http://comparativestudies.osu.edu/secrecy/papers.htm

Paper Title: "Fair Game: Secrecy, Security and the Church of Scientology in Cold War America" Hugh B. Urban

Abstract: Since its origins in the 1950s, the Church of Scientology has been one of the most prosperous and powerful, yet also controversial and poorly understood, new religions in the United States. A large part of the scandal and misunderstanding that surrounds the Church lies in the powerful strategies of secrecy it has used to protect its religious teachings and to conceal its activities from scholars, the media and the US government.

This paper offers a fresh approach to the early Church of Scientology by placing it within the historical and political context of Cold War America and the larger concerns with secrecy during this complex period. Scientology, I will argue, not only reflects, but in many ways embodies and exaggerates larger anxieties about information control and security in America from the 1950s to the 1980s. Indeed, Scientology developed mechanisms of surveillance and espionage -- such as its "security checks" and principle of "fair game" -- that rivaled those of the FBI itself; and conversely, the Church would also come under serious investigation by the FDA, IRS, and FBI for its increasingly lucrative activities.

Using some insights of Georg Simmel, Stanton Tefft, Pierre Bourdieu and others, I will argue that secrecy is often a profoundly ambivalent sort of religious strategy; on the one hand, the claim to possess valuable, rare, carefully controlled information can serve as a profound source of symbolic power or cultural capital. Yet at the same time, the practice of secrecy also tends to arouse the suspicion of governing powers, who deploy strategies of surveillance and espionage of their; and this in turn gives birth to ever new and more creative tactics of counter-espionage and concealment on the part of the religious group. As we see in the case of Scientology, the result was a kind of wild feed-back loop or escalating spiral of secrecy and espionage a work between the Church and government agencies, in which both sides violated various laws and basic civil rights.

To conclude, I will suggest that this particular case of Scientology and Cold War America raises much larger questions about religious secrecy and religious privacy in relation to political power. Perhaps most importantly, it also raises the difficult question of what sort of intellectual, moral and political role the scholar of religion should play in all of this. ---

http://comparativestudies.osu.edu/secrecy/papers/urbanpaper.htm

FAIR GAME Secrecy, Security and the Church of Scientology in Cold War America Hugh B. Urban

Dianetics is important politically. It indicates ways of controling [sic] people or de-controling [sic] them and of handling groups which is good technology...Dianetics could become an ideology if anyone let it. Who controls dianetics, its techniques and researches can be a menace to the security of this country.

-- L. Ron Hubbard, Letter to the Attorney General (1951)

Secrecy lies at the very core of power.

-- Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power (1962)

Surely few new religious movements have generated more scandal, controversy or media interest than the Church of Scientology. Well known for its high-profile celebrity patrons like John Travolta, Kirsty Allie and Tom Cruise, while boasting over 700 centers in 65 countries, Scientology has also been venomously attacked by the government, anti-cult groups and the press as a swindling business and a brainwashing cult. Since the early 1970s, Scientology has come into a series of conflicts with various branches of the US government, particularly the FBI, FDA and IRS, regarding its status as a religious organization and its involvement in an array of alleged criminal activities. Its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, has been described variously as the man who "solved the riddle of the human mind" (by the Church of Scientology), as "a mental case" (by the FBI), and as "a paranoid schizophrenic" (by his former wife). Dubbed the "Cult of Greed" by Time magazine, Scientology has long been singled out by the media and anti-cult groups as the most rapacious and dangerous new religious movement today. As Cynthia Kisser, former Executive Director of the Cult Awareness Network, put it, "Scientology is quite likely the most ruthless, the most classically terroristic, the most litigious and the most lucrative cult the country has ever seen. No cult extracts more money from its members."

Yet remarkably, despite the tantalizing scandal that surrounds it in American popular imagination and the media, Scientology has received little serious attention by scholars of religions. Apart from Roy Wallis' now outdated study of 1976 and a handful of more recent articles, Scientology has never really been submitted to a careful, critical study by historians of religions. The reasons for this neglect, however, are not far to seek. First, from its origins, the Church of Scientology and its founder have been shrouded in complex layers of secrecy. With its tight system of security and its esoteric hierarchy of teachings, Scientology has become one of the most impenetrable and least understood new religious movements. And the more scrutiny the movement has faced from the government, anti-cult groups and the media, the more intense its strategies of self-concealment have become. Second, the Church of Scientology also appears to have developed an aggressive strategy of counter-espionage of its own, designed to investigate, undermine and in some cases destroy those who critique it. According to Hubbard's principle of "Fair Game," the Church was allowed to use any means at its disposal to counter -attack and defeat its enemies. All of this has made it not only extremely difficult, but potentially dangerous, to undertake a critical study of Scientology.

In this article, I will by no means attempt to write a new "expose" of Scientology, nor do I claim to have infiltrated its inner secrets and revealed another dark side of the movement (something I consider both fundamentally unethical and deeply problematic from an epistemological point of view). I approach this phenomenon not as a knowing insider, but as an outsider working with published materials and legally available sources, such as court cases and FBI files made available by the Freedom of Information Act. My aim here is to explore the complex dialectic of secrecy and espionage at work between Scientology and the U.S. government. As I hope to show, the origin and growth of Scientology needs to be understood in the context of Cold War America and larger concerns with secrecy during this complex period. Scientology, I will suggest, was by no means opposed to the mainstream values of Cold War America; on the contrary, in its basic ideals and corporate structure, Scientology is better seen as one of the clearest expressions of many basic American concerns from the 1940s to the 1980s. And in its tactics of secrecy and concealment, it appears to be a strange mirror-image of the FBI during these years. Indeed, as more than one author has observed, "the FBI was quite as paranoid about Hubbard as Hubbard was about the FBI." Thus, Scientology and the FBI are perhaps two sides of the same coin in Cold War America, both centering around issues of secrecy, espionage and paranoia, and both often trampling over basic civil rights in their attempt to maintain control.

In my analysis of Scientology, I will use some insights from Georg Simmel, Stanton Tefft and others who have examined the role of secrecy as a social and political phenomenon. As Simmel argued in his classic study, secrecy often acts as a source of social power and prestige -- a kind of "adornment" -- which enhances the mystery and status of an individual by virtue of what he conceals from others. Yet at the same time, secrecy can also allow deviant or subversive groups to preserve themselves in the face of an oppressive political regime. Yet as Tefft observes, secrecy is by no means a simple or static force in society; on the contrary, it is a far more dialectical social process. As I will argue, secrecy is often a dynamic and shifting process that involves a spiraling feedback loop of concealment, espionage, and counter-espionage, as esoteric groups strive to conceal themselves, government forces attempt to penetrate them by clandestine means, and persecuted groups in turn develop ever more elaborate tactics of dissimulation. Perhaps nowhere is this more apparent than in the interactions between Scientology and the US government, as they engaged in a fantastically elaborate game of secrecy, spying and espionage throughout the decades of the Cold war and continuing in our own generation.

After a brief discussion of the role of secrecy and religion during the early Cold War period (part I), I will examine Hubbard's life and the origins of Scientology (II), as well as the role of secrecy and hierarchy in the Church's elaborate corporate structure (III). Finally, I will examine the role of secrecy, espionage and counter-espionage within the Church and in its interactions with the US government, as it came into increasing conflict with the FBI, FDA and IRS (IV). To conclude, I will discuss the issues of secrecy, freedom of information and censorship as they are being played out today. In sum, I will suggest that the case of Scientology offers a number of insights into many larger questions for the study of religions amidst a new age of religious secrecy, terrorism and government surveillance: What rights to privacy do religious groups have in the face of government scrutiny? And what is the role of the scholar in relation to groups that wish to remain secret?

I. THE CULTURE OF SECRECY: Secrecy, Security and Religion in Cold War America

[T]he feeling of power which accompanies the possession of money becomes concentrated for the dissipater...in the very instant in which he lets this power out of his hands. The secret, too, is full of the consciousness that it can be betrayed; that one holds the power of surprises...The secret is surrounded by the possibility and temptation of betrayal.The secret creates a barrier between men but, at the same time, it creates the tempting challenge to break through it, by gossip or confession.

-- Georg Simmel, "The Secret and the Secret Society"

Fame and secrecy are the high and low ends of the same fascination, the static crackle of some libidinous thing in the world...

-- Don DeLillo, Underworld

Modern scholars of comparative religion have long been fascinated by the role of secrecy and esotericism in religion. Indeed, as Steven Wasserstrom observes in his study of Mircea Eliade, Henry Corbin and Gershom Scholem, the history of religions in the 20th century has been characterized in many ways by a kind of "esocentrism" - that is, a privileging of the mystical, secret, elitist aspects of religion, often to the neglect of their more mundane "exoteric," public aspects. Nonetheless, despite this general interest in the subject, the problem of religious secrecy remains strangely un-theorized and methodologically undeveloped. Apart from recent work like that of Paul Johnson and Jeffrey Kripal, much of the literature on secrecy in religion remains disappointingly vague, universalistic and largely divorced from social and political context. As Kees Bolle put it in his Secrecy in Religions, secrecy is "the mystery at the heart of all religions," whether it is the "Way of the Tao that is unnamed" or the "secret rebirth of Christian mystics;" yet he generally fails to examine secrecy critically in relation to its social and historical contexts. Even Antoine Faivre's extensive work on Western esotericism takes virtually no account of the larger cultural or political implications of secrecy. Thus, what I hope to do here is to use example of secrecy and Scientology during the Cold War to offer some more useful ways of thinking about the larger problem of secrecy in religion - and also the ethical role of the scholar of religion in relation to groups that wish to remain in one way or another hidden.

