Part 4 (1/2)

Whatever OT 3 and the subsequent OT levels may have been, one thing is certain: they were perfectly timed. Mikael Rothstein, a professor of religion at the University of Copenhagen who specializes in new religious movements, has commented that a number of ”UFO religions” emerged during the 1960s. ”Hubbard's noting that human souls-thetans-are spiritual implants that originate in another world is ... quite parallel to religious a.s.sumptions expressed by UFO religions,” he said. Most of these groups were ”very much concerned with the mind-body complex and the impact of extraterrestrials. Hubbard was not original in that respect.”

But where Hubbard was original was in how he packaged this sci-fi mythology-just as he had been with Dianetics. Scientologists did not have to believe in OT 3. They had to do it. Then they would attain secret knowledge and wisdom unavailable to more pedestrian members. And the more they did it, the more enlightened-and invested-they became. This approach was so successful that within months of Hubbard's announcing OT 3, Scientologists from all over the world began beating a path to Valencia, Spain, to do the level aboard Hubbard's s.h.i.+p.

The stated purpose of becoming OT was to ”help Ron clear the planet” -which included fighting psychiatry. But most public Scientologists had a far more selfish goal in becoming an Operating Thetan. ”OT was talked about as the be all and end all,” said Mike Henderson, who joined the Church of Scientology in the early 1970s. ”You'd be completely powerful, would have total control of matter, energy, s.p.a.ce, and time ... you would be able to do anything.” Though no one, to Henderson's knowledge, had ever achieved this level of consciousness (not even Jesus or Buddha had been OTs, but ”just a shade above Clear,” according to Hubbard), the fantasy was sold so effectively that ”going OT” became for Scientologists the equivalent of reaching nirvana or finding the Holy Grail.*

By the late 1970s, thanks to ma.s.sive promotion, nearly every Scientologist aspired to the OT levels. The headline of one ad summed up Scientology's new direction: ”Clear, OT, and Total Freedom.” And because Scientology was now a worldwide spiritual enterprise, it was easy to pursue that goal, provided one could afford it. In addition to the s.h.i.+ps and the Saint Hill Manor, there were now Advanced Scientology churches in cities such as Copenhagen and Los Angeles, enabling more people to go Clear and do the OT levels. To initiate them into the movement, large Scientology churches now functioned in most of the major cities in Europe and the United States; also, dozens of franchised missions, some run by longtime Scientologists, were in operation, and many were far more successful than the formally established orgs.

Hubbard's role took on more and more characteristics of a messiah. As the ”Source” of all of Scientology's teachings, Hubbard was decreed the creator of every bit of Scientology scripture, which was considered infallible. To guarantee that his word was followed exactly, an office was set up at every Scientology organization in the world-complete with a desk, chair, telephone, ashtray, and pack of Kools-and run by an official called the ”LRH Communicator,” whose job was, as Jeff Hawkins put it, ”to make sure the org did exactly what Hubbard said to do.” The standard tech became a fixed product, sold only at official Scientology organizations around the world.

Hubbard himself, at least the standardized version-maverick, adventurer, seaman; an ascot-wearing hero to whom members were encouraged to write letters, telling of their wins-was heavily marketed. By the early 1970s, a new addition appeared on the list of his personas. Hubbard had written a poem t.i.tled The Hymn of Asia, in which he presented himself as Metteya, the reincarnation of Buddha. The Scientology magazine Advance promoted this new image, presenting drawings of the Founder sporting a reddish topknot and dressed in Indian robes. Jeff Hawkins thought this was great marketing. Kids all over the world had been embracing Eastern philosophy. Why not cast L. Ron Hubbard as a modern Buddha?

If in doubt about a problem or decision, members were told to ask themselves, ”What would Ron do?” Scientology events were punctuated by tributes to Ron. His followers, whipped into enthusiasm by pa.s.sionately recounted success stories, stood to face Hubbard's portrait, clapped in unison, and saluted him with Scientology's official cheer: ”Hip, hip hooray!”

