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Secret Lives: L. Ron Hubbard transcript

Secret Lives (documentary series), Channel 4 (British terrestrial TV), Wednesday 19th November 1997 21:00

From john@jritson.demon.co.uk Sat Nov 22 11:41:18 GMT 1997



HANA ELTRINGHAM
"We were saving the world, we were convinced that Hubbard was the
returned saviour and that his techniques, his knowledge and his majesty
would bring all mankind to an enlightened state and that was what we
were doing"
BARBARA KAYE
"There were some things about him that I do feel were rather dangerous.
I felt so much under his spell that I told my room-mate that if ever I
told her that I was going to marry this man she should tie me up and not
allow me out of the house"
CYRIL VOSPER
"I was overwhelmed, Here I am in the presence of the most important
individual in the cosmos. I mean, this isn't just like meeting a film
star or something, I'm meeting God with plus signs."
VOICEOVER - [Pictures of Hubbard and recruits on ship]
"Lafayette Ron Hubbard created one of the richest and most controversial
cults of our time - Scientology. He spent much of his later life at sea,
on the run from those who accused him of being a crook and a charlatan.
But to the millions who at one time or another followed him, and to
himself, he was the greatest guru who ever lived."
HUBBARD
"There is one thing you can say, about Dianetics and Scientology, and
I'm sorry if this sounds odd, but it isn't everybody who can write a
book that turns the world on its ear"
VOICEOVER
"But more remarkable still, the story of a science-fiction fantasist and
self-proclaimed messiah. Ron Hubbard was determined that from the start
that his story would be the stuff of legend. He was born in 1911 and
told of how he was brought up on his grandfather's ranch in Montana,
which he said in a newspaper interview, covered a quarter of the state.
As a small child he was breaking broncos and hunting coyotes. He claimed
that he grew up with old frontiersmen, and even became a blood brother
of the Blackfoot Indians. These were all splendid tales, but all that is 
known for sure is that while he did use to visit a small livery store
his grandfather owned, he was brought up in an ordinary home, the only
child of ordinary American parents. Towards the end of World War I his
father joined the American navy. The teenage Hubbard spent holidays in
Guam, where the family was stationed. He travelled in China and the
East. With a taste for adventure, he went prospecting for gold in Puerto
Rico, and even led a sea exploration to find pirate's hoards. But he 
couldn't resist gilding the lily. 
['What is Scientology' painting of LRH meeting Tibetans]
and is claimed to have communed with native bandits in the high hills of 
Tibet. But there is no evidence he ever went to Tibet."
CYRIL VOSPER - LRH Staff
"He told so many stories of his exploits, in South America, the West 
Indies and places, that he would have to have been at least 483 years
old to have had time to have done all those things, but that doesn't 
really matter. I mean it was just very entertaining really, except that
he turned it into a religion" 
ROBERT VAUGHN YOUNG - Press Officer
"In his diaries he was writing little stories, you know, sea adventures
and sometimes when some of his own representatives found them, they
thought these were true, you know there was an escapade of him fighting
an octopus that once one of his personal representatives was telling as
a true story, and I was trying to point out to her later that no, this
is just one of his stories, interspersed with his diaries"
VOICEOVER
"When he was 22, Hubbard married his first wife, Polly. They went to
live on Puget Sound, in Washington State, and soon had two children.
Hubbard's joy in life was sailing and exploring, but now he had to
settle down, and earn some money. With such a prolific imagination, he
became a writer, starting with adventures and fantasies. Then he turned
to science fiction and became a best seller. [shots of lurid covers]
'Final Blackout' and 'Fear' were considered sci-fi classics. But
Hubbard's most amazing story was about himself. His literary agent was
Forry Ackerman, himself a sci-fi fanatic. One night, in the small hours,
Hubbard told Ackerman of a bizarre event in a hospital theatre that
would shape his enire life"
FORREST ACKERMAN
"He said that he had died on the operating table, and that he rose in
spirit form, and he looked at the body he had previously inhabited and
that he shrugged the shoulders he didn't have any more and he thought
'where do we go from here' in the distance he saw a great ornate gate,
and he wafted over to it, and the gate, as they do in supernatural
films, just opened wiyhout any human assistance. He floated through and
on the other side he saw an intellectual smorgasbord of everything that
had ever puzzled the mind of man, you know, how did it all begin, where
do we go from here, are there past lives, and like a sponge he was just
absorbing all this esoteric information and all of a sudden there was a
kind of swishing in the air and he heard a voice, 'no, not yet, he's not
ready' and like a long umbilical cord he felt himself being pulled back,
back, back and he lay down in his body and he opened his eyes, and he
said to the nurse 'I was dead, wasn't I'. Then he bounded off the
operating table. I don't know how you die then you bound off an
operating table, then he got two reams of paper, and a gallon of
scalding black coffee, and at the end of two days he had a manuscript
called 'Excalibur' or 'The Dark Sword'. And he told me that whoever read
it either went insane or committed suicide. And he said that the last
time he had shown it to a publisher in New York, he walked into the
office to find out what the reaction was, the publisher called for the
reader, the reader came in with the manuscript, threw it on the table
and threw himself out of the skyscraper window."
