1977-1979

Highlights

• Cedars of Lebanon Medical Center in Hollywood purchased
• Wolfe convicted
• FBI raids Scientology's headquarters
• LRH convicted in absentia in Lyon, France
• David Mayo appointed Sen. C/S Int
• World Institute of Scientology Enterprises (WISE)  founded
• Sandcastle purchased as part of the Flag Land  Base
• Commodores Messenger Org International takes over church management and Watch Dog Committee set up
• Mary Sue Hubbard (and 10 others) convicted of conspiracy

1977

The IRS issues a notice of deficiency (regarding tax exemption) to the Church of Scientology of California. CSC appeals the decision. (Criminal Track)

In 1977, Sherman and Stephen Lenske, two tax attorneys who are not, themselves, Scientologists, somehow began handling the "business interests" of L. Ron Hubbard. Within a few months, the corporation that had owned all of Hubbard's intellectual properties, and that the very existence of all of Scientology relied on--HASI, Inc., of Arizona--was revoked. Within two months of that, the Guardian Office in the United States was raided by the FBI (but oddly, there were no raids on its headquarters in England). Within a year, all the copyrights that Hubbard had transferred irrevocably to HCO (a division of HASI, Inc.) had been furtively transferred back to "Hubbard," only to later furtively be transferred, by order of IRS, to a corporation--the "Church" of Spiritual Technology (CST)--that had been founded by a former Assistant Commissioner of IRS, Meade Emory. (Veritas)

1977, early

First thing I had to do in 1977 was handle the Toronto fire, early in 77. The Org was burned down. By the way, this is confidential GO data, but it's no use holding it this late in the game.

The guy who burned down the Toronto Org - it burned completely to the ground - was a plant. He was in there and he set the Mimeo files on fire - you know, the hanging sheets with the Mimeo fluid in them; they burn real well. It was done at night and the guy disappeared. Couldn't find him of course. Actually, it was arson. He burned the Org down at night. And there weren't many people around and it was after-hours and nobody got killed, but they lost everything in the Org - they thought.

Except Ed Brewer and myself went up and salvaged everything and got them a new Org building in a Hotel, rented, for about the same price that they were running, and got them back into Power stats within one week. The same week the Org burned down (on Friday night), by next Thursday they had 27,000 dollars in GI, which was the highest stats they'd ever made since 5 FEBCs had gone back in 1970. (I believe that was the highest stats they'd ever made.) (CBR-debrief from 1982)

1977, February 

The former Cedars of Lebanon Medical Center in Hollywood purchased by the Church of Scientology as a major center for Scientology in the Los Angeles area. (CofS)

1977-1978

Then I did some PAC missions, (missions out in the PAC area), and went out there to help with the Cedars refit. As CS-E, that was the biggest project we had going in the whole world - was refitting Cedars.

And that same year was the raid on the Church there when the FBI had broken in and taken all the records in the B-1 files from the Cedars area. And it's very interesting that those B-l files are now reposing in an FBI secret headquarters in Encino, California.

I have given all this data to the proper people in the Church, but I don't think anybody's gone out there to see the files. I have seen them. They're in the basement there. And since it's an illegal place, the FBI's operating it under the name of an Insurance Company, Zenith Insurance Company. It's not really an FBI place, so there's no reason why we couldn't subpoena them and get the files back.

But, of course, as I told you before, since Bob Thomas put that thing in the file in 1968, everything I've said is really "hallucinations". But no, nobody just goes and looks. That's all I ask you to do. It's all LRH ever asked us to do was just go look. Well, I've done the looking. Anybody else, I don't give a damn whether they believe it or not, but if they ain't big enough to go and look, then they ain' t big enough to know. And they ain't big enough to go OT, either. (CBR-debrief from 1982)

1977, 13.5.

On May 13, 1977, Gerald Wolfe went before U.S. District Judge Thomas A. Flannery and entered a pleas of guilty to the one-count charge of wrongful use of a Government seal. Several weeks later he was sentenced to a term of probation and was required to perform 100 hours of community service.

However, immediately after sentencing, in the same courtroom he was served with a subpoena ordering him to appear the same afternoon before the federal Grand Jury, which was investigating the entries into the U.S. Courthouse.

Among the things the Grand Jury sought to learn from Wolfe was the identity of the John M. Foster who had accompanied him on his visits to the courthouse. He was also asked how he and "Mr. Foster" had obtained the counterfeit IRS credentials they had used to gain admittance to the courthouse.

Wolfe related to the Grand Jury the same cover-up story he had earlier given the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's office. He had met Foster at a bar and with him had gone to the Bar Association Library to study in order to improve his prospects of obtaining a better-paying job. He used the Xerox machines to copy case histories from law books. He did not know Mr. Foster by any other name and did not know where he lived.