Secrecy and the careful control of information as a basic form of power/knowledge would appear to be key parts of more or less all social structures, from Australian Aboriginal communities to post-industrial states. Yet one would be hard pressed to find an era in human history when concerns about political secrecy, espionage, censorship and control of information were more intense than during the decades of Cold War (with the possible exception of the United States following September 11, 2001). Particularly after 1949, when the Soviet Union detonated its own atomic bomb, the threat of Communism suddenly seemed not far off in some distant land, but an insidious presence that could strike on American soil itself. As Stephen Whitfield observes, the "specter of Communism," quickly became a terrifying unseen presence that caught much of America - from clergymen and journalists, conservatives and liberals -in its fearful grip: "The specter that, a century earlier Marx and Engels had described as stalking the continent of Europe was extending itself to the United States."

Of course, the Soviet Union was every bit as worried about the United States' own military power, and the result of their mutual paranoia was the growth of the most elaborate networks of secrecy, espionage and counter-espionage the world had ever seen. As Angus MacKenzie observes in his study of secrecy and the CIA during the Cold War,

The US government has always danced with the devil of secrecy during wartime. By attaching the word 'war' to the economic and ideological race for world supremacy between the Soviet Union and the United States, a string of administrations continued this dance uninterrupted for fifty years. The cold war provided the foreign threat to justify the pervasive Washington belief that secrecy should have the greatest possible latitude and openness should be restricted as much as possible - constitutional liberties be damned .

In the United States, the fear of Communist infiltration was soon extended not just to undercover agents, but to ordinary American citizens; thus the FBI began to compile dossiers on novelists who seemed "unduly critical of their native land" and even filmed patrons of left-wing bookstores. Under both the Truman and Eisenhower administrations, extensive security programs were put into place throughout the civil service. Political testing was also not uncommon, as both government agencies and private employers sought to distinguish between those who were truly patriotic and those who might harbor concealed un-American tendencies. And ordinary citizens were enlisted in the Cold War, called upon to identify those who displayed a lack of patriotic spirit or even suspicious degrees of "neutrality."

Religion would also play a crucial role in Cold War American culture and in the struggle over the boundaries between the public and the private. Indeed, more than any other western country, the United States saw a remarkable increase in religious affiliation after the second World War. Church membership rose from roughly 43 percent in 1920 to 82 percent by 1950 and 69 percent by the end of the 1950s, the highest it would ever be in the 20th century. One of the most threatening features of the rise of Communism, for many clergymen and politicians alike, was its "godless and atheistic" nature. This made commitment to Christian faith even more critical for a sincere commitment to the American flag and the struggle against the Soviet menace: "Even as some clergymen were advocating ferocious military measures to defeat an enemy that was constantly described as 'atheistic,' government officials were asserting that the fundamental problem presented by Communism was not political but spiritual." Few preachers of the 1950s were more outspoken in their patriotism, anti-Communism and Christian fervor than Rev. Billy Graham. "If you would be a true patriot, then become a Christian," Graham exhorted his audience; and so, "If you would be a loyal American, then become a loyal Christian." In short, in the mid-1950s, an "old-fashioned Americanism" was equated with "the way of the Cross," as the most effective shield against "Satan's version of religion," which was Communism.

Not only was strong Christian faith considered the most powerful means of countering the Communist menace, but it was also, for many, the surest means to sound mental health in an era of increasing anxiety and paranoia. Indeed, as concerns about mental illness and the use of psychiatric drugs skyrocketed during the 1950s, the most popular means chosen to combat these psychological ills was, again, a form of Christian faith, this time from popular authors like Norman Vincent Peale: "In an era in when admissions to mental hospitals were nearly doubling, when by 1956 mental patients were occupying more hospital beds than all other patients combined, and when over a billion tranquilizer pills were annually consumed, the most popular therapist in the age of anxiety was a man of the cloth: Norman Vincent Peale." In best-selling works like Guide to Confident Living and The Power of Positive Thinking, Peale assured his readers that a Higher Power can do everything for the modern individual, "driving out fear, hate, sickness, weakness and moral defects and reviving the soul with health, happiness and goodness." As we will see below, Hubbard's own self-help manual, Dianetics, would make very similar claims, though jettisoning the Christian trappings and promising even more impressive psychological and spiritual benefits for his readers.

Of course, this emphasis on solid Christian and American values meant that other religious and cultural groups might well be considered suspect. Between 1956 and 1971, the FBI-operated group COINTELPRO covertly spied on and interfered with various religious and political groups such as the Nation of Islam and the Civil Rights movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King. As we will see, Scientology and other newly emergent religious would also become the object of intense FBI scrutiny.

Finally, the escalation of the strategies of secrecy also brought with it various negative repercussions throughout the Cold War. First, there was the growing distrust of government and secretive agencies like the CIA and FBI. As Jack Blum suggests, the various abuses by the CIA - such as resettling Nazis in the United States, testing LSD on unsuspecting subjects, and funding right wing exiles in the US - would lead not only American citizens but even presidents like John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson to wonder what was going on in the covert operations of the Cold War. And finally, there is the problem of "blow-back" - that is, the possibility that covert political operations will ultimately lead to future repercussions that may turn out to be far worse than the original problems they were meant to solve. Perhaps the most striking example in recent history is the CIA's support of Afghanistan against the Soviet Union - a kind of "Cold War by proxy" -- that led not only to the withdrawal of the Soviets from Afghanistan, but to the creation of one of the most repressive religious regimes ever known - the Taliban - and one of the most destructive terrorist networks ever known - al Qaeda: "A review of the sorry history of blowback suggests that at least one of the laws of physics applies in covert operations. For each operation there is an equal and opposite reaction, though it may be a delayed one.[I]n a few cases, such as Afghanistan, it will be decades before a full assessment is possible."

In sum, the role of secrecy and religion during the early Cold War era would seem far complicated than a matter of the "mystery at the heart of all religions." Rather, it was intimately bound up with complex social, political and historical processes at work between both religious organizations and political institutions. As I will argue in the case of Scientology, secrecy is a fundamentally ambivalent and double-edged kind of social strategy; it is at once a potential source of profound power and a potential liability for those who wield it. Here I would like to expand upon an insight of Georg Simmel, who observed that secrecy often functions in a way somewhat analogous to money and economic capital. Among other things, secrecy works by transforming ordinary knowledge into a scarce resource -- something that is rare, precious and highly sought. The possession of this scarce resource in turn bestows the mark of distinction, prestige and honor -- or, to use Pierre Bourdieu's phrase, "symbolic capital"-- upon its owner. Like economic capital, moreover, secret knowledge is a self-reproducing form of wealth, a form of capital that grows in power and value the further one ascends in the esoteric hierarchy. In sum, as Elias Canetti observes, "secrecy as lies at the very core of power."

But at the same time, with both money and secrecy, increased value brings with it increased risks. By its very exclusivist nature, the practice of secrecy tends to arouse suspicion among the dominant social and political powers, giving rise to all manner of fears: "Freemasons are running the country," the Mau Mau are ready to revolt, the Thuggee are inciting a nationwide subversion of British rule, brainwashing cults are capturing America's youth, etc. And this in turn may bring new forms of governmental control, oppression and espionage against those groups who would remain hidden. In the case of money, the more one's capital grows, the more elaborate become the mechanisms needed to protect or conceal it; and in turn the more elaborate become the tactics used by others to find it, steal it, regulate it or tax it. So too, in the case of secrecy, the more powerful one's claim to esoteric knowledge, the more elaborate become the strategies needed to conceal it, the more intense become the suspicions of outsiders, and the more aggressive become the efforts of those in power to penetrate it or suppress it.

In sum, religious secrecy is generally bound up in a complex dialectic that involves both power and liability, symbolic capital and fears of social subversion. As Stanton Tefft suggests, secrecy is less a thing than a total social "process" - that is, a complex social dynamic that involves a kind of circular play of multiple inter-related processes, including "security (including surveillance, deception, and counterespionage); entrusted disclosure (including certain forms of persuasion); espionage; evaluation; and post-hoc security." As we will see in the case of Scientology, however, this secrecy process could be taken much further than Tefft suggests. Indeed, the dynamic interplay between the Church and the government was more like a kind of vicious feed-back loop or escalating spiral of secrecy and counter-secrecy, which quickly grew into a state of more or less mutual paranoia.

II. SCIENTOLOGY, SECRECY AND THE COLD WAR: Hubbard and the birth of Scientology

I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false.

