Part 10


	The SCIENTOLOGY STORY Newkirk Herald-Journal Extra Special Report Reprinted With Permission From The Los Angeles Times Defining The Theology... The Religion Abounds in Galactic Tales; Deepest Secrets Known to Few By Joel Sappell and Robert W. Welkos (c) 1990, Los Angeles Times What is Scientology? Not even the vast majority of Scientologists can fully answer the question. In the Church of Scientology, there is no one book that comprehensively sets forth the religion's beliefs in the fashion of, say, the Bible or the Koran. Rather, Scientology's theology is scattered among the voluminous writings and tape-recorded discourses of the late science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, who founded the religion in the early 1950s. Piece by piece, his teachings are revealed to church members through a progression of sometimes secret courses that take years to complete and cost tens of thousands of dollars. Out of a membership estimated by the church to be 6.5 million, only a tiny fraction have climbed to the upper reaches. In fact, according to a Scientology publication earlier this year, fewer than 900 members have completed the church's highest course, nicknamed "Truth Revealed." While Hubbard's "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health" typically is one of the first books read by church members, its relationship to Scientology is like that of a grade school to a university. What Scientologists learn in their courses is never publicly discussed by the church, which is trying to shake its cultish image and establish itself as a mainstream religion. For to the uninitiated, Hubbard's theology would resemble pure science fiction, complete with galactic battles, interplanetary civilizations and tyrants who roam the universe. Here, based on court records, church documents and Hubbard lectures that span the past four decades, is a rare look at portions of Scientology's theology and the cosmological musings of the man who wrote it. Central to Scientology is a belief in an immortal soul, or "thetan," that passes from one body to the next through countless reincarnations spanning trillions of years. Together and collectively, thetans created the universe - all the stars and planets, every plant and animal. To function within their creation, thetans built bodies for themselves of wildly varying appearances, the human form being just one. But each thetan is vulnerable to painful experiences that can diminish its powers and create emotional and physical problems in the individual it inhabits. The goal of Scientology is to purge these experiences from the thetan, making it again omnipotent and returning spiritual and bodily health to its host. The painful experiences are called "engrams." Hubbard said some happen by accident - from ancient planetary wars, for example - while others are intentionally inflicted by other thetans who have gone bad and want power. In Scientology, these engrams are called "implants." According to Hubbard, the bad thetans through the eons have electronically implanted other thetans with information intended to confuse them and make them forget the powers they inherently possess - kind of a brainwashing procedure. While Hubbard was not always precise about the origins of the implants, he was very clear about the impact. "Implants," Hubbard said, "result in all varieties of illness, apathy, degradation, neurosis and insanity and are the principal cause of these in man." Hubbard identified numerous implants that he said have occurred through the ages and that are addressed during Scientology courses aimed at neutralizing their harmful effects. Hubbard maintained, for example, that the concept of a Christian heaven is the product of two implants dating back more than 43 trillion years. Heaven, he said, is a "false dream" and a "very painful lie" intended to direct thetans toward a non-existent goal and convince them they have only one life. In reality, Hubbard said, there is no heaven and there was no Christ. "The [implanted] symbol of a crucified Christ is very apt indeed," Hubbard said. "It's the symbol of a thetan betrayed." Hubbard said that one of the worst implants happens after a person dies. While Hubbard's story of this implant may seem outlandish to some, he advanced it as a factual account of reincarnation. "Of all the nasty, mean and vicious implants that have ever been invented, this one is it," he declared during a lecture in the 1950s. "And it's been going on for thousands of years." Hubbard said that when a person dies, his or her thetan goes to a "landing station" on Venus, where it is programmed with lies about its past life and its next life. The lies include a promise that it will be returned to Earth by being lovingly shunted into the body of a newborn baby. Not so, said Hubbard, who described the thetan's re-entry this way: "What actually happens to you, you're simply capsuled and dumped in the gulf of lower California. Splash. The hell with ya. And you're on your own, man. If you can get out of that, and through that, and wander around through the cities and find some girl who looks like she is going to get married or have a baby or something like that, you're all set. And if you can find the maternity ward to a hospital or something, you're OK. "And you just eventually just pick up a baby." But Hubbard offered his followers an easy way to outwit the implant: Scientologists should simply select a location other than Venus to go "when they kick the bucket." Another notorious implant led Hubbard to construct an entire course for Scientologists who want to be rid of it. Shrouded in mystery and kept in locked cabinets at select church locations, the course is called Operating Thetan III, billed by the church as "the final secret of the catastrophe which laid waste to this sector of the galaxy." It is taught only to the most advanced church members, at fees ranging to $6,000. Hubbard told his followers that while unlocking the secret, he "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." Here's what he said he learned: Seventy-five million years ago a tyrant named Xenu (pronounced Zee-new) ruled the Galactic Confederation, an alliance of 76 planets, including Earth, then called Teegeeack. To control overpopulation and solidify his power, Xenu instructed his loyal officers to capture beings of all shapes and sizes from the various planets, freeze them in a compound of alcohol and glycol and fly them by the billions to Earth in planes resembling DC-8s. Some of the beings were captured after they were duped into showing up for a phony tax investigation. The beings were deposited or chained near 10 volcanoes scattered around the planet. After hydrogen bombs were dropped on them, their thetans were captured by Xenu's forces and implanted with sexual perversion, religion and other notions to obscure their memory of what Xenu had done. Soon after, a revolt erupted. Xenu was imprisoned in a wire cage within a mountain, where he remains today. But the damage was done. During the last 75 million years, these implanted thetans have affixed themselves by the thousands to people on Earth. Called "body thetans," they overwhelm the main thetan who resides within a person, causing confusion and internal conflict. In the Operating Thetan III course, Scientologists are taught to scan their bodies for "pressure points," indicating the presence of these bad thetans. Using techniques prescribed by Hubbard, church members make telepathic contact with these thetans and remind them of Xenu's treachery. With that, Hubbard said, the thetans detach themselves. Hubbard first unveiled his Scientology theories during a series of often breathless lectures he delivered in Wichita, Kan., Phoenix and Philadelphia in 1952. His talks were sprinkled with tales of interplanetary adventures he said he had experienced during earlier lives. There was the time, for instance, that Hubbard said he was resting in a peaceful valley on a barren planet in some remote galaxy, and decided to spruce up the place. He said he "fixed up a lake" and "managed to coax into existence a few vines." Then, "all of a sudden - zoop boom - and there was a spaceship," Hubbard recalled, saying "I got pretty mad about the whole thing." "I remember bringing a thunderstorm," Hubbard said. "Moved it