Let's Sell These People a Piece of Blue Sky: Hubbard, Dianetics and Scientology (55 page)

Scott Mayer was on Scientology staff for 12 years. He had
held many posts in that time, from Quentin Hubbard’s bodyguard, when Quentin
was trying to escape or to kill himself, to being manager of the
Apollo
just prior to its abandonment. In his time Mayer had seen Orgs throughout the
world.
¹⁹

Mayer left Scientology in 1976. Two years later, he was
still a GO target, staying more or less in hiding. He eventually decided to
find out just how serious the GO was. Mayer let it be known that he was staying
at a certain address, and left his car parked outside. It was Christmas Eve,
1978. The car was blown up. Although he could not substantiate anything about
the attack, he decided the Guardian’s Office meant business, and stayed in
hiding. Mayer’s resolve to act was strengthened, and he became a consultant to
the IRS in their ongoing litigation against Scientology.
²⁰

Mayer had worked on confidential operations for Scientology,
among them an elaborate smuggling system which used a series of five fictitious
companies to courier money out of America.
²¹
Couriers were carefully
trained, told exactly what to say if apprehended, and sent out with double
wrapped packages. The inner wrapper was labeled with the true destination. He
also talked about blackmailing a potential defector into silence, using
information from the person’s Scientology Confessional auditing.
²²
He put a photocopy of an order to “cull” auditing folders into evidence.
²³

Probably Mayer’s most heartbreaking assignment was the maintenance
of a ranch for Sea Org children in Mexico. They were called the “Cadet Org”:
“Children were routinely transported from Los Angeles to the Mexican base and
berthed and housed there ... so that their mothers and fathers could get on with
their business within the Church.”
²⁴

It was cheaper to ship the kids to Mexico than to provide
acceptable housing in LA. The ranch was not a very safe environment for children:
“Bandits were coming in at night and they were stealing grain and they were stealing
saddles and whatever wasn’t tied down.” Mayer was ordered to set up a rifle
with an infra-red sniper scope to deal with the marauding bandits. As it turned
out the project was never fulfilled, because the woman running the ranch shot
one of the bandits before Mayer arrived, and they did not return.
²⁵

Bandits were not the only problem the children faced in
Mexico. There were scorpions, snakes and poisonous spiders. The brush grew
right up to the house, and there was neither money nor personnel available to
clear it away. Because the Sea Org is run on a shoestring budget, it took Mayer
some time to resolve this intolerable situation. He did so not by appealing to
his superior’s compassion, but by pointing out what bad public relations a
death would cause. He took a jar of scorpions with him to emphasize his point.
²⁶

Scientologists believe that “Considerations” govern “Matter,
Energy, Space and Time.”
²⁷
Which is to say, they believe in mind
over matter. “Clearing the Planet” is far more important than any individual’s
physical well-being. Self-sacrifice is a common trait of the True Believer.
Life in the Sea Org is a peculiar mixture of “making it go right” (to use
Hubbard’s phrase), and an often child-like belief in the miraculous power of
Scientology. According to Mayer: “Staff members were always ill-fed,
ill-clothed ... I had an abscess in my tooth and I was being audited for it.
I’m ready to go to the dentist, and I was being audited for it. I spent about a
week, week-and-a-half, doing ... what they call touch assists - to get rid of
the pain ... And, finally ... I was just delirious and - well, there wasn’t any
money for medical is what it boiled down to ... I went to the dentist ... he
told me I’d just made it ... if it had been another day or so, I wouldn’t be
here to talk to you.”
²⁸

Before journalist Paulette Cooper took the stand, a former
Scientology agent who had stolen her medical records testified.
²⁹
He
also talked about another agent placed in a cleaning company so he could steal
files from a Boston attorneys’ office. He gave this picture of the B-1 cell he
worked in:

We used code names and our reports were written in code names
... The letters that were written in the smear campaigns - the typewriters were
stolen and usually used just for a short time ... Everything was done with
plastic gloves so that there wouldn’t be any fingerprints.