-- Ron DeWolf, formerly L.Ron Hubbard Junior, May 1982

At the heart of the mystery and scandal that surrounds the Church of Scientology lies the enigmatic figure of L. Ron Hubbard (1911-86) himself. Portrayed in his own writings as a rugged explorer, world traveler and nuclear physicist, equally accomplished as a philosopher, artist, poet and photographer, Hubbard has also been described by his critics as a liar, a charlatan and a mad man.

According to the official version of his life given by the Church today, Hubbard was born in Tilden, Nebraska, in 1911. After growing up on his grandfather's farm in Montana, Hubbard is said to have traveled widely throughout the Far East with his father, a Naval officer. An adventurer from an early age, Hubbard claims to have journeyed to the most remote parts of India, China and Japan to sit at the feet of a wide array of gurus and philosophers. Back in America, he studied engineering and nuclear physics at George Washington University and then went on to a glorious career in the Navy in World War II, emerging as a decorated war hero. As one admirer described Hubbard, "He sounds like a practical, down-to-earth cow-puncher from out West...while he's telling us about our whole galaxy!... He looks like a combination of a pro-football player, business executive and roman Emperor."

Apart from his date and place of birth, however, virtually every one of these details of Hubbard's life has been challenged by critics. For example, despite his claims to expertise in physics, he appears to have done rather poorly as a college student, receiving D's and E's in his courses on electricity and magnetism and molecular physics. Most of the skepticism has been aimed at Hubbard's war record; far from a decorated war hero, Hubbard was summoned to a court-martial and removed from command for firing on an uninhabited island in neutral territorial waters off Mexico. Indeed, so wide is the discrepancy between Hubbard's own account of his life and the historical record that many have wondered whether he is not just a "purveyor of flim flam," but also a "pathological liar." As one critic puts it, "every biography of Hubbard published by the church is interwoven with lies, half-truths and ludicrous embellishments. The wondrous irony of this deception is that the true story of L. Ron Hubbard is much more bizarre, much more improbable, than any of their lies."

But whatever the facts of his early background, Hubbard would spent much of his time after World War II as an incredibly prolific author of science fiction, fantasy and adventure stories. His wide range of short stories and novels centered mostly around rugged, macho heroes, such as gunslingers, detectives, foreign legionnaires, flying aces and soldiers of fortune, who "thrashed through jungle thickets pursued by slavering head hunters, soared across smoke-smudged skies in aerial dog-fights, wrestled giant octopi twenty fathoms beneath storm-tossed seas... and held dervish hoards at bay by dispensing steel-jacketed death from the barrel of a machine gun."

The Owner's Manual to the Human Mind: the Birth of Dianetics and Scientology

[W]e have our hands on an appalling piece of technology where the world is concerned. With rapidity and a Meter it can be shown that Heaven is a false dream and that the old religion [i.e. Christianity] was based on a very painful lie, a cynical betrayal.

What does this do to any religious nature of Scientology? It strengthens it. New religions always overthrow the false gods of the old, they do something to strengthen man. We can improve man. We can show the old gods false. ...[W]e'll no doubt find the Creator of Heaven who 43 + Trillion years ago designed and built the Pearly Gates and entrapped us all...That guy is GONE (I hope!).

-- L. Ron Hubbard

By 1948, however, Hubbard's fertile imagination had turned from the realm of science fiction to a new science of the human mind itself -- the science working through (dia) the soul (nous), which he dubbed "Dianetics." Originally outlined in an unpublished manuscript called The Original Thesis, Dianetics first appeared in 1950 in the popular magazine, Amazing Science Fiction. As Hubbard's collaborator, John Campbell, described this new science of the mind: "This is no wild theory. It is not mysticism. It is a coldly precise engineering description of how the human mind operates...tested on some 250 cases." This new science like this was advertised as a radical breakthrough for the human spirit, comparable only to the "discovery of fire and superior to the wheel and arch."

Despite its claims to be a revolutionary new science, Hubbard's system of Dianetics does bear a certain resemblance to other spiritual and psychological practices -- perhaps most notably to psychoanalysis (though Scientologists have long vehemently denied that their practice has any connection to psychiatry). The human mind, in Hubbard's model, is comprised of two fundamental parts: the analytical mind and the reactive mind. "The analytical mind is the conscious, thinking mind, a flawless computer, the reactive mind is a stimulus-response mechanism, a moronic, miasmal carry-over from caveman days." While the analytical mind is accurate, rational and logical, the reactive mind is the repository of a variety of memory traces -- called "engrams" -- which consist of "moments of pain, unconsciousness or emotional loss." These painful engrams are burned into the reactive mind and cause all variety of problems, ranging from neurosis and anxiety to physical illness and insanity. However, through the Dianetic process the individual can erase those painful engrams, "regressing" to the original painful event and "revivifying" it, thereby clearing it from his reactive mind. This is the process that Hubbard calls -- aptly enough -- "auditing," or the method by which the patient is interrogated by the "auditor" and removes the troubling engrams from his mind. Ultimately, once all the engrams have been relived and removed, the patient will achieve the state of "clear." As Hubbard describes it, the "clear" individual experiences the world in a radically new way, attaining a variety of intellectual and physical benefits, ranging from increased IQ to optimum health and vitality:

The experience of his entire life available to the clear and he has all his inherent mental ability and imagination free to use it. His physical vitality and health are markedly improved and all psycho-somatic illness have vanished...[H]e is dynamic. His ethical and moral standards are high, his ability to seek and experience pleasure is great. His personality is heightened and he is creative and constructive...His vigor, persistence and tenacity are very much higher than anyone has thought possible.

One who has achieved "clear" knows how to live life to the fullest, how to succeed and win in every aspect of life, from relationships to big business. As Hubbard put it, the goal is "the playing of a better game," that is, knowing how to win the game of life, social relations and business. According to some testimonies published in a leaflet entitled "Wins Every Day with Scientology,"

Before being in Scientology I didn't know what I wanted in life or what to do with my life. .Since being in Scientology I know just what I want to do and I am getting it done.

I no longer feel afraid of anything. I feel calm and very stable...I like myself a lot better too.

Eventually, Scientologists would make even more remarkable claims for the clear state, going beyond mere intellectual and physical health; indeed, they would claim a variety of superhuman achievements, such as the ability to increase one's height, to communicate telepathically, to see through walls, and even to re-arrange molecules in order to fix appliances like broken coffee makers and air conditioners. "I love it," wrote one enthusiastic clear, "like Superman!" Thus, as one critic observes, "Like the concept of a 'flying saucer current at the time, Clear became a Rorschach blot concept which could be all things to all people. They could impose their aspirations upon it."

To aid in the "auditing" process, Hubbard would also begin to employ a device known as the "E-meter" or electro-psycho-meter. First developed by Volney G. Mathison in 1959, the E-meter was later modified and renamed the "Hubbard electrometer." Comprised of a small box with a meter connected to two metal cylinders (originally ordinary soup or juice cans), the E-meter was designed to measure the responses of the pre-clear patient to various questions during the process of auditing. The movements of the needle on the meter register unusual reactions to specific questions and thereby reveal where particular engrams lie. The ultimate goal is to achieve a state of "floating" -- that is, when the needle floats freely in the middle of the meter, indicating the at the patient has cleared his engrams and is now unaffected by any questions. The process is thus one of "clearing the human computer of its hidden irrational data so that proper computation could proceed."

Whatever may have been the inspiration for Hubbard's new science, it seems to have struck a powerful chord in the American psyche of the 1950s, expanding even more rapidly than its creator was able to contain it. The early movement was rather loose, ad hoc and shifting organization, initially formed in 1950 as the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation. Following a major financial crisis, Hubbard resigned from the Foundation, which went bankrupt in 1952. Instead, he went on to form a new and more ambitious movement -- and ultimately a self-proclaimed religion and Church -- called Scientology. Throughout the 1950s, Scientology evolved as a fluid network of temporary organizations, including the Hubbard Association of Scientologists (HAS, later renamed HASI or HAS International), the Hubbard Guidance Centre (HGC) which offered individual auditing; the Academy of Scientology, which offered training; the Personal Efficiency Foundation which offered introductory courses designed to draw new recruits, and Hubbard Communications Office Ltd (HCO) which was Hubbard's direct administrative machine. Eventually, all these diverse entities would be brought under centralized control through the legal auspices of the Church of Scientology of California.

While the earlier system of Dianetics had focused primarily on the goal of clear and achieving an optimum state of mental health in this life, Scientology had more ambitious spiritual aims. In Scientology, the primary emphasis is on the "Thetan" -- the pure, immortal soul or spiritual dimension of the individual -- and on the liberation of the Thetan from the world of matter, energy space and time. At the same time, Scientology is also concerned not only with the events of this lifetime, but also with past life experiences in previous incarnations. For example, in his Have You Lived Before this Life, Hubbard records individuals who, in the course of auditing, remembered lives from 55,000,000,000,000,000,000 years ago; they recounted such remarkable experiences as seeing a giant manta ray underwater while repairing atomic engines of a space ship. The auditing process thus involves the clearing of engrams not just from this life, but from many lifetimes past, as well.

