Nearly all of present discourse on Scientology facilities round insider revelations relating to the novel perception system coded inside the pay-to-play hierarchy of the Church –– e.g. allusions to an alien god named Xenu, hydrogen bombs exploding in historic volcanoes, auditing periods with e-Meters, and parasitic past-lives in spirit-form overlaying human our bodies often called Thetans. The deepest secrets and techniques of Scientology are solely made accessible to members who’ve diligently climbed the ranks and dished out huge sums of cash. Slowly however certainly, these secrets and techniques have been printed on the web by disgruntled ex-Scientologists, and thus the discussions surrounding this controversial faith have been commandeered into sensational silos. Whether or not intentional or not, the tip result’s that the immense ties of the Church to intelligence and drug trafficking –– to not point out the intersection of each because it pertains to the CIA’s MK-ULTRA thoughts management program –– stay largely ignored.
Scientology’s strategies and their extraordinarily pervasive results on the minds of its personal cult members solely actually start to make sense when understood inside the context of the non-redacted historical past of founder L. Ron Hubbard, together with the Church’s primordial Hubbard Dianetic Analysis Basis connections to the intelligence group, and Hubbard’s personal intelligence profession. His position in under-discussed operations, on the behalf of US Naval and different intelligence businesses, embrace Hubbard’s work at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C. within the Nineteen Thirties –– the hot-bed of psychiatric analysis throughout Undertaking Bluebird and Undertaking Artichoke, the precursors to the notorious MK-ULTRA program –– along with his infiltration of Jack Parsons’ occult-influenced rocket program, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, whose work grew to become the scientific basis for NASA.
In 1953, The MK-ULTRA program was formally approved by CIA Director Allen Dulles with a view to shut the “brainwashing hole” after the US discovered of Korean mind-control strategies that had been used on American prisoners of battle. As detailed later on this investigation, Scientology itself would later make use of such techniques to direct fanatical members of the Church to infiltrate a handful of US businesses, together with the IRS, the Treasury, and the FDA, amongst others, to enact an elaborate intelligence gathering operation within the largest infiltration of the US authorities in historical past –– Operation Snow White.
This piece, the primary in a two-part sequence, makes an attempt to abridge the historical past of the Church of Scientology from its formation by the mid-Nineties with a view to correctly body an ensuing article on Scientologist Sky Dayton and his quite a few web companies strewn throughout his prolific data-mining enterprise portfolio.
Finally, Scientology is excess of simply one other run-of-the-mill faith. Actually, its largely untold historical past paints an image of a corporation that rather more carefully resembles a tax-exempt intelligence operation –– signed off by the very best members of the CIA and its primordial OSS –– than a wacky cult of alien worshippers invented by a pulp science-fiction creator.
St. Elizabeth’s, the OSS, and Undertaking Artichoke
Keep in mind one factor, we’re not operating a enterprise, we’re operating a authorities. We’re in direct management of individuals’s lives.
–– L. Ron Hubbard, Coverage Letter from August 5, 1959
Lafayette Ronald Hubbard was born March 13, 1911 in Tilden, Nebraska, the son of a trainer and a US Navy officer. Hubbard spent his early childhood on varied Navy bases, together with a prolonged keep within the US territory of Guam. Earlier than authoring the ideas of Dianetics and founding Scientology, Hubbard was a well-published science-fiction creator. Hubbard started his ventures into the research of the thoughts after crusing alongside the previous Navy spy and pioneering-yet-controversial psychoanalyst Commander Joseph “Snake” Thompson. His father, Harry Ross Hubbard, was ordered to return to the east coast, and thus the Hubbard household was deployed alongside Thompson on the united statesUlysses S. Grant in 1923. Regardless of the younger Hubbard being solely 12 years previous on the time of assembly, the 2 engaged in pleasant correspondence for years. Hubbard later attended George Washington College to review engineering, however would depart earlier than graduating.
Hubbard encountered and befriended William Alanson White, a professor of psychiatry on the college. For the rest of the Nineteen Thirties, Hubbard stayed in Washington, D.C. and volunteered with the psychiatric group within the nation’s capital, together with alongside White, who was then additionally serving because the Superintendent of St. Elizabeth’s Hospital. His former shipmate, Thompson, quickly grew to become the Vice President of the Washington Psychoanalytic Affiliation, of which White was President, and was additionally stationed at St. Elizabeth’s hospital. Scientologist John Galusha later penned a letter to the FBI in 1954 stating that Hubbard was “skilled in psycho-analysis in Washington, D.C.” by each Thompson and White.
In a lecture given in June 1955, Hubbard himself confirmed this mentorship:
“And I got here again to this very metropolis by which we’re giving this congress, and I took engineering… And majored, in that engineering, in finite energies, and considered the best vitality I might consider – it should be the human thoughts. Experimented to find how reminiscence was saved, and located by no computation I might ever compute, that it – a person couldn’t bear in mind, definitely by this computation, greater than three month’s value. As a result of there wasn’t that a lot space for storing as a result of energies weren’t that small. And I used to be proposed, as a younger engineer, a conundrum of such magnitude that I went over to my superb buddy, the pinnacle of Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital… Dr. William Alan White. He stated, ‘In the event you pursue alongside this line’ (…he was a golf buddy of mine) – and ‘for those who pursue alongside this line,’ he stated, ‘you inform me about it sometimes,’ he says, ‘as a result of I’ll be watching.’
Now, one other fellow who had been kind of my mentor after I was a bit child – as a matter of reality, I adopted within the footsteps of this man – Commander Thompson, who introduced psychoanalysis straight from Vienna to the US Navy, and launched psychoanalysis into the Navy… I informed Commander Thompson about this work, I attempted to get extra data, and after I had turned to Commander Thompson and Dr. Alan White, I had turned to the one two probables within the nation who might have shed any mild on this topic in any respect.”
Regardless of a passion for his former trainer White, White’s successor at St. Elizabeth’s, Winfred Overholser, grew to become an object of Hubbard’s hatred following Overholser’s dismissal of his Dianetic analysis. Hubbard lectured in 1952 concerning the risks of Overholser’s therapy of schizophrenics on the hospital’s Chestnut Lodge. The lecture even consists of point out that three members of the employees from the Chestnut Lodge have been despatched to service Hubbard himself through the Nineteen Thirties. This overlaps with CIA exercise at Chestnut Lodge, which instantly concerned Overholser. In response to the CIA, in 1942, then-OSS Chief William Donovan assembled “a half-dozen prestigious American scientists” tasked to “give you a substance that might break down the psychological defenses of captured spies and POWs” with a view to trigger an “uninhibited disclosure of categorised data.” Overholser was appointed chairman of the panel engaged on this “Reality Drug.”
In response to a College of London analysis paper titled “The Position of Psychoanalytic Data in CIA’s ARTICHOKE and MKULTRA Paperwork In the course of the Years 1947-1963: Use and Misuse of Psychoanalytic Methods,” the Chestnut Lodge “held CIA-cleared psychiatrists ‘for in-house workers and different delicate circumstances’ and was formally ‘accredited by the CIA Safety Workplace to be used’ in 1953.” The paper asserts that “the collaboration between US-intelligence and Chestnut Lodge psychiatrists and psychoanalysts” had started even earlier, throughout World Battle II. For instance, Chestnut Lodge workers Mabel B. Cohen, Robert A. Cohen, and Alfred H. Stanton have been “all security-cleared OSS-medical personnel” who have been, on the time, “assigned to Henry A. Murray’s OSS Evaluation Employees.” The paper additionally states that a few of their OSS assignments have been “carried out on the Lodge,” and that “this collaboration continued when the CIA outmoded the OSS in 1947.” St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, the Chestnut Lodge, and the CIA’s headquarters at Langley are all inside a couple of miles of one another, and two CIA Administrators, Richard Helms and Allen Dulles, employed the identical psychoanalyst on the Chestnut Lodge for his or her private care.