After his appearance before the Grand Jury, Wolfe was debriefed by officials of the Guardian's Office in Washington. A transcript of the debriefing was sent to Los Angeles, where it was analyzed and excerpted by the Church's Legal Bureau.

Justice Department sources say that Meisner was given a copy of the debrief transcript to read so that he could begin adjusting his own cover-up account to conform to that given by Wolfe to the Grand Jury. (O.ﾠGarrison, Playing Dirty, pg. 116/117)

1977, June 

Wolfe is convicted of the forgery of credentials and is sentenced to probation and community service. Ref: "A Piece of Blue Sky", Jon Atack (1992), p. 240 (Timeline of Scientology versus the IRS)

1977, 20.6.

June 20 - Meisner packed a few things in a valise and decamped. He boarded a bus and went to a bowling alley, where he placed a call from a public telephone to Assistant United States Attorney Garey Stark in Washington, D.C. 

When AUSA Stark, who was handling the case of the courthouse entries, answered the telephone, Meisner identified himself by his true name and told Stark that he wished to come to Washington, face the criminal charges against him, and cooperate with federal authorities who were still investigating the incursions into the offices of the U.S. Attorney. (pg 118)

After Meisner's furtive departure from Los Angeles, his colleagues in the Guardian's Office did not suspect that he had betrayed them. They concluded, rather, that he was hiding somewhere in the Los Angeles area, while he did legal research in a library regarding his possible defense in the Washington, D.C. case. (O.ﾠGarrison, Playing Dirty, pg. 119/120)

1977, July

Shortly after LRH arrived in Sparks, cash was needed so Pat Broeker contacted his soon-wife-to-be, who was the Deputy Commanding Officer of the CMO in Clearwater. They arranged between them for Annie to bring one million dollars in cash from the church.

Annie brought the cash to Pat in a briefcase, and turned it over to him at an airport.

This is the point where Broeker starts to cut the line between LRH and MSH by editing letters between them. Over time, Miscavige and Broeker systematically eliminate all of LRH’s comm lines except their own.

Gradually, every single person with whom Ron has a comm line, including his wife and children, must communicate via the Broekers. Finally, the Broekers are the only ones in direct comm with Ron. (Criminal Track)

1977, 4.7.

On July 4 at 2 a.m., Magistrate Henry H. Kennedy, Jr. of the U.S. District Court signed the warrant permitting the FBI to conduct a search of the premises of the Founding Church of Scientology in Washington, D.C. The description of property to be seized under the warrant's authority included 162 items. All but one of these were documents of various kinds -memoranda, letters, files, cable messages, etc. Being properly identified by description which included such indicatory data as names, dates, and contents, they clearly met the particularity requirement of the First Amendment.

The 162nd and final item, however, was anything but specific. It read: "Any and all fruits, instrumentalities, and evidence (at this time unknown) of the crimes of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and theft of government property in violation of 18 U.S. Code Sections 371, 1503 and 641 which facts recited in the accompanying affidavit make out."

The wording of this item had been cleverly based upon a previous case in which the Supreme Court had seemingly arrogated to itself the power to supersede the Constitution by approving a general, exploratory search.

Two other search warrants with identical wording were issued by Magistrate James J. Penne in the Central District of California. It commanded a search of two Los Angeles area church premises. One was a seven-storey Victorian building known as Fifield Manor, at 5930 West Franklin Avenue, Hollywood. The other was an eight-storey, multi-winged building complex known as Cedars-Sinai, which occupied an entire city block and fronted on Fountain Avenue, also in Hollywood.

After a quarter of a century of trying, the federal Government at last had "got something" on the Scientologists. Something big. (O.ﾠGarrison, Playing Dirty, pg. 121/122)

1977, 7 July 

The FBI raids Scientology's headquarters in Washington, DC and Los Angeles. The GO is taken by surprise and tens of thousands of incriminating documents are seized, including complete records of the infiltration and burglary of the IRS and other government departments. Ref: Various, including Los Angeles Times and other newspaper reports (Timeline of Scientology versus the IRS)

MSH and 10 others are later convicted and go to jail. Thus, the beginning of a group engram was laid in. 

LRH and MSH are living together in La Quinta, California at the time. They spend the next week discussing how to handle their legal situation. Then, he leaves La Quinta with Pat Broeker and goes to Sparks, Nevada.

After the raid, the USGO Intelligence bureau had nightly all hands to destroy evidence of crimes in their remaining intelligence files. It went on for months. At the same time, Vicki Aznaran participates in a massive document destruction program undertaken to destroy any evidence that LRH controlled Scientology. Vaughn Young also participated in all of this destruction of evidence. (Criminal Track)

The detailed Story behind the raid can be found in Omar Garrison's book "Playing Dirty", Chapter 07.

