Historical: the complete Penthouse article
here in text mode:
PENTHOUSE
PENTHOUSE INTERVIEW
Scientology and all the other cults are one-dimensional, and we live in a
three-dimensional world. Cults are as dangerous as drugs. They commit the
highest crime: the rape of the soul.
L. RON HUBBARD, JR.
For more than twenty years L. Ron Hubbard, Jr., has been a man on the run.
He has changed residences, occupations, and even his name in 1972 to Ron
DeWolf to escape what he alleges to be the retribution and wrath of his
father and his father's organization-- the Church of Scientology. His
father, L. Ron Hubbard. Sr., founder and leader of Scientology, has been a
figure of controversy and mystery, as has been his organization, for more
than a generation. Its detractors have called it the "granddaddy" and the
worst of all the religious cults that have sprung up over the last
generation. Its advocates-- and there are thousands--swear that the church
is the avenue for human perfection and happiness. Millions of words have
been written for and against Scientology. Just what is the truth?
L. Ron Hubbard, Sr., and the very few who have worked at the highest
echelons of the organization have never spoken publicly about the workings
and finances of the Church of Scientology. Firsthand allegations about
coercion, black-mail, and just how billions of dollars the organization is
said to possess have been accrued and spent is lacking: that is, until very
recently. In an extraordinary petition brought November 10, 1982, in
Superior Court in Riverside, Calif., by L. Ron Hubbard, Jr., to prove that
his father is dead and that his heirs should receive the tens of millions of
dollars being dissipated from his estate, some of the mystery about
Scientology has begun to unravel. Some of the details are shocking.
L. Ron Hubbard, Jr., is a survivor. His appearance on earth, May 7, 1934,
was the result of failed abortion rituals by his father, and Ron, after only
six and a half months in the womb and at 2.2 pounds entered the world. His
mother, Margeret ("Polly") Grubb, was to have one more child, Catherine May,
before her husband ditched her in 1946 to enter into a bigamous marnage with
Sarah Northrup. A half sister, Alexis Valerie, survived that union. Soon
after that, the founder of Scientology married Mary Sue Whipp, the current
Mrs. L. Ron Hubbard, Sr., who at this writing is serving four years in
federal prison for stealing government documents. There were four childrens:
Diana and Quentin, who died under mysterious circumstances in 1976; Arthur,
who has been missing for several years; and Suzette.
Ron Jr. says that he remembers much of his childhood. He claims to recall,
at six years, a vivid scene of his father performing an abortion ritual on
his mother with a coat hanger. He remembers that when he was ten years old,
his father, in an attempt to get his son in tune with his black-magic
worship, laced the young hubbard's bubble gum with phenobarbital. Drugs were
an important part of Ron Jr.'s growing up, as his father believed that they
were the best way to get closer to Satan --the Antichrist of black magic.
Ron Jr. also recalls a hard-drinking, drug-abusing father who would mistreat
his mother and other women, but who, when, under the influence, would
delight in telling his son all of his exploits. Finally, Ron Jr. remembers
his father as a "broke science-fiction writer" who espoused that the road to
riches and glory lay in selling religion to the masses.
Nineteen fifty was a watershed year for the sixteen-year-old Ron Jr., when
his father's book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health was
published. While in the 1980s self-help books hold little novelty, Dianetics
was a pioneer of that genre. Happiness in 1950 could be a reality, if only
one practiced the strange amalgam of science fiction and psychoanalysis
offered in the senior Hubbard's best-seller. It was an unexpected success
for Hubbard, then living in New Jersey, when the mailman would deliver daily
sacks of letters from the unhappy and desperate who had read the book and
wanted L. Ron Hubbard to take them to the promised land. It was a dream come
true --a science-fiction writer who not only created a world of fantasy but
packaged it and sold it as reality.
In 1950 L. Ron Hubbard opened a Dianetics clinic, where the hopeful and
newly cenverted could come, for a fee, and their ills --from loneliness to
cancer --would ce cured. Danetics was the new Scientific Revolution. and L.
Ron Hubbard was its prophet.
Scientology is essentially a self-help therapy. It is based on one premise
that by recalling negative experiences or "engrams", a person can free
himself from repressed feelings that cribble his life. This liberation
process is assisted by a counselor called an "auditor" who charges up to
hundreds of dollars a session. The auditor's basic aid is the "E-meter", a
skin galvanometer that is said to help him ascertain the problems of his
client.
Soon the New Jersey authorities and the American Medical Association
challenged the veracity of the new faith. L. Ron Hubbard met the challenge
by fleeing the state (not the last time this was to happen). A frequent
memory of Ron Jr. is his father's packing up shoe boxes with thousands of
dollars to move on to greener and safer pastures.
Coming into manhood in the early fifties, Ron Jr. learned the virtues of
flimflam and keeping one step ahead of the law and creditors. But he admits
that he accepted his father's teachings and example as correct. By the time
his father started the modern Church of Scientology in Arizona and New
Jersey in 1953, young Hubbard was not only a disciple but a willing
organizer in the new movement. He was to be so throughout the 1950s.
