Tommy Davis
c/o Colony Capital, LLC
Dear Mr. Davis:
As you know — because you were officially on post in the Scientology cult at the time — I wrote you a series of letters in early 2011 about certain statements that, according to Lawrence Wright, you made to him and other staff at The New Yorker.
http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/archives/4819
http://newyorker.gerryarmstrong.ca/letter-to-tommy-davis-the-value-of-valor/
http://newyorker.gerryarmstrong.ca/archives/575
http://newyorker.gerryarmstrong.ca/archives/578
http://newyorker.gerryarmstrong.ca/archives/580
I sent these letters to a number of Scientology corporation addresses, plus put them on my blog to make sure you received them. My wife Caroline also posted the letters to a Scientology-related forum that I know you Scientologists monitor.
Despite my identifying to you black PR and lies about me that, according to Wright, you had communicated to him and the other New Yorker personnel, you did not respond to any of my letters.
On February 8, 2011, as you know, I wrote and challenged you about your charge, reported by Wright, that I “had forged many of the documents,” which were the subject of the Scientology v. Armstrong LA Superior Court case, and were referred to by Judge Breckenridge in his 1984 decision in that case.
The essential reason I’m writing you, however, is your charge that I had forged many of these documents that I later disseminated, to discredit Hubbard or for any other reason. This is a nasty, criminal lie, and I believe you have a duty to tell the truth to reduce the threat you’ve generated.
If you really have Hubbard-related documents that you really believe I forged, then produce them and let me deal with them and my accuser. Otherwise, please acknowledge that you don’t have any such documents, and that you’re lying about me.
A key reason I oppose Scientology is the cruelty of its practitioners. That’s virtually impossible for the majority of Scientologists to get because Scientology is their way of life, and “cruelty” has still not been transformed into a virtue or even neutralized. Therefore to be a Scientologist at all, a person has to deny its cruelty.
It’s an easy concept for Scientologists such as Miscavige, and I’d think you, to get, however, because it’s your job, your hat, your beingness to be cruel. It’s not hard to see that the state of OT has much to do with cruelty. Your willful lying in the face of facts is cruel. Your continuing conspiracy to steal valor is cruel to the people who didn’t lie about their service, wounds or awards. Your forgery charge is false and cruel. Your cruelty is willfully threatening.
Please publicly withdraw this charge.
You did not respond and did not withdraw your false, defamatory charge. Apparently, however, you left the Sea Org and apparently are now working in Colony Capital, an apparently Homo sapiens company. I again find myself without your email address, so I will email people at the company where you are reportedly working and ask them to forward this to you. I will also post it on my blog, and perhaps at other forums, in a good faith effort to make sure you see it.
Later, in July 2011, when Lawrence Wright was working on Going Clear, he advised me that Hubbard’s “affirmations” or “admissions” were among the documents you had told him that I had forged. Wright stated that specifically what you told him was that Hubbard’s affirmations “have no basis in fact nor were they written by Mr. Hubbard.” Wright, of course, devoted some pages to Hubbard’s affirmations in Going Clear, and I will include that text for reference and research purposes at the end of this letter.
I am following up on my earlier communications to you now because of what Mark Rathbun subsequently published in his book Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior about Hubbard’s affirmations.
More damning, Flynn entered into evidence what were called “the affirmations.” These were dozens of handwritten pages from the Hubbard archives. They contained some sort of self-processing Ron had been engaged in, in the late forties. They were called the affirmations because for the most part they seemed to be a sort of positive thinking Ron was writing down, to boost his own self-confidence. They began with this statement of purpose,
‘The purpose of this experiment is to re-establish the ambition, willpower, desire to survive, the talent and confidence of myself’
There were a number of entries acknowledging Ron’s sexual and living relationship with Sarah Northrup, and his close personal friendship with Jack Parsons, the rocket scientist who had headed the Ordo Templi Orientis black magic group Ron had participated in.
Flynn harped on the following passage to give credence to his former-staff witnesses, who had testified about slave-like conditions in the Sea Org:
Material things are yours for the asking. Men are your slaves. Elemental spirits are your slaves. You are power among powers, light in the darkness, beauty in all.
