The Men Behind the Man Behind Scientology

“It seemed a little too pat. It had the austere simplicity of fiction rather than the tangled woof of fact.”

Phillip Marlow in The Big Sleep

by Raymond Chandler

Almost seven years after Ted Koppel proclaimed David Miscavige as “the head of Scientology” on his news program Nightline. The St. Petersburg Times NKA the Tampa Bay Times got into act. Going one step further by proclaiming him the “Pope of Scientology” which is total bull without the Papal. Yet it seems that many “Scientologists” (originally meaning someone who knows how to know) accepted this steaming pile of bovine excrement as if it was Holy Writ.

As I have pointed out in my article on the Myth of Miscavige there is nothing in Church scriptures, that is written by L Ron Hubbard making David Miscavige the heir apparent of Scientology.

Since there is nothing in the canons of Scientology assigning Miscavige to his lofty position within the Church. It has been the mainstream media and the US Government under the formerly Secret Closing Agreement and his coconspirators within the Organization that have the biggest perpetrators of the “Miscavige Myth”. Even today his two former faithful lieutenants Marty Rathbun and Michael Rinder  continue to propagate this myth in their respective blogs by assigning any action taken by the Church to Miscavige exclusively as if he was some kind of mad Svengali in total and complete control of his followers like “cult” leaders in the past such as Jim Jones and David Koresh. The preferred image of the media so that they can write salacious stories about their “brain washed”, “zombie” like followers.

Thus we see here in the pages of the former SP Times, just as we did in Ted Koppel’s Nightline an effort to confirm Miscavige as Scientology’s undisputed “head” or in this case going even further and declaring him the “Pope”.

Not only that, but also weaving a false narrative or a revisionist history giving  Miscavige the starring role when in fact he initially only played a supporting actor in the drama of the Scientology Coup de tat.

Here I will attempt to correct the record of the false history recorded in the following article:

The man behind Scientology

 

St. Petersburg Times/October 25, 1998
Stories by Thomas C. Tobin
Photos by Robin Donina Serne of the Times Staff 

David Miscavige

LOS ANGELES — When David Miscavige recounts his rise to power in the Church of Scientology — a journey that began when he quit high school at age 16 — it is mostly a story of war. War against renegade Scientologists. War against Scientology’s critics. War against its one-time arch enemy (sic), the IRS.

My identities are therefore woven into the pattern so they don’t have to be altered to keep things going. LRH, an individual, becomes an estate. The rest is by appointment from “LRH Executive Director” with that title activated by the Int Ad Council or board but still used as a title but not of a person. The “Office of LRH” is part of org structure. And before long even LRH, “a board member,” will be needless to be filled in the flesh by delegated signature of LRH.

This is not only today, then, but tomorrow as well, and the above identities are firm as identities whether I am here or not. Even today 99 percent of my functions are done by delegated authority. The 1 percent left is heavy enough for twenty men but it is getting lighter each year and so can be seen to be only a post in a few years and so it can continue. Trying to fill up the post is all that would cause “a war” ,so leave it activated as itself, none assigned to it, assistance to it by established formula. (emphasis added)

L. RON HUBBARD Founder

HCO POLICY LETTER OF 4 JANUARY 1966 Issue VI

LRH RELATIONSHIPS TO ORGS

 

 

 

But Scientology’s 38-year-old leader insists he is a determined peace-maker as well.

After years spent well outside the public’s radar screen, Miscavige says he plans to step forward now and take a central role in trying to end differences with those who still oppose Scientology, the self-improvement “technology” devised by the late L. Ron Hubbard in the early 1950s.

In his first-ever newspaper interview, Miscavige told the Times that Clearwater is the scene of “possibly the last long-running conflict” for Scientology. He said he wants to take “big steps” to end hostilities there.

To do it, Miscavige is employing a strategy that is a hallmark of his career: personal intervention. 

* * *

The Miscavige way can include a generous helping of the audacious personality that fueled his steep rise within Scientology, and helped him at age 21 to engineer a purge of rogue church members.

It looked like the Church was going to crumble – that it was finished. But that didn’t happen. Because some people saw what was going on and moved in and overthrew the Guardian’s Office, the off policy and corrupt individuals were dismissed. And the G.O. network was disbanded and its functions placed under the authority of Int Management and the Sea Org.

 

David Miscavige in a speech he gave 8 October 1993 admits to overthrowing the Guardian’s Office. An office that was established personally by L Ron Hubbard in Hubbard Communication Office Policy Letter of 1 March 1966 The Guardian. More specifically the “High Crimes” of:

Mutiny.

And

Seeking to splinter off an area of Scientology and deny it properly constituted authority for personal profit, personal power or “to save the organization from the higher officers of Scientology.”

 

According to long standing policy established in HCO Policy Letter of 23 DECEMBER 1965RB Suppressive Acts ; Suppression of Scientology and Scientologists

 

Not only that but he also violated the following Policy Letter when he “disbanded” the GO:

HUBBARD COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE

Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead, Sussex

HCO POLICY LETTER OF 9 AUGUST 1972

SENIORITY OF ORDERS

 

No Aides Order or Flag Bureaux Data Letter or Executive Directive, Direc- tive or Base Order of any type or kind, written or verbal, may alter or cancel any policy letter or HCOB. These remain senior.

HCO Policy Letters are senior in admin. HCO Bulletins are senior to all other orders in tech.

Only Policy Letters may revise or cancel Policy Letters. Only HCOBs may revise or cancel HCOBs.

No Aides Order or other directive or order may abolish a network or org or change the form of an org.

HCO PLs and HCOBs require passing by LRH or the full authority of International Board members as well as the Authority and Verification Unit.

Telexes which inform orgs or executives of modifications or cancellations of HCO PLs or HCOBs must quote the revision HCO PL or HCOB, and the revision must in fact exist and itself be issued and follow.

Any practice by which junior issues such as directives abolish networks or make off-policy changes can only result in the destruction of networks, orgs and tech.

This is therefore a HIGH CRIME policy letter and it is an offense both to follow or obey or issue any verbal or written order or directive which is contrary to or changes or “abolishes” anything set up in HCO Policy Letters or HCOBs, including the downgrade of “that’s out-of-date” or “that’s been cancelled” with- out showing the HCO PL or HCOB which revises or cancels.

HCO PLs and HCOBs are proven by time and are the senior data on which we operate.

L. RON HUBBARD Founder

 

One could ask who really are the “rogue Scientologists” here?

 

 

It also can have an element of surprise, as the IRS saw in 1991 when Miscavige showed up unannounced in its Washington lobby wanting to see the agency’s director.

 

Again according to his “victory” speech given  8 October 1993:

In October of 1991, while this war was raging at its apex, Marty Rathbun and I were in Washington DC. to attend one of these court hearings I mentioned. It was to be the next day. We had just finished a lunch meeting and our next appointment wasn’t for a couple of hours. In other words – we had some spare time on our hands. That’s not something we’re accustomed to, so – we thought at last we could create a bit of mischief. We told the lawyers we’d see them in an hour or so and that we would be down at the IRS building. Of course they had a good chuckle as we left the room. Off we proceeded to 1111 Constitution Avenue – which if you didn’t know is the address of the national headquarters of the IRS. We presented ourselves to security at the front door, signed the visitors log and informed them we were there to see Fred. They asked – Fred who? We answered, Fred Goldberg of course, the Commissioner of the IRS. “Is he expecting you”” they asked. “No”, was our response. “but if you phone him on the intercom and tell him we are from the Church of Scientology, I am sure he’d love to see us.” Have you ever wondered whether we were really impinging, when we have spoken of the IRS at previous events? Well – if so – shame on you.

