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CITY OF CLEARWATER COMMISSION HEARINGS RE: THE CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY |
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RONALD DEWOLFE Clearwater, Florida MR. LeCHER: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Participants and interested bystanders, please take your seats. Good morning, again, and welcome back to the Clearwater City Commission Public Hearings. This is our second day, and I'd like to start again with the Pledge to the flag, led by Sid Klein, our Police Chief. And, also, the invocation will be given by our own vice Mayor, Paul Hatchett. So, please rise. (Whereupon, the Pledge of Allegiance was recited.) MR. HATCHETT: our Father, I ask for you by name on all of the earth, and we pray for Thine divine guidance during our times of real sincerity. Give us courage, give us strength and the ability to be reasonable, courageous, and honest. We ask that in Thy name. Amen. MR. LeCHER: Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Hatchett. That's really very appropriate. To those of you that are new to this, we have been through one day of hearing. We are now in our second day. And, of course, the Scientologists will have an equal time when our time is through. And we would hope that they would participate so that we can get an honest opinion about the business at hand with respect to Scientology. Yesterday, we were talking to Mr. Ron DeWolfe, who is the natural son of L. Ron Hubbard, who had a surname of Hubbard at one time. RONALD DeWOLFE, a witness herein, having been previously sworn by a Clerk for the City of Clearwater, was examined and testified as follows: MR. LeCHER: And Mr. DeWolfe, you do understand that you were previously sworn in? MR. DeWOLFE: Yes, I do. MR. LeCHER: And anything you say is under the threat of perjury. Mr. Flynn, do you understand that he does not have to be sworn in again; is that correct? MR. FLYNN: That's correct, sir. MR. LeCHER: All right.
Yesterday, Mr. DeWolfe, we were talking primarily about the history of
the organization, how you fit into it, and we kind of left off yesterday
-- we were about to get into Dianetics and E-Meters. You could start
there or you could backtrack and start wherever you'd like. I'm
suggesting to you Dianetics and the E-Meter MR. DeWOLFE: The E-Meter would be fine. The E-Meter was invented by a Paul B. Mathieson in 1951. He was a chiropractor in Los Angeles. And he had been using it on his own and selling it on his own, and then brought it to my father. And for a short time through '51 and '52, he used his E-Meter but he would not let -- he would not let my father manufacture it. My father also demanded royalties and a piece of the action concerning its manufacture and sale. So, then, through the '51 and '52 era and even possibly even into '53, we were having to purchase the E-Meter through Bob Mathieson. But what happened here, it was used in early Dianetic auditing, but when Bob would not turn the rights to the E-Meter over to my father or give him a royalty, my father quit using it. And there was a time period in there in which he totally invented and created various Scientology processes which did not require the E-Meter. Then, later, we were with a Don Green in Washington, D.C., I think in 1954 or '55 a Don Green and Joe Wallace put together our own E-Meter and, all of a sudden, Scientology could now use E-Meters again. And we had -- he invented other processes that could be used with the E-Meter. It was a flow and ebb thing. I think I want to make this point very clear: that the -- as long as my father had some control over the E-Meter in the beginning, then, it was used in Dianetics and Scientology. When he got into a war with Bob over money and we couldn't shake the E-Meter out of Bob's hands, then, we quit using the E-Meter. And then when they invented -- when Joe Wallace and Don Green in the mid-fifties in Washington, D.C. he then manufactured -- had those two guys manufacture the E-Meter in the basement of our headquarters at that time which was 1812 19th Street, Northwest. And then it became popular. It depended upon his control of it, of the instrument. MR. LeCHER: Did Mr. Wallace improve upon the E-Meter, redesign it? MR. DeWOLFE: Joe Wallace and Don Green made it solid state. Before that, the E-Meter was a tube affair, a lot of tubes, and it was a fairly good size. It was about the size of - I don't mean this as a joke - it was about the size of a breadbox. And then it also got to be a very big projection job, and it became more and more complicated. There were E-Meters with double dials, with four dials, with enough switches and dials on it to confuse you for a week. But -- and it got to the point, there were a few of them that were two feet by a foot by, say, eighteen inches tall and weighing about ten or fifteen pounds, which was kind of hard to lug around from one session to another, from an auditing session to another. MR. LeCHER: Is the E-Meter a deeply religious symbol? If it is, I don't want to go into it any further, or is it used for other reasons? Like, a crucifix may -- MR. DeWOLFE: Well, I'm testifying to the early days where -- prior to, I believe, a court decision where this now becomes a religious artifact. But in those days it was not. So, I leave that to your decision as far as whether to continue with it. But it was -- an E-Meter was basically a skin galvanometer, a lie detector, and it would be technically called a balanced wheatstone ridge, which is a very simple basic electronic circuit. And one of the main things that I used to remember about the E-Meter was that our favorite electrodes, which we put onto Campbell soup cans - and Campbell Soup probably made a great deal of money from us -- but there was a small, very small -- in those days anyway, particularly, the ones that plugged into the wall; today they're battery-powered, and when it was designed and built in the mid-fifties it was battery-powered. But the ones that plugged into the wall had a tendency to, because of the amount of very microscopic electrical flow through it, electroplate your hands. That is, that the tin covering or the metal covering of the Campbell soup cans would come off on your hands and so your hands smelled pretty wierd most of the time. But it was used in the beginning to, as I said, a crude lie detector. And when I say "crude," that's a relative statement compared to the, for instance, the present day polygraph that measures heartbeat, respiration, et cetera, et cetera, you know, several different patterns. So, anyhow, that kind of covers the E-Meter. As I said, the point I wanted to make about the E-Meter here is that it ran hot and cold with Dad, depending upon his control of it. And he would say, like, "Well, we don't need the E-Meter anymore because we have these new great, wonderful processes and techniques which don't require the E-Meter." He said that because he couldn't use the E-Meter because Bob Mathieson wouldn't cough it up. Let me back up to a couple of other areas here, if you don't mind. I finished off where I had -- was discussing -- MR. LeCHER: Go at your own pace, sir. MR. DeWOLFE: Huh? MR. LeCHER: Go at your own pace and back up if you want to. MR. DeWOLFE: I'm sorry, I didn't hear you, sir. MR. LeCHER: I said just go talk at your own pace and back up whenever you feel like it. MR. DeWOLFE: Well, I was talking about in the beginning where you had I think I was referring to the question about franchises, ten percent, and successful organizations. MR. LeCHER: Yes, sir. MR. DeWOLFE: Very quickly, to recap: There was the original Dianetic Research Foundation, Elizabeth, New Jersey, and that folded because of AMA pressure. And then there was the foundation in Wichita, Kansas, and that folded because of AMA pressure and, also, because of my father's taking off with all the money and fleeing in early 1952. So, getting together of organizations was rather difficult. But there were other people. As an example, when they set up -- as good businessmen, they set up very successful organizations, and I had mentioned a couple yesterday. And one that crossed my mind was in Phoenix, Arizona. There's two more that are pretty important because they formed the basis today of -- and throughout the years -- the various corporations and organizations. In 1954, there was a J. Edward Farber, who had worked very hard and long in setting up the very first Church of Scientology in California. Looking at this you have to look at this slightly in retrospect and within the context of the time of 1954, it wasn't all that easy to set up a very solid bullet-proof church corporation in which you could do anything within the corporate structure. So, the Chamber of Commerce had this in California. And here, again, it also demonstrates the front organization thrust of my father's, that is, many organizations which are very confusing and -- by the way, to me, Scientology is Scientology. I've always understood it that way. It doesn't make any difference to me about what the corporation says or where the corporation is; it is a corporate-type of entity. To me, Scientology is Scientology, whether it's in Los Angeles or Clearwater or London or Quebec, Canada. It makes no difference; it's Scientology. And Scientology is L. Ron Hubbard. And there's many, many times, hundreds of times, he would get into terrible rages about "This is mine; this is mine. I run it, I own it, and I created it. And nobody is going to make any money out of it except me." And that is a synthesis of a theme which was pushed at me hundreds of times and anybody at the planning sessions. So, anyway, J. Edward Farber
had this tremendously wonderful corporation in California which he was
very MR. SHOEMAKER: I'm sorry, I did that. MR. DeWOLFE: -- apparently, quote, unquote, "run by Hubbard," my father always held signed, undated resignations. Immediately the very second you were put on the Board of Directors, you signed at the same time. I did it and a lot of other people did it. You signed an undated resignation which, then, he kept in his safe. So, if you didn't play by his rules, all he had to do was put the date on it and that was it, you were out. MR. LeCHER: What was the reason that he started Dianetics and went from Dianetics to a corporation for a religion? How did you get in -- why did you leave the Church of Scientology? MR. DeWOLFE: Okay. Well, you're going ahead a great many years and things. The -- how did Dianetics -- MR. LeCHER: Yes. What was the reason for converting Dianetics to something else, to a religion? MR. DeWOLFE: Well, first of all, he couldn't use Dianetics anymore. He had sold the rights to Don G. Purcell in Wichita, Kansas, and he couldn't use Dianetics. He couldn't use the techniques, he couldn't -- he sold the copyrights to the books. And he had fled out from Wichita with all of the monies of the Wichita foundation. But he couldn't, as I said, use it. By the way, Scientology -- the word "Scientology" is not original to my father; my father told me. And it is that it comes from the German "scientologie" -- and if you ask me how to spell that, I don't know in German. The best way I can really explain it very quickly -- very quickly, to bring you up to date, a little bit of biographical data here, autobiographical and otherwise. And when I was born -- I think I mentioned it before I was born at two pounds, two ounces and prematurely. My father had rather severely beaten my mother, and that's what caused that, while he was trying to get involved with black magic rituals. But throughout all of my early years, I had been with him quite a bit off and on. And then, of course, there was the major trauma of the divorce from my mother and the bigamous marriage with Sarah. But in early 1952 -- in early 1952, 1 went from Burlington, Washington, drove down, and started living with my father on a continuous basis. My very first connection -- my very first connection with Dianetics or Scientology, of course, was when my father mentioned about the book, Dianetics, and about the article in Astounding Science Fiction and then, of course, the book. In 1950, I was living in Burlington, Washington and he arranged for my auditing, my very first auditing. My very first auditing was rather strange, because he had arranged it through the Seattle Dianetic group for me to commute from Burlington over there. But he told me that -- he told me two things: one was that I had to be -- he wanted me audited, and I had to be audited under an assumed name. He didn't want me to disclose who I was. And then he also told the auditors that he only wanted them to concentrate on my mother, because he didn't want to -- he didn't want me to disclose anything about him. And I thought that was sort of interesting. I kept that up for a couple of weeks. Then, I got tired of not being able to tell anybody who I was. And how can one be audited Dianetically or remember incidents from the past when you had to completely edit and delete anything concerning your father and concentrate on your mother, and at the same time not disclose who you were? It got to be and I wasn't very old at the time, I was sixteen, but I knew enough then to figure out that that was very confusing. Then, I arrived in Phoenix, Arizona in early '52. He had just arrived from Wichita with Mary Sue. And the very first day -- the very first day I arrived, he wanted me audited immediately. But I had been driving all night and I was eighteen years old. I knew nothing about Scientology. All I had read was Dianetics*: The Modern Science of Mental Health, and it never really interested me very much as a book when I was young. So, after about a couple of weeks there, we got involved -- he asked