VOICEOVER
"But was Hubbard's extraordinary story true? Excalibur became the stuff
of mystery. Hubbard told friends it was too dangerous to publish. But
forty years later, a treasure trove from Hubbard's early journals and
manuscripts, believed to have been long lost, was discovered by his
staff.     
GERRY ARNMMSTRONG - Hubbard's household manager
"There were two and a half versions of Excalibur. I read them and I
didn't go mad and I didn't commit suicide. They also include the
information within related writings, that these came out of a nitrous
oxide incident. Hubbard had a couple of teeth extracted, and it was
while under the effect of nitrous oxide, that he came up with
Excalibur."
VOICEOVER
"Hubbard's 'death' was in fact an hallucination under the effects of
anaesthetic. So what was the intellectual dish he'd fed on?"
GERRY ARMSTRONG
"It wasn't anything particularly revolutionary. The key to Excalibur was 
this great realisation, by Hubbard, of 'Survive' as being the one
command that all existence, and all life and all people, have. That
became the basis for a lot of Dianetics and a lot of Scientology"
VOICEOVER
"This idea had a profound impact on Hubbard. In a letter to Polly he
wrote 'I have high hopes of smashing my name into history so violently
that it will take a legendary form' The Second World War brought a new
dimension to the Hubbard legend. He said that while serving in the U.S.
Navy he had been blinded, but that inspired by the insights he had first
glimpsed when he died on the operating table he had dramatically been
able to cure himself."
HUBBARD IN 1968
"By 1948 through my own processing, and use of the principles I had 
isolated up to that time, was able to pass a 100% combat physical, 
which was very mysterious to the government, how had I suddenly 
become completely physically well, from being blind and lame.
VOICEOVER
"It was an odd story, because Hubbard's war record
[shots of medical history, showing ulcers and conjunctivitis]
shows his recurring problem was a stomach ulcer, there are reports
of conjunctivitis, but none of blindness. Indeed none of his 
medical reports, before, during, or after the war, contain any 
suggestion of blindness, only shortsightedness and astigmatism.
After the war, Hubbard went to Hollywood. As a successful science
fiction author he was a welcome visitor to the Los Angeles Science
Fantasy Association. There was one power over the mind he undoubtedly
did possess - hypnotism"
FORREST ACKERMAN
"Ron Hubbard came to our club and he hypnotised all of the members 
except me. I wanted to remain in present time and watch what was going 
on. I remember it was fascinating, he told one boy he had a little 
kangaroo in the palms of his hands, and the boy was going all 
around the room showing everyone this little kangaroo that was 
hopping around"
VOICEOVER
"In writings and conversations, Hubbard began to speak of his new 
science of the mind. As Scientology's literature would later depict,
Hubbard claimed that in addition to himself, he cured eleven other war
veterans and resored sanity to 40 mental patients" 
JEAN COX - Writer
"Rumours were beginning to circulate that this new science of the mind
or this new philosophy had a significance for mankind that was greater 
than the discovery of the wheel and equal in significance to the 
discovery of fire"
VOICEOVER
"In the May 1950 edition of 'Astounding Science Fiction' Hubbard 
published his stunning findings.Dianetics was truly born. Thousands of
letters poured in to the magazine. In the meantime Hubbard had been
pounding the typewriter keys, putting his ideas into a 450-page book. It
became a bestseller, and Dianetics a national craze. Hubbard's theory
was that the human mind was bedevilled by 'engrams', memories of painful
events, often imprinted before birth on the fetus. He claimed that under 
the direction of a Dianetics therapist or auditor, as he called them
these engrams could be relived and then cleared from the mind.
At this stage, Dianetics seemed just an exaggerated form of 
psychotherapy."
