The Hubbard Dianetic Foundation, Inc.
275 MORRIS AVENUE
P.O. BOX 502, ELIZABETH, N.J.
ELIZABETH [?]-2951
211 W. Douglas St.
Wichita, Kansas
May 14, 1951
THE ATTORNEY GENERAL
DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
Washington, D.C.
Dear Sir:
You will find that I have reported some of these matters to the FBI in Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, D.C. before but this is getting to a point where the mere delivery of facts into files is pointless.
It is more than a belief on my part that the Communist Party or members of the Communist Party have in the past year wiped out a half a million operation for me, have cost me my health and have considerably retarded material of interest to the United States Government.
I am, basically, a scientist in the field of atomic and molecular phenomena. At least, that was my course in college. I followed this into the fields of human thought, indentified an energy and produced through twenty years of research, a science of thought known popularly as dianetics.
Although this story starts earlier, when I left the Navy in which I served as an officer during the war, I found myself associated with a woman known as Sara Elisabeth Northrup. I met her in Pasadena in late 1945. [illegible words] considerable interest in my scientific researches.
In 1949, in Elizabeth, New Jersey, I formed an organization known as the American Institute of Advanced Therapy. Miss Northrup, whom I believed to by my wife, having married her and then, after some mix-up about a divorce, believed her to be my wife in common law, was instrumental in breaking up this organization. In 1950 I wrote a book called DIANETICS and formed the HUBBARD DIANETIC RESEARCH FOUNDATION in New Jersey.
From the first this organization, quite unlike my naval commands, was a source of great turbulence to me. Strange things were done for which I had no accounting. Orders were rarely carried out. Research was held to zero. Funds were spent in unproductive ways.
In August of that year I had reason to believe my wife was unfaithful and went to California. I was afraid of publicity and did nothing about this. By October, things
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The Hubbard Dianetic Foundation, Inc.
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P.O. BOX 502, ELIZABETH, N.J.
ELIZABETH 3-2951
had come to such a pass in terms of organizational enturbulence that C. Parker Morgan, a member of the Foundation board of trustees told me he believed subversion was taking place. He asked the FBI to make an investigation. I know nothing further of this investigation. However, investigating on my own, I found that the publisher of the book, Arthur Ceppos, Hermitage House, was failing to distribute the book and was actually upsetting the organization by invalidating me and the science. I challenged Ceppos with this and forced him to resign from the board of trustees of the Foundation. At this time I learned also that Ceppos was "formerly" a member of the Communist Party. Resigning with Ceppos and hand in glove with him, evidently, was J.A. Winter, MD, medical director of the Foundation. I discovered then that Winter was a psycho-neurotic discharged officer of the US Army Medical Corps and that Winter seemed to have Communist connections. I was not alert still any belief that this strange upset in the organization was Communist inspired.
In early October my alleged wife, who a few months later would be claiming we were not married, caused me to make out a will to her via attorney Milt Davis of Los Angeles, leaving her shares in the copyrights and Foundations. I returned to Rahway New Jersey and in late October, while asleep in my home, was slugged. I had no proof of this and so I wisely or unwisely sheered away from publicity for something for which I had no witnesses and tried to carry on. However I was thereafter in poor health.
I returned to Los Angeles. On my first day in town Sara Northrup left our baby in a car and I was arrested for it. I could never understand why the police insisted it was I, but it is a matter of court record that the act was done by Sara.
On December the 5th, while asleep in my apartment, on North Rossmore in Los Angeles I was again attacked and knocked out. When I woke I debated considerably going to the police but was again afraid of publicity for again I did not know who might have done this. It never occured [sic] to me to suspect that my wife had any part in this.
I had become so ill by January 1st and was so long overdue in writing my second book that I went to Palm Springs. I returned from Palm Springs in late February to find my wife apparently ill, in bad mental condition, and my baby more or less forgotten in a back room of the Los Angeles Foundation. I instantly took steps, what steps I could, to give my wife help. She seemed to recover.
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The Hubbard Dianetic Foundation, Inc.
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ELIZABETH 3-2951
I was in my apartment on February 23rd, about two or three o'clock in the morning when the apartment was entered, I was knocked out, had a needle thrust into my heart to give it a jet of air to produce "coronary thrombosis" and was given an electric shock with a 110 volt current. This is all very blurred to me. I had no witnesses. But only one person had another key to that apartment and that was Sara.
Further, earlier in the week, I had found letters in a "love nest" she had had with a Miles Hollister, an employee of the Foundation. These letters contained, with their love language, also enormous amounts of data on the Foundation and my activities. Further there was a telegram which came from Hollister containing the phrase, "Lombardo should live so long" Lombardo being a name she sometimes called me.