me to sit down on the couch, and I was high on Benzedrine, Bennies. And we started doing, quote, "research" on a book called History of Man. So, we spent a couple, three days on that. Here's the book here, The Scientology History of Man; here's a copy of it. And all the incidents -- he did a few with Mary Sue, but the majority of incidents in it were off the top of my head, as I had upwards of twenty, thirty milligrams of Bennies in me. MR. LeCHER: It's a very small book, The History of Man. MR. DeWOLFE: Yes. MR. LeCHER: How many pages? MR. DeWOLFE: But the thing about this that interests -- the interesting thing about the book is that this is purported to be, it is presented that these are incidents which are common to everybody's past. This is the PR about the book; this is the thrust of the book that these are early genetic incidents in the ancient primordial past of each and every man, woman, and child on earth. And it came out of my drug trip. And I don't know how many thousands of people have been audited on those particular incidents, like, return to the clam. That is where, genetically, you were a clam and you're having jaw trouble, and that was one of the bases of -- according to Scientology and my father, that's one of the bases of bad teeth, having trouble with your jaws, because you were having an engram as a clam fifty trillion years ago. But -- MR. LeCHER: That may be considered to be religious. And judged primarily on its face, we really don't want to pursue that. I'd like to ask you one more -- let's get back to the E-Meter. MR. DeWOLFE: One quick thing, sir, I wanted to mention was that the areas I'm talking about in the fifties, it was not a religion then. We're talking about -- that didn't come in as a corporation until December 1953. Up through -- 1950 through '53, it was a science, so that's what I'm referring to here and I'm not getting into the area of beliefs in any way, as far as I personally am concerned. MR. LeCHER: I realize that's a very fine line for us, too. MRS. GARVEY: The book was written in '52. MR. LeCHER: Then, the book was written -- thank you, Mrs. Garvey -- in 1952. Now, back to the E-Meter: Did the U.S. National Bureau of Standards describe the E-Meter as worthless as a diagnostic service? MR. DeWOLFE: Yes. The FDA was concerned with the E-Meter because it was being used as a diagnostic tool, which, in fact, was true, I mean, the actual practice. MR. LeCHER: The people that normally take these courses, are they the average run-of-the-mill person that you see in the street, or are they there because they're looking for help? I've read where the auditing can cure arthritis and leukemia. I've also read where your father cured an eighteen-month old girl, a child, I believe it was a girl -- of leukemia. MR. DeWOLFE: That's not true. MR. LeCHER: Is it possible, do you think, that your father has those powers? MR. DeWOLFE: I'm sorry, what was that? MR. LeCHER: Do you think your father has those powers or is that a hoax? MR. DeWOLFE: No, but those are claims. And -- MR. LeCHER: Tell me about those claims. MR. DeWOLFE: Well, first of all, leukemia is cancer and, according to my father, all cancer stems from the center of man. The center of man in Scientology is sex. His logic at the time that he was talking about leukemia and cancer -- was that cancer is cells which are dividing, and dividing cells is a sexual thing and -- as in prenatal activity, the conception. And so, therefore, the basis the basis of all cancer is sex. If you had any big bad problems with sex in the early childhood or something like that, then, this is what's causing your cancer. And -- MR. LeCHER: What about being a celibate? MR. DeWOLFE: Mm? MR. LeCHER: If you're a celibate, would that eliminate your possibility of having cancer? MR. DeWOLFE: Well, that probably will cause cancer because of your lack of sexual activity. MR. LeCHER: I guess there's no way you can win. MR. DeWOLFE: Correct. And then, of course -- then, you know, compulsive sex or too much sex or something like that, that could cause cancer, too. MR. LeCHER: Was your father preoccupied with sex? MR. DeWOLFE: Very much so, yes. Anyway, getting back to your question on leukemia, he has -- he had written many things about the ability of Dianetics and Scientology to cure cancer and, also, has reportedly, in those days -- of auditing an eighteen-year old baby -- eighteen-month old baby successfully with cancer. And in my experience throughout Scientology, I have never seen any cure or remission or halting of cancer, period. And he had -- if you wait a second, I think I have -- this comes from -- I don't want to get all involved in the whole thing -- but this comes from "The Journal of Hubbard's Association of Scientologists International." You see, that was a quote, "scientific organization," and quote, "not a religious organization." It was copyrighted in 1953, and quote: "Leukemia is evidently psychosomatic in origin, and at least eight cases of leukemia have been treated successfully by a Dianetic Center medicine had traditionally given up. The source of leukemia has been reported to be an engram containing the phrase," quote, "'it turns my blood to water,'" unquote. MR. LeCHER: What does that mean? MR. DeWOLFE: That means that eight cases of leukemia had been treated successfully by Dianetics. MR. LeCHER: Okay. MR. DeWOLFE: And that it's not true, but that's what -- this was written by my father, L. Ron Hubbard. MR. LeCHER: Tell me about The Old Man's Casebook? MR. DeWOLFE: That's just where I pulled it from. MR. LeCHER: The Old Man's Casebook? MR. DeWOLFE: Yes. That's it; I just pulled it from there. MR. LeCHER: That's where the source of the cure of leukemia -- MR. DeWOLFE: The Old Man's Casebook by L. Ron Hubbard, and it's a -- this was the journal of Scientology which we put out. And he wrote virtually every word in all of the journals. And, also, you will find in some of those journals a man by the name of Tom Esterbrook, and that is L. Ron Hubbard, too. MR. LeCHER: Did he ever have any other nom de plume, other than Esterbrook and L. Ron Hubbard? MR. DeWOLFE: In Scientology, that was the two main ones. He had them previously in his science fiction and western writing. Winchester Remington Colt was one of them. I believe -- MR. LeCHER: That's his gun or his name? MR. DeWOLFE: That was his pen name. He had Rene Lafayette. He wrote the book, The Dr. Methuselah Stories, under that name. I believe there was something like Captain Phillips. He had half a dozen different pen names. MR. LeCHER: You left Scientology in 1959, and you began to disassociate yourself from the organization. According to this that I have, you watched the organization become a criminal conspiracy. Can you tell me about that? MR. DeWOLFE: Well, that is slightly incorrect. I was very much a part of the criminal conspiracy through the fifties,* so it really wasn't me watching it become a criminal conspiracy. It would have to be I watched it continue to become a criminal conspiracy, to be more accurate. Well, you must realize that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. But I wish to paraphrase on that, which is that, for instance, power is very enjoyable, and total and absolute power is ecstasy. Scientology is a power and money game. The definition of life in Scientology is what is called a game. Life is a game, the same as Monopoly or playing Gin Rummy. And it doesn't have all that much reality to it, which means that you can pretty well do what you please. And one of -- my father always felt that he was above the law because he had created the law. He created whatever rules, regulations, and laws to be lived by. There was only one sin in Scientology which was repeated to me at least a few thousand times, which is getting caught. MR. LeCHER: Can you be more specific about -- MR. DeWOLFE: Well, I'll give you a basic viewpoint. MR. LeCHER: We'll get into that a little later. MR. DeWOLFE: I think, yesterday I alluded to several things that we did. For instance, in the Philadelphia fiasco being served the papers by the U.S. Marshals in December '53, I ran around and emptied all of the bank accounts out, which was, I guess, subverting the purposes and the desires of the federal court. And we grabbed up all of the mailing lists and ran off with them. And I remember going around all day before the court thing and hoarding and putting away what money we could from a couple of -- I think we had two bank accounts.* I didn't have, my father did, two bank accounts. And we went out in the country and I hid for a day or so to make sure that both the mailing lists and the money were protected. This was money which, I would imagine, rightfully the federal court would have been interested in. We did such things as when we took the organization over from John Naugerbauer and Helen O'Brien, I mean, we beat the hell out of them. I mean, that -- MR. LeCHER: Physically? MR. DeWOLFE: Huh? This would be in 1953. MR. LeCHER: Physically, did you beat them or mentally -- MR. DeWOLFE: Yes, yes. And -- MR. LeCHER: Physically, you beat the hell out of them? MR. DeWOLFE: Correct. We -- that was Ernie Kitsch and I did that little number. MR. LeCHER: Is that the man -- the one-armed man? MR. DeWOLFE: Yes. His favorite phrase was "I'm going to go have a con with him." And it meant more than a conversation. And as an example, transportation of funds in and out of the country. And I carried a whole valise full of money into England. It wasn't breaking English law, but it was breaking American law. And because, after all, it was, you know, from a non-profit corporation that was going into my father's Dollar Account in England. A Dollar Account is a special bank account. It's set up with permission of the Bank of England, and that meant that you could bring money in and out of that Dollar Account without any problem. This and a couple of checks upset Immigration, and they sent me back to -- British Immigration, they sent me back to Ireland -- I mean, Holland, and I got brought before a member of Parliament. And that was a very interesting thing, but not really appropriate here. I'm trying to remember specific things. Now, you're talking about -- MR. LeCHER: Well, we could -- MR. DeWOLFE: Criminal activity? MR. LeCHER: Yes. If you could -- I'd like to just go through the outline, and my colleagues can get more specific things. And we could maybe take a break and you could refresh your memory. But I also see that your sister, Kay, was apparently blackmailed by -- she thought she was -- by the Scientology movement. Is that true? Do you have a sister, Kay? MR. DeWOLFE: Yes, I do. That's her name. MR. LeCHER: Apparently, she was given auditing and she was blackmailed by that auditing. MR. DeWOLFE: Yes. I think she still is being -- MR. LeCHER: Do you want to talk about that? MR. DeWOLFE: Certainly. Do you mean, what the blackmail was or -- MR. LeCHER: Well, if it's too personal in nature, I don't really have to hear that. MR. DeWOLFE: I don't mind telling you what I know. MR. LeCHER: But, apparently, your sister, Kay, was blackmailed by her father's own organization? MR. DeWOLFE: Yes. To -- as one matter, to want to keep in touch with me would -- she's my full sister and I loved her very much and still do. And we're a very tight, small family. But still they wanted her to keep -- to keep tabs on me. And there are two pieces of information which would really, as far as she is concerned -- as far as I am concerned, there isn't -- but as far as she is concerned would upset her a great deal and upset her husband's family and all of that. MR. LeCHER: Okay. Can you tell us about the Sea Org? Did your grandfather die and then, they sent the Sea Org to pick up your grandfather's remains at the funeral and -- MR. DeWOLFE: Yes, that's correct. MR. LeCHER: I'd like to hear about that. And what about the trust fund for Leif DeWolfe? MR. DeWOLFE: That's my son. MR. LeCHER: All right. Can you tell us something about that? MR. DeWOLFE: Well, my grandfather died in 1975; my grandfather was eighty-eight years old. Up to about thirty days before he became ill, he had a very solid good memory, and we were extremely close. My grandfather was almost the total opposite of my father. My grandfather had spent thirty-six years in the Navy as an officer and a gentleman. And he had gotten very ill, and I didn't know that he was ill because nobody -- as soon as he got ill, my father had given instructions to my grandfather's wife, Marjorie -- it was his second marriage -- that I was not to be told. And so, the very second that he got ill, she was to inform my father. And they sent in a full Sea Org crew to supervise things. Because I remember, when I did find out about it, I was terribly upset, because they hung around town and the very second he died, they took off with everything that he owned. This was, possibly, an attempt to cover his past and, also to -- cover the past of my father. But, also, remember that he has a basic thing that he owns everything, and that was all of his things, he thought. So, he took them all. And, also, later on, Marjorie had said he had told her and a couple of other relatives that I was somehow directly responsible for my grandfather's death, which is totally untrue. MR. LeCHER: He then purchased a ship, a three hundred-foot transport with -- what was that ship used primarily for? MR. DeWOLFE: Well, he was rather -- from what I was reading and what I also knew of him in personal experience, being moved around. If you had a total litany of all the moves that we made organizationally -- I'm talking about geographically -- it was back and forth around the United States a great deal, because he kept creating heat wherever he was at, as I said, going back to