He was a case officer for Scientology agents who had
infiltrated the Attorney General’s Office, the Department of Consumer Affairs
and the Better Business Bureau. “Each week these people would file reports ...
it was very difficult for a public person in Boston to make a complaint about
the Church and have it go anywhere. We had all the bases covered.”

Paulette Cooper then testified about the effects of being on
the receiving end of the Church’s harassive tactics. The Scientologists had
just filed their
eighteenth
law suit against her
³⁰
:

I am being sued now repeatedly by individual
Scientologists, who, in some cases, I don’t even know, suits for distributing
literature at functions I didn’t even attend. Part of the purpose in harassing
people with law-suits is to keep deposing them and preventing you from writing
or making a living and making you show up at legal depositions. I’ve been
deposed for nineteen days total since this started, with four more coming up in
a couple of weeks.

There has also been some other harassment in the
past six months or so: continued calls to me, calls to my family. The
Scientologists find out what the person’s “buttons” [sensitive spots] are, as
they put it, and the way to get to them. And they know that a way to get to me
is to harass my parents...

They’ve put out libelous publications about me;
they’ve sent letters saying that I was soon to be imprisoned ... attempts have
been made to put me in prison. They’ve sent false reports about me to the
Justice Department, the District Attorney’s Office, and the IRS. As you know,
government agencies have to investigate any complaints that they get. So, then,
Scientology sends out press releases that I am under investigation by the
Attorney General’s Office, I am under investigation by the DA, and so on.

They have put detectives on me; they have put spies
on me. A few

months ago, they put an attempted spy on my mother to
try to get information about me from her and to fix me up with the woman’s son
... somebody cancelled my plane to Florida about a month ago, and that is the
third time that happened to me this year ... I’d like to say that this was a
very good year compared to the previous years.

Cooper went on to describe her one-woman battle against
Scientology, which began in 1968. She commented wryly that she had been alone
in this battle for five years, and that she was glad that more people were
finally speaking out.

After her first article on Scientology, in 1968, Cooper
received a flood of death threats and smear letters; her phone was bugged; lawsuits
were filed against her; attempts were made to break into her apartment;
³¹
and she was framed for a bomb threat.
³²

At one point Cooper moved, and her cousin Joy, of rather
similar appearance, moved into her old apartment. Soon afterwards, before the
cousin had even changed the name plate on the door, someone called with
flowers:

When Joy opened the door to get these flowers, he unwrapped
the gun ... he took the gun and he put it at Joy’s temple and he cocked the
gun, and we don’t know whether it misfired, whether it was a scare technique
... somehow the gun did not go off ... he started choking her, and she was able
to break away and she started to scream. And the person ran away.
³³

Many of the 300 tenants in the new apartment building were
sent copies of a smear letter, saying that Paulette Cooper had venereal disease
and sexually molested children.
³⁴

To answer the bomb threat charges brought falsely by
Scientology,

Cooper had to find a $5,000 advance to retain an attorney.
She appeared before the Grand Jury, and truthfully denied the allegations
throughout. She was indicted not only for making the threats, but also for
perjury! She faced the possibility of a 15-year jail sentence.
³⁵

Her career as a free-lance journalist was in jeopardy: “What
editor is ever going to give an assignment to someone who’s been indicted or
convicted for sending bomb threats to someone they’ve opposed? I was very concerned
about the indictment and the trial coming out in the newspapers. The public
does not know the difference between indict and convict ... where there’s smoke
there’s fire.”
³⁶

Cooper developed insomnia, sleeping for only two to four
hours a night, and wandered around in a daze of exhaustion. The lawyers’ bills
for the preparation of her case came to $19,000. She could not write. She lost
her appetite and stopped eating properly. The Scientologists were merciless,
having stolen her medical records; they knew very well that she was recovering
from surgery when they began their attack. Her boyfriend of five years left
her. The Scientologists had pressed her to the edge of extinction.
³⁷

