Sinking the Master Mariner
Report by John Barnes
Photographs by Nik Wheeler
Oct 28, 1984

"Corrupt, sinister and dangerous"' were the words used to describe the Church of Scientology in a judgment given by Mr Justice Latey this summer. He also referred to it as "immoral and socially obnoxious".

But who controls the Church now?

A major Sunday Times Magazine investigation into the activities of the cult in America and Britain has uncovered a disturbing and extraordinary story - the takeover of the organisation by a small band of youthful fanatics following the disappearance of the Church's founder and inspiration, L. Ron Hubbard.

The temperature must have been well over 100°F, a dry burning heat that shimmered the figures on the roof. They were dressed in faded blue denim, heads bare under the sun. One looked towards the road and our car. But the guard below yelled and the man bent his head back to his work of resurfacing the roof. My companion in the car said quietly, "That's a Rehabilitation Project Force. They're RPFers, psychological prisoners -slave labour - , in a way."

This was America, summer 1984, on a major highway between the southern Californian city of Riverside and the millionaires' playground of Palm Springs. Here, in the cactus hamlet of Gillman Hot Springs, where the masts of a $565,000 clipper ship sway incongruously in the desert winds, is the world headquarters of the Church of Scientology.

Yet the great helmsman of this bizarre cult was not on board. No one knows for sure whether L. Ron Hubbard, the 74-year-old founder, is even alive. His round, smiling face gazes down from the walls of more than 100 Scientology offices around the world, orders are given in his name, but he hasn't been seen in nearly five years. He may be in seclusion, as Church leaders claim, or he may be, as recent defectors believe, either dead or in failing health and under the control of half a dozen young followers who are manipulating big fortune.

These are the children. Well, actually, they are in their early 20s now. But they were only 11, 12, 13-year-olds when Hubbard, haunted by fear of enemies, was sailing the world's oceans aboard a 3280-tonne convened British ferryboat called the Apollo. Some 500 scientologists, many of them English, took their children with them aboard the boat. Hubbard was the Commodore. The kids were the elite "Commodore Messenger Org."

"They were mostly good-looking girls, smart, too," said Bent Corydon, a New Zealander who had been in the Church for over 20 years and had run his own scientology mission on a franchise basis. "They weren't much use to the ship particularly, to Hubbard used them as his eyes and ears, spies really, running around, asking questions, observing things. They were considered to be Hubbard himself and any discourtesy to them was regarded as a personal discourtesy to Hubbard. By the time they all got off the boat in 1975, some of the girls had been replaced by teenage boys. The worst part was when these kids started turning in their parents, getting them 'declared' [purged] as 'suppressives - that's evil people, to translate Church language."

Above: L Ron Hubbard

By the mid-Seventies, Scientology's aggressive proselytizing had attracted, by its own count, more than 6 million followers around the world. It had also earned the enmity of numerous governments, including Britain's, and many hundreds of disillusioned individuals who claimed they had been hoodwinked by high-pressure Church salesmen into spending thousands of dollars on Scientology programmes. As authorities began cracking down, the Church's leader found his boat no longer welcome in Mediterranean and Atlantic ports.

Hubbard decided it was time to go home. He dropped anchor in Clearwater, a quiet beach town on the Gulf of Mexico just west of Tampa, Florida. On October 27, 1975, the central Fort Harrison Hotel, which rises 11 storeys over Tampa Bay, was bought for $2.3 million by an unknown company called Southern Land Sales and Development with money from a Luxembourg bank. A few days later paid $500,000 for the Bank of Clearwater building. Only after a newspaper investigation did the true identity of the buyer emerge.

By the summer of 1976 about 1500 Scientologists, including some 800 full time staff members, had moved into their new headquarters, which they described in colour brochures as a "religious retreat" and the "friendliest place in the a whole world". Ron Hubbard, in green tam-o'shanter, was seen directing training films in the grounds. Always at his side was a slim, intense-looking teenager named David Miscavige, smartly dressed in the naval uniform of the Commodore's Messenger.