As the Great Leader L. Ron Hubbard was becoming ever more iconic, the real L. Ron Hubbard was becoming increasingly isolated, locked into the fantasy world he'd created aboard the Apollo. To his followers, he was an aging Peter Pan who entertained them with talk of past lives. He'd been a racecar driver of the alien Marcab civilization. He'd sailed with the Carthaginian fleet and had served as a tax collector during the time of the Roman Empire. He was also convinced that he'd buried treasure during his previous incarnations and led his crew on expeditions to find it, following a course he said he'd charted two thousand years earlier and looking for hidden troves of gold and jewels in the Canary Islands and along the coasts of Italy, Spain, and North Africa.

But in the opinion of the parents of his young converts, particularly those in the United States (where in a pre-Internet era, news of Scientology's travails in England and Australia traveled slowly, if at all), the eccentric and volatile L. Ron Hubbard was no Peter Pan, but rather a Pied Piper, captivating their children with his idealistic vision of a cleared planet and then spiriting them away into a life of utter dedication to Ron and his mission. From the late 1960s onward, the FBI was flooded with mail from worried parents, urging the bureau to investigate the mysterious and, according to some, ”sinister” and ”subversive” church that seemed to have taken control of their children. (”I am literally petrified at this point that [my son] has been brainwashed by the 'processing' he has undergone in 'Scientology,'” one anguished father wrote to J. Edgar Hoover in the early 1970s. ”I have seen my son's personality deteriorate and become progressively worse to the point where now there seems to be no sanity present.”) Aboard the Apollo, Hubbard urged his crew to write to their families-”If your parents or friends are the kind who worry about you, BE SURE AND WRITE THEM AN AIRMAIL LETTER regularly,” he declared on May 2, 1969. ”Otherwise they give us [problems] by asking the government to check up on you to see if you're all right.”

But finding the Commodore and his crew would prove difficult. The Apollo had been ejected from Greece in 1969, after the Greek government received complaints about Scientologists proselytizing on Corfu. Hubbard and his Sea Org set out to find a new home. In 1971, the Sea Org set up a small land base outside Tangier, using what by now had become their new cover name: the Operation and Transport Corporation. If asked, they were to say that they were employees of an international business-management company.

Just a year later, Hubbard pulled up stakes again, after receiving word that the Church of Scientology in France was about to be indicted for fraud. Fearing he might be extradited from Morocco to Paris to testify, and worried about Morocco's worsening political situation, he decided to skip out of Europe altogether and spent most of the next year in New York City, hiding out from French authorities among its populace of eight million people.

It was Hubbard's first time in the United States since the mid-1960s and, accompanied by a bodyguard and a private nurse, he spent most of the year sequestered in an apartment in Forest Hills, Queens, watching TV. ”He really wanted to see what was going on in the culture,” said his former nurse, Jim Dinalci. ”He wasn't very impressed, but he kept the TV on all the time because he wanted to understand the mindset, the b.u.t.tons he'd have to push to get people into Scientology.”

After ten months in New York, Hubbard flew back to Europe. He returned to the Apollo, now anch.o.r.ed off Lisbon, and set sail for the Canary Islands. In Tenerife, in early 1974, Hubbard suffered a motorcycle accident, breaking an arm and several ribs. Convalescing for several months, Hubbard spent most of the time in a red velvet chair, a throne of sorts, with various pillows and foot cus.h.i.+ons, screaming at his aides. ”The red chair to us became a symbol of the worst a human being can be,” one young aide, Doreen Smith, later recalled. ”All we wanted to do was chop it up in little pieces and throw it overboard.”

In his isolation, Hubbard was coming to resemble the reclusive Howard Hughes. He'd insist that the s.h.i.+p, and any other place he ventured to, be given the white-glove treatment. He also became sensitive to smells and banned the use of perfume, and scented detergents and soaps. He was convinced that far more evil forces surrounded him than he'd ever let on. Now that he'd discovered body thetans, who knew what their intentions might be? He began to scrutinize the people around him, who, by Hubbard's own reckoning, were composed of scores of these individual ent.i.ties. Did they mean him harm? Who-and what-among his own staff was friend, and who a secret foe?