Scientology's FOIA suits spanned the very time when the top-secret Scientology-based remote viewing program and budget were not only being expanded, but were being utilized by the Department of Defense, the President's National Security Council (NSC), and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But the documents being sought by the Guardian's Office were never released; the FBI raided the church's offices in July of 1977, and the federal government filed criminal charges accusing Mary Sue Hubbard and the Guardian's Office of "criminal spying"--a strange irony.

The sensational case resulted in Mary Sue Hubbard and 10 Guardian's Office co-defendants being sentenced to jail without a trial by federal Judge Charles R. Richey, which led to the ultimate disbanding of Scientology's Guardian's Office.

This opened the way for a new senior corporation, "Church of Spiritual Technology" (CST), doing business as the "L. Ron Hubbard Library." It was set up in 1982--right after the Supreme Court had upheld Mary Sue Hubbard's conviction--for the express purpose of gaining receivership and control of L. Ron Hubbard's copyrights. But it was in the founding of this corporation that the first hint of the cover-up by the federal government lay buried.

In an EXCLUSIVE 1997 STORY, the PUBLIC RESEARCH FOUNDATION reported that Meade Emory--former Assistant to the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service and former Legislation Attorney, Joint Committee on Taxation--had been a co-founder of CST, Scientology's most senior corporation. That corporation now controls the copyrights for all of L. Ron Hubbard's intellectual properties, once valued at close to $100 million. CST also enjoys ultimate authority over all Scientology-related trademarks, including even the name "L. Ron Hubbard."

But the discovery of Emory, a non-Scientologist, in such an unusual position raised red flags, since Emory's involvement in setting up the corporation had been hidden for fifteen years.

Then it was learned that Emory had been Assistant to Commissioner of IRS Donald C. Alexander from 1975 through 1977. Strangely, those were the very years that an IRS employee, Gerald Wolfe, was supposedly a Scientology "double agent" guilty of numerous thefts of IRS documents for Mary Sue Hubbard and the Guardian's Office--leading to the arrests and convictions. (Veritas)

1977, 8.7.

At six o'clock on the morning of 8 July 1977, 134 FBI agents armed with search warrants and sledgehammers, simultaneously broke into the offices of the Church of Scientology in Washington and Los Angeles and carted away 48,149 documents. They would reveal an astonishing espionage system which spanned the United States and penetrated some of the highest offices in the land.(Miller: "Bare-faced Messiah", pg. 352)

1977, 15.7.

LRH left the ranch and went to Sparks.... With him were three messengers, Diane Reisdorf, Claire Rousseau and Pat Broeker. 

For the remainder of 1977, Hubbard stayed in hiding at Sparks. He cut off all direct communications with the Guardian's Office and his family and relied on his three messengers to maintain secret links with the Church hierarchy.

LRH went into writing film scripts. One of it... Revolt in the Stars. (Miller: "Bare-faced Messiah", pg. 352)

1977, 27 September

The first of the Los Angeles service organizations, Church of Scientology of Los Angeles, moved into the former Cedars of Lebanon Medical Center building complex. (CofS)

1977, Fall 

Universal Media Productions was reorganized as Source Productions in La Quinta, California, to produce Scientology technical instructional Films. (CofS)

(David) 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."  

...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."  (SPTimes: The Man behind Scientology)

1977, end of Dec.

A few days after Christmas 1977, word arrived at Sparks that the Commodore was unlikely to be indicted as a result of the FBI raid and he decided it was safe to move back to La Quinta. There was just one problem. He suspected that Mary Sue was still under FBI surveillance, so if he returned to Olive Tree Ranch, she would have to move out. (Miller: "Bare-faced Messiah", pg. 353)

1978

First groups in Costa Rica, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tahiti, Guatemala and Zambia formed. (CofS)

1978 (FBI)

In Founding Church of Scientology v Webster, the church sued FBI director William Webster, alleging that the FBI was harassing Scientologists for no permissible reason.

The church filed this complaint in 1978, the same year in which MSH and eight other high ranking Church officials admitted in a plea agreement that "the network of Scientology organizations had conducted a broad campaign against US government entities particularly the IRS." The court noted that the same government investigations the Church complained about were justified by, and a result of, the church’s own illegal behavior. (Criminal Track)

A rough quote from an FBI memorandum obtained through the Freedom of Information Act in 1978: 

"To infiltrate the Church and move our agents up to Board of Director positions. We must also prevent the spread of Scientology to China and Japan as it is so similar to Buddhism it would spread like wildfire". (CBR: SOB 12)

LRH is convicted in absentia in Lyon, France. Sentenced to 4 years in prison for fraudulent claims he could cure physical illness.(Criminal Track)

1978, 2.1.