the Elizabeth, New Jersey foundation. He was very -- the British government were looking into the affairs of Scientology to a great extent. He has an org in Rhodesia; Rhodesia kicked him out. In South Africa, they didn't like him. MR. LeCHER: Would you say he was like a ship without a country? MR. DeWOLFE: Yes. So, what was -- that's why he got into the Apollo. That's why he got that so he could have some freedom of action of having a complete headquarters that could leave at a moment's notice. Because, ever since Elizabeth, New Jersey, he has always been totally and fully prepared to leave at a moment's notice anywhere, any time. He's always kept great chunks of cash literally within arm's length so that if there was any problem he could just take off right out the window. Starting off, when I first saw it in 1952, as an example, there were shoeboxes full of money in his closet. All he had to do was throw it in a suitcase and go. Nobody could trap him that way. And at one time I helped him transport -- later on, in Washington, D.C. in the mid-fifties -- two suitcases full of money that I, at two hundred forty pounds, could barely pick up. MR. LeCHER: What kind of activities took place on that ship? MR. DeWOLFE: I don't really know, sir. I was never on the ship. I wasn't there when he purchased it. I was just trying to explain his motivations for being on the ship. So, I'm sorry, I can't answer that. MR. LeCHER: If you can't answer that question, then, I'll go to something else. MR. DeWOLFE: No, I wasn't on the ship. MR. LeCHER: Well, what kind of activities went on on the ship? Was it for study or for -- MR. DeWOLFE: Well, it was a complete floating headquarters. He had everything there. MR. LeCHER: Like a training ship or -- MR. DeWOLFE: Training ship, processing, auditing, including communication. This was all -- this was the private world headquarters of L. Ron Hubbard. MR. LeCHER: Did they eventually -- did this ship eventually land or dock and are those people, those kinds of organizations being now performed by the Church at the Fort Harrison Hotel? MR. DeWOLFE: Yes. MR. LeCHER: So, that's a land-based operation that used to be on the ship? MR. DeWOLFE: Right. MR. LeCHER: All right. Let's get to the 1960's and, apparently, the Scientology organization is being sued by the United States government and Hubbard claims there's a criminal conspiracy and operations against the U.S. and private citizens, et cetera, et cetera. Then, we get down to Fair Game Policies, disconnecting. How do these -- all these fit in from the 1960's until the present, or at least as far as you know? MR. DeWOLFE: Well, as far as, like, the R 245, we'll cover that and the Fair Game Policy. The R 245 occurred, I believe, in December '54 or '53. He was at a congress -- a congress would be like a convention -- in Phoenix, Arizona, and all of the delegates were there and all of the attendees and members. And I was standing in the wings and he pulls out a Colt .45 semi-automatic pistol. MR. LeCHER: Is that your father? MR. DeWOLFE: Yes. My father pulled out this 1911 Army model. I remember he had it for years; he stole it from the Navy. Anyway, he also stole a machine gun from the Australian government which he kept for years, until the Australian government tracked it down and told him to give it back. Anyway, all of sudden, it was a total surprise, with his right hand he just pointed the gun at the floor and fired it. And he has said here and later written -- wow, written up by Al D. Hart, the editor of the Journal Magazine in the fifties, that it was a blank, but it wasn't, because, later on, I happened to see the hole in the floor. But R 245 is a one-shot -- as he said on the stage then, a one-shot clearing process, particularly useful on psychiatrists. And everybody is laughing, of course. When the gun went off, everybody jumped about a foot in the air and there was a lot of confusion because it was a pretty good sized hall, and a lot of people in the back really couldn't see the gun because it came out so quickly. And everybody was laughing kind of nervously. And as he came off the stage towards me, I'm laughing about it. And he looks me right in the eye and he says, "I mean it." Now -- MR. LeCHER: So, permanent clear is when someone -- MR. DeWOLFE: Permanent clear, yeah, you know that's -- the whole thing is quick exteriorization, that is, leaving -- an instant out of the body, a permanent experience, an instant clearing. And through the fifties, it was -- at least, I considered it to be a joke. And then later, see, he got very serious about things that I had thought in the beginning were jokes, and that was one of them. And the various policies of disconnect -- we had a slightly different one. You must realize one thing here that many, if not most, of the basic, very basic, policies of Scientology that are now written weren't written then. They were practiced first and, then, later on at sometime written. So you will find that a lot of things that I am talking about and other people throughout the fifties talking about, that it was the standard, routine operating procedure, but it just wasn't a written down thing. And later; it was written down and what he would term codified. And the Fair Game Policy, he's had that as long as I've known him. MR. LeCHER: That's the attack the attacker. Fair Game is to -- MR. DeWOLFE: That's correct. MR. LeCHER: -- pursue in an effort to destroy -- MR. DeWOLFE: Destroy the attacker. And there's only one good defense, and that's to attack, quote, unquote. MR. LeCHER: Okay. And I'm trying to get through this so that we can all get a chance to question you further. The Blown Student is the policy that is to kidnap a student that tries to leave. MR. DeWOLFE: Oh, yeah, I invented that. MR. LeCHER: You invented that? MR. DeWOLFE: Sure. MR. LeCHER: Tell me about that. MR. DeWOLFE: Oh. Let me back up slightly by saying this -- MR. LeCHER: Okay. MR. DeWOLFE: I ran, as chief instructor, oh, about two dozen advanced clinic courses; those were six-week courses. I ran the very first one and, starting about 1953, I set up all of the training routines and all the training programs. I invented and put them together. I started doing the training at the age of eighteen in 1952. My father gave me a set of tapes that I hadn't heard, and I'm eighteen years old. And he says, "Here, teach these. I'm going to London." And I said, "Well, I don't know what they say." He said, "Well, just listen to them yourself and, then, talk about them to the students." Now, here's an eighteen year-old guy who went to three high schools, never graduated from any one of them, who had never studied the subject, and now I am the chief instructor and the chief training officer in Phoenix, Arizona in 1952. There was only one other man in the office, Al D. Hart. So, here I am at what my father called later college. And that's the way I learned it. In fact, most of the tapes and lectures that you see clear through the fifties in the United States and quite a number of them in England was when I was there when those lectures were made live. What the procedure was: He would give the lecture, giving a slight outline, and then I would stand up and teach what I just heard. So I got very good at double talk and being pretty good at it. Also, it was up to me to formulate and set up all of the training programs, all of the training courses. I originated the grind, which -- I don't know if you hear that word today or not -- but that was like eight o'clock in the morning for students to ten o'clock at night, seven days a week. You got grounded into the ground, okay. You also must realize that at that time I was pretty fat, sassy, and brassy -- and as I was referring to earlier about the exercise of power -- here's a kid eighteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two who was teaching people that were doctors, lawyers, rich people, people like that, and so I really exercised power. They did what I told them to do or else. And I ran them ragged. I was probably equal or even rougher and tougher than a Marine GI, and that's no exaggeration. Okay. As far as Blown Student goes, that was a big ego trip. Nobody blew my courses. In fact, even a few times, I'd handcuff them to their chairs. And I originated that that there's a basic thing with the road out is the road to -- that was a very early pre- religious thing statement of Dad's. So, the thing to do was to continue with the course, continue with the training. So they had to finish it. And I was pretty big physically, and if somebody ran out on me, I went and got him. And it might take me and half a dozen other guys to go get him, but I got him. And they came back. Several times, they dragged them back by their teeth, you know, "Just sit down." A good friend of mine -- I still know him -- I chased him down the street. He locked himself in his apartment. I just knocked the door down, smashing and punching, and grabbed him by the collar and drug him screaming all the way back and threw him in the auditing chair -- in the training chair. So, Blown Student, that's where that comes from. That originated the eighteen-to twenty-hour training schedules, the heavy SS style training methods. MR. LeCHER: Okay. We've gotten -- I'd like to ask you about Hubbard's fees -- MR. DeWOLFE: I'm sorry, sir? MR. LeCHER: How much does your father charge, or his organization -- does he charge -- well, I see Hubbard charges heavily for books and courses and, if he sets up organizations, he demands members pay him ten percent of their gross. MR. DeWOLFE: That's right. MR. LeCHER: So, if a man or woman makes $10,000.00 a year, does that mean they will pay him one thousand -- MR. DeWOLFE: Yes, if they -- MR. LeCHER: Like a tithe? MR. DeWOLFE: Yes, ten percent. And I know his lecture fees, quote, unquote, for various conferences were a minimum of $5,000.00. You've got to realize in the early and mid-fifties, $5,000.00 was a lot more money than it is today. And the same with the advanced clinical courses; it was for $800.00. Every course was for $500.00, and auditing was $500.00 per twenty-five hours. But in 19 -- as I said, in the mid-fifties, $500.00 was a darn good average month's salary. MR. LeCHER: Well, I see a man here charged $25,000.00 in 1955 to a person who teaches a Doctor of Scientology course. Twenty-five thousand dollars is a lot of money today. MR. DeWOLFE: Sure. Yes. And he also guaranteed to clear a guy, Tom Maxwell of New Orleans, in '52. I remember that because we -- he must have had a dozen different auditors, including me, but he wouldn't get clear. And he had paid all this money to get clear, and it was one of those things that he just flat, Dad just flat guaranteed to clear him. MR. LeCHER: Every six months, apparently, your father came out with a new discovery; is that true? MR. DeWOLFE: Yes, because that was just about the time period it took to teach one course and interest would start to lag a little bit. And so Dad had an insatiable desire for an awful lot of money. He would come in, and he would come up with new processes and new techniques. So it was set up fairly well routinely on almost a six-month basis of new courses, new things. MR. LeCHER: Every time he got in trouble with the authorities and there was a law case, did he go out and pass the hat amongst the various missions to raise fees? I see that he raised $100,000.00 for fees. Was that for legal fees or was that just for fees for his -- MR. DeWOLFE: I don't have any knowledge about that particular incident. But during the fifties, there was not much legal trouble. He -- as I said, he would take an organization over or -- everything accrued to him. He signed on every bank account. He and Mary Sue Hubbard were the only two people that could sign on the major bank accounts. During the fifties, in a couple of organizations, there were a couple of other women or men who would sign, which he -- in the mid-fifties -- but that was mostly, I guess you would call, housekeeping accounts, just to pay the utilities, et cetera. MR. LeCHER: Why does the organization cause people to work so hard. Like, I see that they may work fourteen hours a day at little or no pay with virtually no sleep. How can you think -- what's the answer -- how can you continue to work this way seven days a week, and why must you work so hard to be a Scientologist? MR. DeWOLFE: Well, as I -- I want to point out that I left in 1959, and I don't know as much about -- MR. LeCHER: You said that you devised the Blown Student -- MR. DeWOLFE: The Blown Student, yes. Right. MR. LeCHER: -- and brought them back -- MR. DeWOLFE: That set the tone
and the standard for the long, drawn out, heavy amounts of times that
people had to put in it. Also, the pay was incredibly low I can
remember, even in the fifties. Sometimes, even then, people in the
organization were only getting five or seven or ten dollars a week, and
they were living sometimes a dozen to a room. MR. DeWOLFE: Are they dangerous to themselves? MR. LECHER: Or to the people of Clearwater? MR. DeWOLFE: Both. MR. LECHER: Would you like to explain that? MR. DeWOLFE: It's not really
easy to explain. But first of all, they really don't know what they're
doing. The average people coming in the door to Scientology, until they
get to the very, very top, they don't realize that they buy step by
step. They start believing all of the various falsehoods, like, for
instance, L. Ron Hubbard's past, et cetera. And they just don't know
