L. Ron Hubbard fisticuffs! Scientology secrets unearthed in a new government disclosure By Tony Ortega, The Underground Bunker, January 17, 2015 A friend of the Underground Bunker who is also a researcher at WhyWeProtest.net hit a small jackpot this week when a Freedom of Information Act request she made through the MuckRock website yielded fascinating new disclosures about Scientology in its early decades. In the early 1960s, the Food and Drug Administration was concerned enough about the health claims being made by Scientology with its “e-meters,” that it raided the “Founding Church” in Washington DC after several years of investigations. Our researcher’s request yielded documents in the FDA’s files that its inspectors had been gathering for those investigations, both before and after the raid occurred on January 3, 1963. The raid is well known and has been covered at length in books like Russell Miller’s 1987 history, Bare-Faced Messiah, as well as numerous websites that collect Scientology’s early history. But these documents are raw research that contain interviews done by investigators which have never been put online or appear in Miller’s book. (And we searched, believe us.) We have a couple of documents for you today that contain some strange and wonderful tales about L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology, and we’d love to hear from oldtimers who might be able to help us fill out the information in these records even more. So we’ll start with our first document, which was produced at the FDA’s Division of Regulatory Management (DRM) in Baltimore. DRM inspector John C. Bullard, in February 1963, was following up on a tip that the local Pinkerton Agency had done an investigation of L. Ron Hubbard and his e-meters several years earlier, in 1957. The document contains the notes of Bullard’s interview with Pinkerton private eye C.E. McElwee. Continued here: http://tonyortega.org/2015/01/17/scientology-secrets-unearthed-in-new-government-disclosure/
Scientology’s first ‘Clear': L. Ron Hubbard intended to return as his daughter Diana’s son We have more fascinating documents recently unearthed by a researcher who is a friend to the Underground Bunker as well as a mainstay at WhyWeProtest.net. As we said on Friday, her Freedom of Information Act request with the Food and Drug Administration (made with the help of the MuckRock website) is yielding some interesting new insights into Scientology’s early history. The FDA intensively researched Scientology and its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, because it was concerned about the health claims Hubbard was making about the “e-meter,” the crude electronic device used in Scientology “auditing.” Hubbard claimed that nearly all human ailments were psychosomatic in nature, and so his auditing with e-meters could rid a person of virtually any illness. On January 3, 1963, the FDA, with the help of 14 federal marshals, raided Scientology’s “Founding Church” in Washington DC, and confiscated about a hundred of the e-meters. The ensuing legal battle eventually resulted in a settlement requiring Scientology to put a disclaimer on each e-meter about how it was not to be used in the diagnosis of illness. Records show that the FDA continued investigating Hubbard and Scientology well after the raid occurred and as the legal battle continued. Today, we have some documents resulting from interviews done by FDA investigators in 1970 that we thought you’d want to see. Continued here: http://tonyortega.org/2015/01/20/sc...ntended-to-return-as-his-daughter-dianas-son/
Scientology secrets in government docs: Did the feds have a chance to stop ‘Snow White’? Today, we’d like to get back to those really fascinating revelations about Scientology’s early days which were dug up recently in a Freedom of Information Act request by a researcher who is a friend to the Underground Bunker and a regular presence at WhyWeProtest.net. http://tonyortega.org/2015/01/28/sc...id-the-feds-have-a-chance-to-stop-snow-white/
