Prologue

STEWART LAMONT

10

Prologue

IT WASN'T a bad substitute for paradise: the rolling hills, the
manicured landscape gardens, stitched into a lush patchwork by the long,
straight, freshly painted white fences. The scrub which is a common
feature of the hills south of Creston in Southern California had been
meticulously cleared from the 160 acre ranch, designed originally for
horse training. The quarter-mile track was still there, plus a
grandstand painted white and an observation tower. Wild life abounded
and in the hothouse corn stalks grew alongside orchids. The tri-level
ranch house sat atop a hill overlooking a lake. A satellite dish and
pool were perched beneath a patio and sun porch. The lord of this
manor might have been forgiven for thinking he had found heaven
on earth.

As the winter sun reached its highest point on Monday, 27 January
1986, two station-wagons turned slowly out of the ranch gates and
drove up Donovan Road making for the port of San Luis Obispo,
which lay a few miles away on the coast. There a boat was waiting to
help the occupants perform their macabre and secret task.

In the front seat of the lead car were two lawyers: Earle Cooley and
John Peterson. Cooley was a tall man of vast bulk who had weighed in
on the side of the Church of Scientology in several court cases before
becoming one of its most influential members. He had once spent a few
hours cooling off in the cells for contempt of court when he had
defended his clients too zealously. The previous Friday he had dashed
the hundred and fifty miles north from Los Angeles as soon as he had
heard the news. He had spent the weekend with his assistant, John
Peterson, who was driving the station-wagon, seeing that everything
went exactly to plan. There had been no autopsy on the deceased. But
the sheriff of San Luis Obispo County and the coroner had been

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RELIGION INC.

satisfied with the death certificates and the fingerprints and blood
samples with which they had been furnished. They had managed to
arrange a swift cremation that morning for the body. With the ashes
scarcely cool, Cooley and Peterson and others were on their way to
perform one final task before returning to Los Angeles to announce
their secret to the world that very evening.

The small silver urn Cooley held between his knees contained the
remains of a giant among men - the man he admired above anybody
else who had lived. Behind Cooley and Peterson sat a large man with
greying hair, his tinted glasses concealing soft and tearful eyes. Heber
Jentzsch was an emotional man. A man with a big heart. As well as his
personal grief was his regret that he had never met the man whose
remains occupied the urn, yet in the eyes of the world Jentzsch was the
man who represented the deceased when he disappeared six years
previously. Beside Jentzsch sat his wife Karen, a dark-skinned woman
who had known their dead leader. Gossip had it that she had been a
night-club hostess before Scientology had given her a new career, one
in which she had gone quickly and ruthlessly to the top before her
marriage to the President of the Church of Scientology International.

The other station-wagon contained three people: two men and a
woman. It drew ahead as they neared the jetty to meet the skipper of
the large motor-boat which they had chartered for the morning. The
man did not know that this was to be the 'Commodore's' last voyage or
that the funeral he was to witness that morning in the gentle calm of a
bay in the Pacific Ocean on the Californian coast was that of a man
who had started his life's voyage as a Navy man in these very waters
and ended it as a notorious recluse. Not for a moment did he suspect
that the name of the bulky Caucasian whose ashes occupied the silver
urn was Lafayette Ron Hubbard, science-fiction writer and founder of
a religion which had millions of followers worldwide. Now only seven
of those followers were present, as the sun glinted on the ocean around
their small vessel, to say goodbye to Ron as they affectionately and
devotedly knew him. There was a reason for the seclusion and the
privacy. It was a very simple reason. Those millions of followers
around the world did not know that Hubbard was dead. The seven
secret mourners intended to keep it that way for at least a few more
hours.

The youngest of the seven, a slim youth in his early twenties with
a drooping moustache, was dressed in black trousers and a white
short-sleeved shirt. The insignia and epaulettes he wore were not from the
United States Navy, but the badges of the Sea Organization, the elite

12

corps of Scientology. Commander David Miscavige opened a slim
volume bound in maroon leather and began to read, his strong, deep
voice trembling with emotion. '*The finely grist mill of time is spent in
service such as yours*,' he began. '*We gained from Ron, who gave to us
from his past the ability to live and fare against the tides and storms of
fate. Its true we've lost his shoulder up against the wheel and lost as
well his counsel and his strength. But lost them only for a while*.'