FORREST ACKERMAN
"Well, Dianetics was so popular because it promised a brave new world 
of everybody clear, no more colds, no more eyeglasses, it cured me
of a fear of dogs"
JEAN COX
"Among the various things it was said to be able to do was, one 
person had lost a tooth, and through Dianetic auditing he regrew the
tooth. Almost any ilness could be cured, schizophrenia could be cured."
FORREST ACKERMAN
"It opened up the whole world for everybody to become perfect human 
beings"
VOICEOVER
"Hubbard sold Dianetics auditing coures at $500 a go. The money was
rolling in. But he was about to be accused of being a con-man"
"With his book, Dianetics, a best-seller Ron Hubbard was America's new
guru. In August 1950, at a lecture hall in Los Angeles he presented to a 
crowd of 6,000 the first peerson to be what he called a 'clear'.
She was a student called Sonya Bianca. As a clear she was supposed to 
have total recall."
JEAN COX
"Various members of the audience called questions at her. Could she
remember what was said on page 217 of her physics textbook? She
couldn't. Could she remember what she had for breakfast on the morning
of August 17, 1946? She couldn't. Then various people called out for 
Hubbard to turn his back on her and see if she could remember
the colour of his tie. She couldn't. At that moment, the whole 
business sort of collapsed. People started leaving the auditorium."
VOICEOVER
"Suddenly Hubbard was in trouble. He was accused of being a con-man and
Dianetics a form of hypnotism., a technique at which he was so expert.
He recruited a bright young PR woman, Barbara Kaye"
BARBARA KAYE 
"Well I've always found that it's the mind of a man that is most sexy.
He was not really terribly physically attractive. And he had a brilliant
mind, no question about that. I surely thought this was a man who is 
interested in marrying me, and who I might be interested in marrying."
VOICEOVER
"The intellectual attraction turned into an affair and Barbara stayed
with the 40 year old Hubbard in an apartment in Hollywood. But by now
Hubbard had left Polly and was married to his second wife, Sara  He had
led Barbara to believe that the marriage with Sara was over. It wasn't."
BARBARA KAYE
"It was quite shocking when shortly after moving some of my things into
the apartment, suddenly Sara turned up with the babies and moved in.
I believe he was just as dismayed as I, because the next day when he
came to the office with some of my belongings, like my cologne and
toothbrush and so forth, he looked very downtrodden and apologetic and
not happy about the situation at all"    
VOICEOVER
"Nevertheless, Barbara was kicked out. Dianetics was still in trouble, 
after the initial success of the book, money had rolled in, and 
rolled out just as fast. Hubbard went tp Palm Springs to try and
recoup his fortune with a follow-up book. But the business, his 
marriage with Sara, and his writing were in crisis. He asked Barbara to
come to him."
BARBARA KAYE
"He was certainly very depressed, He had lost the colour in his face.
His voice was hardly audible. He told me that he was totally 
blocked, he was working under a publishers deadline that he
was failing to meet. He believed that his inability to write was due to
the sinister interventions of other people, such as Sara hypnotizing him
in his sleep and telling him that he would never write again. I found
him paranoid, you know, he was clearly going through a clinical
depression."
VOICEOVER
"Hubbard and Sara finally split up.
Their divorce became a public sensation." 

[Shot of Los Angeles Examiner cover 
Tues April 24 1951 'Mrs Hubbard Torture Claim'
L. Ron Hubbard, 40, founder of the 'mental healing' system Dianetics
is 'hopelessly insane' and should be committed to an asylum, his wife
of five years, Sara, 25 charged yesterday.......] 
"Sara accused Hubbard of torturing her and declared him insane
Hubbard denounced Sara as a Russian spy and kidnapped their
13 month old daughter. Hubbard ended up in Wichita in Kansas and got
back in touch with Barbara"
[shot of Western Union telegram from Hubbard.
'HAVE BEEN VERY ILL. DO NOT FEEL I SHOULD OFFER YOU ANYTHING LESS 
HONORABLE THAN MARRIAGE.....]
BARBARA KAYE
"He sent me a wire telling me that he had been very ill and saying that 
he wanted to marry me. I wnt to Wichita. He looked terrible. He had hair 
down to his shoulders and his fingernails were like talons."
[shot of handwritten note 'Hello! I am happy you are here! I love you!
 Ron']
"and I found a note, a very sweet note in my hotel room saying 'glad you 
are here, I love you' but I saw a man there who had no prospects, for 
one thing, and that he had some psychiatric difficulties and I didn't 
see much of a life for myself with that sort of individual. So I left"
VOICEOVER
"But Hubbard bounced back. He got married for the third time, to one of 
his students, Mary Sue Whipp. And Mary Sue would become his devoted
deputy. Sara, his second wife, was 'cleared' from his memory, just like
an engram."
