Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief(134)

Davis acknowledged that some of Hubbard’s medical records did not corroborate the founder’s version of events. The church itself, Davis confided, had been troubled by the contradiction between Hubbard’s story and the official medical records. But he said there were other records that did confirm Hubbard’s version of events, based on various documents the church had assembled. I asked where the documents had come from. “From St. Louis,” Davis explained, “from the archives of navy and military service. And also, the church got it from various avenues of research. Just meeting people, getting records from people.”

The man who examined the records and reconciled the dilemma, he said, was “Mr. X.” Davis explained, “Anyone who saw JFK remembers a scene on the Mall where Kevin Costner’s character goes and meets a man named Mr. X, who’s played by Donald Sutherland.” In the film, Mr. X is an embittered intelligence agent who explains that the Kennedy assassination was actually a coup staged by the military-industrial complex. In real life, Davis said, Mr. X was Colonel Leroy Fletcher Prouty, who had worked in the Office of Special Operations at the Pentagon. (Oliver Stone, who directed JFK, says that Mr. X was a composite character, based in part on Prouty.) In the 1980s, Prouty worked as a consultant for Scientology and was a frequent contributor to Freedom magazine. “We finally got so frustrated with this point of conflicting medical records that we took all of Mr. Hubbard’s records to Fletcher Prouty,” Davis continued. Prouty told the church representatives that because Hubbard had an “intelligence background,” his records were subjected to a process known as “sheep-dipping.” Davis explained that this was military parlance for “what gets done to a set of records for an intelligence officer. And, essentially, they create two sets.” (Prouty died in 2001.)

The sun was setting and the Dunkin’ Donuts sign glowed brighter. As the meeting was finally coming to an end, Davis made a plea for understanding. “We’re an organization that’s new and tough and different and has been through a hell of a lot, and has had its ups and downs,” he said. “And the fact of the matter is nobody will take the time and do the story right.”

Davis had staked much of his argument on the veracity of Hubbard’s military records. The fact-checkers had already filed a Freedom of Information Act request for all such material with the National Archives in St. Louis, where military records are kept. Such requests can drag on well past deadline, and we were running short on time. An editorial assistant, Yvette Siegert, flew to St. Louis to speed things along.

Meantime, Davis sent me a copy of a document that he said clearly confirmed Hubbard’s heroism: a “Notice of Separation from the US Naval Service,” dated December 6, 1945. The document specifies medals won by Hubbard, including a Purple Heart with a Palm, implying that he was wounded in action twice. But John E. Bircher, the spokesman for the Military Order of the Purple Heart, wrote me that the Navy uses gold and silver stars, “NOT a palm,” to indicate multiple wounds. Davis included a photograph of the actual medals Hubbard supposedly won, but two of them weren’t even created until after Hubbard left active service.

There was a fire in the St. Louis archives in 1973, which destroyed a number of documents, but Yvette returned with more than nine hundred pages of what the archivists insisted were Hubbard’s complete military records. Nowhere in the file is there mention of Hubbard’s being wounded in battle or breaking his feet. X-rays taken of Hubbard’s right shoulder and hip showed calcium deposits, but there was no evidence of any bone or joint disease in his ankles.

There is a Notice of Separation in the official records, but it is not the one Davis sent me. The differences in the two documents are telling. The St. Louis document indicates that Hubbard earned four medals for service, but they reflect no distinction or valor. The church document indicates, falsely, that Hubbard completed four years of college, obtaining a degree in civil engineering. The official document correctly notes two years of college and no degree.

The official Notice of Separation was signed by Lieutenant (jg) J. C. Rhodes, who also signed Hubbard’s detachment paperwork. On the church document, the commanding officer who signed off on Hubbard’s separation was “Howard D. Thompson, Lt. Cmdr.” The file contains a letter, from 2000, to another researcher, who had written for more information about Thompson. An analyst with the National Archives responded that the records of commissioned naval officers at that time had been reviewed and “there was no Howard D. Thompson listed.”

The church, after being informed of these discrepancies, asserted, “Our expert on military records has advised us that, in his considered opinion, there is nothing in the Thompson notice that would lead him to question its validity.” Eric Voelz and William Seibert, two longtime archivists at the St. Louis facility, examined the church’s document and pronounced it a forgery.10

Eric Voelz additionally told The New Yorker, “The United States has never handed out Purple Hearts with a palm.” He said that ditto marks, which are found on the document provided by the church, do not typically appear on forms of this kind. The font was also suspect, since it was not consistent with the size or style of the times. Voelz had never heard of the “Marine Medal,” and he took issue with the “Br. & Dtch. Vict. Meds.” found on the church document, saying that medals awarded by foreign countries are not listed on a Notice of Separation, and that they were unlikely to have been awarded to an American in any case.