CZM Rewind: Part One: The Last Days of L. Ron Hubbard

Robert is joined by Michael Swaim and Abe Epperson to discuss the end of L. Ron Hubbard's life. 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media. Hey everyone, Robert Evans here. It has been
quite a summer. We've had two political conventions and I
am just drained. So again, we are taking a week
off and running a rerun this week. We do that
occasionally because everyone deserves time off, including every now and

(00:22):
then me. I did want to note this is an
old episode on the Latter Days of l Ron Hubbard,
one of our beloved podcast subjects, with Michael Swain and
Abe Eperson, two of my old friends from Cracked dot com.
They both have a podcast network called small Beans, which
you can back on Patreon and you can find whoever

(00:43):
podcasts are. And I also wanted to note and plug
my friend Michael's novel The Climb. It's an epic fantasy
memoir with some you know, magic realism elements to it.
You can google The Climb Michael Swain Patreon. You can
also look up The Climb wherever books are sold. I'm

(01:03):
seeing it right now on the Barnes and Noble website.
There's a bunch of other places that you can find
The Climb. So check out The Climb Michael swam Just
type that into Google and here's the end of l
Ron Hubbard whats l running my Hubbards. I'm Robert Evans.

(01:26):
This is Behind the Bastards, the podcast where we talk
about the very worst people in all of history. And
today is our super special conclusion episode of the life
of l Ron Hubbard. And with me today to talk
about the last ten years of the craziest man in
History's life is Michael Swam and Abe Eperson.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
For having us.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
I was making cheering and crowd sounds with my mouth.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Oh it's I thought it's not a mechanical.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
I didn't do a good job.

Speaker 3 (01:54):
I thought you just did that for every ten minutes
to like seep out all the saliva from your No.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
No, you know what I do when I fuck something
up like that. Though, As I toss my throw in bagels, Oh.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
Oh, I was aware of the throwing bagel trope. I
thought they were individually thrown A three.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
Yeah, he's angry, and they bounced right off the wall
and back to me. So I'm re armed with my
throwing bag.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
We're also in a room with dozens of panels. You
could have targeted. You targeted one right by someone's head.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
Well, that's because the nature of the bounce means it
won't hit Sophie. If I took a board to her left,
it'll bounce right back to me. I'm an expert.

Speaker 3 (02:32):
I love that you keep them contained in the bag though,
so your vigilanteism is at least kinde exactly like you're You.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
Get ants and rats and stuff.

Speaker 4 (02:42):
That's how you get rats.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
Yeah, and I don't want rats inside the house. I
only want rats in the houses of my enemies.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
There's only the government acceptable level of rat in this studio,
and I appreciate.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
That, yeah, which is five.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
Yeah, that's the max, same as peanut butter.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
Which is why there's so many rats the open peanut
butter jars from back when I had.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
Trying to rescue their rat friends who were in the
peanut butter jars.

Speaker 3 (03:06):
See, I have five rats at home too, and I'm
in like a ratitude situation.

Speaker 1 (03:10):
So I haven't seen that movie, but I think a
guy cooks rats into food and that serves them to
the people of friends.

Speaker 3 (03:17):
Abes eating rats is the correct one.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
Well, I mean the rent is too damn high in
the rat Now, did y'all both listen to uh the
three parter I did on the Life of l. Ron
Hubbard or L. R.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
H I did.

Speaker 4 (03:35):
Indeed.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
Now I got to ask before we before we get in,
were you surprised to learn that he in fact could fuck?

Speaker 2 (03:41):
Oh? I was ready to immediately answer no to everything
you said, because I've done of like he's not the
most obscure bastard you've covered. No, I've done my own research.
But yeah, that was the one detail you found, the
one detail that was surprising too.

Speaker 3 (03:56):
I also, I was very pleased because I'm like, it's
not like he needed a win.

Speaker 4 (04:02):
No, you no, Like he definitely didn't need a win.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
Kind of nailed it.

Speaker 3 (04:05):
But it's just kind of one of those like just
one of those things that like life just serves up
to you, like reality just says and circumstance yeah, and
you go, ah, yes, back to nihilism.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
That's been Like you find out Milton Burle had a
foot long there and you're like why but okay.

Speaker 1 (04:22):
Okay, I don't know if there's one thing that came
across in that book of a thousand Milton Berle jokes.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
I had that as a kid man. You just flashed
me back to I haven't thought of it in twenty years.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
And I remember thinking as a seven year old reading that.
I bet this guy had a fucking salami that could
have knocked at head.

Speaker 3 (04:39):
Yeah yeah, well it was, says a little child, imagining.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
That it was dedicated to his testicles for all the
weight they bear as a kid. I just didn't think
anything of that, you know.

Speaker 1 (04:49):
It just seemed like a normal old comedian talking about
the balls, speaking of old comedians talking about their balls,
or not speaking of that at all. When we last
left el Ron Hubbard, he'd just come ashore in Florida.
After multiple years of shirking all the laws of land
and most of the laws of sea. Old, ill and
as crazy as a cat with an inner ear infection,

(05:09):
Hubbard launched Operation gold Mine. This was his plan to
create the Mecca of Scientology, an entire city dedicated to
the religion where scientologists could rule one another in other
people based on the enlightened principles of their glorious religion. Now,
you guys are gonna build a mecca to your own
personal religions. Where do you pick?

Speaker 2 (05:26):
Oh? Boy, well, I'll you got see this as an
improv rule. You know you're on the spot. First answer,
no censorship. What came to mind was Portland, Oregon.

Speaker 1 (05:37):
No that's a great place to have a call. That's
where I played.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
Because I'm seeing you, but also because i've often that's
been at the top of my list of other places
to live. When I went inn F I leave VLA.
But I also heard your episode about in part the
history of Portland. So I feel bad saying that.

Speaker 4 (05:55):
I would put mine on top of Mount Rushmore.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
Way better yet more time to yeah, well, I.

Speaker 4 (06:00):
Have more time to think. Yeah. In general on Mount Rushmore.

Speaker 2 (06:04):
Question is would it be your face? Is your mecca
in the shape of your face?

Speaker 4 (06:08):
Could be whatever funck I want?

Speaker 1 (06:09):
Just you frowning down on four presidents.

Speaker 4 (06:12):
On my ongoing battle to beat the president.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
That is what we know about a well. L Ron
Hubbard was as I think we've established the craziest man
who ever lived. He's a contender in that. And as
the craziest man who ever lived, he picked the craziest state.
And I say this as a Texan. Nobody beats Florida
in the in the crazy State lottery, it's got to
be Florida. And of course l Ron Hubbard picked the
city of clear Water, Florida. Now there was a downside

(06:39):
to this, which is that the site that el Ron
Hubbard and his minions selected for their faith's new capital
was already occupied by tens of thousands of people who
were not scientologists. So this was a problem, but not
an insurmountable one because l Ron Hubbard has had as
he had you know, most of our last apond. Oh,
it's not a theory now, hasp. Oh he's still alive.

(07:01):
I hope his head's frozen in a jar. I'd like
to see him get one more act.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
I'd like to see him and Ted Williams head fight
each other someday.

Speaker 4 (07:08):
Sure, just rolling around.

Speaker 1 (07:12):
It's one of those things where, after everything we went
through in the first three episodes, it's it's shocking to
me how much gas this guy had left.

Speaker 2 (07:18):
In the This is only the last decade.

Speaker 1 (07:20):
Right, This is the last like ten years of his life.

Speaker 2 (07:22):
Home again. This is the Game of Thrones finale episode.
This is not the whole run.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
Most dictators get a two part, maybe a three part like.

Speaker 2 (07:30):
El Ron Hubbard. This is a five part wait. Yeah, so.

Speaker 1 (07:37):
Clearwater, Florida, is located west of Tampa and north of
Saint Petersburg on the far edge of Florida's Midwest coast.
YEP it has a fine harbor, which was good because
al Ron Hubbard still fancied himself a commodore. And as
you pointed out there, Michael, the city's name Clearwater made
it a perfect fit with ol Ron Hubbard's religious cannon,
because of course clear is the state of being like yeah, yeah,

(07:59):
it's the whole goal in the scientology canon. In nineteen
seventy five, when it disguised el Ron Hubbard arrived with
his retinue, Clearwater was a sleepy retirement community. It went
by the nickname Sparkling clear Water, and a third of
its one hundred thousand citizens were over sixty five. It
was not a place that prided itself on hustle and bustle.
The town's most prominent building was the old Fort Harrison Hotel,
an increasingly decrepit monument to Clearwater's glory days. The hotel

(08:22):
was empty and for sale. In October, the Southern Land
Sales and Development Corporation purchased the old hotel. The local attorney,
who represented the building's old owners, called it one of
the strangest transactions he'd ever seen. The building's new buyers
had paid two point three million dollars in cash, for
the building, and the fact that they had two point
three million in cash was literally all he knew about them.

