Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief(140)

“Did he try it?”

“He blew up my E-Meter. Annie brought it back to me, all burnt up.”

This was just before Christmas, 1985. Hubbard died a few weeks later of an unrelated stroke.

The believers are still waiting for his return.





[page]* * *



1 City Children, Country Summer (Scribner’s, 1979).





Acknowledgments and a Note on Sources


Compared with other religions I have written about, the published literature on Scientology is impoverished and clouded by bogus assertions. Some crucial details one would want to know about the church have been withheld—for instance, the number of people who are members of the International Association of Scientologists, which would be the best guide to knowing the true dimensions of the church’s membership. The church promised to provide an organizational chart, but never did so; in any case, it would have been more notional than actual in terms of the flow of authority and responsibility, since many of the church’s executive hierarchy have been quarantined for years in the Hole at the direction of the only individual who controls the institution.

L. Ron Hubbard’s extensive—indeed, record-breaking—published works form the core of the documentary material that this book draws upon. Hubbard expressed himself variously in books, articles, bulletins, letters, lectures, and journals; one cannot understand the man or the organization he created without examining his work in each of these media. The church has published a useful compendium of Hubbard’s thought in What Is Scientology? Although the church employs a full-time Hubbard biographer and has commissioned several comprehensive works in the past, there is still no authorized account of Hubbard’s life. One of the previous Hubbard biographers, Omar Garrison, did write a full-scale account of Hubbard’s life, which was suppressed. The church has published a series of Ron magazines, which have been compiled as a highly selective encyclopedia. For years, the church has been mopping up other documents—journals, letters, photographs—and withholding them from public view, which makes it difficult for independent researchers to fill in blanks in the historical record.

There are several important repositories of information that I have used in this book, however: the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress; the Heinlein Prize Trust and the UC Santa Cruz Archives; the Kenneth Spencer Research Library of the University of Kansas; and the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Missouri. The Stephen A. Kent Collection on Alternative Religions, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, houses an important collection of Scientology material, and Professor Kent graciously allowed my assistant, Lauren Wolf, to work in his archive. In addition to being an endless source of memories on the history of the church, Karen de la Carriere made her extensive photographic archive available. Many thanks to these valuable resources for their cooperation.

There are three major unauthorized biographies of L. Ron Hubbard: Russell Miller’s excellent Bare-Faced Messiah (1987) was the first in-depth look at the man. Scientology unsuccessfully sued Miller, a British journalist, who says that while researching his book he was spied upon, his phone was tapped, and efforts were made to frame him for a murder he did not commit. Soon thereafter, Bent Corydon’s L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman? (1987) appeared, followed by Jon Atack’s A Piece of Blue Sky (1990). The church attempts to discredit both of these authors because they are former Scientologists who the church says were expelled from the organization. It is notable that no comprehensive biography of Hubbard has been attempted since the church’s campaign against these books.

The scarcity of academic work on the church and its leaders testifies to the caution with which scholars regard the subject, as well as the reluctance of the organization to divulge information about its members, beliefs, and inner workings to qualified social scientists. In 1976, Roy Wallis published The Road to Total Freedom: A Sociological Analysis of Scientology, the first significant academic study of the church. While he was researching his book, Wallis was spied upon, and forged letters were sent to his colleagues and employers implicating him in a homosexual relationship. Renunciation and Reformulation: A Study of Conversion in an American Sect, an insightful book by Harriet Whitehead, an anthropologist, appeared in 1987. Since then, contributions from the academy have been meager. At this point, I should also acknowledge the work of Hugh Urban, at Ohio State University, David S. Touretzky at Carnegie Mellon University, and Stephen Kent, at the University of Alberta. Each of these scholars has produced important contributions to the understanding of Scientology, despite the obstacles and threats posed by the church.

Court documents contain a valuable record of the history and culture of the church and its founder; this is especially true of the landmark 1991 suit Church of Scientology California vs. Gerald Armstrong. David Miscavige has been shy about giving interviews, but he has provided testimony and declarations in several lawsuits, most extensively in 1990, in Bent Corydon v. Church of Scientology.

A handful of courageous journalists have provided much of the essential information available about the culture of Scientology. Paulette Cooper opened the door with her 1971 exposé, The Scandal of Scientology. I have outlined in this book some of the harassment that she endured. Joel Sappell and Robert W. Welkos of the Los Angeles Times did a remarkable six-part series in 1990. Richard Leiby has been writing about Scientology since the early 1980s, first for the Clearwater Sun and subsequently for the Washington Post. Richard Behar covered the subject in Barron’s and most notably in his 1991 exposé for Time, “The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power.” Janet Reitman had unparalleled access to the church for her 2006 Rolling Stone article, “Inside Scientology,” which became a book of the same title in 2011. Chris Owen, an independent researcher, has written extensively about the church online, and has revealed much of the information available about Hubbard’s wartime experiences. Tom Smith has conducted a number of knowledgeable interviews on his radio show, The Edge, broadcast by Hillsborough Community College in Tampa, Florida. Joe Childs and Thomas C. Tobin of the Tampa Bay Times (formerly the St. Petersburg Times) have written groundbreaking stories, especially about the abuse inside the church hierarchy. Tony Ortega has been writing about Scientology since 1995, for the Phoenix New Times, and he continued as a valuable resource in the pages and the blog of the Village Voice until his recent resignation. Several of these journalists have been harassed, investigated, sued, or threatened in various ways. I am the beneficiary of their skill and persistence.