Thus, beyond the state of clear, Hubbard began to elaborate a series of increasingly complex grades of attainment known as "Operating Thetan," or higher stages of the Thetan's transcendence, knowledge and freedom. As Hubbard put it, "Operating Thetan has not before been known as a state of being on Earth. Neither Lord Buddha nor Jesus Christ were OTs according to the evidence. They were just a shade above clear." As we will see in detail below, these grades would eventually be developed into a hierarchy of some fifteen OT levels, all of them containing carefully controlled information and known only to the most highly attained members of the Church.

In sum, Hubbard claimed to have developed a precise, scientific method, relying on the latest technology, to achieve the ultimate state of human existence -- a state of optimum, health, intelligence, worldly success and even superhuman abilities. Such a science would, in his opinion, render the old God and religion of the Christian Church utterly irrelevant. And he seems to have struck a certain chord within the American popular imagination, as his new science quickly became perhaps the fastest growing and most lucrative new religious movement in this century.

A Cold War Religion: Scientology and the Climate of Cold War America

[Hubbard] said that Dianetics was only an atomic bomb, and he had something better that would be a hydrogen bomb.

-- former Scientologist A. E. Van Vogt

With man now equipped with weapons sufficient to destroy all mankind on Earth, the emergence of a new science capable of handling man is vital. Scientology is such a science. It was born in the same crucible as the atomic bomb...The only race that mattes at this moment is the one being run between Scientology and the atomic bomb. The history of man...may well depend on which one wins.

-- L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology: The Fundamentals of Thought

It is probably no coincidence that the Church of Scientology emerged and achieved its height of popularity in the years between 1950 and 1990 -- roughly the period of the Cold War. Hubbard himself states emphatically that Scientology was born as a response to the new weapons of mass destruction and the possibility that the human race might destroy itself in the near future. "Dianetics addresses war because there is in fact a race between the science of mind and the atom bomb;" for "Man is now faced...with weapons so powerful that man himself may vanish from the earth. There is no problem in the control of these weapons..The problem is in the control of man." Thus, Dianetics offers a new hope amidst a society struggling in the aftermath of World War II and its devastation, a hope that human beings could turn their powers to self-betterment rather than self-annihilation.

The early fifties was the right moment to launch Dianetics. The Atomic bomb had been dropped...There was a sense of hopelessness around and there was a great deal of fear about a nuclear war....McCarthyism was rife.Then along comes Hubbard with he idea that if we would increase the overall sanity of man...it would be a solution to the threat of nuclear war . It was no wonder that people wanted to listen to him.

Indeed, Hubbard himself to have been more than a little concerned about the possible impact of a nuclear war on human society and the individual. He was particularly interested in the effects of nuclear radiation following an atomic explosion and the potential means of countering act radiation sickness. Hiring the Royal Empire Society Hall in London to preside over the "London Congress on Nuclear Radiation and Health," he delivered a series of lectures on radiation. Eventually, he would also begin to promote the use of a drug called "Dianezene, " which was alleged to provide protection against radiation sickness as well as a means of counteracting cancer. In the 1950s, Hubbard also planned to form a variety of survivalist groups called the United Survival Action Clubs, which were designed to live through a nuclear attack. As Hubbard warned, nuclear holocaust is an immanent threat, and we need practical means to prepare for it: "Survival Clubs will permit a large section of the American public to survive a national disaster...The United States is the only country in the world which is organized to be destroyed by an atomic bombing...There are no defenses against atomic weapons except the defenses which will be erected by the Survival Clubs."

However, the clearest example of Hubbard's Cold War mentality lies in his attitudes toward the Soviet Union and the "specter of Communism." Hubbard is a striking example of this Cold War fear of Communism, which preoccupied him for much of his life. As we will see in detail below, Hubbard was from an early date in regular correspondence with the FBI, sending many letters to J. Edgar Hoover himself regarding the Red Threat and the presence of subversive Communist elements in the US. As he wrote in a letter to the FBI in 1951, "The Foundation has assumed a highly punitive stand on Communism. I shall shortly be in Washington to go over this matter with the government. " He would even identify numerous members of Scientology -- including his own ex-wife and her lover -- as Communists, and would make Communist sympathy one of the greatest offenses for a Scientologist. In 1951, an FBI agent was dispatched to interview him, and reported as follows:

Hubbard stated that he strongly feels that Dianetics can be used to combat Communism ...He stated that the Soviets realized the value of Dianetics because as early as 1938 an official from Amtorg...contacted him to suggest that he go to Russia and develop Dianetics there.

Eventually, Hubbard would claim to have somehow come into the possession of a secret brain-washing manual used in the Soviet Union, which he generously offered to forward to the FBI.

In sum, Hubbard and Scientology need to be understood not only as by-products of Cold War America, but perhaps as the epitome of many central anxieties in American culture. This was the same era when the US government was actively engaged in research into both the threat and the potential use of brainwashing as an ideological tool. As John Marks observes in his study of brainwashing and the CIA in the 1950s, the concept of mind control was an area of serious interest -- both as a Communist threat and as a possible weapon against Communist influence in this country. As we will now see, however, this parallel between US Cold War attitudes and the Church of Scientology was perhaps nowhere more apparent than in their preoccupation with secrecy and information control.

II. CORPORATE SECRETS: Bureaucracy, Hierarchy and Secrecy

I control the operation as a general manager would control any operation of a company.

-- Interview with Hubbard for The Saturday Evening Post

In my opinion the church has one of the most effective intelligence operations in the U.S., rivaling even that of the FBI.

-- Ted Gunderson, former head of the FBI's Los Angeles office

By the 1960s, Scientology had grown into an enormously varied business organization -- or rather, an intricate network of businesses -- constructed as a complex hierarchical system. Originally proliferating in a chaotic array of ad hoc organizations under Hubbard 's general leadership, the various Dianetics and Scientology groups would gradually come under the centralized umbrella of the Church of Scientology. Quickly growing into a vast bureaucratic hierarchy, Scientology became a powerful corporate enterprise in addition to a popular new religious movement. As Wallis observes, the organization of Scientology resembles less a traditional Church than it does "multi-national enterprises such as the Ford Motor Company, Coca Cola or International Telephone and Telegraph."

From the outset, the Scientology organization was governed to a large degree by the logic of secrecy and hierarchy -- that is, by controlled access to information, which can be disclosed only to individuals who have attained a particular grade of knowledge and experience. In this sense, Scientology resembles the classic structure of the secret society, as Simmel long ago defined it: the secret society is typically structured the principle of hierarchy, or the "graduated differentiation of the elements in a society. Secret societies, above all others, carry through the division of labor and gradation of their members with great finesse and thoroughness." However, as Tefft observes, the principles of hierarchy and concealment pertain not only to secret societies; rather, particularly under the socio-economic system of modern capitalism, they also characterize much of the corporate world as well. Not only do corporations keep secrets from other competitors, but they also typically create complex internal hierarchies of knowledge and access to valued information: "since large private bureaucracies dominate the life of modern capitalist society, they are the major reason for so much secrecy in the economic life of modern state systems....[B]oth corporation hierarchies as well as...divisional structures give rise to internal secrecy." In Scientology, we find elements of the secret society and the financial corporation combined very successfully into one powerful organization.

From the beginning, Hubbard promoted Scientology as way of achieving a more successful life in all domains -- not just psychological well-being, personal relations and physical health, but also success in business. As Hubbard put it, "The end object of Scientology is making the individual capable of living a better life in his own estimation...and the playing of a better game." Scientology was thus presented as a means of winning in the game of life, a way of "improving the individual's chances of status mobility, a means of achieving normatively established levels of aspiration."

Eventually, the Church would also extend its operations beyond strictly religious activities and more explicitly into the corporate world itself. It would spawn a variety of related organizations designed to help businesses improve their efficiency and profits, such as WISE (World in Scientology Enterprises) which was associated with Sterling Management Systems (designed for dentists and other professionals), David Singer Consultants (a leading consultant firm for chiropractors), the Concerned Businessmen's Association, and Uptreads (involved with marketing, organization and finance).

The Bridge to Total Freedom: A Spiritual Hierarchy and Financial Pyramid

This is the road to returned personal power in the Physical Universe.

-- Hubbard, HCO Bulletin, 1 October 1969

Hubbard's works contain many words, the meaning of which are not made clear for lay comprehension and perhaps purposely so.

-- CIA agent assigned to reading all of Hubbard's published works (1957)

Not only did Hubbard gear his method to a business clientele, but he actually uses extensive language and imagery drawn from the world of business to describe the Scientology process. As we have already seen, the core of his method is appropriately dubbed "auditing;" and the human mind itself is described as a kind of computer, with its own memory "bank," containing a series of "files," and even its own "file clerk" to retrieve materials from the bank. The "auditor" then helps the file clerk to "attack" the memory banks in order to clear them:

The index system of the standard bank is a wonderful thing to behold. Everything is there, filed by subject, filed by time and filed by conclusions.The mind is a well-built computer and it has various services. Auditors.call the source of one of these services the file clerk.The file clerk is the bank monitor. He monitors for both the reactive engram bank and standard banks.

