Scientology, The CIA, and MK-ULTRA

Nearly all of present discourse on Scientology facilities round insider revelations relating to the novel perception system coded throughout 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 protecting human our bodies referred to as 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 revealed 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 throughout 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, embody Hubbard’s work at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C. within the Thirties –– the hot-bed of psychiatric analysis throughout Mission Bluebird and Mission 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 turned the scientific basis for NASA.

In 1953, The MK-ULTRA program was formally approved by CIA Director Allen Dulles in an effort to shut the “brainwashing hole” after the US realized of Korean mind-control strategies that had been used on American prisoners of struggle. 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 means of the mid-Nineteen Nineties in an effort 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. The truth is, 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 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 Mission Artichoke

Bear in mind one factor, we aren’t working a enterprise, we’re working 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 instructor and a US Navy officer. Hubbard spent his early childhood on numerous 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 examine 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 usUlysses S. Grant in 1923. Regardless of the younger Hubbard being solely 12 years outdated 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 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 turned 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 through which we’re giving this congress, and I took engineering… And majored, in that engineering, in finite energies, and considered the best power I might consider – it have to 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 pal, the pinnacle of Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital… Dr. William Alan White. He mentioned, ‘In the event you pursue alongside this line’ (…he was a golf pal of mine) – and ‘when you pursue alongside this line,’ he mentioned, ‘you inform me about it occasionally,’ 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 little 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 advised Commander Thompson about this work, I attempted to get extra info, 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 gentle on this topic in any respect.”

Regardless of a passion for his former instructor White, White’s successor at St. Elizabeth’s, Winfred Overholser, turned an object of Hubbard’s hatred following Overholser’s dismissal of his Dianetic analysis. Hubbard lectured in 1952 in regards to the risks of Overholser’s remedy 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 throughout the Thirties. This overlaps with CIA exercise at Chestnut Lodge, which straight concerned Overholser. Based on 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” in an effort to trigger an “uninhibited disclosure of categorized info.” Overholser was appointed chairman of the panel engaged on this “Fact Drug.”

Based on a College of London analysis paper titled “The Position of Psychoanalytic Data in CIA’s ARTICHOKE and MKULTRA Paperwork Throughout the Years 1947-1963: Use and Misuse of Psychoanalytic Methods,” the Chestnut Lodge “held CIA-cleared psychiatrists ‘for in-house workers and different delicate instances’ and was formally ‘accepted 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 Warfare 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 Workers.” 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 outdated the OSS in 1947.” St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, the Chestnut Lodge, and the CIA’s headquarters at Langley are all inside a number 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 revealed memo from Paul Gaynor, the CIA Safety Analysis chief, to Mission 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.” Based on the Alliance for Human Analysis Safety, the now defunct Division of Well being, Schooling, and Welfare (HEW) was created in 1953, the identical 12 months because the aforementioned memo was written, and “the CIA discovered it remarkably straightforward to realize HEW’s approval to be used of Federal medical amenities as fronts for covert drug and interrogation experiments utilizing unwitting human topics.”

Allen later instructed 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 nowadays,” and he instructed “supply[ing] decreased sentences” to those males in an effort to acquire 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 underneath the management of the [U.S.] Public Well being Service.” Shortly after, Artichoke progress stories have been despatched to the CIA by way of 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 answerable for 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 referred to as “The Unabomber” –– along with supervising Timothy Leary’s controversial work with psychedelic medication. Leary’s deeper connections to Scientology and intelligence will likely 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. For 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 Warfare Info in 1942.

In a lecture titled “The way to Deal with Audiences” delivered by Hubbard on November 1, 1956, the Church’s founder confirmed his 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. Instructed him they’d heard a superb speech and left the stage. All of them got here round afterwards saying, ‘What a superb speech that you just gave!’ They could afterwards have suspected my data of the thoughts, however definitely not my data of hypnotism. It’s very straightforward to hypnotize teams.”