[film of Hubbard in naval uniform holding his book 'How to Save Your
Marriage']
HUBBARD
"How many times have I been married? I've been married twice. And I'm 
very happily married just now. I have a lovely wife, and I have four 
children, my first wife is dead."
Interviewer
"What happened to your second wife"
LRH
"I never havd a second wife"
VOICEOVER
"In 1952 Hubbard launched a revolutionary new product, Scientology.
Dianetics originally covered this life only. But in a new book,
'Scientology - A History of Man'
[shot of cover of 'Scientology A History of Man' with ape-man 
gnawing at bloody haunch]
Hubbard revealed that wasn't enough. Human bodies were in fact
inhabited by immortal souls or 'thetans' going back to primeval times.
Hubbard's son from his first marriage, Nibs claimed the book stemmed
>from  an unusual piece of drug-driven research."
JIM DINCALCI - Ron Hubbard's Medical Officer
"LRH gave his son Nibs some amphetamines, and Nibs started talking, he
said, started really going talking fast, from the speed. And he kept
talking, he kept talking, and his dad kept giving him speed and all of a
sudden he was talking about his history, when he was a clam and all
these different situations in early earth. And out of that came 'History
of Man'"
FORREST ACKERMAN
"Suddenly you were nobody - Oh I've been back three lives, you know,
I've been back seven, you know, I was in the time of Pharoah. Well, when
I got back to the individual who was a clam, lying on a primordial
seashore with a grain of sand irritating a pearl inside it, I decided
that was as far back as I wanted to go and I just departed from
Scientology altogether"
VOICEOVER
"In late 1952, Hubbard came to London. He was still in financial trouble
back home. A business partner had just issued a warrant for the return
of $9,000  Hubbard had borrowed. To make money, he needed to go
international, and here instead of creditors, he found a new group of
adoring fans."
PAM KEMP - friend and ex-scientologist
"He was really flamboyant, I mean he was full of life and he rode about
on his Harley motorcycle, and we threw paries and he would play his
guitar and sing and put on his cowboy hat and he was just lots and lots
of fun. We would all get together and then we would do various exercises
and we would go out and see if just with thoughts we could knock off
policemen's hats. What kind of power did we have in terms of thinking
and thought and energy and that sort of thing. I mean, it was great fun"
CYRIL VOSPER - Ron Hubbard's Staff
"I thought it would give me total control over my own life.It sounds
ridiculous doesn't it, but put in those terms, that is basically what
Hubbard was saying. He was saying that you and everyone else, with the
use of Scientology (or Dianetics at that time) could become a god. And                
we were all, if you like, fallen gods"
VOICEOVER
"The next step was to create a church for his new gods. A writer friend
called Lloyd Eschbach later recalled how after a dinner in the late
1940's Hubbard had said "I'd like to start a religion. That's where the
money is'. Now, a few years later the church of Scientology was born.
[shot of articles of association signed by LRH, LRH jr, Henrietta
Hubbard]
In America, in paricular, there were sound practical reasons."
RAYMOND KEMP friend and ex-Scientologist.
"There are tax advantages and there are advantages in the Constitution
which say that the Government must not abridge the operations of a
church. That more than anything else, made him agree to using that
vehicle because it is and has to date proved to be very difficult for
any government to abridge the activities of a church."
VOICEOVER
"Hubbard found the perfect cathedral for his church. Saint Hill Manor,
in East Grinstead in Sussex. He played his new role, the country squire.
He told the locals that he was a scientist, researching plants, and
their reaction to pain [shot of Hubbard and a tortured tomato]
He and his young family settled into Sussex society, bringing American 
razzamataz into East Grinstead's Road Safety Campaign.
[Hubbard with cowboy hat and star on a motorcycle]
But the locals hadn't realised that Sain Hill was to become the 
Mecca of Scientology. Devotees arrived from all over the world to study
at their master's feet. 
[man walking into reception saying 'I'm from LA']
They paid thousands of pounds for Hubbard's courses." 
[Sudents with headphones listening to tape-recordings of Hubbards voice
'When it has an old experience will add that data into its current
experience and it keeps coming up with wrong answers']
Virginia Downsborough was on the first Saint Hill clearing course."
VIRGINIA DOWNSBOROUGH - Ron Hubbard's Personal Assistant
"Ron had such an amazing ability for making you feel that you were just
so important to him and so valued. So many people wanted to do what he
wanted, wanted to show him their best efforts, wanted to be parts, 
you know it was 'wait for me, let me come along with this wonderful
game you're playing'."
