Raid on Scientologists netted CIA documents - Hubbard still gave orders, records show

THE GLOBE AND MAIL

Hubbard still gave orders, records show

Raid on Scientologists netted CIA documents

by John Marshall

January 24, 1980

L. Ron Hubbard, the former science fiction writer who publicly resigned in 1966 from leadership of the Church of Scientology, continued to give orders to its leaders into 1977, a Washington court has been told.

Evidence obtained in 1977 in raids on U.S. offices of the cult by the Federal Bureau of Investigation revealed there was a detailed program to cover up Mr. Hubbard's involvement in the leadership of Scientology.

Called Operation Bulldozer Leak, it was part of the documentary evidence filed by federal prosecutors with the U.S. District Court that last month gave long prison terms to Mr. Hubbard's wife and eight other Scientology leaders for their roles in conspiracies to steal government documents and to obstruct justice by kidnapping an informer. The nine are free pending an appeal of the validity of some of the evidence.

Three other Scientologists, including two world leaders in England and the informer, also were indicted in 1978 but have not yet been tried. Mr. Hubbard and 22 others were named as unindicted co-conspirators.

Federal prosecuting attorneys say investigations into Scientology operations are continuing within the Internal Revenue Service (a meeting of which was bugged by the cult's spies) and at state levels in various areas.

Mr. Hubbard never appeared at any of the long and complex judicial proceedings that began with unsuccessful efforts immediately after the 1977 FBI swoop to have the raids declared illegal.

His name, however, has cropped up frequently. It appears in various forms in some of the 33,000 documents seized from Scientology files and submitted to a grand jury and to trial and appeal courts by U.S. attorneys. He is referred to variously as Founder, Commodore, LRH and Ron.

He also is at times referred to by various code names, according to documents found in the FBI raids and made public by U.S. District Judge Charles Richey after the Scientologists lost appeals of his decision to do so.

In the so-called Zeus code Mr. Hubbard is Joko, his wife, Jigo; in a code called Amber he is Neon, and Mrs. Hubbard is Lily.

A document with FBI number 7822, dated Nov. 5, 1976, and signed by Judy Taussig, a U.S. national official of Scientology, defined the correct use of the codes.

They were to be used, the court learned, for "groups or actions that we don't want connected to LRH or MSH. This is handled by coding their names. Also coding the group or action if it falls into categories #1 - #8 listed here."

That list included incriminating activities, "unpublished crimes," and "things like lobbying where this is prohibited in non-profit corporations, or money deals that might provoke government tax offices."

The document also said the codes should be used for "words of actions that could tend to dispute the fact that the C of S motives are humanitarian, i.e., harass, eradicate, attack, destroy, annihilate ... spreading a rumor, entrapment, stir up opposition."

And codes should be used for the names of "front groups that we do not want connected with the C of S" and "for anything that gives specific and actual evidence that the C of S is in legal control of B6 groups. These are groups that are separate legal entities to the C of S."

An attachment to the document, listed in the prosecution inventory as item 104 in Box C16, said B6 groups include Narconon, a drug treatment organization staffed by Scientologists and using Mr. Hubbard's mental health techniques.

The use of codes, according to the court documents, was part of the operation of the cult's Guardian office, which also produced Operation Bulldozer Leak.

FBI item 1454 from the raid on U.S. Scientology headquarters in California was dated July 21, 1976, and defined Bulldozer's major targets as:

"To effectively spread the rumor that will lead Government, media, and individual SPs (for suppressive persons, meaning critics) to conclude that LRH has no control of the C of S and no legal liability for Church activity."

The document, classified secret, constituted a series of orders to assistant Guardians in all branches to recruit, teach, and test agents on cover stories (it suggested they could pretend to be writing a book and should not use their real names) "to spread the rumor."

Existing agents working in anti-Scientology groups also were to be used.

They were to approach all government officials, journalists and others who had ever been critical of the cult, the Guardians were told, and sample scripts were provided.

An agent "will in several different ways mention that he has heard that LRH no longer has any control of the Church; and that an ex-Scientologist has shown some articles ... that stated that it had definitely been established in several court cases precedents that LRH had no liability for any Church activity."

Contacts who could not be personally seen were to be telephoned, the Bulldozer program said, "and the cover story and rumor given."

A sample script said the agents could add: "So while the press likes to ride with the one-leader idea so as to make press, they could not be further from the truth."

Documentary evidence of another Guardian operation was submitted to the court. FBI number 3205, it was Guardian order 1206, The Snow White Program.

The order was prepared by Fred Hare, assistant to Mrs. Hubbard. (She was identified in this document as Controller, while in others she was called Commodore Staff Guardian.)

It began:

"For the past year there has been a massive program in operation in the Guardian office and on Flag. (Flag was the Apollo, the seagoing ship from which Mr. Hubbard operated until a land base for Flag was opened in a hotel in Clearwater, Fla., bought by the cult in late 1975.)

"This program was written by the Commodore."

The purpose was "to trace back the attacks of the past 24 years to find and handle the SOURCE" and "it involves most of the areas of the planet that have been touched by Scientology."

The order said a special stamp was being made for all documents used in the program. (The stamp, a copy of the Disney Snow White character, appeared on a great many items in the documentary evidence.)

The Hubbard program was to be given "the biggest possible priority." Another document outlining the Hubbard program was dated March, 1976. Now bearing FBI number 13887, it was identified as Guardian order 302 and was over the names of four of the convicted U.S. leaders and the two accused in England.

It said the major target of the top-priority Hubbard program was the need to get all "false and secret files on Scientology, LRH ..." that cannot be obtained legally, "by all possible lines of approach ... i.e., job penetration, janitor penetration, suitable guises utilizing covers."

It said nothing done was to reflect back on Scientology.