Hubbard arrived back at the ranch. He spent a number of hours with Mary Sue behind the closed doors of his study. No one knew what passed between them, but Mary Sue left the ranch that evening at the wheel of her BMW. Next day, Doreen Smith was sent to Los Angeles to help her look for a house.

Behind the security screen, the Commodore was directing the setting up of a full-scale film unit. More property was purchased around La Quinta - a ten-acre ranch, code-named Munro, became a barracks for the film unit personnel and a studio was built in a huge barn on the Silver Sand Ranch, a 140-acre grapefruit farm. Lights, dollies, cameras and a vast range of technical equipment were all moved into the new studio (also called "Cine Org"). (Miller: "Bare-faced Messiah", pg. 353)

An appeal had gone out to Scientology branches around the world for volunteers with acting and film-making experience to help Ron in a special project. Among the first to arrive was a middle-aged couple from Las Vegas... Adelle and Ernie Hartwell were champion ballroom dancers who had taken a few Scientology courses and had been led to believe that joining the Cine Org would give them their big break. (Miller: "Bare-faced Messiah", pg. 353)

Hubbard knew little of what was happening to Mary Sue during this period because the messengers censored her letters in order to avoid upsetting the Commodore. If Mary Sue sent bad news, the messengers cut out the offending passages with a razor blade, believing it to be their duty to keep such problems 'off his lines'. (Miller: "Bare-faced Messiah", pg. 356)

1978, 9 March 

Church of Scientology of Milano, Italy founded. (CofS)

1978, 21 June 

The first Hubbard Communications Office Bulletin on New Era Dianetics (NED) was written, introducing an effective refinement of Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard, based upon thirty years of experience in the application of the subject. (CofS)

1978, 20 July 

Church of Scientology of Bern, Switzerland founded. (CofS)

1978, August

Anyway, 1978, the Cedars refit mission was still going on and then I got qualified to go to SU. Now SU is a Special Unit were LRH was making the films. They needed some more people out there, some execs and so on. And I went out there in August, 1978. Now, just before I arrived there - the first thing I found out there when I arrived is - there's no GO there, there's absolutely no GO there, and the GO is prohibited from being there and the CMO and the SU people are prohibited from talking to the GO, or any GO terminal, or having any written comm to the GO, or any kind of connection with the GO. And this is because LHR had kicked out any GO terminals from SU. (CBR-debrief from 1982)

1978, 15.8.

On 15 August 1978, a federal grand jury in Washington indicted nine Scientologists on twenty-eight counts of conspiring to steam government documents, theft of government documents, burglarizing government offices, intercepting government communications, harboring a fugitive, making false declarations before a grand jury and conspiring to obstruct justice. Heading the list of those indicted was Mary Sue Hubbard. She faced a maximum penalty, if convicted, of 175 years in prison and a fine of $40,000. (Miller: "Bare-faced Messiah", pg. 356)

1978, 29.8.

On 29 August, all nine defendants were arraigned in the federal courthouse at the foot of Capitol Hill and pleaded not guilty.

A few days later, Hubbard collapsed while he was filming on location in the desert. 'The temperature was somewhere between 118 and 122 degrees,' said Kima Douglas. 'I had been watching the old man out there wheezing and struggling for breath, with flecks around his mouth. It was crazy; I knew he wouldn't be able to take it much longer. We always had a motor home at the location - he'd have his lunch in it and sometimes have a lie-down while the set was being prepared. This particular day he came back to the motor home and said he didn't feel well. His pulse was extremely erratic and his blood pressure was way up. I thought he was going to die and said that we ought to get him to hospital. He gripped my arm and said, "This time, no!"'

Hubbard was taken back to Olive Tree Ranch, apparently slipping in and out of a coma. At one point he muttered to Kima, 'If I die, bury me in the date field.' A Scientologist doctor, Gene Denk, was summoned from Los Angeles and driven to the ranch blindfolded but he seemed unsure what was wrong with the Commodore.

David Mayo was called to give assists.

Mayo was dismayed when he was at last ushered into the Commodore's room at Rifle. 'He was obviously very ill, lying on his back almost in a coma. He could talk a little, but very slowly and quietly. There was medical equipment all round him, including an electric pulse machine to re-start his heart. Denk told me he thought LRH was close to death. He would have moved him into a hospital but he thought the ride in the ambulance might finish him off. I was given his PC folders and told to solve the problem. I started looking through the folders that night and began auditing him next day.'

Hubbard slowly recovered....

Mayo was deeply disturbed by what he learned during his daily auditing sessions with Hubbard: 'He revealed things about himself and his past which absolutely contradicted what we had been told about him.' 