VOICEOVER
"Central to the game was Hubbard's E-meter, a form of lie-detector
[students holding the cans] which claimed could electrically detect
emotional charge. Students spent hours, days, months, sometimes years
going over painful events or engrams in this or their past lives
trying to make the needle float - Proof that the engram was now 
cleared from their memories.
[Girl leads another girl through door announces 'Clear 386 - Lee Ecker'
Second girl 'It's like nothing else in the world. Really, I feel quite
free']
Hubbard had designed an ingenious commercial product. The more past 
lives, the more memories, the more engrams to be cleared, all in a
complex series of expensive courses"
HANA ETRINGHAM - Hubbard's Deputy at Sea
"Making money I think to Hubbard was paramount. He wasn't that
interested in it for himself. He did have perks, he did have his cars,
his motorbikes, his books, his good food and things like that and
eventually he had his villas and he had his estates and so on but the
money that he wanted predominantly was for power"
VOICEOVER
"Hubbard wanted to create a world-wide army of Scientologists.
Going clear was only the first step. After that, further courses 
could improve your IQ, improve your work, turn you into a superman.
PAM KEMP 
"The purpose of Scientology was to make the able more able, and 
he was always striving for that, and in everything he did
I think he was looking at that. Now his idea was that if you 
could get everybody looking in the same direction then you'd have
a very powerful nation, you see."
VOICEOVER
"This photograph, composed by Hubbard himself, betrays an 
extraordinary ambition he held for Scientology.
[Hubbard standing, one hand on a globe. - 'State of Man Congress']
HANA ELTRINGHAM
"The entire objective was to find a place that Hubbard could eventually 
turn into his own kingdom, with his own government, his own passports,
his own monetary system, in other words his own principality, that
he would be the benign dictator of. That was the objective"
RAY KEMP
"He had been having some auditing and doing some investigative
auditing and looking at past lives and past experiences and he ran into
what he thought might be the past life of Cecil Rhodes so he went to
Rhodesia to check out what he had discovered in his auditing"
HANA ELTRINGHAM
"He was there to attempt to create a Scientology community in 
the country and eventually turn the country over into a
Scientology country. He was looking for a homebase for Scientology"
VOICEOVER
"Hubbard's vision of becoming a latter-day Rhodes failed. The Rhodesian
Government became suspicious of him and his visa was not renewed. Back
in England, Hubbard was also under attack. Parents were worried by
strange communications from children who had fallen under Scientology's
thrall."
[Black and white interview with unidentified woman]
"There was a letter from her saying that she was disconnecting from me.
You probably know about this, you've seen it in the paper, but
that I was destroying her and that she didn't want to see me again.
That was it. Karen it was signed."
VOICEOVER
"The newspapers were accusing him of being a fraud
[Headline: Memo to the Health Minister THIS MAN IS BOGUS]
and lobbied the government to launch an enquiry. Hubbard decided there
was only one answer. He would take to the high seas. With his loyal band
of disciples 
[film of young bearded man on deck giving muster 
instructions to crew, Hubbard looking on from bridge]
he would move himself and his empire out of any government's
jurisdiction."
HANA ELTRINGHAM
"At one point he turned round and said to us in a very masterful way, in
a very, almost ambassadorial sort of way he said 'It's perfectly all
right to step outside the law, because the law itself is aberrated, so
in order to achieve our ends, that gives us licence to step outside the
law."
VOICEOVER
"Hubbard's followers were about to see the consequences of life 
beyond the law as their messiah became their dictator.
In 1967, with his own navy of Scientologists, the Sea Organisation
Ron Hubbard set sail. Hana Eltringham, 24, went with him. She
had never crewed on a large ship before, but Hubbard detected
that she was unusually well equipped for naval command."
HANA ELTRINGHAM
"Hubbard called me in to his cabin and stood right in the doorway of his
cabin, fiddling with his E-meter and started asking me questions about
when I had last been a captain. This could only be past lives because I
had never been a captain in this life. So I started, you know, thinking
back and came up with this past experience about being a space captain
of a space ship and being blown up in space and the planet was being
invaded and all this fighting and blasting going on and so forth, and at
the end of it he peered over the E-meter at me and he said 'were you one
of the Loyal Officers?' and at that point I got this up-rush and I felt
good. I must have been one of the loyal officers, I must have been one
of the elite, you know"
VOICEOVER
"The young Hana was appointed captain of Hubbard's #2 ship, a 400-ton
trawler. His flagship was a 3,000 ton converted cattle ferry. On board,
Hubbard had a personal guard, called the Commodore's Messengers 
[picture of young girls with long dresses, long hair, 
floppy straw hats and bouquets]
GERRY ARMSTRONG
"They took care of everything for him, they dressed him, they got him
ready for bed, they lit his cigarettes, they held his ashtray"
MIKE GOLDSTEIN  - Hubbard's financial controller
"Most of the messengers were young girls 13,14,15. They were an
extension of his communication, so when somebody saw them on the ship or
they came up to them, it was like you were talking to him."