A printed memo from Paul Gaynor, the CIA Safety Analysis chief, to Undertaking ARTICHOKE director, Morse Allen, reads: “It’s crucial that we transfer ahead extra aggressively on figuring out and securing a extra dependable prepared group, or teams, of human analysis topics for ongoing Artichoke work.” In response to the Alliance for Human Analysis Safety, the now defunct Division of Well being, Schooling, and Welfare (HEW) was created in 1953, the identical yr because the aforementioned memo was written, and “the CIA discovered it remarkably simple to realize HEW’s approval to be used of Federal medical services as fronts for covert drug and interrogation experiments utilizing unwitting human topics.”
Allen later advised to Gaynor in one other memo titled “Artichoke Analysis Program” that “there are some 4 thousand American navy males who’re serving court docket martial sentences within the federal prisons these days,” and he advised “provide[ing] lowered sentences” to those males with a view to achieve their consent to take part in Artichoke-related experimentation. A couple of week later, Allen tweaked the aforementioned memo to incorporate “federal hospitals and establishments beneath the management of the [U.S.] Public Well being Service.” Shortly after, Artichoke progress reviews have been despatched to the CIA through Gaynor about “the experiments at three federal prisons,” along with experiments carried out at Hubbard’s former hang-out, St. Elizabeth’s Hospital.
The aforementioned OSS agent in control of St. Elizabeth’s employees, Henry A. Murray, later joined Harvard as a researcher, the place he carried out the notorious Harvard Experiment, whose analysis topics included Theodore Kaczynski –– extra famously often called “The Unabomber” –– along with supervising Timothy Leary’s controversial work with psychedelic medicine. Leary’s deeper connections to Scientology and intelligence can be explored later on this piece. Murray remained secretly employed by the CIA throughout this time, main many to theorize that Murray’s work have been carried out as part of MK-ULTRA or associated initiatives. Murray was removed from being the one intelligence-linked determine who served in a outstanding position at Chestnut Lodge. As an example, Harry Stack Sullivan, the one-time head psychiatrist at Chestnut Lodge and founding father of the William Alanson White Institute, left the hospital earlier than serving to set up a CIA-precursor, the Workplace of Battle Data in 1942.
In a lecture titled “Find out how to Deal with Audiences” delivered by Hubbard on November 1, 1956, the Church’s founder confirmed his Nineteen Thirties stint on the D.C.-area psychological hospital, and even boasted of tricking the employees at St. Elizabeth’s utilizing superior hypnotism:
“I hypnotized one time the employees at St. Elizabeth’s. Advised him they’d heard a very good speech and left the stage. All of them got here round afterwards saying, ‘What a very good speech that you just gave!’ They may afterwards have suspected my information of the thoughts, however definitely not my information of hypnotism. It’s very simple to hypnotize teams.”
On the onset of World Battle II, Hubbard himself enlisted within the Navy after his stint at St. Elizabeth’s. There may be a lot discrepancy about his rank and accomplishments through the battle, however by almost all accounts –– together with essential biographers and the Church itself –– Hubbard served as an intelligence officer. In 1945, upon the battle’s conclusion, Hubbard moved into an property in Pasadena, CA owned by Jack Parsons, the aforementioned founding father of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The Parsonage
John Whiteside Parsons was born in Pasadena, CA in 1914 and spent his formative years studying science-fiction and emulating his wishes for area journey in his yard with mannequin rockets and fireworks along with his childhood buddy, Edward Foreman. After quite a few craters have been made in his mom’s yard, and whereas nonetheless enrolled in highschool, Parsons joined the Hercules Powder Firm and commenced experimenting with solid-fueled rockets. He later left Hercules and, alongside along with his childhood buddy Foreman, joined the Halifax Explosives firm based mostly within the Mojave Desert. Throughout their time at Halifax, in 1937, each of the aspiring rocketeers attended a lecture on the topic at Caltech, the place they met Frank Malina.
Parsons, Foreman and Malina went on to pitch Theodore Von Karman of the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratories of the California Institute of Expertise (GALCIT) on their concepts of rocket propulsion, with Malina’s proposal for a doctorate ultimately being accredited by the “legendary aerodynamicist.” The trio, now with entry to the labs and literature accessible through Caltech and GALCIT, started their experiments in earnest –– with their notorious explosive tendencies incomes them the identify the “Suicide Squad.” Their work shaped the premise of the Jet Proposal Laboratory (JPL) on the outskirts of Parsons’ hometown. As talked about beforehand, the JPL was ultimately included into NASA, and Malina’s son, Roger Malina –– the husband of Christine Maxwell, the daughter of Robert Maxwell and sister to Jeffrey Epstein’s confederate Ghislaine Maxwell –– later served as the primary Director of this new three way partnership.
Lengthy earlier than the JPL was formalized beneath the Govt Department, Parsons and his crew acquired funding from the US Military in 1938 to develop rocket engines to help within the launch of small plane. The navy was happy with the outcomes on their JATO canisters –– “Jet Assisted Take Off” –– and funneled extra money in the direction of creating these gas sources. The strong rocket gas that had been developed by Parsons grew to become “the premise of the Minuteman missile, the Titan rocket, and the Area Shuttle strong rocket booster.” Regardless of, by almost all metrics, the success of the primordial JPL –– then-known because the GALCIT Rocket Undertaking –– Parsons quickly turned his eye away from the celebs and, in 1939, started specializing in the works of English Occultist, Aleister Crowley.
Crowley, a member of The Airtight Order of The Golden Daybreak, joined the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) in 1910, a Freemasonry off-shoot, that was rapidly influenced by Crowley’s curiosity in his Thelemic faith, occult ceremonies, and “Intercourse Magick.” Parsons and his then-wife, Helen Northup, joined the OTO in 1939, and Parsons engaged in frequent correspondence with Crowley, ultimately changing into the American consultant of the OTO. With the intention to additional his research of Crowley’s teachings and the OTO, Parsons bought a mansion in Pasadena to create a commune of occultists he dubbed “The Parsonage.” The manor quickly grew to become a scorching mattress of lavish events, orgies and occult rituals. In the meantime, the navy continued to pour funding into the GALCIT Rocket Undertaking and, in 1942, the rocket builders based the Aerojet Engineering Firm to maintain up with the rising demand for militarized propulsion. The following yr, in 1943, the navy formally took over the GALCIT Rocket Undertaking, and renamed it the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Now beneath navy management, JPL developed “a number of weapon deployment methods based mostly on the liquid and strong gas expertise” together with the WAC Corporal sounding rocket, which performed a big half within the building of “the primary American rocket ever to exit the Earth’s environment.”
As his curiosity within the occult deepened, the navy grew to become cautious of Parsons’ methods, and strong-armed him into unloading his shares of the Aerojet Engineering Firm. The following payout supplied additional funding for his “non secular” life and the Parsonage itself. Right now, in 1945, L. Ron Hubbard grew to become acquainted with Parsons, and was rapidly initiated into the OTO. Hubbard subsequently moved into Parsons’ Pasadena property. In a letter to Crowley describing Hubbard, Parsons wrote, “I deduced that he’s in direct contact with some increased intelligence. He’s probably the most Thelemic individual I’ve ever met and is in full accord with our personal ideas.”
Hubbard and Parsons quickly grew to become inseparable, with the pair even sharing Parsons’ then-partner Sara Northrup –– the half-sister of Parsons´ first spouse, Helen. Within the winter and spring of 1946, Parsons and Hubbard toiled on a sequence of occult rituals within the Mojave Desert dubbed “Babalon Working,” by which the pair tried to incarnate the Thelemite goddess Babalon onto Earth. Shortly after its conclusion, and having believed the ritual to be successful, Parsons bought the Parsonage for money and seemed to Hubbard for enterprise ideas to pay again the hefty bills from their years of occult investigations. Hubbard promptly took almost all of the funds from the sale of the property, in addition to Parson’s spouse Sara. The pair then eloped in Mexico. Whereas Parsons did ultimately get his a reimbursement, Hubbard, Sara and Parson’s sailboat continued on with out him.