what they're doing. And -- MR. DeWOLFE: I really have no way of predicting, but I think that there's a couple of quotes that my father used to say all the time that really scared me to death. He at one time was also talking about really taking on the world. And I remember in 1958 an example which scared me to death and started myself thinking -- he wanted me to devise a plan to try to steal an H-bomb. MR. LECHER: Your father wanted you to steal an H- bomb? MR. DeWOLFE: Huh? MR. LECHER: Your father wanted you to steal an H- bomb? MR. DeWOLFE: Yeah. He wanted me to -- MR. LECHER: From whom? MR. DeWOLFE: Anybody and everybody. I never got into it, because I said, "Oh, no, thank you." And sort of -- things went click in my head, and I said, "I have two children and I don't want to get involved in that." And that was in late 1958. MR. LECHER: He wanted you to steal the parts or the whole bomb? MR. DeWOLFE: No. He wanted a whole package. As an example, one of the things he said to me was -- he said it many, many times -- he said, "Don't call it murder, call it suicide." And there's another quote, "I connotate loyalty as the highest ethic." That means, "Follow me." That means, "Total dedication, total loyalty to me, L. Ron Hubbard." And that's the one thing that he put before any and all -- everything. And -- MR. LECHER: Because of -- MR. DeWOLFE: So, anyway, that would lead me to believe that this -- knowing as much as I know about it, that -- MR. LECHER: I will not pursue that anymore at this point. One other question: Is it -- do you think that the organization wants to control our economic system? MR. DeWOLFE: Yes. MR. LECHER: Thank you. I would like to ask Mr. Hatchett if he would like to ask any -- MR. FLYNN: Mayor, may the
witness make one more statement about a particular area before we get
into questions? MR. DeWOLFE: Okay, sorry. I left Scientology November 23rd, 1959. I tried to do one or another thing up till about 1962, and that didn't work too well. So then I got a job. Almost immediately upon my leaving, on January 3rd, 1960, my father sent me a telegram threatening to have me arrested for stealing a mailing list. There were other threatening telegrams and activities in which he was applying to me the standard tech of attack and destroy, but he was applying it to me. I helped him do it, and I thought this was kind of incredible. But he turned around and tried to destroy me. This happened in 1960 and kept up with a whole variety of things, which are really unimportant. But at this juncture and to the question. So I got very angry and upset because I had the children, and the only thing I knew how to do in the world was auditing, and I had a hard time getting a job because I didn't know how to do anything, except, you know, how to be a ridiculous rock star jumping around, pushing students around. Anyway, I left originally, by the way, very -- which is very important to this thing -- is because of my children. I didn't want my children involved. I had had a pretty well messed up, turned around childhood. And the weekend around November 23rd, my wife -- twenty years at the moment -- she just flatly -- she's the type of person that's very calm, cool, and collected; she gets angry about once a year -- about once every five years. She flatly just came out and said, "Okay, you've got a choice between me and the children or Scientology. Make up your mind." This was on a Friday. And I said, "Okay. It's you and the children." Zip, off we went. And so, that was one of the basic reasons I left, plus the fact that I was getting very tired of all of the scam and the con and the fraud. And also, even though I was L. Ron Hubbard, Jr., I wasn't being paid much more than the people struggling for seven and ten and $25.00 a week. I just didn't have any money. Okay. That's one of the basic reasons, and I now have six children, five of them up and grown and all of that. In 1962, 1 got very angry and
upset. All I wanted to do with Scientology was to forget it, which was
an impossible situation. I've tried to do it for twenty-three years. So,
I decided, "Well, the heck with it." It's one of those things that's, I
believe, humanly impossible to either cover
your past or to turn a blind eye to it or forget it. And so, about 1972, they
embroiled me in a sales organization in Beverly Hills that I, in the
beginning, didn't realize was a Scientology front organization that Bob
Thomas had set up with an Alan Walters to suck me in and try to nail my
hide to the barn door. At this was, I believe, in the early part of '72.
I would have to check around on dates to give you the exact date. But I
walked there one night to -- thinking it was a sales meeting, and it was
Bob Thomas. Bob Thomas, by the way, at the time was the
Guardian U.S. I mean, he was the
head of all of the Guardian offices in the United States. That's
what I understood at the time. MR. DeWOLFE: I would like to finish this. MR. LeCHER: I'm sorry, sir. MR. DeWOLFE: But I just had to slow up a little bit because I do get just slightly emotional about this. MR. LeCHER: Sorry to -- MR. DeWOLFE: That's all right. It's very important. So, anyway, Bob Thomas, to make a long story short or we'll be here until tomorrow, to make a long story short, showed me photographs of my children going to and from school. And we got calls in the night. My wife was scared to death with calls; strange people would be looking through the window of our little house. I believe at the time that I was working for Sales Training, Incorporated, which was a thing about selling sales courses in Los Angeles. And I didn't have any money, and I lived in a very small house. I think the house was probably, if you put it all together, you could fit, maybe, two of them in your chamber here. And so they wanted me to recant. I had refused. And then he brought in about how my father still loved me and how I shouldn't do such terrible things to dear, sweet, wonderful Dad. And then what happened was -- because they wanted me to recant -- and so, because I was under duress at the time because I was scared stiff, there's a lot of things that happened in Scientology that I haven't brought up at the hearing simply because they are not really apropos to here. And I hadn't been out of
Scientology really that long, and it I didn't know what the legal
ramifications were and I didn't want other things to get out about
-- I mean, I was scared of police, I was scared that somewhere along This also was in relationship to a Paulette Cooper who had written a book, "The Scandal of Scientology," and getting involved in the writing of an article called "A Look Into Scientology" or "One-Tenth of Scientology." Also, there's a Robert Kaufman who wrote a book called "Inside Scientology," and he was going through a lot of hell trying to get it out. And evidently, Paulette Cooper was all involved and getting sued in a real donnybrook with Scientology. And I had read the book. In fact, I found the book on the newsstand. I didn't even know the book existed until I saw it on the newsstand. I picked it up and read it and, then, I called Paulette Cooper and one thing led to another in my involvement in giving her information. A Maurice Gerulius of Nuclear Press wanted an introduction to the book, "Inside Scientology," by Robert Kaufman. And, of course, Scientology didn't want me to write the introduction. And, of course, they were trying to destroy Paulette Cooper and they were trying to destroy Maurice Gerulius, the publisher of the Nuclear Press, and they-were trying to destroy Robert Kaufman. And then, they were also trying to destroy me. And then, in order to protect my wife and my children, and quite literally to protect them -- I mean, the other people involved -- I signed the recant. MR. LeCHER: Thank you. Before this meeting started, we said that we might like to take a break for five or ten minutes. Would you like to take one now or -- MR. DeWOLFE: That would be nice. MR. LeCHER: It would be nice to take a break? All right. Before we start with our questions, we'd like to take a short five-or ten-minute break and then come right back. (Whereupon, a recess was taken.) (Whereupon, the hearing resumed.) MR. LeCHER: Please take your seats, Commissioners, staff, and consultants, and witnesses. Commissioners, I know that we have a very interesting witness and we'd like to question him at length, but if we could keep it brief. We have many others to go and time may be running out. And we also must quit early tonight because we have a Commission meeting at five. So we will be here for virtually all day and all night. As far as tonight, I would like, if possible, to quit at ten so that we can get home and be here at nine tomorrow morning again. So I would ask if you would be brief and to the point. Nor do I want to stifle any questions you may want to ask, too. We're going to lead off with Mr. Hatchett now, so everybody has a chance to lead off first. We're going to alternate as the various witnesses come before us. So, now, I'd like to introduce to you Paul Hatchett, the vice Mayor, who will lead off. RONALD DeWOLFE, Resumed. MR. HATCHETT: Mr. DeWolfe, is it true you lost power in the Church before you left? MR. DeWOLFE: I lost power in the Church? MR. HATCHETT: Lost power in the Church of Scientology before you decided to leave? Was your power base waning? MR. DeWOLFE: No. MR. HATCHETT: You still had -- MR. DeWOLFE: I was Executive Secretary when I left. MR. HATCHETT: I read in the notes about an entry of your son's trust fund in -- MR. DeWOLFE: Well, my father
believed that everything that my grandfather and grandmother owned
belonged to him. My grandfather had set up a trust fund unbeknownst to
me until he died and his Will was probated, and evidently, my father
wanted it. It was an educational trust fund so that my son, Leif, my
oldest son, could go to college. And it amounted to about ten,
$12,000.00. But in the very beginning with the attorneys, it was a legal matter. So I had a very good attorney that handled all of the estate problems, what have you, and liens on the matter. And, of course, there was the original trustees of the People's Bank in Burlington and, of course, the insurance company and the probate court, the probate court in Seattle, Washington. So, the whole thing, I was -- it was kept very legal and very proper and, in general, I handled very little of the money and the arrangements. But anyway, it was just a matter to try to gain control of the money, or keep my son, Leif, from being able to use it for his education, which he did use it for. MR. HATCHETT: Well, the crux of my prior question is, is it still in force? Does your son still have benefit of the trust fund? MR. DeWOLFE: No, no, no. It was only ten or $12,000.00, and he had to work and we had to work to get him through college. He graduated from college in less than four years with about a 3.95 grade average. MR. HATCHETT: All right, thank you. I'm going to ask you a few rapid fire questions. MR. DeWOLFE: Sure. MR. HATCHETT: Your father wrote from the top of his head you kept emphasizing. MR. DeWOLFE: Yes, correct. MR. HATCHETT: A lot of fictional writing. MR. DeWOLFE: That's correct. MR. HATCHETT: Apparently, you did the same. MR. DeWOLFE: No, not throughout the period there. I had written part of a book, as far as my own writing is concerned. I wrote all of the techniques and processes in a book which was published in England called Creative Learning. That was a series of processes used on children in school. The fictional thing would be, for instance, like, "The History of Man," coming up and creating the incidents, as I mentioned the clam, that type of thing. But I have written very little of anything after Scientology. MR. HATCHETT: All right, thank you. That satisfies me. You mentioned, also, that I imagine, your father deserted you, and you mentioned that he sent very little money back for food and clothing. MR. DeWOLFE: I'm sorry, I didn't quite hear that. MR. HATCHETT: Your father sent very little money. MR. DeWOLFE: That's -- MR. HATCHETT: -- for food and clothing. MR. DeWOLFE: That's correct. MR. HATCHETT: Did he desert the family; is that what you really said? MR. DeWOLFE: He sent very little money or used very little money. At one time he had a boat -- excuse me. He sold a story and I believe it was about twenty-five hundred dollars. He went down to the post office to get the check, and he was gone all day, and we couldn't figure out where he went, and he bought a yacht. And we didn't have much food. As I said, my father's support came from my mother and also came from my grandparents to a very great extent. And it was pretty much of a hard scramble for money throughout the thirties and the forties. MR. HATCHETT: Did you ever have
a desire to be number one in the Church of Scientology order or
hierarchy? MR. HATCHETT: Sure? MR. DeWOLFE: Yeah. MR. HATCHETT: The reason I ask you all these questions: It would appear to me there's a father and son rift, you know, a real falling-out. And may this not be just a vendetta against Dad? MR. DeWOLFE:, No, no. MR. HATCHETT: Why should I believe you? MR. DeWOLFE: Well, first,
there've been, like, twenty-three years under the bridge. You must
realize one thing about me is I'm the same person now as I was then,
except it's like I lived two different lives. Then I loved what I did
and I also now love what I do, which is I have my wife and I have my
children. That's what's become the most important thing to me. And this is going to sound like kind of a mealy-mouthed, hollow statement, but it's really quite true because I do have the facts and truth in being able to stand up and tell what I know. But as an example on the life of L. Ron Hubbard, it's easily documented, not through what I say but what other people say, by bits and pieces of his past, the papers, the documentation. So, vendetta? No. I've also
learned another thing, which is that I was all very emotional about it
in the early days after I left and I began to hate and what have you.