VOICEOVER
"On one occasion, Gerry Armstrong, who had been sent on a shore errand
was visited by one of Hubbard's messengers"
GERRY ARMSTRONG
"This was Terry, who was later to be my wife. She came to me where I was
working and said 'The Commodore wants to know, is it true that when you
were ashore, you went to the US Embassy and applied for some 30-odd
visas?' And I said 'Yes sir' because that's how you respond to the
messenger Her next message was 'The Commodore says you're a fucking
asshole'"
VOICEOVER
"The attacks on Scientology had pitched Hubbard into one of 
['Daily Mirror' Headline 'Master-Mind' next to picture of Hubbard]
his periodic depressions. His response was to take it out on his
followers, on sea and land. He designed a new disciplinary code called
'Ethics' which put many of them into what he called lower conditions of
existence like Liability, Doubt, or Treason. To rise out of these
conditions, penances were required. Liability, for example, required you
to 'deal an effective blow to Scientologies enemies'"
VICTORIA DOWNSBOROUGH - crew member Avon River
"Everybody was supposedly in one of these lower conditions, which was   
quite astonishing because everybody really loved Ron, and wanted to
contribute to having whatever his dreams might be come true"
PAM KEMP 
"What happened was it became a very heavy, almost military organisation.
People changed. I think people became scared. They were scared of
'Ethics', scared of what would happen, so they became very intimidated."
VOICEOVER
"At sea the cruelty extended to children. Hubbard became infuriated by a
small boy who had unwittingly chewed a telex."
HANA ELTRINGHAM
"He put this 4 1/2 year old little boy - Derek Greene - into the chain
locker for two days and two nights. It's a closed metal container, it's
wet, it's full of water and seaweed, it smells bad. But Derek was
sitting up, on the chain, in this place, on his own, in the dark, for
two days and two nights. He was not allowed to go to the potty. I mean
he had to go in the chain locker on his own, soil himself. He was given
food. And p- I was - I never went near it, the chain locker while he was
in there, but people heard him crying. That is sheer total brutality.
That is child abuse."
GERRY ARMSTRONG
"People were frightened of him. He was the boss, he was the dictator. He
could order anyone to do anything on board. He was ruthless, he could
be, at times, charming. But he could also be belligerant, and he could
also be uncaring and cruel."
VOICEOVER
"Yet Hubbard's disciples continued to believe in him. In 1968, he took a
select few around the Mediterranean on his yacht, the Enchanter, on a
project he called the 'Mission into Time'. The task was to find treasure
that Hubbard had buried during his previous lives."
HANA ELTRINGHAM
"We were in a tizzy, you know, all was excitement at this upcoming, very
exciting mission. And I was amongst one of the chosen, and we sailed off
with our metal detectors and went to a variety of locations and did find
some metal at the basement of what he claimed used to be a temple in
which he had liasons with some priestess during his trips to Sardinia.
There was metal buried down below. He was very triumphant during those
times. It was very heady stuff for us people, it had a very magical,
magnetic, hypnotising effect on the followers"
VOICEOVER
"Hubbard was also engaged on a further great expansion of Scientology.
Once a Scientologist reached the state of 'clear' he became an Operating
Thetan or OT. Hubbard now designed a series of secret OT levels [Shot of
chart of levels up to OT XV] Each one was part of an unfolding saga
which revealed that we are all infested by 'thetans' the souls of exiles
>from  the Galactic Federation, which under Prince Xenu ruled this sector
of the Galaxy 95 million [sic] years ago. 
[shot of typewriter typing out the start of the OT III material 'head of
the Galactic Federation.....' ] 
If you ever reach the top OT level you will have crossed the 'Bridge to
Total Freedom' As always in Scientology, each OT level could only be
reached after an expensive course. Did Hubbard believe it, or was he
having his followers on?"
CYRIL VOSPER
"He probably always knew he was running a con. Much of the stuff he was
talking about was a lot of rubbish. But I think that after a while,
when he found there were thousands of people, with the adulation around
the planet for this man, I think they started to take him over. I think
he began to believe that he was, if not god, then very close to god."