over the ship. ... And then [I] let them have it." Hubbard told associates that he had been many people before being born as Lafayette Ronald Hubbard on March 13, 1911, in Tilden, Neb. One of them was Cecil Rhodes, the British-born diamond king of southern Africa. Another, according to a former aide, was a marshal to Joan of Arc. After Hubbard's death in 1986, a Scientology publication described him as "the original musician," who 3 million years ago invented music while going by the name "Arpen Polo." The publication noted that "he wrote his first song a bit after the first tick of time." Hubbard realized that his accounts of past lives, implants and extraterrestrial creatures might sound suspect to outsiders. So he counseled his disciples to keep mum. "Don't start walking around and telling people about space opera because they're not going to believe you," he said, "and they're going to say, `Well, that's just Hubbard.' " About This Section The Newkirk Herald Journal today reprints a multi-part series on the Church of Scientology, the controversial organization founded by the late author L. Ron Hubbard. This special report was researched and written by Joel Sappell and Robert W. Welkos, staff writers at the Los Angeles Times. The series was published by the Los Angeles Times in July of this year, and has also been published by the St. Petersburg, (Fla.) Times. Los Angeles, Ca., and Clearwater, Fl., both have large Scientology installations, but neither city has a Scientology controlled organization as large as the 167 acre unlicensed and uncertified Narconon facility currently operating on Chilocco Indian School land. For that reason, the series deserves publication in this area. The Newkirk Herald Journal appreciates the co-operation of the management of the Los Angeles Times to whom we are indebted for both the copy and the permission to reprint it. Since its creation nearly four decades ago, Scientology has grown into a worldwide movement that, in recent months, has spent millions of dollars promoting its founder and his self-help book, "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health." In the past five years alone, more than 20 of Hubbard's fiction and nonfictionbooks have become national best-sellers - most of them achieving that status after his death in January, 1986. Scientology executives estimate the church's membership to be more than 6.5 million, although some former members believe the actual number is smaller. Scientology's largest stronghold is in Hollywood, the organization's management nerve center. The church is also a major presence in Clearwater, Fl., where Scientologists from around the world go for training. No other contemporary religion has endured a more turbulent past or a more sustained assault on its existence than the Church of Scientology. It has weathered crises that would have crippled, if not destroyed, other fledgling religious movements - testimony to the group's determination to survive. Eleven of its top leaders - including Hubbard's wife - were jailed for burglarizing the U.S. Justice Department and other federal agencies in the 1970s. Within the church, there have been widespread purges and defections. Some former members have filed lawsuits accusing the church of intimidating its critics, breaking up families and using high-pressure sales techniques to separate large sums of money from its followers. In 1986, Scientology paid an estimated $5 million to settle more than 20 of the suits, without admitting wrongdoing. In exchange, the plaintiffs agreed never again to criticize Scientology or Hubbard and to have their lawsuits forever sealed from the public view. Through all this, the church has persevered, dismissing its critics in government, psychiatry and the media as "criminals" and "anti-religion" demagogues who have conspired to persecute Scientology. Today, the Scientology movement is writing a new chapter in its history, one that has attracted a new generation of supporters and detractors. Through official church programs and a network of groups run by Scientology followers, the movement is reaching into American society as never before to gain legitimacy and new members. The apparent intent is to position Hubbard as a sort of 20th-Century Renaissance man, lending new credibility to his Scientology teachings. Among other things, church members are disseminating his writings in schools across the U.S., assisted by groups that seldom publicize their Scientology connections. Scientology followers also have established a number of successful consulting firms that sell Hubbard's management techniques to health care professionals and businessmen. In the process, many are steered into the church. And Scientologists are the driving force behind two organizations active in the scientific community. The organizations have been busy trying to sell government agencies and the public on a chemical detoxification treatment developed by Hubbard. There is little question that, although Hubbard is gone, Scientology is here to stay - and doing its best to meet his expectations. "The world is ours," he once told his adherents. "Own it." L. Ron Hubbard: A Religion of a Man's Imagining The Mind Behind The Religion A Path From 'Pulp Fiction' To 'Sacred Scriptures' By Joel Sappell and Robert W. Welkos (c) 1990, Los Angeles Times LOS ANGELES - It was a triumph of galactic proportions: Science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard had discarded the body that bound him to the physical universe and was off to the next phase of his spiritual exploration - "on a planet a galaxy away." "Hip, hip, hurray!" thousands of Scientologists thundered inside the Hollywood Palladium, where they had just been told of this remarkable feat. "Hip, hip, hurray! Hip, hip, hurray!" they continued to chant, gazing at a large photograph of Hubbard, creator of their religion and author of the best-selling "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health." Earlier that day, the Church of Scientology had summoned the faithful throughout Los Angeles to a "big and exciting event" at the Palladium. They were told nothing more, just to be there. As evening fell, thousands arrived, most decked out in the spit-and-polish mock Navy uniforms that are symbolic of the organization's paramilitary structure. The excited assemblage was about to learn that their beloved leader, a man who dubbed himself "The Commodore," had died. Yet, death was never mentioned. Instead, the Scientologists were told that Hubbard had finished his spiritual research on this planet, charting a precise path for man to achieve immortality. And now it was on to bigger challenges somewhere beyond the stars. His body had "become an impediment to the work he now must do outside of its confines," the awe-struck crowd was informed. "The fact that he ... willingly discarded the body after it was no longer useful to him signifies his ultimate success: the conquest of life that he embarked upon half a century ago." The death certificate would show that Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, 74, who had not been seen publicly for nearly six years, died on Jan. 24, 1986, of a stroke on his ranch outside San Luis Obispo, Calif. But to Scientologists, the man they affectionately called "Ron" had ascended. The glorification of L. Ron Hubbard that brisk January night was not surprising. Over more than three decades he had skillfully transformed himself from a writer of pulp fiction to a writer of "sacred scriptures." Along the way, he made a fortune and achieved his dream of fame. "I have high hopes of smashing my name into history so violently that it will take a legendary form, even if all the books are destroyed," Hubbard wrote to the first of his three wives in 1938, more than a decade before he created Scientology. "That goal," he said, "is the real goal as far as I am concerned." From the ground up, Hubbard built an international empire that started as a collection of mental therapy centers and became one of the world's most controversial and secretive religions. The intensity, combativeness and salesmanship that distinguish Scientology from other religions can be traced directly to Hubbard. For, even in death, the man and his creation are inseparable. He wrote millions of words in scores of books