THOSE WHO OPPOSE SCIENTOLOGY

Dianetics did not come quietly into the world. Even before publication of L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, excitement had been created on a relatively small scale — small, in hindsight of what was to come later. It had begun with a mimeographed copy of his earlier work Dianetics: The Original Thesis, which was passed hand to hand around the country, and continued with an article in the Explorers Club Journal.

Then, on May 9, 1950, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health reached the bookstores. Almost immediately, a groundswell of public enthusiasm vaulted the book onto national bestseller lists. Stores simply could not keep copies in stock as hundreds of thousands across the nation formed themselves into auditing groups, and Mr. Hubbard’s discoveries even began to take root on distant shores. To meet the astonishing response from all sectors of society — the fashionable, the academic and, most importantly, the man on the street – the publisher instantly ordered further printings. Yet still supply could barely keep pace with demand. By the end of six weeks, Dianetics was not merely a phenomenon; it was the beginning of the global movement that continues to grow today.

There were, however, a scant few among society’s ranks who were not quite so enthusiastic, i.e., certain key members of the American medical/psychiatric establishment. That their numbers were pitifully small — literally measured in the dozens — did not necessarily concern them. They were well-entrenched and well-connected; and when they decided that Dianetics must be stopped to preserve their kingdom, they were fully prepared to make use of every one of those connections.

Thus it was that two diametrically opposed forces were unleashed on May 9, 1950. On the one hand stood the hundred thousand and more everyday men and women who eagerly read and applied Dianetics with extraordinary success. On the other stood a small clique of medical and psychiatric practitioners, who knew nothing of the human mind and had not even read Dianetics. Nonetheless, they were certain that a handbook which made self-improvement possible to anyone would constitute a severe financial loss to the healthcare establishment. After all, they reasoned, how could psychiatrists expect to command large salaries if the man on the street knew more about the mind than they did? Seen within this context then, May 9, 1950, not only saw the birth of Dianetics, but also psychiatry’s first shot that began a war.

THE REAL ISSUES

To understand the forces ranged against L. Ron Hubbard, in this war he never started, it is necessary to gain a cursory glimpse of the old and venerable science of psychiatry — which was actually none of the aforementioned. As an institution, it dates back to shortly before the turn of the century; it is certainly not worthy of respect by reason of age or dignity; and it does not meet any known definition of a science, what with its hodgepodge of unproven theories that have never produced any result — except an ability to make the unmanageable and mutinous more docile and quiet, and turn the troubled into apathetic souls beyond the point of caring.

That it promotes itself as a healing profession is a misrepresentation, to say the least. Its mission is to control.

Psychiatry as we know it today is more priesthood than science. Its conglomeration of half-baked theories is handed down by an arbitrary elite — authorities who have attained such status through who they know and who can sweet-talk the government into parting with yet more grant money. While as for what they actually do, there are only three primary methods of “treatment” — electroshock, psychosurgery and psychotropic drugs.

To illustrate the unscientific basis of this “science,” in fascist Italy in the 1930s, Professor Ugo Cerletti noted that back in A.D. 43 or so, Roman citizens would sometimes try to rid themselves of headaches by putting a torpedo fish on their heads. A torpedo fish generates about twenty-five volts of electricity. Perhaps it was just coincidence that the Empire fell soon after that, but be that as it may, Cerletti was undeterred by this observation and set off on a new path. He began his experiments by killing dogs with huge jolts of electricity. However, before he could significantly reduce Rome’s canine population, inspiration came in the form of a visit to a pig slaughterhouse. There, much to his delight, he found that pigs were not killed by the electricity administered, but only sent into epileptic convulsions, whereupon their throats could conveniently be cut by the butchers. After experimenting further — and losing a great many pigs — to discover how much electricity it would take to kill one of the porcine creatures, he was ready for man.

The unfortunate vagrant he chose (generously supplied by the police) received 70 volts to the head, fell, then shouted, “Not a second [one]. It will kill!” Later, it was discovered that human beings could withstand between 140 and 150 volts to the brain. Thus electroconvulsive shock therapy (ECT) was born.