When Richard Nixon ordered the Secret Service to investigate Scientology | The Underground Bunker We have another fun discovery found in a Freedom of Information Act request made by a friend to the Underground Bunker. Her request pried loose documents gathered by the Food and Drug Administration during its long investigation of L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology. In the late 1950s, the FDA had become concerned about the health claims being made by Hubbard for his auditing processes with “e-meters.” About 100 of the machines were seized when the FDA raided the Washington DC church in 1963, and inspectors continued to gather information about Hubbard as they prepared for what turned out to be a prolonged court fight. (In 1971 the case was settled when Scientology agreed to put a disclaimer on all e-meters that it was not a device for medical diagnosis.) About a month after the raid, the FDA looked into an interesting lead: Five years earlier, in 1958, Scientology had been probed by the US Secret Service on a request from then Vice President Richard Nixon — and the reason why is pretty wild. Nixon was unhappy that Hubbard was making use the vice president’s name in a bizarre scheme that looked like a ham-fisted attempt to smear and shake down psychiatrists and psychologists. Continued here: http://tonyortega.org/2015/02/03/wh...he-secret-service-to-investigate-scientology/
An L. Ron Hubbard island fantasy: The Scientology daydream you haven’t heard | The Underground Bunker On Tuesday, we told you about new FDA documents which helped us fill in some gaps in Scientology history. The documents took us back to late 1957, when L. Ron Hubbard hatched a scheme to force the country’s psychiatrists and psychologists to take a “loyalty oath” he’d dreamed up, with hopes of rooting out disloyal shrinks and then sending their names to Vice President Richard Nixon for persecution. Nixon didn’t like being named in Hubbard’s plot, and he sicced the Secret Service on Scientology, which prompted Hubbard in 1960 to tell his followers not to vote for Nixon in that year’s presidential election. And hey, Nixon lost in a squeaker! And you thought postulates weren’t effective. Anyway, Lauren Wolf, Lawrence Wright’s research assistant on his book Going Clear, an associate producer on Alex Gibney’s film version, and a friend to the Underground Bunker, thought we’d like to see some additional documents from that era that she had dug up and that have never been made public before. And wow, they are fun, and now we want to take another run at that period. We think you’ll like the results. We’ll start by going back to April 13, 1957, just shy of seven years since the publication of Dianetics and the start of Hubbard’s subsequent adventures in space piracy. On that day, Hubbard gave a remarkable lecture in London that our readers who go back to our Village Voice days may remember with fondness. The lecture recounts a tall tale about Hubbard and a friend putting down a revolt by the country’s nuclear scientists, preventing them from overthrowing the US government with A-bombs, and was a highlight when a version of the lecture with filmed recreations was shown at the 2012 Hubbard Birthday Event in Clearwater, Florida. Continued here: http://tonyortega.org/2015/02/07/an...sy-the-scientology-daydream-you-havent-heard/
Get a load of this bullshit. Warning: Scientology site freedom.lronhubbard.org/page010.htm For these goofs to call Nixon or anyone else ''vindictive'' is eyebrow raising considering what we know about Hubbard. Anyway the rest of the article reads like the equivalent of talking to an OSA handler during a protest. In other words; barf inducing. A Hubbard by any other name would still smell like shit. Edit: Also, the fact that they would criticize Nixon for having an ''enemies list'' is a real laugh considering Hubbard invented the idea years before and Scientology's list is about a thousand times larger.