We did meet with the commissioner, and, as the saying goes – the rest is history.

 

“History” is recorded in actual documents confirming the event. Yet according to the New York Times when they requested a record of this meeting through the Freedom of Information Act. None could be found:

Mr. Goldberg, who left as I.R.S. Commissioner in January 1992 to become an assistant secretary at the Treasury Department, said privacy laws prohibited him from discussing Scientology or his impromptu meeting with Mr. Miscavige.

The meeting was not listed on Mr. Goldberg’s appointment calendar, which was obtained by The Times through the Freedom of Information Act.

 

Indeed, Miscavige surprised Clearwater City Manager Mike Roberto in April when he ended up presiding over what was to be Roberto’s get-acquainted session with local Scientologists. Roberto stayed for four hours.

Miscavige’s friends say he is “intense” and “insistent” and “doesn’t suffer fools lightly.” Scientology’s critics say he is a bully.

He will challenge with a blue-eyed stare or lean forward with a direct, no-nonsense question. His attention sticks to the discussion at hand, and his words shoot out machine gun-style, in the accent of the Philadelphia suburb where he grew up. He will pound a table for emphasis or snap his fingers so hard you imagine they sting.

 

Similar traits noted in historical figures such as  Napoleon and Hitler.

 

He is an early-rising, late-working mix of energy and emotion and confidence, all in a solid, 5-feet-5 frame.

“Let me tell you, I take a great deal of pride in creating peace,” said Miscavige, who became Scientology’s leader at age 26. “And I have been involved in a few situations or conflicts that looked unresolvable … and I was capable of resolving them.”

He said he expects his efforts will improve Scientology’s standing with local residents and change its image as a combative and insular cult.

He said Scientology could be more open to outsiders and he acknowledged it could pick its fights more carefully. It is “misconception one” that Scientology likes to fight, he said.

Miscavige also addressed a long-standing fear in Clearwater, where Scientology secretly established its spiritual headquarters in 1975 and continues to buy land for a major expansion. “There’s no master plan to take over any city anywhere in the world,” he said.

On a larger scale, Miscavige said he is trying to parlay Scientology’s cherished IRS tax exemption into “religious recognition” in the major countries of Europe, where the church has battled for acceptance. He said he wants to do it by the year 2000.

That goal echoes what he told 10,000 stomping, clapping Scientologists after announcing the exemption in 1993. At the time, Miscavige called it “a sort of government stamp of approval,” and said it meant “everything” for Scientology.

 

I have made the grade technically in the field of research. Now it’s time to drop all the booboo’s and nonsense. All you have to do in an Org is release and clear people and turn out auditors who can release people and keep in contact with the public and treat them well and you’re over the top.

This morning I received a cable from an Org. An urgent cable. Did it say, „How do you assess for a Pre-Hav level“ or something sensible? No, it didn’t. It said, „Send us some biographical data for a newspaper article.“ I spit. That Org is doing the lousiest job possible in Technical and is all worked up to get publicity. What’s this? Do they think a society in this shape will approve Scientology into power? Hell no! And to hell with this society. We’re making a new one. So let’s skip the approval button from a lot of wogs and settle down to work to make new people and better people. Then maybe you’ll have a society.

Right here and right now this policy is laid down in concrete with an atomic branding iron: THE FIRST AND PRIMARY GOAL OF AN ORGANIZATION IS DELIVERING THE FOREMOST TECHNICAL QUALITY THAT CAN BE DELIVERED IN ITS AREA.

All right. I’ve made my technical target bang in the bull’s eye. You can release and clear. You can train auditors well. Well, Christ! Let’s do it, do it, do it!

HCO Policy Letter of 26 May 1961 “Quality Counts”

 

In his interview with the Times, he agreed his planned efforts in Clearwater parallel his bold approach to the IRS.

The city is a major destination for thousands of Scientologists, including many who come for discounted counseling packages that, according to recent brochures, can range from $8,000 to $77,000.

But it also is where the police believe a crime was committed in the death of Lisa McPherson, a 36-year-old parishioner who died after a 17-day stay at Scientology’s Fort Harrison Hotel.

 

I’ll be doing a separate article on Lisa McPherson’s tragic death.

 

It is where a four-term mayor remains a perennial Scientology critic; where 3,000 Scientologists marched angrily against the police chief last December; and where the city and church are immersed in a lawsuit over records of a 13-year police investigation of Scientology.

One “big step” toward peace, Miscavige said, would be him meeting with Police Chief Sid Klein to “resolve all matters with the Clearwater Police. Not grudgingly. Truly.”

Another would be meeting Mayor Rita Garvey, he said, perhaps “at some combined function.”

The E-Meter E-Meter Assembly Line

Miscavige also said it was significant he agreed to be interviewed by the Times, which won a 1980 Pulitzer Prize for its investigation of Scientology and continues to vigorously cover the church. He even allowed the newspaper to visit the quiet assembly line where workers manufacture “e-meters,” the electronic devices that Scientologists say can track thoughts.

Actually  Pulitzer Prize Winning  series began in 1979.

He said he believes Roberto, the city manager, looks to the newspaper as a key source of direction on Scientology.

Scientology’s Los Angeles Headquarters

“You have now hit upon why I’m willing to talk to you,” he told a Times news team during a three-day visit to Scientology’s Los Angeles area headquarters. “If I make an effort to resolve something I have every intention of doing so. … I have every intention of keeping my word.”

Can he succeed?

Can Miscavige tame the aggressive instincts that Hubbard, as Scientology’s founder, so strongly encouraged — and that outsiders have found to be frightening and heavy-handed?

“I think the misunderstanding comes about because we can fight a good war,” Miscavige said. “If we get involved in a war where we feel our survival is threatened, we will dedicatedly fight. But I think any dedicated institution, especially a religious organization, will do that. That is the history of religion.

“But when it’s over, we can carry on with our main mission in life, which is Scientology. And I was trying to explain to Roberto that I not only am saying that, I have a history of doing so.”

When attacked, Hubbard instructed his followers to “Treat all skirmishes like wars.” But he also told them: “Always be ready to parley — that is, have a conference and settle it.” He said, “One cannot just fight.”

 

Defense presupposes that the target is not that bad.

One does not have to be perfect to withstand such an attack, but it helps.

But even if one were perfect it would be no defense. Almost all the saints in history have been subjected to such attacks. And most of them died of it.

The answer is PR TECHNOLOGY SKILLFULLY APPLIED.

To be skillful in anything, one has to know it and be experienced in it and DO it.

As weary a task as it may seem to some, as heartbreaking as it can be, one still has tofight.And fight with tools and technology and dedication superior to that of the enemy.

But progressing and getting small gains, small penetrations, small little skir- mishes and battles, one at length comes up to victory after victory and at last wins the whole war.

One is saved.

HCO POLICY LETTER OF 21 NOVEMBER 1972 Issue I

PR Series 18
HOW TO HANDLE BLACK PROPAGANDA

 

 

No one in Scientology is more dedicated to Hubbard’s words than Miscavige. As chairman of Scientology’s Religious Technology Center, his job is to “preserve, maintain and protect” Scientology, but he insists he is not involved in the daily management of church operations.