The "auditing" process is not, however, without a price. Indeed, perhaps the most common criticism aimed at Scientology is the high cost of the movement, which some critics have dubbed "the most expensive 'religion' on earth" (the E-Meter alone currently costs around $4,375). Eventually, Hubbard would develop a hierarchy of increasingly complex grades of achievement -- what he called the "bridge to total freedom" -- consisting of fifteen higher levels of "Operating Thetan" (OT). "The belief system of the movement," Wallis observes, "became increasingly esoteric, and a 'hierarchy of sanctification' emerged. Members could locate themselves on levels of initiation into the movement's mysteries." Each of these, in turn, requires additional auditing, classes and texts, and increasing amounts of money. "Knowledge only comes a little at a time," one former Scientologist explains, "you cannot leap from the Bridge...You must go a step at a time. Each step costs a great deal of money." While Grades 0 through 4 leading up to the state of Clear appear to be rather "exoteric," the higher levels beyond Clear seem to be quite esoteric and of highly restricted access:

After the Grades...matters become more complicated because the pre-clear proceeds to the Confidential levels of auditing ...Hubbard decided to cordon off all processes and techniques beyond Grade IV, so that the uninitiated would have no prior knowledge.of the special theories explaining the significance of each level.

The fifteen higher grades of Operating Thetan thus become increasingly esoteric, as the individual is prepared to receive more elaborate teachings and techniques. Little of this information is known with any certainty by non-Scientologists, and most of what has been divulged has been denied by the official Church; however, there are numerous reports by disaffected Scientologists, as well as several court testimonies, that claim to reveal quite a lot of this esoteric information. For example, at the grade of Operating Thetan III, one discovers that the goal of auditing is not simply to free one's individual Thetan from its bondage in the material world; rather, there are also a variety of other entities or "body Thetans," who, like spiritual barnacles, have "battened on to the bodies of their healthier fellows and who must be audited by the latter to the point where they can disengage."

One of the most controversial of these confidential teachings is said to be revealed at the level of OT III, where one encounters an extremely complex cosmological narrative centering around a figure called "Xenu." According to several ex-Scientologists' reports, handwritten copies of Hubbard's own notes, and court testimonies, the narrative goes something like this: 75 billion years ago, there was a Galactic Federation led by a figure named Xenu. The 76 planets within his Federation were faced with the problem of severe overpopulation, which he solved by bringing people en masse back to planet earth and then planting H-bombs in the principal volcanoes around the globe. The loyal officers within the Federation fought against Xenu, finally capturing and imprisoning him in an electronic mountain trap where he still dwells today. Unfortunately, Xenu had also placed "implants" within all human beings, which are designed to kill anyone who tries to unravel this cosmic secret. Luckily, however, these implants can be disabled by Scientology auditing,

Even more surprising ideas are revealed at the level of OT VIII, the last grade about which anyone seems to have much information. According to evidence provided in the court case of Steven Fishman, Hubbard made a series of rather shocking claims: among others, the document states that Hubbard was the incarnation of the Buddha Metteya (Maitreya), the final Buddha for the end of this cosmic age; it also implies that Hubbard's birth is tied to the rise of Lucifer as the Light-bearer and Anti-Christ who has an opportunity to prevent the second coming of Christ; and finally, it claims that Jesus Christ was a homosexual and pedophile whose message was more one of hate than of love:

For those of you whose Christian toes I may have stepped on, let me take the opportunity to disabuse you of some lovely myths. For instance, the historic Jesus was not nearly the sainted figure has been made out to be. In addition to being a lover of young boys and men, he was given to uncontrollable bursts of temper and hatred that belied the general message of love...

The official Church today decries most of the above as slanderous forgeries. Yet in any case, it does seem clear that the higher grades of OT are shrouded in extreme secrecy and tantalizing mystery.

Each of these grades also becomes increasingly expensive. One outspoken critic, Andreas Heldal-Lund, has provided detailed figures for all Scientology training from entry into the Church up to the level of OT VIII. Achieving the level of "Clear" alone involves a number of lengthy and expensive stages, including: Life Repair (a total of $11,200), Scientology Drug Rundown ($11,200), and passage from Grades 0 through 4 ($11,200 each) followed by New Era Dianetics ($16,800) and Clear Certainty ($2800). Thus, the sub-total to become Clear amounts to (at least) $128,560.

Then, beyond the state of Clear, there follows a new series of stages, sessions and training as one rises through the levels of Operating Thetan (OT). These begin with Solo Course Part 1 and 2 (costing a total of $3200 and $1900), OT Preparations and OT Eligibility ($6600 each), before one reaches the levels of Operating Thetan; the fees then increase progressively from OT I ($2000), to OT II ($3800), OT III ($6500), OT IV ($13000), OT V ($29,500), OT VI ($30,300), OT VII ($3500), and OT VIII ($30, 200). Heldal-Lund estimates that the total cost from entry into Scientology up to the level of Operating Thetan VIII will be a minimum of $277,000 -- but more likely, given the various additional sessions and services that are recommended, closer to $365,000 - $380,000.

In this sense, Scientology is a remarkable of the role of secrecy as a source of status, power and authority. As a "device to maintain an exclusive monopoly on knowledge," secrecy often serves to enhance the prestige and status of privileged individuals within a particular social or economic hierarchy. As Simmel observes, "The jealousy of the knowledge about facts hidden to others is shown in all contexts...The secret gives one a position of exception; it operates as a purely socially determined attraction...[A]ll superior persons...have something mysterious."

Not surprisingly, Hubbard and the Church of Scientology quickly became perhaps the wealthiest of the many new religious movements emerging in the second half of the twentieth century. Already by the late 1950s Hubbard was earning an estimated $250,000 a year, "a great deal more than the President of the United States;" and the wealth of the Church has grown exponentially over the last several decades. At present, we have only scant evidence of the actual wealth of the Church, which keeps strict guard over its financial documents. However, we do have some telling details gained from various court cases and ex-Scientologists. For example, just one of Scientology's many entities, the Church of Spiritual Technology, listed $503 million in income for the year 1987 alone. High-level defectors from the organization have reported that the Church has squirreled away roughly $400 million in bank accounts in Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Cyprus.

Scientology, it seems, was remarkably well adapted to the particular socio-economic context in which it emerged: twentieth-century American capitalism. Hubbard offered a new spiritual product that was enormously successful both as a religious institution and as a business enterprise. In this sense, Scientology seems to be an especially clear example of the situation that Peter Berger and others call the "market" conditions of the contemporary religious life. The increasing plurality of religious movements tends to create a religious market, in which religious groups are subject to the same mechanisms governing any other consumer market. Like other businesses, religious movements must generate consumers in order to survive; they must expand their market and tailor their products to fit consumer demand. Promising success in all aspects of life and the ability to solve all the problems of modern man, while using the rhetoric of modern science, "Scientology emerged as a religious commodity eminently suited to the contemporary market...Its organization and the production of the commodity it purveys were thoroughly rationalized. It developed to a level far in apace of most other religious movements... the techniques of salesmanship and public relations." With its highly centralized bureaucracy and hierarchical structure, Scientology might be said to be an ideal embodiment of the modern "Fordist" style of capitalism that predominated in the US until the 1970s.

Secrecy, Security Checks and Suppressive Persons

Are you guilty of anything?

Do you have a secret you're afraid I might find out?

-- "The Only Valid Security Check," HCO Policy Letter (May 22, 1961)

Just as the widespread diffusion of secret societies is usually a proof of public un-freedom, of a tendency toward police regimentation and of political oppression, in short just as it is a reaction stemming from the need for freedom -- so conversely the internal ritual regimentation of secret societies reflects a measure of freedom and severance from society at large

-- Simmel, "The Secret and the Secret Society"

Secrecy is often a profoundly ambivalent and doubled-edged tool; while it can be a powerful source of authority, status and privilege, secrecy is also often a potential source of oppression and exploitation within the esoteric organization itself. Perhaps nowhere is this more apparent than in the case of Scientology. Very quickly, the elaborate bureaucracy of the Church became tied to powerful forms of internal surveillance of its own members; indeed, more than one observer has compared Scientology's methods of surveillance to those of the FBI and CIA. As I would suggest, Scientology emerged out of the same Cold War context that fueled the CIA and FBI in the years from 1945 to 1989 -- a context of fear, suspicion and secrecy that gave birth to incredibly elaborate new systems of security.

Particularly in the late 1960s and 70s, Hubbard grew increasingly worried about the possibility of subversion from both within and without his organization, and began to create more elaborate methods of surveying his followers. As I noted above, he was particularly concerned about Communist infiltration into his organization and even claimed to have uncovered a secret Communist brainwashing manual. In turn, Hubbard began to develop an elaborate code of Scientology "Ethics" designed to identify and weed out individuals designated as "suppressive persons" (SP). The SPs were identified as any persons who were deemed a threat to the proper functioning of the Church: those who question Hubbard's authority, those who reveal classified information to unqualified recipients, and even those who sell Scientology materials at a cut-rate price. Much of this was conducted through the "Ethics" branch of the Church. Using the E-meter and a series of interrogations called "Security Checks" or "Sec Checks," the Ethics officers could identify and then interrogate any individuals who were deemed potential threats to the well-being of the Church. Author William S. Burroughs provides a fascinating account of his own scrutiny under the Sec Checks, which he compares to the techniques used by the CIA:

I had to undergo a series of Security Checks (at my own expense, of course) carried out on a lie detector.'Do you have any doubts about Scientology? Do you have any unkind thoughts about L. Ron Hubbard? Do you know any Communists personally?' - No one asked whether I knew any CIA men personally.You have to swear and believe on some level that the organizational policy is correct and the materials are as Mr. Hubbard says they are before you can see them.