(08:43):
The buyers would not even admit to having a telephone number,
good Little gold Smell, a grift code.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
It's almost impressive they didn't run a foul of Disney
operatives buying land out from Florida residence.

Speaker 4 (08:55):
If there to.

Speaker 1 (08:56):
Expand any group like crazier and wealthier than the Disney
Corporation in this period of time, it's the Church of Scientology.
Now it's Disney.

Speaker 3 (09:05):
I mean, we all have a lot, like humans have
a long history of just like, if you get enough
people and put them in a spot, you can declare
that yours.

Speaker 1 (09:12):
Yeah, which is exactly what I planned to do someday
in Oregon.

Speaker 4 (09:16):
Like a bunch of people.

Speaker 1 (09:17):
You guys saw that documentary Wild Wild Country. Yeah, like
that that literally is my goal minus poisoning that town. Probably.

Speaker 2 (09:25):
I saw the first problem the important and I was like,
it's kind of boring. They're not culty enough for my
like the part of me that wants to watch it.
And everyone said, something happens, So now I know what.
They poison a town.

Speaker 1 (09:36):
Yet it they poisoned the shit out of a town.

Speaker 2 (09:38):
We're past spoiler range.

Speaker 1 (09:39):
I think they were kind of on the right though. Anyway,
let's move on past that the town. Yeah. Less than
a week later, the Southern Land Development Corporation bought another
of the city's landmarks, the Bank of Clearwater Building. They
paid five hundred and fifty thousand dollars, again in cash. Now,
residents started talking after this, and they talked even more
when a strange old man in a green jumpsuit showed
up in town and publicly announced that the Southern Land

(10:00):
Company would be leasing the buildings to a group called
the United Churches of Florida. He claimed that the United
Churches would host religious meetings and seminars there. Now this
perplexed local journalists. They could find no records anywhere of
the United Churches of Florida ever existing. This was because
there was no United Churches of Florida, or Southern Land
Development Company for that matter. Both organizations were, of course,

(10:22):
fronts for the Church of Scientology. On December fifth, l
Run Hubbard officially announced Project Power three aka Operation Normandy.

Speaker 2 (10:29):
I shave with that. That's it gets really close.

Speaker 1 (10:33):
Those three blades. Yeah, yeah, you say that with a
full beard. Look, no one at this table shaves regularly.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
The literature, the literature they handed me made me understand
that I am clean shaven. The scientology raiser works. This
is just my sin coming out of my Facebook. Yeahs shave,
I'm gonna get it out of it away. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:53):
Get you're shaved on the inside, which is where it is.

Speaker 4 (10:55):
Yeah, little hairs, little thetans, it's all the same stuff.

Speaker 1 (10:59):
Now. The purpose of Operation Normandy was quote to fully
investigate the Clearwater City and County area so we can
distinguish our friends from our enemies and handle is needed.
Hubbard's overall plan to accomplish this was quote to locate
opinion leaders, then their enemies the dirt scandal, vested interest
crime of the enemies with overt data as much as possible,
then turn this over to United Churches, who will approach

(11:21):
the opinion leader and get his agreement to look into
a specific subject which will lead to the enemy's crimes.
United Churches then discovers the scandal, et cetera, and turns
it over to the opinion leader for his use. Ops
can be done as a follow up to remove or
restrain the enemy. So Wow just gets right into it.
With how do we deal with our enemies that we're
gonna make.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
That's his tool is to blackmail so quick, Like he
doesn't like someone introduces you by pointing him across the
room at a party, like, oh yeah, that's my friend
l Ron. He's got dirt on you. Damn. That was fast.

Speaker 1 (11:52):
Yeah yeah, I mean he's like in his sixties at
this point. He's experienced. He knows, he doesn't pussy foot around,
like it's time. We're gonna make enemies, so we need
a plan to destroy them.

Speaker 2 (12:01):
Our mob boat has reached land begin discovering everyone. Since
you know, like.

Speaker 3 (12:06):
Video games where you're supposed to like you have like
offense and defense and you have to power them both up.
He's done this enough to know. He's like, well, it's
good to be ahead of the.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
Curve on the defense.

Speaker 1 (12:15):
He's been playing for a long time exactly now. One
of these enemies was a reporter for the Clearwater Son
named Mark Sableman. Mark had been sniffing around the Church's
operations in Clearwater, and it revealed some evidence that suggested
the United Churches were really the Church of Scientology and
so On January twenty sixth, nineteen seventy six, a church
official named Joe Liza wrote up a scheme to get

(12:36):
Mark fired. Quote. Have a woman elderly go into the
office and in grief and mis emotions, starts screaming that
she wants to see Sableman's boss. She goes in and
sees this man and screams and cries about Sableman's sexually
assaulting her son or grandson. The woman takes a magazine
which is lurid and perverted, and throws it into the
face of the man. Woman in screams, look what he
gave my son. Not to mention what the pervert did.
Sob sob to my Johnny, I'm going to the police.

(12:59):
If you can't do something of that pervert Sableman, I
will see that they do something to you. So journalist
reveals the very basic de tale that they're secretly buying
up land and this is.

Speaker 2 (13:09):
Going yeah, and that at one point in time sab
sub to my Johnny.

Speaker 1 (13:13):
Yeah, that's literally how it's written.

Speaker 4 (13:15):
Yeah, sub sub to my Johnny. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (13:18):
It's like a song you would hear at the sacap.

Speaker 1 (13:21):
Or like it's it could be kind of like a
like a greeting too, like sab Sob Magennia.

Speaker 2 (13:27):
For next episode Johnny.

Speaker 1 (13:31):
Sob and Majohnny's There We Go Yeah. Throughout later nineteen
seventy five and early nineteen seventy six, Clearwater flooded with young,
uniformed Scientologists. They began renovating the Church's new acquisitions downtown.
Their presence was strange and discomfiting for locals, since the
newcomers refused to answer questions on who they worked for
and what they were doing. Hubbard himself supervised the construction

(13:51):
efforts from five miles away in a condominium complex in
the nearby town of Dunedin. During his few visits into Clearwater,
he posed as a photographer. His initial plan was to
sneak into a respected position in local society by posing
as a photographer, taking pictures to encourage local tourism. In
a letter to one member of the Guardian Office, which
was the trunk of the Church of Scientology aimed at
protecting l Ron Hubbard, he wrote, quote, taking pictures of

(14:14):
beautiful Clearwater is the local button. My portrait of the
mayor will hang in the city hall. Never fear, okay pretentious.

Speaker 2 (14:23):
First of all, it's clear that he was like well,
I'm not going to live there. Find me the nerdiest
sounding town. I gotta live in a JR. Tolkien named town.
I am el Rond.

Speaker 1 (14:34):
After all, he is l Rond in Dunedin.

Speaker 2 (14:37):
Yeah, he's an elf who collided with a space telescope
Elron Hubble, right.

Speaker 4 (14:42):
Which actually just turns out to be an orc.

Speaker 2 (14:46):
But secondly, is he allowed back on land? I thought
he was gonna get arrest.

Speaker 1 (14:50):
Yeah, no, he's not allowed. That's why he's always in disguise.

Speaker 2 (14:54):
So he's like on the I mean because I thought
the boat was his sort of final solved, yeah, evading LA.
But even in this late stage, he's like, I'm risking it.

Speaker 1 (15:03):
He's risking it now he's being hidden. At this point
he has a whole team of people. The Guardian Office
is just there to keep people off his bad.

Speaker 2 (15:10):
Would sound silly if you hadn't just dropped the KKK episode. Yeah,
they're like the Exalted Cyclotics.

Speaker 1 (15:15):
Oh yeah, and the King Klegal.

Speaker 2 (15:17):
Oh the Clavy, yeah, the clay like Clavy.

Speaker 1 (15:23):
Unfortunately for l Ron Hubbard, the mayor of Clearwater had
no interest in being photographed by a strange old man.
He was deeply concerned with this army of anonymous invaders.
At one point he reached out to the United Churches
and said, quote, I am discomfited by the increasing visibility
of security personnel armed with billy clubs and mace employed
by the United Churches of Florida. I am unable to
understand why this degree of security is required by a

(15:44):
religious organization.

Speaker 2 (15:45):
You see more like ufc AM.

Speaker 4 (15:47):
I right, it's like a reasonable question.

Speaker 1 (15:50):
Yeah, it seems like he brought an army to our
sleepy retirement to and also why a.