On the onset of World Warfare II, Hubbard himself enlisted within the Navy after his stint at St. Elizabeth’s. There’s a lot discrepancy about his rank and accomplishments throughout the struggle, however by practically all accounts –– together with vital biographers and the Church itself –– Hubbard served as an intelligence officer. In 1945, upon the struggle’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 adolescence studying science-fiction and emulating his needs for area journey in his yard with mannequin rockets and fireworks together with his childhood pal, 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 started experimenting with solid-fueled rockets. He later left Hercules and, alongside together with his childhood pal Foreman, joined the Halifax Explosives firm primarily based 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 accepted by the “legendary aerodynamicist.” The trio, now with entry to the labs and literature accessible by way of Caltech and GALCIT, started their experiments in earnest –– with their notorious explosive tendencies incomes them the title the “Suicide Squad.” Their work shaped the idea 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 underneath the Government 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 direction of creating these gasoline sources. The strong rocket gasoline that had been developed by Parsons turned “the idea of the Minuteman missile, the Titan rocket, and the House Shuttle strong rocket booster.” Regardless of, by practically all metrics, the success of the primordial JPL –– then-known because the GALCIT Rocket Mission –– Parsons quickly turned his eye away from the celebrities 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 shortly 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 a view to additional his examine 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 turned a scorching mattress of lavish events, orgies and occult rituals. In the meantime, the navy continued to pour funding into the GALCIT Rocket Mission and, in 1942, the rocket builders based the Aerojet Engineering Firm to maintain up with the rising demand for militarized propulsion. The subsequent 12 months, in 1943, the navy formally took over the GALCIT Rocket Mission, and renamed it the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Now underneath navy management, JPL developed “a number of weapon deployment methods primarily based on the liquid and strong gasoline know-how” 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 turned 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. Presently, in 1945, L. Ron Hubbard turned acquainted with Parsons, and was shortly 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 greater intelligence. He’s probably the most Thelemic particular person I’ve ever met and is in full accord with our personal rules.”

Hubbard and Parsons quickly turned 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,” through 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 offered 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 practically 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 trade” with “the newly based Israeli authorities in trade for admission into Israel.” The US Air Power advised the FBI that that they had 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 residence at 1003 South Orange Grove Avenue, Pasadena, California, which has been reported subversive.” Based on statements made by the Church in December 1969 to the Sunday Occasions, Hubbard was despatched by the US Navy to “[break] up black magic in America.” The Church wrote, “He went to reside on the home and investigated the black magic rites and the state of affairs 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 together 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 revealed as an article within the Astounding Science Fiction journal’s Might 1950 situation, “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 vital determine within the blossoming science fiction scene having mentored and revealed 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 Mission BLUEBIRD was approved by the CIA. Based on letters from John Galusha –– a Board member of the Hubbard Affiliation of Scientologists Worldwide –– later launched by the FBI, the thought for the formation of the Dianetics Analysis Basis was instructed 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 objective 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 & Basic 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 title additionally seems on a government-hosted listing 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 in opposition to the Basis, and Hubbard discovered himself in want of a brand new operational technique for Dianetics. Based on each McClaughry and The Royal Maze, two separate intelligence officers instructed that Hubbard incorporate Dianetics as a faith as a protection mechanism in opposition to these lawsuits. They have been the aforementioned OSS/FBI agent Charles Parker Morgan, and John Starr Cooke.

In The Sport 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 idea of political activism primarily based on an impressively detailed examine of the way through which leaders of the world primarily based their judgements on one type or one other of divine steering.” Copeland additional described the duo’s idea that “correctly ‘charismatized’ leaders, positioned in sure positions within the ‘free world’s’ ‘key’ bureaucracies, might be used as political levers by which an enlightened American overseas coverage might uplift the world,” which might “allow a correctly employed CIA to satisfy the Wilsonian pledge to ‘make the world secure for democracy’ whereas eradicating sure goings-on right here and there that have been inconveniencing the American lifestyle.” Contemplate, for instance, the affect of Presidential non secular advisors similar 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 comparable preparations with Scientology, the brainchild of one other nut, this one a science-fiction author named Ron Hubbard, we have been on our approach 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 turned a ‘clear’ underneath the tutelage of Ron Hubbard himself, after which demanded and bought 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 Goals 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 celebration; 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 throughout the Chilly Warfare. John Cooke hobnobbed with Sherman Kent at annual household reunions and is alleged to have made the acquaintance of quite a lot 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 lecturers. Within the early 1950’s, he turned an in depth confidant of L. Ron Hubbard, the ex-navy officer who based the Scientology group. Cooke rose excessive within the ranks of the newly shaped non secular cult. (He was the primary “clear” in America, which means he had attained the extent of a sophisticated Scientology provoke.) Earlier than lengthy, nevertheless, he grew disillusioned with Hubbard and so they parted methods.”