New government release contains a surprise: L. Ron Hubbard flunked out of high school, too! | The Underground Bunker We have another surprising set of documents recently unearthed by a researcher who is a friend to the Underground Bunker and has been making use of the Muckrack website for submitting Freedom of Information Act record requests. For several weeks now, we’ve been plowing through documents released by the Food and Drug Administration, which investigated L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology for a 1963 raid of the Washington DC “Founding Church,” and then continued to gather information during 8 years of intense litigation over health claims made by Scientology for its “E-meter.” We have found that FDA inspectors looked into every aspect of Hubbard’s life, and in these new documents, we learn that in 1963 they dug up a pretty complete set of Hubbard’s school records. Longtime Scientology watchers know that transcripts of Hubbard’s brief college career have been online for many years. But now, for the first time, we have his high school grades. And also for the first time, a small mystery about Hubbard’s school years has been solved. In the great biographical books about Hubbard — Russell Miller’s 1987 book, Bare-Faced Messiah, and Jon Atack’s 1990 volume, A Piece of Blue Sky — there’s agreement that Hubbard suddenly left Helena High School in Montana near the end of his junior year. But why, exactly, was something that even Miller could never be sure of. Now we have a more definitive answer for that, and a lot more. Let’s dig in! According to Miller’s fine book (which was republished last year), in 1924 Hubbard moved with his father, Navy Lieutenant Harry Hubbard, and his mother, Ledora May (Waterbury) Hubbard, from Washington DC to Bremerton, Washington. Ron then started the eighth grade at Union High School in Bremerton, so in the academic year 1925-1926, he was a high school freshman. FDA inspector George D. Tilroe managed to track down just a little about Hubbard’s time at Union High, and found just two course results there: In Spanish II, Hubbard managed to get two ‘D’ grades, and in physical geography a ‘B.’ In the summer of 1926, the Hubbards moved across the Puget Sound to Seattle, and Ron started his sophomore year at Queen Anne High School that fall. He spent just one academic year there, and Tilroe obtained these grades for him: Advanced algebra II: C Commercial geography: C Elementary algebra I: grades D & C English I: D English II: C French I: C Physiography: B Spanish I: C World history II: C Continued here: http://tonyortega.org/2015/02/24/ne...l-ron-hubbard-flunked-out-of-high-school-too/
Thanks for creating a dedicated thread for these FOIA-related posts TWG! I searched up all the other related posts from this same series Ortega is doing (currently are spread around misc. treads) and did a mod report asking to have them moved to this new one.
Now it’s Scientology UK that opens its books, and we have the numbers | The Underground Bunker What a week of “dox” we have going on this week in the Underground Bunker. Scientology Australia had to open up its books because of changes in the law there, and on Monday we had the latest numbers and a rare peek inside Scientology finances. Yesterday, a release of government documents gave us our first look ever at L. Ron Hubbard’s high school grades. (Random, we know.) And now, today, another telling disclosure. We have the latest filing for the finances of Scientology’s organizations in the UK which, for bizarre reasons we’ll explain in a minute, are actually registered with Australia’s national charities commission. It was journalist Bryan Seymour who publicized what a strange setup Scientology UK has in South Australia. See, in the UK, Scientology does not have charity status. So, in order to get around regulation there, the UK orgs are registered as a company called “Church of Scientology Religious Education College, Inc. or COSRECI, which is based in Adelaide, Australia, where Scientology is recognized as a church. And that has all of the orgs and missions in Britain being registered to a suburban address on the other side of the world, probably for tax avoidance reasons. Continued here: http://tonyortega.org/2015/02/25/no...that-opens-its-books-and-we-have-the-numbers/