VOICEOVER
"Hubbard's new cosmology was accompanied by new forms of punishment on
board ship. Crew members who displeased him were liable to be thrown
overboard before being retrieved from the harbour below. If they re-
offended they were tied up and blindfolded first"
HANA ELTRINGHAM
"I saw one woman, Julia Lewis Salmon, from the United States, thrown
overboard. This woman must have been in her fifties. She was - had her
hands and I think her feet tied, maybe only her hands tied and a
blindfold, but she went over. She was so panicked by the thought of
being thrown over this way - she was standing on the edge of the deck,
panicked, beside herself, shouting. And I was standing on the A deck
with Hubbard and his other aides, watching this going on. And Julia 
didn't jump over, she had to be pushed over, she was incapable, she was
in such a fit."
JIM DINCALCI
"He saw everyone suspiciously and assumed everyone was intentionally 
attacking him. Governments were attacking him, and then everyone
around, who made a mistake, were attacking him, and the only thing 
he could do would be to attack back."
VOICEOVER
"In 1973 a French court started proceedings against Hubbard for fraud.
He had left his ship, which was berthed in Morocco and went to live in
hiding inNew York, where he was looked after by Jim Dincalci. To turn
the tables on his enemies he devised a bizarre plan called 'Snow White'.
Its stated aim was to correct false reports about Scientology
[shot of 'SNOW WHITE I/C' document]
It led to Scientology members infiltrating government departments.
Hubbard even issued a reading list for learning the black arts 
of espionage. 
ROBERT VAUGHN YOUNG
"He believed that there was an international cabal that was in control
of the attack on him around the world as well as all the attacks 
in various countries. And so 'Snow White' was written to find this
cabal, find all the connections between these enemy groups, and
to expose them, to destroy them. It was done throgh burglary. It
was just pure military intelligence."
VOICEOVER
"Having instigated 'Snow White' Hubbard rejoined his ship in the Canary
Islands. There he had a serious motorbike accident. His mood
dramatically worsened"
HANA ELTRINGHAM
"This was his period which I called the pouting, the crying, the mad
period where he would cry and throw things against the wall, the
bulkheads and pout and scream. Right towards the tail end of that
he created the RPF, the 'Rehabilitation Project Force'"
VOICEOVER
"The RPF was yet another correctional regime. Its orders were fearsome
[shot of RPF orders]   
As ship's captain it was Hana Eltringham's job to implement them."
HANA ELTRINGHAM
"I was absolutely horrified when I read them, because they talked about
the creation of this - pretty much like a slave labour camp. Those
weren't the words used but that was the impression given. Where the
unwanteds, those found wanting, seriously wanting were to be sent, and
they were to be kept in this with no rights, no freedoms, no privileges
of any kind. Pretty much the only rights they were allowed were a little
bit of sleep each day, food leftovers. The harshest treatment, they were
not allowed to speak to any of the crew. It was very, very, very bad
that this was going on, but Hubbard's statement to us was that it is
going to take a lot more ethics, a lot more punishment than anyone has,
can easily face up to, to get this whole world back in shape, and at
that point, I believed that statement"
JIM DINCALCI
"Human emotion and reactions is the way humans were. And he didn't
specially regard humans very highly. He liked the idea of the 'doll
bodies' that were in other civilisations. Doll bodies didn't have human
emotions and reactions . They were I guess like Spock, you know. Just
very analytical, you just get the job done. Love is not a sentiment
that's known or cared for, and to me that's the tragedy because he put
that into the organisation, into the way of being in the organisation."
VOICEOVER
"Hubbard even consigned his own son, Quentin, who was a senior 
auditor on the ship to the RPF."
MIKE GOLDSTEIN
"Quentin really was a real sweet kid. He was a real nice guy, and very
soft-spoken and it was very difficult for him being Hubbard's son and
being put very high position and I don't think he was that interested in
it. He just wanted to be a pilot and also the fact that he was gay and
that's a very tough thing in Scientology, to be gay. Especially that
kid, to be Hubbard's son and this top technical person, and to be gay.
Oh, that would be a horrible thing to be wrestling with."
VOICEOVER
"Quentin was sent to the RPF, after he committed the sin of trying to
commit suicide. Two years later he succeeded."
JIM DINCALCI
"Hubbard saw it as a betrayal, because everything was referenced around
him, the world was doing everything to him. This technology that was
supposed to work, didn't even work on the senior person of all
Scientology, you know, Hubbard and his son. No, he just saw that as an
attack from his son. You know, the love was gone. He had lost love."