The passage that perhaps had the greatest overall effect, in a trial about whether L. Ron Hubbard’s archives proved him to be a self-promoting liar, read:
You can tell all the romantic tales you wish. You will remember them, you do remember them. But you know which ones were lies. You are so logical you will tell nothing which cannot be believed. But you are gallant and dashing and need tell no lies at all. You have enough real experience to make anecdotes forever.
The affirmations were highly personal, detailing Ron’s sexual problems, physical deficiencies, fears and phobias. I felt like they were a precursor to some Scientology confessional processes, and felt sorry for LRH that they were being bandied about in open court. However, one of the first exhibits Flynn entered into evidence was a Guardian’s Office order authored by Mary Sue herself, which directed that preclear folders (supposedly confidential notes from auditing sessions) of Scientologists deemed “security risks” be routinely culled for information, for use against them should they become a problem for the organization. We would be receiving no sympathy from the court over the airing of Ron’s secrets.
Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior, pp. 248, 249.
In 2009, not long after Rathbun announced that he had left your cult, I had actually written him and asked if your cult head David Miscavige had ever let him read Hubbard’s affirmations.
I’m sure you’re knowledgeable about many of the years of attacks on me while you were working under David Miscavige. But right now I just want to address your August 13, 1991 dec. While I’m at it, because DM is steamed and some of his Scientologists or ops have been communicating particularly insanely recently about Hubbard’s Admissions or Affirmations, I’ll also take this opportunity to ask whether DM ever let you read them.
In a letter in 2011 to Rathbun, I again mentioned Hubbard’s affirmations. I called them Hubbard’s “Admissions,” but Rathbun, Miscavige, you and I all know what I’m talking about.
You promote Hubbard as promethean, and Scientology markets him as promethean. Hubbard promoted himself as promethean, a polymath, professional in 29 fields. His Admissions evidence his promethean urges, and, of course, he declared his high hopes of smashing his name into history so violently that it would take a legendary form; which is about as promethean as it gets.
Rathbun did not respond to my sincere question in 2009, or my communication in 2011, because he still executes Miscavige’s malevolent command intention toward people like me, who, despite our victimization, tell the truth about Hubbard, Scientology and Scientologists, like Miscavige, Rathbun and you. Rathbun has now, however, as I said, acknowledged that Hubbard’s affirmations are Hubbard’s affirmations, and even quoted from them, in the Memoirs book. I am now asking you, Tommy Davis, to tell the truth that Hubbard authored his own affirmations, and correct your lie that I forged them.
Yes, I know that Rathbun still lies for Scientology, as Memoirs shows. Even the most gargantuan of liars, however, has to acknowledge some truth or fact, just to keep lying and keep the hope alive that some lie will be believed. Doling out truths but for some all-important lie, is standard psychopath tech. Hubbard, who was, as you know, a judicially declared virtually pathological liar, salted Scientology with all kinds of grains of truth and even the odd nugget. In mining for truth, Hubbard’s affirmations are a sort of mother lode.
Please publicly correct your lie that I forged them. And please correct your other lies about me.
Decidedly,
Gerry Armstrong
cc: Mark Rathbun
cc: David Miscavige
————————
The fact that Hubbard was a continent away from his wife offered him the opportunity to court other women, which he did so openly that he became an object of wonder among his writer colleagues. Ron blamed Polly for his philandering. “Because of her coldness physically, the falsity of her pretensions, I believed myself a near eunuch,” he wrote in a private memoir (which the church disputes) some years later. “When I found I was attractive to other women, I had many affairs. But my failure to please Polly made me always pay so much attention to my momentary mate that I derived small pleasure myself. This was an anxiety neurosis which cut down my natural powers.”
One of those momentary mates was named Helen. “I loved her and she me,” Hubbard recorded. “The affair would have lasted had not Polly found out.” Polly had discovered two letters to different women that Hubbard left in the mailbox when he was back in Port Orchard; she took the letters, read them, then vengefully switched the envelopes, and put them back in the mail. For a while, Ron and Polly didn’t speak.
Ibid. p. 36:
While he was in Miami, Hubbard contracted gonorrhea from a woman named Ginger. “She was a very loose person,” he confides in his disputed secret memoir. “I was terrified by it, the consequences of being discovered by my wife, the navy, my friends. . . . I took to dosing myself with sulfa in such quantities that I was afraid I had affected my brain.”
