Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief (22 page)

Then, one day in her auditing, she felt something. A kind of “flicker.” Was it a BT? She decided that it must be. An immense feeling of relief washed over her. Soon after that, she discovered more BTs—eventually, hundreds, thousands. Sometimes there was a feeling of lightness or of floating when the BT was expelled. Other times, Eltringham exteriorized from her body. But the headaches remained. Then something new arrived: quarrelsome voices inside her head. At first the voices were faint, but they grew louder and more insistent. Eltringham worried that she was going insane.

When she returned to the
Apollo
, she was shocked by the hellish changes that had taken place. In January 1974, Hubbard issued
Flag Order 3434RB, creating the
Rehabilitation Project Force. The stated goal was to rehabilitate Sea Org members whose statistics were down or who might be harboring subversive thoughts against Hubbard or his technology. Because the RPF provided a second chance for those who might otherwise be fired, Hubbard saw it as an enlightened management
technique, the sole purpose of which was “redemption
.” When Eltringham came aboard
, she found dozens of crew members housed in the old cattle hold belowdecks, illuminated by a single lightbulb, sleeping on stained mattresses on the floor. They were dressed in black overalls, called boiler suits, and forbidden to speak to anyone outside their group. They ate using their hands from a bucket of table scraps, shoveling the food into their mouths as if they were starving.

Despite the confusion and the harsh punishment, there were many Sea Org members who experienced their days on the
Apollo
as a time of incomparable adventure, filled with a sense of mission and an esprit de corps they would never again recapture. Although Hubbard could be terrifying and irrational, and comically pompous, he still held his followers in thrall. Those who were close to him saw a generous and caring leader who used his gigantic personality to keep his ship, his fleet, his organization, and his religion on track.
Karen de la Carriere, a young British auditor, remembers watching Hubbard in his office screaming at one of the crew; when that person left, cowering, Hubbard swiveled in his chair and gave Karen a big wink. “He was in total control
,” she realized. “It was all theatrical to create a desired effect.”

Hubbard developed many of the basic Scientology techniques aboard the
Apollo
. In one instance, de la Carriere was having no luck auditing a wealthy Scientologist with a long drug history, who kept falling asleep during their sessions. Hubbard theorized that the LSD
he had taken must still be in his system; perhaps the drugs could be sweated out by putting him to work swabbing the decks. After six weeks, he was a changed man. De la Carriere says that was the beginning of the Scientology drug-treatment program, called the
Purification Rundown.

A strapping crewman named
Bruce Welch
had what other crew members diagnosed as a nervous breakdown or a psychotic episode. In Scientology terms, he had gone “
Type III.” He had a crush on one of the ship’s young women, and when he learned she was engaged, he went berserk. According to de la Carriere, Welch got a butcher knife from the pantry and threatened to kill Hubbard and other members of the crew. There were no designated security procedures or personnel trained to handle such a case. It took four crewmen to eventually subdue Welch and wrestle him into a cabin in the forecastle, the storage area above the bow, away from most of the crew, where he screamed continuously. There was a metal bed with a mattress, and a metal cabinet, but Welch managed to tear them apart with his bare hands and shove the pieces through the porthole.

A young Australian named
Mike Rinder (who would eventually become the church’s chief spokesperson) had just arrived aboard the
Apollo
and was given the assignment of guarding Welch’s cabin. He sat on a trunk in the hallway, listening to Welch shouting, “Bring the Commodore
here! I want the Commodore right now!” Then Welch would yank on the door, which was locked and lashed to the bulkhead with sturdy ropes. Several times, Rinder recalled, Welch beat up other members of the crew when he was escorted to the bathroom or given his meals.

Hubbard saw Welch’s rampage as an opportunity to experiment with the problem of acute mental breakdown. Total silence was enforced on the forecastle deck so that Welch would have nothing to stimulate him. Three times a day, Hubbard would write Welch a note, asking about his well-being. According to de la Carriere, Welch’s response might be, “You’re the devil
incarnate. I’m going to enjoy plunging the knife in you.” Hubbard would respond that he understood, and by the way was there any special food that the chef could prepare for him? In this way, Welch’s rage began to subside. He allowed an auditor to visit him each day. After two weeks, the door to Welch’s cabin was unlocked and he emerged, serene and apparently cured.

“I have made a technical
discovery which possibly ranks with the
major discoveries of the twentieth century,” Hubbard boasted in one of his bulletins. “It is called the
Introspection Rundown.” He explained that the
psychotic break had long bedeviled psychiatry, which had attempted to treat it with drugs, lobotomies, and shock treatments. The key, Hubbard had discovered in his treatment of Welch, was to learn what had caused the person to “introspect” before his breakdown. “THIS MEANS THE LAST REASON TO HAVE PSYCHIATRY AROUND IS GONE,” Hubbard declared. “The psychotic break, the last of the ‘unsolvable’ conditions that can trap a person, has been solved.… You have in your hands the tool to take over mental therapy in full.”