I learned of this quickly by phone from New Jersey and my orders from my eastern Foundation were to get out. I went back to the apartment that night however and found my "wife" had returned but seemed drugged. I found two strange men watching the apartment. I got her out, she consenting, and took her to Palm Springs. Hollister instantly had warrants issued for my arrest for "abducting" my wife and gave the Beverly Hills police a false address for himself. Further, I had put my baby safely in a nursing home and Hollister issued a compalint [sic] against me in Los Angeles for kidnapping my own baby. I tried to get Sara out of California, knowing her to be under terrific duress of some kind. She however would not further accompany me than the Arizona border. I have her signed statement, requested of her by me before the border guard that she was under her own power and was with me by full consent. At the moment she demanded to go back I could not deter her naturally without using force and so I let her go.
I went east. My baby was delivered to me there. The child was ill and I took her south to get her some sunshine. I wrote my second book in Havana. I returned here to Wichita.
Meanwhile I was able to integrate this matter and obtained more data from friends. There are many witnesses to these things, Frank Dressler, A.E. van Vogt, Mrs. Fay Clauson,
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The Hubbard Dianetic Foundation, Inc.
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Richard de Mille, and others.
Sara was associating exclusively and using her position to support a group consisting of Miles Hollister, Gene Benton, (an alias, his real name being Weinberger), Peggy Benton, Roger Starr, Lyn Hite, Henry Hunter, Marge Hunter and Gregory Hemmingway. In the east she was closely and exclusively associated with Dr. Winter, Arthur Ceppos and a Nancy Roodenburg. Using a Foundation position as Executive vice-president, she provided this group with funds. Handling my own accounts she neglected to pay many debts. She was closely connected as well with H[?] [?]oon, a "pastor" in Monrovia or some such town in California. Also she was associated, as a part of this group, with Marc Lawrence, the actor, and via Benton, Stan Benton, the orchestra leader seems also associated with this group and also with a [?]ill Graff or Graph. Also connected here is Edward [?]uhl or [illegible word] Universal Pictures but in what way I am not certain.
Gene and Peggy Benton confessed to our general manager that they had been members of the Young Communists. Henry Hunter and Marge Hunter are alleged to have been connected with Communism. Marc Lawrence, very active in this group, is supposed to have been (admitted in the House to have been) a member of the Communist Party. Hollister stated to me that he had been a member of the Young Communists and is associated with Dr. Werner Wolfe of Bard College.
In November the Medical Director of the Foundation Dr. Rowland Walker died very suddenly, in Winter's House [sic], of "coronary thrombosis", after a siege of terrible nerves. In late January or early February, an instructor of the Los Angeles Foundation, on the verge of important research data, was shot to death by his wife who then committed suicide - out of which Hollister and Benton seemed to have attempted to make anti-dianetic publicity. Earlier, in New York, a young patient, after an interview with Gene Benton committed suicide and an effort had been made to publicize t[?]
The group above named has produced remarkable turbulence in our organization so that the organization has collapsed and another has had to be set up to replace it. Their removal from dianetics has been attended by a most remarkable smear campaign in California.
In February in Chicago I took tests at the Chicago Psychological Institute to guarantee the fact that I am sane. This talk of insanity and other matters in the press have behind them a remarkable clause in the "divorce" petition leveled by Sara "Hubbard" - a receivership for the Foundation and turning it all over to her. She was aware of
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The Hubbard Dianetic Foundation, Inc.
275 MORRIS AVENUE
P.O. BOX 502, ELIZABETH, N.J.
ELIZABETH 3-2951
that my will had been changed.
Many offers of peace were extended to her before this strange attack was launched. I have been called a "dope fiend" by her. I have been called "insane". Every effort is being made to get dianetics.
This is data: in August 1950 I found out a method the Russians use on such people as Vogeler, Min[?]nty and others to obtain confessions. I could undo that method. My second book was to have shown how the Communists used narcosynte[?]sis and physical torture and why it worked as it did. Further, I was working on a technology of psychological war[?] to present it to the Defense Department. All that work was interrupted. Each time I tried to write, a new attack was launched.
As a one-time officer of ONI[?]I I try not to see Indians behind every bush. I have not the use of your files. I find out, suddenly, that a Leo West, in charge of our office is a Communist and so discharge him and close that o[?] But I could not discover these things until damage has been done.
I enclose a validation pamphlet of dianetics. It is not a psychotherapy but a study of the energy of thought. It is important technology. The proof of it in the field of psychotherapy is indicated in this pamphlet.