Hubbard intensified his security checks, asking the Sea Org and even his own family if they had relations.h.i.+ps with foreign governments, or if they'd ever had ”unkind thoughts” about Hubbard. Those who fell victim to his wrath were subject to a particular disciplinary measure called the Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF). Members on the RPF were not allowed in normal crew areas of the Apollo and were banned from communicating with anyone outside their own group, said Glenn Samuels, a former Sea Org member who worked as an auditor aboard the Apollo. In 1974, Samuels, then twenty-five, was distracted by marital troubles, earning him a six-month stint on the RPF as punishment. ”We lived in a dingy hold in the s.h.i.+p infested with roaches, and slept on pee-stained mattresses formerly designated to be thrown out. Study took place there as well.” Members awoke at dawn and were sent off to clean toilets or duct shafts. If anyone made a mistake, he was made to do push-ups and run laps around the s.h.i.+p. Walking was prohibited; members had to run everywhere, and even in baking heat were required to wear black boiler suits.

”It was brutal,” said Samuels. ”But much worse than the menial labor was the extreme 'untouchable' aspect of the whole thing. You were considered 'evil' ... especially if you had upset the Commodore, LRH.” One boy who had committed such a sin was stowed in a chain locker for several days. ”When he asked Hubbard if he could get out, LRH said, 'You got yourself in there; get yourself out,'” Samuels recalled. ”Another young girl was so disoriented from working so hard that she fell into the hold, about twenty feet down. She was twelve years old.”

As the 1970s wore on, Hubbard banished more people to the RPF. Virtually no one aboard the Apollo was safe. ”It was scary because at his whim you could end up in the h.e.l.lhole-for real or imagined errors,” said Samuels. ”And not just the Flag crew was sent; but executives, plus three of Hubbard's personal stewards, a cook or two, three of the s.h.i.+p's photographers.”

When Hubbard finally recovered from his motorcycle accident, the Apollo, which had been sailing off the coast of Portugal, set course for Spain. But the Spanish authorities, like the Moroccans, wondered about the strange, rust-streaked s.h.i.+p whose crew claimed to be affiliated with an international management group. The s.h.i.+p left Spanish waters after the Apollo mistakenly tried to enter one of the country's largest naval bases. Hubbard directed his captain to set a new course: ejected from European and North African waters, the Apollo would now cross the Sarga.s.so Sea and ply the Caribbean.

A senior marketing executive at the Publications Org, Jeff Hawkins now lived in Copenhagen with his wife, Tina, a fellow Sea Org member, and their seven-year-old daughter, Gwennie. In June 1975, he was summoned back to the Apollo to become part of a new international dissemination unit. Thrilling to Jeff, Hubbard, impressed by his work, had asked for him personally.

Much had changed aboard the Apollo in the four years Jeff had been away. Gone was the spit-polished, crisply military style of its crew. Now a bohemian atmosphere prevailed. Sea Org members sported beards, long hair, shorts, T-s.h.i.+rts, and bikini tops. Theater sets were strewn on the deck, along with musical equipment belonging to a band composed of Sea Org members, who called themselves the Apollo All-Stars. There also seemed to be a harem of young girls at the center of things. They dressed provocatively in tiny white shorts, white midriff-baring s.h.i.+rts, and chunky platform shoes.

These girls, the children of Scientologists, as it turned out, were called the Commodore's Messengers. Many of them had grown up on the Apollo, having been sent by their parents to serve in the Sea Organization. As the youngest people on the s.h.i.+p, they'd been deployed at first as go-fers, running messages to and from L. Ron Hubbard and other members of the crew, but over time, Hubbard began to rely on the Messengers as his personal caretakers, and as his eyes and ears.

DeDe Reisdorf, one of Hubbard's favorite Messengers, was thirteen years old when she arrived on the Apollo in 1971, with her sixteen-year-old sister, Gale, and her parents, Charles and Pauline Reisdorf, longtime Scientologists who'd joined the church in the 1950s. Most of the girls on the s.h.i.+p were also in their early or middle teens-the oldest, DeDe recalled, was perhaps seventeen. Many were there without their parents (Charles and Pauline Reisdorf departed the Apollo in 1973, leaving their children behind). ”I hated it at first,” recalled Gale, who served as a lookout on the s.h.i.+p and also as a steward to Mary Sue Hubbard and her daughter Diana. ”I cried almost every night for two or three months. But then I just accepted it, and it became my life.”

Messengers washed and ironed Hubbard's clothes, laid out his pajamas, prepared his bath, helped him dress, attended him while he ate, and took careful notes on every minute of his day. When Hubbard slept, two Messengers waited outside his door in case he happened to need anything (at which point he'd bellow, ”Messenger!”). Messengers lit his cigarettes, and when he walked around on deck, two would accompany him at all times: one person carrying his ever-present pack of Kools, the other holding an ashtray to catch the droppings.