Speaker 2 (15:55):
Catholic priest walking out Cobblestone Street, like, oh, how you doing?
It's just smacking a night stick into his hands. That
is discomforting. Yeah, I think that's the perfect that.

Speaker 1 (16:05):
Is that is the perfect word. It became clear that
the Scientologists would need to stage reveal of their organization
to the people of clear Water. In early nineteen seventy six,
they held a meeting at the Fort Harrison Hotel, officiated
by l Ron Hubbard himself. He wore a beret, caci
fatigues and headphones, and local religious leaders watched in wonder
and confusion as this bizarre man presided over the setup

(16:25):
of microphones and stage managed the production, with the press
conference down to the tiniest detail. He was introduced as
mister Hubbard, an engineer.

Speaker 2 (16:33):
We could have caught him. Why didn't I get him?

Speaker 1 (16:36):
One of the again, one of the like can through
lines of any time you read about criminals in the seventies,
Like the FBI really wasn't very good at its job.
I mean, you could debate whether or not they still are.
But everyone was kind of asleep at the wheel until
September eleventh, which you know is part of why September eleventh?

Speaker 3 (16:52):
That wait, right, It's almost as if in the human narrative,
there's incoonfidence has always been with us, Yes, especially of
those of power.

Speaker 1 (17:00):
Yeah, shouldn't have been super hard to find el Ron Hubbard.

Speaker 2 (17:03):
Now.

Speaker 1 (17:03):
Five hundred local citizens attended the meeting, where they were
shown the renovations downe to the Fort Harrison Hotel. Scientology
representatives tried to reassure them that the church was a
fundamentally friendly force with no nefarious aims towards their town.
A spokesman for the church told them scientologists are people
who don't drink or violate laws. They are friendly and
want to contribute. The very next day, the Church of
Scientology filed a one million dollar lawsuit against the mayor

(17:25):
of Clearwater, Gabrielle Cazares, suing him for libel, slander, and
a bevy of civil rights violations. A few days after
announcing his presence in Florida and instantly suing the mayor
of the town, l Ron, Hubbard went out to get
a suit tailored near Dunadin. It turned out that the
tailor was a science fiction fan, and since Ron was
a proud narcissist, he immediately revealed his identity to the
fan and told him he was staying nearby. The news

(17:46):
percolated through the local rumor mill, and before long it
was common knowledge that the Profit of Scientology was hanging
out in Dunedin rather than clear Water. Now, at the time,
there were numerous pending lawsuits and investigations against the church.
The fact that Hubbard's location had been revealed by himself
made him in credit paranoid. Within days of revealing himself
to clear Water, he and his entourage fled twelve hundred
miles north to Georgetown. Hubbard grew a beard and bought

(18:07):
a new wardrobe at from a local Salvation Army store.
One of his aides who'd been with him during his
long boat journey, noted that it was strange because on
the ship he had all these phobias about dust and
smells and how his clothes had to be washed, but
all that vanished when we were living together in Washington.

Speaker 2 (18:21):
He goes boho, kind of a massage arc for him.

Speaker 3 (18:24):
Yeah, he had like a second religion family, like yeah, yeah,
oh man, it's they're just pests though, right, Like they
just anytime anyone might be a threat, they just throw
everything at them.

Speaker 4 (18:38):
I'm gonna see you then.

Speaker 2 (18:39):
Oh yeah, didn't you hear they throwing at everyone in
any area they're in before they get to know anyone.

Speaker 1 (18:46):
But yeah, it's how you react to threats when you
have infinite money and are is just a lunatic.

Speaker 2 (18:52):
And I think it's a sign of your own Like
I feel like from your previous episodes too. He walked
around with a lot of darkness inside him, like there
are some people who I think have done horrendous things
and it really goes off them, like water off the ducks.
Back his just sheer obsession with well, everyone's got dirt,
everyone's got skeletons. The trick in life is just to

(19:13):
find the skeletons first. That's the act of someone who's like, yeah,
I have the most skeletons, so many skeletons.

Speaker 1 (19:19):
Is preemptively throwing my own baby, And if.

Speaker 3 (19:24):
You say anything about these skeletons, I'm gonna create new skeletons.

Speaker 2 (19:30):
It's also incredible that he uh, I wish I could
have been there in his head in the moment he's
leaving the tailor's office when it turned from like it
was nice meeting a fan. I shouldn't have done that.
Oh hell, that was real bad al all the crime.
Wait a minute, Lil ron, little rock.

Speaker 1 (19:53):
So he grows to Georgetown and grows a beard like
we all do at some point. Now, well, Hubbard hit
out in Georgetown, he continued to directive variety of clandestine
operations down in clear Water. His main goal was to
unseat Gabriel Kazaras, who had grown into a figure of
almost luciferian importance to the scientologists, to lose that portrait.
He still wants that portrait. Yet they were really worried
about his moderate concern about them taking over his town

(20:15):
with a paramilitary security force. According to the book Baar
Face Messiah quote. Scientologists had gone back to his hometown
of Alpine, Texas, trawled through public records, nosed around the courthouse,
and even checked the headstones in the local graveyard without success.
But then it was disclosed that Kazaras would be attending
the National Mayor's Conference in Washington from eleventh or thirteen
to seventeenth March, and the Guardian's Office made hasty plans

(20:36):
to give him a welcome. A scientologist posing as a
Washington reporter sought an interview with Kazaras and introduced him
to a friend, Sharon Thomas, who offered to show the
mayor the sites of Washington. Miss Thomas was, of course
working for the Guardian's Office. Driving with the mayor through
scenic Rock Creek Park, she temporarily lost control of her
car and ran into a pedestrian, who crumpled dramatically. To
the Mayor's horror, Miss Thomas accelerated away without stopping, leaving

(20:58):
the injured man lying on the road.

Speaker 2 (21:01):
Is the injured man also a plant?

Speaker 1 (21:03):
Yeah, he's a science Everyone involved as a scientologist, but
the mayor.

Speaker 4 (21:06):
So this is like a play for no one.

Speaker 2 (21:08):
It's like in the Simpsons when they put on a
play to convince mister Burns to fund the school or
some ship, like, yeah, I wonder if they rehearsed.

Speaker 1 (21:16):
Oh, they must have.

Speaker 4 (21:17):
They must have, and it's all for him to find
that important.

Speaker 1 (21:21):
He had a team always practicing to fake a hit
and run just because he knew at some point I'm
gonna need this. I'm got to be in those morning
production meetings.

Speaker 4 (21:30):
Yeah, we're just right.

Speaker 3 (21:31):
And he was talking last night about not feeling like
so great when he's like, he's not tall, so can
we just like, let's build his platform, make him taller for.

Speaker 2 (21:42):
Our shortest people.

Speaker 4 (21:44):
They were doing this shit.

Speaker 2 (21:45):
I want to see the scenes that they rehearsed that
were cut, Like, okay, in case the mayor gets carried
off by a giant bird of prey, we have this
great scene worked out. It never happened. It just like
slays on the cutting room floor.

Speaker 1 (21:58):
Yeah, with the beatings with.

Speaker 4 (22:00):
So probably that's what I get the acting connection.

Speaker 2 (22:02):
Now, Oh that makes sense.

Speaker 4 (22:04):
So they had to do a lot of improv.

Speaker 1 (22:06):
We'll be getting a little more into that story.

Speaker 2 (22:08):
Thomas Cruise, Yeah, that was his first role.

Speaker 1 (22:12):
Yeah, Now, the plan was to use this hit and
run to discredit the mayor. A Guardian's office memo noted,
I should think the mayor's political days are at an end.
Of course, a fake hit and run committed by someone
else did not have the derailing effect on the mayor's
career that the Guardian's office at home. Yeah, but Hubbward
was ready the same day with another plan to try
and convince Miami's Cuban population that the Mayor of Clearwater

(22:34):
was pro castro. So, like most of L. Ron Hubbard's
hairbrain schemes, this one did not bear fruit. The commodore
cooked up ideas like I Hopcook's pancakes, poorly and constantly,
but all of his schemes were not half asked. And
while all this was going on, the Church of Scientology
was deep in the middle of the most ambitious scheme
of its history to date, Operation snow White. On November ninth,

(22:55):
nineteen seventy five, an agent of the Church code named Silver,
walked into the Internal RESI New Service headquarters in Washington,
d C. He entered the office of Attorney Charles Zuvrayan,
although he had no legal right to be there, and
began taking documents. He made copies of hundreds of confidential
tax documents and then walked out the door with them.
Like the purchase of the Fort Harrison Hotel. This was
done under the express orders of l. Ron Hubbard. The

(23:17):
genesis of snow White had come in nineteen seventy three,
whilst Hubbard and his Sea Org were still trawling international waters.
Multiple nations refused to let the Scientologists dock at their ports,
and l. Ron Hubbard decided this was due to a
worldwide conspiracy to discredit his church, rather than its numerous
numerous crimes.