Psychosurgery had equally shabby beginnings, according to the medical historians. In 1848, Phineas Gage of Vermont was peering into a blasting hole when a charge detonated and blew a metal tamping rod through his brain — an unfortunate accident that he managed to survive.

But, his astute physician noted with amazement, Gage had changed! A most noticeable change — from efficient and capable to self-indulgent and profane. Thus Gage may take his place in history as the first person to survive a lobotomy. The man who actually established himself as the father of the lobotomy (a procedure conducted on intractable patients to make them more manageable) was Dr. Egas Moniz. He operated on about one hundred patients. However, in at least one case, the operation might have been a success but the doctor died: he was shot by one of his lobotomized patients. That in 1949 he was given the Nobel prize for this questionable advancement is one of the saddest ironies of medical history. Nonetheless, it assured that many followed his path.

As for drugs, witch doctors have used the natural variety for centuries. Today’s pharmaceutical psychotropic drugs began their development with attempts to brainwash recalcitrant citizens and political prisoners. Virtually all of the original research — in Russia, Germany and the United States — was funded by intelligence agencies. Once again, the aim was to make individuals more tractable and malleable. And in the United States, at least most of it was illegal, conducted on unknowing servicemen and citizens. Except, of course, in the oft-cited instance of CIA psychiatrist, Dr. Louis Jolyon West, who was the only man known to have killed an elephant with LSD.

That all of this experimentation — drugs, psychosurgery, ECT — has never cured anyone of anything but, on the contrary, has either made people more manageable or damaged them beyond recognition, has never stopped the psychiatric community from continuing these practices. After all, these are the only tools they have. Without them, they would have nothing to sell.

Which brings up a crucial point: to whom do they sell their services? Not to the broad public (and only sometimes even to their own patients), for the majority have no faith in this parody of science and would never even entertain the idea of actually visiting a psychiatrist. Then, of course, there is also the shame and embarrassment associated with going to a psychiatrist – which is largely due to the way psychiatrists themselves have characterized mental illness in a sales campaign that backfired. The only customers they have, the only ones willing to pay for their services (and very generously) are governments, particularly the clandestine arms of the government, or those that desire to control people, be they prisoners, children or society’s unwanted.

These, then, constitute the force that tried to stop Dianetics and Scientology.

And this is the world Dianetics entered. A world where psychiatry was entrenched among the US intelligence services, living off the fat of government grants, and experimenting — with the help of ex-Nazi scientists — on an oblivious public. A world where their critics were simply labeled insane and “in need of psychiatric help.”

Thus the battle lines were drawn. Dianetics offered a means to happiness, stability and success. It provided a solution to psychosomatic illnesses. It created an interest in the workings of the mind among people of all classes and ages. And it gave the man in the street a method that, for the first time, he himself could utilize to improve his own condition. Additionally, it should be kept in mind that L. Ron Hubbard achieved something that psychiatrists have long been attempting to achieve: to write a book about the mind that was genuinely popular, that people actually wanted to read, that was both understandable and applicable.

But Dianetics did more. It labeled the latest and greatest psychiatric drugs as dangerous. And it directly exposed the inhuman crimes of psychiatrists and the harm they caused with ECT and lobotomies, clearly substantiating the irreparable damage these treatments caused to healthy brain tissue.

That mental health professionals were incensed by Mr. Hubbard’s not-so-gentle upbraiding is understandable, particularly as he was not a member of their elitist clique.

But when all was said and done, the issue was clearly financial: How long could one continue to convince the American taxpayer to foot the bill for multimillion-dollar psychiatric appropriations in the face of what Dianetics could accomplish for the price of a book?

THE MARSHALING OF FORCES

Among the many, many positive reviews and articles on Dianetics were a few strategically placed “hits” specifically designed to dampen public enthusiasm.

These first negative “reviews” on Dianetics came through the American Medical Association — a group instinctively opposed to any unregulated or nonmember means to better health and living. But it was not as it appeared; it was more the result of a ventriloquism act. The actual link to the AMA was made by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) medical director, Dr. Daniel Blain, who well knew that psychiatry enjoyed nothing close to the credibility of its medical colleagues, and none of the clout. The voice of the AMA was essentially that of him and his colleagues.

