Underground Exiles

During the early 1970s the IRS “proved that Hubbard was skimming millions of dollars from the church, laundering the money through dummy corporations in Panama and stashing it in Swiss bank accounts. Moreover, church members stole IRS documents, filed false tax returns and harassed the agency’s employees.”¹

A US federal court in 1971 ruled that Hubbard’s medical claims were bogus and that E-meter auditing could not be called a scientific treatment. The Church of Scientology responded by “going fully religious, seeking First Amendment protection…counselors started sporting clerical collars. Chapels were built, “franchises” became “missions”, fees became “fixed donations”, and Hubbard’s comic-book cosmology became “sacred scriptures.” ²

After years of running the Scientology organization from aboard his flagship, the Apollo, in 1975 Hubbard bought the Fort Harrison Hotel and a former bank building in downtown Clearwater, Florida under the name United Churches of Florida, to hide Scientologys connection. He moved his crew to Clearwater, establishing the Flagship Land Base, a.k.a. “Flag.”

While the Church of Scientology continued to expand, its private intelligence agency known as the Guardian’s Office (GO) ran cloak-and-dagger operations against the mayor of Clearwater, various governmental agencies and anyone else perceived as in their way.

Hubbard had established the GO in 1966 for internal and external security purposes. The GO’s purview included attacking critics, keeping members in line and silencing defectors. GO agents “stole medical files, sent out anonymous smear letters, framed critics for criminal acts, blackmailed, bugged and burgled opponents, and infiltrated government offices stealing thousands of files…Critics were to be driven to breakdown or harassed into silence.”³ Eventually, in the early 1980s, eleven GO officials, including Hubbard’s wife, were imprisoned following a massive bugging and burgling operation against government offices across the US that Hubbard had personally created and code-named “Operation Snow White.” Hubbard, himself was named as an unindicted co-conspirator but escaped justice because no one could find him.

Almost from the beginning, Hubbard had been in trouble with the law. In 1951 the New Jersey Board of Medical Examiners brought proceedings against him for teaching medicine without a license; he fled to Los Angeles to escape prosecution. His organizations were repeatedly charged with practicing medicine without a license; E-meters and vitamin compounds were seized. The FDA accused Scientology of falsely claiming the E-meter could cure medical ailments and all E-meters were required to carry labels disavowing such claims.

At various times, Hubbard (and/or the church) was investigated by the US Justice Department, the FBI, FDA, CIA, IRS, NSA, Bureau of Customs, DEA, DOD, the Secret Service, the US Post Office, INS, ATF, Department of Labor, police departments of various US cities as well as Interpol and a host of other governmental agencies worldwide. Hubbard was convicted in absentia of fraud in France. The Church of Scientology was convicted of breach of the public trust and infiltration of government offices in Canada. Scientology was banned by the state of Victoria, Australia. Hubbard attributed all these events to widespread plotting by Russian communists, neo-fascists, bankers, the media, the IRS, Christian clergy, fiendish extraterrestrials and the psychiatric profession, which he considered his arch enemy.

Hubbard went into seclusion following the “Operation Snow White” debacle and in the early 1980s David Miscavige, a second-generation Scientologist, took the reins of Scientology at age 21. At that time “…high-level defectors [were] accusing Hubbard of having stolen as much as $200 million from the church [and] the IRS was seeking an indictment of Hubbard for tax fraud. Scientology members “worked day and night shredding documents the IRS sought,”⁴ according to a defector. Hubbard died in 1986 before the criminal case could be prosecuted.

During the power struggles and purges of the 1980s, many people left the church. Some established independent organizations based on Hubbard’s writings. The Church of Scientology quickly undertook mass copyrighting of all Hubbard materials and took legal steps to shut down the independents. In 1983 the Office of Special Affairs was created to carry on the purposes of the defunct Guardian’s Office.⁵

In 1991 the internet newsgroup alt.religion.scientology (A.R.S.) appeared. Scientology immediately pounced, but the church’s heavy-handed attempts to shut down A.R.S. failed. The conflict attracted the attention of free speech advocates worldwide and sparked a proliferation of anti-Scientology newsgroups and websites.

