a time plot and start plotting what the target was doing, whether it was stopped, whether it was moving, and, if so, what course.

This was done both with what was then a highly classified attack piece of electronics, now, knowledge and obsolete. But it was then the very latest that very few people knew about. We had one of the earliest ones. And we kept that going for a plot along with our own manual plot with a stop watch.

Q And you had determined that the target was a submarine?

A Beyond any question.

[…]

Q After making the determination that it was, indeed, a submarine, what did you then do?

A Well, we took some time — it has been so many years I can’t remember how long – but we took some time to evaluate it.

During that time we would know that a submarine would hear our pinging inside its hull.

If he were friendly, he would have made recognition signals.

We received no recognition signals; so we proceeded to attack.

[…]

Q And this 60-hour attack on the submarine, did you ever at any time make a sighting or a discovery of any other target in the area?

A Yes. Yes. Oh, I believe it was toward the close of the second day when we made — we had lost contact with our submarine. And after one of the attacks when the water had been roared up, we were searching around to pick him up and we picked up a second contact which was not where it should have been at all if it had been ours.

We swung our sound gear back and forth and determined that we now had two targets.

We went through the same procedure and identified the second one as a submarine also.

Vice Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher, Commander Northwest Sea Frontier, conducted an investigation of the Cape Lookout incident and analyzed the battle reports. He submitted his results to the Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz in a memorandum dated June 8, 1943, a copy of which was entered into evidence in the Scientology v. Armstrong trial.

1. At the time of the incident reported herein PC 815 was enroute to San Diego, California, in accordance with orders of Commander Fleet Operational Training Command, Pacific.

2. It is noted that the report of PC 815 is not in accordance with
“Anti-Submarine Action by Surface Ship” (ASW-1) which should be submitted to Commander In Chief, U.S. Fleet.

3. SC’s 536 and 537, CGC’s BONHAM and 78302, and blimps K-33 and K-39 engaged in this submarine search. Reports have been received from the Commanding Officer of each of these ships in writing and in personal interviews. An oral report has also been received from Lieutenant Commander E. J. Sullivan U.S.N., Commander Airship Squadron 33, who made a trip to the area during the search on one of the
blimps.

4. There is a known magnetic deposit in the area in which depth charges were dropped.

5. An analysis of all reports convinces me that there was no submarine in the area. Lieutenant Commander Sullivan states that he was unable to obtain any evidence of a submarine except one bubble of air which is unexplained except by turbulence of water due to a depth charge explosion. The Commanding Officers of all ships except the PC 815 state they had no evidence of a submarine and do not think a submarine was in the area.

Moulton’s testimony also disagreed with the Navy’s records on other points. Here, Peterson is questioning Moulton at p. 3910:

Q And in all the times that you knew him in Portland did he wear dark glasses?

A It was necessary for him to wear them, yes.

Q And when you knew him in Miami did he wear dark glasses?

A Yes, he did, the same glasses.

Q Did he ever tell you why he had to wear the dark glasses?

A Yes.

Q What did he say?

A He said that his eyes had been injured in the flash from a large caliber gun. I think it was a four or five-inch gun on a destroyer he had been on.

The gun was fired prematurely. He was standing adjacent to the muzzle and he received a bad flash burn which did not impair his vision, but it was very painful for him to go around in any sort of light without the glasses on.

The Navy’s records show Hubbard claiming his eyes were damaged by sunlight. (“excessive tropical sunlight”)

Peterson questioning Moulton at p. 3911:

Q Now, at any time when you were with Mr. Hubbard in Portland did he have any complaints about pain in his low back or any area like that?

A He frequently complained of pain in his right side and the back in the area of the kidneys which he said was due to some damage from a Japanese machine gun very early in the war.

And from that he had considerable difficulty in urination. And upon at least one occasion I saw him urinating bloody urine. He had great difficulty in urinating.

Flynn questioning Moulton starting at p. 3953

Q BY MR. FLYNN: First, when did Captain Hubbard tell you that he was injured by a Japanese machine gun?

A This was while we were in Miami which would have been in the fall of ’42. It was the fall of 1942.

Q Is that —

A While we were in Miami.

Q Did he describe the circumstances under which he was injured by the Japanese machine gun?

A Yes, in some detail; not entirely.

Q What did he tell you?