More proof that Scientology used the ‘R2-45′ method to intimidate enemies By Tony Ortega, The Underground Bunker, March 17, 2015 We’re back with more documents that have been released recently by the FDA that illuminate Scientology’s early years. Thanks to a researcher who is a friend to the Underground Bunker and her work with the Muckrock website, we have yet more investigative records that have never before been online. In this case, we’re looking at an early Dianeticist and Scientologist who was among the first to be targeted by the “ethics” procedures that L. Ron Hubbard put into place in 1965 as he became more concerned about splinter groups. After 1965, Hubbard and Scientology became much more openly about control and interrogation, declaring enemies “suppressive” and subjecting former members and critics to “Fair Game.” <snipped> This is twice now that the new FDA documents we’ve received have contained references to Scientologists at this time being intimidated by the church with references to “R2-45,” which puts a new spin on the notorious policy. Later in 1970, FDA inspectors talked to another early champion of Hubbard who had been expelled, Jack Horner, who also said he was sent an R2-45 letter along with his notice of being subject to Fair Game. These two references in FDA investigative reports should change the way R2-45 has been discussed by Scientology historians. Until now, debates about R2-45 — Hubbard’s idea that a person could be “exteriorized” from his body with a bullet to the head — had argued on the one hand whether Scientology actually ordered murders of enemies, or whether it was all just a joke by Hubbard. These documents suggest that there was a third possibility: Hubbard’s references to separating the mind from the body with the use of a .45-caliber weapon was another form of intimidation he used against former members. More here: http://tonyortega.org/2015/03/17/mo...-used-the-r2-45-method-to-intimidate-enemies/
When the FDA interviewed L. Ron Hubbard’s first family about Scientology By Tony Ortega, The Underground Bunker, June 9, 2015 Today we have copies of some really interesting interviews FDA officials conducted in 1963 with Hubbard’s first wife, Polly Grubb, and their two children, L. Ron Hubbard Jr (“Nibs”) and Katherine. The interview of Polly has been online for some time — we think it was shared with the FBI and released with those records years ago. But we aren’t sure if the document about Nibs and Katy has been seen by many people. And it’s really fascinating. http://tonyortega.org/2015/06/09/wh...-ron-hubbards-first-family-about-scientology/
Another document trove on L. Ron Hubbard’s troubled son, Nibs, the Scientology flip-flopper By Tony Ortega, The Underground Bunker, June 17, 2015 Last week, we told you we’d found yet more interesting and previously unseen documents about L. Ron Hubbard and his family in records that have been released lately by the FDA. Researcher R.M. Seibert has been doggedly pursuing the records with the help of the MuckRock website, prying out of the FDA an investigation it did in the 1960s as part of its litigation against the Church of Scientology. Last time, we told you that as part of its investigation of Hubbard, in 1963 the FDA had tracked down and interviewed Hubbard’s first wife, Polly, as well as their two children, L. Ron Hubbard Jr — also known as “Nibs” — and Katy. To our surprise, Katy turned out to be loyal to Scientology and criticized the FDA for its investigation, which was based on health claims made for Scientology’s “E-meter.” She denied that her father said that his machine cured anything, and she said that Scientology was a beneficial movement — even though she’d never finished a Scientology course, and hadn’t worked for the organization in several years. Nibs on the other hand explained that he’d worked for Scientology in the 1950s as a young man but then had left in 1959 and was then, in 1963, happy to tell the FDA inspectors that they were right — Scientology did make plenty of health claims, and they were bogus claims. The FDA then discussed the prospect of using Nibs as a witness in its litigation. Now, we have documents which showed that the FDA then came back to Nibs several years later — in 1970 — after losing track of him. The agency still was interested in having him testify for its litigation, which was still ongoing, but it found in the intervening years that Nibs had pulled a flip-flop. In 1967, Nibs was asked by the government to testify in a trial that led to the IRS stripping Scientology of its tax-exempt status. The courts would continue to hold this position — that Scientology was a business that benefited its leader, rather than a non-profit organization with a religious purpose — until the IRS caved in 1991 and began a process that gave Scientology tax exempt status in 1993. So that 1967 trial was rather crucial, and Nibs had been one of the people who helped the IRS make its case. Continued here: http://tonyortega.org/2015/06/17/an...oubled-son-nibs-the-scientology-flip-flopper/