Wartime sexual diseases were a common affliction, and servicemen
were constantly being cautioned about the dangers of casual romance. Although American sexual relations were freer in practice than the popular culture admitted at the time, divorce was still sharply stigmatized; and yet, as a young man Hubbard seemed to be constantly driven toward reckless liaisons and courtships that would destroy his marriages and alienate his children (he would eventually father seven
children by three wives). He admitted in his disputed memoir that he suffered from bouts of impotence, which he apparently treated with testosterone. He also wrote of his concerns about masturbation, which at the time was considered a sign of moral weakness that could also lead to many physical ailments, such as weak eyesight, impotence, and insanity.
Ibid. pp. 38, 39
Hubbard continued to San Diego on his shakedown cruise. In June, the PC-815 participated in an exercise off the coast of the Mexican state of Baja. Afterward, he ordered additional gunnery and small-arms fire, shelling South Coronados Island, a dry atoll that he apparently failed to realize was a part of Mexico. He was admonished for firing on an ally and relieved of his command. He felt unjustly treated but also remorseful about the compromised situation he had placed his shipmates in. “This on top of having sunk two Jap subs without credit, the way my crew lied for me at the Court of Inquiry, the insults of the High Command, all combined to put me in the hospital with ulcers,” Hubbard noted in his disputed secret memoir. He spent the next three months in a naval hospital in San Diego. In a letter to his family he explained that he had been injured when he had picked up an unexploded enemy shell that had landed on deck and had blown up in midair when he tried to throw it overboard.
Ibid, pp. 39,40:
When he arrived in Princeton, in September 1944, Hubbard fell in with a group of science-fiction writers who had been organized into an informal military think tank by his friend Robert Heinlein. The Navy was looking for ways to counter the kamikaze suicide attacks on Allied ships, which had begun that fall as desperation took hold of the Japanese military planners. Hubbard would spend weekends in Philadelphia at the Heinleins’ apartment, along with some other of his former colleagues, including his former editor, John Campbell, gaming different scenarios for the Navy. (Some of their suggestions were actually tested in combat, but none proved useful.) Heinlein was extremely solicitous of his old friend, remarking, “Ron had had a busy war—sunk four times and wounded again and again.” The fact that Hubbard had an affair with Heinlein’s wife didn’t seem to affect his deep regard. “He almost forced me to sleep with his wife,” Hubbard
later marveled.
Ibid. p. 41:
POLLY AND THE TWO CHILDREN had spent the war waiting for Ron on their plot in Port Orchard, but there was no joyous homecoming. “My wife left me while I was in a hospital with ulcers,” Hubbard noted. “It was a terrible blow when she left me for I was ill and without prospects.”
Ibid. pp. 50-55
A fascinating glimpse into Hubbard’s state of mind during this time is found in what I am calling his secret memoir. The church claims that the document is a forgery. It was produced by the former archivist for the Church of Scientology, Gerald Armstrong, in a 1984 suit that the church brought against him. Armstrong read some portions of them into the record over the strong objections of the church attorneys; others later found their way onto the Internet. The church now maintains that Hubbard did not write this document, although when it was entered into evidence, the church’s lawyers made no such representation, saying that the papers were intensely private, “constitute a kind of self-therapy,” and did not reflect Hubbard’s actual condition.
This disputed document has been called the Affirmations, or the Admissions, but it is rather difficult to define. In part, the thirty pages constitute a highly intimate autobiography, dealing with the most painful episodes in Hubbard’s life. Many of the references to people and events made in these pages are supported by other documents. It appears that Hubbard is using techniques on himself that he would later develop into Dianetics. He explores memories that pose impediments in his mental and spiritual progress, and he prescribes affirmations or incantations to counter the psychological influence of these events. These statements would certainly be the most revealing and intimate disclosures Hubbard ever made about himself.
There are three sections in this document, each of which seems to have a different purpose.
The first section is called “Course I.” This is what I have termed the secret memoir, as it contains reflections on the most embarrassing or troubling features of Hubbard’s biography. “The purpose of this experiment is to re-establish the ambition, willpower, desire to survive, the talent and confidence of myself,” Hubbard declares straightforwardly at the start. “I was always anxious about people’s opinion of me and was afraid I would bore them. This injected anxiety and careless speed into my work. I must be convinced that I can write skillfully and well.” Those who criticize his work are fools, he writes. “I must be convinced I have succeeded in writing and with ease will regain my popularity, which actually was not small.”