While Ron Jr. may never have questioned his father and the mushrooming cult
of Scientology, a growing uneasiness began to take hold of him. In 1953 he
married Henrietta, whom he never allowed to join the church. They were to
have six children --Deborah, Leif, Esther, Eric, Harry and Alex, age twelve,
who suffers from Down's Syndrome-- plus six grandchildren, none or whom were
ever members of Scientology. The importance of family life, especially in
contrast to his own up-bringing, caused Ron Jr. to question his life as a
member of Scientology, albeit privately. Other factors also caused Ron Jr.
to think about breaking away from the cult that was dominating his life. His
father's autocratic and arbitrary control of Scientology often led to
violence, and the young Hubbard began to be disturbed by his own
participation. Certain questionable transactions involving drug dealing and
the transfer of large sums of money abroad by his father was another
troubling factor. But, he says, the breaking point came over his father's
involvement with the Russians. Finally, in 1959, when his father was in
Australia, Ron, his wife, and two children fled the Church of Scientology.
According to Ron Jr., life was to become a nightmarish existence. No matter,
where the family went in the United States, it would not take long for a
member of the organization to find them. Because he knew too much about
Scientoiogy and its founder, Ron says, attempts were made to ensure his
silence. For many years L. Ron Hubbard, Jr. kept a low profile.
Keeping silent did not end Ron's terror of what his father and followers
might do to him and his family. In 1976 his half brother Quentin died under
mysterious circumstances that Ron is certain was murder. Quentin, a son of
Scientology's leader, was a drug abuser and an embarassment to his father.
Whether all these questions were signs ot paranoia finally became less
important to Ron than discovering, once and for all, the truth about his
father. In 1980 Ron became convinced that his father was dead, and that his
death was being kept a secret by the Church of Scientology, lest knowledge
of his death cause chaos in the organization. He filed his petition and an
open war was declared. Should he win the suit by proving that his father is
either dead or incompetent, Ron and other family members will receive the
millions of dollars believed to be part of L. Ron Hubbard's estate.
For some thirty years, stories, rumors, and innuendo about the Church of
Scientology have been whispered, and sometimes reported, internationally.
Obviously, the final judgment of L. Ron Hubbard. Jr., and his allegations
remains to be made. But because of his high-level involvement for such a
long time with this controversial organization, he himself has become a
newsworthy figure. To find out what this man at the center of an
international firestorm is like. Penthouse sent contributing editor Allan
Sonnenschein to Carson City, Nev, where he met Hubbard in the small
three-bedroom apartment in which he lives (he manages the apartment
complex). "DeWolf." Sonnenschein told us, "is a stocky and
ruddy-complexioned man, with thinning red hair. Despite his almost
continuous involvement with lawyers of both sides of his case, DeWolf was
very relaxed during the several hours. I spent with him. He seemed convinced
that his desire to tell his story after all these years was of vital
importance ... and he spoke with a firmness and intensity befitting a person
who claims to be risking his life by speaking out."
Because of the seriousness of Mr. DeWolf's charges and because his father
has affected the lives of thousands, if not millions, of people, Penthouse
will be launching an independent investigation of these charges. The results
will be published in a forthcoming issue.
Penthouse: Before you filed your lawsuit and began speaking openly about
Scientology, there was very little news of it in the media. Why do you think
there has been so little investigation of Scientology?
Hubbard: it's very simple. Scientology has always had a "fair-game
doctrine"--a policy of doing absolutely anything to stop an investigation or
publication of a critical article in a magazine or newspaper. They have run
some incredible operations on the several people who have tried to write
books about Scientology. It was almost like a terror campaign. First they'd
try throwing every possible lawsuit at the reporter or newspaper. We had a
team of attorneys to do just that. The goal was to destroy the enemy. So the
solution was always to attack, full-bore, with every possible resource, from
every angle, instantaneously it can certainly be overwhelming. A guy would
get slapped with twenty-seven lawsuits, and our lawyers would start
depositioning absolutely anybody who ever knew the man, digging up dirt
while at the same time putting together an operation that would get him into
further trouble. I know of one case, concerning Paulette Cooper, who wrote a
book called The Scandal of Scientology, in which they spent almost $500.000
trying to destroy her.
Penthouse: So you think the press was intimidated?
Hubbard: Oh, absolutely. All the way through, since the fifties. I found
this very sad. It seemed very much like Germany in the thirties. The freedom
of the press seemed buried. They got scared. They thought. "Well, who wants
to go through ten years of lawsuits, just because we printed the name L. Ron
Hubbard?" I'm delighted to see that Penthouse has the balls to print this
interview.
Penthouse: Why do you think it's so risky?
Hubbard: My father drilled into all of us: Don't go to court thinking to win
a lawsuit. You go to court to harass, to delay, to exhaust the enemy
financially, physically, mentally. You file every motion you can think of
and you just lock them up in court. The courts, for my father, were never
used to seek justice or redress, put to destroy the people he thought were
enemies, to prevent negative stories from appearing. He just wanted complete
control of the press --and got it.
Penthouse: What exactly is Scientology?
Hubbard: Scientology is a power-and-money-and-intelligence-gathering game.
To use common, everyday English, Scientology says that you and I and
everybody else willed ourselves into being hundreds of trillions of years
ago --just by deciding to be. We willed ourselves into being ourselves.