In a confidential memo, Hubbard issued orders to his staff to turn a section of the Fort Harrison Hotel into a hide away for himself. But June 1976, Hubbard flew instead to California, first living in a Church owned apartment complex in Hemet, a small town at the foot of the San Jacinto Mountains. His top aides set up headquarters on the golf course of a country club they bought by Gillman Hot Springs on the edge of the Mojave Desert, a few miles from Hemet.

By this time, Hubbard had become a "Hughesian kind of creature" (A reference to the reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes in his final years), according to Gerry Armstrong, who had been a member of Hubbard's "family unit" from 1971 until 1980. "I saw him deteriorate both physically and mentally," said Armstrong, who claimed that one of his tasks was to shuttle suitcases stuffed with $50 bills to various Hubbard accounts in Liberia, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein.

Armstrong said that his boss talked to no one but the young Messengers who had been with him since their childhood days aboard the Apollo. "He was childlike and bullying." He had also become a hypochondriac, said Armstrong, terrified of germs, taking injections of drugs and vitamins.

About a dozen senior Scientologists lived in the apartment complex with Hubbard. One of them was David Mayo, who was Hubbard's personal auditor (confessor) and the Church's leading authority on its philosophy. A 22-year Scientology veteran, Mayo earned his place at the top of the hierarchy through his close friendship with Hubbard. But in February, 1980, Mayo left for a two-week visit to his native New Zealand. When be returned, Hubbard had vanished.

The young naval-uniformed Commodore Messenger Org had pulled a preemptive coup for control of the Church

Hubbard (top) and protégé, Miscavige (below) shooting a recruiting film and its finances. "It was like "Lord of The Flies," said Mayo. "The kids - fanatics, all of them - had taken over."

Hubbard disappeared in the company of Ann Broeker, an attractive young woman in her mid-twenties who had been with him during his Apollo days, and her husband, Pat. Ex-Scientologists who know the Broekers describe them as personable, articulate, good-looking and slavishly devoted to Ron Hubbard, the kind of people he loves to have around.

No Scientologists except for the Broekers have seen him since. The three of them are believed to be living in a southern California beach town. But it is no more than a guess, based on Hubbard's love of the ocean and the time it has taken for one of the Broekers to rendezvous with Church leaden to give them instructions from their leader.

From their 500-acre estate in Gillman Hot Springs on the edge of the desert, the now commanders of Scientology planned the removal of those they perceived as their enemies within the Church. The place looks more like a prison camp than the headquarters of a religion. Brown-shirted guards scrutinize passing cars through binoculars. A golf course, abandoned and gone to weed, and is lined with NO TRESPASSING signs. A notice outside a black wrought-iron gate Says GOLDEN ERA STUDIOS. Set back from the road are rows of one storey buildings with blue roofs.

It is not advisable to stop and stare. During our visit the guards didn't seem to be inhibited by the fact that the road passing the Church headquarters is a California State Highway. One banged on the boot of my car. Two others chattered away on walkie-talkies. I could see another holding an animated discussion on the phone, in the guardhouse by the gate. I drove on. A guard on a motorcycle pulled in behind us. As I passed another guardhouse a mile along the road, a young man with a movie camera jumped out on to the highway and filmed.

"These lads get $17 a week plus board and lodging," said Bent Corydon. "They live in dormitories and study Scientology when they're not working. There's no television. Once a month, a Church van takes them into Riverside for an evening at the movies. Why do they do It? They signed 'billion-year' contracts to become members of Ron's Sea Org. He's promised them that they will join him in future incarnations."

But these are merely the troops. The commanders, dressed in black pseudo-naval-officer uniforms, live in comfortable bungalows around a swimming pool, close to a replica of a masted ship's deck that carries a bronze plaque dedicated to "L. Ron Hubbard, Master Mariner." The new leader is 22-year old David Miscavige, who became a Scientologist at the age of 12 aboard the Apollo. He has had no education since then except for Scientology. Consequently, he speaks a language that is more Scientology org-speak than English.