But I've learned that hate only does one thing, which is consume the
person doing the hating. And so I've absolutely refused to hate him. And
people can't understand this man who has done all this stuff, how can
his son not hate him? I refuse to hate, because if I hate him, then,
this gives my children the right to hate me, or other people the right
to hate me kind of thing.
MR. HATCHETT: My last question -- thank you. Do you know for a fact whether your father is still living? MR. DeWOLFE: No, I haven't seen his dead body in a coffin. But over the years, we have written back and forth. He has kept a secret address down in Los Angeles that non-Scientology types and family would write to. I have it, if you wish it; I don't think I have it with me, but it's a post office box number. But over the years, all of a sudden, about -- I would say somewhere between 1979 -- 1975 to 1979 -- and even more recently, some of the letters I've received, there's a complete change in syntax. He has a very special way of stringing words together, which, after reading umpteen million of them ever since I've been a kid, I can recognize. And just bits and pieces and that sort of thing leads me to believe that he just possibly might be, but I don't know. MR. HATCHETT: Thank you very much. MR. LeCHER: Mr. Shoemaker, do you have any questions? MR. SHOEMAKER: Mr. DeWolfe, apparently, from what you've indicated, many of the procedures which are currently used were actually created in the time that you were still with your father, and in here did it classify as Dianetics or else for the Church of Scientology? MR. DeWOLFE: Yes, that's correct. MR. SHOEMAKER: Did you -- were you -- MR. DeWOLFE: There's been little or no change in the actual basis. MR. SHOEMAKER: Could you briefly explain what the purpose of auditing is, for example, how you came up with --not necessarily you, but your father or whoever came up with the idea of auditing? MR. DeWOLFE: As I said, auditing is a term used in accounting to -- you have to go back to the basic theory of Dianetics as it was set up: any and all man's ills are mentally caused, based. And it's based in what is called an engram, that is, moments of pain in unconsciousness. So, auditing would be the eradication of moments of pain in unconsciousness and discomfort and et cetera in one's past and subconsciousness. I'm talking about Dianetically at the moment. MR. SHOEMAKER: Yes. MR. DeWOLFE:
Dianetics. So that is the basic modus operandi of it, the basics
of what auditing is. Auditing, physically, is basically -- in the
old days of Dianetics -- laying down on the auditing couch, somewhat
similar to the psychiatrist's couch, and you would sit there and return
people into the past and get very much involved in, for instance,
pre-natal experiences, birth, and other areas of trauma. As I said, it
was a do-it-yourself psychoanalysis or psychotherapy. MR. DeWOLFE: Yes of course,
everybody was told that the files were confidential, that they were
treated as if they were files of, say, a doctor or a priest or an
attorney. And they were, in the main, by most people, but it was quite
inviolate. But of course, Dad and I had complete access to it. MR. DeWOLFE: The origin simply was that if anybody gave us any problem, any trouble, why, we'd just attack them. We were pretty successful at it. And if you're
talking about power and what have you, that was a lot of fun to take on
the FBI, take on the IRS, take on the government, take on anybody and
whip it out. And as I
said, I'm in the early twenties, and we're stomping the hell out of
people and getting away with it. But the point is that's pretty heady
stuff. MR. DeWOLFE: Yeah. MR. SHOEMAKER: What was the purpose of that policy where the students were required to work long, extended periods of time? MR. DeWOLFE: Well, we had a lot to teach them, plus it was a very good control mechanism. Very tired people are very receptive. MR. SHOEMAKER: I see. So, it's a control mechanism? MR. DeWOLFE: You see, we were controlling the body. If I had a walking microphone and you had the time, I'd demonstrate it for you. By the way, as a matter of example, anything I talk about, I'm more than happy to demonstrate. MR. SHOEMAKER: The other one, Mr. DeWolfe, I wanted to ask about here: In the -- and I know you've seen the outline -- in the outline, there is an item referred to as "November 1968, racket exposed relating to the listing of thirteen people" personally declared Fair Game by Mr. Hubbard. MR. DeWOLFE: Yes. MR. SHOEMAKER: Would you explain that a little bit, what was involved in that and what that meant? MR. DeWOLFE: That meant exactly what it said. Well, it wasn't written up, and I wasn't in Scientology at this particular time in '63, having left in '59. This is the same sort of thing that we would write out. The Fair Game Policy in the fifty's was something which was very verbal. Maybe a point I'd like to make here very quickly is that there are two concurrent lives of L. Ron Hubbard going on at the same time. You have the super-secret hidden, private life of L. Ron Hubbard, which very few people knew, and which is now, probably, as we go along through time here, will be discovered more of, because now that I talked, maybe other people will feel it's safe to talk. So all of this was all verbal. And, of course, he didn't have the power base he had in the fifties that he had later. So it was kind of a secret thing. But this is precisely, as you read it. It's exactly what was meant. It was not done as an empty, hollow threat. And this means you were cut off from all people. If we could do something to you, we did. MR. SHOEMAKER: Mr. DeWolfe -- and this will be my last question -- I know this is a difficult one to try to answer, but I think it should be asked. Obviously, you're under a great deal of duress to come here and to testify at this -- MR. DeWOLFE: No, I'm not under duress, sir. MR. SHOEMAKER: Well, I didn't -- that's the wrong word. I mean, you had to have had a lot of trauma -- MR. DeWOLFE: I would have walked here on my hands and knees. MR. SHOEMAKER: I guess my question is why? That's what I'm getting down to. MR. DeWOLFE: As I said, I happened to have acquired a rather strong like for constitutionality, laws, truth, and fact over the years. It's a very funny thing; I don't know how to explain the mechanism. Maybe somebody else can. But I spent years having no real, honest, commonly understood ethics or legality. And the laws were something to be used. They were a weapon. A court or anything else was used as a sledgehammer. I didn't have any of those. They didn't mean anything to me. Life didn't mean anything to me. It wasn't something to be loved and cherished and nurtured. People were robots to me. People were nothing but raw meat. And over the years, I've suddenly started getting my head sorted out. It wasn't until late 1978, that the last vestiges of all of the Scientology-nonsense and Hubbard nonsense got out of my skull. But there's nothing worse than, say, a sinner who has become a preacher, because he knows every in and out of the whole thing. He believe in these things, and he -- everybody, like you -- so many people like you, they take the constitution simply for granted because, as kids, it was just there. And too many people take too much for granted. But, as I said, I don't take any of that for granted, and that's why I'm here. I think -- and again, I think I'm considering myself personally -- my being here not all that totally necessary. And so that's why I'm here, just to help it out. I've always tried to be one of the things my father taught me. I still follow some of these rules which is try to be effective and efficient. And so, this is a good forum to say all these things that I haven't been able to get out. And I've tried for years to try to say things to people to try to tell them, and they laughed at me a great deal because they think that some of the things I say are as a far out as my father's science fiction. MR. SHOEMAKER: Mr. DeWolfe, just one other question: At the time you were in the Church of Scientology, did they have the Guardian's Office? MR. DeWOLFE: No. MR. SHOEMAKER: Did they have any -- MR. DeWOLFE: It was a do-it-yourself organization. I mean, we didn't have a complete department called the Guardian's Office. It was done by L. Ron Hubbard, by Mary Sue. It wasn't, as I said, it wasn't something that was hung up there on the org board. MR. SHOEMAKER: When you say "it," what do you mean by it? MR. DeWOLFE: The Guardian's Office. We, you know -- MR. SHOEMAKER: Yes, sir. But what was done by Mr. Hubbard and Mrs. Hubbard that the Guardian's Office does now? MR. DeWOLFE: The same things. So you mean, specific Incidents? MR. SHOEMAKER: No, I accept that. What was being done then that you can relate to what is being done now by the Guardian's Office? MR. DeWOLFE: Well, there's something referred to earlier, just rapid expose -- the attacking of any enemies of Scientology, the pumping out of this information, the Guardian's protection of Scientology, the protection of the organization itself. MR. SHOEMAKER: I want to ask -- MR. DeWOLFE: Any Scientology organization to me is called organization. MR. SHOEMAKER: I don't mean to put words into your mouth, but are you saying that these are the same types of practices, whether legal or illegal, that were done then -- MR. DeWOLFE: Yes. MR. SHOEMAKER: -- to protect the organization? MR. DeWOLFE: That's correct. MR. SHOEMAKER: Thank you. MR. LeCHER: Two quick ones: You have said that your entire youth was spent in Scientology in the planning stage: formulating, writing, plotting, along with your father who was the Founder, with all this study and all this planning and all this effort, has it left you with any marketable skills at age forty-eight? MR. DeWOLFE: Marketable skills? MR. LeCHER: Has it prepared you for a job after Scientology? MR. DeWOLFE: No. I didn't know what to do. I've held probably a couple of dozen jobs at least over the years. I didn't have any skills that you would call marketable skills, so I had to learn them. I had to learn how to work. It's incredibly difficult in the very beginning like that to try and get back into some kind of routine and work nine to five. I wasn't used to receiving a paycheck or even how to earn a paycheck. But it took me quite a number of years. After all, you know, with six children, you better get something or you're passed. MR. LECHER: Thank you. One other question: Can you tell me something about radiation? MR. DeWOLFE: Yes. I find this
kind of funny -- I know that many people don't, but I happen to have a
thirty-two-year view of the thing -- there's a book called "All About
Radiation" that came out in the mid-fifties. And at the same time, we
sold a product which was vitamins and minerals called
Dianazene.