'It wasn't just what I discovered about his past. I didn't care where he was born or what he had done in the war, it didn't mean a thing to me. I wasn't a loyal Scientologist because he had an illustrious war record. What worried me was when I saw things he did and heard statements he made that showed his intentions were different from what they appeared to be. When I was with him messengers often arrived with suitcases full of money, wads of hundred-dollar bills. Yet he had always said and written that he had never received a penny from Scientology. He would ask to see it, the messenger would open the case and he'd gloat over it for a bit before it was put away in a safe in his bedroom. He didn't really spend much, so I guess it was getaway money. I didn't mind the idea of him having money or being rich. I thought he had done tremendous wonders and should be well paid for it. But why did have to lie about it?

'I slowly began to realize that he wasn't acting in the public good or for the benefit of mankind. It might have started out like that, but it was no longer so. One day we were talking about the price of gold, or something like that, and he said to me, very emphatically, that he was obsessed by an insatiable lust for power and money. I'll never forget it. Those were his exact words, "an insatiable lust for power and money".' (Miller: "Bare-faced Messiah", pg. 358)

1978, Sept.

David Mayo: In September 1978, I was called from the Flag Service Org to California to audit LRH and there I stayed on, as his auditor. In October 1978, LRH appointed me to the post of Senior C/S International. I remained in California auditing LRH on audited NOTs until he advanced onto Solo NOTS. In mid-1979, I assisted him with technical research and with the export and training of the first auditors and C/Ses on new tech. Apart from some return visits to Flag (and other Orgs) to handle out-tech, I remained on the post of Senior C/S International in California from 1978. Throughout that period, I was being trained and briefed by LRH on current tech and on his research of new tech, as yet unreleased. (David Mayo, Open Letter)

LRH has another stroke. (He had his first stroke in June 1975.) Mayo arrived to give LRH assists and LRH was barely conscious. Dr. (Gene) Denk told Mayo that LRH could die at any moment because his heart was not beating normally. The assists went on for 3 weeks and from those assists came the seeds that became NOTS.

Ron’s illness was an additional excuse to further edit incoming communication to him to keep all this "bad news" off of his lines.

NOTS is released this year.(Criminal Track)

Audited New Era Dianetics for OTs (New OT V) released. (CofS)

1978, 24 September 

Dianetic Clear Hubbard Communications Office Bulletin released. (CofS)

1978, middle Oct.

By the middle of October, the Commodore was back on his feet, back making movies. 

Gilman Hot Springs - a faded resort straddling Route 79 between Riverside and Palm Springs. Its 550 acres boasted a yellowing golf course, a decrepit motel, the Massacre Canyon Inn, and a collection of miscellaneous buildings in various states of disrepair, one of them a house satirically named 'Bonnie View'. The entire property had been purchased for $2.7 million cash... (Miller: "Bare-faced Messiah", pg. 359)

1978, late

... in late '78 the location where the boss was filming got blown by two people that went to Las Vegas.

They blew from SU Area, from the film area. They were like new recruits. They blew. They were "family" of some messenger or something and they blew and they went to Las Vegas and tried to get $10,000 from the FBI to reveal the location. The FBI said "No, reveal it anyway", and they did.

And they went to the newspapers, and they tried to get money from the newspapers, and the next thing you know, people from Las Vegas Org were over there running around in their cars trying to see LRH. So he said "We've got to get a new location." So we did. We got another new secret location for filming so we wouldn't be bothered. And it's still in California. And this one was where the current CMO INT people are, and the Watchdog Committee, and all that stuff. (CBR-debrief from 1982)

1978, end

The Hartwells... had disentangled themselves by the end of 1978 and returned to Las Vegas... Ernie Hartwell did not particularly want to stir up any trouble but he thought that the church was trying to entice Dell (Adelle) back and break up his marriage. He was a straight-talking Navy veteran who worked in a casino and was not the kind of guy to be cowed by 'kids running around in sailor suits', which was his favorite description of Scientologists. He began threatening to go to the FBI and the newspapers and telling everything he knew. Actually he did not know much, other than the best-kept secret in Scientology - the whereabouts of L. Ron Hubbard.

Ed Walters... was ordered to 'handle' Hartwell. 'I'll never forget sitting in the local Guardian's Office the day I brought Ernie in,' said Walters. 'These two young kids who've never met Hubbard are sitting there and they obviously think that Hartwell's a liar. One of them says, "You don't know what you're talking about. You say you actually met Ron Hubbard..." Ernie says, "Yeah, I was with him down in the desert." "Well, if you met him," says the GO guy, "how would you describe him?" I knew that what he meant was how did Hubbard look, but Ernie says, "How would I describe him? I'd describe him as fucking nuts."