Messengers also parroted Hubbard's words, mimicked his tone of voice, and spoke for him. The job, as Gale explained, was to ”pa.s.s on what he said, exactly, and then report back how the person responded-exactly.” Jeff Hawkins recalled several occasions when, asleep in his bunk, he was awakened in the middle of the night by the small hand of a Messenger laid gently on his chest and the words ”The Commodore wants to know ...” He would then be expected to spring to attention and answer the question, after which, he said, ”they'd say 'Thank you' and fade away into the night.”

As ”emissaries of the Commodore,” Messengers were addressed as ”sir.” Eventually they would be given their own org, the Commodore's Messenger Organization, with their own hierarchy, and ultimately they held almost as much authority as the Commodore himself. Among the privileges allowed the Messengers were the right to enter any room (except Hubbard's) without permission, the right to view anyone's private case folders or personal auditing files (except Hubbard's), and the right to be disciplined or given orders only by a higher-ranking member of the Commodore's Messenger Organization or L. Ron Hubbard himself.

The Messengers, as Hubbard's envoys, were dispatched on a.s.signments that ranged from finding out why a certain engine had failed aboard s.h.i.+p to discovering why a Scientology organization's statistics happened to be down. It was extremely demanding: even at thirteen or fourteen years of age, they were not allowed to return until they had solved the problem. While many referred to their service to the Commodore as fantastic training for jobs they'd hold later in life, they also admitted that they'd ceased being children the moment they entered his employ. The Messengers worked long hours, got time off only occasionally, and received hardly any education. ”We had three hours a day of reading, writing, and arithmetic-nothing else,” said Karen Gregory, a Messenger who came on board the Apollo when she was twelve. Their teachers were other Sea Org members-”no one in particular”-and often a person who lacked training as an educator. The students showed up if they wanted to; rarely would a Messenger be punished for not doing her homework, Gregory said. At the age of sixteen, they were allowed to stop school altogether. If they could type eighty words a minute, they could stop even earlier. ”I spent hours trying to type eighty words a minute so I could be done,” Gregory said.

Hubbard could be cruel to his Messengers, and his ever-s.h.i.+fting moods caused even the toughest to occasionally burst into tears. ”He was a roller coaster,” said DeDe Reisdorf. ”His expectations were always the max and you wanted to please him and get a 'well done' from him. But sometimes he would be in such a c.r.a.ppy mood, you wanted to run and hide in the closet”-which several of the Messengers did, according to her.

But the mission motivated the Commodore's Messengers just as it had their parents. ”Obviously we knew that other kids didn't live this way, but we didn't really think about it one way or another,” said Gale. ”Yes, the work was hard. I didn't go to school. A GED was not considered necessary or even thought about. But I never considered that I would be doing anything else, as I had given my life to this endeavor.” She and everyone she knew ”felt like we were doing the most important thing there was, which was to help people become happier and to help mankind get out of the mess we were in as a human race,” she said. ”It was a pretty n.o.ble cause.”

It was also the great teen adventure of a lifetime. On his good days, L. Ron Hubbard was ”charming and funny,” as DeDe said, as well as generous. ”He was never inappropriate,” said Gale, but he doted on the Messengers: sending them flowers on their birthdays and often buying them expensive gold and sapphire rings or earrings as Christmas presents. He considered himself their surrogate father-many felt he was closer to them than he was to his own four children by Mary Sue, who were also on the Apollo-and he also considered himself their tutor. As Reisdorf recalled, he was particularly fond of teaching them tactics for use on covert missions. ”Once, in Curacao, he decided to teach us how to 'lose tail,' as he called it. So he gave us drills to do, like having one or two Messengers follow a third, and then see if she could lose them in town.” The girls spent the entire afternoon practicing escaping from one another, she said.

Mary Sue Hubbard, the mother of four teenagers of her own, tried to take responsibility for the girls-sometimes at the behest of their parents-but it wasn't easy. ”Some of the Messengers were pretty wild,” Reisdorf said. ”Our logbook always had notes as to where to find people. Like ... 'If you're looking for Jill she is currently sleeping with Allen.'”

