"In January 1980, fearing a raid by law enforcement agencies, Hubbard's representatives ordered the shredding of all documents showing that Hubbard controlled Scientology organizations, finances, personnel, or the property at Gilman Hot Springs. In a two week period, approximately one million pages were shredded pursuant to this order."After the FBI raid of 1977 was when we had the first massive shredding parties at the US Guardian's Office. I have no idea how much was shredded but the orders werd to destroy anything that showed any link between the GO and the orgs and LRH and MSH, anything that showed they sent us any orders, that we sent them reports etc. We were to also watch for anything showing any illegal activity or questionably illegal activity. All documents marked "non-foia" (meaning they were stolen rather than obtained under the FOI Act) were to be destroyed.
In other words, we were destroying evidence.
The machine was "Jaws" a huge conveyor belt shredder that was brought in for the job. In one hall where Jaws was, filled boxes were stacked, ready for shredding. The stack was two boxes wide, about 4 feet high and it went down about 25 feet. (A fair estimate would be roughly 100-200 boxes. At 4k-5k pages per box, we easily went through a million pages of paper in just a couple of days. As boxes came off to be shredded, more arrived. This went on for over a week.
The amusing part is that it was all needless. The government already had more than enough to indict and convict.
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