Speaker 2 (23:33):
He tended to want to an asshole.

Speaker 1 (23:37):
A conspiracy.

Speaker 2 (23:38):
I'm an address up like Spider Man and ruin his
good name.

Speaker 1 (23:42):
Hubbard tasks Scientology's investigative arm, the Guardian Office, with countering
this false information. The name snow White was picked because
Hubbard claimed the government's case against him was, in essence
a fable.

Speaker 2 (23:53):
Now we call it Operation Fable. That's way cooler.

Speaker 1 (23:55):
Well, he went with snow White all right. Under the
direction of his wife, Mary Hubbard, Operation snow White would
grow into a sprawling infiltration of the US federal government
at every level. Agent Silver's theft of IRS documents was
just one part of the scheme. Agent Silver was really
IRS Clerk Gerald Wolf, and in that capacity he was
able to steal more than thirty thousand pages worth of documents.

(24:16):
By the beginning of nineteen seventy five, the Church had
actually succeeded in placing agents inside the I R S,
the US Coast Guard, and the DEA. Now this scheme
was executed entirely by agents of the Guardian Office. They
were trained to lie, or in scientology terms, outflow false
data in order to worm their way into these federal organizations.
That's a good synonym for lie.

Speaker 2 (24:37):
Wrap my head. Yea euphemism.

Speaker 4 (24:40):
Cinerga is the dishonesty.

Speaker 2 (24:43):
Also, your name's already Wolf, agent Wolf.

Speaker 4 (24:48):
Wolf or I don't know, silver Wolf.

Speaker 2 (24:49):
Agent silver Wolf, Red Fox. That was agent Red Fox,
snow Wolf. Why he's got a filthy sense of humor,
but he gets shipped done.

Speaker 1 (24:59):
Speaking of fables, you know it's not a fable.

Speaker 4 (25:04):
Products yea, your heart, your heart's sewing this man.

Speaker 1 (25:09):
They're very you know what I don't need to see.
I throw the bagels, they get right back to him.

Speaker 4 (25:15):
Hey, those are some products.

Speaker 2 (25:17):
Yeah, the services are real, but we are not.

Speaker 1 (25:19):
And the throwing bagels are real. My current throwing bagels
are everything, bagels, kettle boiled and health baked, sliced, the
bagel that won the West.

Speaker 2 (25:28):
And they're bruising badly, which I didn't think bagels were
supposed to do.

Speaker 1 (25:32):
The bagel that won the West?

Speaker 4 (25:33):
Did they didn't know that? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (25:34):
Did these wipe out the Cherokee?

Speaker 2 (25:37):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (25:38):
Are these genide bagels that are.

Speaker 2 (25:39):
Throwing on the walls.

Speaker 3 (25:41):
They're everything, so they're definitely genocide. Plus I guess everything else.

Speaker 1 (25:45):
That's not cool.

Speaker 2 (25:46):
Thousands of American bison died with those bagels embedded in
their skulls.

Speaker 1 (25:50):
Sophie, I want bagels that didn't commit genocide. Yeah, fair,
Also these expired February twenty fifth.

Speaker 2 (25:59):
So I want us throwing bagels.

Speaker 1 (26:02):
Actually, the expired ones work a little bit better.

Speaker 2 (26:04):
So, uh, check out these ads.

Speaker 1 (26:13):
We're back. I shouldn't have come back when I was eating, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:18):
Right, when, Well, you fully control when you come back,
so that was your choice and you can it.

Speaker 4 (26:24):
That's number three for those keeping track.

Speaker 1 (26:27):
I hit some equipment with that one, but Daniel says
it's fine.

Speaker 2 (26:30):
We've returned from examining the ads examining antiquated woodworking tool,
and I, for one will purchase one.

Speaker 4 (26:37):
Yeah, delicious products or services.

Speaker 1 (26:41):
Now what's not delicious is the throwing bagels that apparently
are genocide bagels.

Speaker 4 (26:46):
Yeah, I think they're genocide bagel.

Speaker 1 (26:48):
I would like to apologize to genocide victims for throwing
genocide bagels.

Speaker 2 (26:53):
I've heard a lot of words in my time on
this earth. I've never heard the combination tasty, genocide.

Speaker 1 (26:58):
I mean, I don't know. I don't eat bake, so
I just throw them, so I don't know if they're tasty.
I can say these are the bountiest of the bagels.

Speaker 2 (27:04):
So you're not even vouching for these bagels as edible.

Speaker 1 (27:08):
That's why they're throwing, all right.

Speaker 2 (27:11):
I assume they're a throwing bagel could sort of retire
and end its life in my little mouth. Is that
not a possible.

Speaker 1 (27:17):
I'm not going to say you can't, but that's not
their purpose. Okay, they're everything bagels, so you can do
anything with them.

Speaker 4 (27:24):
This bagel is my everything now, including jennocide.

Speaker 1 (27:29):
Yes, unfortunately, I guess, yeah, they really are.

Speaker 2 (27:31):
Well, if the bagel's everything, it's all good and.

Speaker 4 (27:34):
It's all on there.

Speaker 1 (27:35):
Yeah, that bagel both invented the seat belt and killed
John Bana Ramsay and everything. It is the spirit of Christmas,
and is the spirit of Christmas as well as the
spirit of Saint Louis.

Speaker 2 (27:49):
And is that right wing college kid who led the
campaign against wearing seat belts and died in an accident
that he wouldn't have lived through if he had worn
his seat belt. It's all in the bagel, people.

Speaker 1 (28:00):
We've gotten to invest in the philosophy of what an
everything bagel.

Speaker 2 (28:03):
Is, the cream cheese is hitler. I don't ask why
it's always been that way.

Speaker 1 (28:07):
I think we can all agree on all right, let's
get back to Ron Hubbard's life.

Speaker 2 (28:13):
A little bit of bagel.

Speaker 1 (28:14):
It's a little bit of bagel. So the Guardian Office
agents were infiltrating, you know, all these federal agencies, the IRS,
the DEA, the Coastguard. Much of the data gathered, like
the IRS files copied by agents Silver was collected in
order to help the church deal with its mountain of
pending audits. At this point, it was not a religious
institution in the legal sense of the word, but it

(28:34):
was still refusing to pay taxes, so the IRS was
not super happy.

Speaker 2 (28:39):
So it still had not secured the religious exemption.

Speaker 1 (28:41):
No that was not until much later.

Speaker 4 (28:43):
Now.

Speaker 1 (28:43):
The Guardian's Office also used their connections to the US
government to dig up dirt on their political enemies, particularly
journalists who dared to write about them. According to the
La Times quote, the Guardian Office saved the worst for
author Paulette Cooper of New York City, who's scathing nineteen
seventy two book, The Scandal of Scientology pushed her in
the top of the church's roster of enemies. Among other things,
Cooper was framed on criminal charges by the Guardian Office

(29:05):
members who obtained stationary she had touched and then use
it to forge bomb threats to the church in her name.
You're like the Nazis or the Arabs. I'll bomb you,
I'll kill you, warn't one of the rambling letters. The
church reported these threats to the FBI and sent the
fury of the bureau crashing down on poor Paulette Cooper.
She was indicted by a grand jury for making bomb
threats and for lying under oath about having made the
bomb threats. The truth did eventually come out, but it

(29:26):
took two years and cost Paulette twenty thousand dollars in
legal fees and six thousand dollars in psychiatric treatment. Now,
Hubbard actually hated Paul that enough that he had the
Guardian's Office dedicated an entire operation to destroying her, code
named freak out. I found an article where she recites
a small list of the things they did before reporting
those fake bomb threats to the FBI.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
What are you doing today, honey, We're destroying this one woman.

Speaker 1 (29:47):
We're destroying this lady. She wrote a book.

Speaker 2 (29:49):
Yeah, we're in Q two. I'm hoping by Q four
she'll be contemplating suicide.

Speaker 1 (29:54):
You know, that's the goal. You know, we all get
a bonus if it happens before Q four?

Speaker 2 (29:59):
Did the agents who infiltrated the irs, like ninety nine
percent of the time have to just keep up their
cover by doing things returned?

Speaker 1 (30:05):
I think?

Speaker 2 (30:06):
So, I want to know if a scientologist operative ever
just processed my taxes by chance?