There were a number of other references to Mr. Hubbard's leadership in the documents submitted to the court.

In 1970 a top Guardian wrote to Mr. and Mrs. Hubbard his appreciation for their "continually superb leadership."

Another order to Scientology directors and deputies from Richard Weigand, one of the Guardians ultimately convicted as a conspirator, said: "I have been over your lists of major orders ... LRH-MSH are the highest priorities."

Gregory Willardson, another convicted conspirator, described his duties in January, 1976, according to Item 64 of Box C10 in the court documents, as including the need "for increasing my reality of senior's viewpoints all the way to LRH."

Another convicted conspirator, Henning Heldt, wrote to Mrs. Hubbard about a package of sensitive Scientology documents from world headquarters that had been seized by U.S. customs officers in 1976. He said one item "could be embarrassing" but assured Mrs. Hubbard that "quotes under policy are not directly stated to be LRH's."

Prosecuting attorneys used documentary evidence to show the Scientologists stole material from the seized packages and replaced them with innocuous documents before customs inspectors saw the package contents.

They also submitted evidence describing the material in the packages that the Scientologists considered sensitive.

One was a report on the incorporation of the Cleveland Scientology mission that "could be used by IRS if they ever got hold of it to prove legal control invalidating board of directors."

Another item was a report on a group called the Association of Scientologists for Reform that, a Guardian said, "could show more control and connection between C of S and ASR than we would like."

The documents seized by the FBI in 1977 and filed in court included reports on Scientology operations sent directly to Mr. Hubbard.

One, given FBI number 3197, was a 13-page year-end listing of "U.S. Guardian office wins." It covered a wide field of activities in the United States and Canada.

It told Mr. Hubbard that Guardians "penetrated" a hospital and obtained medical records and also infiltrated Better Business Bureaus, the American Medical Association, Associations of Mental Health in the United States and Canada, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Sexual Freedom Movement and a Toronto mental health hospital.

It reported to him on insurance matters and on state and federal tax issues, and on how Guardians had the "IRS tied up in knots."

It told Mr. Hubbard of successful public relations attacks on conventional psychiatry and reported on public relations gains through the expansion of Narconon.

The drug-treatment program is referred to often in the court documents.

In a Guardian logbook for early 1976, Barbara Code asked another office: "Has Narconon U.S. established itself as an admin unit functioning w/out bypass from your bureau?" There was also criticism in the log of a church official who visited a Narconon operation in Palo Alto, Calif., without settling its debt problems.

Another document contained a report that a U.S. municipality wanted local leaders named to the Narconon board before they would consider granting it taxpayers' funds. The Scientologists rejected the proposal.

Many of the Church of Scientology operations, according to the documentary evidence and the prosecutors' stipulation of evidence in the conspiracy trial, were programs set up to fight so-called enemies.

There was Operation Kettle against the American Medical Association, Operation Rook against the Better Business Bureau, Humanist Humiliation against scientists investigating the paranormal, Operation Smoke against the American Cancer Society.

Operation Strike (File 70, Box C-9, FBI item 11572) was defined by Guardian officer Kathy Gregg in October, 1971, as "the action of gathering information on a covert basis."

She gave 12 steps on how to do so, ranging from such details as the acquisition of squeakless shoes to the establishing of a "safe reading place" if target files could not be removed for study elsewhere.

Some operations were against individuals, the Washington court was told, with documentary evidence to support the state's charges.

A priority was Paulette Cooper, target of the church's Operation Freakout. She was the author of a 1971 book, The Scandal of Scientology, and the subject of a torrent of lawsuits by the Scientologists.

Evidence implicated the Scientologists in a frameup that resulted in the New York writer's being indicted on a bomb-threat charge that took her two years to have dropped.

There were also reports in the files from a Scientology agent who became intimately close to Miss Cooper. He told his superiors at one point that the woman was so depressed she had talked about suicide. He said that he had sympathized with her, but that on the inside he was laughing -- "wouldn't this be a great thing for Scientology."

In one case a cult member played the role of a cosmetic-layered, foul- mouthed prostitute who invaded the reception area of a government office to embarrass an official.

And in Program Billy's Baby, a Scientologist was to be rehearsed in playing the role of mistress to an American Medical Association official, so that she could cause a scandal by claiming she was going to have a baby by him.

A Guardian official called Doug reported to another, Sandy, in one document: "I recruited a tough OT (operating thetan, a supposedly superior person on the Scientology ladder of courses) female with lots of intention who could act out a few dramatic phone calls ... I drilled the FSM (field staff member) so she had the patter exactly as written and could mock up grief, drugged, slurred voice."

Doug noted that another field staff member in the target agency "let me know they (the phone calls) created quite an effect." The press was a special target for attention from both Mr. Hubbard and his wife.

The cult founder's Manual of Justice of 1959 was included in the court documents. In it he ordered his followers to use private detectives to investigate critical journalists "and get any criminal or Communist background."

In a policy letter to his followers dated February, 1966, Mr. Hubbard wrote: "Start investigating them promptly for felonies or worse using our own professionals, not outside agencies."

He also said Scientologists should feed sexual and criminal information about their enemies to the press.

In Guardian order 121569, Mrs. Hubbard said: "It has been virtually impossible to get true press stories in certain newspapers ... there is a 'party line' ... we think perhaps this line leads back to psychiatric front groups."

She called on Guardians in all local organizations to investigate the writers of critical material and ascertain their contacts, and to investigate editors, managers and owners of the media outlets involved. The Guardians were to "use imagination" in obtaining information not publicly available.

In the court documents was an acknowledgment of the order from San Francisco. The church there reported it got an agent into the San Francisco Examiner the day after a second article by a reporter appeared "and obtained his entire file on Scientology."