Cooke moved again to California, and have become an vital 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 residence in Cuernavaca, Mexico in 1976, however not earlier than being visited by Andrija Puharich, an ex-Navy scientist and researcher, and Seymour “The Head” Lazare, a long-time affiliate of William Mellon Hitchcock, who will likely be mentioned shortly.

Puharich was well-known for his examine on parapsychological phenomenon, and tried to seek 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 underneath the CIA’s notorious Mission Stargate, was straight supervised at Langley by John McMahon, the “second-in-command underneath [CIA Director] William Casey. “Most of the SRI empaths have been mustered from L. Ron Hubbard’s Church of Scientology,” in accordance with 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 Middle 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 acknowledged overtly, ‘fourteen Clears participated within the experiments, greater than I’d suspect.’ On the time he denied CIA involvement, however now acknowledges, ‘it was moderately widespread data all alongside who the sponsor was, though in paperwork the id of the Company was hid behind the sobriquet of an east-coast scientist.’”

Based on the CIA, the SRI’s work was funded by the CIA, the Parsons-founded Jet Proposal Laboratory (now inside NASA), ARPA and the Navy. The CIA and the Church of Scientology had grow to be direct companions of their development of psychic and paranormal analysis by the Nineteen Seventies. Nevertheless, 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 Working, LSD, and The Sea Org

“I give the CIA a complete credit score for sponsoring and initiating the complete consciousness motion counter tradition occasions of the Nineteen Sixties.”

– Timothy Leary

Timothy Leary, a pupil of former St. Elizabeth’s employees and OSS/CIA agent Henry A. Murray, turned 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 pal and eventual CIA Director Richard Helms. The Mellon household had many members of the family 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 –– identified 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 Religious Discovery, a faith shaped in September 1966 that “included psychedelic medication as sacraments.” Sand’s chemistry operations, culminating within the infamously pure LSD referred to as Orange Sunshine, have been a product of a long-time partnership with David Mantell, a Scientologist who studied straight underneath 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 accomplice of Hitchcock. Based on Acid Goals, Hitchcock and Clapp “organized for Sand to open an account underneath a false title at Clapp’s financial institution,” whereas concurrently wanting “into the feasibility of organising an offshore LSD laboratory on one in every of Bahamas secluded cays.” The e book furthers Hitchcock’s monetary exercise throughout this journey, straight connecting his account at Clapp’s Fiduciary Belief with the CIA-front arrange by Allen Dulles and Thomas Dewey referred to as 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 sort that aren’t traded publicly however have a tendency to indicate dramatic features on paper) related to the Mary Carter Paint Firm, later referred to as 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 referred to 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 struggle, Helliwell had run CIA entrance corporations in Florida. Via 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 pal Timothy Leary, the period’s most publicized advocate of the chemical lobotomy, who bought him concerned with the LSD operation. The earnings have been laundered by means of 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 largest tax-evasion bust in American historical past. However the CIA efficiently lobbied for the inquiry to be buried, and plenty 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 atmosphere of Panama.”

The 1985 e book Acid Goals by Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain importantly connects Citadel Financial institution founder Helliwell with the Sea Provide, a 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 Warfare 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. Primarily based 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. Just a few 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 legislation 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 corporations and “phantom cities” in Florida throughout the building of Disney World to ensure that the group to “keep away from taxation and environmental regulation in addition to keep 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 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 International Relations Committee, initiated an investigation into the CIA’s influence on overseas coverage. Reporting from the Boston Globe particularly alluded to Sea Provide for instance 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 present Present to clarify the reasoning for putting three committee members on a Congressional board to supervise CIA actions:

“The precept [sic] argument, I imagine, is that a lot of the least publicized difficulties which have appeared within the press in recent times relating to the CIA have virtually all the time been within the discipline of overseas relations. Numerous the Committee feels that that is the world which has triggered appreciable query and in some instances criticism –– that it could be the duty 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 could enhance the relations of the Senate and the general public with the CIA.