 

According to RTC articles its primary purpose is :

“ensuring and maintaining the purity and integrity of the religion of Scientology”

 

Also for one “so dedicated to Hubbard’s words”. He has made continual alterations in the Technology. Something that is considered a High Crime or Suppressive Act:

 

Issuing alter-ised Scientology technical data or information or instructional or admin procedures, calling it Scientology or calling it something else to confuse or deceive people as to the true source, beliefs and practices of Scientology.

HCO Policy Letter of 23 DECEMBER 1965RB 

Suppressive Acts ; Suppression of Scientology and Scientologists

See the following findings  and the following summary of what is known as the “Golden Age of Tech“

 

Not only was he the founder’s protege and trusted aide, he is to Scientologists what the pope is to Catholics — a leader who sets the tone, establishes goals and ensures that Hubbard’s practices and teachings are followed with precision.

 

The source of this comment is probably based on a declaration signed by Hubbard 15 May 1983  that specifically says:

 

Since there apparently have been specific allegations of wrongdoing by David Miscavige, I wish to take this opportunity to communicate my unequivocal confidence in David Miscavige, who is a long time devoted Scientologist, a trusted associate, and a good friend to me. Any activities which he may have engaged in at any time concerning my personal or business affairs have been done with my knowledge and authorization and for my benefit. The charge that he is organizing the theft of my assets are completely false and not worthy of further comment than that.

 

We do not know if Hubbard actually wrote this declaration or whether it was written on his behalf by Sherman Lenske for him to sign.

Either way. There is nothing there about him ever being a personal aide to Hubbard. The term used is “trusted associate”.

 

The question is which of the founder’s maxims will apply as Miscavige approaches Clearwater.

“I think he would be received with great skepticism,” said Roberto. “It is not an organization that has the smoothest past to deal with.”

But he also said he and Miscavige have an understanding they can improve relations, provided there are no more attacks against the police and the lawsuit is settled.

While Miscavige proposes “big steps,” Roberto said he wants “short steps.” He explained why, referring to the Scientologists’ march on police headquarters: “Last December is not that far away.”

Mayor Garvey said Miscavige was putting “a different spin” on Scientology. “It’s called doing a good PR program,” she said. “What they’re doing at this time is loving us to death. But, ultimately, the internal workings are the same.”

She said she had “no idea” what Miscavige could do to win her over. “The community does not trust them.”

Klein, the police chief, said the two sides can’t even settle their lawsuit over the police investigation much less reach a general peace.

“If we’re talking “big steps,’ I think it’s time to put up or shut up,” he said. “They want a big first step. There’s one.”

Miscavige “absolutely” can bring about peace in Clearwater, said Monique Yingling, a friend and Washington attorney who helped Miscavige battle the IRS. “He has the most incredible ability to just cut through the bulls – – -.”

Despite a traditional education that ended at age 16, Miscavige also “has one of the most incisive minds I’ve ever seen,” Yingling said.

“He’s just very effective at listening to what people’s concerns are and saying, ‘We can come up with a solution to that.’ “

 

Monique Yingling just happened to be “a Trial Attorney with the Tax Division of the Department of Justice, Washington, D.C. from 1978-1983”. According to her bio on Zuckert, Scoutt & Rasberger’s  website which just happens to be around the same time Mary Sue Hubbard and ten other Scientologists were being prosecuted for a “conspiracy” against the US Government. The catalyst that catapulted Miscavige into the cat birds seat.

Of course there is nothing to see here folks so let’s move along.

 

David Miscavige was born with a twin sister into a Polish-Italian family. Home was a new, two-story colonial house in southern New Jersey.

And while the family of two boys and two girls attended public schools and didn’t always make it to Sunday Mass, the youngest son of Ron Miscavige Sr. and his wife Loretta, received his first communion and first confession in the Catholic church.

 Ron Miscavige Sr. introduced his son to Scientology. — David Miscavige was a small boy who suffered from asthma and severe allergies, but he was determined to play football, basketball and baseball. Ron Miscavige Sr. once filled his son’s pockets with 2-pound metal plates so he could meet the 60-pound minimum and become a defensive back for the Pennypacker Patriots.

The father, who made a living playing trumpet, said he first heard of Scientology by chance at a meeting about a business opportunity. He read some of Hubbard’s books and began to receive “auditing,” a Scientology counseling process with the goal of locating negative emotions and purging them from the mind.

One day, as David Miscavige struggled through a serious asthma attack, his father took him to a Scientologist. According to both father and son, the attack stopped suddenly after a 45-minute auditing session.

“It was the reactive mind,” David Miscavige said, referring to Hubbard’s belief that mental images called “engrams” are stored in the unconscious and can cause negative emotions and physical pain.

“From that moment I knew this is it,” he said. “I mean I absolutely know that that is the point in my life where I said, “This is it. … I have the answer.’”

A short time later, the entire Miscavige family began to study at a local Scientology mission. From there, they graduated to higher levels of Scientology services at the church’s “advanced organization” in East Grinstead, England.

Ron Miscavige Sr. said he sold belongings, put furniture in storage and took his family to England.

“Before I made this decision I had planned on getting them an education,” he said. “Once I got in Scientology I said, ‘Wait a minute. This is something that they’ve never had.’ … And I knew this would help them more than anything I could possibly get them to do.”

In England, it did not take long for the younger Miscavige boy to make his mark. He began auditing other people at age 12; he became the 4,867th Scientologist to become “clear,” a state in which a person is freed of the “reactive mind;” and he set his sights on a career in Scientology.

By age 15, Miscavige was back in suburban Philadelphia for his sophomore year of high school.

It was the spring of 1976 and Hubbard had just established a “land base” for Scientology parishioners in Clearwater after years of operating from a ship known as the Apollo.

At the time, Miscavige said, he found the drug use among his classmates “appalling.” He decided Clearwater was a good place to work with Hubbard, and he quit high school on his 16th birthday.

“I totally sanctioned it,” said Ron Miscavige Sr., who today is a staff musician for Scientology in California.

 

Ronnie Miscavige would some time later be playing a different tune on that trumpet of his since leaving the Church by writing a “tell all” book entitled Ruthless.

 

“I wanted to dedicate my life to this,” David Miscavige said, explaining his decision to drop out of high school. “The thought of hanging around two more years in that existence so that I could match up with the status quo meant nothing to me because I knew that in two years I would go and work with the church anyway.”

He would get a much different education in Scientology.

Once in Clearwater, Miscavige joined the Sea Organization, the Navy-style staff that pledges eternal service to Scientology. He worked in the Commodore’s Messenger Organization, a group charged with making sure Scientology management was functioning according to Hubbard’s policies.

He bunked on the Fort Harrison Hotel’s ninth floor, delivered telexes, helped tend the grounds and worked as a steward serving food. He also took pictures of Clearwater for Scientology’s promotional brochures.

Before long, he was assigned to help with problems caused by the sudden influx of parishioners and staff in Clearwater. Miscavige was reviewing and training staffers, a job that allowed him to give directives to people many years his senior.

The teenager from New Jersey showed no timidity.

When “someone 15 years younger than you is starting to tell you something, you either have tremendous respect for that person … or you don’t listen to them,” said Greg Wilhere, then the leading Scientology official in Clearwater who now works under Miscavige in California. Miscavige, he said, “had the ability to make things go right.”

Miscavige was coming of age in a culture that believes each person is a spirit or “thetan” who operates with all the experience and competence born of many previous lives.

Hubbard wrote that a child is “not a special species of animal” distinct from adults, but “a man or a woman who has not attained full growth.”

