Transcript: LRH Conference with the investigators

LRH CONFERENCE WITH THE INVESTIGATORS

17th August, 1966¹

This is 17th of August, and I will just make a record here for you own private information, 1966, and I suppose there are some questions you would like to ask me on this and that.

Before you do, I would just like to give a rundown on the situation.

I myself am not unfamiliar with your line of country. I myself was a D-3 office[r] of Naval Intelligence with the US Navy as Intelligence Officer in the Asiatic fleet at the beginning of the World War II, served previously around Washington and New York.

In the spring of 1942, they however found they had great scarcity of Master Mariners and so on and the FBI took over the complete entirety of Naval Intelligence at that time and so those of us who were qualified as Deck Officers were transferred over to the line and I went from there. Nevertheless, I was in this line of country for some time — well this doesn’t make me a “bug” on the situation — makes me familiar with it.²

In 1950, I’ll give you some background history on this, I started a Foundation. I didn’t have control of this Foundation; it was started by a number of business men who were in who believed in human betterment, and they began a Foundation called the Hubbard Research Foundation, Elizabeth, N.J.

At that time I wasn’t ever owning up to having done the research. I had written a book and it had become a bestseller, and they had taken over, and the Foundation, to continue the researches. I was actually at that time backing out of the whole thing and I was scheduled to take an expedition. I’ve been a member of the Explorer’s Club for many years, and have commanded several expeditions. I was going down to the [Dandecaues], and there was a ship down there that was full of Greek statuary which had been wrecked in Roman times and they had aerial photographs of it, and I had a job to look at this. And I was just backing out very gorgeously, you see, and they pleaded with me not to go. Things were becoming very busy, popularity of this work exceeded anything they had ever dreamed of.

It was riding the top of the Best Seller list throughout the summer of 1950, it was a sellout all over the place and so I said all right I’d give them a hand until July, and then I would have to go on and do something that was more in my line of country, you see.

By July I found out that people were doing things with this technology which had been released which were not necessarily harmful just terribly off beat, messed up, and I saw that it was all about to go down the river, and the Board at that time begged me to stress the fact that I had done the research, and the work was basically mine, and that I should take some administrative control for this. Well, so I took some administrative control.

Well, if you ever saw a shambles it had begun right at that moment, not because I was in administrative control but just shambles. It was so bad there were about four people killed out in California. There was an effort to kidnap me, which only my somewhat hard won knowledge of Judo and so forth got me out of — I put two blokes in the hospital — very very adventurous.

A woman sued me for divorce to whom I was not married³; she was the mistress of a scientist, an atomic scientist, and he had been my friend, and he had died⁴. Well anyway, to make a long story short, she haunted me — and it was just too thick — offices were being robbed and, oh my goodness.

By this time there were five of these branch offices to the Foundation — I still had no administrative control over this and the Boards would pass all sorts of resolutions and spend money in all different directions – I had no control over this.

But I did have control over the fact that we were being knocked around badly, so I went down and saw a friend of mine who was an assistant of Hoover’s, J. Edgar Hoover, and he said, “Well, Ron, I can’t do anything for you by telling you anything about your staff, but if you give me a list of all of your staff members of all of these Foundations, I will give you back a list which will startle you, and tell you which ones of them are not members of the Communist Party. I’ll give you back that list”.

That was news to me, what was this? So I gave him that list that included a thousand staff members in these five organizations, and he gave me back a list and it had two hundred fifty-seven names missing off it. Well, he wised me up just to this point, “Communists”, he said, “are under orders to infiltrate all sorts of organizations, and you are just getting more than your share of popularity and if they can bend this activity over to their own uses they would be very excited about it, and so forth.”

Well, I slogged through the remainder of 1951 and eventually…I had no control of these organizations at all and they, through mismanagement and so forth by their existing Boards, they folded up and I went off down to Phoenix, Arizona, and I started a Scientology organization.