As the blank verse from Scientology's book of ceremonies was read,
two mourners stood with their heads bowed, looking into the water.
Pat and Annie Broeker were husband and wife and the only two
people, apart from Miscavige, who knew where and how Ron
Hubbard had lived these past three years. Pat Broeker was well suited
to such clandestine activities, He had a voracious appetite for spy
stories, fictional and factual, and had the nickname within Scientology
of '007'. He was in his mid thirties, a High School graduate who
had attended college but had been no high flier. His succession of posts
within Scientology had resulted in his being 'busted' from every one
except the last, which was as a financial courier to Hubbard himself.
That post proved to be providential in 1980 when Hubbard learned
that the authorities were about to force him into court. He disappeared
and Pat and Annie Broeker became his only link with the outside world.

'*We do not tremble faced with death - we know that living is not
breath. Prevail! Go, Ron, and take the life that offers now, and live in
good expectancy that we will do our part*.'

Annie Broeker let a tear glisten on her cheek. She was Pat Broeker's
third wife. But in this marriage Annie was the dominant partner. Now
in her late twenties, she had fifteen years of service in the Sea Org and
despite being 'busted' in 1979 from her post as deputy commanding
officer of the organization by Hubbard's wife, Mary Sue, with whom
'bad blood' still existed, she had survived. She was tough. 5' 6" in
height, she stood 2" higher than Miscavige and above her husband in
the pecking order.

'*Your debts are paid. This chapter of thy life is shut. Go now, dear
Ron, and live once more in happier time and place. Thank you, Ron.
And now here lift up your eyes and say to him goodbye*.' David
Miscavige was nearing the end of the funeral service written by Ron
Hubbard, although seldom performed throughout the hundreds of
Scientology churches scattered round the world. For twenty years
now Ron had developed the doctrine of its 'religious technology' or
'tech' as he called it. He had administered it through memos and

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RELIGION INC.

bulletins from the Hubbard Communications Office. If the tech was
Scientology's Bible, the HCOBs were its canon law. Neatly bound in
green folders, they defined what to do, how to do it, and to whom to
do it. Ron had even covered the present circumstances.

The Press, those 'merchants of chaos', and the Government,
stacked full of 'Suppressive Persons', would have a field-day when
they realized that Ron had 'dropped the body', Miscavige reflected.
They would move in for the kill. It would lead to severe strain on the
orgs. Where would the leadership come from? They had always
relied on Ron's word to settle policy matters. In recent years outsiders
had been told that he had retired to devote himself to study
and writing, but insiders knew that Ron was always there in memo
or in spirit. Now they would not know where to turn. That was why
David Miscavige had to keep his control. As Ron's protege he had
the task of 'keeping the show on the road' and 'getting the stats up'.

'*Come, friends, he is all right and he is gone. We have our work
to do, and he has his. He will be welcome there*.' Miscavige raised
his hand in a spontaneous salute to the leader to whom he was
devoted. The ocean air was not suited to his asthma. His enemies
called him the 'asthmatic dwarf' behind his back. Those who had
felt the lash of his tongue usually changed it to 'poison dwarf'.

Despite his youth and his size, Miscavige had a reputation for
getting things done. He had learned from Ron that if a little
hysterical screaming and shouting was necessary to achieve
something, you didn't think twice - you shouted. He had used the
technique to great effect at the Mission Holders' Conference in San
Francisco in 1982. It had been a tense time. The grasp on power
which the founding documents of the Religious Technology Center
had granted to him and his colleagues was incomplete until he was
seen to be in control. The next task had been to remove those who
might challenge that authority. Ron could not help him. He had
been incapacitated by a severe stroke, far worse than the one he had
suffered in 1975. As Ron lay dying, David Miscavige knew that the
Religious Technology Center was the only thing that could save
Scientology. It protected him from prosecution, it safeguarded the
tech and the orgs and it gave him the authority he needed to get the
job done. The body had been properly certified and all formalities
had been completed. The 'high crime' would have been to stand by
and watch the enemies of Scientology destroy the organization that
had nurtured him since he was a small child. He was not ashamed to
look on Ron as a father figure. To his enemies Scientology was a

14

PROLOGUE

cult, a con, a corporation marketing false religion. To David
Miscavige, it was all he knew.