instructing his followers on everything from how to market Scientology to how to fend off critics. His prolific and sometimes rambling discourses constitute the gospel of Scientology, its structure and its soul. Deviations are punishable. Through his writings, Hubbard fortified his clannish organization with a powerful intolerance of criticism and a fierce will to endure and prosper. He wrote a Code of Honor that urged his followers to "never desert a group to which you owe your support" and "never fear to hurt another in a just cause." He transmitted to his followers his suspicious view of the world - one populated, he insisted, by madmen bent on Scientology's destruction. His flaring temper and searing intensity are deeply branded into the church and reflected in the behavior of his faithful, who shout at adversaries and even at each other. As one former high-ranking member put it: "He made swearing cool." Hubbard's followers say his teachings have helped thousands kick drugs and allowed countless others to lead fuller lives through courses that improve communication skills, build self-confidence and increase an individual's ability to take control of his or her life. He was, they say, "the greatest humanitarian in history." But there was another side to this imaginative and intelligent man. And to understand Scientology, one must begin with L. Ron Hubbard. In the late 1940s, Hubbard was broke and in debt. A struggling writer of science fiction and fantasy, he was forced to sell his typewriter for $28.50 to get by. "I can still see Ron three-steps-at-a-time running up the stairs in around 1949 in order to borrow $30 from me to get out of town because he had a wife after him for alimony," recalled his former literary agent, Forrest J. Ackerman. At one point, Hubbard was reduced to begging the Veterans Administration to let him keep a $51 overpayment of benefits. "I am nearly penniless," wrote Hubbard, a former Navy lieutenant. Hubbard was mentally troubled, too. In late 1947, he asked the Veterans Administration to help him get psychiatric treatment. "Toward the end of my [military] service," Hubbard wrote to the VA, "I avoided out of pride any mental examinations, hoping that time would balance a mind which I had every reason to suppose was seriously affected. "I cannot account for nor rise above long periods of moroseness and suicidal inclinations, and have newly come to realize that I must first triumph above this before I can hope to rehabilitate myself at all." In his most private moments, Hubbard wrote bizarre statements to himself in notebooks that would surface four decades later in Los Angeles County Superior Court. "All men are your slaves," he wrote in one. "You can be merciless whenever your will is crossed and you have the right to be merciless," he wrote in another. Hubbard was troubled, restless and adrift in those little known years of his life. But he never lost confidence in his ability as a writer. He had made a living with words in the past and he could do it again. Before the financial and emotional problems that consumed him in the 1940s, Hubbard had achieved moderate success writing for a variety of dime-store pulp magazines. He specialized in shoot'em-up adventures, Westerns, mysteries, war stories and science fiction. His output, if not the writing itself, was spectacular. Using such pseudonyms as Winchester Remington Colt and Rene LaFayette, he sometimes filled up entire issues virtually by himself. Hubbard's life then was like a page from one of his adventure stories. He panned for gold in Puerto Rico and charted waterways in Alaska. He was a master sailor and glider pilot, with a reported penchant for eye-catching maneuvers. Although Hubbard's health and writing career foundered after the war, he remained a virtual factory of ideas. And his biggest was about to be born.< Hubbard had long been fascinated with mental phenomena and the mysteries of life. He was an expert in hypnotism. During a 1948 gathering of science fiction buffs in Los Angeles, he hypnotized many of those in attendance, convincing one young man that he was cradling a tiny kangaroo in his hands. Hubbard sometimes spoke of having visions. His former literary agent, Ackerman, said Hubbard once told of dying on an operating table. And here, according to Ackerman, is what Hubbard said followed: "He arose in spirit form and looked at the body he no longer inhabited. ... In the distance he saw a great ornate gate. ... The gate opened of its own accord and he drifted through. There, spread out, was an intellectual smorgasbord, the answers to everything that ever puzzled the mind of man. He was absorbing all this fantabulous information. ... Then he felt like a long umbilical cord pulling him back. And a voice was saying, 'No, not yet.' " Hubbard, according to Ackerman, said he returned to life and feverishly wrote his recollections. He said Hubbard later tried to sell the manuscript but failed, claiming that "whoever read it (a) went insane, or (b) committed suicide." Hubbard's intense curiosity about the mind's power led him into a friendship in 1946 with rocket fuel scientist John Whiteside Parsons. Parsons was a protege of British satanist Aleister Crowley and leader of a black magic group modeled after Crowley's infamous occult lodge in England. Hubbard also admired Crowley, and in a 1952 lecture described him as "my very good friend." Parsons and Hubbard lived in an aging mansion on South Orange Grove Avenue in Pasadena, Calif. The estate was home to an odd mix of Bohemian artists, writers, scientists and occultists. A small domed temple supported by six stone columns stood in the back yard. Hubbard met his second wife, Sara Northrup, at the mansion. Although she was Parsons' lover at the time, Hubbard was undeterred. He married Northrup before divorcing his first wife. Long before the 1960s counterculture, some residents of the estate smoked marijuana and embraced a philosophy of promiscuous, ritualistic sex. "The neighbors began protesting when the rituals called for a naked pregnant woman to jump nine times through fire in the yard," recalled science fiction author L. Sprague de Camp, who knew both Hubbard and Parsons. Crowley biographers have written that Parsons and Hubbard practiced "sex magic." As the biographers tell it, a robed Hubbard chanted incantations while Parsons and his wife-to-be, Cameron, engaged in sexual intercourse intended to produce a child with superior intellect and powers. The ceremony was said to span 11 consecutive nights. Hubbard and Parsons finally had a falling out over a sailboat sales venture that ended in a court dispute between the two. In later years, Hubbard tried to distance himself from his embarrassing association with Parsons, who was a founder of a government rocket project at the California Institute of Technology that later evolved into the famed Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Parsons died in 1952 when a chemical explosion ripped through his garage lab. Hubbard insisted that he had been working undercover for Naval Intelligence to break up black magic in America and to investigate links between the occultists and prominent scientists at the Parsons mansion. Hubbard said the mission was so successful that the house was razed and the black magic group was dispersed. But Parsons' widow, Cameron, disputed Hubbard's account in a brief interview with the Los Angeles Times. She said the two men "liked each other very much" and "felt they were ushering in a force that was going to change things." In early 1950, Hubbard published an intriguing article in a 25-cent magazine called Astounding Science Fiction. In it, he said that he had uncovered the source of man's problems. The article grew into a book, written in one draft in just 30 days and entitled "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health." It would become the most important book of Hubbard's life. The book's introduction declared that Hubbard had invented a new "mental science," a feat more important perhaps than "the invention of the wheel, the control of fire, the development of mathematics." Hubbard himself said he had uncovered the source of, and the cure for, virtually every ailment known to man. Dianetics, he said, could restore withered limbs, mend broken bones, erase the