But using the AMA to take potshots was only the first round. The full APA plan was far more elaborate. First, false propaganda was to be published in “authoritative” journals. Then, once the “experts” had passed judgment, these opinions would be given to mainstream media sources. Dossiers would be created to contain all this unflattering “information” and passed still further afield including, of course, to appropriate government agencies.

Although simple in both design and execution, the consequences would be far-reaching. Indeed, to one degree or another, the subsequent attacks on Dianetics and Scientology were but a result of this original scheme to fabricate dossiers and then spread them far and wide.

MIND CONTROL EXPOSED

During the continual process of Dianetics research, both as an auditor and as an observer of other auditors, Mr. Hubbard naturally came into contact with a wide variety of cases. And it was inevitable that these would include those who had been in the hands of psychiatrists closely allied to the intelligence community.

Thus it came about, fully twenty-five years before the facts were made public by Congress, that Mr. Hubbard was the first to announce and decry government mind manipulation programs. Eventually, of course, these and other revelations about Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) misconduct would entirely reshape public perception of this agency.

The vehicle for his revelation was his 1951 book Science of Survival, and in it Mr. Hubbard described in no uncertain terms the combined use of pain, drugs and hypnosis as a behavioral modification technique of the worst kind. It was, he said, so extensively used in espionage work, it was long past the time people should have become alarmed about it. It had taken Dianetic auditing to discover the widespread existence of these brainwashing techniques, and, he added, the only saving grace was that Dianetics could undo their effects.

With such covert government activity so openly addressed by Mr. Hubbard and Dianeticists, he had compounded his “crime”: In his first book, he offended psychiatrists; in his second, the intelligence community. That the two, already closely connected, should now draw even closer in the common effort to stop him was not surprising. What was surprising was the velocity and frequency of subsequent attacks. By the mid-1950s, at least half a dozen federal agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), were brought into the effort to suppress Dianetics and its assault on the mental health field.

“You would have thought that at the very least I was inciting whole populations to revolt and governments to fall,” a slightly bemused Mr. Hubbard later wrote of these events. “All I really was doing was trying to tell man he could be happy, that there was a road out of suffering and that he could attain his goals.”

THE BATTLE MOUNTS

Yet even while Mr. Hubbard successfully told man he could be happy and the numbers of Scientologists mounted, psychiatry was attempting to strengthen its grasp on society.

The plan involved what came to be known as the Siberia Bill, actually named the Alaska Mental Health Bill. The more popular title came from the fact that the proposed outcome of this cherished psychiatric plan was likened to a Siberia-type camp for mental health patients in the frozen wastelands of Alaska. Presumably, this was far enough away from the well-traveled roads of the world to allow psychiatrists to conduct their mind control and other experiments on a captive population, unhindered by the glare of publicity. To ensure a captive population, the measure incorporated a “simplified commitment procedure,” so simple, in fact, that it eradicated such wasteful and costly activities as jury trials and legal defenses and allowed any peace officer, friend, medical doctor and, of course, psychiatrist, to institute commitment proceedings.

But just after January 1956 and the bill’s unanimous, yet barely noticeable, passage through Congress, a coalition of members of the Church of Scientology and civil rights groups launched a campaign to inform the American public just what this bill held in store for them. Under the rallying cry, “Siberia, USA!” a massive letter-writing campaign inspired political opposition.

When it was over, the commitment section of the bill was deservedly dead, leaving merely an act to authorize mental health funding to the territory of Alaska.

A wounded psychiatry struck back, this time utilizing the FDA as its main battering ram. Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, Scientologists later uncovered a mountain of documents which well demonstrated the activities of the participants — egged on by members of both the AMA and APA. A veritable beehive of activity took place, with letters and meetings between interested psychiatric parties; the Department of Justice; the Washington, DC, police department; the United States Post Office; the IRS; the AMA of course; and even the US Army’s Criminal Investigation Command — all continuously linked and regularly prodded by a now extremely nervous psychiatry.

The upshot of all these schemes? The first action was a ludicrous failure, the second a waste of time, the third an embarrassment.