How does Hubbard do it? With the E-Meter of course. The E-Meter is ...a reliable lie detector in expert hands. The CIA also uses lie detectors and runs Security Checks on all personnel. With this device any organization can become a God from whom no thought...can be hidden.

As we read in the Church's own letters and bulletins from the early 1960s onward, the Security Checks were designed as a powerful means to critically examine Scientology members and seek out any subversive or disloyal tendencies. According to an HCO document from 1960, "Remember as a security checker you are not merely an observer, or an auditor, you are a detective." Most of the questions in the Sec Checks centered around matters of secrecy, disloyalty to Hubbard or the Church, ties with Communism, and, interestingly enough, sexual aberrations. For example:

Are you a pervert?

Are you guilty of any major crimes in this lifetime?

Have you been sent here knowingly to injure Scientology?

Are you or have you ever been a Communist?

Do you have a secret you are afraid I'll find out?

Have you ever assaulted anyone, practiced cannibalism, been in jail? raped anyone or been raped? been involved in an abortion?...practiced homosexuality? practiced or assisted intercourse between women?...

Do you collect sexual objects?...

Are you hiding anything?...

Do you feel Communism has some good points?

Have you ever injured Dianetics of Scientology? .

Have you ever had any unkind thoughts about L. Ron Hubbard or Scientology?...

Are you upset by this security check?

Do you hope you won't be found out?

Have you ever avoided auditing yourself?

Have you ever mistrusted your E-meter?...

Do you think selling auditing is really a swindle?

Do you think there is anything wrong with having your own privacy invaded?

Have you secretly violated any course rule, or regulation? passed on restricted data of Scientology to unauthorized persons? tried to give Scientology a bad name?

Following severe criticism and legal assaults on the Church, the process of Security Checking would be officially canceled in 1968; however, the Church's concern with secrecy and surveillance does not appear to have ended, but rather to have grown even more intense in the last three decades.

The most esoteric and strictly-controlled part of the Scientology organization is the elite group known as the Sea Org -- the small group of the most dedicated followers who served on Hubbard's fleet of sea-going vessels. With the professed goal of "exploring ancient civilizations," the Sea Org was formed shortly after Hubbard was warned that he would no longer be permitted entry into the United Kingdom. Today, the Sea Org claims over 5000 members who occupy high positions in individual churches; however, the organization has been from its origins shrouded in secrecy. "The vessels of the Sea Org are surrounded with an aura of mystery and secrecy. The whereabouts of the Flag Ship on which Hubbard resides is kept a closely guarded secret even from the rank and file Scientologists." According to Scientology's own accounts, the Sea Org was supposed to represent the most disciplined faction within the Church, and indeed, the most powerfully organized elite corps in the world:

The Sea Org was formed to compose a superiorily disciplined, elite group working directly under Ron to aid the creation of a new civilization on this planet

The Sea Organization is the most powerful organization in the world. It works with the primary rod of Ethics.

As the sign of their intense dedication, Sea Org members were required to sign a 'billion year contract" of service to Church. Not only was their unfailing unquestioning devotion to continue over this lifetime, in other words, but it was to be their mission for many, many lifetimes to come.

III. FAIR GAME: Secrecy, Espionage and Counter-espionage

[N]o Scientologist may be brought before a Committee of Evidence or punished for any action taken against a Suppressive Person or Group during the period that person or group is 'fair game.'

-- Hubbard, Introduction to Scientology Ethics

The law can be used very easily to harass. And enough harassment on somebody who is simply on the thin edge anyway, well knowing that he is not authorized will generally be sufficient to cause his professional decease. If possible, of course, ruin him utterly.

-- Hubbard, HCO Technical Bulletin, 1955

Surely the most remarkable -- and often just plain bizarre -- aspect of Scientology's history is its labyrinthine game of espionage and counter-espionage with a variety of enemies. Not only did it enter into complex disputes with various governments, from the US to Germany, England and Australia, but it also took on a series of legal battles with various media and anti-cult groups. In short, the case of Scientology is one of the most extreme examples of the complex "secrecy process," or the elaborate feedback lop between esoteric groups, the governments who oppose them, and the various tactics of counter-espionage that each deploys in order to combat the other. While secrecy is often a powerful means of enhancing the status and prestige of those who hold esoteric knowledge, it often becomes a serious liability when dominant political authorities begin to suspect subversive activities. And in turn, groups who face political persecution often adopt even more complex strategies of self-concealment as a basic means of survival. Scientology, however, would go further still, using the cloak of secrecy not only to protect itself, but also to carry out aggressive acts against its enemies.

During the 1960s, in the face of increasing criticism from both within and without the Scientology organization, Hubbard adopted a principle known as "fair game." Someone who is declared "fair game" is an individual who has been identified as a major threat to the organization and therefore can be harassed, threatened or punished using any and all means possible. In his Introduction to Scientology Ethics, Hubbard defines "fair game" as follows:

By FAIR GAME is meant, without right for self possessions or position and no Scientologist may be brought before a Committee of Evidence or punished for any action taken against a Suppressive Person or Group during the period that person or group is 'fair game'

Elsewhere, in his Policy Letters, Hubbard comments that "fair game" may be "deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of Scientologists. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed." For example, when a splinter group called "Ampinistrics" broke off from Scientology and began practicing a similar kind of therapy using Hubbard's ideas, they were branded heresy and aggressively attacked; as Hubbard put it, "They are each fair game, can be sued or harassed...If these persons move into your area act through any agency you can to have them deported or arrested on whatever grounds." Similar judgments were passed on those Scientologists who distributed confidential advanced materials at a reduced price: declared "enemies of mankind, the planet and all life," they were deemed "fair game:" "No amnesty may ever cover them...The Criminals Prosecution Bureau is to find any and all crimes in their pasts and have them brought to court."

Like the practice of "Sec Check," the Fair Game principle was officially canceled during the reforms of 1968. Yet it is clear that the Church has by no means ceased its aggressive response to any groups or individuals -- including the media, anti-cult groups and the US government -- perceived to be a threat to the prosperity of the movement.

Dirty Business? Espionage, Counter-Espionage and Cold War Paranoia

Man in his anxieties is prone to witch hunts.

-- L. Ron Hubbard, Introduction to Scientology Ethics

The evidentiary record of the US Government's conspiracy against the Church of Scientology...has no parallel in American legal history ...[N]ever before have so many agencies.joined forces in a dedicated -- yes, a fanatical-- scheme to destroy a legally constituted religious community.

-- Omar Garrison, Playing Dirty: The Secret War against Beliefs

From an early date, as we saw above, Hubbard had been in regular contact with the FBI, sending frequent letters to J. Edgar Hoover in order to identify Communists threats to US security. Initially, the FBI largely ignored Hubbard and dismissed him as a crack-pot or a "mental case." Ironically, however, Hubbard himself would become an object of scrutiny by a wide array of government agencies, who grew concerned about his possible status as a subversive threat. Thus, Hubbard's own paranoia about infiltration actually turned out to be at least partly justified:

Hubbard did not know of the extent of the FBI's interest in his activities until it was disclosed in the late 1970s through FOIA. He always was convinced that he was under surveillance by the US and foreign security services.On this occasion, Hubbard's rampant paranoia was justified - perhaps demonstrating the saying about a broken clock being right twice a day.

Like many alternative religious and political groups of the Cold War era, Scientology was targeted as a potential threat to American values, family structure and even public health. Already in 1963, the Food and Drug Administration began to investigate the Church and finally raided its center in Washington, DC on the grounds that Scientology was making false claims about the benefits of its E-meters. Moving in with two unmarked vans, a squad of FDA agents and US marshals began a raid that some critics have called "a farce better suited to the Keystone Cops than a federal agency." All in all, the agents confiscated three tons of materials, including piles of books, papers and E-meters. The Church in turn decried the raid as the work of armed thugs bursting into "pastoral counseling sessions" and desecrating the sanctity of a church; it was nothing less than a "shocking example of government bureaucracy gone mad," and a "frightening attack upon the Constitutional rights of freedom of religion." As Hubbard complained, "All I can make of this is that the United States Government. has launched an attack upon religion.Where will this end? Complete censorship? A complete ignoring of the First Amendment? Are churches to be attacked and books burned as a normal course of action?