The name of the earlier subject was Dianetics, and you will find that is still in useful practice, but it was basically a healing subject. We got in bad with the healing professions because the publisher and a medical doctor, not me, said that any two people could use it and get well instantly, and it was Walter Winchell no less who said it was a greater development than the wheel and arch. That wasn’t me. Now these people staring attributing these statements to me.⁵

Well, I parted company with this field because I did not want to be mixed up with a healing activity because this was a philosophic line of research and I ran into Scientology and the basic subject from which Dianetics was derived, and I went on with this development down in Phoenix, Arizona, and I got the earliest Scientology Organization put together and I had control of that and it ran pretty well, and it has been prospering ever since.

I came over here to England — there were several groups over here in England that were at swords with each other — and they requested me to come over and make peace amongst them — so I made a branch of the American Office in London and let these groups contribute their activity to it and its gone on from 1952 in England.

Now at the time, had it not been for responsibility to other people and so forth, I would actually very happily have pulled foot from all the administrative actions and so forth in regard to this, because it is a tumultuous field to end all tumultuous fields. You see me right now gazing longingly and casting sheep’s eyes at a yacht I am getting surveyed up at Hull right now and you see me going out to Rhodesia and slogging around and trying to get a connection with some of my own finances and so forth for a change, and it is a tough, tough line. And if it weren’t for my responsibility to other people in this matter, I myself would not have very much to do with it. That is the truth of the matter.

But now that I have taken responsibility along this line, I am very dedicated to certain propositions, and that is, first and foremost, the ethical application of the technology, it must be done right. It must be used properly. It mustn’t be used to hurt or harm people, and so on. Hence you see our Ethics activity.

Now in 1954, I got my first clue — and this is where you start coming in — I got my first clue as to the actual type of personality that gave us a slugging around.

Earlier, in doing research on the mind, and so on, I had become a special officer of the Los Angeles force. For a while I was down there having […] time. My beat was South Main and Alvarado and that is the toughest district there is down there. And I got a little insight into the criminal intelligence, and then I began to find out that I didn’t run across Communists who didn’t have a slightly or largely tainted criminal background. This was the big discovery to me — possibly it is very well known to the police, but the criminal seems to move over into that particular field.

Well, I’m not hepped up on this subject of communism. As a writer, before the War, and so on, I rubbed elbows with communists and socialists and extreme rightists and any other breed — I got along with all of them.

The Communists used to say to me, “Ron, you are on the wrong side of the fence. You should join us now because we are taking over the world,” and so forth, and I said, “You just go along and take over the world and let me get on with what I’m doing.”

There was no emotional [?] with this, and as time has gone on, I have gotten a deeper and deeper insight into the type of personality which raises the devil with this type of work, and it isn’t 90% of the human race, it is a figure as small as 20%. Of that 20%, only 2 ½ % of the 100, the other being 17 ½ %, the 2 ½% are really institutional cases. They are utterly mad.

Now they themselves — for various reasons, they cannot confront their own past. It would be entirely too painful to them. Therefore they cannot conceive of anyone else confronting his past, so they are opposed to anybody who tries to make people do this. And then in addition to this, they are terrified that something will be found out about them, because there is something to find out. And even if there isn’t, they are still afraid that something will be found out.

Now, it is this type of personality.

Now when I found out that they are in the minority I began to investigate whenever we started to take a shellacking. Whenever we started to be beaten around, I would get a private investigator in the area and have a look around and see who was at this and that activity.

Is [it] the suits, no, but that activity of investigation is the only thing which has tamed down attacks on Scientology. Not even a punitive action after the investigation was concluded but just the fact of investigation.

Now what happens — apparently the mechanism of is this — this chap here is of a self-betterment group. He hears that somebody is doing something about the mind. Well, he is ably aided and assisted with the fact that newspapers in all the years I’ve been around have never bothered to interview me — they just go off and write what occurs to them, you see. And when we have a win, or we sue somebody and we win, they never report this. We just get the total opposite picture.

You see it in the Council up here. Every time the Council turns down planning permission, they used to publish, “Doctor Hubbard receives a turn-down vote at Saint Hill,” and whenever they granted one, if it appeared at all, it would be at the bottom of the page in fine type.