wrinkles of age and dramatically increase intelligence. Not surprisingly, the nation's mental health professionals were unimpressed. Famed psychoanalyst Rollo May voiced the sentiments of many when he wrote in The New York Times that "books like this do harm by their grandiose promises to troubled persons and by their oversimplification of human psychological problems." But "Dianetics" was an instant best-seller when it hit the stands in May, 1950, and made Hubbard an overnight celebrity. Arthur Ceppos, who published the book, said Hubbard spent his first royalties on a luxury Lincoln. Hubbard had tapped the public's growing fascination with psychotherapy, then largely accessible only to the affluent. "Dianetics," in fact, was popularly dubbed "the poor man's psychotherapy" because it could be practiced among friends for free. In the book, Hubbard claimed to have discovered the previously unknown "reactive mind," a depository for emotionally or physically painful events in a person's life. These traumatic experiences, called "engrams," cause a variety of psychosomatic illnesses, including migraine headaches, ulcers, allergies, arthritis, poor vision and the common cold, Hubbard said. The goal of dianetics, Hubbard said, is to purge these painful experiences and create a "clear" individual who is able to realize his or her full potential. Catapulted from obscurity, Hubbard decided in the summer of 1950 to prove in a big way that his new "science" was for real. He appeared before a crowd of thousands at the Shrine Auditorium to unveil the "world's first clear," a person he said had achieved a perfect memory. Journalists from numerous newspapers and magazines were there to document the event. He placed on display one Sonya Bianca, a young Boston physics major. But when Hubbard allowed the audience to question her, she performed dismally. Someone, for example, told Hubbard to turn his back while the girl was asked to describe the color of his tie. There was silence. The world's first clear drew a blank. "It was a tremendous embarrassment for Hubbard and his friends at the time," recalled Arthur Jean Cox, a science fiction buff who attended the presentation. More problems were on the way for the man whose book promised miracles but whose own life would move from one crisis to the next until his death. He became embroiled, for instance, in a nasty divorce and child custody battle that raised embarrassing questions about his mental stability. His wife, Sara Northrup Hubbard, accused him of subjecting her to "scientific torture experiments" and of suffering from "paranoid schizophrenia" - allegations that she would later retract in a signed statement but that would find their way into government files and continue to haunt Hubbard. She said in her suit that Hubbard had deprived her of sleep, beaten her and suggested that she kill herself, "as divorce would hurt his reputation." During the legal proceedings, Sara placed in the court record a letter she had received from Hubbard's first wife. "Ron is not normal," it said. "I had hoped you could straighten him out. Your charges probably sound fantastic to the average person - but I've been through it - the beatings, threats on my life, all the sadistic traits which you charge - 12 years of it." At one point in the marital dispute with Sara, Hubbard spirited their 1-year-old daughter, Alexis, to Cuba. From there, he wrote to Sara: "I have been in the Cuban military hospital, and am being transferred to the United States as a classified scientist immune from interference of all kinds. ... My right side is paralyzed and getting more so. "I hope my heart lasts. I may live a long time and again I may not. But Dianetics will last ten thousand years - for the Army and Navy have it now." Hubbard, who had earlier accused his wife of infidelity and said she suffered brain damage, closed his letter by threatening to cut his infant daughter from his will. "Alexis will get a fortune unless she goes to you, as she then would get nothing," he wrote. He also wrote a letter to the FBI at the height of the Red Scare accusing Sara of possibly being a Communist, along with others whom he said had infiltrated his dianetics movement. The FBI, after interviewing Hubbard, dismissed him as a "mental case." In one seven-page missive to the Department of Justice in 1951, he linked Sara to alleged physical assaults on him. He said that on two separate occasions he was punched in his sleep by unidentified intruders. And then came the third attack. "I was in my apartment on February 23rd, about two or three o'clock in the morning when the apartment was entered, I was knocked out, had a needle thrust into my heart to give it a jet of air to produce 'coronary thrombosis' and was given an electric shock with a 110 volt current. This is all very blurred to me. I had no witnesses. But only one person had another key to that apartment and that was Sara." After months of sniping at each other - and a counter divorce suit by Hubbard in which he accused his wife of "gross neglect of duty and extreme cruelty" - the couple ended their stormy marriage, with Sara obtaining custody of the child. In later years, Hubbard would deny fathering the girl and, as threatened, did not leave her a cent. Not only was Hubbard's domestic life a shambles in 1951, his once-thriving self-help movement was crumbling as public interest in his theories waned. The foundations Hubbard had established to teach dianetics were in financial ruin and his book had disappeared from The New York Times best-seller list. But the resilient self-promoter came up with something new. He called it Scientology, and his metamorphosis from pop therapist to religious leader was under way. Scientology essentially gave a new twist to the Dianetics notion of painful experiences that lodge in the "reactive mind." In Scientology, Hubbard held that memories of such experiences also collect in a person's soul and date back to past lives. For many of Hubbard's early followers, Scientology was not believable, and they broke with him. But others would soon take their place, conferring upon Hubbard an almost saintly status. But as Hubbard's renown and prosperity grew in the 1960s, so, too, did the questions surrounding his finances and teachings. He was accused by various governments - including the U.S. - of quackery, of brainwashing, of bilking the gullible through high-pressure sales techniques. In 1967, Hubbard took several hundred of his followers to sea to escape the spreading hostility. But they found only temporary safe harbor from what they believed had become an international conspiracy to persecute them. Their three ships, led by a converted cattle ferry dubbed the "Apollo," were bounced from port to port in the Mediterranean and Caribbean by governments that wrongly suspected the American skipper and his secretive, clean-cut crew of being CIA operatives. While anchored at the Portuguese island of Madeira, they were stoned by townsfolk carrying torches and chanting anti-CIA slogans. "They [were] throwing Molotov cocktails onto the boat but they weren't lit," a crew member recalled. "Fortunately, this was not an experienced mob." The years at sea were a watershed for Hubbard and Scientology. He instituted a Navy-style command structure that is evident today in the military dress and snap-to behavior of the organization's staff members. Hubbard named himself the "Commodore," and subordinates followed his orders like Annapolis midshipmen. As former Scientology ship officer Hana Eltringham Whitfield put it: "Scientologists on the whole thought that Hubbard was like a god, that he could command the waves to do what he wanted, that he was totally in control of his life and consequences of his actions." Staking A Claim To Blood Brotherhood (c) 1990, Los Angeles Times As L. Ron Hubbard told it, he was 4 years old when a medicine man named "Old Tom" made him a "blood brother" of the Blackfeet Indians of Montana, providing the inspiration for the Scientology founder's first novel, "Buckskin Brigades." But one expert on the tribe doesn't buy Hubbard's account. Historian Hugh Dempsey is associate director of the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Alberta. He has extensively researched the tribe, of which his wife is a member. He said that blood