After 10 months in Clearwater he was picked — he’s still not sure by whom — to join an elite group working directly with Hubbard, who was producing Scientology training films in LaQuinta, Calif.

 

The above was a continuation of Ron’s Photo Shoot Org:

an organization in the Office of LRH that produces tapes, films, video and artistic dissemination products such as brochures, etc.

 

which was usually composed of staff who had been busted off a regular post or position in Scientology and was the forerunner to what became Gold short for Golden Era Studios.

Not what would be considered “elite”.

 

Miscavige recalls meeting the founder in 1977. Hubbard, then 66, wore a straw cowboy hat, slacks, a short-sleeved shirt and boots. He was leaving a dining room when the teenager from Clearwater introduced himself. “Oh I know who you are,” he remembers Hubbard saying. “Welcome aboard.”

As most Scientologists do, Miscavige often refers to Hubbard by his initials, LRH. He says Hubbard called him by the nickname “Misc” (pronounced Misk).

 

Or it could have been a contraction of Miscellaneous.

 

“I never thought LRH was looking at me as: Oh, Dave is 17 years old or 18 years old,” Miscavige said. “It was just Dave, person to person. Spiritual being to spiritual being, so to speak.”

Miscavige, a photography bug, quickly grasped filmmaking concepts such as camera angles and continuity, said Norman Starkey, who was on the camera crew and now is a high-ranking Scientologist. “He was always thinking ahead, thinking of the future, predicting it and taking action.”

Hubbard appointed Miscavige camera chief and considered him his best friend, Starkey said. And in the mornings, when the film crew gathered for work, “David Miscavige was always the first person whose hand he’d shake.”

 

Does anyone believe that Ron shook everyone’s hand before they started filming each day?

It seems that “Storming” Norman Stark Raving Mad Starkey as I call him has stretched credibility beyond the snapping point here.

 

By 1979, Miscavige, at age 19, advanced to the supervisory position of “action chief” in the Commodore’s Messenger Organization. His new job was to send out teams or “missions” to investigate reports Hubbard was getting about poor management of Scientology organizations around the world.

 

“Action Chief” like “Ecclesiastical Leader” or “Pope”  is a position or post that doesn’t exist on any Scientology Organizing Board. A person heading a mission was called the Mission I/C for in charge. See Scientology’s Administrative Dictionary.

THE HUBBARD COLLECTION: Miscavige created the L. Ron Hubbard Library, which showcases a copy of every book Hubbard authored and many photos he took while traveling.

 

L Ron Hubbard Library is actually the public face of the Church of Spiritual Technology. Another corporation incorporated in 1982 which was assigned Hubbard’s copyrights and is actually senior to RTC. Miscavige had absolutely nothing to do with creating it.

 

Mike Rinder Marty Rathbun

Among the young “missionaires” Miscavige enlisted were Mike Rinder and Marty Rathbun, now in their forties and among the highest ranking officials in Scientology.

By 1980, Hubbard was in seclusion. According to church lore, he was continuing his Scientology research and had returned to writing fiction. Critics claim he was hiding from legal troubles and operating the church from afar.

 

 

According to historically documented fact Hubbard after resigning as Executive Director World Wide in 1966 became the Commodore of a small flotilla of ocean going vessels known as the Sea Organizations and pretty much had secluded himself from the outside world from that point on.

 

Among the many departments involved in running the church was the Guardian’s Office, or “GO,” a group that Miscavige says was separate and autonomous from the rest of church management. It had been handling Scientology’s legal, financial and public affairs since 1966 and was headed by Mary Sue Hubbard, the founder’s wife.

 

Actually the Guardian’s Office was never directly involved in “running the church”. After Ron’s resignation as Executive Director World Wide the organization was actually run by board members of the International Board and the Church of Scientology of California both who issued policy, bulletins and other directives.

Mary Sue Hubbard headed the Office of the Controller who’s duties were as follows:

HUBBARD COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE

Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead, Sussex

HCO POLICY LETTER OF 21 JANUARY 1969

Remimeo

CONTROLLER

The post of CONTROLLER is founded in the Office of LRH.

The post is just senior to the GUARDIAN.

The duties of the post consist of coordination of all Scientology orgs and activities.

There is just one Controller in all Scientology, just as there is only one Guardian.

The Controller is appointed by the Founder or in his absence by the Guardians and Board of Directors in single meeting.

 

The term of the office is for life as is that of the Guardian.

L. RON HUBBARD Founder

LRH:ldm.ei.rd
Copyright @ 1969
by L. Ron Hubbard
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

 

 

 

Miscavige said his “missions” discovered serious problems with the GO, including stealing the best staffers, not paying bills and failing to file legal pleadings on time.

 

More  undocumented “history” by David Miscavige. We are told generally of these various crimes that the Guardian’s Office allegedly committed but not specifically what they were.

In other words nothing but generalities.

 

Scientology also had been embarrassed by the 1979 convictions of Mrs. Hubbard and 10 other GO staffers for conspiring to steal federal government documents and cover it up.

 

What isn’t mentioned is that these documents that were “stolen” were related to the Church of Scientology and were illegally being withheld by the US Government for nebulous reasons of “National Security”.

Again see Omar Garrison’s book Playing Dirty. Also Top Secret actions against the Church

 

(Photo) TOP OFFICIALS: Mike Rinder, left, heads Scientology’s Office of Special Affairs. Marty Rathbun is president of Scientology’s Religious Technology Center. Both have worked with Miscavige about 20 years. — Miscavige, Rathbun and Rinder insist the GO was responsible for the activities that so enraged people in Clearwater. According to FBI files, Scientology arrived with plans to control civic leaders and discredit critics. An attempt was made to frame then-mayor Gabe Cazares with a sex smear.

 

Right. It had nothing to do with the at that time with the recent death of one of their parishioners, Lisa McPherson and then seeking to cover up their criminal negligence. Nor that Flag operates much like a high security compound than the “friendliest place on Earth”. Surrounded by surveillance cameras and armed guards.

 

“It’s 20 years later and we had no involvement in it or knowledge it was happening, yet we’re still handling the fallout of it,” Rinder said. He added: “That isn’t us.”

 

Welcome to the Church of Blamology. Whatever’s wrong with the Church currently is someone else’s fault and has nothing to do with the current management.

Actually the organization that Rinder headed the Office of Special Affairs which took over from the old Guardian’s Office is much worse in my opinion since shifted from Government targets to “rogue Scientologists”, critics and “squirrels”.

See Wired’s Alt Scientology War.

Much like the notorious “Operation Freakout” which was a GO side show but now is pretty much OSA’s primary modus operandi.

In other words what is them is in many ways actually much worse.

 

Clearwater never knew Scientology was near collapse from legal problems and its own infighting, Miscavige said. “I thought the church would actually disintegrate.”

 

The irony is that under David Miscavige’s “leadership” the Church has disintegrated. It is almost as if a neutron bomb has hit the organization leaving nothing but empty edifices called “Ideal Orgs“.

The Organization has diverted away from training and processing the public to endlessly asking for donations for the above and for the International Association of Scientologists.

 

In 1981, as Mary Sue Hubbard appealed her prison sentence, Miscavige said he and others concluded she had to go. When none of his superiors would confront the founder’s wife, Miscavige stepped forward.