The truth of the matter is that we’ve got more planning permission than anybody in the whole district. But this false picture continues to present itself, and if you go back in the newspaper files and clippings, you find this flood of stuff.

Now you take the Australian Enquiry which is giving us trouble right now. That Enquiry proceeded under executives who since have really been shot from guns by us, who would take no order of any kind. They did whatever they pleased, and they were operating apparently under a law code which was invented by a bunch of criminals to begin with.

Now this Australian Enquiry forbade — its got so many legal points — that it forbade me to appear. It said it couldn’t guarantee my personal safety if I appeared and testified there. They refused completely to do this — we are getting a booklet out in which all that evidence is authenticated. Now English law says that if a newspaper publishes something that happened to somebody abroad, it must have been testimony in a fair trial. And of course that was an unfair trial. And it wasn’t a trial really. And so it makes it actionable as it was republished in England. What we are getting out is reprintings of this sort of thing.

We get all sorts of weird things happening like this fellow Filson, he grabbed some papers which are not public issue papers but which are research materials. He sells them to a newspaper. The newspaper comes out and gives all sorts of weird, out of context reporting of this sort of thing. Well now then this kind of thing mounts up and we get an hostile environment as a result thereof.

Now you are running down somebody who apparently is one of this original type personality I was talking about. They are terrified and they push it forward.

What has actually happened in Scientology is that we have a technology which has been developed, which for instance permitted a fighter squadron in the United States to go over a whole year without a single clipped wing tip. They didn’t have an accident of any kind whatsoever.

Well, you can raise people’s IQ, you can half their reaction time, you can identify something about the nature of man which carries more truth or weight with him.

You are not doing anything which is criminal, don’t you see. There is no such action involved, but the fact that you are bettering him terrifies such people. They only approve of activities which kill man. Now this is the background in which we are operating.

Now you in your activities undoubtedly are responsible at this moment for far more damping out than you probably know. For instance, when I got back here, a letter had been written to me from the Ministry of Health in England, saying — I thanked them for turning down the Enquiry — and it was now, “Don’t be too sure that we are not going [to] inquire into Scientology after all,” you see. Not a threatening letter. I got it when I returned a few weeks ago. It had been sitting in my files all that time, waiting for me to see it. But you know, there hasn’t been anything of that, and they didn’t proceed [along] that line.

We had an enthusiasm on the part of The Daily Mail for trying to kick things around. Now writs were issued a week ago against The Daily Mail. They will be followed up by very good evidence and it is a very good suit, and they will undoubtedly settle this thing out of Court, and it will not appear in the press again.

Their man, by the way, Peter Younghusband, that they used to pull off this coup in Rhodesia, I now find out from Tony Hitchman, the Radio Rhodesian television, that isn’t his name. His name is something like Von der Staden or something, and he is a South African, and he operates under an assumed name and he is still kicking around Rhodesia.

Now Truth Magazine, which was about to be under suit by us, but once more our legal was not quick enough off the launching pad. We had an action there, not only against the government, but also against Truth Newspaper being let in from Canberra, not from Melbourne. And apparently they wrote Smith about the Enquiry. And Smith, the fool, wrote them back and said yes he would then have me investigated or words to that effect. And this was the source of Smith’s statement. Truth Newspaper of Melbourne. And a little clipping came through the other day, forwarded through by a student, which gave somewhat the gist of this. I am sure there were other stories, but you had better recover that clipping and show it to them.

Now the whole weight of my activity has very little to do with punishing people, but I think that by the time we run some of this down, and isolate it, some of it, I think that we will find that we are dealing with very few personalities. Now we can be completely certain that the few personalities with whom we are dealing have unsavory pasts. Now that is not not necessarily one which an intelligence officer would be expected to jump the gap of, because that is one which I have found out over the years.

There will be something wrong with the man’s past. Balniel, who advanced that question in Parliament, for instance, has a psychotic wife. Well, we don’t know that that is a bad background, but what’s she doing psychotic? What kind of a home atmosphere is this? What goes on in that vicinity, you see.