And the Dianazene had huge amounts of niacin in it, nicotinic acid. Now if you take a great deal of niacin, you get these incredible flushes, like a rash. You get hot, your body would turn red in spots or over the whole thing. And this was proof that you were running out or eradicating all of your entire space-opera, old-track radiation. And the Dianazene and following the directions in the book guaranteed you proof against any radiation. That means, if somebody dropped an H-bomb today and you followed all of that, that you were proofed against radiation; it wouldn't hurt you. And so that is, I think, one of the major frauds in the mid-fifties concerning Scientology is about the radiation. All it was was niacin. MR. LeCHER: I have two quick ones the attorney would like me to ask. How was the money carried out of the country? And in the organization, was it Hubbard's policy to have all the writings bear his name? MR. DeWOLFE: Yes. He was Source. That must have been repeated fifty million times. "L. Ron Hubbard is Source. L. Ron Hubbard is Founder. L. Ron Hubbard is Creator." It is his game. "It is my game," he would say. "This is mine; it belongs to me." And everything that was written by anybody else -- and there are many little bits and pieces that were written by other people, and many of the processes and training drills, et cetera that were written and invented and created by other people -- but at all times it was L. Ron Hubbard. That was the only name attached to it. Even if we wrote policy letters and he would review them and then put his name on it. So that was one of his first, basic, standard orders at that time. MR. LECHER: How was the money taken out of the country? MR. DeWOLFE: There were several ways of doing it. The very first one that I know of was in late 1952, when he went to London where Diane was born. On September 24th he opened up, through permission of the Bank of England, what is called in England a Dollar Account. That means that it was a special account that you could put in and take out dollars. MR. LECHER: Was that carried out in a shoebox or -- MR. DeWOLFE: Yeah. Well, they were carried out in checks. They were carried out in shoeboxes. I took a valise over one time, as I said, full of money that went into the account. Now while other people may have been signatories and directors of other U.S. corporations, the only one that could sign on the Dollar Account was L. Ron Hubbard. So this was a way in the early fifties for the money to be siphoned out of the various organizations in the United States to England. And once it was there, he had absolute and total freedom to use it because of the nature of the account and the fact that he was the signatory on it. MR. LECHER: Thank you. Mr. Calderbank, do you have some questions? MR. CALDERBANK: Yes. Mr. DeWolfe, during the time that you were with your father from '48 up until '59, would you describe yourself as probably his closest person? Or were you, as his son and as a, would you say, co-founder in the various Dianetics and Scientology teachings -- MR. DeWOLFE: I would say I was very close, but I was not a co-founder. There is only one Founder. But as far as being close is concerned, yes. It was not from '48, though. It would have to be from the summer of 1952 is when it was incredibly close. Of course -- MR. CALDERBANK: You were his right-hand man and knew your father probably better than anyone else? MR. DeWOLFE: Yes, me and Mary Sue. We were probably the closest workwise and even, as I said, living together in many different areas of the country. MR. CALDERBANK: You said you weren't co-founder, but all during your testimony you said that -- MR. DeWOLFE:. Well, that's a very special term. MR. CALDERBANK: Correct. But many of the -- MR. DeWOLFE: I did a lot of the things, but as I said, just answering your questions, the name of L. Ron Hubbard is on it. MR. CALDERBANK: Right. But why, if many of the policies and ideas were yours and you came up with them, why are they all copyrighted to L. Ron Hubbard? MR. DeWOLFE: Because he owns them. What I mean is there's only one Source, one Founder. He always insisted on that, regardless of whatever was done was him. And it really didn't make an awful lot of difference to me. If you look at it within the context of the time, it was rather immaterial to me. MR. CALDERBANK: During the era of Dianetics, prior to it becoming the Church of Scientology, was auditing then a major money producer? MR. DeWOLFE: Yes. MR. CALDERBANK: And -- MR. DeWOLFE: That and Dianetic courses. MR. CALDERBANK: Then, in 1953, it was changed to Scientology, and you went from Dianetic auditing to Scientology auditing? MR. DeWOLFE: Yes. MR. CALDERBANK: What was the -- MR. DeWOLFE: Well, actually, Scientology auditing started or occurred, as I said, in the summer of 1952 when he could no longer do anything with Dianetics again. That's where it started to become Scientology. It would be the summer of 1952 in Phoenix, Arizona. MR. CALDERBANK: And my question is: The Dianetics auditing was guaranteed? It was scientific research, et cetera, et cetera? MR. DeWOLFE: That's correct. MR. CALDERBANK: What was the difference between Scientology auditing and Dianetic auditing? MR. DeWOLFE: Nothing at all -- MR. CALDERBANK: In the beginning? MR. DeWOLFE: -- except I would say the greater increasing emphasis on space opera. MR. CALDERBANK: Back in the Dianetics era, was your father using the confidential information to have people pay up for their courses? MR. DeWOLFE: Yes. If people didn't pay, that was a fairly actionable offense, according to Dad. MR. CALDERBANK: And he told them then, also, that it was in confidence that the auditing was taken? MR. DeWOLFE: Oh, yes. MR. CALDERBANK: And he utilized it? MR. DeWOLFE: If you had a copy of the Auditor's Code, that Auditor's Code is virtually the same. MR. CALDERBANK: I guess the main reason that I see for you coming here is: We've heard testimony that many of the -- or, at least, one person spent up to $35- or $40,000.00 in the belief that your father was a nuclear physicist, et cetera. On what do you base your knowledge that he was none of these? MR. DeWOLFE: By conversations with him and by conversations with my grandfather, my mother, my grandmother, other family members. Actually, our family, if you wanted to spread it out a little bit, is pretty well all over the United States. Plus, I have seen a variety of documents over the years, both his and others obtained. For instance, not being a nuclear physicist -- I've seen his transcript a long time ago, many years ago. MR. CALDERBANK: And in addition to auditing, when it was used as a Dianetics procedure, what guarantees were given then? The same that are given now? In Scientology, it was guaranteed as a science to relieve and cure various cancers, various ailments? MR. DeWOLFE: That's correct. Of course, some of the terminology changed, but I'm talking about actual -- de facto. MR. CALDERBANK: During this time, did auditing or Dianetics ever pay taxes in the fifties when this was being used? MR. DeWOLFE: If we did, we should have fought it. No, I don't think so. MR. CALDERBAINK: And a statement recently in the media, I believe Reverend Wilhere said that your father, again, spent years and years of research in this auditing, and it's based on case histories and years of research. Just to sum it up, you're saying that none of this research existed? There's no data, no case histories? And as the person that knew your father the best during the evolution of Dianetics and Scientology, are sitting here and saying that what he's printed in books and what has brought many people to pay for it into Clearwater is untrue? MR. DeWOLFE: That's correct. MR. CALDERBANK: No more questions. MR. LeCHER: Mr. Berfield. MR. BERFIELD: Mr. DeWolfe, if I understood your testimony yesterday, the allegations or statements as to your father's education, you answered "No" to most of those. Is that correct? MR. DeWOLFE: I'm sorry, sir, I can't hear you. MR. BERFIELD: Yesterday, a list of schools and studies that your father had undertaken, you answered "No" to them. And if I could read for you a book called "Dianetics," on page 138 it refers to your father having studied science and mathematics at George Washington University, graduating from Columbia College, attending Princeton University, and attaining a degree as Doctor of Philosophy from Sequoia University. Your answer was "No" to each of those. Is that correct? MR. DeWOLFE: It was "No" to the point of Sequoia University. As I explained yesterday, Sequoia University was a diploma mill and you just wrote to them. MR. BERFIELD: And Mr. Calderbank just got through asking you about another one, "All About Radiation." On the flyleaf of it, it makes reference to "L. Ron Hubbard, one of America's first nuclear physicists." What -- MR. DeWOLFE: That's not true. MR. BERFIELD: All of these would be lying with the exception of Doctor of Philosophy? MR. DeWOLFE: That's correct. MR. BERFIELD: So, if I relied upon his ability to render service to me based upon this, that would be a falsehood. Is that correct? MR. DeWOLFE: Correct. MR. BERFIELD: In other words, it would be more or less a fraud upon the public. Is that correct? MR. DeWOLFE: Correct. MR. BERFIELD: Let me ask you a few other questions here. Now, like Mr. Hatchett said, your story here sounds so interesting it sounds almost like Howard Hughes. MR. DeWOLFE: That's a very close analogy there, believe me. MR. BERFIELD: Have you ever testified before any other groups, any governmental agencies or groups similar to this, legislative groups? MR. DeWOLFE: No, I haven't, sir. I just testified for the IRS in the sixties. I don't have the date, but it was -- MR. BERFIELD: I was trying to find it here, and I cannot confront you with it, but somewhere that you had given or sworn an oath or testimony and then reneged on it. Is that correct? MR. DeWOLFE: That's correct. Yes, that's correct. I was talking about 1971, 1972. That's where I had signed a statement which, at the time, I did not believe. But anyhow, that was that. I didn't feel, in my own mind, I didn't feel that I was able to recant something I had put under oath without the recant itself being equal under the law, and it wasn't equal under the law, as far as I was concerned -- the recant. MR. BERFIELD: All right. What I'm trying to get in my mind is: If you testified under oath before, what assurance do we have that you're not going to recant on this? Was there some undue pressure -- MR. DeWOLFE: I'm not going -- MR. BERFIELD: -- put on you or something? MR. DeWOLFE: Huh? MR. BERFIELD: Was there undue pressure put on you or something that caused you to recant that? MR. DeWOLFE: Yes. MR. BERFIELD: Can you tell us about it? MR. DeWOLFE: Well, I was
trying, as I said, to explain that earlier, just before the break. But
the testimony that I supposedly recanted, or the recant statement that I