The first, based on a psychiatrist’s “tip” that the Church was using illegal drugs, led to a “raid” on the Washington, DC, church by a US deputy marshal who seized a few bottles of said drug. When it turned out to be a compound of the commonly available vitamin B1, vitamin C, niacinamide and calcium, that case obviously went nowhere.

Drug dealing proving an unworkable premise, the FDA and other interested agencies decided that Scientology practicing medicine without a license would prove fertile ground for exploration. On March 19, 1959, FDA agent Taylor Quinn infiltrated the church, taped a religious service, and passed the information on to the US Attorney’s Office.

Unfortunately, as he reported to the FDA, the church had required him to sign a contract that he was not to learn to cure anyone. Nor was there any evidence of fraud.

With both drugs and illegal healing dead-ended, the only avenue remaining to the FDA was the E-Meter. Perhaps, they theorized inaccurately, it was used to “diagnose” or “cure illness.” So, on January 4, 1963, US marshals, deputized longshoremen and armed police barged their way into the Founding Church of Scientology in Washington, DC, threatened the staff, and left with two vans of not only E-Meters, but books, scriptures and other materials.

Still, as outrageous as it was, it did not match the sheer audacity of what happened in Seattle where the FDA’s fingerprints were figuratively all over the handgun that was used to murder the head of the church there.

A local resident, Russell Johnson, who had heard about the FDA’s actions in Washington, DC, thought they would provide a sympathetic ear to his current problem. He called them to complain about “the practices of a Dr. William Fisk who operates as the Church of Scientology” and claimed Fisk was attempting to seduce his wife.

The enterprising FDA official he spoke to immediately suggested that Johnson join forces with the FDA as an “undercover agent” and infiltrate the church. Johnson dutifully did this, reported in, and was instructed to return and get further information.

Johnson carried his duties as an intelligence agent into tragic and bloody extremes. On September 10, 1963, he walked into the Seattle church and shot and killed the Executive Director before a roomful of horrified congregation members.

The FDA then carried the concept of expediency to new and distasteful heights. Instead of confessing that one of its “agents” had just committed murder, it contacted the Seattle police department and arranged to send its own people illegally into church premises with the homicide team, to further gather information for its “investigation.” As usual, however, the FDA discovered nothing illegal in the church.

For more than a decade the FDA would remain obsessed with the E-Meter. With other government agencies, it would repeatedly infiltrate the Church with agents and informants, employ bugging devices, place a “cover” on Church mail, and obtain confidential Church bank account information.

It went nowhere. In 1969, the Washington, DC, Federal Appeals Court ruled the Church a bona fide religion protected by the US Constitution, and that the E-Meter had not been improperly labeled or used.

Still, it was not until 1973 that a reluctant FDA finally returned those stolen Church materials: 5,000 books, 2,900 booklets, and the E-Meters.

MEDIA-GOVERNMENT COLLUSION

There remains one illuminating point to the FDA fiasco. It involves the enlistment by the FDA of The Saturday Evening Post and their star feature writer, James Phelan.

After being approached by the AMA to do a story on Scientology, the Post assigned the piece to Phelan, who traveled to England to interview Mr. Hubbard. He was warmly welcomed and assisted in every manner possible, as befits a seemingly interested and unbiased journalist, which is how he represented himself.

That Phelan was anything but that was borne out by two facts: Immediately upon his return to Washington and before the story was published, he gave his story to the FDA for coordination purposes; and the resulting story was a hatchet job of the first order — an unrestrained attempt to smear both Mr. Hubbard and Scientology, obviously a flanking action to the FDA’s attempted case against use of the E-Meter.

Phelan was followed by many others — a long string of stories through the years, concocted to create a climate conducive to governmental harassment. It was a similar pattern to that which occurred in Germany in the 1930s — the very successful media actions to create public “indignation” that would legitimize not only the most blatant violations of civil rights, but, indeed, the Holocaust.

THE IRS CAMPAIGN

The FDA had conclusively proven its incompetence, not only by botching its mandate to destroy Scientology, but by taking so long to do it — and allowing Scientology to grow meteorically, both in the United States and around the world. Thus, the FDA was dismissed to do what it does best: harass vitamin salesmen, and give carte blanche to powerful drug companies well before completion of the product safety tests.