Hubbard advocated harassment of opponents by lawsuit, and so following the Church of Scientology’s loss of tax-exempt status in 1967, Scientology declared war. For 26 years “…they attacked the IRS consistently on many fronts; suing and investigating individual IRS agents, deliberately obscuring their records, constantly suing the IRS directly, taking out anti-IRS advertisements, funding anti-IRS groups, lying, infiltrating, stealing, bugging, offering rewards for IRS whistleblowers, pressuring congressmen to investigate the IRS, filing countless Freedom of Information Act requests, creating a corporate maze, publishing anti-IRS articles in their own magazines, and other methods. The attacks worked.”⁶

In 1993 the beleaguered IRS and the Church of Scientology International reached an agreement, the terms of which were kept secret but were leaked to The Wall Street Journal four years later. Per the agreement, the church gained tax-exempt status for itself and its subsidiaries and in return agreed to drop the lawsuits and settle its back tax obligations with a payment of $12.5 million — a fraction of the estimated amount owed. Many questions have been raised about provisions of this agreement, however the IRS and CoS maintain that it is confidential and will not discuss it. ((Ibid.))

Scientologists have sought to undermine anti-cult groups by infiltrating them or shutting them down outright. Multiple lawsuits were filed against the Cult Awareness Network (CAN), which was for 20 years the US’s best known resource for information and advice on religious cults. CAN’s legal fees forced it into bankruptcy; the rights to CAN’s name, logo and hotline number were bought by a Scientologist in bankruptcy court and the new CAN is staffed by Scientologists.

The Church of Scientology relies heavily on celebrity spokespeople and front groups for favorable publicity and recruiting. A number of organizations working in the areas of literacy, drug counseling, human rights, and business and management techniques, while not legally connected to the Church of Scientology, promote Hubbard’s philosophy and draw people into the church. The Church of Scientology capitalized on the Sept. 11, 2001 World Trade Center tragedy, with its corps of “Volunteer Ministers” setting up a flurry of centers to help/recruit traumatized emergency workers and grieving families, while simultaneously interfering with mental health professionals wherever possible.⁷ And US troops returning from service in Iraq have apparently been targeted for recruitment into the church.⁸

In 2003 Fox News and other media outlets reported that the Church of Scientology has begun requiring its members to sign a release form agreeing to be held against their will for indefinite periods, isolated from friends and family and denied access to medical care (particularly psychiatric care) and absolving the church of responsibility for any resultant harm.⁹ The document was apparently drawn up in response to a wrongful-death suit brought against the church in 1997 by the family of Lisa McPherson, a 36-year-old Scientologist who died in 1995 after being held in isolation for 17 days while undergoing Scientology “processes” at the Fort Harrison Hotel in Clearwater. At the time of her death, she was comatose, severely dehydrated and covered in cockroach bites. Following a seven-year legal battle, an out-of-court agreement settling the suit was reached in May 2004; the terms of this agreement were sealed.¹⁰

1. Richard Behar. “Scientology: The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power,” TIME MAGAZINE, May 6, 1991. http://tinyurl.com/28nox [↩]
2. ((Ibid. [↩]
3. Op. cit., Atack, chapter 16. [↩]
4. Op. cit., Behar. [↩]
5. Chris Owen. “Scientology’s Secret Service: An expose of the shady activities of Scientology’s intelligence agencies.” Online article: http://tinyurl.com/37nw4 [↩]
6. Jeff Jacobsen. “Scientology’s Tax Exemption Should be Rescinded.” July 19, 2001. Online article: http://tinyurl.com/26ow5 [↩]
7. Chris Owen. “Scientology at Ground Zero.” May 2003. Online article: http://tinyurl.com/23kt3 [↩]
8. Press Release, April 26, 2004, from L. Ron Hubbard Public Relations West U.S., “Collateral Damage in Iraq Includes Military Suicide” http://tinyurl.com/2n8gk [↩]
9. The Church of Scientology’s release of liability agreement. http://tinyurl.com/35lws [↩]
10. Robert Farley. “Scientologists settle death suit,” ST. PETERSBURG (Florida) TIMES, May 29, 2004. http://tinyurl.com/yqxj5 [↩]