However, perhaps the real reason for the government's intense interest in Scientology was that it was an extremely high-income business. By 1967, the IRS had become suspicious of the Church's growing wealth and corporate organization, passing a ruling that stripped it of tax-exempt status. In the early 1970s, the IRS began to scrutinize the Church -- conducting a few "auditing" sessions of its own -- and claimed that it owed several million dollars in unpaid taxes. In response, Scientology began to clothe itself in more recognizably "religious" garb, veiling itself in Christian imagery, in order to win First Amendment protection. Thus, the Church began to use the "Scientology Cross" as one of its main symbols, while "counselors started sporting clerical collars. Chapels were built, franchises became 'missions,' fees became 'fixed donations,' and Hubbard's ...cosmology became 'sacred scriptures.'"

In addition to the IRS, the FBI also began to take an active interest in Scientology. Already by the early 1970s, the FBI had sent secret operatives to virtually every branch of the Church, while at the same time pressuring members were into supplying the agency with confidential information, by the threat of, criminal prosecution. In 1974, for example, an FBI agent tried over a period of several months to recruit a young Scientology student named James Robert Welder to become an undercover operative in the church, offering to pay for his courses in Scientology, along with $4800 monthly stipend.

It is perhaps not surprising that the Church felt justified to respond in turn to its aggressors according to the principles of "fair game." Increasingly attacked on all sides from anti-cult groups, the media, the IRS and the FBI, the Church turned to elaborate tactics of counter-espionage of its own, undertaking covert operations that almost rivaled those of the FBI. As one critic remarks, Scientology developed "a strict, devoted and tentacular organization, merciless espionage and intelligence machine to repel the attacks of people who began...to expose Scientology." Ironically, the same Hubbard who had once written letters to J. Edgar Hoover to unmask Communists began to target many government officials as "suppressive persons:" "politicians, journalists, medical and psychiatric professionals, judges...and agencies (... the AMA, the FDA, the NIMH, the NAMH, the British and Australian Parliaments) that have attempted to discredit Hubbard...or to erect legal or financial barriers to the spread of the Church have been, at various points, declared suppressive."

From an early date, Hubbard had made plans to infiltrate key government branches with Scientology members, advancing the interests of the Church at the highest levels of power. According to his "Special Zone Plan" of 1960,

[A] nation or state runs on the ability of its department heads, its governors or any other leaders. It is easy to get posts in such areas...Don't bother to get elected. Get a job on the secretarial staff or the bodyguard, use any talent one has to get a place close in...Doing a good job.will result in promotion, better contacts -- a widening zone.

However, it was not until it was faced with increasing harassment from the IRS, FBI and FDA that the Church undertook serious attempts to infiltrate specific government agencies in order to engage in covert and illegal operations. The most remarkable of these operations was begun in 1975, when Jane Kember, the Church's Guardian Worldwide, issued an order calling for decisive action against the IRS Service. In "a turnabout caper in which the spied upon would themselves become spies," the Church undertook an elaborate operation that included intensive litigation in courts, a public relations campaign, and finally penetration of the IRS intelligence division and chief counsel's office. In addition to planting hidden microphones, the undercover agents were to obtain and make photocopies of all the files pertaining to Scientology. In the first five months of 1975 alone, they had photocopied a pile of documents that stood over ten feet high. As one defender of Scientology argues, the Church was only responding in turn to an unjust government, using the very same tactics the FBI had used:

If, at the last, in their long trial against a criminal regime, some Scientologists broke the law...they were merely following the example set by their official persecutors. Every offense of which the Scientologists were charged had been committed by federal agents previously.

In the end, however, the spying Scientologists were caught. On July 4, 1977, the FBI began intensive searches at Scientology centers in Washington, Los Angeles and Hollywood. In LA, this culminated in 21-hour raid, during which a 16 ton truck backed up and was loaded to capacity with files, documents, correspondence and miscellaneous items. In a massive operation, which many critics claim showed a flagrant "disregard for Constitutional restraints," 156 agents forcefully burst into and cleaned out all Church offices and files in the centers:

They came at dawn, in a long procession of shiny big cars filled with grim-faced men neatly dressed in jackets and ties. In all there were 156 of them-- the largest number of FBI agents ever mustered for a single raid in the history of the Bureau...They would use huge battering rams, sledge hammers and buzz saws to smash and cut their way into church buildings, where they would conduct a massive search and seize, unprecedented in American legal history.

In 1979, eleven Scientologists, including Hubbard's own wife, Mary Sue, were convicted of conspiracy and sentenced to lengthy jail sentences. Hubbard himself was cited as an "unindicted co-conspirator" and went into hiding, from which he did not emerge until his death in 1986.

Operation Freak-Out: Scientology and the Media in the Post-Cold War Era

Strange things seem to happen to people who write about Scientology.

-- Richard Behar, "The Thriving Cult of Greed"

People attack Scientology; I never forget it, always even the score.

People attack auditors, or staff, or organisations, or me. I never forget until the slate is clear.

-- Hubbard, Manual of Justice

Perhaps fittingly, Hubbard's death corresponded roughly with the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Yet his death did not bring any end to the dialetic of secrecy and surveillance between the Church and the government, any more than the end of the Cold War brought an end to secrecy in the US government; if anything, in both cases, the obsession with secrecy, surveillance and counter-espionage would only intensify in the post-Cold War era.

If the Church of Scientology undertook extreme measures in its war of "fair game" against the US government, they were even more aggressive in their war against the media. Since at least the 1960s, Scientology has been subject to a barrage of journalistic exposes, culminating in Time's cover story on the "Cult of Greed." But the Church has not remained passive to these media attacks. On the contrary, it has responded forcefully, using both the overt legal apparatus of the court system and the covert tactics of private investigation and character defamation. Hubbard himself warned his followers to "beware of attorneys who tell you not to sue .[T]he purpose of the suit is to harass and discourage rather than to win;" the Church would eventually bring hundreds of suits against its enemies and now pays an estimated $20 million annually to more than 100 lawyers.

This had already begun in the 1971, when journalist Paulette Cooper wrote a scathing book on Scientology. The Church responded with a plan called "Operation Freak Out," whose goal, according to Church documents, was "to get P.C. incarcerated in a mental institution or jail." Scientologists actually impersonated Cooper and managed to get her indicted in 1973 for threatening to bomb the Church. Cooper was finally exonerated in 1977, but only after enduring 19 lawsuits. Perhaps the best-documented case of Scientology's war with the media, however, is that of Richard Behar, who wrote the 1991 article for Time entitled "the Cult of Greed." As Behar recounts his experience with Scientology during his research on the article, he was assaulted with a frightening array of legal and illegal persecution, including a swarm of lawyers and private detectives:

[A]t least 10 attorneys and six private detectives were unleashed by Scientology and its followers in an effort to threaten, harass and discredit me... A copy of my personal credit report -- with detailed information about my bank accounts, home mortgage, credit-card payments, home address and Social Security number -- had been illegally retrieved from a national credit bureau...[P]rivate investigators have been contacting acquaintances of mine.to inquire about subjects such as my health ...and whether I've ever had trouble with the IRS.

If Scientology played hard ball in its war of "fair game" with the media, it would be quite ruthless when it came to dealing with the various anti-cult groups that have hounded it for decades.

The Cult Awareness Network (CAN), for example, targeted Scientology as one of the most rapacious of all "deviant cults" in the US. Like many other anti-cult groups, they severely criticized the Church because of its alleged brainwashing techniques and greed-driven corporate organization. However, Scientology was by no means a passive victim of CAN's attacks. On the contrary, beginning in 1991, the Church begin to bombard CAN with a massive legal assault, filing at least fifty lawsuits against CAN in state and federal courts across the country.

Eventually, CAN would be driven deeply into debt and finally to bankruptcy, in large part because of its endless court battles with Scientology. In October 1996, CAN's executive director, Cynthia Kisser, appeared in a federal bankruptcy court in Chicago hoping to buy the last assets of the organization; she wanted, she says, only "the chance to put the hopelessly bankrupt CAN out of its misery by buying up its trade name, post office box, help line number, and service mark, so that all could be retired." Unknown to Kisser, however, another party had appeared to bid on CAN's assets -- a lawyer from Los Angeles, who also happened to be a member of the Church of Scientology. And he proceeded to outbid and purchase the last remaining assets of the Network, including all rights to its name, help-line number its extensive information on cult activity around the worldToday, when one calls the Cult Awareness Network (now renamed "New CAN") or visits its web-site, one is in greeted by a member of the Church of Scientology. Had Hubbard lived to see the day, I am certain he would have observed that turn-about is, after all, fair play.

Finally, with the rise of new information technologies in the post-Cold War era, Scientology's war of secrecy and control has only grown more intense. Above all, with the rapid proliferation of the Internet, Scientology faces a new series of threats to its exclusive claim to possession of secret knowledge. For the last decade, a wide array of confidential Scientology materials have been popping up all over the world wide web, so that now anyone with a fast modem can unlock the inner secrets of Operating Thetan at the click of a mouse. In turn, the Church has adopted a fiercely aggressive stance in order to censor and silence any individuals who publish its materials on-line.