The weight of the mission soon fell on IRS shoulders — more specifically, on the shoulders of an attorney in the office of the IRS’ Chief Counsel, one Charlotte Murphy. A noteworthy fact is her attendance at meetings in the mid-1950s of the DC Medical Society’s Committee on Mental Health — along with the main sponsors of the Siberia Bill, along with the psychiatrist who had falsely “tipped” the FDA that the Church was involved in illegal drugs, and along with a number of leading psychiatrists who had been at the forefront of the attacks on Dianetics from day one. It is therefore not surprising that Murphy herself requested that she deal exclusively with any IRS matters regarding Scientology. Nor were her intentions surprising. She made them quite clear in a memo to the Director of the Washington Branch of the IRS in which she asked whether there were “any local statutes or ordinances available as tools to curtail or close down the operation.”

What followed was an all-out effort to harass the Church by denying tax-exempt status to various Scientology churches, and issuing federal tax liens against others. Information was provided to the post office to “support a charge of misrepresentation,” and later a host of other government agencies were forwarded blatantly ludicrous falsehoods on the order of: “LSD and perhaps other drugs are widely used by the members while assembled” and that the Church used “electric shock” on its parishioners in an “initiation ceremony” — fabrications that would have been laughable if not for the consequences.

The harassment of the Church and its leaders for purposes totally removed from proper enforcement of the tax laws was definitively exposed during a series of Congressional investigations and hearings in the 1970s. These hearings focused on, among other things, the infamous 1969 Nixon White House “enemies list,” and revealed previously secret and illegal IRS programs against individuals and organizations, including the Church of Scientology.

History shows us that of the 213 names on the Nixon list, 211 were left bankrupt, collapsed, disbanded or dead. Indeed, of the individuals and organizations on that infamous “enemies list,” only two survived intact: L. Ron Hubbard and the Church of Scientology. That these attacks continued for as many years as they did serves as a study in how bureaucratic momentum can carry raw animus forward long after the initial “reason” has been forgotten.

The whole tiresome history of IRS attacks would fill a book. Faced with the choice of defending itself or perishing, the Church used the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to obtain and ultimately expose government documents which demonstrated a broad range of discriminatory conduct and illegal acts against the Church and its parishioners by certain elements within the IRS. When the agency balked at releasing the information, the Church was forced to litigate hundreds of cases which ultimately resulted in precedent-setting legislation — and exposure and confirmation of the very matters alleged by the Church, and more. One federal judge credited the Church with reforming IRS procedures which directly benefited “over 1,000 cases involving identical legal issues.” An official of the US Department of Justice remarked that the Church’s actions “significantly contributed to the preservation of democracy for everyone.” Indeed, it is virtually impossible to read a page in a legal textbook about the FOIA today without finding a precedent set by the Church of Scientology.

The documents obtained under the FOIA filled scores of filing cabinets and revealed a genuinely shocking parade of dirty tricks authored by those in the IRS who hoped for the Church’s destruction. They tell of IRS attempts to redefine the term “church,” expressly to disqualify Scientology from tax-exempt status. When that did not work, an even more incredible story unfolded: In an attempt to circumvent the absence of any wrongdoing on the Church’s part, rogue IRS employees engaged for years in a corrupt scheme of vast dimensions.

Directing this effort was the infamous Los Angeles branch of the IRS Criminal Investigations Division (CID), a unit whose abuses of the Church and countless other taxpayers eventually became the focus of extensive congressional hearings in 1989 and 1990, and ultimately led to substantial IRS reforms. Before that, however, the Los Angeles IRS CID, with the offices of the mother church of the Scientology religion nearby, held sway over certain key IRS matters relative to Scientology. #### The CID plan called for nothing short of complete destruction of the Church. Yet even as attempts were made to infiltrate church premises and plots were hatched to forge and plant documents to later be “discovered” and used as evidence, Church attorneys and staff exposed all. Thus, in addition to concerns over growing public outrage resulting from this exposure, the CID now had to contend with another problem: It had spent several years investigating the Church at enormous cost to taxpayers, only to find no crimes committed.