made, was a very generalized statement, as I remember. MR. BERFIELD: I guess it's still not clear in my mind. Was there any pressure put on you to rescind or recant or withdraw -- MR. DeWOLFE: Yes. At the time, as I said, in 1971, 1972, it was a very traumatic experience. I was not really in a position to defend myself at that time. Scientology was very, very strong and, also, my children were very small. One of the reasons I'm here today is that five of my six children are up and on their own, and they're very well able to take care of themselves. There is enough of what I have said already available to the press and to government and other kinds of people, so that it would be absolutely useless to try to do anything against me or force me to try to say something different or recant. MR. BERFIELD: Let me go a step further. Are you saying that there was duress or some undue influence that they put upon you at that time? MR. DeWOLFE: Yes. MR. BERFIELD: Is that, basically, just the children that you were talking about earlier? MR. DeWOLFE: Well, I was worried about myself and my wife, too. MR. BERFIELD: What, other than the photograph, did they do to -- MR. DeWOLFE: Phone calls in the night. I would actually have to sit down and remember all of it. It was really quite a confused mess at the time. And you really have a proper question there: Will I recant in the future? I'd have to say, absolutely not. MR. BERFIELD: All right. Thus far, you've been talking about the period up to '59, early '60, and you did testify based upon firsthand experience. But since that period of time, have you had any contact with Scientologists? MR. DeWOLFE: I've had off and on contact with people that had been in Scientology or in and around the whole subject matter. But insofar as this direct observation within the organization or anything else, of course not, no. MR. BERFIELD: So you really couldn't say whether the criminal activities or some of these other training activities were continuing. Is that correct? MR. DeWOLFE: As to direct, personal knowledge, no. MR. BERFIELD: There are a couple of other things here that I'm not too sure about. I believe you testified that you were using drugs or high on drugs when you wrote, I can't remember, one of the books, whether it was Beginning of Man or whether it was one of them. Do you use drugs? MR. DeWOLFE: Do I use drugs? MR. BERFIELD: Yes. MR. DeWOLFE: No. I use, of course, prescription stuff. But no, I quit all. of that when I left. MR. BERFIELD: At the time you were in the Church, you said that your father was totally in charge. MR. DeWOLFE: I'm sorry, I didn't hear the -- MR. BERFIELD: During the period of time that you were associated with Scientologists, you said that your father was totally in charge. MR. DeWOLFE: That's correct. MR. 13ERFIELD: Could you testify, to the best of your opinion, whether he still is in complete control of the Church or Scientology? MR. DeWOLFE: Yes, assuming he's alive. MR. BERFIELD: Why do you say that? MR. DeWOLFE: Well, I really don't know. In the many, many years and experiences of being around him, he said that he resigned in 1966, but that was a paper shuffle. He was so focused on being in absolute and full control at all times that I just cannot see him ever changing that. MR. BERFIELD: Now, I also understand you to say that this book here was really was not your father's possession at all times, is that correct? That someone else had copyrights or something to it? It's Dianetics. MR. DeWOLFE: Yes. That was the Dianetic Research Foundation, Don G. Purcell, correct. MR. BERFIELD: A personal question -- MR. DeWOLFE: Oh, not that particular book, I'm sorry. Is it Dianetics: Evolution of Science? Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health is the one I'm referring to. MR. BERFIELD: From your own personal knowledge, has Scientology ever helped you with any of your illnesses or sicknesses? MR. DeWOLFE: No. I learned I had to wear glasses since I was twelve. And during Scientology, he wouldn't let me wear them, so I had migraine headaches. But after I learned that they wouldn't handle that, I wore them. MR. BERFIELD: I believe this question's been asked earlier but are you aware of anybody that has been cured by Scientology? MR. DeWOLFE: No. MR. BERFIELD: As a layman, and this is very hard for you to do, but take yourself out and just go into Scientology to begin with, would you believe the information that's in this book? MR. DeWOLFE: Yes. MR. BERFIELD: Knowing what you do know about Scientology and what has been alleged about Mr. Hubbard and what he can do for you, would you believe what's in this book? MR. DeWOLFE: Yes. MR. BERFIELD: You would believe what's in this book? MR. DeWOLFE: If I was from the outside -- MR. BERFIELD: No, no. Excuse me. I'll repeat the question. Knowing what you now know about Scientology -- MR. DeWOLFE: Oh, sorry. No. MR. BERFIELD: -- would you believe that they could cure your illnesses and -- MR. DeWOLFE: Knowing what I know? MR. BERFIELD: Knowing what you know. MR. DeWOLFE: No, they couldn't. MR. BERFIELD: One other thing -- and I may be on touchy ground here but -- during the period of the fifties when there was so much conversation about the E-Meter, why the vacillation back and forth about using the E-Meter? It either was important or it wasn't important. MR. DeWOLFE: It was very
important, but it was a matter of ownership. Bob Mathieson and my
father couldn't come to terms as to the continued use of the E-Meter in
1951 and '52. And then, my father, since he could not control totally
the E-Meter or come to terms, quit using it and invented processes which
didn't require the E-Meter until later on, as I mentioned earlier, Don
Green and Joe Wallace created one in Washington, D.C. in the
mid-fifties. MR. BERFIELD: Just two last questions here and I'm not trying to put words in your mouth but if I understood you correctly, it is your testimony that your father still sets corporate policy for Scientology? MR. DeWOLFE: I would have to say yes, just simply because of the long term, having experience with him. MR. BERFIELD: This question really may have been said, too, but this one follows along that line. In your estimation, if somebody violated that corporate policy, would there be any punishment? MR. DeWOLFE: I would say yes. He would control things, yes. MR. BERFIELD: Then, I come back to put the last nail in the coffin: This book or any other book -- this one on "All About Radiation" -- how would you describe that as far as the public is concerned? MR. DeWOLFE: I don't know quite what you mean. MR. BERFIELD: Would you say that it's a factual book that they could rely upon or fraud or what? MR. DeWOLFE: No. It's a complete fraud. There's not a thing in there that is workable. MR. BERFIELD: If this book was being sold in Clearwater, if I understand your testimony, this is something that would be a fraud upon the people of Clearwater. Is that correct? MR. DeWOLFE: Well, yes. It is guaranteeing that it's going to rid you of radiation or make you radiation proof, and that's a scientific impossibility as we know it today. MR. LeCHER: Thank you. Mrs. Garvey, would you like to ask some questions? MRS. GARVEY: Just some clarification on the use of the E-Meter: The Dianetic Research Institute was set up as a scientific research institute? The Dianetic Research Institute was what? Was it a scientific research institute? MR. DeWOLFE: No. The Dianetic Research Foundation was set up ostensibly for research, but it was more or less a place where people could come to train to be an auditor. It's the same as a mission today or what we called them, centers, where you were trained and you received auditing. MRS. GARVEY: But it was not intended to be a religious institute at all? MR. DeWOLFE: None whatsoever. MRS. GARVEY: There was no religion attached to it. But the exact same E-Meter and auditor is now being used by a religious institute? MR. DeWOLFE: Yes. Of course, there are different models over the years. MRS. GARVEY: Right. But it's the same basic concept? MR. DeWOLFE: Yes, correct. MRS. GARVEY: One of the things that Mr. Walters told us earlier is the reason people are joining or going in with Scientology is because of the fantastic background of Mr. Hubbard, you know, he's a nuclear Physicist, you know, all the really great things that he has done. Why did the people join in 1950 or '51, '52, '53? MR. DeWOLFE: The same basic reasons. The same self-created mystique. The same biographical data created by him. Plus you must realize that there's that old thing of being able to do anything, being completely free, having total and complete power over yourself. And you have that promise to be what you want to be, fly through space, and be completely free of your subconscious mind. MRS. GARVEY: So, what you're saying is when he wrote the first book, Dianetics, he used that background then? MR. DeWOLFE: Yes. MRS. GARVEY: Before you left, were there any of these policies that you talked about that weren't written. Were any of those written by the time you left in '59, or were they still unwritten policies? MR. DeWOLFE: Well, on that aspect, I can't recall if -- MRS. GARVEY: Okay. MR. DeWOLFE: They may have been written in different forms and slightly different words. I would really have to review it. Please keep in mind that I've heard enough, I guess, during the fifties to pack into ten or twenty lifetimes. And so, you're dealing, also, with, you know, maybe a few hundred million words. MRS. GARVEY: You just can't remember whether or not there was anything written? MR. DeWOLFE: Anything really specific about it. MRS. GARVEY: Thank you. MR. DeWOLFE: I mean as it was described in books. MRS. GARVEY: Oh, one last thing: Hubbard supposedly claims that the Church is owing him millions of dollars because of all the research that he has done for Scientology. Is that true? Is that what he -- MR. DeWOLFE: He did that as a business ploy and as a tax ploy, that he was owed all of this money and he never made anything, quote, unquote, was the public type of statement that he made about that. MRS. GARVEY: But obviously, if he didn't do any research -- MA. DeWOLFE: That kept increasing to where he'd walk in and say, "Well, the Church owes me $100,000.00." But it got up to thirteen million. It started out as one or two million. MRS. GARVEY: But what you're saying is that he, in fact, did not do any research, so nothing is owed to him? MR. DeWOLFE: That's correct. MR. LeCHER: If you had to sum up your testimony given to us today, what message would you like to leave with this Commission? MR. DeWOLFE: Wow. I think the message I would leave with you is to stay the hell out of hell. MR. LeCHER: Stay the hell out of hell. Thank you. MR. FLYNN: Mayor, I now have some documents that I'd like to introduce. MR. LeCHER: I'd like the witness to stay here. He may be able to help us with the documents or if we want to question him about any of the documents. Then, we'll get on to the next witness. MR. FLYNN: I believe we're up to Exhibit 20; is that correct? MRS. WILLIAMS: Correct. MR. FLYNN: Exhibit 20 -- if we could place it on the projector -- is a transcript of the grades of Lafayette Ronald Hubbard from the George Washington University. (A copy of a transcript from George Washington University was marked as Exhibit No. 20, as of this date.) MR. GREENE: This exhibit shows that Mr. Hubbard completed three semesters at George Washington University. I'd like to direct your attention to -- MR. LeCHER: Can you get it off the ceiling? MR. SHOEMAKER: Oh, I'm sorry. MR. GREENE: I might direct your
attention to the last entry in the left-hand column: In Nuclear and
Atomic Physics, Hubbard received an F. The faculty took action,
which is indicated in the lower right-hand corner of the exhibit, if you
could move it up on the screen. Mr. Hubbard was on probation when he
returned in September of 1931. MR. CALDERBANK: Was there any Physics or any other complex science on the document? Did he take any courses -- MR. GREENE: The document speaks for itself, Mr. Calderbank. It appears that I pointed out physics courses, that course that he took, that he received an F in. He had a mathematics course above that that he received an F in. MR. FLYNN: May the record reflect that the exhibit indicates that there were two Ds, three Fs. And three semesters would be a year and-a-half. The next exhibit, number 21, is a Navy biographical outline of Mr. Hubbard's naval career. (A copy of a biographical outline from the U.S. Navy was marked as Exhibit No. 21, as of this date.) MR. FLYNN: Mr. Greene will indicate relevant portions of it. MR. GREENE: This was an Information Request submitted to the Department of the Navy. It indicates on page one his ships and station in the lower left-hand corner of the page, that station being in Washington, D.C. And if you trace through on page two of the exhibit, the ships and station, you'll see Mr. Hubbard spent approximately sixteen weeks in Melbourne, Australia. That appears at the third entry down from the top of the page. Aside from that foreign duty, his entire involvement with the Navy, he was stationed, as station or a ship, here in the United States: New York, Oregon, California, New Jersey. On the lower part of that page, you'll see that he attended the Naval Training School at Princeton, New Jersey. Just below that, you'll see an entry for the Naval Hospital, Oak Knoll, California for a period of time: September '45 through December '45, December 4, '45. MR. CALDERBANK: To sum up the document, how much time does this document show that he actually spent in active duty/combat during the World War II time span? MR. FLYNN: The document indicates that he didn't spend any time in any combat and, in fact, he never received any war wounds in any type of combat. The next document is a Ship's Log of a ship that Mr. Hubbard served on, which is going to be marked as Exhibit No. 22. (A copy of a Ship's Log was marked as Exhibit No. 22, as of this date.) MR. GREENE: This is a confidential log. You'll see it appears at the top of the left-hand corner of the page. The ship's name was the ALGOL, A-L-G-O-L. I'd like to direct your attention to the entry at 16:30, the left-hand column toward the bottom of the page, that last