In 1950, Parsons misplaced his safety clearance after the FBI started investigating the occult scientist for the theft of “rocket plans,” plans which the bureau claimed Parsons “had deliberate to change” with “the newly based Israeli authorities in change for admission into Israel.” The US Air Power informed the FBI that they’d been “monitoring Parsons and his relationship with Crowley,” stating in a report that “a non secular cult, believed to advocate sexual perversion, was organized at topic’s dwelling at 1003 South Orange Grove Avenue, Pasadena, California, which has been reported subversive.” In response to statements made by the Church in December 1969 to the Sunday Instances, Hubbard was despatched by the US Navy to “[break] up black magic in America.” The Church wrote, “He went to dwell on the home and investigated the black magic rites and the scenario and located them very unhealthy… Hubbard rescued a woman they have been utilizing. The black magic group was dispersed and destroyed.” In 1952, Parsons died suspiciously in an explosion at his workshop. Hours after the explosion, Parsons’ mom, Ruth, purposefully overdosed on sedatives and died the identical day.
Shortly after splitting from Parsons and settling in along with his now-wife Sara, Hubbard penned the beginnings of his life work with Scientology, then-known as Dianetics, publishing his first work on the topic in Might 1950.
Dianetics and the CIA’s Affect on Scientology
Initially printed as an article within the Astounding Science Fiction journal’s Might 1950 subject, “Dianetics: The Evolution of Science” was written by Hubbard over three weeks on an IBM typewriter. In April 1950, a month earlier than the discharge of the article, the journal’s editor John W. Campbell –– an especially essential determine within the blossoming science fiction scene having mentored and printed Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, and Hubbard, amongst others –– labored with Hubbard to coalesce the pre-publication hype right into a basis to unfold its teachings. This culminated within the founding of the Hubbard Dianetic Analysis Basis. Coincidentally, the identical month, the CIA’s thoughts management program Undertaking BLUEBIRD was approved by the CIA. In response to letters from John Galusha –– a Board member of the Hubbard Affiliation of Scientologists Worldwide –– later launched by the FBI, the concept for the formation of the Dianetics Analysis Basis was advised by Charles Parker Morgan.
In a declassified report from the FDA, information cited by ex-Scientologist investigator Mike McClaughry, “the Dianetic Analysis Basis was included in New Jersey, in April 1950, as a ‘non-profit, scientific and academic company, the first function of which is to do analysis within the discipline of Dianetics and, for the correction of all psychosomatic ills of mankind’.” The report lists Hubbard as President, Parker Morgan as Secretary & Normal Counsel, Campbell as Treasurer, alongside Sara Hubbard and Donald H. Rogers as Trustees of the Basis. The identical report additionally lists Parker Morgan as a “former particular agent for the FBI,” whereas his identify additionally seems on a government-hosted record of OSS Brokers, confirming the primordial intelligence ties to the formation of Scientology. An FBI Memo from the L. Ron Hubbard Information dated March 21, 1951 additionally refers to Donald H. Rogers, the Director of Analysis on the newly shaped basis, as a former FBI agent.
In January 1951, the New Jersey State Board of Medical Examiners filed a lawsuit towards the Basis, and Hubbard discovered himself in want of a brand new operational technique for Dianetics. In response to each McClaughry and The Royal Maze, two separate intelligence officers advised that Hubbard incorporate Dianetics as a faith as a protection mechanism towards these lawsuits. They have been the aforementioned OSS/FBI agent Charles Parker Morgan, and John Starr Cooke.
In The Recreation Participant by ex-CIA agent Miles Copeland, Copeland describes his political affect work with fellow agent Bob Mandlestam, which they known as “Occultism in Excessive Locations” or “OHP.” OHP was “a concept of political activism based mostly on an impressively detailed research of the way by which leaders of the world based mostly their judgements on one kind or one other of divine steering.” Copeland additional described the duo’s concept that “correctly ‘charismatized’ leaders, positioned in sure positions within the ‘free world’s’ ‘key’ bureaucracies, may very well be used as political levers by which an enlightened American international coverage might uplift the world,” which might “allow a correctly employed CIA to satisfy the Wilsonian pledge to ‘make the world protected for democracy’ whereas eradicating sure goings-on right here and there that have been inconveniencing the American lifestyle.” Take into account, for instance, the affect of Presidential non secular advisors corresponding to Ronald Reagan’s astrologer Joan Quigley, or Choi Quickly-sil over former South Korean President, Park Geun-hye.
Copeland particularly mentions such “preparations” with the Church of Scientology:
“When Bob Mandlestam made related preparations with Scientology, the brainchild of one other nut, this one a science-fiction author named Ron Hubbard, we have been on our technique to having a political motion functionality which might make the extremely costly, largely ineffective and largely overt ‘covert motion’ of Invoice Casey’s CIA appear trivial by comparability. ‘MRA will hit ’em excessive, and the Church of Scientology will hit ‘em low!’ Bob favored to boast, and he was proper… we planted an agent within the Scientology cult who grew to become a ‘clear’ beneath the tutelage of Ron Hubbard himself, after which demanded and acquired increasingly more ‘operation bills’ to be turned over, along with his personal life’s financial savings, to the reason for Dianetics.”
The 1985 e book Acid Desires by Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain confirms the company’s infiltration, means that the aforementioned John Star Cooke had been the CIA proxy despatched by Copeland and Mandlestam:
“A person of wealth and influential household connections, Cooke was no stranger to high-level CIA personnel. His sister, Alice, to whom he was very shut, was married to Roger Kent, a outstanding determine within the California state Democratic social gathering; Roger’s brother, Sherman Kent, was head of the CIA’s Nationwide Board of Estimates (an especially highly effective place) and served as CIA director Allen Dulles’s right-hand man through the Chilly Battle. John Cooke hobnobbed with Sherman Kent at annual household reunions and is alleged to have made the acquaintance of a variety of CIA operatives whereas touring in Europe.
Pushed by an avid curiosity within the occult, Cooke journeyed world wide befriending an assortment of mystics and non secular academics. Within the early 1950’s, he grew to become a detailed confidant of L. Ron Hubbard, the ex-navy officer who based the Scientology group. Cooke rose excessive within the ranks of the newly shaped spiritual cult. (He was the primary “clear” in America, that means he had attained the extent of a sophisticated Scientology provoke.) Earlier than lengthy, nonetheless, he grew disillusioned with Hubbard and so they parted methods.”
Cooke moved again to California, and have become an essential pillar within the blossoming occult scene, with quite a few connections to Timothy Leary, the CIA, and lots of the chemists and traffickers related to the LSD motion. Cooke died at his dwelling in Cuernavaca, Mexico in 1976, however not earlier than being visited by Andrija Puharich, an ex-Army scientist and researcher, and Seymour “The Head” Lazare, a long-time affiliate of William Mellon Hitchcock, who can be mentioned shortly.
Puharich was well-known for his research on parapsychological phenomenon, and tried to search out navy functions of such practices of distant viewing and telekinesis. His work led to the founding of the Stanford Analysis Institute, which employed high-ranking Scientologists Hal Puthoff, Ingo Swann, Pat Value and Eli Primose. Puthoff had labored for the Nationwide Safety Company, and Swann for the United Nations. Their analysis, ultimately merged beneath the CIA’s notorious Undertaking Stargate, was instantly supervised at Langley by John McMahon, the “second-in-command beneath [CIA Director] William Casey. “Most of the SRI empaths have been mustered from L. Ron Hubbard’s Church of Scientology,” based on a December 1996 report from Alex Constantine titled “CIA MIND CONTROL AT STANFORD RESEARCH INSTITUTE”:
“Harold Puthoff, the Institute’s senior researcher, was a number one Scientologist. Two distant viewers from SRI have additionally held rank within the Church: Ingo Swann, a Class VII Working Thetan, a founding father of the Scientology Heart in Los Angeles, and the late Pat Value. Puthoff and Targ’s lab assistant was a Scientologist married to a minister of the church. When Swann joined SRI, he said overtly, ‘fourteen Clears participated within the experiments, greater than I’d suspect.’ On the time he denied CIA involvement, however now acknowledges, ‘it was slightly widespread information all alongside who the sponsor was, though in paperwork the identification of the Company was hid behind the sobriquet of an east-coast scientist.’”