Speaker 1 (30:11):
Well not if you were filing taxes in the late seventies.

Speaker 2 (30:14):
Yeah maybe, Yeah, that's I have a very bad tax cheat,
which is I've been filing taxes since before I was born.
I'm hoping it'll pay off.

Speaker 1 (30:24):
I'm gonna stop paying taxes, say plus column. Here's Paul
at Cooper quote. I soon got used to telephone death threats,
harassing calls in lawsuits. I was occasionally followed, often conspicuously,
as if to upset me, and people seem to be
trying to gain access to my apartment. Then, in the
basement of my small building, I discovered alligator clips on
my phone wires, likely the remnants of a phone tap. Next,

(30:46):
my cousin, who was also short and slim like me,
was in my apartment alone when a man arrived with
a flower delivery for me. When she opened the door,
the intruder pulled a gun out of the flowers and
put it to her temple. Fortunately, the gun jammed, misfired,
or was empty. The man then began to choke her,
and then when she pulled a way and screamed, he
ran off. The police said afterward that they were mystified
because there appeared to be no motive for the attack.
I quickly moved to a safer, dormant building, but soon

(31:08):
afterwards three hundred of my new neighbors received an anonymous
smear letter about me, outrageously describing me as a part
time prostitute with venereal disease.

Speaker 2 (31:16):
They really showed control with the part time though, they're like, don't.

Speaker 1 (31:22):
Not a full time yea wow, Yeah, that's like that's.

Speaker 3 (31:26):
A you know, the reason why they choose part time
too is that they're like, she can't even be a
full prostitute.

Speaker 1 (31:33):
That's a different way to take it, but you know.

Speaker 2 (31:35):
It's the one they took, Yeah, varsity sex work.

Speaker 1 (31:38):
Yet yeah, she can't. She can't entirely subsist off of that,
So she's got to do the writing books about scientology
thing as an off game.

Speaker 4 (31:45):
There's just wors lies and worst lies.

Speaker 1 (31:47):
Yeah. Now, much as I do love talking about the
wacky schemes of l Ron Hubbard, it's important to remember
that for every botched fake hit and run, which is
just genuinely whimsical and funny, someone like Paul Atte Cooper
was subjected to insane, almost unimagined torment for the crime
of writing a book that angered l four. Well, it
seems like it might have been actually just a torture technique,
like where they were never planning to shoot her, but

(32:09):
like that's a thing that you'll do. Like I talked
to someone who was in an Iranian prison and torture
for a while, and fake executions were a common thing.
The ciated it too with people who captured in Iraq,
where you put a gun to their head and pull
the trigger but it's not loaded, because like that just
really fucks with people, I guess.

Speaker 2 (32:23):
Because he went on to Choker and it makes you
imagine like he really was sent a killer, but a
jam is also pretty unlikely.

Speaker 4 (32:29):
Yeah, like as a torture rehearsal, like uh like just
just to fuck her up.

Speaker 2 (32:34):
Yeah, yeah, like like yeah, they'll execute a prisoner of
war with a son that has no bullet right to
like to be psychological. Now.

Speaker 1 (32:49):
Meanwhile, back in Operation snow White, over the months and year,
Scientology spies had made their way into the Department of Justice,
placing an operative as the secretary to an assistant US
attorney who handled them mountain of Foyer requests by the
Church Freedom of Information Act requests. This was the surface
legitimate goal of Operations snow White. Hubbard framed it as
a perfectly legal blizzard of freedom of information requests aimed

(33:10):
at trying to figure out just why so many people
thought the Church of Scientology was a nefarious entity.

Speaker 2 (33:14):
Now, because yeah, I'm usually pro Foyer. Toya has been
a force for good mostly yep.

Speaker 1 (33:19):
Not in this case. So because many of these Foyer
requests pertained to records that were critical and ongoing investigations
into the church's rampant criminal activity, the church would be
denied the right to see them, which is, you know,
part of how FOYA works. The church's man and the
Justice Department would be able to like know when they
were like okay with the request of this document, it's
being denied, and so he would get a copy of
the document they were getting denied and then smuggle them

(33:40):
out to church authorities. So this is why they were
placed in what sent everyone was on, Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (33:46):
Now.

Speaker 1 (33:47):
The IRS was l Ron Hubbard's greatest nemesis outside of
the concept of psychiatry, and they were where his guardian
office focused most of its efforts. At one point, an
office operative managed to bug an IRIS conference room by
wiring a re quarter into a wall socket that allowed
him to listening on agency meetings via his car's FM radio.
And another point two scientologists use their faked IRS credentials
to get inside government archives and photocopy documents related to

(34:09):
the Church. Now, the head of Operation snow White was
again Mary Sue Hubbard, and when it all came crashing
down spoiler, she is the one who would take legal blame.
But basically everyone who has studied the Church or Hubbard
agrees that he was the center of the whole conspiracy.

Speaker 2 (34:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (34:22):
It's almost like people who are scared that everything is
conspiracy make conspiracy.

Speaker 1 (34:29):
Do nothing but create conspiracies.

Speaker 2 (34:31):
Yeah, because the worldview and it's it seems like every
everything is the mafia. Like everything works like the to
get you right, it's the same, you just shift the.

Speaker 3 (34:42):
Blank and there's the you know, concept of the lieutenants
or made men kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 (34:49):
Avon's in the clink for a year, but we got
Stringer on the outside. He can run messages to weibe
whatever you need. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (34:56):
And in l Ron Hubbard's case, he's he's Avon Barksdale.

Speaker 2 (35:00):
I guess he never.

Speaker 3 (35:01):
Spends time in a secon because he's a mythical He's
more of a mythic figure.

Speaker 2 (35:05):
Yeah. I do think this is also the first time
I've heard of spy work that is too boring to
contemplate doing.

Speaker 1 (35:11):
Oh my god, Like, do you want to be a spy?

Speaker 2 (35:13):
Yeah, dude, Okay, go into this I R S office
and install a bug. That's kind of cool. Now, sit
in a van and listen to what I r S
people say all day.

Speaker 1 (35:23):
Drive around listening to the I r S radio.

Speaker 4 (35:26):
Are we cops.

Speaker 1 (35:29):
Kind of the opposite of cops?

Speaker 2 (35:31):
New cops Spock cops backwards spot cops.

Speaker 1 (35:37):
That's not how that works the cops.

Speaker 2 (35:39):
It is cops backwards spot because there's illogical.

Speaker 1 (35:42):
I've always said that that Commander Spock is the opposite
of a copy. Yeah, you know why.

Speaker 2 (35:51):
The blue uniform. No, that does.

Speaker 4 (35:55):
Profser I'm looking for the fun.

Speaker 1 (35:57):
Yeah, I really didn't have anything there. You're just hoping
something I was opody was.

Speaker 4 (36:04):
Somebody comedy? Now, yeah, and we failed.

Speaker 2 (36:07):
Logical you do for your badge guns.

Speaker 1 (36:13):
Right back at my feet?

Speaker 4 (36:14):
Number four.

Speaker 1 (36:15):
I you know, I hate the genocide they were complicit in,
but they're damn good. Shove throwing bagels, really good throwing bagels.

Speaker 2 (36:21):
Friday and slip shoving bagels, those are different bagels. You
need a littler bagel. Most orifices are small bagel bytes,
good for show.

Speaker 1 (36:30):
I put bagel bites. The throwing bagels can be big.
Shoving bagels need to be small enough to fit in
most holes to just.

Speaker 4 (36:37):
Kind of ease in there.

Speaker 2 (36:38):
Call me old fashioned, but I like just a good
old fashioned walking bagel, a little walk around town.

Speaker 4 (36:43):
Just you can grab on it. Yeah, not gone too
much on the outside. That's a good walking bagel.

Speaker 2 (36:50):
Back to evil.

Speaker 1 (36:51):
I was ready to shoving bagels more because you know,
if it's bagel bites, they make their own loop.

Speaker 2 (36:58):
Do they? Now?

Speaker 1 (36:59):
Back to science.

Speaker 2 (37:02):
Michael Meisner, Yeah, real good.

Speaker 1 (37:05):
Michael Meisner, who was the fake victim of the fake
hit and run aimed at destroying the mayor of Clearwater,
was also a major part of Operation snow White. He
personally broke into the Department of Justice several times and
organized the copying of tens of thousands of secret files.
Under Meisner's direction, decoding equipment was installed to provide direct,
secure communication between church headquarters in the Clearwater and the
Guardian's office in Los Angeles. After Virginia o Ron, Hubbard

(37:28):
himself wound up hiding next on Overland Avenue in Culver City, California. Literally, yeah,
that was about a block away from my first home
in Los Angeles.