‘Book ‘em, Danno': Just for fun, L. Ron Hubbard’s fingerprints, revealed! By Tony Ortega, The Underground Bunker, June 21, 2015 Thanks to researcher R.M. Seibert and the MuckRock website, we’ve been receiving some pretty great original documents about L. Ron Hubbard and his family lately, some of which have never been seen in public or put online before. Much of it is also very serious, and is having us rethink some of the historical record about Hubbard and Scientology. But also, there’s some fun stuff. Like the new file that came through Friday. It’s a document that we’ve found online before, but only in textual format. Is this the first time L. Ron’s actual full set of fingerprints have been online? We think it is, but either way we still think it’s fun! Our researcher tells us that when the FBI released Hubbard’s file, it included references to Hubbard’s fingerprints, but it left out the fingerprint card itself. But in a new release of Interpol documents, the fingerprint card turned out to be intact. According to the FBI’s notation, Hubbard’s fingerprints had been taken four different times by 1983 when the agency went looking for them. On January 22, 1943, Hubbard was fingerprinted by the FCC, perhaps for a military assignment. (It’s marked “non-arrest entry,” which means it might be for a job or some other security measure.) Hubbard submitted fingerprints on another non-arrest entry on the last day of 1947 to the Los Angeles Police Department. It was around this time that Hubbard became a “special officer” for the police force in some kind of auxiliary role. Just the week before, on December 24, he had obtained his divorce from his first wife, Polly Grubb, although he had already married his second wife, Sara Northrup, the year before. The third set of fingerprints were gathered on August 17, 1948 by the San Luis Obispo Sheriff’s Department on the charge of petty theft, for writing bad checks. Then, on December 16, 1952, Hubbard was fingerprinted by US Marshals in Philadelphia on a bankruptcy charge. It’s the 1948 San Luis Obispo arrest that produced the fingerprint card you see here. Continued here: http://tonyortega.org/2015/06/21/book-em-danno-just-for-fun-l-ron-hubbards-fingerprints-revealed/
DOX: A former L. Ron Hubbard business partner dishes on Scientology to the feds By Tony Ortega, The Underground Bunker, February 19, 2016 For more than a year now we’ve been bringing you previously unseen and often startling documents that our friend and researcher R.M. Seibert managed, with the help of the MuckRock website, to pry out of the hands of the Food and Drug Administration in a Freedom of Information Act request. The FDA investigated L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology from about 1958 to 1971, and raided the Washington DC church in 1963. The documents we’ve recovered have ranged from Hubbard’s high school grades to interviews with family members, former church members, and even some major science fiction figures. Last January, we told you about a really odd little nugget that turned up in the pile. FDA inspectors became interested in a man named Joseph Ettelmann who had a business dispute with Hubbard. According to the FDA files, Ettelmann and Hubbard had become “close friends” and had gone into business together, becoming partners in a jewelry plant that manufactured Zodiac pendants for use in Hubbard’s church. Then they had a falling out, leading to a lawsuit and a wild scene when Ettelmann tried to serve the suit on Hubbard. At the time, we noted how crazy that sounded. Hubbard and astrology? That’s not a connection we’d ever heard before. Well, now we have even stranger stuff to fill out that tale a bit. It turns out that in February 1963, the FDA tracked down Ettelmann and interviewed him, and we thought you’d want to see what the man said. Some of it is just plain weird. Continued here: http://tonyortega.org/2016/02/19/do...ss-partner-dishes-on-scientology-to-the-feds/
Mary Sue Hubbard was into astrology bigtime, but was discrete about it in her dealings with people in the scientology organization. She didn't want to turn off staff who (rightfully) thought it was bullshit.
When Scientology was in trouble in 1955, L. Ron Hubbard told prosecutor he was a ‘psychologist’ By Tony Ortega, The Underground Bunker, February w1, 2016 One of Scientology’s early run-ins with the law resulted in a remarkable letter by L. Ron Hubbard that has previously never seen the light of day — in it, Hubbard claimed to be a psychologist, and proposed that a vast conspiracy had been aimed at his Phoenix, Arizona operation. It’s a remarkable letter, and we have our friend and researcher R.M. Seibert to thank for bringing it to us after she managed to pry it out of the possession of the Food and Drug Administration with the help of the MuckRock website. From 1958 to 1971, the FDA investigated Hubbard and Scientology, including a raid of the Washington DC Scientology church in January 1963. For more than a year, we’ve been posting remarkable documents from the FDA files, some of which have never been posted online before. This time, we have documents that the FDA obtained from the files of officials