Miscavige took over control of the Church in June of 1981. He had never held any position in the Church hierarchy. He was merely one of the Messengers who served in Hubbard's entourage. But as his cameraman, he gained a privileged place in the pecking order because be was constantly by Hubbard's aide when they were film-making.

At first, the young Messengers shared power at Scientology's headquarters. According to one of them, Miscavige seized control of the Church and its assets with breathtaking simplicity. He handed the then Commanding Officer, Diane Voegeding, a message supposedly written by Ron Hubbard, ordering her to resign her post. It was signed "##", which is the way Hubbard has signed his communications for the past four years for fear that his real signature could be used against him in the multitude of legal actions that have been brought against the Church. The order was hand-carried to Gillman Hot Springs by Ann Broeker. Until then her main function had been to look after Hubbard, wash his clothes and cook his food.

Diane Voegeding said that Hubbard disappeared because be feared be would be caught up in a trial in which one of his former Messengers, Tanya Burden, claimed that she had been forced to be his serf from the age of 14. The Broekers went with him because it was felt that senior Church officials couldn't be spared. "What a mistake we made," said Voegeding, "We should have realised that whoever controlled communications with Hubbard controlled the Church."

In fact, it's a troika. While ultimate power now rests with the Broekers, it is their friend David Miscavige who wields it. The current Commanding Officer, Commodore Messenger Office, is Marc Yager, a close friend and supporter.

Yet Miscavige held no official position in the Church of Scientology. At the beginning of January 1982, he formed a new corporation called the Religious Technology Center, which controls Hubbard copyrights, techniques and signature. Other RTC trustees are Vicky Aznaran, Deputy Inspector-General, Lyman Spurling and Warren McShane.

Five months later the same people incorporated a separate body called the Church of Spiritual Technology, enabling them to transfer the trademarks for only $100 if the Church came under attack. The Church of Spiritual Technology has authority over RTC.

Directly below Miscavige in the hierarchy are other young turks, mostly in their mid-20's: Yager; Vicky Aznaran and her husband Rick, Chief of Security; Steve Marlowe, Inspector General, Religious Technology Center; and Commander Wendell Reynolds, International Finance Dictator.

RPFers, the Church's labour force, tend to their every need - cleaning house, waiting at table, washing dishes, forbidden to talk, moving at a run.

Bent Corydon explained why the RPFers don't simply escape. "Most of these guys am in their 30s or 40s. They've never known anything else in their adult lives except Scientology. Some of them were very big in the

A Scientology guard patrols outside the Church's Los Angeles headquarters

SCIENTOLOGY: the old guru is purged hierarchy - maybe in the top 10 or 20 in the whole Church. They believe in Scientology. The fact is they don't know what hit them. One moment they were in charge, the next they're on their hands and knees scrubbing floors. They faced a Spanish Inquisition-type tribunal: they had either squirreled the tech' [heresy - misinterpreting Church doctrine] or had 'ripped off the orgs' [the worst sin of all - keeping money taken from Scientologists who had paid for courses or auditing instead of giving it to the Church].

"RPF sentences can last two or three years, depending on the crime," said Corydon. "They're convinced that when Ron hears about the miscarriage of justice they'll get cleared or at least get a fair hearing, but that never happens, and what are they going to do? They don't have any money. They don't know anybody outside except their family and they severed those ties years ago. Anyway, they love Ron. He is their God.".

As many as 2000 top Scientology staffers have been declared "suppressive persons" and expelled from the Church. And sometimes heroes have become rogues with breathtaking swiftness. On July 8, 1982, Ensign Ken Macfarlane was "highly commended" for training Scientology registrars (salesmen) on hard-sell techniques so successfully that his first graduates produced $25,000 in their first week. But just one month later, Macfarlane was accused by the International Finance Dictator of "crimes and suppressions against the Church" and was thrown out of the organization.