Speaker 2 (37:36):
Yeah, me too.

Speaker 1 (37:37):
Yeah, that's where Hubbard hit after he decided he'd spent
too much time in Georgetown and he had to get
out of the East Coast.

Speaker 2 (37:43):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (37:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (37:44):
Yeah. So in mid nineteen seventy six, with Operation snow
White at its height and Hubbard living in his third
undisclosed location since returning to dry Land a year ago,
Mary Sue Hubbard finally joined back up with her husband
to warn him about some major problems not related to
the fact that they were conducting the largest infiltration of
the federal government US history.

Speaker 4 (38:02):
See.

Speaker 1 (38:02):
It turns out that living on a series of boats
and searching for gold for like a decade, committing a
vast and dizzy and crey of financial crime, spying on
the government, living in a series of safe houses is
kind of bad for someone's family life.

Speaker 2 (38:13):
He blew up those imaginary submarines.

Speaker 1 (38:15):
Yeah, he did blow up those submarines.

Speaker 4 (38:18):
Yeah, yeah, claiming it And didn't the racist guy do
it too?

Speaker 2 (38:23):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (38:24):
Yes, theged like Rockwell, they made the same lie.

Speaker 3 (38:27):
So it's almost like there's a it's a continuity of
liars and like wanting to be awesome and making your
own mess.

Speaker 1 (38:34):
You know that song Everybody Wants to Rule the World.
It's like that, but with blowing up a Japanese summer.

Speaker 4 (38:39):
Yeah, Yeah, it's like cred in those circles.

Speaker 1 (38:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (38:44):
So yeah.

Speaker 1 (38:44):
Things were not great with the Hubbard family at this
point in time. His daughter Diana's marriage was falling apart,
his son Quentin was ostensibly in the Sea York, but
was constantly out of pocket and battling crippling depression, And
worst of all, al Ron Hubbard's daughter Susette was dating
non scientologists. Now, Mary Sue suggested that all of these
problems could be solved by providing the family with a

(39:04):
little bit more stability. So, using some of the church's
literally infinite funds, they bought a gigantic compound in southern
California named La Quinta. The family moved in that October.
For a while, all was well. The Commodore's messengers noted
that he seemed to be much more relaxed and happier
after moving into his new ranch. This did not last long.
On Wednesday, November seventeenth, nineteen seventy six, Hubbard received dire

(39:27):
news his son Quentin had been found dead in his
car in Las Vegas, the victim of a successful suicide.
Mary Sue wept. L Ron Hubbard screamed that stupid, fucking kid,
That stupid fucking kid. Look at what he's done to me.

Speaker 2 (39:40):
Whoop, Yeah, what happened to blame in the Thetans dude. Yeah,
like he should fall to his knees and go theta Duz.

Speaker 4 (39:50):
I will stole my boy state Thetans.

Speaker 2 (39:55):
Yeah, yeah, that's tragic.

Speaker 1 (39:56):
Yeah. According to bear Face Messiah quote, the Guardian's office, meanwhile,
had moved swiftly to handle the situation. It's local representative
in Las Vegas was a pit boss at the Sands
Hotel by the name of Ed Walters. I had been
working as a covert operator for about eight years, he
said him. I had secretly tape recorded a psychiatrist and
got him to talk about lobotomies to try and discredit him.
And I had bugged the meetings of the Clark County
Mental Health Association. Things like that. I worked on anything

(40:19):
that ORG considered to be a threat to the Hubbards.

Speaker 2 (40:21):
Who's he saying this too?

Speaker 1 (40:23):
This is what he said to the author of Bare
Face Messiah.

Speaker 2 (40:25):
Okay, so you he presumably got Yeah, he.

Speaker 1 (40:28):
Left the church at some point. He was just a
classic casino pit boss slash spy for the Church of Scientology.

Speaker 2 (40:34):
There's your connection right here.

Speaker 4 (40:37):
So what info is he getting though? Look stuff like this.

Speaker 1 (40:40):
They want dirt on a psychiatrist. So he gets this
guy drunk and bugs him talking about committing LOBOTOI yeah, yes, I.

Speaker 2 (40:46):
Guess lebotomy is are pretty cool. We should do more.

Speaker 1 (40:50):
You ching another goodass day for Ed Walters. So anyway,
this is a Walters again quote. When they found out
Hinton was here, I was told to get a hold
of all of his medical files. There was apparently evidence
that he had had a homosexual encounter shortly before he
was found, and they didn't want anything like that to
get out. There was a girl scientologist working in the
hospital in a very secure position, and she got all

(41:12):
the reports on Quentin and gave them to me, and
I handed them over to the Guardian's office. Quentin was
cremated the next day. Those who knew him suggest that
he probably just wanted out of scientology, but couldn't think
of a way to do so without ending his own life.
According to Ed Walters, you don't just leave something like scientology.
You quit and then instantly become an enemy. He knew
his father violently attacked anyone who betrayed him, and he

(41:32):
knew that the Guardian's Office would be after him as
a trader. He had grown up in scientology and would
have been tremendously afraid of the world out there, full
of wogs and evil people. I guess he just couldn't
handle it.

Speaker 2 (41:42):
Now, el Ron Horvard probably would have yelled the same
thing if he had less scientology instead of killing or
what has he done to me?

Speaker 1 (41:48):
Yeah? What has he done to me? Right? It's one
of those things. It's crazy because like, of course they
have some people in Vegas, like He's like they have
this pit boss in Vegas, and they have like a
lady working at a hospital. But like, I feel like
at this point you get the feeling that at this
point in the church's history they have people like that
in pretty much every.

Speaker 2 (42:04):
City, every major city.

Speaker 1 (42:05):
Yeah, they've got scientologists scattered around who they can trust
to like, yeah, we need you to get some pull
some medical records for us, We need you to bug
this conversation, we need you to get this guy waste
or whatever.

Speaker 3 (42:15):
That's almost the more baffling part, because I can I
can wrap my head around the concept of crazy people
doing crazy stuff because they.

Speaker 4 (42:23):
Want to be awesome. Yeah, but the fact that they
convince in mass.

Speaker 3 (42:29):
All these people have different walks of life that are
applicable in the way of like, oh I can get
I can get information from them, Like that's just what
is that demographic.

Speaker 1 (42:39):
Well, instance, you got to keep in mind one of
the things he's saying at this point in time, this is,
you know, the Cold War is pretty ornery in like
the late seventies. This is not that long before Red
Dawn comes out, So fears high, fear is high.

Speaker 4 (42:51):
Elroon Hubbard.

Speaker 1 (42:51):
One of the ways he's billing scientology is like this
is the tech, which is like his term for their
their religious stuff, that this is what's going to save
the world. This is going to like make a nuclear
war possible. So he like, all of you are like
as as like the guardians of this sacred knowledge that
I've brought from space. All of you are like integral
in saving the world. So these people like view themselves

(43:13):
as secret agents, you know, in the cause of the
salvation of humanity. Which if you're just like a pit
boss or a lady work in the mid level position
at a hospital and you want some excitement in your life,
it's cool, right, Like you get to be a secret
spy bug, these evil psychiatrists or whatever.

Speaker 2 (43:29):
Also ironic that the only place he didn't be foul
with horrendous crimes is space, Like this only place he's
innocent the undergrounds.

Speaker 1 (43:40):
Oh he did try to. He wrote letters to NASA
saying that like, you're not going to get into space
without our help.

Speaker 2 (43:46):
That's why I mentioned it is. I bet your bottom
butt that this is a guy who genuinely wanted to
go to space. You know, I mean I used to
read a sci fi books because I write all sci
fi books, and it was genuine. He loves space, He
loves and space. We're all grateful that he didn't make
it there.

Speaker 1 (44:03):
No, it didn't need l Ron Hubbard. You know what
else doesn't need l Ron Hubbard? The wonderful products and
services that support the show with they're advertising dollars.

Speaker 2 (44:11):
Why would they They're fully actualized.

Speaker 1 (44:13):
They're fully actualized. I've heard about these these services, yes,
and the products. Uh huh. All right, well, let's all
hear about them some more. We're back now. I want
to be clear here. When I quoted mister Walters earlier,
he said that l. Ron Hubbard's son was scared of

(44:34):
a world filled with wogs and evil people. Now, my
Australian listeners will note that the word wog is a
racial slur in that country, but it also has a
totally separate meaning in scientology, so Walters was not being
racist against anyone there. L Ron Hubbard used the term
wogs to refer to normal people who were not members
of his sweet ass space cult. He to find a
wog as quote muggle and it sounds like, yeah it is,

(44:57):
and it's yeah, Hubbard said, a wog is quote a
common everyday garden variety humanoid. He is a body, he
doesn't know he's here, et cetera. He isn't there as
a spirit at all. He is not operating as a Thetan.