 

Another myth. The new management who I call the “Scientology Junta” were looking for any excuse to take down the Guardian’s Office so they could  “move in” on the lucrative Franchise or Mission Network which was under the GO’s control and thus created a schism  in the Church. Mary Sue Hubbard and the GO were basically standing in their way and thus had to go.

All one has to do is simply “follow the money”.

 

“I thought if I do something and it’s wrong or I don’t achieve this, I’ve had it. I’m toast,” he said. “But if I don’t do something, after seeing what the GO had been engaged in … I’m convinced I’m toast anyway.”

During two heated encounters, Miscavige persuaded Mary Sue Hubbard to resign. Together they composed a letter to Scientologists confirming her decision — all without ever talking to L. Ron Hubbard.

 

Again there is no historical record of what actually happened here except for Miscavige’s account of events. Memorialized here and in this affidavit where Miscavige discuses what happened in broad generalities.

See this alternative analysis.

 

He saw the one-on-one meeting as the only way. “I knew if it was going to be a physical takeover we’re going to lose because they had a couple thousand staff and we (the “messengers”) had about 50. That is the amazing part about it.”

 

As above. There is no record of what actual “crimes” were revealed by this “investigation” headed by Miscavige or how many Sea Organization actually participated in it. However we do know that the action of overthrowing and abolishing the GO was in fact a Suppresive Act and a High Crime according to Scientology’s policies on such matters.

Again:

Mutiny.

And

Seeking to splinter off an area of Scientology and deny it properly constituted authority for personal profit, personal power or “to save the organization from the higher officers of Scientology.”

Also it seems likely that eliminating the GO was already a foregone conclusion and that uncovering these alleged “crimes” were merely used to justify their actions.

In my opinion it is unlikely that Mary Sue or her successor would have accepted the Faustian deal which Miscavige and Rathbun would eventually make with the Internal Revenue Service which will discussed later.

 

The founder’s wife was ousted by Miscavige from her high post in Scientology in 1981. — Indeed, the scenario is hard to imagine in any other organizational setting. A 21-year-old employee, five years on the staff and with only a modicum of power, manages to oust the boss’s wife by arguing that is what the boss would want.

 

The “scenario” is only “hard to imagine” probably  because it never actually happened. A trick used by Intelligence or Espionage Agencies using their friends in PR agencies such as Hill & Knowlton and in News Outlets like the SP Times is to create a false perception of events like  portraying  Miscavige as merely having “modicum of power” when in fact there is evidence suggesting that he may have had the backing of the US Government in particular the CIA as an Agent of Influence.

Even if one dismisses the above as “Conspiracy Theory”. The fact is that Miscavige had more than a “modicum of power” through his direct connection to Pat Broeker. The man who at the time had direct access to the “Old Man”.

 

“People keep saying, ‘How’d you get power?’ ” Miscavige said. “Nobody gives you power. I’ll tell you what power is. Power in my estimation is if people will listen to you. That’s it.”

 

Another lie. Miscavige by being assigned to the “Special Project” by Broeker  which operated covertly out of ASI was granted the ability to restructure the Church of Scientology under what was known as Mission All Clear or MAC.

 

Today, Mary Sue Hubbard lives in California and Miscavige says the two are friends.

 

So much of a “friend” that he and the Organization never bothered to acknowledge her passing in 2002. Hey but what are friends for? The truth is that Miscavige hated Mary Sue  and the new management kept her under constant surveillance to ensure that she didn’t initiate a counter-coup.

 

It took five months for word of her resignation to reach her secluded husband, Scientology says. In a sworn statement two years later, Hubbard said of his wife: “Although we are presently apart, we remain husband and wife.”

 

Hubbard was intentionally kept out of the loop by Pat Broeker his aide up in Creston who conspired with Miscavige to keep any “entheta” a contraction for enturbulated theta, loosely meaning bad news off his communication lines.

Not all “bad news” however. What was allowed was how badly the GO were screwing up though what wasn’t mentioned was how Broeker and Miscavige were sabotaging their events as covered in the earlier link.

 

Miscavige, meanwhile, was rising fast in Scientology, taking charge where others wouldn’t.

 

Of course Miscavige neglects to mention Pat Broeker’s influence in all of this or his possible connections to CIA as an Agent of Influence. Here we find Miscavige listed  with 2618 other sources connected to the Agency.

 

Scientology underwent a corporate restructuring after the GO episode, and Hubbard appointed Miscavige in 1982 to run his sizeable fortune through a new corporation formally outside Scientology’s umbrella. Miscavige was only 21. Author Services Inc., based in Los Angeles, would manage Hubbard’s personal, business and literary affairs.

 

Again it was actually Broeker who appointed him as the head Author Services acting on Hubbard’s behalf and then had Hubbard bail his sorry ass out when Miscavige was caught with his hand in the till with the Riverside Declaration.

The origin of the “most trusted friend” myth.

 

As Miscavige’s position in Scientology grew, allegations began to surface about his conduct.

He lists two without being asked. One is that he raided Hubbard’s assets and did “harm to the founder.” The other is the suggestion Miscavige was involved in the 1985 suicide of his mother-in-law, Mary Florence Barnett, who was said to have associated with a splinter group of Scientologists.

 

This is Scientology’s own version of the Vincent Foster “suicide”. Seems poor Flo managed to somehow shoot herself several times.

 

Miscavige is incredulous about being linked to her death. California authorities ruled Ms. Barnett shot herself three times in the chest and once in her right temple with a .22-calibre rifle. One of Ms. Barnett’s daughters told an investigator she had been depressed following surgery.

 

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks”

Hamlet Act 3, Scene 2

William Shakespeare

 

In 1982, Hubbard’s estranged son took legal action, claiming his father was either dead or incompetent. He alleged Miscavige was running Scientology through Author Services and that Miscavige and another church official were looting the founder’s accounts.

In 1983, Scientology gave the court a sworn statement in which Hubbard claimed to be in a self-imposed seclusion and was fine. The document contained Hubbard’s fingerprints and was signed with special ink that allowed the date of his signature to be confirmed.

It called Miscavige a “trusted associate” and “good friend” who had kept Hubbard’s affairs in good order. A judge ruled the statement was authentic.

 

The judge actually agreed that the signature was authentic and that the finger prints matched his records . He didn’t make any such ruling about the statement itself.

 

In sworn declarations used in several anti-Scientology lawsuits, Miscavige also has been accused of ordering the shredding of documents sought by the IRS and the courts, ordering attacks of church enemies and striking subordinates.

 

The documents that he shredded probably had nothing to do with the upcoming appeal with the IRS and likely had every to do with forged orders which he and Pat Broeker claimed were written by L Ron Hubbard.

 

Miscavige’s top lieutenant, Marty Rathbun, said the courts and the IRS got every document they requested. He also said he has never known Miscavige in 20 years to hit anyone. “That’s not his temperament,” Rathbun said. “He’s got enough personal horsepower that he doesn’t need to resort to things like that.”

 

I believe it was Karl Marx who said something like comedy was tragedy times time or something similar. Did Miscavige ever hit anyone?  Ask Marty that question now.

 

Said Miscavige, “If a fraction of what they said about me was true — a fraction — I wouldn’t be here.”

 

Unless of course Miscavige was protected by some Agency who had the power to make law enforcement agencies look the other way.

 

He added later: “I’ve not only not been convicted of anything, I’ve never been indicted for anything. Now I think that’s where you finally have to look at the, quote, critics and say, “Hey. Put up or shut up. Let’s see some evidence.’”