The purges have reached out to every part of the world where Scientology has taken hold, particularly in Canada, Australia, South Africa, Germany, Scandinavia and Britain. Present and former leaders of the Church are bombarding each other with costly law suits, all of them claiming, to be the true guardians of Hubbard's religion.

Caught in the crossfire, the "raw public" or "wogs" (the terms often used by Church members to describe outsiders) have not been "going up the bridge" and emptying their bank accounts into Scientology coffers as they used to. Membership has plummeted so fast that some recent defectors believe that the Church is disintegrating. In Britain, when the Church once boasted 200,000 supporters, Michael Garside, the public relations officer at the national Scientology headquarters at East Grinstead, recently admitted that member ship had fallen to around 1000.

This small Sussex town used to be a hive of Scientology activity - hundreds of staffers at the luxurious estate of Saint Hill Manor and a constant stream of Scientologists from all over the world arriving to take courses. But in recent months, East Grinstead his become a battleground between staffers (their numbers reduced to around 70) and former Church members who live in town. There have been demonstrations and arrests.

Recent defectors claim that staffers have been living on low cost diets such as rice and beans because most of the British Church's £2 million-a-year income is being sent to America. In an effort to keep the money flowing, prices for Scientology courses have soared and continue to rise almost every month. It now costs £40 to buy a copy of Dianetics, the bible of the Church. And after the introductory £100 communications course, charges for training And counselling can run into thousands of pounds.

British banks have become increasingly reluctant to lend Scientologists money to pay for Church courses, so the Church has been using one of its own wealthy American members to act as a money-lender. Lee Lawrence, who lives in East Grinstead, has been making loans of over £5000 at interest rates of up to 30 per cent. The borrowers never even see the money. It goes straight to the Church. And Lawrence imposes "heavy penalties" if the loan repayment is even one day late. He warns those who fail to pay up that he is "quite unreasonable" and will "resort promptly to Scientology ethics and justice", which could mean a visit from the Church police.

The Church's leaders claim that they no longer indulge in the kind of excesses that made headlines a few year ago and resulted in the jailing of members of their espionage unit, including Hubbard's wife Mary Sue. Those people, they say, have been thrown out of the Church. But recent defectors deny this.

A remarkable story is told by Jay Hurwitz, who was Commanding Officer of the Church in Los Angeles - until the summer of 1982, that is, when he was told to report to the Gillman Hot Springs headquarters for a briefing. The first night there, guards came for him in his room and dragged him off for a "sec check" (interrogation) by David Miscavige and three other leaders of the Church. "Their first question to me was 'Who is paying you?' I didn't understand what he was talking about. I was then subjected to enormous duress with statements like: "We will stay here all night until you tell us who is running you"

Hurwitz said that for the first five days be and others were kept locked up under guard. "We were brought our food and we slept on the floor. We had to use the same toilet facilities in the presence of one another."

Although Hurwitz didn't know it at the time, he was actually in the Scientology penal camp called "Happy Valley" in an Indian reservation several miles from Gillman Hot Springs. At least 18 other senior Scientology staffers were there at

Church-hired investigators unload surveillance equipment to watch their rivals

SCIENTOLOGY the Finance Police get their man

the same time in different rooms - one of them Ron Hubbard's former closest associate, David Mayo.

Mayo had been working late on the night of August 29, 1982, in his staff quarters when guards came and took him away to Happy Valley. At his first interrogation, Miscavige told him he was going to be removed from the Church for being anti-management.

The previous winter Mayo, Corydon and 120 other senior Scientology staffers had attended a meeting in Clearwater organised by Bill Franks, the then new Executive Director International of the Church of Scientology. Its purpose was to reform the Church after the Federal bugging convictions involving Mary Sue Hubbard and to bring down the soaring cost of membership of the Church. Unknown to Franks, his own office had been bugged. In January of 1982, 15 Church security officers physically threw him out of the Clearwater building. "It was just a power grab," said Franks, who admits he used to control $150 million in Scientology accounts in Luxembourg banks and that up to $1 million a week was being taken in from counselling and auditing at Clearwater while he was in charge.