Speaker 4 (45:08):
He's such a special boy.

Speaker 1 (45:11):
He's not a special.

Speaker 2 (45:11):
Operating as a thet Yeah. I still don't even because
I thought you were trying to get rid of the theme.

Speaker 1 (45:17):
Well, but you are a Thetan too, right, I think? So,
like you're not operating, you don't realize you're a space
ghost and try to inside a meat sock.

Speaker 4 (45:24):
Yeah, there's good Thetans and there's cheating themes.

Speaker 2 (45:27):
So and you're saying they had locations all across the
us at this time.

Speaker 1 (45:31):
Oh yeah, they're fucking everywhere.

Speaker 2 (45:32):
Man, sounds like there's space ghost.

Speaker 1 (45:34):
Coast to coast. All right, well, the episode's over.

Speaker 2 (45:38):
That that joke's all we needed.

Speaker 1 (45:40):
See you guys next week.

Speaker 2 (45:43):
I'm sorry we pre wrote that. We're all scientology.

Speaker 4 (45:46):
We talked about.

Speaker 1 (45:48):
Really selling it.

Speaker 2 (45:51):
Hey, that wasn't an actor.

Speaker 4 (45:53):
That's that's true.

Speaker 1 (45:54):
That might have been Tom Cruise. Probably not, definitely not.
Shouldn't be landering a rich millionaires.

Speaker 2 (46:02):
He also runs too fast to ever believably be hit
by a car, and I just wouldn't buy it.

Speaker 1 (46:08):
I also think if he if he came after you
wanted to kill you, he probably do the job. Oh yeah,
I feel like Tom Cruise could have very easily been
a special Forces guy or a murderer for hire.

Speaker 3 (46:19):
I mean, this is the kind of guy that with
his fuck off money, he just has like a compound
where he learns martial arts, where.

Speaker 1 (46:25):
He learns how to destroy things.

Speaker 2 (46:27):
So you were worried about the legal ramifications of slandering
him by saying he might have been that guy, But
you immediately also want to say he's probably good at murdering.

Speaker 1 (46:37):
I mean, I think I think he would be the
first to admit.

Speaker 2 (46:40):
That he would be hypothetically a great murderer.

Speaker 1 (46:45):
When you talk to guys who like do like train
Hollywood actors for gun stuff, the two people they note
as being like these guys don't really need any help
is Tom Cruise and.

Speaker 4 (46:57):
The all big movies he's been. He had to shoot guns.

Speaker 2 (47:01):
And if you see him behind the scenes, he's just
tries hard.

Speaker 1 (47:04):
Yeah, heah, he works really hard. Yeah, he's a great guy. Now,
you remember those two Scientology agents who orchestrated the Department
of Justice breaking back in seventy six. Well after eleven
months on the lamb, in early nineteen seventy seven, one
of them broke and became an informant to the FBI.
The bureau had been on his case for the break in,
but the full story of the church's infiltration of the
US government was complete news to them. They opened a

(47:25):
massive investigation into scientology sweeping infiltration of the United States government.
The investigation would culminate in a June nineteen seventy seven
raid that is still one of the largest raids in
the history of the FBI. One hundred and thirty four
agents with crowbars and sledgehammers, tore through Scientology, HQ, and DC,
as well as their offices in Los Angeles. They carted
away tens of thousands of documents, including the plans for

(47:47):
Project Normandy, revealing the church's secret goal to establish area
control in the city of clear Water. The resulting court
case led to eleven scientologists, including l Ron Hubbard's wife,
Mary Sue, being convicted and sentenced to up to five
years in federal prison. L Ron Hubbard was named by
the grand jury as an unindicted co conspirator, a term
we all know very well now, but the seas file
should not link him directly to any crimes. He maintained

(48:09):
his innocence up until the very end. According to the
Justice Department quote, the crime committed by these defendants is
of a breadth and scope previously unheard of. No business office,
desk or file was safe from their snooping and prying.
No individual or organization was free from their despicable conspiratorial minds.
The tools of their trade were miniature transmitters, lockpicks, secret codes,
forged credentials, in any other device they found necessary to

(48:31):
carry out their conspiratorial schemes. By the way, it's worth
noting that while this is happening at the height of
the Cold War, the Soviet government never managed to infiltrate
the United States and nearly as comprehensive or extensive a
fashion as the Church of Scientology did.

Speaker 2 (48:46):
It seems like they should have been trying to infiltrate
the Church of Science. It's like, talk to the people
who really are making progress.

Speaker 1 (48:53):
Yeah, they now, those are the facts of the case
as they exist in reality, But they are not the
facts of the cases admitted by the Church of sciencelogy.
In the immediate aftermath of the raid, they accused the
FBI of Gestapo like brutality, which would be true if
the Gestapo handed out five year sentences from massive and
sweeping and filtrations of the Third Reich. Rather than just shooting.

Speaker 2 (49:11):
People, they had crowbars.

Speaker 1 (49:13):
They had crowbar The Stand League builds itself as an
advocacy group of scientologists fighting bigotry against their religion. The
name is an acronym for scientologists taking action against discrimination.
You have to use the in and against for the acronym,
which is a really great acronym. We all cut corners
now and again. I use expired throwing bagels like nobody's perfect.

(49:37):
I found an article published on the stand League's website
about the snow White Program. Here's how they describe it.
The snow White Program refers to the program written by
Scientology founder el Ron Hubbard in nineteen seventy three for
the purpose of legally correcting and expunging the plethora of
false government reports about the Church of Scientology, it's leaders
and members through strictly legal means.

Speaker 2 (49:56):
It's for legal legal twice yeah. Ps.

Speaker 3 (50:00):
Legals think about the word legal and think of me.

Speaker 1 (50:04):
Yeah. The Stanley asserts that Elroon Hubbard did not remotely
contemplate anything illegal, of course not. Who's famous law follower
l Ron Hubbard, who's got two thumbs in his legal
this guy guy.

Speaker 2 (50:16):
Yeah, I gotta get back on my boat.

Speaker 1 (50:17):
Now I'm going to kidnap my baby again.

Speaker 2 (50:21):
Oh my wife though, damn it sucks. How she sucks?

Speaker 4 (50:24):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (50:25):
Yeah, that's rough.

Speaker 1 (50:27):
Now it is impossible to disprove that to a point
of certainty, which is why l Ron Hubbard himself was
never convicted of anything. But I want to emphasize this,
come the funk on.

Speaker 2 (50:36):
We all know all of this information.

Speaker 4 (50:38):
It's true.

Speaker 1 (50:40):
Now we're not done with the story of l Ron
Hubbard yet. And in our next episode, which I'm very
excited for, we're going to talk about the last phase
of his life where he became an autor filmmaker and
a singer.

Speaker 4 (50:49):
Hell yeah, hell yes, hell you believe.

Speaker 1 (50:53):
L RH hasn't as much?

Speaker 2 (50:55):
Then it doesn't even Battlefield Earth?

Speaker 1 (50:58):
Oh yeah, Oh buddy, does it involve Battlefield? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (51:04):
What a juicy treat. At the end of so many
people come on the show and at some point in
the hour ago, Yeah, this has been really depressing. Thanks
for having me. Yeah, I feel like you got all
the sad stuff out of the way. I mean, that's
been sad shit. But man, the next one's gonna be
a tree.

Speaker 1 (51:19):
It is gonna be a treat. But before we close
this episode out, I'd like to talk a little bit
more about the town of Clearwater, Florida. Now, the Fort
Harrison Hotel was renamed by the Church of Scientology to
flag Land Base. After renovations were finished, it became and
is today the chief training center for scientologists studying the
highest levels of whatever the hell scientology is. Since nineteen
eighty three, scientologists have died at Flag Base. One of

(51:41):
those dead was a young woman named Lisa McPherson, who
died of a blood clot caused by dehydration in bed
rest after seventeen days locked in Room one seventy four
of the former hotels. Josephus Heavineth was found dead in
a bathtub in his room. The water was hot enough
to have burned his skin off. The official cause of
death was drowning, but the coroner noted that he was
found with his head above the water line. Herbert Faff
died of a seizure in the hotel after he ceased

(52:03):
taking his seizure medication in favor of a Scientology approved
vitamin program.

Speaker 2 (52:07):
And this is the hotel from the shining you're describing this, Yeah,
that's essentially hotel.

Speaker 1 (52:11):
What they turned this building into.

Speaker 2 (52:13):
Go in room one seventy four, don't.