In response to the CIA, the SRI’s work was funded by the CIA, the Parsons-founded Jet Proposal Laboratory (now inside NASA), ARPA and the Army. The CIA and the Church of Scientology had develop into direct companions of their development of psychic and paranormal analysis by the Seventies. Nonetheless, the groundwork for this relationship seems to have began years earlier, given quite a few connections between the CIA’s LSD trafficking scheme and Hubbard’s newly-formed private navy, the Sea Group.
Drug Operating, LSD, and The Sea Org
“I give the CIA a complete credit score for sponsoring and initiating your entire consciousness motion counter tradition occasions of the Nineteen Sixties.”
Timothy Leary, a pupil of former St. Elizabeth’s employees and OSS/CIA agent Henry A. Murray, grew to become an FBI informant with quite a few connections to the CIA over the course of his psychedelic missionary work throughout the US. For starters, the property the place Leary carried out a lot of his LSD experiments was gifted to him by the Mellon banking household‘s William “Billy” Hitchcock after being visited quite a few occasions by household buddy and eventual CIA Director Richard Helms. The Mellon household had many relations serve within the OSS, together with OSS Station Chief of London, David Bruce, who was coincidentally the son-in-law of former US Treasury Secretary, Andrew Mellon. Hitchcock himself had ties to intelligence-linked sexual blackmail operations, such because the Profumo Affair, and he additionally held an account at Citadel Financial institution and Belief, a mob-affiliated financial institution based within the Bahamas by the CIA banker Paul Helliwell. As well as, he was a frequent visitor at Resorts Worldwide-owned properties –– recognized notorious assembly grounds of the mob, off-shore bankers, and the CIA. Hitchcock concurrently had served because the banker and monetary advisor to the LSD cult and drug operation, The Brotherhood of Everlasting Love (BEL).
Hitchcock evicted Leary off his property in 1967, however shortly thereafter within the spring of 1968, Hitchcock traveled to the Bahamas with LSD chemist and BEL member, Nick Sand. Sand had been appointed the alchemist of Leary’s League for Non secular Discovery, a faith shaped in September 1966 that “included psychedelic medicine as sacraments.” Sand’s chemistry operations, culminating within the infamously pure LSD often called Orange Sunshine, have been a product of a long-time partnership with David Mantell, a Scientologist who studied instantly beneath Hubbard’s successor, David Miscavige.
This journey to the Bahamas led to Hitchcock and Sand staying at an property owned by Sam Clapp, a chair of the Fiduciary Belief Firm, along with being a “college-chum” and long-time enterprise companion of Hitchcock. In response to Acid Desires, Hitchcock and Clapp “organized for Sand to open an account beneath a false identify at Clapp’s financial institution,” whereas concurrently wanting “into the feasibility of establishing an offshore LSD laboratory on certainly one of Bahamas secluded cays.” The e book furthers Hitchcock’s monetary exercise throughout this journey, instantly connecting his account at Clapp’s Fiduciary Belief with the CIA-front arrange by Allen Dulles and Thomas Dewey often called the Mary Carter Paint Firm (later renamed Resorts Worldwide):
“Hitchcock took full benefit of his limitless borrowing privileges at Fiduciary. At Clapp’s urging he poured over $5,000,000 into unregistered ‘letter shares’ (the type that aren’t traded publicly however have a tendency to point out dramatic positive aspects on paper) related to the Mary Carter Paint Firm, later often called Resorts Worldwide. It was the only largest chunk of cash raised by Resorts, a corporation suspected of getting ties to organized crime. Resorts Worldwide proceeded to construct a on line casino on an unique piece of Bahamian actual property known as Paradise Island…”
The 1987 e book, Scorching Cash and the Politics of Debt by R.T. Naylor, additional particulars Hitchcock’s reference to the off-shore banking enterprise linked to intelligence and arranged crime, alluding to his shares in Resorts being managed by the CIA-linked financial institution, Citadel Financial institution & Belief:
“To finance these actions [various efforts to topple the government of Cuba], the CIA turned to Citadel Financial institution & Belief of Nassau. The financial institution was established by Paul Helliwell, a former OSS China hand with a background in drug-trade intelligence. After the battle, Helliwell had run CIA entrance firms in Florida. By way of his Bahamian financial institution, and a companion establishment in Florida, hundreds of thousands of {dollars} have been funneled for covert navy operations staged off Andros Island within the Bahamas. Citadel additionally facilitated tax evasion, and, in its trust-company capability, voted the shares of sure nonresident homeowners of Resorts Worldwide, the highest [Meyer] Lansky-era on line casino operation on Nassau. When a kind of shareholders so strongly objected to the way in which Citadel was voting his shares that he sued the financial institution, the scheme started to unravel.
The shareholder was William Mellon Hitchcock, the New York stockbroker who had been utilizing the Paravicini Financial institution of Berne, Switzerland, to avoid the New York Fed’s margin necessities. Allegedly, Hitchcock additionally put his enterprise expertise to work in ‘excessive finance,’ together with the Brotherhood of Everlasting Love, whose clandestine California laboratories reportedly produced greater than half the LSD that levitated political debate on American campuses within the Nineteen Sixties. It was Hitchcock’s buddy Timothy Leary, the period’s most publicized advocate of the chemical lobotomy, who acquired him concerned with the LSD operation. The income have been laundered by the Paravicini Financial institution till its demise and thru the IOS-controlled Fiduciary Belief within the Bahamas.
After Hitchcock’s lawsuit, the IRS made its transfer, anticipating the most important tax-evasion bust in American historical past. However the CIA efficiently lobbied for the inquiry to be buried, and lots of IRS veterans stop in disgust. However Citadel Financial institution shut down its Caymans and Bahamas operations in 1977, and moved to the extra congenial surroundings of Panama.”
The 1985 e book Acid Desires by Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain importantly connects Citadel Financial institution founder Helliwell with the Sea Provide, a Nineteen Fifties trafficking operation run by the CIA:
“Citadel Financial institution was based and managed by Paul Helliwell, a Miami lawyer with long-standing ties to American intelligence. Helliwell’s profession as a spook dates again to World Battle II, when he served as chief of particular intelligence in China with the OSS. He stayed within the Far East when the CIA was shaped and bossed a bevy of spies, together with E. Howard Hunt of Watergate fame. Within the early 1950’s, Helliwell organized Sea Provide, a CIA proprietary firm that furnished weapons and different materials to anti-Communist guerrillas within the hills of Burma, Laos, and Thailand. Based mostly within the Golden Triangle, this mercenary military cultivated fields of opium poppies, and the CIA was drawn instantly into the drug connection. Helliwell additionally served as paymaster for the ill-fated Bay of Pigs operation in 1961. A number of years later he arrange Citadel Financial institution, serving in a twin capability as CIA banker and authorized counsel for the Cuban Mafia, which prospered by promoting Southeast Asian heroin within the US. Helliwell’s regulation agency additionally represented [Meyer Lanksy Frontman] Louis Chesler and Wallace Groves, each companions in Resorts Worldwide.”