Through wild space games, interaction, fights, and wars in the grand
science-fiction tradition, we created this universe --all the matter,
energy, space, and time of this universe. And so through these trillions of
years, we have become the effect of our own cause and we now find ourselves
trapped in bodies. So the idea of Scientology "auditing" or 'counseling" or
"processing" is to free yourself from your body and to return you to the
original godlike state or, in Scientology jargon, an operating Thetan --O.T.
We are all fallen gods, according to Scientology, and the goal is to be
returned to that state.
Penthouse: And what is the Church of Scientology?
Hubbard: It's one of my father's many organizations. It was formed in 1953,
basically to avoid the harassment of my father by the medical profession and
the IRS. The idea of Scientology didn't really exist before that point as a
religion, but my father hit upon turning it into a church after he started
feeling pressured.
Penthouse: Didn't your father have any interest in helping people?
Hubbard: No.
Penthouse: Never?
Hubbard: My father started out as a broke science-fiction writer. He was
always broke in the late 1940s. He told me and a lot of other people that
the way to make a million was to start a religion. Then he wrote the book
Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health while he was in Bayhead, New
Jersey. When we later visited Bayhead, in about 1953, we were walking around
and reminiscing --he told me that he had written the book in one month.
Penthouse: There was no church when he wrote the book?
Hubbard: Oh, no, no. You see, his goal was basically to write the book, take
the money and run. But in 1950, this was the first major book of
do-it-yourself psychotherapy, and it became a runaway best-seller. He kept
getting, literally, mail trucks full of mail. And so he and some other
people, including J. W. Campbell, the editor of Astounding Science Fiction,
started the Dianetics Research Foundation in Elizabeth, New Jersey. And the
post office kept backing up and just dumping mail sacks into the building.
The foundation had a staff that just ran through the envelopes and threw
away anything that didn't have any money in it.
Penthouse: People sent money?
Hubbard: Yeah, they wanted training and further Dianetic auditing, Dianetic
processing. It was just an incredible avalanche.
Penthouse: Did he write the book off the top of his head? Did he do any real
research?
Hubbard: No research at all. When he has answered that question over the
years, his answer has changed according to which biography he was writing.
Sometimes he used to write a new biography every week. He usually said that
he had put thirty years of research into the book. But no, he did not.
What he did, reaily, was take bits and pieces from other people and put them
together in a blender and stir them all up --and out came Dianetics! All the
examples in the book --some 200 "real-life experiences" --were just the
result of his obsessions with abortions and unconscious states... In fact,
the vast majority of those incidents were invented off the top of his head.
The rest stem from his own secret life, which was deeply involved in the
occult and black-magic. That involvement goes back to when he was sixteen,
living in Washington. D.C. He got hold of the book by Alistair Crowley
called The Book of Law. He was very interested in several things that were
the creation of what some people call the Moon Child. It was basically an
attempt to create an immaculate conception --except by Satan rather than by
God. Another important idea was the creation of what they call embryo
implants --of getting a satanic or demonic spirit to inhabit the body of a
fetus. This would come about as a result of black-magic rituals, which
included the use of hypnosis, drugs, and other dangerous and destructive
practices. One of the important things was to destroy the evidence if you
failed at this immaculate conception. That's how my father became obsessed
with abortions. I have a memory of this that goes back to when I was six
years old. It is certainly a problem for my father and for Scientology that
I rememoer this. It was around 1939, 1940, that I watched my father doing
something to my mother. She was lying on the bed and he was sitting on her,
facing her feet. He had a coat hanger in his hand. There was blood all over
the place. I remember my father shouting at me. "Go back to bed!" A little
while later a doctor came and took her off to the hospital. She didn't talk
about it for quite a number of years. Neither did my father.
Penthouse: He was trying to perform an abortion?
Hubbard: According to him and my mother, he tried to do it with me. I was
born at six and a half months and weighed two pounds, two ounces. I mean, I
wasn't born: this is what came out as a result of their attempt to abort me.
It happened during a night of partying --he got involved in trying to do a
black-magic number. Also, I've got to complete this by saying that he
thought of himself as the Beast 666 incarnate.
Penthouse: The devil?
Hubbard: Yes. The Antichrist. Alestair Crowley thought of himself as such.
And when Crowley died in 1947, my father then decided that he should wear
the cloak of the beast and become the most powerful being in the universe.
Penthouse: You were sixteen years old at that time. What did you believe in?
Hubbard: I believed in Satanism. There was no other religion in the house!
Scientology and black magic. What a lot of people don't realize is that
Scientology is black magic that is just spread out over a long time period.
To perform black magic generally takes a few hours or, at most, a few weeks.
But in Scientology it's stretched out over a lifetime, and so you don't see
it. Black magic is the inner core of Scientology --and it is probably the
only part of Scientology that really works.
Also, you've got to realize that my father did not worship Satan. He thought
he was Satan. He was one with Satan. He had a direct pipeline of
communication and power with him. My father wouldn't have worshiped
anything. I mean, when you think you're the most powerful being in the
universe, you have no respect for anything, let alone worship.
Penthouse: Let's get back to how you saw Scientology working on an
individual basis. What if someone wrote to your father asking if he could
cure their cancer?