A That he had been in Soerabaja at the time the Japanese came in or in the area of Soerabaja and that he spent some time in the hills in back of Soerabaja after the Japanese had occupied it.

Q Now, Soerabaja was where, sir?

A That is a port on the north part of Java in the Dutch East Indies.

Q So you understood from Captain Hubbard that he had been in Java fighting the Japanese and was hit by machine gun fire?

A Not quite as you put it. He had been landed, so he told me in Java from a destroyer named the [Edsall] and had made his way across the land to Soerabaja, and that is when the place was occupied. When the Japanese came in, he took off into the hills and lived up in the jungle for sometime until he made an escape from there.

[…]

Q BY MR. FLYNN: So he told you he was in the South Pacific in Soerabaja when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor?

A That is correct. He had been landed by the [Edsall] and she was sunk shortly after that. He was, as far as I know, the only person that ever got off the [Edsall] because he wasn’t aboard when it happened. She was sunk within a few days after that.

[…]

Q And that is when he was hit by the machine gun fire?

A Some time during his chasing up and around through the jungle before he made his escape.

[…]

Q So you believed Captain Hubbard at the time?

A Certainly. I had no reason not to.

Q Did he tell you exactly where he was hit by the machine gun fire?

A In the back, in the area of the kidneys, I believe on the right side.

Q And did he tell you what caliber machine gun it was?

A No, sir, he did not.

Q And it damaged his urinary system?

A Somewhere in the urinary system. I know he had a great bit of difficulty in urinating.

There of course is no mention in Hubbard’s Navy record of him being shot, by machine gun or any other weapon. There is also no mention in the record of Hubbard ever being on the Edsall, ever being on Java, ever life-rafting to Australia, or ever life-rafting anywhere else.

In his Affirmations in 1946 he tells the truth about his urinary difficulty that Moulton observed. This does not appear in Hubbard’s Navy records because he went to a private doctor for treatment.

In 1942 – December 17th or thereabouts – while training in Miami, Florida, I met a girl named Ginger who excited me. She was a very loose person but pretended a great love for me. From her I received an infection of gonnohorea (sp?). I was terrified by it, the consequences of being discovered by my wife, the navy, my friends. I went to a private doctor who treated me with sulfa-thiazole and so forth. I thought I was cured but on a plane headed to Portland, Ore. I found I was not. I took to dosing myself with sulfa in such quantities that I was afraid I had affected my brain.3

JA: Now, the purple heart is only awarded for injuries received in combat. The first difficulty is that Hubbard only claimed one wound – he said he had been machine-gunned when the destroyer Edsall was sunk and that after this injury he had rowed his way to Australia (about 800 miles). In fact, he was actually never on board the Edsall, and no one could row that far after being riddled with machine gun bullets. His arrival in Australia was via more conventional means, as the record demonstrates.

I’m not sure about Hubbard claiming he rowed his boat from Java to Australia. Moulton testified that Hubbard said he and another man “sailed a life raft.” Presumably, in Moulton’s mind, this was one of the Edsall’s life rafts, in which Hubbard had shortly before been put ashore. Moulton would have also understood that Ron the Master Mariner would have rigged a sail, and with Japanese lead in him, or having just passed through his abdomen, could hardly have been expected to row hundreds of miles in open ocean, but merrily, merrily sailed. Regardless, Moulton and the Navy would certainly agree that for anyone either sailing or rowing his raft from Java to Australia it would have been a remarkable piece of navigation.

Flynn questioning Moulton starting at p. 3955:

Q BY MR. FLYNN: So he told you he was in the South Pacific in Soerabaja when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor?

A That is correct. He had been landed by the [Edsall] and she was sunk shortly after that. He was, as far as I know, the only person that ever got off the [Edsall] because he wasn’t aboard when it happened. She was sunk within a few days after that.

Q And Captain Hubbard told you all this?

A Yes, sir, but I also know that she was sunk.

She is carried in the records as having been sunk with all hands.

Q And all hands were lost except Captain Hubbard?

A He was ashore at the time.

Q And that is when he was hit by the machine gun fire?

A Some time during his chasing up and around through the jungle before he made his escape.

[…]

Q And did he tell you how long he remained hiding in the hills with these machine gun wounds before he was removed from the combat area?

A I know that he told me he had made his escape eventually to Australia. I don’t know just when it was.

He apparently, he and another chap, sailed a life raft, I believe, to near Australia where they were picked up by a British or Australian destroyer.