Eventually, Hubbard inst.i.tuted a ”no s.e.x until marriage” rule (possibly at Mary Sue's insistence, DeDe thought) within the Sea Org. This toned things down a bit, though not much. The girls simply married their beaux. Hubbard did not oppose a teen marriage-indeed, he once informed his Messengers that anyone who got married would receive a promotion-but he insisted on approving the match. ”He expected the guys we were dating to ask him for permission to marry us,” said Reisdorf. Over the years at sea, there were numerous weddings on the s.h.i.+p, attended solely by the crew-even the Messengers' parents would not be allowed to attend, as the s.h.i.+p was always in a ”secret” location. In 1974, one of Hubbard's favorite Messengers, Terry Gilham, was married to the Sea Org member Gerry Armstrong in a double wedding ceremony with friends and fellow s.h.i.+pmates Trudy Venter and Pat Broeker. Hubbard gave away the brides.

”It was a bizarre scene,” said Jeff Hawkins, who spent the summer and early fall of 1975 aboard the Apollo, designing Scientology's new brochures. It was the first time Jeff had been admitted to Hubbard's rarefied circle, and he was both mystified by the goings-on around him and also determined not to let his perplexity show. What Hubbard said in meetings dealt largely with promotion-after his television-watching sojourn in Queens, Hubbard believed that Scientology needed to use more visual imagery to attract the younger generation. To accomplish this, he established a Photo Shoot Org to take pictures for Scientology publications, using the teenage Messengers as models.

For nine months, the crew of the Apollo sailed around the Caribbean, stopping at various ports to shoot photographs. As a public relations effort, the Apollo All-Stars held impromptu concerts on the docks. The group maintained its cover as the Operation and Transport Company. But the mysterious s.h.i.+p, its odd Commodore, young crew, and penchant for secrecy still raised suspicion at every island port in which it tried to dock. One Trinidadian newspaper, having heard a rumor that the Apollo was connected to the CIA, irresponsibly suggested that in addition to housing spies, the s.h.i.+p was also linked, in some nefarious way, to the gruesome Manson murders in Los Angeles.

Over the summer and into the fall, Jeff began to sense a subtle change in tone aboard the s.h.i.+p. ”I could see executives rus.h.i.+ng around and hurrying into meetings, but people were silent about what was going on.” When Jeff asked, he was told it was confidential. By autumn, the Apollo had sailed to the Bahamas. From there, a cadre of Sea Org officers disembarked and flew to the United States.

The nearly decade-long voyage of the Commodore and his Sea Org was at an end. Flag had become too small to accommodate the number of Scientologists clamoring to do the OT levels and other exclusive courses. And the Sea Organization had grown-no longer based aboard s.h.i.+p only, it had offices all over the world. Scientology needed to return to terra firma and establish a land base. They would choose the sleepy Gulf Coast community of Clearwater, Florida, where at the end of 1975, the Scientologists quietly began to arrive.

Hubbard, Mary Sue, and a small retinue settled five miles north, in the town of Dunedin. As with everything about him, the Commodore's location was a closely guarded secret. Once or twice, however, Hubbard ventured out, appearing in Clearwater dressed in a beret and khaki safari uniform. Unaware of what Scientology would ultimately have in store for their town, few locals even recognized him.

Chapter 6.

Over the Rainbow.

ON THE EVENING of May 21, 1976, two covert operatives from the Guardian's Office, Gerald Wolfe and Michael Meisner, both using forged government IDs, entered the U.S. Courthouse in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., intent on breaking into the office of Nathan Dodell, an a.s.sistant U.S. attorney who was investigating Scientology. After informing the security guard that they were there to do legal research, the pair signed the log at the front desk, took the elevator to the law library, and then exited through a back door and walked down the hall to Dodell's office, where they entered with a stolen key. The men made copies of six inches of government files pertaining to the investigation, returned the originals, then left.

One week later, on the evening of May 28, Meisner and Wolfe returned to the same courthouse, and using the same tactic, removed and copied even more files from Dodell's office. On June 11, they attempted to do the same thing. But this time the night librarian, having noticed the men previously, had alerted authorities. Two FBI agents approached Meisner and Wolfe as they waited in the law library for a cleaning crew to vacate Dodell's office. Telling the agents that they were doing legal research, the men presented their identification and were allowed to leave. But Wolfe had mistakenly handed the FBI his actual identification card, resulting three weeks later in his arrest for use and possession of a forged government ID. By August, a grand jury investigation into the Wolfe case had turned up Meisner's name and connected him to the Church of Scientology.

