[Thanks to Hartley for the forewarning on this one!] Following the excellent Fortean Times review of the new book on Jack Parsons, "Sex and Rockets", which featured a lengthy sidebar on L. Ron Hubbard's sojourn with the OTO (see a.r.s. posts passim), a gentleman from the "L. Ron Hubbard Office" in East Grinstead has written to put the facts "straight"...

In the feature about Jack Parsons, "Rocket in his Pocket" [FT 132:

34-38], the writer attempted to belittle L Ron Hubbard by referring to his "less than spectacular naval career." Mr Hubbard was in fact awarded 21 war medals during his service in World War II, including a Unit Citation which is only awarded by the President to combat units that perform particularly meritorious service.

At the particular time mentioned in your article, Mr Hubbard was working as an intelligence officer and was assigned to <i>break up</i>

the OTO ring for national security reasons and that was the sole motive for his involvement.

A factual account of Mr Hubbard's involvement with the OTO can be found in J Gordon Melton's <i>Thelemic Magic in America - the Emergence of an Alternative Religion</i> (1981).

Mr Bob Keenan,
Executive Director,
The L. Ron Hubbard Office,
United Kingdom

Dear FT, Mr. Bob Keenan ("From Ron's Office", Letters, FT 136) repeats many long-disproved claims about L. Ron Hubbard's naval service, which the FT rightly called "less than distinguished".

The US Navy's records show that Hubbard was awarded only four of the 21 medals claimed, all being very routine service awards. There was no Presidential commendation. Two of the other 17 medals do not even exist. The US, British and Dutch military authorities have confirmed that the document on which Hubbard's claim was based is a poorly executed forgery. It credits him with non-existent and non-awarded medals, with academic qualifications that he never earned, serving on a ship which was scrapped long before World War II and bears the purported signature of a non-existent officer.

Hubbard was a junior intelligence officer for only 4½ months, during early 1942. There is no evidence of any link with Naval Intelligence at any time afterwards. When Hubbard was involved with the OTO, in 1945-46, he was on the US Navy's inactive list due to a recurrent duodenal ulcer. FBI records show that Jack Parsons retained the highest security clearances for years after Hubbard had left the OTO with Parsons' girlfriend, soon to be Hubbard's second wife. The OTO was not "broken up" by Hubbard and still exists to this day.

The OTO's official website is at http://www.otohq.org and a digitised copy of Hubbard's service record can be found at http://www.ronthewarhero.org.

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