VOICEOVER
"In 1975 Hubbard decided the time had come to come ashore. He sent
scouts to lok for a suitable land base. They settled on Clearwater, in
the rich state of Florida."
HANA ELTRINGHAM
"He stated coming ashore would be profitable. Because we could get so
many more people to the Flag Land Base, as it was to be called, for 
auditing and training. And he also wanted to concenrate on getting 
professionals to the Land Base because of course they had more 
accessible money. They had pension funds, they had children's education 
funds, and some of these he named that were accessible."
VOICEOVER
"Hubbard knew Scientology would be unwelcome, so he devised a top-secret 
battle plan. He called it 'Operation Goldmine". Using a covername
'United Churches of Florida' Hubbard issued secret orders to take over
the town"
GABRIEL CAZARES - former Mayor of Clearwater
"These orders, in effect, stated very clearly, move into this area. Find
out who your friends are, develop them, find out who your enemies are,
destroy them. And then move into every possible area of community life,
business, social, religious, education."
VOICEOVER
"The plan worked, Clearwater is a Scientology bastion. Scientology owns
many prime sites. Big-name Scientologists like Lisa-Marie Presley have
moved in"
MIKE GOLDSTEIN
"You could get all the big high-rollers, you could get the people 
with the dollars, and you could make a fortune. And I believe the 
income for a week, this was like in 1978/1979 would be somewhere,sort of
half a million dollars a week. I mean thats where the big bucks started
to be made when you could do that"
VOICEOVER
"With the money rolling in, Hubbard moved to California, where he'd
play his last great role. His ambition was to film sci-fi blockbusters
based on his books, but he ended up making Scientology training films.
JIM DINCALCI
"The movie mogul - Cecil B DeMille. You know it was like he was. He
tried to be bigger than life. But he just wasn't. So he would make these
extravagent sets. They were ludicrous. They were not big productions.
They were just silliness. They were egomaniac. He tried to be flustery
and big and powerful, but if you looked, just stepped and observed, you
could see that he had fear about everything. And finally the fear 
came down to dust particles, little teeny dust particles"
GERRY ARMSTRONG
"He had phobias about dust, he had phobias about smells, he had phobias
about sounds. He would hear sounds that weren't there and he would
scream at the sound technician. He would see things that weren't there
and he would scream at the people who were framing the shot. And he
would smell smells that weren't there and he would have people rinse his
clothing some 13 or 15 or however many times."
VOICEOVER       
"In 1977 while Hubbard was away making movies, the FBI caught up with
the Snow White operation and raided Scientology headquarters in Los
Angeles and Washington. Hubbard's wife, Mary Sue and eight other
Scientology executives were convicted and sentenced for conspiracy and
stealing government documents. Hubbard disappeared, never to be seen
publicly again. After living in a succession of hiding places, he ended
up on this secluded ranch in the California hills. Secrecy has veiled
his final years. Bu one man, Robert Vaughn Young, who was then a
Scientology public relations officer, was later given a description of
Hubbard by one of his guardians. This and evidence from Hubbard's
autopsy report, paint a sad picture"
ROBERT VAUGHN YOUNG
"He had grown a beard, he had grown his long hair, the nails were
long, very much in the same problem as they found with Howard Hughes,
unkempt nails. Neigbours, there was a neighbour that walked in on him 
one day and he had become very frightened, and suddenly scuttled out of 
the barn. He was frightened to meet people, he was terrified of meeting
any new people. He was disappearing down, down, down into this little
strange world of his. The irony of this is that this was a man who was
promulgating and telling the world that with my technology and ideas,
you can get bigger and bigger and bigger and yet he was shrinking down
until finally he was hiding"
VOICEOVER
"On January 24th 1986 Ron Hubbard died. The Church of Scientology said
he'd simply quit his body to continue his work"
ROBERT VAUGHN YOUNG
"Him dying suddenly made him very mortal. And the last thing we could
have was for Hubbard to be mortal. So a story had to be designed and the
story is that he went off to research the next level. What is amazing is
how the Scientologists bought this. They bought it."
VOICEOVER
"Today the L. Ron Hubbard image is carefully protected by the  Church of
Scientology. It says he is the greatest humanitarian in history.
Hollywood has named a street after him and millions of dollars roll into
Scientology every year. It continues to preach that Hubbard's teachings
are the best solution to the mental problems of the world. The personal
tragedy is that one mind  Scientology did not appear to help is that of
its founder"

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