When Mayo faced his accusers, he readily admitted that he wanted to reform the Church. He says Miscavige told him that RPF duty was far too good for him, that he was going to suffer a lower stratum of Hell. For the next six months, he dug ditches in the desert heat, and when he wasn't digging he was often made to run around a pole.

Explaining why he submitted to such indignities, Mayo said "People will submit to unbelievable things to prevent being deprived of their spirituality. I believed in Scientology - I still do - and I felt that, as so many thousands of Scientologists around the world regarded me as the authority on the technology of the Church, it would have been as though I had admitted that all the charges against me were true."

Day after day, he was ordered to write a confession. He refused. For others out at Happy Valley, the treatment was even tougher. Hurwitz claims that three "interested parties" - Scientology jargon for those under investigation - were physically abused and spat upon while they were held by guards.

After seven weeks of isolation, Hurwitz finally signed a typed confession and walked out on to the highway, where he hitch-hiked his way to the nearest town and caught a bus to Los Angeles International Airport. Hurwitz said that several of the RPFers had their marriages broken up, that Scientology officials had "worked over" wives to make sure that they left their "suppressive" husbands.

While Hurwitz and Mayo were broiling in the sun during the summer and autumn of 1982, David Miscavige and the other new leaders of the Church were turning their attention to the owners of Scientology missions around the country. These were senior Scientologists who ran franchise operations, giving 10 per cent of their take to the Church.

"I knew something was going on when we started to hear these new terms like 'finance police', 'inspector general network' and the technology center'." said Bent Corydon. "And people were being excommunicated all over the place. A lot of them were people like myself, running their own minions."

In the summer of 1981, Corydon had received a visit from members of the Finance Police. They said the Finance Dictator wanted $40,000. "They said they were going to stay in my office and charge me $15,000 a day until I paid up. They said they were going to put me in jail. I asked them what they meant. They said: "You'd just better dam do what you're told or you'll find out."

Terrified at what they might do to his family - he has a wife and two small children - Corydon paid up. But be was then sent to Clearwater to serve a six-month Rehabilitation Project Force sentence, waiting on tables and taking courses to "clear" his "doubt condition", for which be had to pay an extra $10,000.

Corydon said he was reinstated by the Church's Executive Director, Bill Franks, who told him that he was determined to clean up Scientology to prevent the kind of excesses that had caused so much public controversy. When Franks was kicked out of the Church, Corydon knew it would be only a matter of time before the Church police arrived. He was ordered to appear in San Francisco for a meeting with the leadership of the Church at the Hilton Hotel. He says that what happened them was the most terrifying experience of his life.

It was October 17, 1982. One hundred mission holders from around the country and a number of other senior leaders of the Church were herded into a lecture hall on the fourth floor of the hotel. The door was locked and guarded by Finance Police while the young, uniformed Commodore Messengers lectured their captive audience from 9 o'clock in the evening until 2 o'clock in the morning.

Miscavige first explained that there had been a corporate reorganisation which had made the Church "impregnable" and, according to the Inspector General Steve Marlowe, would put a stop to "squirrels" and "schisms". Later came a violent denunciation by International Finance Dictator Wendell Reynolds. "Collectively, you guys are in some weird lower condition. You have allowed the minions to go squirrel and I mean squirrel. . . because you guys are sitting on the public, you're ripping off the orgs. You've just had it. You see these guys standing around here. They're International Finance Police and their job is to go out and find this stuff."