Slightly than being a mirrored image upon the CIA, I really feel that it could be an enchancment in our relationships and would have a tendency to switch, if not remove, to an excellent 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 should be.”

Richard Helms –– the godfather of MK-ULTRA, the long-time pal 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 vital of Fulbright.” For sure, the Central Intelligence Company was dropping company and gaining Congressional oversight, a lot to the dismay of Helms, and the foremost points of the intelligence company have been in dire want of a rebrand that will permit them to proceed working far past the attain of the general public sector.

Firstly of 1965, Hubbard arrived in Spain’s Canary Islands to start analysis and writing on the superior “OT ranges.” The truth is, 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 best degree of Scientology’s initiates. On the finish of June 1965, Hubbard gave a lecture titled “The Effectively-Rounded Auditor,” through which he exclaims that the US authorities has been “attempting 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 turned head of the CIA, Hubbard as soon as once more returned to the Canary Islands, in February 1966. Based on ABC Spain, Hubbard signed a contract with Helms and the CIA that 12 months, 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 task he has been on in Spain for a little bit over a 12 months.” Shortly thereafter, Hubbard formally creates the “Sea Mission” in a Scientology coverage letter dated November 10, 1966. On November 22 of that 12 months, the Hubbard Exploration Firm Restricted was included in London, and by the tip of the 12 months, 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 best ranges of Scientology have been delivered. Based on 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.”

Based on 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, acknowledged that the remedy 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.” Based on The Week, a former Sea Org worker claims to have “labored 15-hour days as a youngster,” and was solely allowed to “see her dad and mom simply twice between ages 12 and 18.” One other acknowledged 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, because of human trafficking issues. No fees have been ever made on account of their inquiries, which have been carried out underneath the codename “Operation Overboard.” As for why no fees have been filed, the Tampa Bay Occasions interviewed specialists in 2013 who acknowledged that the doubtless 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 partially 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 affordable,” and to take action would “entangle the court docket within the non secular 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 12 months. 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 Warfare 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 numerous 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.

Based on the CIA, Sea Provide founder Helliwell was “deeply concerned” within the financing of “covert forays between 1964 and 1975” in opposition to 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 Middle, an “antisubmarine base” on Andros Island to “experiment with new strategies of in search of and destroying enemy submarines” with know-how mentioned to “surpase [sic] something we all know of in the complete world.” For identified intelligence operatives like Helliwell, who have been main gamers within the worldwide maritime trafficking sport, such a naval analysis and know-how might show priceless. Additional stories from the CIA describe the bottom as “vital” 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 as a right.” Based on 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 stories dated July 1969 stating two of the Church’s ships have been conducting “navy drills” whereas “bearing Coast Guard insignia replicas.”

There’s 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 in opposition to BEL lawyer Michael Metzger. That operation resulted within the arrest of Nick Sand’s accomplice 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 throughout the Clearwater, Florida Fee Hearings, together with allegations that the Church was trafficking medication:

“Exhibit XII –

February by means of 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 strains.

February 1970 – Milner tells JM that US customs believed Scientology was selling and smuggling medication 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 medication 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 in regards to the Aires and JM’s involvement in Scientology”. He asks questions like – Why is Scientology going forwards and backwards between Mexico and the US, is Scientology working dope? He additionally signifies that Scientology is underneath 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 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 be aware of McDonald’s ship in relation to the aforementioned Hitchcock-linked BEL, referred to easily as Brotherhood:

“Undated, unsigned be aware in US Coast Guard information – ‘owned by Scientology group – paramilitary’. McDonald – marijuana smuggling – followers virtually navy. Arrested couple of them occasionally. 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 medication 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 current burglaries concentrating 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 fees on “possessing stolen property,” “possessing a tear fuel gun” and “a sniper scope,” and “having a hid weapon in a automotive.” Regardless of his failure to seem in court docket and the multitude of significant felony allegations, McDonald was cleared of all fees the next month, in December 1970, alluding to suspicions of engaged on behalf of intelligence, along with his identified informant place with U.S. customs.