'My heart was pumping. No one talks like that about LRH. The GO people were stunned. To them it proved that Ernie was a liar. I said, "Well, Ernie, you don't really mean that he's nuts, do you?" He says, "Yeah!" So I asked him to give me an example, hoping to tone it down a bit. "Are you kidding?" He says. "One day we get there and he's playing director with all these kids following him around. He starts screaming at the wall, he says there's supposed to be shelves there and why aren't there shelves there. So one of his people turns to me and says put some shelves there. So I say OK, I need a hammer, nails and wood. Then this fucking kid just says to me make it go right."

'To tell someone "make it go right" was typical Scientology-speak. I knew then that he was telling the truth.'

Walters liked Ernie Hartwell and tried, over the next couple of days, to dissuade him from carrying out his threats. 'Next thing that happens,' he said, 'was that the GO sent some people to tell me to stay out of it. They were going to handle Hartwell. They were not going to allow Hubbard to be exposed by this man and they insinuated they would destroy him if they had to. Ernie was just a troubled old guy off the street who should never have been in Scientology in the first place. How could they think of destroying someone like that? Something just went off inside me.'

Walters began telephoning his closest friends in Scientology, among them Art Maren, to tell them he was thinking of getting out. Maren rushed to Las Vegas and begged Ed to re-consider. It dawned on Walters, with a sense of deep shock, that his friend Artie was frightened. Next day Walters went to the FBI. (Miller: "Bare-faced Messiah", pg. 360/61)

LRH fled from Olive Tree Ranch... Kima and Mike Douglas were again chosen to go with him. (Miller: "Bare-faced Messiah", pg. 361)

1979

The first Dianetics group formed in Ecuador. (CofS)

Carl Barney's Mission was stolen from him in 1979 ... and Herbie Parkhouse was very instrumental in that. (Peter Green debrief, 23.6.1982) 

CBR: ... I was the CO of SU, which is the Special Unit, ... and I worked with LRH for a year and a half out there, and since the GO wasn't there, I did all the Legal and Intelligence for him. And hatted up Leo Johnson on how to do it, so that he could take over the Div 6 hats of PR, and so on, for the base. And I got to know LRH's Legal and Intelligence and Public Relation Policies very well, 'cause I had to get hatted on them myself. And he was personally directing me and handling these by conference and by written dispatch.

... So anyway, in 1979 we got this new place and I was working on that and then the CMO was given the job of getting the whole of Scientology operating totally on Policy, and making sure every Org was operating and do an eval on each Org and so on. So most of the evals required missions, and at that time LRH was "close" to the lines (in '79), he was only living a few miles away. And we did missions to all the Orgs.

I was then put on as Chief Missionaire, because I had most of the experience in missioning. And I did missions to Flag, St. Louis, FOLO WUS, St. Hill Castle, the Eval Unit, etc, etc. Now on these missions in 79, I started discovering... - you mostly know, you go on a mission and it's usually a down-stat, out-ethics area and you find things. And you find things like somebody trying to be a plant, or you find somebody that's been PDH'ed, or something like that.

Well, I kept reporting these to the GO, as you should, and I kept reporting them to the GO and then I'd go on another mission and find out that in that place where I'd just done a mission, that nothing had happened to these guys. They never did remove them, they never cleaned them up, they never fixed them, they were still there! Some of them had even been promoted!

So I went to this guy Jimmy Mulligan, who was the highest "visible"... - 'cause Mary Sue was living in her own place then. You see, the Boss and her had to live in separate places because she was under surveillance by the Government all the time since she was "indicted" now, you see. And she had to live at a separate house in a different town. So I couldn't get to her. And that was a secret location. And the Boss was in a secret location.

And so I went to Mulligan, who was the highest intelligence terminal in the GO, he was the Controller's Committee for Intelligence. And I went to him, I said, "I want to talk to you". (This is in late 1979), I said, "I've been spotting these plants in the Organizations. I've been reporting them to the GO and the GO has done nothing about them. Why not?"

And he looked "Oh!" This had shocked him because it came from left field. I just met him in the hall there, you see, and he didn't have an answer ready. So he said "Ah...ah.., well.., if we ..if we... shoot them.., uh..uh..uh.., they might send in others and we don't know who they are."

I said, "That's a lie, man. What are you giving me that bullshit for. Anybody can find a plant on a meter," I said, "That's a lie". So he said, "Oh well, yah, ..uh.., yes.., uh..., well it was Mary Sue's policy". And I knew that was a lie, too. Because I've done missions for Mary Sue and I know how she feels about plants. So he lied to me twice there.

And the next thing you know, he did a little 3rd party on me to the CMO and got me in a Comm-Ev. So that I "wouldn't remember", you see. But anyway, I remembered that. That he wouldn't do anything about this, and he was lying to me. I didn't know why at the time, but it later became apparent. That was late 1979. (CBR-debrief from 1982)

1979, 1 February

The World Institute of Scientology Enterprises (WISE) founded. (CofS)

1979, March

They eventually found several adjoining apartments for rent in new building just off the main street in Hemet, a small town on the west side of the mountains. Hubbard moved in at the end of March 1979, along with a slimmed-down staff of messengers and aides.