Hubbard: He'd say, Oh, yes, he could handle that.
Penthouse: And what would be the charge for curing cancer?
Hubbard: Back in those days it was anywhere from $10 to $25 an hour. Now
,it's up to $300 or more an hour.
Penthouse: What exactly did that pay for?
Hubbard: To be audited. In the old days, the patient would lie on a couch
and the auditor would sit in a chair and counsel. The words auditing,
counseling, and processing are really the same in Scientology.
Penthouse: What would be discussed?
Hubbard: They would say that the cancer and its cure are just incidental to
the main problem of one's "spiritual development." And according to
Dianetics and Scientology, the explanation for cancer is basically that you
have a sex problem?
Penthouse: A sex problem?
Hubbard: Right.
Penthouse: How did he figure that?
Hubbard: Quite simply, according to my father. Cancer is basically cells
that are dividing out of control, and so, according to my father, the
problem is a sexual thing. Therefore the cancer is rooted in a sexual
problem. If you have cancer, you are really screwed up on sex. So what would
happen in this auditing --I don't know what it's like now, but it's probably
just the same as in the old days --is that they would address a guy's entire
sex life. There was certainly an incredible preoccupation. In Dianetmos and
Scientology, about sex was a great means of control. You have complete
control of someone if you have every detail of his sex life and fantasy life
on record.
Penthouse: What if someone who went thought the training just wanted to drop
out?
Hubbard: There was no way. There were thousands of people, back in the
fifties who would come in and receive various levels of training, such as a
Huboard Certified Auditor's Certificate or a Bachelor of Scientology or a
Doctorate of Scientology, and if they didn't toe the mark as my father
wanted them to, then we would cancel their certificates. And then he would
notify the Scientologists in the area where the man lived not to have
anything to do with him, to disconnect from him. And if information was
available about him, we would spread that information around to his wife,
his family, his children, where he worked, everywhere. It was straight
blackmail. It was "Stay in the fold or else." Then, later on, they developed
what they called an ethics review board. If you didn't toe the mark, you'd
be put on trial in front of a kangaroo court and then be sentenced to maybe
scrub floors. I heard that you had to walk around with a dirty rag tied
around your arm like a badge. You could be made to do anything. You would be
locked in a chain locker or handcuffed to a bed. This is in later years. We
were simpler in the fifties, more direct. I just went out and beat them up.
(For my father, the courts were used to destroy people he thought were
enemies ... I'm delighted to see that Penthouse has the balls to print this
interview.)
Penthouse: Physical beatings?
Hubbard: Yeah. We'd strong-arm them. I did it myself. And you had to realize
that I weighed around 240 pounds in those days. When I taught Scientology,
no students ever blew my courses! I would go out and physically retrieve my
students.
You know, the Scientologists are now trying to make me out to be the worst
person since Attila the Hun. They forget that when I was director of
training for the organization, I trained literally thousands of people. I
created a lot of the Scientology processes and procedures throughout the
fifties. I really helped create and run the organization. I was very deeply
involved, very directly, for seven years, during its formulation and
building. So I find their attempts to discredit me amusing.
I used to have a thing about saying that nobody ever ran out of my courses.
If you think est is tough, you ought to have taken courses under me in the
fifties!
Penthouse: What would happen if someone went to your class, decided it was
bullshit, and never came back?
Hubbard: If you signed up for a course and you came to my class, I'd keep
you there or go physically retrieve you if you left.
Penthouse: You'd already gotten the money, so why did you bother?
Hubbard: Because I thought I was allknowing, all-powerful --totally arrogant
and egotistical --for one thing. I was quite insufferable.
Penthouse: Your father knew this was going on?
Hubbard: Well, sure. Nobody did a thing in Scientology without his direct
knowledge or consent or without his orders.
Penthouse: Did it ever go beyond these physical beatings?
Hubbard: I remember locking one girl up in a shack out in the desert for at
least a couple or weeks.
Penthouse: Why were things like this never publicized?
Hubbard: Because the same reign of terror that occurred under Robespierre
and Hitler occurred back then in the fifties, as it occurs now. You must
realize that there is very little actual courage in this world. It's pretty
easy to bend people around. It doesn't take much to shut people up, it
really doesn't. In the fifties all I had to do was call a guy up on the
telephone and say, "Well, I think your wife would like to know about your
mistress." The response would be a shocked "Oh, my God!" I'd say, "Well,
nobody really wants to divulge that kind of information. I think it would be
absolutely terrible if your wife found out, so I'm going to make absolutely
sure that she doesn't find out. Now, if you just drop in here for a little
more auditing ... Now you know in your heart that the critical things you've
been saying about Scientology are just vindictive. They're not really true
in your heart. You know that, don't you?" And the guy says. "Yeah, sure, I
sure do know that!"
And then, if Scientologists couldn't blackmail you, they'd create some dirt
on you through their "special operations." There were quite a few of those
operations. This one, for example, happened recently. I wasn't involved in
it, but Scientologists tried to get an assistant attorney general of the
state of California embroiled in a fake operation where a Scientologist
pretended to be a nun and pretended to get pregnant by him and filed papers
against him. Then in another scheme they tried to set up the mayor of
Clearwater, Florida, for a fake hit-and-run accident. I could give you
operation after operation that they set up like this.