“My service record was none too glorious,” he admits. He also confesses his shame about his frequent affairs. But he is intent on succeeding in his relationship with Sara, whom he describes as “young, beautiful, desirable.” Unfortunately, he is handicapped by bouts of impotence. “I want her always. But I am 13 years older than she. She is heavily sexed. My libido is so low I hardly admire her naked.”
Sex preoccupies him. He’s worried about his “very bad masturbatory history,” his sexual diseases, and his impotence, which he had been treating with testosterone supplements. “By eliminating certain fears of hypnosis, curing my rheumatism and laying off hormones, I hope to restore my former libido. I must!”
Through self-hypnosis, he hopes to convince himself of certain prescriptive mantras, including:I can write.
My mind is still brilliant.
That masturbation was no sin or crime.
That I do not need to have ulcers anymore.
That I am fortunate in losing Polly and my parents, for they never meant well by me.
That I believe in my gods and spiritual things.
That my magical work is powerful and effective.
That the numbers 7, 25, and 16 are not unlucky or evil for me.
That I am not bad to look upon.
That I am not susceptible to colds.
That Sara is always beautiful to me.
That these words and commands are like fire and will sear themselves into every corner of my being, making me happy and well and confident forever!
The second part of the document, labeled “Course II,” included the statements that have come to be called Affirmations, although Hubbard refers to them as incantations. He had recently gotten a new recorder for dictation, called a SoundScriber. It may be that he recorded this portion and played it back to himself as a means of self-hypnosis. This section begins with the command “You are asleep.”In this lesson, Hubbard tells himself, he will learn several important things:
You have no urge to talk about your navy life. You do not like to talk of it. You never illustrate your point with bogus stories. It is not necessary for you to lie to be amusing and witty.
You like to have your intimate friends approve of and love you for what you are. This desire to be loved does not amount to a psychosis.
You can sing beautifully.
Nothing can intervene between you and your Guardian. She cannot be displaced because she is too powerful. She does not control you. She advises you.
You will never forget these incantations. They are holy and are now become an integral part of your nature.
Material things are yours for the asking. Men are your slaves.
You are not sleepy or tired ever. . . . Your Guardian alone can talk to you as you sleep but she may not hypnotize you. Only you can hypnotize yourself.
The desires of other people have no hypnotic effect on you.
Nothing, no one opposes your writing. . . . You can carry on a wild social life and still write one hundred thousand words a month or more. . . . Your writing has a deep hypnotic effect on people.
You will make fortunes writing.
Your psychology is advanced and true and wonderful. It hypnotizes people. It predicts their emotions, for you are their ruler.
You will live to be 200 years old.
You will always look young.
You have no doubts about God.
You are not a coward.
Your eyes are getting progressively better. They became bad when you used them as an excuse to escape the naval academy. You have no reason to keep them bad.
Your stomach trouble you used as an excuse to keep the Navy from punishing you. You are free of the Navy.
Your hip is a pose. You have a sound hip. It never hurts. Your shoulder never hurts.
Your foot was an alibi. The injury is no longer needed.
Testosterone blends easily with your own hormones. . . . You have no fear of what any woman may think of your bed conduct. You know you are a master. You know they will be thrilled. You can come many times without weariness. . . . Many women are not capable of pleasure in sex and anything adverse they say or do has no effect whatever upon your pleasure.
You have no fear if they conceive. What if they do? You do not care. Pour it into them and let fate decide.
You can tell all the romantic tales you wish. . . . But you know which ones were lies. . . . You have enough real experience to make anecdotes forever. Stick to your true adventures.
Money will flood in upon you.
Self pity and conceit are not wrong. Your mother was in error.
Masturbation does not injure or make insane. Your parents were in error. Everyone masturbates.
The most thrilling thing in your life is your love and consciousness of your Guardian.
She has copper red hair, long braids, a lovely Venusian face, a white gown belted with jade squares. She wears gold slippers.
You can talk with her and audibly hear her voice above all others.
You can do automatic writing whenever you wish. You do not care what comes out on the paper when your Guardian dictates.The red-haired Guardian Hubbard visualizes so vividly is a kind of ideal mother, who also functions as his muse and is the source of his astoundingly rapid writing. Hubbard loves her but reassures himself that his Guardian does not control him. In all things, he is the controlling force. She seems to be an artifact of the influence of Aleister Crowley. Jack Parsons had said that Hubbard called his Guardian “the Empress.”