Sea Provide operated for a decade, earlier than the former OSS and CIA officer Helliwell wound down the operation. Helliwell handed away at age 62 in 1976, however not earlier than changing into notorious for advising Walt Disney to set up shell firms and “phantom cities” in Florida through the building of Disney World to ensure that the group to “keep away from taxation and environmental regulation in addition to preserve immunity from the U.S. Structure.” Related techniques have been later employed by the Church of Scientology throughout their takeover of Clearwater, Florida within the Nineteen Eighties.
Whereas seemingly unconnected to the story of Scientology and L. Ron Hubbard at first look, Sea Provide appears to have served as an inspiration and template for Hubbard’s Sea Group, with quite a few connections to the aforementioned CIA-driven drug trafficking nexus.
The Sea Group
Within the Spring of 1966, Congressman J. William Fulbright, then-chairman of the Senate Overseas Relations Committee, initiated an investigation into the CIA’s influence on international coverage. Reporting from the Boston Globe particularly alluded to Sea Provide for example of such operations by the intelligence company. The report makes the case that “spying is a reality of recent worldwide life; our enemies spy, and so should we,” earlier than concluding that “elevated congressional scrutiny of the CIA doesn’t must jeopardize nationwide safety.”
In Might 1966, Congressman Fulbright appeared on NBC’s The At the moment Present to elucidate the reasoning for putting three committee members on a Congressional board to supervise CIA actions:
“The precept [sic] argument, I consider, is that many of the least publicized difficulties which have appeared within the press lately relating to the CIA have nearly at all times been within the discipline of international relations. Numerous the Committee feels that that is the world which has brought on appreciable query and in some circumstances criticism –– that it might be the accountability of the committee to be represented there. And a few of us, together with myself, really feel that if such a committee was created that it might enhance the relations of the Senate and the general public with the CIA.
Relatively than being a mirrored image upon the CIA, I really feel that it might be an enchancment in our relationships and would have a tendency to change, if not get rid of, to a terrific extent, the criticisms that I believe generally come up out of a sense that there’s not ample and never as cautious supervision of this company as there must be.”
Richard Helms –– the godfather of MK-ULTRA, the long-time buddy of Helliwell’s enterprise affiliate Billy Hitchcock, and CIA Director since March 1966 –– went as far as to pen a letter that July within the St. Louis Globe-Democrat “expressing pleasure at a newspaper editorial essential of Fulbright.” Evidently, the Central Intelligence Company was shedding company and gaining Congressional oversight, a lot to the dismay of Helms, and the key facets of the intelligence company have been in dire want of a rebrand that might permit them to proceed working far past the attain of the general public sector.
In the beginning of 1965, Hubbard arrived in Spain’s Canary Islands to start analysis and writing on the superior “OT ranges.” Actually, it was throughout a lecture given on the Canary Islands by Hubbard that the primary inkling of OT III was introduced –– the extent that launched Xenu to the very best stage of Scientology’s initiates. On the finish of June 1965, Hubbard gave a lecture titled “The Effectively-Rounded Auditor,” by which he exclaims that the US authorities has been “making an attempt to grab Scientology in the US.” In July 1965, CIA agent E. Howard Hunt is chosen by Richard Helms to journey to Spain on behalf of the company. The month earlier than Helms formally grew to become head of the CIA, Hubbard as soon as once more returned to the Canary Islands, in February 1966. In response to ABC Spain, Hubbard signed a contract with Helms and the CIA that yr, though no direct report of any such contract exists.
Shortly after, in July 1966, the IRS knowledgeable the Church they are going to be recommending the revocation of their tax exemption standing. On September 1, 1966, Hubbard formally resigned from all Scientology administration positions. Three weeks later, on September 21, 1966, Hunt returns to Washington, D.C. “from a extremely secret project he has been on in Spain for a bit over a yr.” Shortly thereafter, Hubbard formally creates the “Sea Undertaking” in a Scientology coverage letter dated November 10, 1966. On November 22 of that yr, the Hubbard Exploration Firm Restricted was included in London, and by the tip of the yr, the primordial “Sea Org” secretly bought its first ship – the Enchanter.
The Sea Group was formally established in August 1967 by Hubbard and was initially compromised of three giant ships. Sea Org membership was accessible to solely probably the most religious of the Church, throughout which coaching for the very best ranges of Scientology have been delivered. In response to paperwork proven to a former Scientologist, as documented in Jon Atack’s 1990 biography on Hubbard, A Piece of Blue Sky, the Sea Org believed that “the governments of the world have been on the snapping point,” and that “the Sea Org would survive and decide up the items.”
In response to a doc provided by the group to the IRS in 1992, initiates of the Sea Org have been requested to pledge a billion-year time period of service to Scientology, in alignment with their perception that people have been immortal beings. Former Scientologist and aforementioned creator of A Piece of Blue Sky, Jon Atack, said that the therapy of Sea Org members was a “cautious imitation of strategies long-used by the navy to acquire unquestioning obedience and quick compliance to orders, or extra merely to interrupt males’s spirits.” In response to The Week, a former Sea Org worker claims to have “labored 15-hour days as a teen,” and was solely allowed to “see her dad and mom simply twice between ages 12 and 18.” One other said that “he by no means earned greater than $17 every week for his work,” and “lived in a room so barren it lacked a door knob.”
In 2009, the FBI carried out an investigation of the Church of Scientology, particularly specializing in the Sea Org, attributable to human trafficking issues. No costs have been ever made on account of their inquiries, which have been carried out beneath the codename “Operation Overboard.” As for why no costs have been filed, the Tampa Bay Instances interviewed consultants in 2013 who said that the possible motive was a ruling in August 2010 by a federal decide in a civil case introduced by two former Sea Org members. The decide had dominated partly that “the First Modification’s assure of the free train of faith prevented the court docket from delving into whether or not the church’s self-discipline strategies have been cheap,” and to take action would “entangle the court docket within the spiritual doctrine of Scientology and the doctrinally motivated practices of the Sea Org.”
Regardless of the motive given by the Church for the formation of a paramilitary fleet of vessels predominantly stationed in worldwide waters, public opinion has coalesced across the concurrent timing of Scientology’s lack of tax exemption standing by the IRS earlier that very same yr. This motion led creator Stephen Kent to comment in his 2001 e book, From Slogans to Mantras: Social Protest and Non secular Conversion within the Late Vietnam Battle Period, that “the much less lofty motive behind Hubbard’s institution of the Sea Org was that he had encountered opposition in the US from the Meals and Drug Administration and the IRS, from the governments of Australia, the UK, and Rhodesia, and from varied media sources world wide, which motivated him to set sail on the excessive seas and thereby escape the management of any nation-state.”
Whereas the revoking of tax exemption standing was certainly a believable forcing perform for Hubbard’s private navy setting sail, Helms, Helliwell, and the CIA have been additionally concurrently on the lookout for a substitute for his or her off-the-books, off-shore shadow operation.
In response to the CIA, Sea Provide founder Helliwell was “deeply concerned” within the financing of “covert forays between 1964 and 1975” towards Cuba by “CIA operatives working from Andros Island,” the biggest island within the Bahamas. Throughout this time, in April 1966, the US spent $130 million on the Atlantic Undersea Testing and Analysis Heart, an “antisubmarine base” on Andros Island to “experiment with new strategies of in search of and destroying enemy submarines” with expertise stated to “surpase [sic] something we all know of in your entire world.” For recognized intelligence operatives like Helliwell, who have been main gamers within the worldwide maritime trafficking recreation, one of these naval analysis and expertise might show priceless. Additional reviews from the CIA describe the bottom as “essential” to each the US and the UK, with one other CIA report describing “the unrestricted means of the US Coast Guard to function on this space” which the company notes is “largely taken without any consideration.” In response to Guardian Order 1344 issued by Scientology’s intelligence department, the Guardian’s Workplace, the Coast Guard started reporting on Scientology’s Sea Org ships, with reviews dated July 1969 stating two of the Church’s ships have been conducting “navy drills” whereas “bearing Coast Guard insignia replicas.”