Once all the security precautions were in place, Hubbard relaxed and settled down to enjoy life in Hemet. (Miller: "Bare-faced Messiah", pg. 361)

1979, 13 March 

The Hubbard Mark VI E-Meter was released. (CofS)

1979. April

Mayo goes to Hemet, California and gives LRH assists again because LRH had just had a cancer operation on the front of his head. They work together on refining NOTS. (Criminal Track)

1979, Middle 

Annie Broeker is working for CMO in Clearwater. MSH is also there operating out of the G.O. Annie is meddling in G.O. affairs and MSH eventually has had it with her and forces her off post. Annie is then sent back to INT as useless on management lines. (Criminal Track)

1979, July 

The Sandcastle, a hotel in Clearwater, Florida, purchased as part of the Flag Land Base, an advanced religious retreat for Scientologists. (CofS)

1979, summer

Through the summer months of 1979, Hubbard followed closely the progress of the battery of lawyers which was fighting to prevent Mary Sue and her co-defendants from being brought to trial. In the intimacy of the Hemet hideaway, he made no secret of his intention to sever all his connections with his wife. He frequently asserted that he had never known anything about what Mary Sue was doing and whined about the fact that she was getting him into trouble. Everyone knew it was a lie.

David Mayo was sent to see Mary Sue at her house off Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles, to suggest that she might consider a divorce. 'She was really offended and very upset,' said Mayo. 'I thought she was going to blow my head off. I went back several times later to make sure that she wasn't going to rat on him. That's what he was really worried about, that she would reveal during the case that she was only relaying his orders. She had covered up for him so much, and there had been so many opportunities for her to betray him, that she couldn't believe he would think that. She kept saying to me, "What is he worried about?" I thought to myself, "My God, I can't tell her."'

Hubbard, still not convinced that he could trust his wife, decided to risk meeting her himself at Gilman Hot Springs. At summer headquarters, no one was supposed to know that the Commodore was visiting, although it was not hard to guess since a working party was assigned to spend two days scrubbing 'Bonnie View' and polishing all surfaces by hand. Mary Sue was told to go to a hotel in Riverside and wait to be picked up by Kima Douglas, who drove her on a roundabout route to Gilman, checking all the time that they were not being followed. Hubbard arrived on the bed in the back of the Dodge Ram, which drove through the gates of the resort at high speed. Waiting guards immediately put a chain across the entrance. No messengers were present during the meeting, so no one knew what was discussed and no one saw either the Commodore or his wife leave the property. (Miller: "Bare-faced Messiah", pg. 363)

1979, 1.9.

A major change in church management takes place. The Commodores Messenger Org International takes over all church management and the Watch Dog Committee is set up.

LRH orders that messengers who hold management posts are not to stand watches for him, leaving them free to hold their management position full time. He ordered to send two messengers to work with him on a permanent basis who are of no great value on management lines. The two people chosen are Pat and Annie Broeker. (Criminal Track)

David Miscavige is posted as Action Chief in CMO International. (Criminal Track)

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. Among the young "missionaires" Miscavige enlisted were Mike Rinder and Marty Rathbun, now in their forties and among the highest ranking officials in Scientology. (SPTimes: The Man behind Scientology)

1979, 20 September 

Instituto de Filosofía Aplicada, A.C., Havre, in Mexico City founded. (CofS)

1979, October 

Eleven Scientologists, including Mary Sue Hubbard, are convicted of conspiracy and imprisoned for between two and six years. L. Ron Hubbard goes into hiding in California and does not reappear again until his death in January 1986. Ref: Various, including Los Angeles Times and other newspaper reports (Timeline of Scientology versus the IRS)

...  in 1978 the indictment came down on the "nine" (and Mary Sue) that the FBI had done from the files that were stolen from the Church. And LRH had offered, right away, he had ordered the GO lawyers and so on, to TRADE the Kissinger 800 million dollar suit to the government. ...

And it was getting a little more play now. I think one Washington paper had mentioned it. So he offered to trade that suit off: To say we "have insufficient evidence" if you say you "have insufficient evidence" in the Mary Sue and nine conspirators case.

That was his order. To trade those two, equal off. They drop the case against Mary Sue and the nine. We drop the case on Kissinger.

The GO didn't do that. They traded that suit for one of the IRS appeal suits. And LRH was so mad at them that he kicked them all off of the SU area and he wouldn't have any more comm with them. He warned Mary Sue at the time, "There's something wrong in the GO. There's something very wrong in there. They're not complying. They're not acting as if they are on our side".