What you have just read is mostly fictional. However, the characters
are real. There *is* a ranch at San Luis Obispo in Southern California. L.
Ron Hubbard mysteriously disappeared in 1980. The Religious
Technology Center *does* own the Scientology trademarks which bring
in millions of dollars per month worldwide. David Miscavige, a
relatively inexperienced member of the full-time staff of the Church of
Scientology, became within months its most influential figure. All that
is documented and acknowledged. But six years after he disappeared
and became a recluse, it was still not known whether Ron Hubbard
was alive or dead.

Then on Monday night, 27 January 1986, Earle Cooley, Chief
Counsel for the Church of Scientology, and Heber Jentzsch, President
of the Church of Scientology International, made their fateful
announcement. Hubbard was 'officially' dead. They explained that he
had left the bulk of his multi-million dollar estate to the Church of
Scientology. They revealed that his body had been cremated and its
ashes scattered. No post mortem had been carried out, and although
the coroner of San Luis Obispo County had received blood specimens
and fingerprints, speculation inevitably arose that Hubbard did not
die in January 1986 but had been dead for over two years. During the
past six years since he had disappeared immense changes had taken
place in the leadership of the organization he founded. During that
time his followers were encouraged to believe that he was still keeping
a watchful eye on matters from his secret retreat, now revealed to have
been a ranch near San Luis Obispo, 150 miles north west of Los
Angeles. His followers continued to act as if he were still alive. He was
away studying for another book, they said. He was entitled to his
privacy, they argued, when asked why he did not come out of seclusion
to answer the charges made against him. He was no longer in
charge of Scientology, they protested, and could not be brought to
court to justify some of the malpractices of those who were.

His opponents took a different view. He was in hiding to avoid his
crimes of tax avoidance, criminal conspiracy and fraud, they alleged.
Far from his having retired from running Scientology, they produced
documents which linked him to the burglary by his wife and nine others
of Federal offices in 1977. He was laughing all the way to the bank, they
said, as money continued to pour into the Scientology coffers in the
early eighties. The banks were in Luxembourg and Switzerland.

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RELIGION INC.

There were others within Scientology who never lost their
admiration for Hubbard. But in his absence several catastrophes befell
the organization. His wife and her ten fellow conspirators were
imprisoned. A cleansing of the Guardians' Office followed in which the
Church of Scientology was forced to admit that many criminal acts
had been done in its name. There was a purge. However, the new
leaders - Miscavige prominent among them - were resented.
Longstanding Scientologists with a string of qualifications from the
church were 'busted' from their posts and they left to form an
independent movement, but retained their devotion to the 'tech' (the
doctrine and practices of Scientology) and their personal loyalty to
Hubbard. They were declared 'Suppressive Persons' by the church, 'Declares'
(effectively ex-communication orders imposing a ban on associating
with their former friends within the official church) began to pour
forth. A bitter battle ensued with both movements fighting to win converts,
the official church from outside its own ranks, and thus to bring
fresh money into the rapidly emptying coffers. The independents
lowered their prices for courses in Scientology and were accused by
the official church of 'squirrelling the tech' - as great a crime in their
eyes as heresy was to medieval theologians. If the penalty stopped
somewhat short of that advocated by Aquinas for counterfeiters of the
faith, the animosity was no less than that which the Inquisition felt for
its victims. The church which had campaigned so virulently against
psychiatrists and governments for 'persecuting' it, found itself
conducting a crusade against its own adherents.

One result of this was that disaffected Scientologists began to
campaign against the cult. They duplicated memos, disclosed confidential
processes, vilified the official church and joined in lawsuits as
prosecution witnesses. What emerged was a mountain of testimony, much
of it unfavourable to Scientology. Journalists seized on these revelations
but until now the inside information has not been collected and
published in book form.

Another consequence was that the Church of Scientology realized
that it had either to reform its ways or be subject to wholesale attack in
the courts and in the media. I have benefited from this more open
policy in that I have had the co-operation of the Church of Scientology
in writing this book. I have also had the advantage of talking at length
to dissident Scientologists, former members of the church who now
repudiate it utterly, and the two men whom Scientology regards as its
public enemies numbers one and two: Boston attorney Michael Flynn
and Harvard psychiatrist Dr John Clark.

16

PROLOGUE

Faced with friendliness and co-operation from all these
irreconcilable sources, my task was made more difficult, not easier.
I originally wanted to write a book telling the story without offending
anyone, but the more written material and personal evidence I
gathered, the more I became convinced that despite my good intentions
and those of many Scientologists, I could not avoid the verdict
that Scientology does more harm than good and that its founder Ron
Hubbard was more of an evil genius than an idol with feet of clay.