There may be some vital proof, along with the timeline supplied above, that Hubbard was concurrently serving to fulfill the necessity of Helms’ CIA of escaping Congressional scrutiny –– creating an off-shore paramilitary intelligence fleet, staffed with fanatical seafarers –– whereas constructing the non secular successor to Helliwell’s Sea Provide.
For starters, one of many vessels making up Hubbard’s fleet –– the Aries –– was beforehand owned by Scientologist and informant Jerry McDonald, and featured in a sting operation towards BEL lawyer Michael Metzger. That operation resulted within the arrest of Nick Sand’s companion and fellow Scientologist, David Mantell. McDonald is talked about quite a few occasions in information put collectively by the Church’s Guardian’s Workplace which have been launched through the Clearwater, Florida Fee Hearings, together with allegations that the Church was trafficking medicine:
“Exhibit XII –
February by July 1970 – JM [Jerry McDonald] is reported as working with Customs and LAPD as an informant of the cycle arrange by Milner to take away X-Scientologist drug runners off Scientology traces.
February 1970 – Milner tells JM that US customs believed Scientology was selling and smuggling medicine as a result of some expelled Scientologists have been engaged in drug trafficking. And additional that an individual had been picked up by customs whereas smuggling medicine and claimed that he was on a secret mission for the Sea Org.
February 16, 1970 – US Customs official calls JM in Salt Lake Metropolis, Utah “to inquire concerning the Aires and JM’s involvement in Scientology”. He asks questions like – Why is Scientology going backwards and forwards between Mexico and the US, is Scientology operating dope? He additionally signifies that Scientology is beneath investigation by a number of gov’t businesses, together with customs.
February 17, 1970 – Jack Enoch, US Customs, calls JM and tells him that the Scientology investigation is simply native now however ought to quickly be widespread. JM tells Enoch that he’s now not concerned in Scientology however that his spouse and children are.” [emphasis added]
Different Guardian Workplace paperwork from October 1974 launched by the FBI make direct notice of McDonald’s ship in relation to the aforementioned Hitchcock-linked BEL, referred to easily as Brotherhood:
“Undated, unsigned notice in US Coast Guard information – ‘owned by Scientology group – paramilitary’. McDonald – marijuana smuggling – followers nearly navy. Arrested couple of them sometimes. Hopkins boarded Makaira. Scientology based by multi-millionaire who lives – L. Ron Hubbard. Brotherhood at Laguna – marijuana. (Brotherhood was a drug ring.)”
The Makaira was McDonald’s boat on the time, and was boarded in July 1970 by DEA brokers, who discovered few medicine however a great deal of weapons, together with 40 pistols and 10 lengthy arms, onboard. Brokers believed that the weapons cache “had been taken in commerce for marijuana…from Mexico.” One other report ear-marked the weapons to be value round $6000 on the time, and speculated many have been stolen in latest burglaries focusing on pawnshops in Backyard Grove, CA. But one other report quoted state narcotics agent Garrett Van Raam that he believed the Makaira “had entered San Francisco Bay in late Might with as a lot as 2,200 kilos of Mexican pot.” In November 1970, McDonald was reported lacking, having didn’t report back to preliminary hearings relating to costs on “possessing stolen property,” “possessing a tear gasoline gun” and “a sniper scope,” and “having a hid weapon in a automobile.” Regardless of his failure to look in court docket and the multitude of great prison allegations, McDonald was cleared of all costs the next month, in December 1970, alluding to suspicions of engaged on behalf of intelligence, along with his recognized informant place with U.S. customs.
In January 1972, Customs brokers made their manner upon the Sea Org vessel Asia –– later named Excalibur –– which was anchored within the harbor at Los Angeles, with McDonald being acknowledged by an agent and served a subpoena. The following month, in February 1972, the identical ship was once more boarded by Customs and Secret Service brokers on the lookout for medicine, confirming regulation enforcement inquiries into Scientology’s Sea Org as a trafficking enterprise. In response to historian Chris Owen, printed on creator Tony Ortega’s The Underground Bunker, “the UK and US authorities have been suspicious of the sealed packages that have been often being couriered to the Sea Org fleet.”
The arms-for-drugs commerce exemplified in McDonald’s work for Scientology was a key pillar within the CIA’s Operation Paper, by which Helliwell’s Sea Provide had performed a serious position in facilitating. CIA Director Helms commented on these company’s operations, stating “this was a serious operation” that “took specifically certified manpower” attributable to being “harmful” and “troublesome.” Helms additional contended that the CIA did “an excellent job.” Additional testimony from former Church members alludes to McDonald being “specifically certified manpower,” because it pertains to their new, obvious trafficking ring.
Former Sea Org Captain Scott Mayer supplied an affidavit within the case of the “Church of Scientology Worldwide versus Fishman and Geertz,” by which Mayer spoke upon being given “directions to kill” alongside McDonald:
“Whereas I used to be within the Sea Org, I used to be instructed to kill one other human being by the Scientology group. On the time Scientology had an workplace on Beacon Avenue in Los Angeles, very near McArthur Park. I used to be known as in for a briefing by Alex Sibryski. At the moment, Scientology had a ranch at Rosarito in Mexico which was getting used as a nursery, a spot for overflow children that might not be housed in Los Angeles and a spot to develop vegetables and fruit. Mexican bandits have been allegedly harassing and hustling the ranch and stealing produce from it. Jerry McDonald and I have been requested to place collectively a mission to go all the way down to Mexico, take some infrared optics and a few weapons and rifles, watch for the Mexican bandits to assault the ranch once more after which handle them. We have been informed to kill them if needed…
Jerry McDonald was extensively rumored to have been a former mercenary and a paid murderer in Europe. He was recognized all through the Sea Org for taking good care of troublesome issues. If somebody was giving an issue in some space Jerry McDonald would simply seem there. Due to his status as having been an murderer, if he got here on the scene, folks would concern for his or her lives. They believed that he was working completely for Scientology and that he would do something for Hubbard. Moreover, he was additionally the type of man who would have folks over to his home from time to time and would get out his computerized weapons, clear them and put them collectively in entrance of individuals. On this manner, he would let folks know that he was actually conversant along with his craft. He carried a 9 mm pistol on him on a regular basis and he was at all times speaking about arms gross sales and offers that he was doing. As issues turned out, he and I weren’t required to hold out the directions to kill that we had acquired. Nonetheless, if the orders had not been canceled I’ve little doubt that he might have carried out the duty.”
Mayer moreover testified that “at varied occasions” he was “answerable for getting ready mission orders and briefing couriers that might smuggle cash out of the US.” He was hardly the one former Scientologist who gave testimony about shifting giant sums of cash for the Sea Org. Within the 1987 e book, Messiah or Madman, former Sea Org member Hana Eltringham said there was “a number of cash aboard,” making notice of a time when she helped “courier 7 or 8 million {dollars} in money to Switzerland,” and “a later journey” by which “far more than that was couriered.” Eltringham referred to Hubbard as “actually like a squirrel with nuts, stashing it,” earlier than revealing that he “stashed gold bullion, too.”
One other Sea Org member, Mary Maren, recalled being given “about £3,000 in high-denomination notes to take out to the ship,” which she hid in her boots. One other Church member, Mike Goldstein –– the Banking Officer aboard the Apollo –– famous there “have been drawers full of cash in every single place and greater than 1,000,000 {dollars} within the protected, however no correct accounts.” Goldstein claimed the Sea Org “paid for the whole lot in money” and “have been working with three completely different currencies –– Spanish, Portuguese and Moroccan.” Goldstein additional defined “that if anybody needed cash for one thing they only requested for it.”