Now we ask such questions and there are answers. Now right here, locally on the Council, there are three members — I can’t call them off by name, I did have their names a few months ago — on Town and Country Planning, who are in actual fact complete mad dogs out of a committee of, I don’t know how many men on that committee, but those men are all bright, smiling cheerful. But these three mad dogs are being mad dogs. What makes them so mad dog?

[End of Tape Side 1]

If a Town and Country Planning were engaged in criminal activity, we would worry them frantic.

There is something going on here in terms of land speculation. It is only in this direction that the town can conceivably expand and it would expand normally in this particular direction. We are sitting on a lot of that land.

But more important than this, I spotted some time ago that as long as a planning permission existed as a rarity on certain pieces of property, that piece of property was up in the stars. But if other planning permissions were granted in that vicinity, then the price of that property deteriorated.

Now the one who runs this council up here, or did a year or two ago, was Lady Dudley Gordon, a very heavy property holder in this immediate vicinity. She considers, I am sure, that I am just pure and simple poison.

Whenever a planning permission is granted, there is always a tendency to reduce the price of property on which permissions are held. For instance, there was an old rag of a house down the road here by the reservoir, that was the awfullest piece of junk you ever looked at. Just a few uprights holding up a ragged roof, and it went for £8000 (eight thousand pounds) because it had a planning permission.

Now there is probably in the various property speculations individuals — people who engage in that type of thing very often do not have clean hands. Now it is the individual, then, whose deeds at the moment I feel you will find a very fruitful line. I just wanted to give you a fast rundown., and outline of how I looked at it, and what the score was with regard to it, and now

[Discussion here re type of crime found in Country Councils.]

And now I want you to tell me anything I can do to help you out in your jobs.

[Concerning the Minister of Health]

Yesterday we saw a Scientologist Pat Webster at London HASI whose brother Tony Webster has been causing some trouble, and this brother is in an executive position in a big import and export corporation in London and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and he has got a down on Scientology. I thought it was purely because of the sister.

However, I spoke to him on the telephone last night and told him I was part of a small organization that were wanting to oust Scientology, and wondered if we could meet. He said that he was going back to Malaysia tomorrow on the 2:45 plane from London Airport, and we have got a luncheon appointment with him for 12:30.

He said that he has seen Kenneth Robinson, the Minister of Health, he has been trying to do things against Scientology for ages and he will not stop. This is what he told me on the telephone. His name is WEBSTER. He is married to, his wife is a G.P., I suppose practicing in Malaysia. They have been on leave in this country for the last two months. And well, we primed him up quite well, and I think that we will get quite a lot of details from him tomorrow.

He has got a copy of the Victoria Report. He said, “Have you read the Victoria Report on Scientology?”

So I said, “No” and he said, “Well I’ve got a report,” he said, “Well I was in the House of Commons last week” and he said, “and it is shocking.”

He really is confident of himself, and that bothers me, so we have primed the job up, and we are going to London Airport to meet him for lunch, and you will have the report on Friday. But rest assured that we will find out as much as we can.

There was a slight indication that he might have been to the press. Yes, he did mention this last night, I forgot. He had go press cuttings, etc. Therefore we think that there might be a press contact, and we will try to establish who it is.

I feel it must be The Mail (Daily Mail) from the way he spoke, but he has very definitely been to the Government. (The House of Commons.)

LRH: Now in that man’s background there are a few bodies under culverts and things, I learned that the hard way.

His sister said he is a very, very — he is an extremist as far as Christianity is concerned, so there may well be — something could easily be out a lot.

LRH: Well, very good. Very good. Now what can I do for you?

This brings us into the general field of pursuing this type of thing. We naturally got together — it would be stupid if we didn’t — and of course we have come from three varied backgrounds — I have an Intelligence Security background, another police, and another with the MET. We have discussed our approach to this type of thing. We are wondering whether we shouldn’t put it on a more or less professionally covert background, because there does seem to be a dedicated opposition against you in many ways.