in Phoenix, where Scientology faced one of its early legal challenges. L. Ron Hubbard had published Dianetics in 1950 while he was living in New Jersey, and that’s where the first Dianetics “foundation” was formed following the book’s surprising popularity. He also promoted Dianetics in Los Angeles, where another foundation was formed. But Dianetics proved to be a passing fad, and by 1951 Hubbard was in financial trouble and his foundations were bankrupt. He regrouped in Wichita with the help of an oilman millionaire there, and then moved to Phoenix in 1952, coming up then with his new idea he called “Scientology” and creating the “Hubbard Association of Scientologists International,” HASI. Then, in September 1955, there was an interesting arrest in Phoenix of a Scientologist for practicing, well, Scientology. His name was Edd Clark, 56, and he had come to Phoenix to join HASI after he had received training in Scientology at another HASI branch near Seattle. He was arrested after he practiced Scientology techniques on two women, taking payments of $55 after helping them with complaints they had of headaches and other ailments. It turned out, however, that the women were actually working a sting — one was a police detective, the other worked in the office of county prosecutor William P. Mahoney Jr. Clark was charged with practicing medicine without a license, and the case made the local newspapers. By then, Hubbard himself had moved on from Phoenix to Washington DC, where he opened the “Founding” Church of Scientology that July. Two days after the news of Edd Clark’s arrest was made public, Hubbard sat down and wrote a really remarkable letter to Mahoney, the prosecutor, explaining that he was a scientist and psychologist, a war veteran, and that what Mahoney should really be investigating is an obviously well-funded and shadowy effort to send people with “records of insanity” to infiltrate Scientology in order to discredit it. Here, see for yourself. Continued here: http://tonyortega.org/2016/02/21/wh...ubbard-told-prosecutor-he-was-a-psychologist/
Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s tall tales about himself never get old By Tony Ortega, June 2, 2016 The FBI has released many documents about Scientology and L. Ron Hubbard in the past. They have helped inform books such as Going Clear by Lawrence Wright, as well as the Alex Gibney film of the same name. Those FBI files have been released again to the MuckRock website, which made a request for them in April. And although the documents in that release are not new, it sure is fun to pore through them again. We thought we’d share one with you today, which serves to remind us the kinds of things L. Ron Hubbard used to get away with before journalists like Russell Miller came along and fact-checked his biography. This is a description of Hubbard that was put out by the “Founding” Church of Scientology in Washington DC, around the year 1957, which was a couple of years after that org had been started. How many untruths can you spot? Continued here: http://tonyortega.org/2016/06/02/sc...bards-tall-tales-about-himself-never-get-old/
L. Ron Hubbard: 'Dr.' (No!) PhD (No!) Nuclear Physicist (No!) Civil Engineer (No!) WWII War Hero (No!) Presented an amazing 21 Medals of Honor (No!) L. Ron Hubbard: Fake PhD (Yes!) Failing College Student (Yes!) Disgraced, Demoted Stolen Valor Military Officer (Yes!) Convicted Fraud (Yes!) Embezzler (Yes!) Child Abuser (Yes!) Google: L. Ron Hubbard abuses 4 year old Derek Greene on the Apollo Created his own Gulag with illegal detentions (Yes, The RPF!) Google: Scientology 'Babysitting' / Scientology Prison Created very human like 'Ronbots' under his evil spell (Jury still out!) L. Ron Hubbard's original Ronbot Prototype: The Ronettes (So lifelike)
DOX: Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s nutty scheme to strong-arm America’s psychologists By Tony Ortega, April 18, 2017 Quote: Wow, what a couple of days of reporting we’ve had. Big stuff is coming, but for now we have to keep a lid on it. In the meantime, our old friend Mark “Warrior” Plummer sent over a couple of nice items we thought you’d want to see. The first item is from 1958, and it’s one of L. Ron Hubbard’s bolder scams. We wrote about it a couple of years ago, but Mark has sent us scans of the full document, a pamphlet put out by Hubbard in Washington D.C., trying to bully the country’s psychologists into signing “loyalty oaths” in order to make them subservient to Scientology. He even claimed that Vice President Richard Nixon supported the plan, which Nixon didn’t like at all. Read our earlier story to hear how Nixon apparently never forgot Hubbard’s attempt to use his name in this wacky scheme. During a lecture, Hubbard explained how he wanted the scheme to work, as we explained previously. Hubbard told his listeners at