Those ex-Communists or current Communists "helped me". They stayed close to me. They shut me off from Communication. I did not realize that my wife was one until this spring. Only then could I separate myself.
While my proof may be slight, it is strange that turbulence in the new Foundation ceased the moment I began to use only personnel screened by a "lie detector". This present organization is secure as well as I can make it. But the old Foundations have been thrust into oblivion.
Dianetics is important politically. It indicates way [?] of controling [sic] people or de-controling [sic] them and of handling groups which is good technology. It is an American science. Arthur Ceppos sat on the press side of dianetics and we have received since the publication of the book a most rabid anti-dianetic press.
The field of Group 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.
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The Hubbard Dianetic Foundation, Inc.
275 MORRIS AVENUE
P.O. BOX 502, ELIZABETH, N.J.
ELIZABETH 3-2951
It may be that this is wildcat party activity. It may be that these members are simply ex- Communists. But an Alastair Kyle, stated by Parker Morgan to be a Communist, tried long and hard from New York to get our mailing list.
I only know these things - while I let them, unsuspected, cluster around me, these people stopped dianetics in its tracks. With them gone we can run an organization. But once ejected they began, evidently, through Sara, these remarkable attacks. I believe this woman to be under heavy duress. She was born into a criminal atmosphere, her father having a criminal record. Her half sister was an inmate of an insane asylum. She was part of a free love colony in Pasadena. She had attached herself to a Jack Parsons, the rocket expert, during the war and when she left him he was a wreck. Further, through Parsons, she was strangely intimate with many scientists of Los Alamos Gordos. I did not know or realize these things until I myself investigated the matter. She may have a record.
My plea is simply this: security in which science can work. Why do these people remain at large, free of our press[?] destructive of our efforts? I have been developing, in spite of these enturbulences, data of some value as this rudimentary pamphlet proves. Dianetics and the Foundation, potent forces, almost fell into complete Communist control or the control of ex-Communists whichever it is. I cannot fight the battle of Communist vs the world as the only opponent or threat. Certainly some one else must be at least faintly interested. My life has been in danger, my work has suffered, my life is still in danger. My reputation is almost ruined so these vermin Communists or ex-Communists whatever they are can take over a piece of society and a technology.
If Russia possessed the notes I have on psychological warfare, she would be that much more potent.
Further, I do not believe these people meant to destroy dianetics but to drive it underground. They "helped" me with radio programs which did not get played, by pamphlets which did not give the whole story (like this validation pamphlet and by "advice" which attempted to knock every loyal American out of dianetics.
What can one do in the face of this? When, when, when will we have a round-up?
Please compare these notes with your central files. I am certain you will find these names repeated there connected
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The Hubbard Dianetic Foundation, Inc.
275 MORRIS AVENUE
P.O. BOX 502, ELIZABETH, N.J.
ELIZABETH 3-2951
with Communist activities. Perhaps in your criminal files or on the police blotter of Pasadena you will find Sara Elizabeth Northrup, age about 26, born April 8, 1925, about 5'9", blonde-brown hair, slender. My own investigation seems to indicate that possibility. Her residence from 42 to 45 was 1003 South Orange Grove, Pasadena, Calif. I have no revenge motive nor am I trying to angle this broader than it is. I believe she is under duress, that they have something on her and I believe that under a grilling she would talk and turn State's evidence.
I am unsure of Edward [?]uhl and Stan Benton as connected but merely mention them as associated vaguely with this group. I am very sure of the politics or ex-politics of other members of the group. Gregory Hemmingway is the son of Ernest Hemmingway [sic] and is employed at Douglas Aircraft in California. He may be a dupe but he has taken a solid role in this group. Roger Starr is probably a dupe. Lyn Hite is not known to be a Communist but associated solidly with Communists. Marc Lawrence was definitely aiding Sara in January 1950 in her efforts to stop the second book.
All these matters are, of course, confidential. I do not wish them to be published in any way. I am not trying to regain a reputation by blaming Communism. But I am trying hard to understand how it is that these persons, all so solidly _ex_-affiliated or currently affiliated, as a group, work in such close partnership against a technology they know would hurt Communism and yet remain at liberty.
I am applying to the Department of Defense for [?]ermi[?] to deliver to them my work on psychological warfare. I hope this new Foundation can operate. Frankly, from what has happened, I am not certain I will live through this. If I do not, know that I have only these enemies in the entire world.
May I respectfully request, sir, your assistance in rendering America a trifle safer for new sciences. I wish I could ask you to extend that clause in the charter of the FBI about persons in distress.
Sincerely,
L. Ron Hubbard