We are rather inclined to believe that the main hostility comes from the one particular paper, The Daily Mail Newspaper. We havn’t penetrated it enough, but as you will see from what we have written, there have been two penetrations, and I favour the direct intro using cover, if it is possible. Of course it is always fraught with difficulty, and very simple things could blow us.

LRH: Well, I took that up and I will try to give you as much cover as possible.

In this particular line of course, we wanted to make it quite clear that we were operating under a cover, and we would like to know if that meets with your approval.

LRH: Yes.

We are not operating as from Scientology, as that would blow us right away, because we are up against it right away.

LRH: You would be.

Well actually, we wondered originally when the application was in The Telegraph for investigators, we’ve discussed obviously we are going to get vast amounts of wrong types applying for a job, which you did, Filson and Brady for instance. Now the thing is:

About making loud investigations, is it not better to do the investigation on the quiet and then when somebody comes up with something, shoot him back down with the information we have got about them, rather than do the investigation loud after the event. Let them jog along nice and quiet while the investigation is in progress, and then when we’ve got sufficient, then give them a broadside.

Perfectly fine.

We found too, that to gather information about the local sie of things rather than at the top. We rather favour starting a little bit below the top, for example these Harmsworths and Northcliffe are running this NEWSIGHT thing, the man who is putting on the pressure is the head of the editorial feature department. He is the one fellow we have to uncover for example, Whitehead, you see?

You can’t go wrong there.

We rather feel that latitude given to the editorial men, as long as it conforms with the general policy of the paper, and God knows what we could uncover about Whitehead. He might be a complete alcoholic, etc., etc. We rather favour, although we have had projects given us of Carr, King, and Cudlipp, of the three we rather fancy Cudlipp more, we rather feel that starting a little bit below the top level would probably produce more results.

LRH: Well, I should think that your operation and the policy governing your operation should be arranged amongst yourselves. All I am asking is a result.

That is what we thought. Now that is what we want to do now. We cottoned on very quickly to your note, and that your interest in these matters are taboo, not to be divulged in any way. We would like to work beneath the surface a little bit, under cover if you like.

LRH: I heartily agree with you. Why don’t you organize the Bide-a-wee Detective Agency or Enquiry Agency?

Just what we wanted.

LRH:Why don’t you organize this and get this as a very, very separate organization.

Ideal.

Before you came today, [?], I mentioned to Nancy that apart from becoming completely divorced from this place we are becoming too stereotyped in our activities. We come in here on Wednesday and put our reports in and our expenses. We come in here on Friday and put further reports in and we pick up our pay and expenses as usual. We may be on the premises two hours sometimes, and we may be, as we were last Friday, for about fourteen hours. Now the point is is, that whilst we are so stereotyped, should there be anyone keeping observation on this place, it is the easiest thing to pick us out coming in regularly on a Wednesday or a Friday.

LRH: Too predictable.

Again, should there be anyone in this place — and nobody knows this for certain, and we have a hint that there is an informant inside Saint Hill — Filson hinted this to both Ron and myself when we went down to interview him a few weeks ago. When he tried to get in touch with us and we went down, and we came and reported fully to Monica all about this interview. And if this is so, and I for one am not prepared to overlook that this is true, then it is the easiest thing for any informer to say, “You can see them come here every Wednesday and Friday.” And as long as this continues, Mr. Hubbard, then we are in jeopardy. Whilst we are in jeopardy, you are in jeopardy.

It is more serious than that. It is a matter of safety as well as a matter of security, and if any type of arrangement that you can make in that way, go ahead and do so. I don’t know what it takes to license an agency.

Nothing. No license required.

I believe that some of our SPs, and undoubtedly this is one of the best ones we have had yet — (Chorus: “I agree”). And  although Pat says he has only been interested in Scientology for the last month, that phone call last night indicated to me that he had been interested in Scientology for many more months, and he didn’t even know his sister was in the organization until a month ago.