Q And that would have been late 1941, early 1942?

A I would imagine it would have to have been early ’42 because it would take some time from December 7.

Q Now, Captain Hubbard gave you all of these details that you are giving the court today; is that correct?

A Well, I have no other knowledge except what he told me.

Q And did he tell you how far he sailed the raft?

A He told me he was picked up — again, I’m trusting my memory — but it was on the order of 75 miles off Australia.

I know it was under 100, but it was somewhere around 75 because it was a remarkable piece of navigation.

JA: Hubbard only began to claim heroism after founding Scientology. In an interview with Look magazine, published in December 1950, Hubbard said he was hospitalized at Oak Knoll for a year, suffering from “ulcers, conjunctivitis, deteriorating eyesight, bursitis and something wrong with my feet.” Save for the problem with his feet, the other conditions are all attested by the official Navy record (in the Affirmations, Hubbard gave himself the hypnotic affirmation: “You have perfect and lovely feet,” but nothing about war wounds).

When Hubbard began to claim heroism is probably the most important point I’m commenting on here.

In that Hubbard claimed to have started Scientology, including naming it “Scientology,” in 1938, then yes, he began to claim WW II heroism after starting or founding Scientology. All his heroism or absence of heroism in WW II was after 1938 because all of WW II was after 1938.

If by “after founding Scientology” is meant after he started advertising or publishing as “Scientology” or after he incorporated the first Scientology organization, then no, he began to claim heroism considerably earlier.

Moulton’s testimony shows that Hubbard was hyping his heroism in 1942 when they were in training together in Miami, Florida. Hubbard continued telling Moulton his heroic tall tales in 1943 when they were outfitting the PC 815 in Portland, Oregon.

Even earlier, upon his ignominious return to the US from Australia, Hubbard communicated a far more heroic account to John W. Campbell, his science fiction editor, which Campbell wrote about in a letter dated May 13, 1942 to Robert Heinlein.

L. Ron Hubbard’s in town—temporarily confined to the Sick Officer’s Quarters. He’s angry, bitter, and very much afraid—afraid he’ll get assigned to some shore job, which he does not want, and kept from going to sea again.

Angry and bitter because, I suspect, he was among those licked. He collected a piece of Jap bomb in his thigh during the battle of the Java Sea, as far as I can make out. He was aboard ship at the time, apparently, and Allied air power was not giving adequate coverage.

He is a graduate C.E., but is also rather competent in several lines. He was barnstorming for a living for a while, and has a private pilot’s license. He did some fairly useful mapping along the Alaska coast by a new radio-beam survey method. And he has imagination, of course.

If the guy is hooked for shore duty—he’s got a limp; how permanent I don’t know, nor how bad—he might be useful. His own feeling is that his direct experience with Jap weapons, methods and tactics might be his prime asset.

Hubbard communicated similarly to Heinlein and limped so convincingly that Heinlein passed along his tales of wounds and heroics. He wrote about Hubbard’s “injuries” in letters to colleagues during that time, and even described these “injuries” in 1985 in an introduction he wrote for Theodore Sturgeon’s book Godbody.

I had been ordered [by the Navy] to round up science-fiction writers for this crash project [on antikamikaze measures] —the wildest brains I could find, so Ted was a welcome recruit. Some of the others were George 0. Smith, John W. Campbell, Jr., Murray Leinster, L. Ron Hubbard, Sprague de Camp, and Fletcher Pratt. On Saturday nights and Sundays this group usually gathered at my apartment in downtown Philadelphia.

[…]

The first weekend Sturgeon was there he slept on the hall rug, a choice spot, while both L. Ron Hubbard and George 0. Smith were in the overflow who had to walk down the street. In retrospect that seems like a wrong decision; Hubbard should not have been asked to walk, as both of his feet had been broken (drumhead-type injury) when his last ship was bombed. Ron had had a busy war—sunk four times and wounded again and again—and at that time was on limited duty at Princeton, attending military governors’ school. © 1986

I think that Hubbard’s lying about his heroic exploits to his fellow officers, his fellow writers, his Navy superiors, his editor, the Navy’s medical examiners, the VA, his wife, etc., and apparently getting away with it all, made it so easy for him to lie to us and con us, his elemental Scientologist pigeons.