Penthouse: This has been going on since the fifties?
Hubbard: Sure. It was pretty tame back then compared to very sophisticated
operations like they have now. When we hid assets, for example --I remember
being in Philadelphia when the FBI anc the U.S. Marshall's Office were after
my father on a contempt-of-court charge. There I was running across town
with my father with our complete mailing list and a suitcase full of money!
Heading for the hills!
Penthouse: Where did the money end up?
Hubbard: A lot of it went abroad. But my father always kept a great deal of
it around his bedroom so that he could flee at a moment's notice. In shoe
boxes. He distrusted banks.
Penthouse: What kind of money are we talking about?
Hubbard: Back then? Hundreds of thousands at least. The last time I saw my
father, in 1959, he mentioned that he had at least $20 million salted away.
Penthouse: Did he invest the money?
Hubbard: No. He wanted to stay really liquid. Very fluid, so he could cut
and run at any time.
Penthouse: Where did all this money come from? How much did it cost to be
audited, in Scientology parlance?
Hubbard: It cost as much as a person had. He had to stay in the
organization, getting audited higher and higher, until he paid us as much as
he had. People would sell their house, their car, convert their stocks and
securities into cash, and turn it all over to Scientology.
Penthouse: What did you promise them for this price?
Hubbard: We promised them the moon and then demonstrated a way to get there.
They would sell their soul for that. We were telling someone that they could
have the power of a god --that's what we were telling them.
Penthouse: What kind of people were tempted by this promise?
Hubbard: A whole range of people. People who wanted to raise their IQ, to
feel better, to solve their problems. You also got people who wished to lord
it over other people in the use of power. Remember, it's a power game, a
matter of climbing a pyramidal hierarchy to the top, and it's who you can
step on to get more power that counts. It appeals a great deal to neurotics.
And to people who are greedy. It appeals a great deal to Americans, I think,
because they tend to believe in instant everything, from instant coffee to
instant nirvana. By just saying a few magic words or by doing a few
assignments, one can become a god. People believe this. You see, Scientology
doesn't really address the soul; it addresses the ego. What happens in
Scientology is that a person's ego gets pumped up by this science-fiction
fantasy helium into universe-sized proportions. And this is very appealing.
It is especially appealing to the intelligentsia of this country, who are
made to feel that they are the most highly intelligent people, when in
actual fact, from an emotional standpoint, they are completely stupid. Fine
professors, doctors, scientists, people involved in the arts and sciences,
would fall into Scientology like you wouldn't believe. It appealed to their
intellectual level and buttressed their emotional weaknesses. You show me a
professor and I revert back to the fifties: I just kick him in the head, eat
him for breakfast.
(My mother was lying on the bed and my father was sitting on her, facing her
feet. He had a coat hanger in his hand. There was blood all over the place.)
Penthouse: Did it attract young people as much as cults today?
Hubbard: Yes. We attracted quite a few hippies but we tried to stay a way
from them, because they didn't have any money.
Penthouse: A poor man can't be a Scientologist?
Hubbard: No, oh no.
Penthouse: What do you think of the great popularity of cults in this
country?
Hubbard: I think they're very dangerous and destructive. I don't think that
anyone should think for you. And that's exactly what cults do. All cults,
including Scientology, say, "I am your mind, I am your brain. I've done all
the work for you, I've laid the path open for you. All you have to do is
turn your mind off and walk down the path I have created." Well, I have
learned that there's great strength in diversity, that a clamorous
discussion or debate is very healthy and should be encouraged. That's why I
like our political setup in the United States: simply because you can fight
and argue and jump up and down and shout and scream and have all kinds of
viewpoints, regardless of how wrongheaded or ridiculous they might be.
People here don't have to give up their right to perceive things the way
they believe. Scientology and all the other cults are one-dimensional, and
we live in a three-dimensional world. Cults are as dangerous as drugs. They
commit the highest crime: the rape of the soul.
Penthouse: You mentioned that Scientology attracted a great many well-known
or important people. Can you give us some examples?
Hubbard: Two of the people we were involved with in the late fifties in
England were Errol Flynn and a man who was high up in the Labor Party at the
time.
My father and Errol Flynn were very similar. They were only interested in
money, sex, booze, and drugs. At that time, in the late fifties, Flynn was
pretty much of a burned-out hulk. But he was involved in smuggling deals
with my father: gold from the Mediterranean, and some drugs --mostly
cocaine.
They were both lust a little larger than life. I had to admire my father
from one standpoint. As I've said, he was a down-and-out, broke
science-fiction writer, and then he writes one book of science-fiction and
convinces the world it's true. He sells it to millions of people and gets
billions of dollars and everyone thinks he's some sort of deity. He was
really bigger than life. Flynn was like that, too. You could say many
negative things about the two of them, but they did as they pleased and
lived as they pleased. It was always fun to sit there at dinner and listen
to these two guys rap. Wild people.
Errol Flynn was like my father also in that he would do anything for money.
He would take anything to bed --boys, girls, Fifty-year-old women,
ten-year-old boys, Flynn and my father had insatiable appetites. Tons of
mistresses. They lived very high on the hog.