In Messiah or Madman, one other ex-Church member beneath the alias Elena Lorrel described her time spent through the younger Sea Org as “James Bond stuff” that was suggestive of intelligence-adjacent work:
“There are some lacking chapters within the story of this era which can be fully unknown even to many veteran Sea Org members. These lacking chapters have enabled a number of myths to develop. They should do with what the ships have been actually doing versus what we proclaimed to Scientologists we have been doing. What we have been doing was James Bond stuff in all these completely different international locations. Among the missions that we undertook have been actual intelligence missions: to the U.N., and to the World Federation of Psychological Well being, for instance, in addition to to nearly each authorities of the international locations we visited. We have been infiltrating these teams….making an attempt to covertly again one political candidate versus one other. Every kind of political manipulations such as you’d by no means think about have been happening, and it was all being pulled off by only a few folks. Most Sea Org members have been robotic, rigidly following Scientology assume. Put beneath strain and duress, they’d simply blab the whole lot. So there was solely a really small group of us that needed to do it throughout a interval of 10 or 12 years. We’d been out on scenes the place we needed to break into presidential palace grounds, con our well past guards, and so forth.”
An August 1978 report on the Sea Org hosted on the CIA’s Studying Room alludes to suspicions of the Apollo –– the Sea Org’s flagship vessel –– being related to intentions that went far-beyond these of a easy spiritual sect. For starters, the Los Angeles Instances article notes a State Division letter that quotes an officer from the Apollo, who said that the “group backed by cash and mates in excessive locations ‘would trigger a nosy vice consul extreme issues,’” earlier than threatening “accidents might simply occur to folks” inquiring concerning the Sea Org. The article accurately related the Apollo with a Panamanian firm titled the Operation and Transport Corp, Ltd. –– a Scientology entrance –– earlier than describing a daily triangular course that Sea Org vessels adopted between ports in Spain, Portugal, and Morocco. In response to the Instances, the Apollo “transmitted coded radio messages to New York and factors unknown,” whereas establishing “land bases in Casablanca and Tangier.” Regardless of being registered in Panama, the Panamanian Consul Normal was unable to schedule a gathering with Hubbard, resulting in a slightly telling remark upon the ship’s “gimmicks”:
“It’s attainable that Commodore Hubbard and his spouse are philanthropists of some type and/or eccentrics, but when one doesn’t settle for this as a proof, there needs to be another, ‘gimmick’ concerned on this operation. What this gimmick is likely to be is unknown right here, though folks in Casablanca have speculated variously from smuggling to drug site visitors to a far-out spiritual cult.”
The US Consulate in Tangier dispatched a “prolonged cable” to Washington, DC, as famous in the article, together with point out of “rumors on the town that the Apollo is concerned in drug or white slave site visitors,” with the previous “undoubtedly stem[ming] from the truth that included among the many crew of the Apollo are numerous strikingly lovely younger women.” The article concludes with point out of a Trinidad tabloid, The Bomb, that speculated the ship was “linked to the CIA and Sharon Tate murders in Los Angeles.” (Charles Manson, whose followers have been linked to the homicide of Tate, has lengthy been related with each the CIA and MK-ULTRA and in addition listed himself as a Scientologist in July 1961 upon incarceration.)
In October 1974, the Apollo was meant to port in Charleston, South Carolina, when “a welcoming social gathering consisting of brokers from the Immigration Workplace, Drug Enforcement Company, US Customs, Coast Guard, and US Marshals” was tipped off by the early arrival of the ship’s band, the Apollo All Stars. A Charleston newspaper reported there have been “sufficient U.S. Customs Service brokers in Charleston Wednesday to maintain every of the crew members of the vessel Apollo beneath surveillance for attainable drug smuggling,” and that “customs brokers had gathered right here from as far-off as California to maintain watch on the Apollo” attributable to suspicions “of carrying giant portions of narcotics.” Hubbard’s Guardian’s Workplace seen the gathering of regulation enforcement, and his spouse Mary Sue was capable of warn the Apollo, which reversed course again to the Bahamas.
Jane Kember, the Deputy Head of Scientology’s Guardian’s Workplace, issued Guardian Order (GO) 1344 that very same month, which ordered the intelligence department of the Church to start a large-scale operation towards Customs and the Coast Guard. Particularly, GO 1344 known as for “penetration of and theft of paperwork from the eleventh District Coast Guard Intelligence and the Nationwide Headquarters of Coast Guard Intelligence, Washington, D.C.” GO 1344 constructed off the beforehand issued GO 732 from April 1973, by which Hubbard accredited and first described the “Snow White Program.”
The escalation of the Guardian’s Workplace’s GOs rapidly developed right into a full-blown paramilitary intrusion of quite a few departments of the US authorities, in what’s now thought of the biggest infiltration of the federal government in US historical past –– Operation Snow White.
Operation Snow White
The coverage of Scientology’s Snow White program, now generally known as “Operation Snow White,” merely states “Assault is neccessary [sic] to an efficient defence.” The “plan” appeared slightly innocuous sufficient, detailing the Church’s intention “to have interaction in varied litigation in all international locations affected in order to reveal to view all such derogatory and false reviews” towards Scientology. This is able to culminate in efforts “to have interaction in additional litigation within the international locations originating such reviews” with a view to “exhaust sources in these international locations.” At first, the Church largely caught to authorized makes an attempt at upholding Hubbard’s Snow White, together with quite a few requests made beneath the Freedom of Data Act (FOIA). By the beginning of 1974 nonetheless, Hubbard and his then-wife, Mary Sue Hubbard, have been overheard discussing infiltrating the IRS by Scientologist Kenneth Urquhart, based on Atack’s A Piece of Blue Sky.
Proof launched within the case of America of America vs Mary Sue Hubbard et al from October 1979 means that Snow White developed into an intensive espionage operation that infiltrated “greater than 30 international locations” along with quite a few US authorities businesses. Prices together with “housebreaking, obstruction of justice, wiretapping, harboring a fugitive and conspiracy” ultimately resulted in 11 church leaders, together with Mary Sue Hubbard, serving jail phrases.
Within the summer time of 1974, Cindy Raymond –– Collections Officer of the US Data Bureau of the Guardian’s Workplace –– despatched “a directive” to Michael Meisner –– Assistant Guardian for Data, Washington, DC –– to “recruit a loyal Scientologist to be positioned as a covert agent at Inner Income Service” for “the aim of taking from that company all paperwork which handled Scientology,” together with “pending litigation initiated by Scientology towards the US Authorities.” By that September, the Church had discovered its man –– Gerald Bennett Wolfe –– to infiltrate the IRS on behalf of Scientology. In October 1974, Jane Kember, the aforementioned Head of GO issued Guardian Order 1361 to make clear the “working targets” to incorporate:
“10. Instantly get an agent into DC IRS to acquire information on LRH, Scientology, and many others. within the Chief Council’s [sic] workplace, the Particular Companies employees, the intelligence division, Audit Division, and some other areas.
16. Gather knowledge on the Justice Dept. Tax Division for the org board, the present terminals, and the folks dealing with Scientology.
17. When the proper areas are remoted, infiltrate and get the information.
[GO 1361] additionally known as for the putting of “an agent, reliable and properly grooved in, to infiltrate the IRS LA workplace” (goal 2). That “agent” was “to acquire any information on LRH, Scientology”, and many others. from each the Intelligence Division (goal 3) and the Audit Division (goal 4) of the Los Angeles IRS Workplace. It additionally known as for the situation (goal 20) and infiltration (goal 22) of the IRS London Workplace with a view to “acquire all paperwork” (goal 22). 12/ Guardian Order 1361 directed that when paperwork had been obtained clandestinely, the designated bureau and official would create “appropriate cowl” to disguise the style by which “the information was obtained” in order that they might be launched to “PR [Public Relations] for lifeless agenting,” that’s, for attainable use in impeaching these perceived as enemies of Scientology.¨
On November 1, 1974, Michell Hermann –– the Guardian’s Workplace’s Data Department I Director –– efficiently planted a radio transmitting bug in a convention room on the IRS’ Chief Counsel. This was to be the assembly place for a confidential dialogue regarding the tax exemption standing of Scientology, resulting in your entire assembly’s recording and transcriptions being despatched to the GO. A number of weeks later, Scientologist Gerald Wolfe gained employment on the IRS as a clerk typist. From December 1974 by June 1976, Hermann, Wolfe, and Meisner stole tens of 1000’s of paperwork from the IRS with a view to understand Mary Sue Hubbard’s “IRS Technique,” which was described in a letter to Kember as “us[ing] any methodology at our disposal to win the battle and achieve our non-profit standing.