brothers are "an old Hollywood idea" and that the act was "never done among the Blackfeet." As for "Old Tom," Dempsey has informed doubts. For one thing, he said, the name does not appear in a 1907 Blackfeet enrollment register containing the names of hundreds of tribal members. For another, "It's the kind of name, for that period [1915], that would practically not exist among the Blackfeet," he said. "At that time, Blackfeet did not have Christian names." In 1985, church leaders produced a document that they say proves Hubbard was not lying. Typed on Blackfeet Nation stationery, it states: "To commemorate the seventieth anniversary of L. Ron Hubbard becoming a blood brother of the Blackfeet Nation. Tree Manyfeathers in a ceremony re-established L. Ron Hubbard as a blood brother to the Blackfeet Tribe." The document actually is meaningless because none of the three men who signed it were authorized to take any action on the tribe's behalf, according to Blackfeet Nation officials. The document was created by Richard Mataisz, a Scientologist of fractional Indian descent. Mataisz said in an interview he tried to prove that Hubbard was a Blackfeet blood brother but came up empty-handed. "It's not," he said, "something you go down to the courthouse and look up." So Mataisz, using the name Tree Manyfeathers, said he held a private ceremony, made Hubbard his own blood brother and, along with two other men, signed the commemorative document. "You should not give it [the document] very much credibility," said John Yellow Kidney, former vice president of the tribe's executive committee. "I don't." Burglaries And Lies Paved A Path To Prison A Web Of Criminal Conspiracy To discredit The Church's Foes Resulted In 5-Year Sentences For 11 Defendants. By Robert W. Welkos and Joel Sappell (c) 1990, Los Angeles Times LOS ANGELES - It began with the title of a fairy tale - Snow White. That was the benign code name Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard gave to an ominous plan that would envelop his church in scandal and send its upper echelon to prison, a plan rooted in his ever-deepening fears and suspicions. Snow White began in 1973 as an effort by Scientology through Freedom of Information proceedings to purge government files of what Hubbard thought was false information being circulated worldwide to discredit him and the church. But the operation soon mushroomed into a massive criminal conspiracy, executed by the church's legal and investigative arm, the Guardian Office. Under the direction of Hubbard's wife, Mary Sue, the Guardian Office hatched one scheme after another to discredit and unnerve Scientology's foes across the country. Guardian Office members were trained to lie, or in their words, " to outflow false data effectively." They compiled enemy lists and subjected those on the lists to smear campaigns and dirty tricks. Their targets were in the government, the press, the medical profession, wherever a potential threat surfaced. The Guardian Office saved the worst for author Paulette Cooper of New York City, whose scathing 1972 book, " The Scandal of Scientology," pushed her to the top of the church's roster of enemies. Among other things, Cooper was framed on criminal charges by Guardian Office members, who obtained stationery she had touched and then used it to forge bomb threats to the church in her name. " You're like the Nazis or the Arabs - I'll bomb you, I'll kill you!" warned one of the rambling letters. The church reported the threat to the FBI and directed its agents to Cooper, whose fingerprints matched those on the letter. Cooper was indicted by a grand jury not only for the bomb threats, but for lying under oath about her innocence. Two years later, the author's reputation and psyche in tatters, prosecutors dismissed the charges after she had spent nearly $20,000 in legal fees to defend herself and $6,000 on psychiatric treatment. It seemed that no plan against perceived enemies was too ambitious or daring. In Washington, Scientology spies penetrated such high-security agencies as the Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue Service to find what they had on Hubbard and the church. In nighttime raids, they rifled files and photocopied mountains of documents, many of which the church had unsuccessfully sought under the federal Freedom of Information Act. The thefts were inside jobs; the Guardian Office had planted one agent in the IRS as a clerk typist and another in the Department of Justice as the personal secretary of an assistant U.S. attorney who was handling Freedom of Information lawsuits filed by Scientology. So bold had they become that one Guardian Office operative slipped into an IRS conference room and wired a bugging device into a wall socket before a crucial meeting on Scientology was to be convened. The operative rigged the device so he could eavesdrop over his car's FM radio. The U.S. government was losing a war it did not even know it was fighting. But that was about to change. Two Scientologists used fake IRS credentials to gain access to government agencies and then photocopied documents related to the church. Their conspiracy was exposed when one of the suspects, after 11 months on the lam, became worried about his plight and confessed to authorities, prompting the FBI to launch one of the biggest raids in its history. Armed with power saws, crowbars and bolt cutters, 134 agents burst into three Scientology locations in Los Angeles and Washington. They carted off eavesdropping equipment, burglar tools and 48,000 documents detailing countless operations against " enemies" in public and private life. In the end, Hubbard's wife and the others were found guilty of charges of conspiracy and burglary. The grand jury named Hubbard as an unindicted co-conspirator; the seized Guardian Office files did not directly link him to the crimes and he professed ignorance of them. In a memorandum urging stiff sentences for the Scientologists, federal prosecutors wrote: "The crime committed by these defendants is of a breadth and scope previously unheard of. No building, office, desk, or file was safe from their snooping and prying. No individual or organization was free from their despicable conspiratorial minds. The tools of their trade were miniature transmitters, lock picks, secret codes, forged credentials and any other device they found necessary to carry out their conspiratorial schemes." The 11 defendants were ordered to serve five years in federal prison. All are now free. Church leaders today maintain that this dark chapter in their religion's history was the work of renegade members who, yes, broke the law but believed they were justified because the government for two decades had harassed and persecuted Scientology. Boston attorney Earle C. Cooley, Scientology's national trial counsel, said the present church management does not condone the criminal activities of the old Guardian Office. He said that one of Hubbard's most important dictums was to " maintain friendly relations with the environment and the public." "The question that I always have in my mind," Cooley said, " is for how long a time is the church going to have to continue to pay the price for what the (Guardian Office) did. ... Unfortunately, the church continues to be confronted with it. "And the ironic thing is that the people being confronted with it are the people who wiped it out. And to the church, that's a very frustrating thing." The Final Days... Deep In Hiding, Hubbard Kept A Tight Grip On The Church By Robert W. Welkos and Joel Sappell (c) 1990, Los Angeles Times LOS ANGELES - Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard often said that man's most basic drive is that of survival. And when it came to his own, he used whatever was necessary - false identities, cover stories, deception. There is no better illustration of this than the way he secretly controlled the Church of Scientology while hiding from a world he viewed as increasingly hostile. Hubbard was last seen publicly in February 1980, in the desert community of Hemet, Calif., a few miles from a high-security compound that houses thechurch's movie and recording studio. His sudden departure fueled wild and intense speculation. The church said Hubbard went into seclusion to continue his Scientology research and to