Penthouse: And what about this Labor Party official?
Hubbard: He was a double agent for the KGB and for the British intelligence
agency. He was also a raging homosexual. He wanted my father to use his
black-magic, soul-cracking, brainwashing techniques on young boys. He wanted
these boys as his own sexual slaves. He wanted to use my father's techniques
to crack people's heads open because he was very influential in and around
the British government --plus he was selling information to the Russians.
And so was my father.
Penthouse: Your father was selling information to the Soviets?
Hubbard: Yes. That's where my father got the money to buy St. Hill Manor in
East Grinstead, Sussex, which is the English headquarters of Scientology
today.
Penthouse: What information did your father have to sell the Soviet
government?
Hubbard: He didn't do any spying himself. What he normally did was allow
these strange little people to go into the offices and into his home at odd
hours of the night. He told me that he was allowing the KGB to go through
our files, and that he was charging £40000 for it. This was the money he
used for the purchase of St. Hill Manor.
Penthouse: Do you know any specific information that the KGB got from your
father that might have been harmful to security?
Hubbard: The plans for an infrared heat-seeking missile in the early
fifties. They obtained the information by extensive auditing of the guy who
was one of the head engineers. There were great infiltrations clear to this
day. There has always been an inordinate interest on the part of Scientology
in military and government personnel. There's no way for me to prove it
sitting here, but I believe that the KGB trained East German agents who came
via Denmark to London to the United States who were, supposedly,
Scientologists. They made very good Scientologists. They were very well
trained.
Penthouse: Did your father do this just for money?
Hubbard: Yes. The more he made, the more he wanted. He became greedy. He was
really just interested in the use of money and power, wherever it was or
whosoever's it was. Morality and politics made no difference to him at all.
Penthouse: Did the Labor Party official get any of his young men via
Scientology?
Hubbard: Yes. The British were ripe for Scientology. The British school
system fosters lesbianism and homosexuality, because from the time you're
born until you're in your twenties, all you see is the same sex. The schools
are so segretated. And you'll notice in Scientology the focus on sex. Sex,
sex, sex. The first thing we wanted to know about someone we were auditing
was his sexual deviations. You know, in actual fact, very few people
exclusively practice missionary-style sex. So all you've got to do is find a
person's kinks, whatever they might be. Their dreams and their fantasies.
And if you find that central core, their sexual drives and desires and
fantasies, then you can fit a ring through their noses and take them
anywnere. You promise to fufill their fantasies or you threaten to expose
them --very simple. And People do have outrageous sexual fantasies. Nothing
wrong with that --I'm the last guy on earth who should make a value judgment
about somebody's sexual practices. But once you find their sexual core,
you've got them. And you find this by brainwashing, through auditing,
through interrogation, investigations, following them, photographing them,
tapping their phones, whatever.
Penthouse: You did all that?
Hubbard: Sure.
Penthouse: Nere there any other highlevel British government people in
Scientology?
Hubbard: There was a member of Winston Churchill's medical staff. We had him
by the balls.
Penthouse: Did he give you any information about Churchill?
Hubbard: Yes, certainly. You see, these people didn't realize where their
information was going. They always thought that in Scientology auditing they
had the priest-confessor's confidentiality --but it was never that way.
People just assumed it, and still do. But everybody knew what was in
everybody's files.
Penthouse: What was the first example you can remember of your father's
espionage activity?
Hubbard: I remember one day in 1944 when he came nome from the naval base
where he was stationed in Oregon with a big, gray metal box under his arm.
He put in our little attached garage and put a tarp over it. That weekend a
couple of funny little guys came over to the house. I remember it was summer
and they were wearing heavy woollen overcoats --dark brown overcoats. It
stuck in my mind: what are they doing wearing overcoats when it's hotter
than hell? I was only about ten at the time. Anyway, these big, sweating
guys take the box and put in in their car and drive off. But before they'd
come, I'd shuck a look in the box. It had this strange-looking object in it.
I didn't know what the hell it was.
Later on, in the fifties, I was walking through a warsurplus store and I
suddenly saw an object that was just like the one I'd seen in the box. It
was the heart of the radar. During the war --when those men took it from our
garage --it was super-secret, super-valuable, worth thousands of dollars. I
remember that people were told to commit suicide if it ever got captured in
order to blow it up.
Then, in 1955, I went to work in the Scientology office in London. I noticed
a woman in the office doing strange things with strange people in the
office, so I investigated her. I found out she was a card-carrying member of
the Communist Party. I got very angry at her and broke into her apartment,
where I found dozens of little code pads. They looked like little milk pads
with a whole mess of letters and numbers on them. I had people follow her to
the Russian Embassy. I finally wrote a long report to my father about her.
He was furious. He told me not to investigate anymore, not to write anymore,
not to tell anyone what I had found out, to destroy all my evidence. I
yelled at him, "The goddamn Russians are running around the office and doing
God knows what." He yelled back. "I want'em there!" He told me that she was
placed there by the KGB with his knowledge and consent. This really bothered
me. My grandfather, who was a lieutenant commander in the navy, had
impressed me with his red-white-and-blue honor and integrity. He was an
officer of the old school. 180 degrees different from my father, in fact, I
credit him a great deal with my ability to get rid of Scientology and get my
head straigntened out, because his patriotism had gotten through to me and
made me sour on what my father was doing in dealing with the Russians.