At a hidden location in Los Angeles, Meisner, at the urging of Mary Sue Hubbard, among others, agreed to turn himself in. But he was kept waiting for eight months while the Guardian's Office sought to concoct an appropriate cover story. By the spring of 1977, a frustrated Meisner threatened to leave California and return to Was.h.i.+ngton if the situation was not resolved. Instead, he was put under watch by Scientology guards on orders from his Guardian's Office superiors. In June 1977, a full year after the courthouse incident, Meisner managed to escape his captors and placed a call to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., which phoned the FBI. He was later taken to Was.h.i.+ngton, where he agreed to plead guilty to a conspiracy felony. Then he told all to the grand jury. Two weeks later, on the morning of July 8, 1977, FBI agents raided the Church of Scientology's headquarters in Los Angeles and Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., and carted away close to fifty thousand incriminating doc.u.ments. The government had uncovered Operation Snow White.

Hubbard's quiet small-town life in Florida didn't last long. Still paranoid, he'd fled Clearwater in February 1976, leaving the fledgling Flag Land Base behind when the Guardian's Office discovered that a local reporter was closing in on Hubbard's true ident.i.ty. Mary Sue and a core group of Messengers joined him and found him a new refuge about two hours east of Los Angeles, in the desert community of La Quinta. They called this sprawling $1.3 million ranch their Winter Headquarters, which was immediately given a code name: ”W.” The large, hacienda-style main house, known as Olives, served as a dormitory, while another house, called Palms, became the dining hall. Hubbard's home, known as Rifle, was a bit removed from the main property, across several open fields. Aside from his Messengers, Hubbard's disciples were not told where he went. The Messengers simply said that he'd gone ”over the rainbow.”

Hubbard was now sixty-five, with thinning hair, an expanding belly, and a temperament that grew more bellicose by the day. But he had developed a new pa.s.sion: the Commodore wanted to be a film director. At the ranch, Hubbard would eventually establish the Cine Org to produce instructional films for students learning to be auditors. He strolled the grounds dressed in a cowboy hat and boots, shouting orders at his young a.s.sistants, who quickly learned to operate camera and lighting equipment.

The Messengers had by now come to adopt Hubbard's mannerisms to a remarkable degree. ”If Hubbard screamed at the Messenger when he issued his order, then the Messenger screamed at the person to whom the message was intended,” one young Sea Org member, Sylvana Garritano, later recalled. ”Some of the Messengers could duplicate Hubbard's voice almost perfectly.” The longtime Scientologists who witnessed his behavior were appalled. ”Hubbard had gotten to a point where he didn't have direct interactions or communications with anyone,” said Alan Walter, who had watched the rise of the Messengers on board the Apollo between 1968 and 1975. ”These kids became his voice.”

But though the Messengers were closely involved with Hubbard, it was the Guardian's Office that had become the most powerful ent.i.ty in the Church of Scientology, other than Hubbard himself. Based at Saint Hill, but with eleven hundred staff members all over the world, this extremely sophisticated branch stood outside the official chain of command, as a watchdog.

Scientologists hoping to join the Guardian's Office went through a rigorous screening process, not unlike what an applicant to work for the CIA might endure. A typical background check would include a review of the aspirant's activities and friends.h.i.+ps as well as those of his or her parents, grandparents, and other relatives and friends. All of this material was then compiled in secret dossiers, which made the Guardians especially vulnerable. Though any Scientologist, staff or public, could be subject to internal investigation, these dossiers gave the church particularly sensitive material that could be used against any Guardian who stepped out of line; stringent loyalty was the only line of defense. If staff members rebelled, they might be followed, their phone might be tapped, or their family hara.s.sed with threatening phone calls. ”It freaked you out,” says one former official. ”You had no idea what they were going to do, except that you knew that you would be hunted down.”

This kind of hara.s.sment fell under a Scientology policy known as ”Fair Game.” Originally written by Hubbard in 1965, the ”Fair Game Law,” as Hubbard called it, instructed Scientologists on how to handle Suppressive Persons, both within and outside the church. ”A truly Suppressive Person or Group has no rights of any kind, and actions taken against them are not punishable,” Hubbard wrote. He later explained that such enemies ”may be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed.”