The backbone of the Church's war against the Internet is a special branch called the "Religious Technology Center" (RTC). As the RTC defines its mission, it is "a legal mechanism for ensuring that the Scientology religious technologies were orthodox" designed "to prevent anyone from.engaging in some distorted misuse of Hubbard's writings;" in sum, "RTC is the final arbiter of orthodoxy." Above all, the RTC has waged a full-scale war in cyber-space against the many Internet users distributing confidential Scientology materials throughout the globe using the power of digital communications:

The Church of Scientology has a massive multimedia Internet presence with the launch in 1996 one of the largest and most technically advanced web sites on the Internet .The Church uses the Internet in its dissemination of the Scientology religion and feels that this is one of the most -- if not the most -- important technological advances in the field of communication. However, with the popularization of the Internet.a certain percentage of Internet users decided that no rules should apply in this new medium. In particular, they decided that their own "free speech" was paramount to any other rights.

The RTC has been particularly aggressive in its pursuit of Internet sites claiming to reveal Hubbard's confidential writings and the higher levels of the Church hierarchy. This began in 1993, when an anti-Scientology newsgroup called "alt.religion.scientology" was founded, falsely using the name of the Church's head, David Miscavage. However, the first major court case began in 1994, when a former Scientologist minister posted confidential Advanced Technology works on the Internet through a bulletin board on the NETCOM service. Since then, the Church has engaged in a series of court battles: in 1998, the Church was awarded $ 3 million as a result of a lawsuit filed against Grady Ward for posting confidential materials on the web; and in 1999, a lawsuit involving 1,900 copyright infringements was settled between the Church and FACT.NET - though not until both sides had accumulated $7 million in legal fees. According to the RTCs accounts, it has engaged in at least seven major lawsuits and a variety of smaller cases over the issue of copyright infringement on the Internet.

Yet despite these aggressive attempts to squelch its enemies in cyber-space, the Church appears to be fighting a losing battle. The speed, relative anonymity and fluidity of the Internet makes it virtually impossible stop the spread of information to every corner of the globe, as ten mirror sites pop up for every one web-page that is taken down and the "secrets" of Scientology proliferate in a bewildering flurry of digital debris. As William S. Burrough observed based on his own interactions with the Church, "If the Scientologists persist in a self-imposed isolation and in withholding their materials from those best qualified to evaluate.them, they may well find themselves bypassed."

This is perhaps much the same lesson the U.S. government has to learn in the aftermath of the Cold War; despite our most intense efforts to maintain security, our most valued "secrets" are now spreading throughout the globe in a new age of nuclear proliferation and religious terrorism.

CONCLUSIONS AND COMPARATIVE COMMENTS: The Price of Secrecy

Falsehood must become exposed by truth -- and truth, though fought, always in the end prevails.

-- L. Ron Hubbard, My Philosophy (1965)

As Bachelard neatly put it, 'there is no science but that of the hidden.' The sociologist is better or worse equipped to discover what is hidden depending on .the degree of interest he has in uncovering what is censored or repressed in the social world.

-- Pierre Bourdieu, Sociology in Question (1978)

Despite the intense scrutiny of the Church by the government, media and anti-cult groups, and despite the "revelation" of its secrets all over the Internet, Scientology does not appear to have lost much of its power or wealth; on the contrary, it remains perhaps the most affluent new religious movement in the United States. It now claims over eight million members, with 3000 churches spread throughout he world. Particularly through its opulent "Celebrity Centers," the Church continues to attract a wide array of entertainers, including not only Travolta and Cruise, but also Palm Springs mayor and performer Sonny Bono and even Nancy Cartwright, the voice of cartoon star Bart Simpson. The crowning moment of victory for the Church came in 1993, when it was finally -- after a long court battle and a settlement of twelve million dollars -- awarded legal status as a religious movement by the US government. The IRS finally declared that "Church of Scientology International and its related churches and charitable and educational entities [are] exempt from United States federal income tax as exclusively religious or charitable organizations under section 501 (c) (3) of the Internal Revenue Code." Shortly thereafter, on October 8, 1993, tens of thousands of Scientologists gathered in Los Angeles to celebrate this "historic victory for religious freedom." In the end, it would seem that Scientology has won at least one major round in its "fair game."

I have in this brief article just scratched the surface of the Church of Scientology and its complex role in American culture. However, my aim here has simply been to make two basic points: First, Scientology is best understood not as a counter-cultural rejection of mainstream American values, but rather as the fulfillment and perhaps exaggeration of many American anxieties, particularly during the decades of the Cold War. In this sense, Scientology is similar to many of the new religious movements that Paul Heelas has examined. According to Heelas, these movements are not so much a revolt against modernity; on the contrary, they are better seen as the fulfillment of many central ideals of the modern West. They provide a "sacralized rendering of widely held values," such as "freedom, authenticity, self-responsibility, self-reliance, self determination... and above all the self as a value in and of itself." Many of these movements, moreover, are compatible and even complicit with the values of modern capitalism. Rather than a reaction against Western materialism, many new religions are in fact directed toward the material world, including the world of business and finance. Nowhere is this more true than in the case of Scientology, which developed an elaborate corporate hierarchy that is perhaps the epitome of the centralized capitalist bureaucracy imagined by Henry Ford himself. Second and more important, however, Scientology also reflected and perhaps epitomized the concern with secrecy that characterized much of Cold War America. Not only was secrecy and the claim to valuable information a key part of Scientology's tremendous symbolic (and economic) power; but it's very tactics of secrecy and its growing wealth in turn aroused the interest of the government's own security agencies and covert operations. In sum, the practice of secrecy was in this case an elaborate dialectical interaction between the government and the Church. A spiraling, self-destructive, yet somehow self-nourishing feedback loop, it circled endlessly in a cycle of concealment, espionage and counter-espionage that left both the Church and its critics drowning in a mire of lawsuits. To return to Simmel's analogy between secrecy and money, the practice of secrecy can generate both symbolic and economic forms of capital; but it also brings with it a host of both symbolic and real political risks.

To close, I would like to suggest that the example of Scientology has a number of profound implications for the study of religions today -- particularly in our own new age of religious secrecy, terrorism and government surveillance. The case of Scientology during the Cold War was at once a kind of prefiguration and a strange mirror of our own generation in the wake of 9/11 and the new war on terror. Indeed, the tactics employed by the FBI against Scientology appear rather timid compared to the new measures allowed by the USA PATRIOT Act -- measures that, according to many critics, reflect a new version of "McCarthy-era philosophy." Perhaps most important, it raises the question of what rights to privacy religious movements deserve and how far either government officials or scholars in the academy should go in order to penetrate their inner secrets. Does the government, in fact, have some obligation to infiltrate and expose movements that appear to be dangerous or harmful to its citizens? And what is the role of the scholar of religion in all of this? Do we have some obligation either to expose and unmask such groups, or, conversely, to argue for tolerance and respect?

If the case of Scientology has anything to teach us, I think, it is that every attempt to infiltrate or expose an esoteric movement only leads to further, ever more intense tactics of concealment and counter-espionage. Attempting to infiltrate and expose such movements, in other words, is not a useful approach - - on the contrary, as we have also seen in the case of the Branch Davidians and the disaster at Waco, such aggressive attacks only push these groups into more and more extreme, often quite paranoid positions vis a vis the outside world. Every act aimed at penetrating such movements would only appear to create an equal and probably more intense reaction of secrecy and concealment.

Perhaps the only viable stance we can take toward such groups is to respect their rights to privacy, acknowledging those areas in which they wish to remain closed to outsiders, while at the same time critically exercising our own "hermeneutics of suspicion." We can and should remain critical of those aspects of all religious movements -- and all secular ideologies, as well -- that appear exploitative or oppressive; and we should continue to spread as much information as possible in order to inform the public at large and to train our students in the skills of critical thinking about all forms of ideology, religious and non-religious alike. For, as Pierre Bourdieu reminds us, this is precisely how scholarship exerts its political influence -- that is, by critically examining and demystifying asymmetrical relations of power wherever they exist in the social field. Yet we cannot, I think, overstep the bounds of religious freedom and basic rights to privacy -- as the FDA and FBI did in the case Scientology, and as the US government is currently doing under the USA PATRIOT Act and other measures in its war or terror -- nor can we expect such covert strategies to lead to anything other than an escalating cycle of secrecy, mistrust, obfuscation and paranoia. In sum, the historian of religion needs to remain at once respectful and critical of both religious movements and the governmental powers that would monitor, regulate and control them.

To close, I would like to cite one last passage from one of Hubbard's bulletins, in which he describes his own future re-incarnation on this earth. The secrets of his teaching have been entrusted to his loyal students, who are commissioned with preserving them until Hubbard's eventual return to this world, at a time when he will assume a more explicitly political role than he has in this life:

I will return not as a religious leader but a political one. That happens to be the requisite beingness for the task at hand...So there you have it. The secret that I have kept close to my chest all these years. Now you too are part of this secret and I no longer have to shoulder the burden alone...With this briefing I entrust to each of you the responsibility for this material until such time as I am able to return...The handful of secret societies throughout history that have caught on to this game have long since fallen by the wayside or been taken over and become instruments of the very menace they were set up to combat.

In the midst of a new American war on terror, with the rapid proliferation of new offices of homeland security and Total Information Awareness networks, Hubbard may well find that he has ample opportunities to return in a more explicitly political role in his next incarnation.

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