Penthouse: Was this why you became disenchanted with Scientology?
Hubbard: It was the beginning. I began to see that my father was a sick,
sadistic, vicious man. I saw more and more parallels between his behavior
and what I read about the way Hitler thought and acted. I was realizing that
my father really wanted to destroy his enemies and take over the world.
Whoever was perceived as his enemy had to be destroyed, including me. This
"fair game" policy since the beginning. The organization couldn't exist
without it. It keeps people very quiet.
Penthouse: Do you mean killed?
Hubbard: Well, he didn't really want people killed, because how could you
really destroy them if you just killed them? What he wanted to do was to
destroy their lives, their families, their reputations, their jobs, their
money, everything. My father was the type of person who, when it came to
destruction, wanted to keep you alive for as long as possible, to torture
you, punish you. If he chose to destroy you, he would love to see you lying
in the gutter, strung out on booze and drugs, rolling in your own vomit,
with your wife and children gone forever: no job, no money. He'd enjoy
walking by and kicking you and saying to other people, "Look what I did to
this man!" He's the kind of man who would pull the wings off flies and watch
them stumble around. You see, this fits in with his Scientology beliefs,
also. He felt that if you just died, your spirit would go out and get
another body to live in. By destroying an enemy that way, you'd be doing him
a favor. You were letting him out from under the thumb of L. Ron. Hubbard,
you see?
Penthouse: It's been said that many Scientologists have similar
philosophies.
Hubbard: Yes. Many are sadistic, just like he was. Very Teutonic, very
Gestapo.
Penthouse: Do you think they would stop at murder?
Hubbard: Many wouldn't. The one super-secret sentence that Scientology is
built on is: "Do as thou wilt." That is the whole of the law. It also comes
from the black magic, from Alistair Crowley. It means that you are a law
unto yourself, that you are above the law, that you create your own law. You
are above any other human considerations. Since you came into being by an
act of will, you can do anything you will. If you decide to go out and kill
somebody --bam! --that's it. An act of will. Not connected, to any emotions
or feelings, not governed by any ethics or morality or law. They are very
vicious people. Totally into attack. Most people think these people are so
insane and wild and berserk and unpredictable. Not to me. Insane people are
very predictable, because they're trapped on the same mental and spiritual
merry-go-round and all they can do is go round and round. For years I've
been able to Counter them --to stay alive --simply because I was one of
them. I had a helluva good teacher.
Penthouse: Was your father violent in his behavior with his family?
Hubbard: Not to me. But he beat up a lot of women very badly. Blood, black
eyes, busted teeth, the whole thing. He beat the holy hell out of women. His
rages were incredible. I've read reports of the kinds of rages Hitler used
to have, and they sound just like my father's. He was especially touchy
about food. He would always have somebody else at the table sample
everything on the table before he'd eat it. I've seen him pick up an entire
dinner table and throw it against the wall if he didn't like the food or
thought it was suspicious. He got very strange in the fifties. He had to
have his clothes washed and washed and washed. He would take showers half a
dozen times a day. I have often wondered if all of this might have been
caused by the massive amounts of drugs and medication he took.
Penthouse: Did your father take a lot of drugs?
Hubbard: Yes. Since he was sixteen. You see, drugs are very important in the
application of heavy black magic. The personal use of drugs expands one's
conscious ability to break open the doors to the realm of the deep.
Penthouse: What kind of drugs did he generally use?
Hubbard: At various times, just about everything, because he was quite a
hypocondriac. Cocaine, peyote, amphetamines, barbiturates. It would be
shorter to list what he didn't take.
Penthouse: Did he encourage you to do drugs?
Hubbard: Well, he used them with me. He was a real night person. We used to
sit around all night, sit around his office or home, get loaded up, and
talk. He had a pretty liquid tongue. He loved to talk. And of course, in the
fifties, he decided that was the heir apparent, so he wanted to teach me
everything he knew. He started me out by mixing phenobarbital into my bubble
gum, when I was ten years old. This was to induce deeper trances in order to
practice the black magic and to get an avenue to power.
Penthouse: How exactly would this work?
Hubbard: The explanation is sort of long and complicated. The basic
rationale is that there are some powers in this universe that are pretty
strong. As an example, Hitler was involved in the same black magic and the
same occult practices that my father was. The identical ones. Which, as I
have said, stem clear back to before Egyptian times. It's a very secret
thing. Very powerful and very workable and very dangerous. Brainwashing is
nothing compared to it. The proper term would be "soul cracking." It's like
cracking open the soul, which then opens various doors to the power that
exists, the satanic and demonic powers. Simply put, it's like a tunnel or an
avenue or a doorway. Pulling that power into yourself through another
person --and using women, especially -- is incredibly insidious. It makes
Dr. Fu Manchu look like a kindergarten student. It is the ultimate
vampirism, the ultimate mine-fuck, instead of going for blood, you're going
for their soul. And you take drugs in order to reach that state where you
can, quite literally, like a psychic hammer, break their soul, and pull the
power through. He designed his Scientology Operating Thetan techniques to do
the same thing. But, of course, it takes a couple of hundred hours of
auditing and megathousands of dollars for the privilege of having your head
turned into a glass Humpty Dumpty --shattered into a million pieces. It may
sound like incredible gibberish, but it made my father a fortune.