paragraph, which reads as follows: "The navigating officer reported to the OOD that an attempt at sabotage had been made sometime between 15:30 through 16:00. A coke bottle filled with gasoline with a cloth wick inserted had been concealed along cargo. It was to be hoisted aboard and stowed in Number One Hold. It was discovered before being taken aboard. ONI, FDI, NSD authorities reported on the scene and investigations were started." In the lower right-hand corner of the page appears Mr. Hubbard's signature as the navigator, the navigating officer. Page two of that exhibit -- if you raise that exhibit*, you'll see it in the lower right-hand corner of the page. If you look, you'll see Mr. Hubbard's signature there as the navigator. Page two of that exhibit, could we have that placed on the overhead projector? There'll be the date in the upper right-hand corner, Thursday, September 28th, 1944. It's the following day, and I'd like to direct your attention to the entry 16:20, last paragraph on the page. "Orders before 16:35 pursuant to DuPers dispatch dated 27 September at 22:144. Lieutenant Lafayette Ron Hubbard D/BS, USNR 113392 was this date detached from duties aboard this vessel. He transferred from present duty under instruction to the University of Princeton, New Jersey. "19:40: 32nd unit U.S. Naval Construction Batallion returned aboard to resume loading." MR. LeCHER: Why is it significant about the coke bottle, the wick, and the return to Princeton? MR. FLYNN: Mr. Hubbard -- the ALGOL sailed into combat approximately three days after this event, and it received its orders to go into combat sometime before that, which Mr. Hubbard was aware of. And Mr. Hubbard is the one who found the coke bottle and, just before the ship went into combat, he was relieved of duty. MR. LeCHER: All right. Thank you. MR. FLYNN: And as the record will indicate, shortly after that, he went to the Oak Knoll Military Hospital. MR. LeCHER: Yes, sir. MR. BERFIELD: Just one question: Do you have anything there to validate that the two are connected? MR. FLYNN: We don't have any evidence to validate who placed the coke bottle. We have evidence to validate that the ship went into combat. We have evidence, as you've just seen, to validate that Mr. Hubbard was relieved from duty within twenty-four hours after the coke bottle was found by him, as you have just seen. The next exhibit, number 23, is a letter of October 16th from Mr. Hubbard to the Veteran's Administration. (A copy of a letter to the Veteran's Administration was marked as Exhibit No. 23, as of this date.) MR. GREENE: This letter is dated October 16, 1947 from Lafayette Ronald Hubbard: "Gentlemen" directed to the Veteran's Administration --"This is a request for treatment. My residence is north of Hollywood, but I attend school at Drama Theater Workshop, Fairfax and Wilshire, Los Angeles. It would be appreciated if any out physician selected would be located near my school, as I have a vacant hour and a half from one to two-thirty four days each week at school. I work at night six days per week. I was placed on a certain medication back East and have continued it at my own expense. After trying and failing for two years to regain my equilibrium in civil life, I am utterly unable to approach anything like my own competence. My last physician informed me that it might be very helpful if I were to be examined and, perhaps, treated psychiatrically or even by a psychoanalyst. Toward the end of my service, 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 nearly come to realize that I must first triumph above this before I can hope to rehabilitate myself at all. I cannot leave school or what little work I am doing for hospitalization due to many obligations, but I feel I might be treated outside possibly with success. I cannot myself afford such treatment. Would you please help me? Sincerely, L. Ron Hubbard." MRS. GARVEY: The date on this is? MR. GREM: October 16, 1947 appears on the upper right-hand corner of this letter. MRS. GARVEY: And Dianetics came out in 1950? The first Dianetic book came out when? MR. DeWOLFE: 1950. MR. BERFIELD: Counsel, I have a question: Through any testimony -- and this appears to be a court document-- was it ever established that was his signature or do -- MR. FLYNN: That's a document that was -- that has appeared in a number of court proceedings. And Mr. Hubbard here could authenticate the signature, if necessary, and the document was seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. MR. BERFIELD: Would you put that back up there again, please? Would you look at that document, Mr. DeWolfe, and say for sure whether that is your father's signature? MR. DeWOLFE: Yes. I've seen it many thousands of times. His signature, I mean. I don't mean this -- MR. LeCHER: How did you get these documents in your possession, Mr. Flynn? MR. FLYNN: The documents have
been available to the public for one period of time, during a nine-month
sealing period in the United States, Federal District Court in
Washington, D.C. During that period of time, we obtained possession of
many of them. We have also obtained possession of many of them through
various court proceedings. MR. FLYNN- And rather than place the book into evidence, we are going to put a xeroxed copy of it into evidence. And Mr. Greene will read from a portion of that biography. MR. GREENE: Again, this is from Exhibit 24, page 158: "L. Ron Hubbard. Scientology was developed by L. Ron Hubbard, a writer and philosopher. It was completed after thirty-five years of research. Hubbard was born in Tilden, Nebraska on March 13, 1911. Much of Hubbard's early youth was spent in the American West, and he traveled extensively in Asia as a young man. "He studied science and mathematics at George Washington University, graduating from Columbian College." Columbian College, as you may know, is the undergraduate Arts and Science Program at George Washington University. "He attended Princeton University and obtained a degree as Doctor of Philosophy, Ph.D., from Sequoia University. "Before World War II, he was well known in exploration-circles and is to this day a member of the Explorers Club. He wrote and published over fifteen million words of articles and novels of all kinds before World War II. During that war, he served as Commander of Corps Vettes and was extensively decorated. Crippled and blind at the end of the war, he resumed his studies in philosophy and by his discoveries recovered so fully that he was reclassified in 1949 for full combat duty. "It is a matter of medical record that he has twice been pronounced dead, and in 1950 he was given a perfect score on mental and physical fitness reports. Revolted by war and man's inhumanity to man, he resigned his commission rather than assist the government-research projects." Dropping-down some paragraphs: "Unlike any other philosopher at any age, Hubbard has led a very full and adventurous life. He has been the hero in numerous novels and even of a famous motion picture. Probably no philosopher of modern times.has had the popularity and appeal of Hubbard or such startling successes in his own lifetime." MR. LeCHER: What famous motion picture does he appear as the hero in? MR. DeWOLFE: None. I think that the motion picture that he may be referring to is Mister Roberts; that was a rumor that he spread around. But he had no connection with the movie, nor the play, nor the character Mister Roberts. MRS. GARVEY: It says there that he was given a perfect score on mental and physical fitness reports. Is he currently getting-disability checks from the federal government? MR. FLYNN: If you know. MR. DeWOLFE: I don't know. I do know that he continued to receive them throughout the early fifties. I remember in '54 and '55 'in Washington, D.C., he got one every month. I don't believe -- it was somewhere between $80 and $140.00 a month. MRS. GARVEY: So, if he was receiving disability checks, he can't, obviously, be in perfect mental and physical shape. MR. DeWOLFE: Correct. MRS. GARVEY: That's unusual. MR. CALDERBANK: Mr.
DeWolfe, so that people don't misinterpret your testimony and what is
being presented here as a personal attack on L. Ron Hubbard, do you
personally know of thousands of dollars, both in Dianetics MR. DeWOLFE: Right. MR. CALDERBANK: And you understand the weight of your testimony is that -- because, if many people are spending thousands of dollars daily here in Clearwater, based on his background, based solely just on the representations made in books, published and written articles, in verbal communication and you're now saying that each of these is false? MR. DeWOLFE: Correct. MR. BERFIELD: Along that same line, Mr. DeWolfe, his comments that he was blind and had total recovery, did he ever address that subject to you? MR. DeWOLFE: He's never been blind, to my knowledge, during the -- are you talking about being blind? MR. BERFIELD: Yes, sir, wounded or - MRS. GARVEY: You never questioned him about that? MR. DeWOLFE: I'm sorry, what? MRS. GARVEY: You never questioned him about that, that part of his biography? MR. DeWOLFE: There
were times during the fifties that were periods that he had been away
from me - And MR. BERFIELD: I have a question to the counselor: Do you have copies of his medical records? MR. FLYNN: No, we don't. However, we do have copies of the outline of his naval career, which has been introduced into evidence, which we just went through. And it may be helpful if the Commission took that exhibit and each one of you scrutinize it so- that you can see precisely where he was at various times. In addition to that, we have some evidence of the discharge from the Oak Knoll Military Hospital, which we will be introducing, which shows that he suffered from a duodenal ulcer. MR. CALDERBANK: You've never ever seen any records or case histories, a compiling of data, that your father did to verify any of the claims that he's made in Dianetics or auditing? MR. DeWOLFE: No. I knew he had an ulcer. MR. HATCHETT: Pardon me. You did say he had an ulcer? I didn't hear you. MR. DeWOLFE: Huh? MR. HATCHETT: Yes, he had an ulcer? MR. DeWOLFE: Yes, he had an ulcer. MR. HATCHETT: I didn't hear you. Thank you. MR. DeWOLFE: He drank copious amounts of that milky, chalky stuff that the Navy - MR. LeCHER: Like Maalox? MR. DeWOLFE: Yes. But it was far more unpleasant than that. MR. LeCHER: Can we get to the next document? MR. FLYNN:, Yes. To
speed things up here a little bit, what I will do is I'll mark two more
biographical sketches of similar type as exhibits. The top one will be
Exhibit 25 and the next one will be Exhibit 26. MR. FLYNN: And then, we'll mark the cover of the book, All About
Radiation. MR. FLYNN: As you can see in another biographical sketch, it basically says the same thing: he is a graduate of George Washington University, Columbian College, which is the undergraduate school, and he gives hi's - - he represents himself to be a student at Princeton. Well, in fact, as I indicated to you at the outset, the only training he had at Princeton, and as Mr. DeWolfe testified, was connected with his naval training during-World War II,- which -- he was at no point a part of Princeton University as an undergraduate student. And the cover of the book, if we could put that on so that everyone can
see the representations right on the cover of the book, All About
Radiation, it states that it is by a nuclear physicist and a medical
doctor. It doesn't really appear that well on the projector, but, as you
can see, that representation is held out right on the cover of the book. And Mr. Hubbard would like -- wants to testify as to who wrote-the entire book. MR. LeCHER: Who wrote the entire book, sir, about radiation? MR. DeWOLFE: L. Ron Hubbard. MR. LeCHER: L. Ron Hubbard. And he is not a medical doctor? MR. FLYNN: You might want to answer that: Is your father a medical doctor? MR. DeWOLFE: Is my father a medical doctor? I'm sorry, I didn't hear you. MR. LeCHER: Is your father a medical doctor? MR. DeWOLFE: No, nor is he a nuclear physicist. MR. LeCHER: Has he ever been to any medical school in a foreign land? Has he ever been to a medical school in a foreign land like Mexico, England. MR. DeWOLFE: No, never. MR. LeCHER: Okay. Thank you. These hearings are really not appear to
being a personal attack on your father. We're trying to get to the
bottom of this to understand why he is so credible to so many people.
Apparently, he has no background
to back up his opinion of himself. I'm glad you were able to come to speak to us today and yesterday, sir.
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