resurrect his science fiction-writing career. But former aides have said he dropped from sight to avoid subpoenas and government tax agents probing allegations that he was skimming church funds. Publications throughout the world ran stories about Hubbard's disappearance. " Mystery of the Vanished Ruler" was the headline in Time magazine. In 1982, Hubbard's estranged son filed a probate petition trying to wrest control of the Scientology empire. He argued that his father was either dead or mentally incompetent and that his riches were being plundered by Scientology executives. The suit was dismissed after Hubbard, through an attorney, submitted an affidavit with his fingerprints, saying that he was well and wanted to be left alone. No doubt, Hubbard would have chuckled with satisfaction over the speculationsurrounding his whereabouts. For he had always considered himself a shrewd strategist and a master of the intelligence game, endlessly calculating ways to outwit his foes. Hubbard took with him only two people, a married couple named Pat and Anne Broeker. Pat Broeker, Hubbard's personal messenger at the time, had gone into hiding with him once before and knew how to ensure his security. Broeker relished cloak-and-dagger operations. His nickname among Hubbard's other messengers was " 007." Anne had been one of Hubbard's top aides for years. She was cool under pressure and able to defuse Hubbard's volatile temper. Hubbard and the Broekers spent their first several years together on the move. For months, they traveled the Pacific Northwest in a motor home. They lived in apartments in Newport Beach and other suburbs of Los Angeles. Then, in the summer of 1983, they decided to settle down in a dusty ranch town of Creston, Calif., population 270, where the hot, arid climate would be kind to Hubbard's bursitis. About 30 miles inland from San Luis Obispo, it was a perfect spot for a man of notoriety to live in obscurity. In those parts, people don't ask a lot of questions about someone else's business. Hubbard and the Broekers concocted an elaborate set of phony names and backgrounds to conceal their identities from the townsfolk. Pat and Anne Broeker went by the names Mike and Lisa Mitchell. Hubbard became Lisa's father,Jack, who impressed the locals as a chatty old man, charismatic but sometimes gruff. They purchased a 160-acre ranch known as the Whispering Winds for $700,000, using 30 cashier's checks drawn on various California banks. Pat Broeker told the sellers, Ed and Sherry Shahan, that he had recently inherited millions of dollars and was looking to leave his home in Upstate New York to raise livestock in California. At the time, the Shahans were suspicious. As Ed Shahan recalled, " They were having trouble deciding whose name to put the property in." In less than three years, Hubbard poured an estimated $3 million into the local economy as he redesigned the ranch to his exacting and elaborate specifications. He launched one project after another, some of them seemingly senseless, according to local residents. He ordered the construction of a quarter-mile horse-racing track with an observation tower. The track reportedly was never used. The 10-room ranch house was gutted and remodeled so many times that it went virtually uninhabited during Hubbard's time there. He lived and worked in a luxurious 40-foot Bluebird motor home parked near the stables. All this was done without work permits, which meant that Hubbard and his aides would not have to worry about nosy county inspectors. Like Hubbard's aides in earlier years, the hired help saw extreme sides of the man who was chauffeured around the property in a black Subaru pickup by Anne Broeker. Fencing contractor Jim Froelicher of Paso Robles remembers asking him for advice on buying a camera. Several days later, Froelicher said, Hubbard presented him with a 35mm camera as a gift. Longtime Creston resident Ed Lindquist, on the other hand, said painters dropped by the local tavern at lunch to talk about how the " old man" was acting eccentric. They said he had them paint the walls again and again because they " weren't white enough," according to Lindquist. Scientology officials insist that Hubbard was in fine mental and physical health during his years in seclusion. Most of his days, they say, were spent reading, writing and enjoying the ranch's beauty and livestock, which included llamas and buffalo. But Hubbard was doing much more, according to former aides. Even in hiding, they say, he kept a close watch and a tight grip on the church he built - as he had for decades. As early as 1966, Hubbard claimed to have relinquished managerial control of the church. But ex-Scientologists and several court rulings have held that this was a maneuver to shield Hubbard from potential legal actions and accountability for the group's activities. Over the years, efforts to conceal Hubbard's ties to the church were extensive and extreme. In 1980, for example, a massive shredding operation was undertaken at the church's desert compound outside Palm Springs after Scientology officials received an erroneous tip of an imminent FBI raid, according to a former aide. " Anything that indicated that L. Ron Hubbard controlled the church or was engaged in management was to be shredded," recalled Hubbard's former public relations officer, Laurel Sullivan. For more than two days, Sullivan said, roughly 200 Scientologists crammed thousands of documents into a huge shredder nicknamed " Jaws." Documents too valuable to destroy, she added, were buried in the ground or under floorboards. In his self-imposed exile, Hubbard continued to reign over Scientology with almost paranoid secrecy. He relayed his orders in writing or on tape cassettes to Pat Broeker, who then passed them to a ranking Scientologist named David Miscavige, the man responsible for seeing that church executives complied. Hubbard's communiques travelled a circuitous route in the darkness of night, changing hands from Broeker to Miscavige at designated sites throughout Southern California. To mask the author's identity, the missives were signed with codes that carried the weight of Hubbard's signature. Sometimes Broeker himself appeared from parts unknown to personally deliver Hubbard's instructions to church executives. From his secret seat of power in the oak-studded hills above San Luis Obispo, Hubbard also made sure that he would not be severed from the riches of his Scientology empire, high-level church defectors would later tell government investigators. They alleged that Hubbard skimmed millions of dollars from church coffers while he was in hiding - carrying on a tradition that the Internal Revenue Service said he began practically at Scientology's inception about 30 years ago. Hubbard and his aides had always denied the allegations, and accused the IRS of waging a campaign against the church and its founder. While Hubbard was underground, the IRS launched a criminal investigation of his finances. But the investigation would soon be without a target, and ultimately abandoned. By late 1985, Hubbard's directives to underlings had tapered off. At age 74, he no longer resembled the robust and natty man whose dated photographs fill Scientology's promotional literature. Living in isolation, separated from his devoted followers, he had let himself go. His thin gray hair, with streaks of the old red, hung without sheen to his shoulders. He had grown a stringy, unkempt beard and mustache. His round face was now sunken and his ruddy complexion had turned pasty. He was an old man and he was nearing death. On or about Jan. 17, 1986, Hubbard suffered a " cerebral vascular accident," commonly known as a stroke. Caring for him was Gene Denk, a Scientologist doctor and Hubbard's physician for eight years. There was little Denk could do for Hubbard in those final days -the stroke was debilitating. He was bedridden and his speech was badly impaired. One week later, at 8 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 24, Hubbard died. Throughout the night, according to neighbor Robert Whaley, heavy traffic inexplicably moved in and out of the ranch. Whaley, a retired advertising executive, said that he was kept awake by headlights shining through his windows. For more than 11 hours, Hubbard's body remained in the motor home where