Penthouse: When was the last time your father was seen in public?
Hubbard: Sometime in the sixties he granted an interview to British
television. After that he didn't appear in public and just slowly became a
recluse. One of the reasons he became a recluse was his own physical and
mental condition was deteriorating so badly that he couldn't let the public
or the Scientology membership know just what kind of shape he was in. He was
a testament to the fact that Scientology didn't work.
Penthouse: Looking over the past twenty-odd years of your life, what would
you have done differently?
Hubbard: That's a complex question, guess if I had it to do all over. I
would do the same thing. With a father like mine. I don't think I could live
it differently. It's been twenty-three years of nell, out sometimes you have
to go through hell to get to heaven. It's been a very exciting life. I can
say that. We come from a long line of rogues and scoundrels, going back 200
or 300 years, at least. And so I guess we're built for this kind of life.
I've said that I am a preacher of adversity and controversy, and I thrive on
it. Plus maybe by our example, people will quit trying for god-ship.
Penthouse: What if your father's alive? Would you be able to confront him?
Hubbard: Yes I would love to.
Penthouse: Do you have any fear of him?
Hubbard: No if he is sick, I would make sure he receives the best treatment
I could find in the world for him. I consider him a victim of all this as
much as I consider myself a victim of his own involvement with black magic,
drugs and his own delusions. He became a victim of himself.
Penthouse: Many people would say that your father is guilty of a great many
sins and crimes. Do you think he should be punished?
Hubbard: He hasn't escaped punishment. I think at this juncture, dead or
alive, he fell into his own insanity, and that's quite sufficient
punishment. That is the most terrible jail of all, to be trapped inside his
own head. With him it must be like being locked inside an exploding
fireworks factory with no way out.
Penthouse: Have you ever wished your father dead?
Hubbard: I don't believe so, no. Regardless of the things he's done to
me --we had a helluva good time!
Penthouse: Ripping the world off?
Hubbard: We did! I enjoyed my life then, and I enjoy it now. And really, as
far as crimes go. I think my father has received the ultimate punishment
wichis being locked and traped in his own insanity. There's no way out for
him.
SCIENTOLOGIE RESPONDS
[here part of the copy I got is on grey on black, and therefore illegible;
only the last part of the interview of Jentzsch is available here]
....underneath the ink and to the side. And top forensic analysts have
proven that, that is the ink that was formulated the second of February
1983. Number two: that is his writing. Number three: those are his
fingerprints. End of theme. But this letter establishes, in terms of
forensic science and in terms of court-acceptable records, that Hubbard Sr.
is very much in control of this whole scene and his own monies, his own
life, his own activities...
Penthouse: Is it possible to speak to Mr. Hubbard?
Jentzsch: I...I don't think that Penthouse magazine, given its past
activities, would ever do a decent article on Mr. Hubbard. I think they
would do everything they could to try to denigrate, to try to impugn the
man, to try to destroy any credibility he has... I've read Penthouse and the
hate they have for anyone who is opposed to psychiatry, anyone who is
opposed to electric shock and psychosurgery, as we have been... I have only
to characterize it; that's the only reason they're opposed to it --that
Hubbard has instituted an incredible educational capability. They hate it.
Absolutely hate anything... [Editor's note: Reverend Jentzsch is not as
familiar with the editorial content of Penthouse as he thinks. Among the
very many critical articles on psychiatry the magazine has published are "
Psychiatric Holocaust" (January 1979), "Psychiatry Kills" (April 1981), and
"Electroshock: The Horror Continues" (June 1982)]
My current frame of mind is that the media will have to prove to us that
they have some sort of modicum of ethics and integrity... At this current
point, I have no reason to trust them. None at all. I find them rapacious. I
find them to be not interested in anything... Six and a half million people
who are living good lives, with a tremendous capability...but I don't find
the media wanting to cover any of that...
Penthouse: We feel that Mr. Hubbard has a right to respond to the
allegations made by Mr. Hubbard, Jr.
Jentzsch: What you're saying is that you give a man who's a criminal the
same right as a man who is not.
Penthouse: We're just trying to determine the truth.
Jentzsch: I've got to tell you, I've heard the same thing from every major
media that has talked to me. And every one of them had just not one modicum
of integrity.
Penthouse: We would be willing to work out any problems you might have
before we meet with Mr. Hubbard.
Jentzsch: Well, I don't know that you could meet him, because I have no idea
where he is... I will tell you this: if I were ever asked by Mr Hubbard, I
will make sure that all of the media who have currently interviewed him will
never, ever, ever, get a personal interview. I mean, I can guarantee you
that Time magazine will not... I can guarantee you ABC-TV will not: I can
guarantee you that all the others will not. I will promise that, and I will
campaign for it if he ever decides that he wants to do a major media event
of any kind or an interview of any kind. I will make sure that every one of
those gentlemen never, ever, ever, ever, ever, gets an interview with him.
The International Magazine for Men/June 1983?
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