 

As above and also the fact that such evidence had been covered up by his former faithful flunky Marty Rathbun who admitted as much when the tragic death of Lisa McPherson was more recently revisited.

 

He expressed impatience with the topic, calling the allegations “ancient history.” Irritated, he said to the Times: “I wonder, what am I doing in this room?”

 

Again the above Shakespeare quote comes to mind about protesting too much.

 

One of those critics is Vaughn Young, who once worked with Miscavige and left Scientology in 1989 after 20 years.

Subordinates responded to Miscavige with “a combination of admiration and fear,” Young said. “He’s got a serious vicious streak in him that you don’t want to trigger.”

But Young offered praise as well: “He’s got severe political genius in him. He knows how to pick people. He knows how to make people work for him. He knows how to favor them. He knows how to instill just enough fear and threat. He knows how to push people beyond what they think they can do to get things done.”

 

One call tell that RVY was a master of PR by assigning any kind “genius” to this idiot goes beyond anything Hill & Knowlton could dream up.

 

Miscavige dismisses Young as a consultant who is paid to testify in court against Scientology. Miscavige believes he’s targeted by those who wanted to “bring Scientology to its knees and destroy it” and never forgave him for ousting the GO.

 

Not just the late Robert Vaughn Young but others who have disagreed with Miscavige have found themselves in hot water, myself included.

Scientology’s management have totally equated Miscavige with Scientology. A definite “A = A”. What is called an aberration.

 

“You would think that that would get me at least a simple thank you,” he said. “Instead what it got me was I think the biggest criminal investigation in the history of the IRS.”

 

Yet again there is not a shred of evidence supporting what he says is “the biggest criminal investigation in the history of the IRS.” Something on the order of Elliot Ness and the Untouchables.

I’ve noticed that Miscavige likes continually  to portray himself continually as a “victim” :

 

HUBBARD COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE

Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead, Sussex

HCO BULLETIN OF 18 JULY 1959

TECHNICALLY SPEAKING

We have a whole world full of “victims”.
That’s enough.
We don’t have to be victims ourselves. It’s a scarcity we don’t have to remedy. New Definition: A Scientologist—one who is not a victim.
We can make victims into people without Q and Aing.

——————-

Historical note: The whole Christian movement is based on the victim. Compulsion of the overt act-motivator sequence. They won by appealing to victims. We can win by converting victims. Christianity succeeded by making people into victims. We can succeed by making victims into people. It’s time the inversion turned anyway.

L. RON HUBBARD

LRH:brb.rd
Copyright © 1959
by L. Ron Hubbard
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

 

 

 

 

The plush Celebrity Centre in Hollywood is a retreat for Scientology’s movie star parishoners. Inside are luxury accommodations, auditing rooms and the 3-star Renaissance restaurant, which is open to the public.

Of all Scientology’s conflicts, none is more bitter than its 40-year battle with the IRS.

 

Actually this “battle” lasted a little more than three decades with the IRS’ revocation of Scientology’s tax exempt status in 1967.

 

For years, the IRS had denied the Church of Scientology a tax exemption, saying it was a commercial enterprise. The church appealed, spending millions on lawyers.

As tensions mounted in the months after the Guardian’s Office was disbanded, the IRS launched a criminal investigation of Scientology that focused on Miscavige.

 

As noted earlier. There is no evidence that such an investigation was launched against Miscavige personally.

 

“He was always on the defensive,” said Washington lawyer Gerald Feffer, who has represented the church in IRS matters since 1984. “He lived in an environment where people (federal investigators) were trying to destroy his family, himself and his church.”

 

Again poor Dave.

 

Miscavige said he was targeted by IRS agents in Los Angeles who blamed him for Guardian’s Office crimes. He said the government’s main witnesses against him were spurned Guardian staffers.

The IRS would not confirm the investigation, much less discuss it. But Feffer said it was never acted upon by the Justice Department and dropped in 1985. Some time later, Feffer said, he approached the IRS about Scientology’s tax exemption and was rebuffed.

 

 

Well actually it did take years but the Government did award him for his fine service in eliminating the pesky GO and thus their proclivity for filing FOIA requests by deputizing him as a Special IRS Agent by making him the Chairman of the Board of the Church’s Tax Compliance Committee. Who says good things don’t come to those who wait?

“Gold”: $50-million outpost

 

A place called ‘gold’ Nowhere is Scientology’s trademark self-sufficiency more clearly in evidence than at its $50-million outpost in the arid hills 90 miles east of Los Angeles.

 

 

Hubbard actually wanted a functional base for management and the production of Scientology promotion. After his death the new Management turned it into Scientology’s version of Disneyland.

 

Amid Scientology’s IRS troubles, Hubbard died in 1986 while still in seclusion. Later that year, Miscavige rose to the position he holds today after removing a church executive who, he said, was re-hiring ousted Guardian staffers.

 

The fact is that Pat Broeker represented a threat to Miscavige’s absolute control over the Organization having allegedly been named as one of Hubbard’s “Loyal Officers“, along with his wife Annie which was later canceled.

 

Hostilities escalated in the late 1980s when the IRS began to audit the income tax returns of thousands of Scientologists. Scientology responded with lawsuits and massive records requests, seeking to document IRS discrimination. It also investigated IRS employees and published scathing reports of the agency in the Scientology magazine, Freedom.

 

 

The fact is that although the Church itself had tax exempt status. The law which is IRC 501Ciii didn’t allow Scientology training and processing to be considered exempt because according to reports that is “Success Stories” they would be considered “tangible benefits”.

Also these services offered were delivered at a fixed fee and were not considered “donations” as such.

Thus the Church under Scientology’s new management or the “Junta” actually argued against Scientology giving any tangible benefit of any kind by having parishioners file for a tax deduction for receiving services rendered by the Church.

 

At the height of the war in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the church was spending about $1.5-million a month in legal fees, largely to fight the IRS.

 

Hubbard never called for the total elimination of the IRS, while the Church under its new management did by supporting a “Fair Tax“.

 

HUBBARD COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE

Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead, Sussex

HCO BULLETIN OF 18 JULY 1959

INCOME TAX REFORM

 

Please write the enclosed letter to (1) your leading local paper, and (2) your representatives in Congress.

America needs your help to survive and we need your help to spread and effect a postulate as a mass-postulate test. This test is to determine the amount of mest communication necessary to change the “mind” of a governing agency. In this last respect it is purely research. But it is also a good idea. Let’s do it. Your ability to postulate is workable too. Please tell us if you have done it.

——————-

Dear

There comes a time in the history of any country when tax collection activities become a disease that its economy cannot bear. Such a disease is ordinarily healed by revolt, inflation, or financial collapse. The primary source of disintegration in all governments, whether ancient Egypt or modern America, is tax voracity or abuses.

While fighting a cold front with Communism the US is violently co-operating with Communist aims by destroying her individual confidence and initiative with a Marxist tax reform. The basic principles of US income tax were taken from “Das Kapital” and are aimed at destroying capitalism. Unless the US ceases to co-operate with this Red push, Communism could win in America.

The reform of all income tax laws is needed for other reasons. (1) To increase government revenues in order to support defense. (2) To prevent spiraling inflation and another stock market collapse and (3) to return the US to the basic principles of democracy as opposed to economic tyranny.

The following program should accomplish all desirable ends. The only “losers” are the people now gaining tax bonuses and the Kremlin.

If America cannot act rationally on this matter of tax abuse, she is condemned to a crash, another depression and Communist dominance in the world.