the Ability Congress that he wanted them to take copies of the loyalty oath and send it to every psychologist and psychiatrist in the country. The goal was “to place under the noses of every person in mental practice in the United States whether graduated from universities or anything else, a copy of this code and ask them to sign on the dotted line, whether it is done by mail or in person, and to carefully note down all those who refuse to sign it. Very important that last step,” he said.Those people who signed the oath would be considered “safe.” They could then pay $80 in order to become “certified,” card-carrying NAAP members (Scientologists would pay only $25). Those that refused to take the loyalty oath would be labeled “potential subversive,” and those that “rail against it” would be labeled “subversive.” Soak up the audacity of this document, and imagine that Hubbard actually thought he might convince the country’s psychologists to submit: Continued at http://tonyortega.org/2017/04/18/do...-scheme-to-strong-arm-americas-psychologists/
"(17) To hold in confidence the secrets of my patients." All licensed psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers and mental health counsellors in the U.S. and Canada are mandatory reporters who are obligated to report criminal activities to law enforcement. Anything else must be held in confidence and divulged only upon court order or lawful written release from the client/patient. So Hubbard was insisting that they pay him $80 and promise to violate the law so he would not label them as "potential subversive". Sure looks like racketeering to me. Another scientology scam.
L. Ron Hubbard was no Bill Shakespeare, but here’s some of his early playwriting anyway By Tony Ortega, May 26, 2017 Quote: Our tipster who pores through old newspaper clippings sent a message this week, barely concealing his glee. He said that scans of The University Hatchet were added online last year going back to its founding in 1904. The Hatchet is the student newspaper at George Washington University in the District of Columbia, a school that Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard attended from 1930 to 1932. He left after his sophomore year, and never got a college degree. But while he was at GW as an engineering student, he got up to numerous extracurricular activities, including flying gliders and writing for the Hatchet. In an earlier story, we found an assessment of Hubbard’s final year at GW in an investigation by the FDA: In September 1931 he was placed on probation due to grades. On April 23, 1932 he was issued a warning relative to his grades in mathematics and physics. A math instructor indicates on a probational report that “failed make up in analytics, failed calculus flatly. Work throughout term was weak, also failed final exam. Apparently loafing. Polite, talkative, but weak student.” Just a few weeks after getting that warning, in the May 24, 1932 issue of The Hatchet — 85 years ago this week — Hubbard had a short play published in the Hatchet’s literary review. We hadn’t seen it before, and it doesn’t appear to be online. So we thought we’d reproduce it here to get a sense of 21-year-old Hubbard’s playwriting. Continued at http://tonyortega.org/2017/05/26/l-...t-heres-some-of-his-early-playwriting-anyway/
Freed files: Scenes from a government investigation of Scientology By Tony Ortega, July 2, 2018 Quote: In 1958, the Food and Drug Administration raided Scientology’s Washington DC org in an investigation of health claims that the church was making with its “E-meter.” Over the next several years, the FDA conducted an intense and widespread investigation of L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology before ultimately settling the matter in 1971. Our dogged researcher R.M. Seibert has been pulling amazing documents out of the FDA files for us, and in them we found such things as L. Ron Hubbard’s high school grades, which had never been published before, as well as a lot of other gems. There was so much in the pile, we literally haven’t had time to get to it all. Today, we’re going to present some brief snapshots from the investigation that we didn’t want to get overlooked. After going through them, we’re struck by how much the FDA inspectors of the 1960s were running into the same things we’re seeing emerge today, on Leah Remini’s series, for example. We hope you find these small peeks into what it was like to build a case against Scientology as interesting as we do. Continued at https://tonyortega.org/2018/07/02/freed-files-scenes-from-a-government-investigation-of-scientology/ Search keywords that appear in the article: E-meter, Robert Wingate, Evelyn Wingate, FDA, New Jersey State Board of Medical Examiners, Wayne Prewitt, suicide, LAPD, Frank Mosebar, Dorothy Waller, Robert Waller, Mildred Troup, Elmo Troup