And Mary Sue didn't get the word. She didn't look hard enough, or she didn't believe it, or there were too many people on her lines telling her that things were "other" than what LRH was saying.

But in actual fact, the people on her Controller's Committee, right underneath her, and between her and Jane (because they were senior to Jane) there were two people on it that were working for the government. And they were James Mulligan and Anne Mulligan. All right.

... You may have seen these Court Records of the Mary Sue case and there's this guy in it named Michael Meisner.

... The whole reason Mary Sue and the nine got indicted was because of this break-in that the GO did in Washington to get these papers on Scientology having to do with the stealing of the documents from Cedars. 

Now, you realize that if those comms had been allowed to go thru, then Mary Sue would never had gone to jail. And I don't know if you've found that out, I think I told you, but it is a fact now that Mary Sue is in jail. She's in a prison for women on the East Bay - it s called East Bay of San Francisco Bay. It's quite a nice place. It's a white-collar prison. But she's still in prison and she should not be there.

I wanted to point out something else, too, on the GO's head, and these plant's heads. That since 1976, before 1976, all the years that LRH and MSH and the family were onboard the ship under the Sea Org protection, they were totally safe. Nobody touched a hair on their heads. Nobody got them in a court room.

Since they moved ashore, they were under GO quote "protection" and since that time, Mary Sue is in jail, Quentin is dead, LRH had to move off the lines because of 18 or more subpoenas on him for various civil cases against the Church, and the family is quite dispersed.

They don't get together for birthdays anymore. Diana, this year, has said that she can't even get her comm thru the CMO to the Old Man. She can't even communicate hardly to her father anymore. She writes up there but she doesn't know if anything is getting thru or not. And Arthur is now kicked out of SU. And so is Suzette.

They are not in SU anymore. They were quote "knocked out of SU" for quote "out security". When in actual fact, the thing is that they are very vulnerable themselves to any attacks because they are members of the family. And they should be protected. And they are not being protected. And they're all in the Los Angeles area now.

And Diana is trying to take care of them. And she's also trying to help her mother. And I also pledged to her that I will do anything in my power to help get her mother out of jail.

And that whole thing, I say, was caused by the fact of infiltration and plants in positions in the GO. And, of course, we all know that Mary Sue should have spotted them, but there were two right under her, feeding her Legal and Intelligence data.

James Mulligan was in charge of Intelligence and his wife Anne Mulligan (they're both homosexuals, by the way - they got together to make a good "show"), but they chopped all the Legal and Intelligence lines to Mary Sue, and just let thru what they wanted her to see, or wrote up their own reports the way they saw it, or the way they wanted it to be, and that was the way the Government wanted it. (CBR-debrief from 1982)

1979, 8.10.

The trial was scheduled for 24 September in Washington, but the government prosecutors and defense attorneys were still bargaining at that date and a stay was granted. On 8 October, in an unusual legal maneuver, an agreement was reached that the nine defendants would plead guilty to one count each if the government presented a written statement of its case, thereby avoiding a lengthy trial. (Miller: "Bare-faced Messiah", pg. 364)

1979, 26.10.

On 26 October, US District Judge Charles R. Richey accordingly found the nine Scientologists guilty on one count each of the indictment. Mary Sue and two others were fined the maximum of $10,000 and jailed for five years. The remaining defendants received similar fines and prison sentences of between one and four years. Sentencing Mary Sue, the judge told her: 'We have a precious system of government in the United States . . . For anyone to use those laws, or to seek under the guise of those laws, to destroy the very foundation of the government is totally wrong and cannot be condoned by any responsible citizen.' All the defendants indicated an intention to appeal on the grounds that the evidence against them had been obtained illegally. (Miller: "Bare-faced Messiah", pg. 364)

1979, 23.11.

Scientology lawyers were still hoping to prevent the damning documents seized in the FBI raids, currently under seal, from being released. But on 23 November, the day after Thanksgiving, the appellate court ordered the seal to be lifted and began releasing the documents, much to the delight of newspapers and television stations throughout the United States. At last they were able to report the astonishing details of Operation Snow White and give the public a peek into the strange and secretive world of the Church of Scientology. (Miller: "Bare-faced Messiah", pg. 364)

1979-1980

'79 and '80 there was, of course, a great deal of revelation in the press about the trials in Washington on Mary Sue and Jane Kember and Mo Budlong, Henning Heldt, Duke Schneider and the rest of the G.O. people who had been indicted.

And in 1980, Mary Sue and the others pleaded guilty. And then Jane Kember and Mo Budlong were extradited and also either pleaded guilty or were found guilty. (Peter Green debrief, 23.6.1982)

1979, December 

The Purification Rundown released. (CofS)

1979, 15.12.

LRH executes a will. Ron’s tax lawyer, Norton S. Karno is named as Executor. (Criminal Track)