Still, in a last-ditch effort to save face, the Los Angeles CID sought to persuade the Department of Justice to bring some kind — any kind — of prosecution to justify what it had done. Justice may be blind but it is rarely stupid, and Justice Department attorneys rebuked the unit and refused to support any prosecution or even further investigation.

Throughout this assault, the Church persisted in efforts to gain fair treatment from the IRS. Finally, in 1991, senior executives of church organizations met with IRS officials in Washington, DC. Once dialogue began, outside the purview and without the poisonous influence of the Los Angeles CID, the result was inevitable. Still, it was neither fast nor easy, for the IRS conducted a two-year examination of an intensity and depth without parallel in the history of exempt organizations.

IRS officials subjected Scientology churches to the most intensive scrutiny any organization ever faced — including a meticulous review of its operations and financial records, as well as a comprehensive review of every aspect of Church policy and practices at all levels, including the most senior echelons of its management.

The IRS review resulted in hundreds of detailed questions, requiring thousands of pages of narrative and many more thousands of pages of financial records. Six teams of between four and eight agents conducted a full-time review for periods of up to ten continuous weeks. And by the end of its examination, the IRS had reviewed more than one million pages of information concerning the Scientology religion.

The IRS also reviewed and fully investigated sensationalized media stories about Scientology based on the allegations of a few disgruntled former members. The agency found these apostates unreliable and dismissed their media stories as utterly baseless.

By the time the churches of Scientology received the IRS final decision, the largest administrative record ever for any exempt organization — twelve linear feet — had been compiled. These churches and their representatives had been subjected to hundreds of hours of exhaustive meetings and examined by the most senior officials over exempt organizations at the IRS National Office, spanning the administrations of three IRS Commissioners.

In the end, the IRS came to the only conclusion possible after such a thorough examination: Scientology churches and their related entities were organized and operated exclusively for charitable and religious purposes.

So, on October 1, 1993 the United States Internal Revenue Service issued ruling letters which recognized the tax-exempt status of more than 150 Scientology churches, missions, social reform organizations and other entities because they operate exclusively for religious and charitable purposes.

IRS religious recognition was universal and unconditional, and it was the result of the most detailed and exhaustive examination of a religious organization in the agency’s history. The IRS was given unfettered access to every echelon of the Church’s ecclesiastical hierarchy. Thus, the IRS examination was not limited to United States entities, but specifically included the financial and other affairs of church organizations from Australia to Canada and from Europe to South Africa.

As a result, Church of Scientology International (CSI), the mother church of the Scientology religion, received not only exempt recognition, but also received a group exemption letter embracing all Scientology churches within its ecclesiastical oversight. The Church’s spiritual meccas were also individually recognized as tax-exempt, as were the Church’s publishing entities.

Scientology Missions International (SMI) received its own exemption. It also received a separate group exemption letter for all Scientology missions within its ecclesiastical oversight.

Religious Technology Center (RTC) was individually recognized as tax-exempt and received its own separate ruling letter.

The IRS also recognized the International Association of Scientologists as a tax-exempt organization.

In addition to ruling favorably on tax exemption, the IRS rulings made all donations to all United States churches of Scientology deductible against personal income taxes to the full extent permitted by law.

The IRS recognition brought not only an end to decades of conflict between churches and the tax agency, but a formal acknowledgment of Scientology’s religious nature and its benefit to society as a whole.

In the wake of that victory, and the Church’s efforts to expose IRS wrongdoing, came many reforms benefiting all US citizens. The Taxpayer Bill of Rights, now a legislative reality, exists today in no small part due to the perseverance of the Church and its parishioners who exposed widespread IRS abuses and demanded a curb of future abuses. Through their use of the FOIA, the Church ultimately brought into public view agency misconduct and computer errors which could have resulted in $1 billion in incorrect assessments. The movement now gaining momentum in Congress to make sweeping tax reform reality rather than rhetoric is, to no small degree, traceable to the groundbreaking work of Scientologists.

In short, when the war with the IRS ended, the ground gained on the road to that resolution yielded victories enjoyed today by all Americans.