By July 1977, 150 FBI brokers raided the Scientology headquarters in Washington, DC and Los Angeles. In response to a report hosted on the CIA’s Studying Room, the raid revealed “an astounding haul,” together with “lock picks, pistols, ammunition, knockout drops, a blackjack, bugging and wiretapping gear,” and “even a small vial labeled ‘vampire blood.’” Over 23,000 paperwork have been impounded by the FBI, alleged to have been “taken from the personal information of federal prosecutors, correspondence between U.S. Cupboard members, and church memoranda on producing false identification papers, tailing folks, laundering cash and committing blackmail” together with paperwork stolen from “the Federal Commerce and Atomic Vitality Commissions; the Nationwide Safety, Protection Intelligence and Central Intelligence Businesses; the Departments of Labor, the Military and the Navy; the U.S. Customs Service; Interpol, and quite a few U.S. police departments.”
Whereas a US Choose dominated the raid unconstitutional later that month, eleven Scientologists, together with Mary Sue Hubbard, have been “convicted of conspiracy and imprisoned for between two and 6 years.” The Church’s founder and chief, L. Ron Hubbard, then went into hiding in California and stayed hidden till his dying in January 1986. It was in his absence that David Miscavige, the Church’s present chief, seized management of Scientology.
Throughout the Nineteen Eighties, the Church employed former CIA agent and former Chief of Particular Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Employees beneath President Kennedy, L. Fletcher Prouty, to provide an affidavit on the US authorities’s assaults towards Scientology. Notably, Prouty was beforehand the “Pentagon’s chief briefing officer assigned to the White Home through the Eisenhower administration” who “labored carefully with CIA Director Allen Dulles in coordinating navy assist for the clandestine political operations undertaken by the company.” In his report, Prouty defined that “copies of intelligence messages about Scientology actions all through the world have been often routed to the state division, Nationwide Safety Company. Military, Navy, and protection division’s Workplace of Particular Operations,” and that particularly “the CIA routinely acquired 16 copies of every message.” Prouty defined that this was “a really uncommon order of distribution for messages of this kind and signifies a really excessive classification and safety dealing with of what’s in any other case unclassified data,” main him “to consider that the federal government is hiding its actions behind a cloak of secrecy.”
In response to reporting from the New York Instances, data on file on the IRS reveal that “the church was incomes about $300 million a yr” by the early Nineties. In October 1991, now-Scientology chief Miscavige and Marty Rathbun, one other senior Scientology official, held an unscheduled assembly with IRS Commissioner, Fred T. Goldberg Jr. Miscavige supplied to stop Snow White’s operations and to “drop all of the fits towards the IRS” if Scientology was as soon as once more “given tax exemption.” For causes unknown, not solely did Goldberg comply with the Church’s calls for, the IRS went as far as to create “a particular five-member working group” so as “to resolve the dispute” –– an “exceptionally uncommon association” that bypasses the company’s exempt organizations division, which usually handles these issues. As a part of the settlement, the IRS even “agreed to distribute a reality sheet describing Scientology and Hubbard.” “It is extremely full and really correct,” Miscavige recalled. “Now, how do I do know? We wrote it! And the IRS can be sending it out to each authorities on the earth.”
Goldberg left the IRS only some months after the choice, in January 1992, to hitch the Treasury division. Goldberg cited privateness legal guidelines which “prohibited him from discussing Scientology or his impromptu assembly with Miscavige.” The now-infamous assembly by no means appeared on Goldberg’s appointment calendar, which was later obtained by The New York Instances by the Freedom of Data Act. His predecessor on the IRS, Lawrence B. Gibbs, known as it “a really stunning determination.” Gibbs added that “It was much more stunning that the service made the choice with out full disclosure, in mild of the prior background.”
The Battle Is Over
Whereas Miscavige and the Church declared “the battle is over,” in actuality, the battle for Scientology had barely begun. The proliferation of the web drastically pushed ahead the entrance of the data battle. For instance, public releases of top-secret Church literature, together with the Xenu story current in OT III, was printed in a Calgary, Canada newspaper as early as December 1974. However because of the issue of distribution innate to bodily publications, the Church was capable of largely hold entry to such secrets and techniques locked-up inside the hierarchy of the group. This all modified with the July 1991 founding of the Usenet newsgroup, alt.faith.scientology, as Scientology secrets and techniques –– as soon as costing 1000’s and 1000’s of {dollars} –– have been instantly flooded all around the web, accessible to hundreds of thousands of readers for the low worth of a month-to-month subscription to an web service supplier.
Naturally, Scientology’s Workplace of Particular Affairs (OSA) –– the identify of the Guardian’s Workplace since 1983 –– sprung into motion, resulting in a memo from OSA’s Elaine Siegel that detailed plans to deal with each digital criticism and the proliferation of Church secrets and techniques. Mockingly, Siegel’s letter was later printed “greater than a dozen occasions on Web,” together with the small print of the OSA’s newly-formed web technique. The memo, dated Might 11, 1994, said that “as a bunch, we are going to NO longer put up with our faith being criticized, harassed and denigrated on the Web,” along with “some authorized actions, which you’ll be additional briefed on.” She furthered “It is going to be fairly easy, really,” together with plans to have “40-50 Scientologists posting on the Web each few days,” which might “run the SPs [suppressive persons] proper off the system.”
After calling the Church’s critics, “jerks,” Siegel informed The Tampa Bay Instances that “Scientology goes to get its personal hyperlink to Web.”
Based by second-generation Scientologist Sky Dayton, with funding sourced from Scientologists, and with a administration and board of administrators that includes Scientologists, the pioneering web service supplier EarthLink was registered on June 6, 1994 –– lower than one month after the circulation of Siegel’s memo.
Understanding that the way forward for Scientology depends closely on the Church’s means to surveil dissidents, push again on criticism, censor the publication of copyrighted supplies, and unfold their teachings internationally to potential initiates, EarthLink’s Dayton rapidly got down to achieve substantial footholds within the knowledge infrastructure layer of the blossoming web. The second piece on this two-part sequence on Limitless Hangout will examine EarthLink’s founding and evolution, and additional study Dayton’s spectacular portfolio of firms and investments in addition to his proximity to political energy.
As can be famous on this forthcoming article, along with EarthLink, Dayton helped incubate one of the crucial widespread web sites of all time, NeoPets; based Boingo Wi-fi, the world’s largest WiFi supplier, which companies the vast majority of the world’s main airports and US navy bases; suggested and invested in Swarm Tech, the acquired firm behind SpaceX’s world-leading satellite tv for pc fleet; suggested and invested in Ring, the main dwelling and neighborhood surveillance system later acquired by Amazon; invested and sat on the board of Age of Studying, a government-partnered academic software program firm featured in over a 3rd of US public libraries and utilized by 65,000 academics in North America; based Metropolis Storage Methods, since acquired by disgraced Uber founder Travis Kalanick, which launched the “web meals court docket” CloudKitchens on the onset of COVID lockdowns; along with his present main Companion place at Craft Ventures, the enterprise capital agency based by the present US AI & Crypto Czar, David Sacks.
Dayton’s expansive net of ventures, and his simultaneous devotion to the Church and its data-hoarding pedigree, means that Scientology’s intelligence-adjacent operations have been something however neutered by the arrival of the web, and actually stay extra influential and consequential than ever.
To Be Continued