It is, of course, possible that Heinlein and Campbell were aware, or at least suspected, that Hubbard was BSing about his injuries and his claimed heroism. They all told and sold yarns for a living. Campbell and Heinlein and other writers enjoyed Hubbard’s patently BS bear stories. From the record they left behind, they didn’t always let on how much they believed of what Hubbard said or wrote.

Notes

by

Exscientologists’ terrible humility: An open letter to Jon Atack

 

I am writing concerning some statements you made about Exscientologists in your foreword in Chris Shelton’s just-published book Scientology: A to Xenu. I am assuming you wrote what was published.

There is considerable disinformation in the book, and, while presenting as critical of L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology, Scientologists and their collaborators, it actually serves their antisocial purposes in key areas and ways. I will take these up with Mr. Shelton over the next days. Right now, I will only address a few things from your forward.

You write:

I first heard about Chris Shelton in 2013 when I began blogging at the Underground Bunker. I was pleasantly surprised to find someone who had survived such a profound involvement and managed to dig himself out. Believe me, it is highly unusual: more usually, former members spend years embroiled in the halfway-house of the self-styled Independent movement, until some external event triggers reflection.

Of course, recovery from prolonged trauma does not happen overnight, and Chris has the humility to admit he has further to travel – as do we all – but that very humility marks him out from most former members, who retain the phoney élite status implanted by the cult into its devotees.

Unlike 99% of former Scientologists, Chris was prepared to consider other explanations and to leave the cage of phobias induced by Scientology.

It is not clear what explanation of what exactly Mr. Shelton was considering when he became prepared to consider other explanations. You might be viewing Scientology as providing or being, for Scientologists, an explanation of human existence, or the human condition, or some such thing, for which there are other explanations. You might have an explanation for what you had in mind.

You also, of course, could be seen to be writing that while a Scientologist Mr. Shelton had an explanation for his Scientology-implanted phony elite status, and at some point after becoming an Exscientologist he became prepared to consider other explanations for his phony elite status.

In either case, or whatever the various explanations are that you had in mind, it has never been my experience that 99% of Exscientologists were not prepared to consider other ones themselves. I have not experienced any quantifiable percentage at all of Exscientologists who were not prepared to consider such or different explanations. Without searching out all the explanations Mr. Shelton has said he considered, I do not believe, and I challenge the notion that Exscientologists in any large percentage were not prepared to consider virtually everything Mr. Shelton has said he has considered. I would have to examine a lot of facts, which are not immediately accessible, to confirm for myself your assertion about the Exscientologist class.

What evidence do you have that, unlike Mr. Shelton, 99% of Exscientologists were unprepared to consider the explanations you say he was prepared to consider? And what evidence is there that any meaningful percentage of Exscientologists were unprepared to leave the cage of Scientology-induced phobias you say he was prepared to leave?

Obviously, I consider your conclusion about Exscientologists erroneous. It also obviously denigrates the Exscientologist class, and is worth getting to the bottom of and correcting.

I disagree with your conclusion that most Exscientologists retain the phony elite status that was implanted in them while Scientologists. I also question the claim that it is Mr. Shelton’s humility that marks him out from these Exscientologists. I can say from personal knowledge, which I have made available for some months, that, after you had heard about him and apparently found him dug out and his humility remarkable, he treated me knowingly, arrogantly, indeed contemptuously. In doing so, he also was serving the Scientologists’ inimical purposes. While he has not corrected the black propaganda record he made targeting me, I have also observed that he is generally remarkably unhumble in his public presentations.1

He, of course, has now put his humility, with his corresponding arrogance and resultant hypocrisy, into issue publicly. It is prominent in your foreword, which he published, and, I would guess, he requested you to write.

It is conceivable that you and I could have different definitions or values for “humility,” and what could be the essence of arrogance to me might be ever so humble to you. Just going by the usual, common definitions, however, what is your basis for construing Mr. Shelton’s humility as so deep, profound or clear to you that it marks him out from most Exscientologists?

His book, as I noted, has made his humility or lack a possibly quite educational public issue. Contrasting this psychological trait with the same trait of other Exscientologists has also made the humility or arrogance of the whole class a public issue for educational purposes. So there is a good issue for a public debate.

You write in your foreword:

My friend Christian Szurko, who is surely as expert about cults as anyone else alive, has pointed out former Scientologists tend to be even more arrogant than escapees from other groups. Chris is a notable exception. He has no pretensions to guru hood nor any need to form his own cult of personality. He has done remarkable work thus far, and I have no doubt that he will make many more contributions beyond this exceptional book.