Speaker 1 (52:16):
In nineteen ninety seven alone, the Clearwater Police received one
hundred and sixty emergency calls from Flag Base. At no
point were they allowed to enter. For most of Scientology history,
the church was in constant arrears for failure to pay
state and local property taxes. Scientology was brought to court
numerous times by the city and the irs for this
Luckily for the church, they eventually succeeded in having Scientology
to cleared a religion, which granted them tax exempt status.

(52:38):
The way they did this was pretty fascinating. They basically
bombarded the IRS as an organization and individual IRS executives
with lawsuits until they got their way. We'll probably talk
about that in the Tail in a later episode. According
to a recent report in the Tampa Bay Times, the
Church of Scientology currently owns more than two hundred and
sixty million dollars in property in downtown clear Water. Most
of these buildings are empty and undeveloped, and many in

(53:00):
Clearwater blame the church for the fact that downtown Clearwater
has remained incredibly underdeveloped compared to downtown Saint Petersburg and Tampa.
The church is able to exercise a huge amount of
control over the city of Clearwater due to their ownership
of much of its downtown area and then economic power
of their religion. According to FSU News quote, Scientology leader
David Miscavige introduced a retail strategy to Clearwater's Community Redevelopment Agency.

(53:22):
The plan requires use of not just property owned by
the church, but at also every property in a three
block by four block area that encompasses all of downtown.
The plan involves attracting a few major retail brands and
then filling open spaces with hand picked businesses, similar to
an outdoor mall. The proposal will give the church total
control over the downtown area in regards to development and
management of properties. The church's redevelopment plan has not yet

(53:42):
been made public, nor will it be subject to a vote. Cool,
why do you need that?

Speaker 3 (53:47):
Like?

Speaker 2 (53:48):
Why? I don't understand what the area he's like? This
church is important to me. I made trillions of dollars,
but I need area control. What's area control? Well? I
want to decide if there's a Sparrows or you know,
an old spaghetti factory there. Well, and this is wanted
to be what I wanted to be. This is who
gives a ship, dude.

Speaker 1 (54:06):
This is the decision of his predecessor. Because for l
Ron Hubbard taking over this town which the church controls
like forty years later today, this was like a two
week project for him, right like he was he was
there for like a month or so. El Roonn Hubbard
himself never spent more than a couple of days actually
inside the city limits. Of clear Water, like they still

(54:26):
control this and it was just sort of a vague
plan of his for a couple of weeks before he
moved up to Georgetown Town.

Speaker 4 (54:32):
I like it with these mythic figures.

Speaker 3 (54:35):
Yeah, like uh uh, the entire sea org is just
like whatever he said, what beautiful drippings came out of
his horrible mom You need to make that a religion.

Speaker 4 (54:46):
Because there's only so much that he said.

Speaker 1 (54:49):
I mean, he said a lot, but it's like there's
still people in Clearwater who have to deal with the
consequences of l Ron Hubbard's passing fancy right, yeah every day.

Speaker 4 (54:57):
Well, I guess we have to justify this ship.

Speaker 2 (55:00):
So kind of want to go there now because I
didn't know there existed like a company town for scientology. Yeah, sure,
I gotta imagine, because they're freaking annoying to be around.
They must have pushed out anyone who had an easy
opportunity to leave or felt like so by now forty
years later. I just want to go to a town

(55:20):
where you're like ninety percent there and everyone around you
as a scientologist at all time, or another person gawking
at all the scientologists.

Speaker 3 (55:27):
I wonder, I wonder if there's ever at the time
like he would listen to music or like it was
really the stand up comedian and would like watch it
and stuff. And then everyone was like, I guess that's
another god amongst us.

Speaker 1 (55:41):
You get the feeling from l Ron Hubbard that he
did not consume a lot of other people's media, right.

Speaker 4 (55:47):
That's probably true.

Speaker 1 (55:48):
Yeah, we will be talking about Star Wars a little
bit in the next episode.

Speaker 4 (55:50):
I can't wait.

Speaker 1 (55:51):
This is gonna be It is gonna be great. But first,
you know what else is going to be great? What
is y'all plugging your pluggables? Oh yeah, yeah, we're in
the Pizzo.

Speaker 2 (56:00):
Please to the zone.

Speaker 4 (56:02):
I thought that's the pizza zone.

Speaker 2 (56:04):
What's the cookie with that? That's a pazuki the p zone,
and we'll blast you with theka full of pazookies.

Speaker 1 (56:11):
All right, guys, we have things we do throwing bagels
around the table. Oh god, you're under the bagels now.

Speaker 2 (56:20):
My associate ape here and I have a little outfit
called small Beans. It's a podcasting network and is about
to branch into web video, and I think it's very
important that you find out more about that at patreon
dot com. Slash small Beans or on the small Beans
YouTube channel, because we're right now in the process of
producing a little show where four friends sit around analyzing

(56:41):
pop culture, accompanied by illustrations and clip packages. And there's
a good chance that a lot of your audience likes
that show because it feels familiar to that. I'm exciting.

Speaker 1 (56:52):
This sounds familiar to another show that I know you
were on.

Speaker 2 (56:57):
Any other Well, this is the launch of a legally
distinct show from all other shows called off off Hours,
Off Hours, off doing your off hours, the analyze.

Speaker 1 (57:11):
Analyzed pop culture. Hey, this is Robert Evans cutting in
from the future. When we recorded this episode, Off Hours
was was not yet done. It was just a dream
and Michael and Abe's beautiful, beautiful eyes. But now it
is in fact a reality and you can watch it
right now on the internet if you go to YouTube

(57:33):
and look up off Hours. If your life got rebooted?
What kind would it be? On the small Beans channel,
please check it out Off Hours, If your life got rebooted?
What kind would it be? It's it's it's a fun show.
It's important to me because all of my friends are involved,
and because internet comedy, if you don't know, is having
some hard times these days, and Michael and Abe and

(57:55):
a good group of many of my former coworkers who
are all great people, are trying to keep it alive,
keep it user supported. Uh you know, you know, avoid
having to do ads, avoid a lot of that mess,
and and try to make beautiful content that makes people
laugh and makes the world more bearable. So please go
to the small Beans channel on YouTube. Check out the
first episode of off Hours, share it with your friends,

(58:18):
donate to small Beans, and and keep the world laughing.

Speaker 2 (58:22):
That's all I do, is you research horror.

Speaker 3 (58:25):
The reason we chose that name is because it's the
acronym is oh, like, oh, I might want to watch.

Speaker 2 (58:30):
This and then have fun fun friends, fun with friends.

Speaker 4 (58:34):
Funds is oh fun with friends, Oh, fun with friends.

Speaker 2 (58:37):
And it's you know, after your work hours, like after hours. Yeah,
it after hours.

Speaker 1 (58:42):
It's the kind of thing I would watch when I
put down my throwing bagels for the day and I
pick up my relax in bagels.

Speaker 4 (58:47):
Right, yeah, yeah, just unwined with the soothing dulcet tone.

Speaker 2 (58:52):
I am pitching a Fraser episode that I think will
convince you to throw a bagel or two.

Speaker 4 (58:56):
It's yeah, okay, yeah, he might be bad as you
might be bad, guys.

Speaker 2 (59:01):
So many surprises like that and more at patreon dot
com slash small beans, small.

Speaker 1 (59:07):
Beans all right, I'm Robert Evans. You buy shirt te
public behind the you can buy you. You can also
just buy shirts and other places if you want a shirt.
It's legally required in many outdoor areas in the United
States because of the fucking president. Or you can listen

(59:29):
to my other podcast It could happen here. If you
want to be sad, it will. It will make your
day worse with knowledge. Listen to it. And I have
a Twitter in an Instagram at Bastards pod well Sophie
runs both of those. I don't understand Instagram. It frightens
and confuses me. But you can look at those things.

(59:50):
They exist, They're in the world. We have a website
behind the Bastards dot com where you can find all
the sources for this, including bare Face Messiah, which you
can find free online. I think it's out of copyright.
I don't know. I did buy a copy of it,
but you can also find it for free online.

Speaker 2 (01:00:04):
The chance the church got a little of your money,
Well no they don't.

Speaker 1 (01:00:07):
They didn't publish that book. They do not like that book.
It's a hell of a read, though, Like the speaking
of cutting room floors. As we were earlier, the number
of LRH stories that I didn't include in this podcast
just because I couldn't make a fourteen hour podcast about
al Ron Hubbard fucking wild. Anyway, I'm going to throw
some bagels. Y'all, continue your commute or your poop. Yeah,

(01:00:31):
the episode's over. Behind the Bastards is a production of
cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit
our website cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.