he died. Scientology attorney Earle Cooley had ordered that Hubbard not be touched until he arrived by car from Los Angeles with another Scientology lawyer. The next morning, Cooley telephoned Reis Chapel, a San Luis Obispo mortuary, and arranged to have the body cremated. With Cooley present, Hubbard was transported to the mortuary. Once chapel officials learned who Hubbard was, however, they became concerned about the church's rush to cremate him. They contacted the San Luis Obispo County coroner, who halted the cremation until the body could be examined and blood tests performed. When then-Deputy Coroner Don Hines arrived, Cooley presented him with a certificate that Hubbard had signed just four days before his death. It stated that, for religious reasons, he wanted no autopsy. Cooley also produced a will that Hubbard had signed the day before he died, directing that his body be promptly cremated and that his vast wealth be distributed according to the provisions of a confidential trust he had established. His once-ornate trademark signature was little more than a scrawl. After the blood tests and examination revealed no foul play, coroner Hines approved the cremation. With Cooley's consent, he also photographed the body and lifted fingerprints as a way to later confirm that it was the reclusive Hubbard and not a hoax. Within hours, Hubbard's ashes were scattered at sea by the Broekers and Miscavige. Two days after Hubbard's death, Pat Broeker stood before a standing-room-only crowd of Scientologists at the Hollywood Palladium. It was his first public appearance in six years, and he had just broken the news of Hubbard's passing. The cheers were deafening. Broeker announced that Hubbard had made a conscious decision to " sever all ties" to this world so he could continue his Scientology research in spirit form - testimony to the power of the man and his teachings. He " laid down in his bed and he left," Broeker said. " And that was it." Hubbard left behind an organization that would continue to function as though he were still alive. His millions of words - the lifeblood of Scientology - have now been computerized for wisdom and instructions at the touch of a button. In Scientology, he was - and always will be - the " Source." Church Scriptures Get High-Tech Protection By Robert W. Welkos and Joel Sappell (c) 1990, Los Angeles Times LOS ANGELES - Scientology is determined that the words of L. Ron Hubbard shall live forever. Using state-of-the art technology, the movement has spent more than $15 million to protect Hubbard's original writings, tape-recorded lectures and filmed treatises from natural and man-made calamities, including nuclear holocaust. The effort illustrates two fundamental truths about the Scientology movement: It believes in its future and it never does anything halfheartedly. In charge of the preservation task is the Church of Spiritual Technology, which functions as archivist for Hubbard's works. It has a staff - but no congregation - and its fiscal 1987 income was $503 million, according to court documents filed by the church. The organization has purchased rural land in New Mexico, Northern California and Southern California's San Bernardino Mountains to store the Hubbard gospel. According to Church of Spiritual Technology documents, the New Mexico site has a 670-foot tunnel with two deep vaults at the end. The tunnel is protected with thick concrete and has four doors with "maintenance-free lives of 1,000 years." Three of the doors purportedly will be "nuclear blast resistant." All this to house mere copies of the original works, which include 500,000 pages of Hubbard writings, 6,500 reels of tape and 42 films. The originals themselves are being kept under tight security on a sprawling Scientology complex near Lake Arrowhead, Calif. While details of the facility are sketchy, a San Bernardino County sheriff's deputy, who requested anonymity, said the group had burrowed a huge tunnel into a mountainside. At the Lake Arrowhead repository, sophisticated methods are being used to prepare Hubbard's works for the bomb-proof vaults. Here, according to Scientology officials and documents, is the process: First, the original writings are chemically treated to rid the paper of acid that causes deterioration. Next, they are placed in plastic envelopes that church officials say will last 1,000 years. From there, they are packaged in titanium "time capsules" filled with argon gas to further aid preservation. Hubbard's writings also are being etched onto stainless steel plates with a strong acid. Scientology officials said the plates are so durable that they can be sprayed with salt water for 1,000 years and not deteriorate. As for Hubbard's taped lectures, they are being re-recorded onto special "pure gold" compact discs encased in glass that, according to Scientology archvists, are "designed to last at least 1,000 years with no deterioration of sound quality." Scientology Markets Its Gospel With High-Pressure Sales Pitch By Joel Sappell and Robert W. Welkos (c) 1990, Los Angeles Times LOS ANGELES - Behind the religious trappings, the Church of Scientology is run like a lean, no-nonsense business in which potential members are called "prospects," "raw meat" and "bodies in the shop." Its governing financial policy, written by the late Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, is simple and direct: "MAKE MONEY, MAKE MORE MONEY, MAKE OTHERS PRODUCE SO AS TO MAKE MONEY." The organization uses sophisticated sales tactics to sell a seemingly endless progression of expensive courses, each serving as a prerequisite for the next. Known collectively as "The Bridge," the courses promise salvation, higher intelligence, superhuman powers and even possible survival from nuclear fallout - for those who can pay. Church tenets mandate that parishioners purchase Scientology goods and services under Hubbard's "doctrine of exchange." A person must learn to give, he said, as well as receive. For its programs and books, the church charges "fixed donations" that range from $50 for an elementary course in improving communication skills to more than $13,000 for Hubbard's secret teachings on the origins of the universe and the genesis of mankind's ills. The church currently is offering a "limited time only" deal on a select package of Hubbard courses, which represent a small portion of The Bridge. If bought individually, those courses would cost $55,455. The sale price: $33,399.50. As a promotional flyer for the discount observes, "YOU SAVE $22,055.50." To complete Hubbard's progression of courses, a Scientologist could conceivably spend a lifetime and more than $400,000. Although few if any have doled out that much, the high cost of enlightenment in Scientology has left many deeply in debt to family, friends and banks. Ask former church member Marie Culloden of Manhattan Beach, Calif., who describes herself as a "recovering Scientologist." "I'm trying to recover my mortgaged home," says Culloden, who spent 20 years in Scientology and obtained three mortgages totaling more than $80,000 to buy courses. The Scientology Bridge is always under construction, keeping the Supreme Answer one step away from church members - a potent sales strategy devised by Hubbard to keep the money flowing, critics contend. New courses continually are added, each of which is said to be crucial for spiritual progress, each heavily promoted. Church members are warned that unless they keep purchasing Scientology services, misery and sickness may befall them. For the true believer, this is a powerful incentive to keep buying whatever the group is selling. Through the mail, Scientologists are bombarded with glossy, colorful brochures announcing the latest courses and discounts. Letters and postcards sound the dire warning, "Urgent! Urgent! Your future is at risk! ... It is time to ACT! NOW! ... You must buy now!" By far the most expensive service offered by Scientology is "auditing" - a kind of confessional during which an individual reveals intimate and traumatic details of his life while his responses are monitored on a lie detector-type device known as the E-meter. The purpose is to unburden a person of painful experiences, or "engrams," that block his spiritual growth, a process that can span hundreds of hours. Auditing is purchased