His own mother is in Australia (I.e., Mrs. Webster). She is residing with the sister of Pat Webster. She is residing in Perth. Now if you got anyone who is disgruntled with any job or anything he is doing, like he is an SP from Scientology–

Say “Joe Bloggs” from London HASI, he goes off to his house in London and there is obviously some news interest in Scientology all the time, so the odd reporter goes around to “Joe Bloggs” and says, “Can you give me a statement?” “No.” “No…” “And so and so…” “But see old Jim Smith…”

And sooner or later he (the reporter) is getting a little bit of information from each one and building up the story and consequently will indicate to us that there is one big SP behind it. The SP, I think, is about the level of an editor, rather than Cudlipp, or King. I don’t think King is interested as long as his money is coming in to be quite blunt about it. I don’t think he would be interested in anything, as long as his finances are okay.

As long as the papers keep selling, he doesn’t care.

Providing the paper doesn’t print anything that would step on the toes of his associates in business, and I believe–

Here’s something astonishing with regard to men with money. I finally got a rundown on no less a person than Harry Oppenheimer⁶ I was looking for who was kicking over the traces down in South Africa because they are starting investigations concerning the organization for blasphemy.

So I took a small amount of my time I spent in Rhodesia to as a few questions about this, and you know this fellow Oppenheimer controls The Rhodesian Herald in Salisbury, controls the Argus Press, controls these various press activities down there. And what is more important is that he himself is so far on the outs with the Nationalist Party of South Africa that he has started at one time a party called The Progressive Party, which was able to elect exactly one MP, that was as far as it got. And he has been violently against “white supremacy.” Whether that is good, bad, or indifferent is besides the point. This man has been making his money out of the country and yet he is violently opposed to this. And his copper mines up in Zambia are being clobbered by the Zambian government, and yet this fellow is going right straight along just as pretty as you please, with people who are cutting his throat from ear to ear. And yet he is busy cutting the throat of the people who are trying to give him the law and order in which to operate in South Africa.

Now this is a very, very interesting picture. I will just give you my “think” on it, not an authoritative think, but I concede usually that the fellow has done something and when he does something this irrational, he is told to do it from somewhere. And when I see key figures all over the world make the same utterance simultaneously, I always get rather alert, and say, “Well, who’d have what on where?”

Now a theory is only as good as it works out, and if that theory doesn’t work out, well it doesn’t work out. But it is utterly mad to suppose that Harry Oppenheimer of all people would be favouring and buttering up the Zambian government which is destroying  Anglo-American interests, and he is in actual fact fighting the existence of the Rhodesian government, which gives him carte blanche to mine anything in the country. And if there is a take-over in Rhodesia he will lose that carte blanche right away.Why is this man going contrary to his own interests? That is the only question. It isn’t that one favours one side over the other.

Because I was down there urging ‘one man one vote’ as far as that was concerned, which did me no good whatsoever. But just the same these people such as Oppenheimer have no reason on God’s green earth to act the way they do. Their conduct is irrational. Now I wondered if there wasn’t a contact between King and Oppenheimer, because King is also on the Board of Directors of the Bank of England, isn’t he?

Yes (chorus)

This man King is a great seeker after power internationally. He has a lust for power, there is no doubt about that. You see it written through the whole of his history. His big disappointment must be his not having a knighthood.

I would bring up his papers apart from The People, just a scandal sheet on Sundays anyway, his newspaper group hasn’t printed a thing against Scientology.

This is true.

LRH: But he is a director with Carr of the NPA, which has banned our advertisement, and come in through the back door, so to say. It could tie in.

When I did an extrapolation of this, if it were a conspiracy, it led to somebody who had interest in mental healing, the press and high finance. Because they were able uniformly to influence income tax and treasury departments, and influenced the Ministry of Health, and influenced the policy papers. And it was so uniform and the patter was so uniform — the attack is a pattern, same pattern every time — that I wondered who this bloke, or blokes, or group could possibly be. So anyway, that is the project on which you are working. Is there anything else I can do…

We would like to know how far you would like to go as far as things like —

[End of Tape Side 2]

Notes