In January 1972, Customs brokers made their means 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 subsequent month, in February 1972, the identical ship was once more boarded by Customs and Secret Service brokers on the lookout for medication, confirming legislation enforcement inquiries into Scientology’s Sea Org as a trafficking enterprise. Based on historian Chris Owen, revealed on creator Tony Ortega’s The Underground Bunker, “the UK and US authorities have been suspicious of the sealed packages that have been commonly 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, through 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” because of 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,” through 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 referred to 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 youngsters that might not be housed in Los Angeles and a spot to develop vegatables and fruits. 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, await the Mexican bandits to assault the ranch once more after which handle them. We have been advised to kill them if obligatory…

Jerry McDonald was extensively rumored to have been a former mercenary and a paid murderer in Europe. He was identified all through the Sea Org for caring for troublesome issues. If somebody was giving an issue in some space Jerry McDonald would simply seem there. Due to his repute as having been an murderer, if he got here on the scene, folks would worry 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 form 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 means, he would let folks know that he was actually conversant together with his craft. He carried a 9 mm pistol on him on a regular basis and he was all the time 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. Nevertheless, if the orders had not been canceled I’ve little question that he might have carried out the duty.”

Mayer moreover testified that “at numerous occasions” he was “chargeable for making ready mission orders and briefing couriers that will smuggle cash out of the US.” He was hardly the one former Scientologist who gave testimony about transferring giant sums of cash for the Sea Org. Within the 1987 e book, Messiah or Madman, former Sea Org member Hana Eltringham acknowledged there was “plenty of cash aboard,” making be aware of a time when she helped “courier 7 or 8 million {dollars} in money to Switzerland,” and “a later journey” through which “way 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 secure, however no correct accounts.” Goldstein claimed the Sea Org “paid for every part in money” and “have been working with three totally 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 underneath the alias Elena Lorrel described her time spent throughout 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 plenty of myths to develop. They need to 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 totally different international locations. A few of 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 virtually each authorities of the international locations we visited. We have been infiltrating these teams….attempting to covertly again one political candidate versus one other. All types of political manipulations such as you’d by no means think about have been occurring, and it was all being pulled off by only a few folks. Most Sea Org members have been robotic, rigidly following Scientology assume. Put underneath strain and duress, they might simply blab every part. 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 non secular sect. For starters, the Los Angeles Occasions article notes a State Division letter that quotes an officer from the Apollo, who acknowledged 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 in regards to the Sea Org. The article appropriately 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. Based on the Occasions, 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 Basic was unable to schedule a gathering with Hubbard, resulting in a moderately telling remark upon the ship’s “gimmicks”:

“It’s potential that Commodore Hubbard and his spouse are philanthropists of some form and/or eccentrics, but when one doesn’t settle for this as a proof, there must 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 non secular 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 a lot of strikingly stunning 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 celebration 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 underneath surveillance for potential drug smuggling,” and that “customs brokers had gathered right here from as distant as California to maintain watch on the Apollo” because of suspicions “of carrying giant portions of narcotics.” Hubbard’s Guardian’s Workplace observed the gathering of legislation enforcement, and his spouse Mary Sue was in a position to 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 in opposition to Customs and the Coast Guard. Particularly, GO 1344 referred to 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, through which Hubbard accepted and first described the “Snow White Program.”

The escalation of the Guardian’s Workplace’s GOs shortly 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 moderately innocuous sufficient, detailing the Church’s intention “to have interaction in numerous litigation in all international locations affected in order to reveal to view all such derogatory and false stories” in opposition to Scientology. This is able to culminate in efforts “to have interaction in additional litigation within the international locations originating such stories” in an effort to “exhaust assets 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 underneath the Freedom of Info Act (FOIA). By the beginning of 1974 nevertheless, Hubbard and his then-wife, Mary Sue Hubbard, have been overheard discussing infiltrating the IRS by Scientologist Kenneth Urquhart, in accordance with Atack’s A Piece of Blue Sky.