I wrote to Mr. Szurko a week or so ago to have him confirm that he said what you attribute to him, and what he based such a conclusion on. I have not heard back from him. In any case, I have not found Mr. Shelton at all a notable exception to other Exscientologists regarding his level, quantity or manifestation of arrogance. In fact, it is clear to me that an honest analysis of his public persona and communications, and his handling of sincere questioners of his claims, as he did with me, will show that his arrogance or narcissism is a significant characteristic, and a psychological concern, not a virtue. I do not mean that Mr. Shelton’s arrogance or narcissism is a concern to him, but should be a concern to people who might look to him for guidance or tout his humility. Perhaps you can provide whatever evidence you have that he is a “notable exception” to the claim you ascribe to Mr. Szurko that Exscientologists are notably more arrogant than escapees from other groups.

You also write that Mr. Shelton “is driven by the compassionate urge to help those who have been harmed by Scientology.” I have never hidden, but have been very clear that I have been, and am being, harmed by the Scientologists and their collaborators. Yet Mr. Shelton has exhibited no urge whatsoever to help me, when he could, but has shown a determination to help the Scientologists and their collaborators in harming me. Do you really believe that it was compassion that motivated him, after claiming to be free of Scientology, to publicly black PR me, shun me, not grant me credence, all in service of the Scientologists’ malevolent purposes?

I look forward to hearing your answers to my questions, and your thoughts on the humility and arrogance issue generally, psychologically or socially from your perspective.

Yours frankly,

Gerry Armstrong

Notes

by

Hubbard, Scientology, death and memes

Jon Atack wrote on Ex Scientologist Message Board:

After the Armstrong case, attorney (and legend) Mike Flynn turned to Gerry and told him he’d killed Hubbard. We killed Scientology at Toronto. All we have to do now is dig a big enough hole to bury it in. 1

Jon also emailed me about the “death” of Scientology. He wrote that, as he had said from the stage, we, the conference participants, have killed Scientology, in the same way that my attorney Michael Flynn had said that I had killed L. Ron Hubbard.

Jon had made such a statement on the last day of the conference. It wasn’t sensible for me to respond publicly at the time, although it was eminently called for. I am certain I had some brief interactions later with conference participants about Jon’s proclamation that Scientology is dead and we killed it, because it was brand new news, important to me, and there were lots of people who talked with me the final evening.

Jon continued in his email that after Flynn said I’d killed him, Hubbard’s body lumbered on, but his credibility was shot by different judicial exposés, including the 1984 judgment in the Scientologists’ first case against me.

The deaths of Hubbard and Scientology and Scientologists are not the same at all. One is, in human terms, true. Hubbard is dead. The other is not true, the Scientologists and their entities are not dead, and we did not kill them. This is being presented as a meme for acceptance, which, I believe is so erroneous that I would speak up publicly. I also have, of course, a personal interest in this meme because Caroline and I, and all sorts of people acting in concert with me, are still combatting the Scientologists and their collaborators, who are very much alive, and not killed one whit.

Flynn’s comment to me, “You killed him…you killed Hubbard,” was after the settlement in December 1986 and after Hubbard really was dead, which was January 1986. The Scientologists remaining have not been killed in the same way. Nor have their organizations, nor their lawyers, nor their connections and agents in high and deadly places.

I, of course, knew that Flynn was only talking psychically, and I really had not killed L. Ron Hubbard at all. But he is, in human terms, dead. This is something on which wogs and Scientologists agree. He’s dead. Scientology and Scientologists are not.

So his body had lumbered its last long before Flynn said I’d killed him. I wrote something about this in 2011:

I had a friend, a very smart professional, who said to me, not long after Hubbard’s death, and quite seriously, “You killed him, Gerry.” Of course I hadn’t. All I had done was tell the truth about things that needed the truth told about them when there was the opportunity to tell it. I could see, however, where, following the Breckenridge decision, following his failed ops to silence me, and in the grip of long term malignant narcissism, Hubbard could have seen me as the executioner he’d appointed. He couldn’t come out of hiding, the Scientology v. Armstrong judgment in LA identified him as virtually a pathological liar, and the criminal division of the IRS was using the judgment and case documents to go after him and the organization.