At this point, she met Jerry Levin, who took pity on her
terrible situation. She helped Levin to find an apartment in her building. He
did everything he could to help, even doing some of her shopping. At last she
had a friend and confidant who would listen to everything. And having listened,
she later discovered, Levin would file his report with the Guardian’s Office.
After the GO trial in 1979, Levin’s reports were made public. Jerry Levin was
also known as Don Alverzo, one of the Washington burglars.
³⁸
Paulette Cooper was Fair Game, in Hubbard’s words she could be “tricked, sued
or lied to or destroyed.”
³⁹

It took over two years for the bomb threat charges against
Cooper to be dropped. She was completely exonerated after the FBI had found the
GO Orders for the Ops against her. By that time her book,
The Scandal of
Scientology
, had long been out of print. The Guardian’s Office had even
imported small quantities into foreign countries, so they could obtain
injunctions against its distribution. Copies were stolen from libraries, bought
up from used book shops, and destroyed.
⁴⁰

Cooper’s final point to the Clearwater Commission was the
insistence that Scientology incessantly claims to have reformed itself, to have
expelled the bad elements. She had heard such claims in 1968. We are still
hearing them now. They have never been true. The Scientologists expel another
scapegoat (“put a head on a pike” in Hubbard’s terms), make a great show that
the culprit has been removed, and then replace him with someone who will repeat
the offending behavior.
⁴¹

Dr. John Clark, a noted psychiatrist who has been a
persistent observer and critic of Cults also took the stand, and gave his
opinion of the intrusive nature of Scientology techniques. He explained the
incredible pressure brought to bear upon him by the Scientologists in their
attempt to discredit him. He spoke at some length about the conversion
experience: the sudden change of personality which members of Cults often
undergo.

Flynn’s last witness was former Mission Holder Brown McKee,
who a few months earlier had been a major voice at the Flag Mission Holders
conference. After 24 years of membership, having trained to a high level as an
Auditor, and having done the vaunted OT levels, Brown McKee took a surprisingly
short time to put Scientology in perspective
⁴²
:

After this meeting in December [1981], we went back to
Connecticut with the firm conviction that there was no interest within this
Church for reform. The dirty tricks, the Guardian’s Office operations, and that
type of thing, which they had told us were all a matter of the past, we found out
were not a matter of the past ... I’ve been a minister of the Church for some
sixteen years, and I really took it seriously. I’ve married people, I’ve buried
them, and to me it was a duty and an honor. And to find out what my Church had
been doing – it’s a little hard on me.

McKee described his most traumatic experience while in
Scientology. His wife, Julie, who was a highly trained Auditor, had started to
feel tired:

You must realize both of us were totally persuaded
that the source of all illness was mental, except for, say, a broken leg, and
the way of curing it is with auditing ...

So, during the summer, Julie lost more and more of
her energy and had some swelling and some small chest pains ... and began to
lose her voice. So, I thought, “Well, Flag has the best Auditors in the world
and should be able to help her out.” So, I sent her down here to Clearwater in,
I guess it was, October of 1978. We never even really thought about going to
see a doctor ... the Scientologist doesn’t think about that.

Well, they sent her back a week later sicker and ...
she couldn’t even whisper any more. She’d write notes. So, I tapped her on the
back, because she was complaining about her chest, and on one side I could hear
... the hollow sound that you hear when you tap, and the other side, it wasn’t
hollow. And so, I knew that there wasn’t any air on that side.

So, we went to see a doctor, and he had her in the
hospital very quickly. She was there two days when we were given the report.
And what it was adenocarcinoma, which was a cancer of the lymph glands of the
lungs, and her right lung had totally collapsed ... this cancer had totally
infiltrated her throat and paralyzed her vocal cords. And it had progressed to
the point where it was totally hopeless. I mean, they didn’t even suggest
chemotherapy. And they sent her home, and I cared for her for ten days. And she
died in my arms.