Proof launched within the case of The US of America vs Mary Sue Hubbard et al from October 1979 means that Snow White developed into an in depth espionage operation that infiltrated “greater than 30 international locations” along with quite a few US authorities businesses. Costs 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 Info Bureau of the Guardian’s Workplace –– despatched “a directive” to Michael Meisner –– Assistant Guardian for Info, 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 in opposition to 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 Providers employees, the intelligence division, Audit Division, and every 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 right areas are remoted, infiltrate and get the information.

[GO 1361] additionally referred to as for the inserting of “an agent, reliable and nicely 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 referred to as for the situation (goal 20) and infiltration (goal 22) of the IRS London Workplace in an effort to “acquire all paperwork” (goal 22). 12/ Guardian Order 1361 directed that after paperwork had been obtained clandestinely, the designated bureau and official would create “appropriate cowl” to disguise the style through which “the info was obtained” in order that they might be launched to “PR [Public Relations] for lifeless agenting,” that’s, for potential use in impeaching these perceived as enemies of Scientology.¨

On November 1, 1974, Michell Hermann –– the Guardian’s Workplace’s Info 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 in regards to the tax exemption standing of Scientology, resulting in the complete assembly’s recording and transcriptions being despatched to the GO. Just a few weeks later, Scientologist Gerald Wolfe gained employment on the IRS as a clerk typist. From December 1974 by means of June 1976, Hermann, Wolfe, and Meisner stole tens of hundreds of paperwork from the IRS in an effort to understand Mary Sue Hubbard’s “IRS Technique,” which was described in a letter to Kember as “us[ing] any technique at our disposal to win the battle and acquire our non-profit standing.

By July 1977, 150 FBI brokers raided the Scientology headquarters in Washington, DC and Los Angeles. Based on 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 Eighties, the Church employed former CIA agent and former Chief of Particular Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Workers underneath President Kennedy, L. Fletcher Prouty, to provide an affidavit on the US authorities’s assaults in opposition to Scientology. Notably, Prouty was beforehand the “Pentagon’s chief briefing officer assigned to the White Home throughout the Eisenhower administration” who “labored carefully with CIA Director Allen Dulles in coordinating navy help 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 steadily 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 sort and signifies a really excessive classification and safety dealing with of what’s in any other case unclassified info,” main him “to imagine that the federal government is hiding its actions behind a cloak of secrecy.”

Based on reporting from the New York Occasions, information on file on the IRS show that “the church was incomes about $300 million a 12 months” by the early Nineteen 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 provided to stop Snow White’s operations and to “drop all of the fits in opposition to 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 vitally full and really correct,” Miscavige recalled. “Now, how do I do know? We wrote it! And the IRS will likely be sending it out to each authorities on this planet.”

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 Occasions by means of the Freedom of Info Act. His predecessor on the IRS, Lawrence B. Gibbs, referred to as it “a really shocking choice.” Gibbs added that “It was much more shocking that the service made the choice with out full disclosure, in gentle of the prior background.”

The Warfare Is Over

Whereas Miscavige and the Church declared “the struggle is over,” in actuality, the battle for Scientology had barely begun. The proliferation of the web drastically pushed ahead the entrance of the knowledge struggle. For instance, public releases of top-secret Church literature, together with the Xenu story current in OT III, was revealed in a Calgary, Canada newspaper as early as December 1974. However because of the issue of distribution innate to bodily publications, the Church was in a position to largely maintain entry to such secrets and techniques locked-up throughout 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 hundreds and hundreds of {dollars} –– have been abruptly flooded all around the web, accessible to hundreds of thousands of readers for the low value of a month-to-month subscription to an web service supplier.

Naturally, Scientology’s Workplace of Particular Affairs (OSA) –– the title 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. Sarcastically, Siegel’s letter was later revealed “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, acknowledged 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 may 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 advised The Tampa Bay Occasions 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 shortly got down to acquire 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 corporations and investments in addition to his proximity to political energy.

As will likely be famous on this forthcoming article, along with EarthLink, Dayton helped incubate one of the vital fashionable web sites of all time, NeoPets; based Boingo Wi-fi, the world’s largest WiFi supplier, which providers nearly all 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 residence and neighborhood surveillance system later acquired by Amazon; invested and sat on the board of Age of Studying, a government-partnered instructional software program firm featured in over a 3rd of US public libraries and utilized by 65,000 lecturers 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