My career as an appointed executioner should have ended there, but DM then appointed me his executioner. He must have thought the truth was killing him, and he went to extremes to suppress it and silence the people telling it. He committed and got others to commit countless pettinesses and crimes to appoint me their executioner.

Marty spent his years in the Sea Org with me as his appointed executioner, and over the past couple of years has newly appointed me his executioner.

Appointing me as their executioner must mean Scientology’s myriad beneficiaries are feeling something different from great, I guess. Postulating me as executioner imputes to me the evilest of intentions toward them and a threat to their dynamics, which means their “eternity.” I’m a living threat to their universal postulate to have lies be true. Their willingness to fight back was triggered a generation ago and we have been at war ever since.

Scientologists war on me because I tell the truth. Yet telling the truth is the only real hope I have to end the war. I want their war on me and persons acting in concert with me to be over, because it’s time, although it always was time. Ending their war is as easy for the Scientologists as not appointing anyone their executioners.2

In his email, Jon wrote that it remains for Scientology and Scientologists to be buried but their back has been broken. He said it was “the Beast” that remains to be buried, but I am sure he was referring to Scientology and the Scientologists keeping it working.

The Scientologists’ back is not broken, and, they are as motivated as ever by base desires including revenge. Revenge is command intention. They have $60 K in a heartbeat, and can get it to pretty well anywhere on planet earth in hours. We the people who supposedly killed them don’t have it and are relegated to hustling for it.

The Scientologists are not dead. Fortunately, neither am I, nor are many other people who stand up to the Scientologists’ lies, aggression and threat in this war. The Scientologists’ back is not broken. Fortunately neither is mine nor are the backs of many other upstanding people. Fortunately too, in the war, Hubbard is dead.

Acceptance of the Scientology-is-dead meme serves the Scientologists’ purposes in a number of ways. It is not true for the Scientologists. They are in action in some way all day long, and do not act in any way as if they are dead. So they gain the advantage of believing, or knowing, what is true; that is that they are alive and at war. And those who say they are dead are laughed at with good reason, because they are so easily proven wrong.

Claiming that we killed Scientology, when we did not, is at best magical thinking, and has the psychological downsides that such thinking has. It is the attribution of causal relationships between actions and events which seemingly cannot be justified by reason and observation. Here there is a non-event, the killing of Scientology, and the thinking that what caused it was the conference in Toronto. Magical think is distinguished from the scientific method and is appropriately subject to skepticism. People could even welcome a skeptical analysis, questioning and even refuting of this meme.

If the old Scientology-is-dead meme or the new we-killed-Scientology-in-Toronto meme is accepted, while untrue, those who do not accept it, knowing it to be untrue, will be placed at a serious disadvantage in the war the Scientologists wage on us, using the arts of this war commanded in HCOPL “Battle Tactics.” People who accept that false meme necessarily have to lose any incentive to do anything effective about the war being waged, or to keep up the good fight, because what was once a threat while alive is no threat now dead. And people who accepted that meme will be incentivized to portray those who know Scientology and Scientologists are alive, and who stand up to their lies, aggression and threat, as deranged or pathetic, tilters at carcasses. When in truth such people might be very different and worth supporting in their effort.

People accepting that meme would have an incentive to keep others from joining the people who know that Scientology and Scientologists, and their collaborators, are alive, potent, and at war, and who yet stand against them. To not try to dissuade people from joining in the war alongside the Scientologists’ opposition would acknowledge the meme generators and the meme accepters had been wrong as long as they had been generating that meme and keeping it working.

Off the top of my head, the Scientologists have recently acquired a TV station; own a huge publication/printing and media plant, other studios and media units; run front groups we haven’t even heard of yet; and have footholds in Third World countries, and handholds in western governments and agencies; billions in acknowledged assets; an intelligence network, an attorney network, and an organized pseudomilitary; and US Government aircover. We who supposedly killed them last week have nothing comparable. We are actually very few.

If Scientology and Scientologists are dead, they could maintain very few legal actions. The facts are that the Scientologists are able to come into virtually any court anywhere, very animatedly, with very big bigbucks attorneys; the Scientologists’ IRS tax exemption has not been revoked; the Scientologists continue to deprive citizens of basic human rights without prosecution or even acknowledgement; the conspiracy between the Scientologists and the US Federal Government has not been plumbed; there are an insane, unlawful injunction, jail sentences and fines against me that prevent me from entering the US, and the dead would not maintain such orders; and Mark Rathbun, Mike Rinder and David Miscavige haven’t even begun to tell the relevant truth yet. These are proofs of life, not of Scientology or the Scientologists’ death.