Income Tax Reforms that would stabilise US Economy and could win an election:

Charge as tax 55’o of all gross income and forbid taxes on net incomes.

Abolish criminal penalties for tax failures; substitute higher percentiles of gross failures to pay.

Forbid use of employers’ or tax payers’ time to actually collect taxes from others; (no second party tax duties).

Forbid payments of bonuses or awards to tax personnel or informants for tax collections.

Make tax personnel personally liable for all public actions if illegal or damaging.

Forbid the payment of tax on tax monies paid; sums paid to internal revenue; tax payments to be an expense, all retroactive.

 

Delete the political aspect from income tax; make it a financial transaction, not an advance of the principles of Karl Marx aimed to penalise leadership or initiative.

 

Delete all criminal aspects from income tax law, not using penalties about taxation to arrest men whose other crimes are suspected but cannot be proven by other law agencies; the payment of tax, if it is to be effected, must not be associated in the public mind with the actions of gangsters.

Use the income tax amendment to collect taxes, not fight capitalism or the inequalities of ability amongst a people.

Forbid the invasion of privacy of personal transactions and activities in order to collect tax beyond the examination of a corporation’s books by a qualified accountant.

Cease to penalise corporation executives exclusively because their accounts departments fail them—penalise only the accountants who refuse to work or who make the errors, since management to-day is becoming difficult where the person actually making the errors and omissions cannot be touched.

Forbid complex forms for taxation purposes. Allow only forms which list income and calculate its gross percentage.

——————

If the ills of income tax practice are not cured by swift law, they will be cured by (a) Economic collapse, (b) Russian victory, (c) A revolt of the people, or (d) The abandonment of democracy in favor of a fascist state.

America can no longer afford the deadly disease of economic punishment in the name of income tax. This, more surely than H-bombs is destroying her future.

The aim of the Kremlin is to destroy the US economic system. In 1911, the US altered her constitution to admit a Marxist tax principle. This was the first germ of the present economic disease.

It can be handled in such a way as to save civilisation or it can be ignored with the consequence of total destruction.

A way has been hoped for that would give the government her revenues for defense without wrecking the economy. This is such a way since political popularity can be bought by it without sacrificing government revenues.

L. RON HUBBARD

 

 

The church’s lawyers said they tried for years to work through IRS channels, and that Miscavige kept pushing for a direct meeting, going right to the top.

It became an inside joke, until one day in Washington in 1991 Miscavige and Rathbun told their lawyers they were headed to see IRS Commissioner Fred Goldberg.

“He does get you out of the mindset of you have to do things in traditional ways,” Feffer said of Miscavige. “He had an unwillingness to accept there was no way to solve the problem.”

Miscavige didn’t see Goldberg that day, but the impromptu visit got him a later meeting and a two-year review process.

The IRS had hundreds of questions. Scientology found itself having to explain such Hubbard directives as “make more money” and “make other people produce so as to make money.”

The church argued that the IRS had taken those statements out of context — that Hubbard’s remarks were directed only at the finance and treasury divisions, which constituted 4 percent of the staff.

Goldberg, the IRS commissioner, did not return telephone calls to his Washington law office.

Seven days after the exemption was approved, 10,000 Scientologists were summoned to the Los Angeles Sports Arena for what they were told was a big announcement. Miscavige took the podium in a black tuxedo as two olympic-size torches burned behind him. He held the audience in suspense for much of his 2 1/2-hour speech, before proclaiming: “The war is over!”

The war was over and many such as myself at the time saw the secret closing agreement as a defeat. Not a victory. Despite the Triumph of the Will  manner that Miscavige presented it in.

The ovation lasted more than 10 minutes.

Although peace was at hand, Miscavige used the occasion to recount the entire war, tracing its origins to a conspiracy by psychiatrists. He called them “pea-brained psych-indoctrinated mental midgets” who once plotted with the government to make a “slave society.”

He referred to IRS officials as “vampires” and gave a litany of their sins against Scientology.

And he railed against those who “deliberately tried to stop us,” adding with a smile: “We know who they are and we’ll get to them last.”

After 1993, Scientology was able to channel the millions it was spending against the IRS into projects that had been under way since the early 1980s.

 

The fact is that this so called “battle” with the IRS had never detracted from expanding in the past yet according to research conducted by others and myself, Scientology hasn’t expanded at all since its 1993 “victory” over the IRS but is in fact contracting.

 

Among them: trying to grow Scientology by attracting new members; pushing parishioners to sign up for ever higher levels of Scientology counseling; standardizing Scientology practices the way Hubbard outlined; preserving and distributing his many writings and lectures, and renovating Scientology’s buildings.

 

One can ask how one continues to “standardize” a practice that was already considered standard as in “Standard Tech”? This would be much like perfecting what would already be considered perfect. Not that Ron considered his technology was “perfect” but he did say:

 

HUBBARD COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE

Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead, Sussex

HCO POLICY LETTER OF 14 FEBRUARY 1965

(Reissued on 7 June 1967, with the word “instructor” replaced by “supervisor”.)

SAFEGUARDING TECHNOLOGY

For some years we have had a word “squirreling”. It means altering Scientology, off-beat practices. It is a bad thing. I have found a way to explain why.

Scientology is a workable system. This does not mean it is the best possible system or a perfect system. Remember and use that definition. Scientology is a workable system.

In fifty thousand years of history on this planet alone, Man never evolved a workable system. It is doubtful if, in foreseeable history, he will ever evolve another.

Man is caught in a huge and complex labyrinth. To get out of it requires that he follow the closely taped path of Scientology.

Scientology will take him out of the labyrinth. But only if he follows the exact markings in the tunnels.

It has taken me a third of a century in this lifetime to tape this route out.

It has been proven that efforts by Man to find different routes came to nothing. It is also a clear fact that the route called Scientology does lead out of the labyrinth Therefore it is a workable system, a route that can be travelled.

What would you think of a guide who, because his party said it was dark and the road rough and who said another tunnel looked better, abandoned the route he knew would lead out and led his party to a lost nowhere in the dark. You’d think he was a pretty wishy-washy guide.

What would you think of a supervisor who let a student depart from procedure the supervisor knew worked. You’d think he was a pretty wishy-washy supervisor.

What would happen in a labyrinth if the guide let some girl stop in a pretty canyon and left her there forever to contemplate the rocks? You’d think he was a pretty heartless guide. You’d expect him to say at least, “Miss, those rocks may be pretty, but the road out doesn’t go that way.”

All right, how about an auditor who abandons the procedure which will make his preclear eventually clear just because the preclear had a cognition?

People have following the route mixed up with “the right to have their own ideas.” Anyone is certainly entitled to have opinions and ideas and cognitions—so long as these do not bar the route out for self and others.

Scientology is a workable system. It white tapes the road out of the labyrinth If there were no white tapes marking the right tunnels, Man would just go on wandering around and around the way he has for eons, darting off on wrong roads, going in circles, ending up in the sticky dark, alone.

Scientology, exactly and correctly followed, takes the person up and out of the mess.

So when you see somebody having a ball getting everyone to take peyote because it restimulates prenatals, know he is pulling people off the route. Realize he is squirreling. He isn’t following the route.

Scientology is a new thing- it is a road out. There has not been one. Not all the salesmanship in the world can make a bad route a proper route. And an awful lot of bad routes are being sold. Their end product is further slavery, more darkness, more misery.

Scientology is the only workable system Man has It has already taken people toward higher I.Q., better lives and all that. No other system has. So realize that it has no competitor.

