Alaska Mental Health Act, introduced
in the U.S. Congress in 1955.
As an unabashed circumvention of the American Bill of Rights, this measure
was without precedent in the legislative history of that country. Under its
terms, anyone at any time is subject to seizure and involuntary commitment to a
mental institution without recourse to due process guaranteed by the Fifth
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
A prominent Los Angeles jurist, Superior Court judge Joseph M. Call, who made a careful study of the
act from the legal stand-point, characterized it as "totalitarian
government at its best".
"Under this section [104(b)], any health, welfare or police officer who has reason to believe that an individual is mentally ill
and therefore likely to injure himself or others if not immediately restrained
pending examination and certification by a licensed physician, may take the
individual into physical custody and transport him to a mental asylum. This
section, in effect, practically nullifies every constitutional safeguard to be
found in the Federal Constitution for the protection of the individual. It is
the police state working at its best.
- It permits no examination of any type.
- No statement of probable cause need be filed under oath to support the
issuance of a warrant of arrest or apprehension.
- No judge or magistrate need issue a warrant of arrest.
- No examination is permitted of the patient by the patient's own physician.
- No examination is provided for by any physician.
- No trial is permitted by a judge.
- No trial is permitted by a jury.
"This section under these conditions permits the patient to be held in
custody and without bail up to a period of 5 days under rules and regulations to
be prescribed by the head of the hospital. By the end of 5 days the head of the
hospital is authorized to designate an examiner to make an examination, and upon
the certification of the examiner that in his opinion the patient (1) is
mentally ill or (2) is likely to injure himself or others if allowed at liberty,
he is forthwith committed to further confinement and custody under this
certificate. (O. Garrison, Hidden
Story of Scientology, pg. 97...)
Hubbard called the measure the Siberia Bill because, be said, under its
provisions any man, woman, or child could be seized and transferred without
trial to an Alaskan Siberia being set up under authorization of the Act. There,
the allegedly mentally ill person, deprived of all human and civil rights, could
be detained forever. A cleverly legalized way of railroading political enemies,
personal opponents and other "undesirables" into permanent oblivion à
la USSR. (O. Garrison, Hidden Story
of Scientology, pg. 101)
LRH: The rest of their apparent program (talking about the secret influence
groups in RJ76) was to use
mental health - which is to say, psychiatric electric shock and prefrontal
lobotomy - to remove from their path any political dissenters. They were the
people behind the Siberia bill, which almost passed the House of Representatives
in the United States, and did pass, if I remember rightly, the Senate, which
gave the power to any governor in -- of any state in the United States simply to
pick up anyone on the street and send him to Alaska. We defeated this Siberia
bill and many other mental health quote-unquote "acts" of this
character, but never really before knew from whom they were coming. (Ron's
Journal 67)
1955