I have been placed in a situation where there is an appearance of benefitting financially from the conference. This did not, however, incentivize me to promote the idea that the conference was so effective that we participants had killed Scientology and Scientologists, in any way similar to the way that Hubbard had been killed. I don’t believe that there was any prior mention of sharing in sales of the film or presentations. In any case, I have not officially been offered remuneration of any kind for my participation. And I have not exaggerated the conference’s value or effect to make money. Jon and Jim Beverley have a monetary incentive to hype the event’s value and effect, which should acknowledged, even the introduction of the we-killed-Scientology meme I’ve been writing about.

In my first communication to Dr. Beverley right after the conference I wrote:

Again thank you for inviting me to the Toronto conference and for making it I believe a huge success, and hopefully a meaningful step toward resolution of the Scientology problem.

I think that this is still a reasonable and realistic statement about the event, and about future, perceptible hope. The conference was not where Scientology and Scientologists were killed. It is unlikely that the conference will in the future be viewed as the point of accomplishment of that goal.

Having not achieved that goal at the conference, we can actually be grateful, because it is wrong, and arguably criminal. To celebrate the killing of Scientology and Scientologists could be viewed as an admission that it was the underlying motivation or intention. I do not have that intention and would not work toward that goal. Justice is the goal. It is clear that justice has not been achieved, and must be fought for, unless injustice is accepted.

It is not clear what part memetic engineering or memes will play in bringing the Scientologists to end their war on good wogs, or submit to justice. There are many memes that are inarguably wiser to accept, for multiple related purposes, than any that are untrue. An untrue meme can be hell.

If the conference has a hope of becoming a meaningful step toward resolution of the Scientology problem, then certainly support it, and give in that hope. Nobody should go into massive, or minimal, debt over this conference, even if Scientology had been killed, or, looked at another way, even if the conference never became that meaningful step. Make it meaningful might make a neat meme.

It is reasonable to assume that the Scientologists have a recording of the entire conference, and some of the conversations between participants and others that were not part of the recorded conference. In this matter certainly, safety is senior to sales. We all know that the black PR tract the Scientologists prepared for this event was but one trial round, in a new Skirmish in Toronto. I think that the participants, who care, should be provided with recordings of their public statements right away. The public post-conference discussion about conference finances also amps up security concerns, and moves toward greater/full disclosure as strategy.

But for all our sakes, make a better meme.

*****

Caroline posted an excerpt of this article to WWP earlier today.3  Phobos asked a related question in that thread:

According to Jon Atack, the Conference is 60 thousand dollars in the red: “Prof Jim handled all the money details. From what he has told me, it is in the region of 60K. I’d be perfectly happy to distribute the material for free, once Jim has been paid back, but I have to contact all the participants to find out how they feel.”

Caroline, do you or Gerry have any comments on the above?4

Thanks for asking.  I was not involved in the organizing, other than concerning my own participation, which involved no payment to me and no knowledge of the organizers’ finances. From what I now know, my idea would to be to release all the conference footage, immediately. If it makes sense to edit out set up, set down, sound and video tech stuff, fine. Make it open to study and analysis at every level. The idea that Dr. Jim Beverley, professor at Canada’s largest theological University, connected to a career’s worth of Christian Croesuses, tied in to a network of NRM scholars, has to go to the Scientology-related forums for a few dollars to pay off a $60 K debt, does not, except in narrow conspiratorial contexts, make sense.

I have no doubt that Dr. Beverley could raise this sum rather painlessly without having to sell the conference videos, and all that entails. Therefore do not tie their release/distribution in any way to collection of funds against Dr. Beverley’s debts. Morph the website that announces the conference into a conference website, put up as much material as possible, including the talks, as soon as possible. Do the best possible, now that it has been put in motion, to make it meaningful.

http://gettingclear.co/index.html It’s been almost a week.

So my suggestion is: 1. Publish as promised, for everyone, right away. 2. Jim collects to cover his debt. (It certainly is possible to go beyond the few poor souls on the message boards.) 3. He can go on the record about finances, original agreements, what’s the deal with Tyndale, etc.

Notes