Scientology is a workable system. It has the route taped. The search is done. Now the route only needs to be walked.

So put the feet of students and preclears on that route. Don’t let them off of it no matter how fascinating the side roads seem to them. And move them on up and out.

Squirreling is today destructive of a workable system.

Don’t let your party down. By whatever means, keep them on the route. And they’ll be free. If you don’t, they won’t.

L. RON HUBBARD Founder

LRH:nt:rd
Copyright © 1965
by L. Ron Hubbard
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

 

 

“The one incredible thing that we all needed was what David did,” said jazz musician Chick Corea, a long-time Scientologist who lives in Clearwater. “(He) came and took all the dropped balls and caught them all and kind of saved the organization from splintering apart, and put it back together again for all our sakes.”

 

Chick Corea like most artists who are attracted to the subject has very little theological or philosophical background meaning actual training thus can not give an informed opinion of what Miscavige actually has done.

What he has done from the perspective of someone who has trained to the highest levels of Scientology such as myself is that he has altered the practice of Scientology almost beyond recognition while claiming to “correct” various flaws in the subject (see above). In other words “squirreled” and has to a large extent destroyed its workability.

 

Now, Scientology’s global 10-year plan calls for a mission in every city of 100,000 or more and a church in every city of 250,000 to 500,000, Miscavige said.

 

Miscavige for the most part sets unattainable targets and goals. Such as the “Golden Age of Tech” which had the objective of making “perfect auditors” who we’re “drilled to perfection” before ever auditing.

Or making every Organization “Ideal” according his twisted point of view where “gradients don’t apply”:

 

Some guys are so bad off they set targets like “move the mountain” and give one and all a big failure. Since there’s no way to do it and probably no reason to either. That’s an SP target. So what MUST be done means just that. What is vital and necessary. Not what is simply a good idea.

HCO POLICY LETTER OF 14 JANUARY 1969

Target Series 1

OT ORGS

 

 

In the U.S., Scientology sees opportunity for growth in parts of the country with little or no Scientology presence, Miscavige said. “You go to the Midwest there’s not much at all.”

He also has been trying to improve Scientology’s public image, even as reports persist that Scientology harasses its enemies with private investigators, lawsuits, and tactics such as bad-mouthing targets to neighbors, relatives and business associates.

The image needs work, he said. “Am I satisfied? No. Of course not. Do I think it’s improved? Yes. Do I think we have more credibility than we had in earlier years? Yes. Do I think it should change? I think it should improve. Do I think that’s something that can happen overnight? Not quite.”

Scientologists on occasion had “no choice” but to fight, he said.

“Have they been right every time? Probably not. Should they make as big an effort at mending fences? I think so. … Is there another approach that could have been taken? I think probably.”

 

In order to fix Scientology’s image Miscavige elicited the help of Hill & Knowlton, a PR and perception management firm with connections to the Intelligence Community.

 

One remaining hurdle for Scientology is the Lisa McPherson case, now in the hands of prosecutors who are deciding whether a criminal charge is warranted. McPherson, 36, was a Scientologist who became psychotic after a minor auto accident in 1995 and was taken from Morton Plant Hospital to avoid psychiatric treatment, which Scientologists believe is harmful.

Her fellow Scientologists watched her for 17 days at the church’s Fort Harrison Hotel before driving her to a hospital. Gaunt and dehydrated, she was dead on arrival from a blood clot in her lung.

Miscavige suggested the same situation would be handled differently in the future.

“Do I think that we should work with the community or the police or the medical people down there to work out what to do if there’s another Scientologist who needs care and we want to avoid psychiatric treatment? Yes I do,” Miscavige said. “And why is that? No matter what the circumstance … anybody would want to do something to avoid someone dying.”

It is Scientology’s first acknowledgement that the four-star hotel may not have been the best place for McPherson.

Miscavige also said he believes some people were “thrilled” by McPherson’s death because it could be used against Scientology.

“Here’s what I do know,” he said, slapping his black leather desk top with each word. “No Scientologist — no Scientologist — is involved in attempting to do in another Scientologist.”

Miscavige said he usually does not involve himself in local issues, such as which buildings Scientology will buy in Clearwater. Nor was he called, he said, the night McPherson died.

According to Marty Rathbun, Miscavige was heavily involved with Lisa McPherson’s case handling and subsequent fall out from her demise.

More on as I’ve said in a later article.

As far as being involved in estate decisions. Miscavige was the main impetuous behind the monstrosity known as the Super Power Building. Discussed below and what are called “Ideal Orgs”.

He will, however, stay active on larger matters such as the 300,000-square-foot building Scientology wants to build across from the Fort Harrison Hotel.

When early architectural renderings resulted space-age designs that, Miscavige said, “looked like a hockey rink to me,” he steered church planners toward a historic look to match the Fort Harrison.

Despite Miscavige’s high place in Scientology, his associates say he doesn’t receive many more perks than a nice office, a fantastic wardrobe and proximity to Scientology’s stable of celebrity parishioners, including his friends Tom Cruise and John Travolta.

Beyond the intense exterior, Miscavige can deal a humorous one-liner. Friends say he is given to sending unexpected notes and gifts.

He drives a Honda around Los Angeles and lives in staff quarters with his wife, Michelle, who is one of his paid assistants. Reports to the IRS in the early 1990s put his salary in the $60,000 range, and Rathbun says it’s $50,000 now.

During frequent visits to Clearwater, where his mother lives, Miscavige said he spends his nights in Scientology’s staff dormitory, a converted apartment complex on Saturn Avenue. He said he eats in Scientology’s communal dining halls and sometimes gets out to Domenic’s Capri Italian Restaurant on Clearwater Beach. He goes to movies, enjoys trail biking in Hillsborough County, and has been known to ride a water scooter.

 

Reports indicate that Miscavige who currently has a personal entourage that includes a personal chef, hair stylist, etc. etc. has received more perks as “COB” of the Church than L Ron Hubbard.

 

He said he also plays piano, takes underwater photographs, reads several books a week, exercises daily and keeps a casual eye on his hometown sports teams from Philadelphia.

 

He doesn’t specify what these “books” are. But there are those of us who suspect that they are comic books.

Another fact is that despite being the “head” of Scientology since 1987 that his level of training has remained as it was when he did his original training at Saint Hill back in 1972, that is Class IV and that he has never completed the Organizational Executive Course.

 

He communicates with most Scientologists through church publications, and through gala events that reflect his interest in audio-visual effects and the performing arts.

The events, which are taped and sent around the world, have several trademark elements: Texas-size stages; grandiose props; laser shows; pulsating music; an audience of upbeat Scientologists and a super-size photo of L. Ron Hubbard.

 

What many of Hubbard’s earlier materials would describe as an “implant”.

 

Capt. David Miscavige, smartly dressed in a tuxedo or the blue-and-gold uniform of the Sea Organization, plays the confident emcee with lots of good news about Scientology.

At the end of the night, he may flash a thumbs-up or briefly soak in the applause. And he will turn and look up to his mentor’s huge visage and clap, leading the flock in a traditional Scientology chant.

“Hip hip hooray! Hip hip hooray! Hip hip hooray!”

It is Hubbard, after all, whose words Miscavige will heed as he tries to improve Scientology’s standing in Clearwater and around the world. Ten of them are inscribed on his boardroom wall:

Or at least says he is while doing something else entirely.

“Ideas and not battles mark the forward progress of mankind.”