AN END TO THE WORLDWIDE CAMPAIGN

Although the more than forty-year assault against Scientology assumed large proportions, the source must be remembered – that small but influential circle of psychiatrists. Nor did the means change over the years: false allegations selectively planted in the media, then seeded into federal files as background “fact.”

It is a method, with small adjustments, that also served to cause trouble overseas. The international pipeline left the US, primarily through IRS and FBI links, traveled through the channels of the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol), located in France, and was discharged among the law enforcement and intelligence bodies of various nations.

What happened was fairly predictable: attacks against Scientology by government agencies in England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Australia — all with fervent media support involving the most outrageous allegations. Still, as usual, Scientology prevailed.

And, just as there had been some within the IRS who were willing to examine the facts and dismiss the lies about Scientology, so it was with Interpol. Following the IRS recognition, Church officials were able to meet with top Interpol officials to present the truth.

Interpol, too, recognized the religiosity of Scientology. The Church and the police agency peacefully resolved all issues between them. Following its own charter not to involve itself in religious matters, Interpol today keeps no files on the Church of Scientology.

SKIRMISHES

The IRS recognition of Scientology was a stunning blow to those who had kept the attacks on the Church going for so many decades. Yet despite this, and despite the end to the international campaign of disinformation which had also been waged for so many years, the psychiatrists who had fueled this campaign from behind the scenes continued sniping on other fronts.

One vector of attack was through so-called “anti-cult” groups. For many years, psychiatry had used a variety of antireligious front groups to assault Scientology and other churches, both in the United States and Europe. One of the most notorious of these was the “Cult Awareness Network,” known as CAN.

CAN had been a clearinghouse in the US for false and biased information which was used to incite prejudice, hatred and fear about Scientology and many other religions, both old and new. It was an organization that preyed on the gullible and violated the civil rights of the innocent for financial reward. Its members were continually linked to kidnappings, assaults and rapes.

The Church responded with a national public information campaign which provided the truth about this organization to police departments, judges, district attorneys and religious and charitable organizations across the country. And the resulting groundswell of public indignation and condemnation created a backlash against CAN.

In 1996, CAN was forced into liquidation after unsuccessfully seeking to escape a $1.1 million damages verdict handed down by a US District Court in Seattle by filing for bankruptcy. The case involved a young Christian man who had been kidnapped and assaulted by a CAN “deprogrammer.”

Yet another attack on the Church was mounted from a different direction — the technological frontier of the Internet. Here, a handful of apostates, with the support of psychiatric and media apologists who had figured prominently over the years in assaults on Scientology, began to broadly distribute copyrighted and confidential religious scriptures which had been stolen from a Church of Scientology in Denmark.

When the Church brought legal action against these copyright pirates, those involved claimed the protection of “free speech” for their criminal acts.

The courts disagreed. Judges in three different cases ruled unequivocally against those distributing the stolen materials, and upheld the right of the Church of Scientology to protect its sacred scriptures from illegal distribution on the Internet.

So it goes. Key psychiatric figures, their US government allies and psychiatric colleagues overseas, together have spent untold millions of dollars around the world to stop Scientology.

And they never have.

THE END OF THE FIGHT

While psychiatry had US government agencies infiltrating, raiding and investigating the Church in the early and mid-1960s and inquiries in Australia and Great Britain underway during the same decade, the technologies of Scientology and Dianetics were widely available in five countries. Despite unabated attacks, these technologies became available in five more countries by the mid-1970s, in fifty-six countries in the late 1980s, and in seventy-four countries by the turn of the 1990s. By 1998, there were more than 1,400 churches, missions and groups located in over 130 countries. All of which demonstrates that psychiatry has been about as effective in stopping Scientology as it has been in treating mental illness.

It has, in fact, become increasingly evident that psychiatry offers no valuable contribution to society whatsoever. Electric shock, brain operations and indiscriminate drugging of patients in nineteenth-century-like horror chambers passed off as mental hospitals have killed and maimed people on a daily basis. And during the period psychiatry has held its position of authority, the most dramatic era of social unrest, civil disobedience, drug proliferation and criminality in the history of the Western world has gained momentum.