To understand this org-talk, it's necessary to realise that Scientology is a money-making machine. Members pay the Church for services such as counseling and auditing to clear their "engrams" so that they're better able to solve their own problems and the world's. There are no religious services or clergymen. The job of Scientology minions is to get new recruits, sell them basic courses, then pass them on to Church-run centres for more expensive counselling and auditing. In America the basic course only costs $50 but is looked upon as a "loss leader". The more advanced courses can cost $300 an hour. What had provoked the rage of the

Bent Corydon, once among the leading mission holders, was ejected and, like Mayo, has started a business

Mayo, once Hubbard's confessor, is now a bitter antagonist of the Church

SCIENTOLOGY Attacks, intensify

new young leaders of the Church of Scientology was their conviction that Church mission holders had been keeping recruits instead of passing them on to Scientology-owned centres. Not only were the missions skimming the gravy, there were suspicions that they were faking their statistics with lower body counts to reduce payments to the Church.

For seven hours, the captive audience was lectured, cajoled and denounced. "We weren't allowed to move, go to the bathroom, or speak unless spoken to," recalled Corydon. "There were only 15 of them and there were 100 of us. If we had gone for them, there was no way they could have controlled us. But we were terrorised. Right at the beginning, three mission holders were randomly picked out and expelled right there and then, their lives finished.

"We were told that those being expelled would be put in jail. We were told to applaud and we did. It's a sad commentary on all of us. But when you've been in the Church for 20 years and believe in it, you don't want to be told you can't do it anymore, that your friends can't speak to you because you've been excommunicated. Well, I finally quit and told them what they could do with their Church. But at the time, we were all cowed."

Corydon said they were lined up and "mug-shot". Then they had to write up their crimes. "They wanted to know how much money we had been bolding back from the Church. That's the biggest crime of all. We had to write down our `out 2Ds' - that's sex crimes, had we been unfaithful to our wives? That's to give them better control.

"I wrote down whatever I had. Why? I had been withholding stuff. We all had. They kept jacking up the finances, ordering us to charge $300 an hour for courses, outrageous prices. No one can afford it unless they're totally hooked. So I just wrote down things they already knew.

"Then, before we were allowed to leave, we had to pay $75 for the seat that we'd sat on for hours. We had paid our fares and for our room. Some of us were told that we had to be security checked. And we had to pay another $1000 for the privilege."

For most of the mission holders, it was their first glimpse of David Miscavige, Security guards never left his side during the evening. Apart from introducing each speaker, he had little to say to the audience. He merely warned them what would happen to anyone who turned against Scientology: "That person's future is black. It is so black I can't even describe it right now. l can't even find the words to describe bow black that person's future is ... I mean it is really black."

Within a few days, some of them found out exactly what he meant. Eighteen were taken out to the Scientology prison camp at Happy Valley where they joined David Mayo, who had been there since the summer. They were kept for several months before being released.

"Outrageous and personal abuse permeates the organisation," said Boston lawyer Michael Flynn, who represents 28 people who claim they have been victimised by Scientology. Millions of dollars' worth of lawsuits have been going back and forth between the Church and ex-Scientologists. Bill Franks, the former Executive Director International of the Church, said that while he was running the international operation it was spending as much as $1 million a month on lawyers to fight legal battles.

"It': a con - it was a fraud from the very beginning," claimed Hubbard's former archivist Gerry Armstrong, who said his eyes had been opened after being authorised by Hubbard to write his biography. "I went from being a devotee - I thought it was the hope of mankind and I learned it was all based on lies and deceptions."

At the end of a six-week trial in Los Angeles Superior Court this summer, Judge Paul G. Breckenridge called the Church of Scientology:

"schizophrenic and paranoid"; adding that "this bizarre combination seems to be a reflection of its founder".

If any serious charges stick, the Church's leaders are likely to find that being "Operating Thetans" with the ability to surge to the stars will not save them from a prison sentence in a land- based cell in a penitentiary. Whether that will also apply to Hubbard will depend on how well he has distanced himself legally from his Messengers and whether be is, in fact, alive. According to his son, after being treated for a second pulmonary embolism in 1978, Hubbard gave his personal medical attendant instructions to "bury me in the date fields and don't tell anyone"

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