in 12-hour chunks costing anywhere between $3,000 and $11,000 each, depending on where it is bought. Even Scientology's critics concede that auditing often helps people feel better by allowing them to air troubling aspects of their lives - much like a Catholic confessional or psychotherapy - and keeps them coming back for more. The church makes no apologies for the methods it uses to raise funds and spread the gospel of its founder. Scientology spokesmen said in interviews that it takes money to cover overhead expenses and to finance the church's worldwide expansion, as it does for any religion. "You can't do it on bread and butter," said one. Church leaders will not discuss Scientology's gross income or net worth. But they contend that Scientologists who pay for spiritual programs are no different from, say, Mormons who tithe 10 percent of their income for admittance to the temple, or from Jews who buy tickets to High Holiday services or from Christians who rent church pews. "The fact of the matter is that the parishioners of the Church of Scientology have felt and continue to feel that they get full value for their donations," said Scientology lawyer Earle C. Cooley. Many Scientologists say that Hubbard's teachings have resurrected their lives, some of which were marred by drugs, personal traumas, self doubts or a sense of alienation. They say that, through the church, they have gained confidence and learned to lead ethical lives and take responsibility for themselves, while working to create a better world. Scientology "works," they say, and for that, no price is too high. "It takes money," acknowledged Scientologist Sheri Scott. "It took money for my father to buy his Cadillac. I wish he'd sell the damn thing and give me the money [for Scientology].... I have never felt cheated at all." "I'm not glued to the sky or anything. I'm a very normal person," she added. "I just wish more people would take a look, would read [about Scientology], before they decide we're cuckoo." While other religions increasingly advertise and market themselves, none approaches the Church of Scientology's commercial zeal and sophistication. Its tactics come directly from Hubbard, who wrote entire treatises on how to create a market for, and sell, Scientology. He borrowed generously from a 1971 book called "Big League Sales Closing Techniques." Touted as the "selling secrets of a supersalesman," the book was written by former car dealer Les Dane, who has conducted popular seminars at Scientology headquarters in Florida. Hubbard said that Scientology must be marketed through the "art of hard sell," meaning an "insistence that people buy." He said that, "regardless of who the person is or what he is, the motto is, `Always sell something....' " Hubbard contended that such high-pressure tactics are imperative because a person's spiritual well being is at stake. Among other things, he directed his followers to: "rob the person of every opportunity to say `No.' "; "help prospects work through financial stops impeding a sale"; "make the prospect think it was his idea to make the purchase"; utilize the two man "tag team" approach, and "overcome and rapidly handle any attempted prospect backout." One of the most important techniques in selling Scientology, Hubbard said, is to create mystery. "If we tell him there is something to know and don't tell him what it is, we will zip people into" the organization, Hubbard wrote. "And one can keep doing this to a person - shuttle them along using mystery." Frequently, a person's first contact with Scientology comes when he is approached by a staff member on the street and offered a free personality test, or receives a lengthy questionnaire in the mail. Using charts and graphs, the idea is to convince a person that he has some problem, or "ruin," that Scientology can fix, while assuaging concerns he may have about the church. According to Hubbard, "if the job has been done well, the person should be worried." With that accomplished, the customer is pushed to buy services he is told will improve his sorry condition and perhaps give him such powers as being able to spiritually travel outside his body - or, in Scientology jargon, to "exteriorize." Former church member Andrew Lesco said he was told that he "would be able to project my mind into drawers, someone's pocket, a wallet and I would be able to tell what's inside ...." Church members are required to write testimonials - "success stories" - as they progress from one level to the next. The testimonials regularly appear in Scientology publications. Usually carrying only the authors' initials, they are used to promote courses without the church itself assuming legal liability for promising results that may not occur, according to ex-Scientologists. Here is an example: "We were having trouble with the windshield wipers in our car. Sometimes they would work and sometimes they wouldn't.... We were driving along, and my husband was driving. I got to thinking about the windshield wipers, left my body in the seat and took a look under the hood. I spotted the wires that were shorting and caused them to weld themselves together, like they were supposed to be. We haven't had any trouble with them since." Scientology staffers who sell Hubbard's courses are called "registrars." They earn commissions on their sales and are skilled at eliciting every facet of an individual's finances, including bank accounts, stocks, cars, houses, whatever can be converted to cash. Like all Scientology staffers, a registrar's productivity is evaluated each week. Performance is judged by how much money he or she brings in by Thursday afternoon. And, in Scientology, declining or stagnant productivity is not viewed benevolently, as former registrar Roger Barnes says he learned. "I remember being dragged across a desk by my tie because I hadn't made my [sales quota]," said Barnes, who once toured the world selling Scientology until he had a bitter break with the group. Barnes and other ex-Scientologists say that this uncompromising push to generate more money each week places intense pressure on registrars. Another former Scientology salesman in Los Angeles said he and other registrars would use a tactic called "crush regging." The technique, he said, employed no elaborate sales talk. They repeated three words again and again: "Sign the check. Sign the check." "This made the person feel so harassed," he said, "that he would sign the check because it was the only way he was going to get out of there." A 1984 investigative report by Canadian authorities quoted a Toronto registrar as saying that members of the public want to be "bled of their money.... If they didn't, they would be staff members eligible for free training." The Canadian report also recounted a meeting during which Scientology staffers chanted: "Go for the throat. Go for blood. Go for the bloody throat." Former Scientologist Donna Day of Ventura, Calif., said that church registrars accused her of throwing away money on rent and on food for her cats and dogs - "degraded beings," they called her pets. They said the money should be going to the church. "I was so upset, I finally left the house with them sitting in it," said Day, who sued the church to get back $25,000 she said she had spent on Scientology. Several years ago, church members persuaded a Florida woman to turn over a worker's compensation settlement she received after the death of her husband, Larry M. Wheaton, who left behind two children, ages 3 and 7. He was the pilot of an Air Florida jet that plunged into the Potomac River after it had departed National Airport in Washington, D.C., in 1982. The Wheatons were longtime church members. Joanne Wheaton gave nearly $150,000 to the church and almost as much to a private business controlled by Scientologists. But the deal was blocked when a lawsuit was brought by an attorney appointed by the court to protect the children's interests. The suit claimed that the Scientologists had disregarded the future welfare and financial security of the Wheaton family by taking money that was supposed to be used solely for the support of the children and their mother. After protracted discussions, the money was refunded and the Scientologists who negotiated the deal were expelled by the church for their role in the affair.