Today, there are 500 Dianeticists and Scientologists to every psychiatrist, and while Scientology expands, enrollment in psychiatric university curriculums has slid to a drastic low since a peak in the 1960s. Without government appropriations, even these few psychiatrists would not be able to economically survive, for they have nothing to offer worth a cent of the public’s money.

Hence, while Scientology is more visible than ever, with churches dotting every continent on Earth and millions of parishioners around the world, one is hard-pressed to find even a single psychiatrist with a shingle on his door. True, one can still find them in scuffed-linoleum offices of state and county hospitals, and lodged in the federal bureaucracy. But when was the last time anyone saw a sign advertising lobotomies, electric shock and seriously incapacitating drugs?

In short, then, while psychiatry, which lives off government handouts, is shrinking, Scientology, which receives only public donations from people who know it works, is growing faster than any religion in the world. And if Scientology had anything to hide, it would not have survived the relentless attacks detailed in this chapter.

Thus the story of the attacks against Scientology is basically very simple. Dianetics and Scientology cut across vested interests which then ruthlessly attempted to destroy it. The issue was never any wrongdoing by the Church, merely encroachment on turf claimed by a mental health industry that would stop at nothing to preserve its stake.

Still, while psychiatry’s offensive against Scientology has been all but defeated, the battle is not over and the skirmishes continue.

In spite of the IRS recognition in the United States of the religiosity of the Church of Scientology, there are less enlightened countries that do not have a tradition of religious freedom, that are dominated by state religions which consider others to be competition, and that have a long and painful tradition of intolerance. In these countries, the strategy is the same as it once was in the United States. The same false reports are seeded into government files, the same type of psychiatrists make authoritative announcements, and the same kind of media blindly repeats wild accusations.

But just as in the United States truth once again demonstrated its power by prevailing against odds that would have overwhelmed any lesser cause, so too will it in these countries. It is clear now that when any government agency demonstrates enough integrity to actually investigate the Church of Scientology, to examine the false reports, libel, rumor and innuendo, to see for themselves what the Church actually is and actually does, it has no choice but to recognize the religiosity of Scientology and the benefit it brings. While some still cling to the musty old files with yellowing clippings dating back to those early days in 1950, they too will sooner or later have to enter the present and step into the tide of the future.

It would thus be well to remember, then, that when alarming reports are heard about Dianetics and Scientology, they stem from those who would prefer to manhandle problems with mind-altering drugs or enough electricity to throw a pig into convulsions — and as any fool knows, sticking one’s finger in a light socket or clamping electrodes to one’s skull cures nothing. (Even psychiatrists are not that stupid. When widely offered $10,000 to undergo their own “treatment,” not one has ever agreed to subject himself to electroconvulsive therapy.)

The lessons of history provide the best context within which to consider such attacks. Every great movement which has opened new vistas and shaken the strongholds of archaic thought has been attacked by those who profit from the persistence of outmoded ideas. Thus, as Scientologists continue their work toward a new civilization without insanity, criminality or war, those with billion-dollar vested interests in just those ills will continue to lash out.

Yet it is ironic to view these attacks in the context of time. Scientology did not choose to fight this battle with psychiatry and, indeed, was not the one to fire the opening salvos. Mr. Hubbard was simply the one to come up with real answers to problems of the mind. Perhaps sensing that implicit in a solution to the mind lay their own demise, psychiatrists decided to destroy him and his technology. And just as they feared, Scientology has become their nemesis, exposing their brutality and their crimes.

What remains of the old guard stands increasingly alone and the shrill voices of their heirs grow fainter and fainter. For try as they might to maintain their privileged positions and spread their falsehoods, the ears and eyes of the world have changed. Truth, after all, sheds light. The dark shadows in which they have hidden have grown ever more insubstantial.

But even as their tirades drone on, there is another point they should consider: The world which they helped create, a world where the wasted insane wander aimlessly through our inner cities, where senseless criminality claims a new life every few minutes, and entire generations sag under the double onslaught of drug dependency and illiteracy, this is a world in which they too must live.

And so, in the end, even those who attempted to stop Scientology will ultimately benefit from its victory.