His fear of hypnotism is quite striking. He was an accomplished stage hypnotist, a skill he displayed at a meeting of a group of sci-fi fans in Los Angeles, when he put nearly everyone in the audience into a trance, and persuaded one of them that he was holding a pair of miniature kangaroos in the palm of his hand. He also once tried to hypnotize Sara’s mother, after she had a stroke, to persuade her to leave her money to him. But then he would accuse Sara of hypnotizing him in his sleep.
If one looks behind the Affirmations to the conditions they are meant to correct, one sees a man who is ashamed of his tendency to fabricate personal stories, who is conflicted about his sexual needs, and who worries about his mortality. He has a predatory view of women but at the same time fears their power to humiliate him.
The third and final section of this document is titled “The Book.” It contains a checklist of personal goals and compliments he pays to himself, but it is also a portrait of the superman that he wishes to be. He does make mention of an actual book—he calls it One Commandment—that seems to be a reference to Excalibur. “It freed you forever from the fears of the material world and gave you material control over people,” he writes.
You are radiant like sunlight.
You can read music.
You are a magnificent writer who has thrilled millions.
Ability to drop into a trance state at will.
Lack of necessity of following a pulp pattern.
You did a fine job in the Navy. No one there is now “out to get you.”
You are psychic.
You do not masturbate.
You do not know anger. Your patience is infinite.
Snakes are not dangerous to you. There are no snakes in the bottom of your bed.
You believe implicitly in God. You have no doubts of the All Powerful. You believe your Guardian perfectly.
The judge in the Armstrong suit, where this document was presented as evidence, offered his own amateur diagnosis of Hubbard’s personality in a crushing decision against the church:
The organization is clearly schizophrenic and paranoid, and this bizarre combination seems to be a reflection of its founder LRH. The evidence portrays a man who has been virtually a pathological liar when it comes to his history, background, and achievements. The writings and documents in evidence additionally reflect his egoism, greed, avarice, lust for power, and vindictiveness and aggressiveness against persons perceived by him to be disloyal or hostile. At the same time it appears that he is charismatic and highly capable of motivating, organizing, controlling, manipulating, and inspiring his adherents. . . . Obviously, he is and has been a very complex person, and that complexity is further reflected in his alter ego, the Church of Scientology.
Ibid. p. 68:
One of the charges that would be lobbed against Hubbard by his disaffected eldest son was that his father had attempted two abortions on his mother. “One I observed when I was around six or seven,” L. Ron Hubbard, Jr., later testified. He recalled seeing his father standing over his mother with a coat hanger in his hand. The other attempted abortion was upon himself. “I was born at six and a half months and weighed two pounds, two ounces. I mean, I wasn’t born: this is what came out as a result of their attempt to abort me.” Hubbard himself writes in his secret memoir that Polly was terrified of childbirth, “but conceived despite all precautions seven times in five years resulting in five abortions and two children.” While he was writing Dianetics, and Sara was pregnant with Alexis, she says, Hubbard kicked her in the stomach several times to attempt to cause a miscarriage. Later, Hubbard told one of his lovers that he himself had been born of an attempted abortion.
Endnotes:
32 “Because of her coldness”: “The Admissions of L. Ron Hubbard,” www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/writings/ars/ars-2000-03-11.html The church disputes the authenticity of this document, claiming that it is a forgery.
33 “I loved her and she me”: Ibid.
36. “a very loose person”: “The Admissions of L. Ron Hubbard,” www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/writings/ars/ars-2000-03-11.html
39. “This on top of”: “The Admissions of L. Ron Hubbard,” www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/writings/ars/ars-2000-03-11.html
40. “He almost forced me”: “The Admissions of L. Ron Hubbard,” www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/writings/ars/ars-2000-03-11.html
41. “My wife left me”: “The Admissions of L. Ron Hubbard,” www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/writings/ars/ars-2000-03-11.html
51 “a kind of self-therapy”: Church of Scientology, California, v. Gerald Armstrong. Information that has become available since the Armstrong trial, such as the Heinlein and Hays letters, confirms much of the material in the Affirmations, adding to its credibility.
68. “but conceived despite all precautions”: “The Admissions of L. Ron Hubbard,” www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/writings/ars/ars-2000-03-11.html