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A PIECE OF BLUE SKY -- SCIENTOLOGY, DIANETICS & L. RON HUBBARD EXPOSED |
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PART EIGHT: JUDGMENTS
CHAPTER ONE: Scientology At Law
The litigious nature of the Church of Scientology is well-known. It has waged a twenty-year battle against the Internal Revenue Service in the United States. The IRS insists that the profits of Scientology have accrued to the benefit of a private individual, namely L. Ron Hubbard. There was a ten-year battle against the Food and Drug Administration. The Courts upheld the FDA's assertion that the E-meter was improperly labeled. But the Church did manage to overturn a ruling that material seized from them be destroyed. So the Church claims victory. In the 1970s in France, Hubbard was sentenced in absentia to a prison term for fraud. In the 1970s, the Church fought to prevent the sale of books critical of Scientology. They failed in this attempt, but caused authors George Malko, Paulette Cooper, Cyril Vosper and Robert Kaufman considerable difficulty (not only from the law suits: Roy Wallis, in his Salvation and Protest, described the harassment he received after writing about Scientology). In 1982, Paulette Cooper, author of The Scandal of Scientology testified that the Church had brought eighteen suits against her. More recently Russell Miller has defended against attempts to prevent distribution of his Bare-Faced Messiah in England, Canada, Australia and the United States. In 1983, the Legal office of the Church admitted that it did not know how many suits were outstanding in England alone. So many writs had been issued for libel it had lost track. In 1968, thirty-eight libel suits were dropped by the Church in England. Cases which continued were uniformly lost by the Church. Boston attorney Michael Flynn won fourteen of the sixteen complaints brought against him by the Church, the remaining two being withdrawn. The Church has from time to time filed suits against the FBI, the IRS, the Justice Department, Interpol and even against Henry Kissinger (for $800 million). Scientology has filed hundreds of cases over the years. Most have been withdrawn before trial, but in Britain suits against a former Police Commissioner and against Member of Parliament Geoffrey Johnson-Smith were both lost by the Church. In return, there have been hundreds of suits filed against Scientology. The Church was forced to pay substantial damages to former Health Minister, Kenneth Robinson, and withdraw their allegations that he had instigated "death camps," likened by the Church to Belsen and Auschwitz. 1 Also in the legal arena are the reports of the many Commissions of Inquiry, and of several U.S. grand jury investigations. These run to tens of thousands of pages. Two books have been written about the attempt made by the Guardian's Office to take over the National Association of Mental Health in the U.K. in the late 1960s, which also ended in a ruling against Scientology in the English High Court. Of all the court cases, two stand out. Their verdicts came down within a month of each other: one in Los Angeles, the other in London. The first, and perhaps the most revealing to date, was the case brought by the Scientologists against Gerald Armstrong. Armstrong had joined the Sea Org in 1971. Over the years he held various positions close to Hubbard. During the trial he gave detailed testimony of these periods, and of his time in the Rehabilitation Project Force. His accounts highlighted the extreme duress of life in the Sea Org. Armstrong saved over twenty boxes of Hubbard letters, diaries and photographs from the shredder at Gilman Hot Springs. On January 8, 1980, he wrote to Hubbard asking permission to collect material for a biography. A few years earlier Hubbard had lamented that no biography could be written because his personal documents had been stolen, and the great Conspiracy against him would by now have altered all public records. Far from being stolen by the Russians in the early 1950s, as Hubbard had claimed, his personal archive had quite remarkably been preserved. When the Hubbards left Washington for Saint Hill, in spring 1959, the boxes had been put into storage, where they stayed until the late 1970s. Somehow they had been shipped to La Quinta, and thence to Gilman. Armstrong was excited by the discovery, as it would no longer be necessary to rely on the supposedly corrupted government records, with Hubbard's personal documents in hand. Hubbard approved Armstrong's request only days before he went into deep hiding. Armstrong was titled "L. Ron Hubbard Personal Public Relations Office Researcher," and he collected over half a million pages of material by the end of 1981. Omar Garrison, who had already written two books favorable to Scientology, was contracted to write the biography in October 1980, and the Archives were made available to him. Armstrong became Garrison's research assistant, copying tens of thousands of the most relevant documents for Garrison's use. In his judgment in the Scientologists' case against Armstrong, Judge Breckenridge explained the gradual erosion of Armstrong's faith in Hubbard:
Armstrong began a campaign to correct the numerous misrepresentations, but met with considerable resistance. In November 1981, he was ordered back to Gilman from Los Angeles. He was told by senior Church official Norman Starkey that he was to be Security-checked. There was no desire to correct Hubbard's biography. To this day, Scientology Orgs sell books which contain the very biographies which Armstrong had proved false; Hubbard's Mission into Time is the worst example of many. On November 25, 1981, Armstrong wrote to Commodore's Messenger Cirrus Slevin:
A few weeks later, Armstrong decided to leave the Church. Before leaving, he worked desperately hard to ensure that Omar Garrison had all of the documents necessary for an honest biography. After leaving, he maintained contact with the Biography Project, even helping to find documents in the Archives when the new Archivist was unable to do so, for two months following his departure. Judge Breckenridge's opinion continues:
Armstrong, with Garrison's permission, made copies of about 10,000 pages of these documents, and deposited them with attorneys for safe keeping. Michael Flynn was one of these attorneys. On August 2, 1982, the Church of Scientology of California filed suit against Gerald Armstrong for Conversion (a form of theft); breach of fiduciary duty (breach of trust); and breach of confidence. Mary Sue Hubbard joined the suit against Armstrong as an "intervenor," and added a charge of "Invasion of Privacy" to the suit. Judge Breckenridge's opinion continues:
After hearing four weeks of testimony, and deliberating for two weeks, Judge Breckenridge ruled that Gerald Armstrong was entitled to judgment and costs. The preceding quotations come from a fifteen-page appendix to the opinion. The main body of the decision is one of the most forceful statements ever made against the Church of Scientology. Of the Founder and his Church, Judge Breckenridge wrote: In addition to violating and abusing its own members' civil rights, the organization over the years with its "Fair Game" doctrine has harassed and abused those persons not in the Church whom it perceives as enemies. The organization clearly is schizophrenic and paranoid, and this bizarre combination seems to be a reflection of its founder LRH.
The documents involved in the case were extensive. They included copies of letters from Hubbard to his father, to his first two wives, and to the children of his first marriage. They also included Hubbard's teenage diaries, his Boy Scout records, poems, and the manuscript of an unpublished book called Positive Mental Therapy. Also included were Hubbard's letters to Mary Sue Hubbard over the years, where he said exactly what he was doing while researching the "Technology" of Scientology. For example, there are letters sent from North Africa in late 1966, to Mary Sue at Saint Hill, which give details of the drugs Hubbard was taking to "research" the most secret of Scientology's levels, OT3. During the course of the trial, the judge heard testimony from Armstrong; his wife Jocelyn; Laurel Sullivan, who had been Armstrong's senior on the Biography Project; the proposed author Omar Garrison; Hubbard's nurse Kima Douglas (who left Hubbard in January 1980); and former Author Services Incorporated Treasury Secretary Howard Schomer. Omar Garrison, who had been commissioned to write the biography, had this to say of the documentation Armstrong provided:
Garrison intended to complete the biography, and continued with this work through 1982. In June 1983, he agreed to a settlement with the Church. The Church wanted to be absolutely sure that the manuscript wasn't made public. Garrison reluctantly agreed. He too had been followed by private detectives, "bumper to bumper." However, Garrison retained copies of documents from the Hubbard archives to ensure the church's good behavior. Jocelyn Armstrong testified that she had worked on a project where Mission Holders were to sign backdated contracts, Board minutes and resignations. Kima Douglas was Hubbard's personal Medical Officer from 1975 until her departure on January 16, 1980. From 1977, she was with Hubbard on a daily basis. She was also the head of no less than fourteen Scientology corporations, and had written undated resignations from each. Among these was the Religious Research Foundation, which was used to channel monies from the Flagship, and later the Flag Land Base, into non-Church accounts controlled by Hubbard. Douglas testified that she was with Hubbard when he approved Armstrong's request to collect material for a biography. She had also been present when Hubbard had ordered that supposedly confidential counselling folders should be "culled" for admissions of crimes, and anti-social or immoral actions, for future use. Douglas admitted that she had seen Hubbard display "irrational and abusive" behavior, to the extent of striking someone. She also revealed the extent of Hubbard's ill health throughout the years she served him. The myth of L. Ron Hubbard was badly fractured. It seemed that his mesmeric hold over Scientologists, whether Church members or Independents, was slipping. The trance could only be maintained through a stubborn refusal to consider the material now available. The Judgment in the Armstrong case was filed on June 22, 1984, just as Justice Latey was preparing to hear a child custody case in London. _______________ FOOTNOTES Principal source: Memorandum of Intended Decision in Church of Scientology of California vs. Gerald Armstrong, Superior Court, Los Angeles County, case no. C 420153. 1. The Times, London, 4 September 1973; Evening News, 5 June 1973
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