Hubbard’s recipe for curing psychosis was to isolate the subject, with the attendants “
completely
muzzled (no speech).” By discovering the last severe conflict that triggered the episode, and then helping the subject discharge the emotions surrounding it, the auditor can begin to untangle the mental knots that have thrown the subject into his present state of wrestling with “the mystery of some incorrectly designated error.” The subject should be given vitamins, especially Vitamin B, along with calcium and magnesium, in order to restore his physical well-being. He should be examined on the E-Meter for discordant moments in his life, such as someone accusing him of something he hadn’t done, or being told he was a Potential Trouble Source when he wasn’t, or having his identity questioned. These steps are simple, Hubbard said, but “its results are magical in effectiveness.” The goal is to take the highly introverted personality, who is trapped in an endless loop of self-criticism, and bring him out of himself.

The subject should be able to look at the world once again and see it as “quite real and quite bright.”

“Do it flawlessly and we will all win,” Hubbard promised.

“THIS PLANET IS OURS.”

The
Apollo
crew were in awe of their leader. They had seen the transformation with their own eyes. “A madman was made sane
on the high seas,” de la Carriere said. “To do that, you have got to have a certain amount of greatness.”

ONCE A WEEK
, there was a movie night on the aft deck, with a recently released film flown in. Popcorn was made, a screen erected, and when everyone was settled Hubbard would descend from the prom deck,
resplendent in his Commodore’s uniform, with Mary Sue and the children in tow.

In the interest of public relations,
Hubbard staged free concerts at various ports of call, using the ship’s ragtag band, the
Apollo Stars. He wanted to “revolutionize music
,” and composed original songs for the band to play. He started a modern
dance troupe as well.
Quentin wanted to join
the dancers, but his father sternly told him that he had other plans for him. By 1974, Hubbard had decided that his two oldest children by Mary Sue—
Diana, twenty-two, and Quentin, twenty—were to take over the major management and technology functions of Scientology. Diana was enthusiastic—she had been the Lieutenant Commander since the age of sixteen and was often at her father’s side—but everyone knew that Quentin’s great ambition
was to fly. His cabin was full of model airplanes, suspended from the ceiling with dental floss, and books about flying. He was often seen weaving along the deck with his arms outstretched, making engine noises, completely absorbed in being a plane.

Jim Dincalci, the medical
officer who was still beached in Madeira, learned that the
Apollo
was headed in his direction. By now, he had made friends with many of the local people, and he was surprised to learn from them that the
Apollo
was widely suspected of being a spy ship for the
CIA.
⁸
He sent telexes warning the ship that it would be better to avoid Madeira, but Hubbard came anyway. Soon after the
Apollo
docked, a mob arrived and began stoning the ship. Hubbard ordered fire hoses turned on the crowd, which further infuriated them. There were motorcycles belonging to crew members and two of Hubbard’s cars which had been offloaded onto the pier; the mob shoved them all into the harbor, then loosened the moorings so that the ship drifted offshore. Mary Sue and some other members of the ship’s company were stranded in town and had to be rescued by the local authorities.

Quentin returned to the ship in bad shape. He had taken an overdose of pills in a failed suicide attempt. After his stomach was pumped
at a local hospital, he was brought back to the ship, pale and weak, and put in isolation in his cabin, guarded night and day, becoming the second person to undergo the
Introspection Rundown.
Suzette was the only one to visit him. He looked like a broken doll.

Quentin was now twenty years old, popular and free-spirited, but in many ways still a soft-spoken, dreamy boy. Although he was small like his mother, and had her coloring, in other respects he bore a strong resemblance to his father. His facial features were almost an exact match: almond-shaped eyes under low, reddish brows; protuberant lips; and a deep cleft in the chin. Even though Quentin became one of the highest-rated auditors in the Sea Org, his father was constantly disappointed in his performance. “You have to improve
,” he barked at Quentin in front of the other auditors. “It doesn’t matter that you’re a Hubbard.” Quentin would sit there and smile, seemingly unfazed, as the others cringed for him. Privately, he confided, “Daddy doesn’t love me
anymore.”

Eventually, Hubbard sentenced Quentin to the
Rehabilitation Project Force. His “twin” on the RPF was
Monica Pignotti, an auditor in training at age twenty-one. As they practiced auditing each other, they became close. Quentin sneaked some peanut butter from the family
pantry and shared it with Monica. They made up skits and played with his tape recorder. They never became intimate. Quentin told her that he had once become sexually involved with a woman
, but when his father found out, she was sent off the ship. He knew that people regarded him as a homosexual, he said, but that was only something he told other women on the ship who were after him because he was
Hubbard’s son.

Quentin Hubbard, circa 1973

HUBBARD SET
a new course: due west, toward America. The destination was
Charleston, South Carolina. The crew were thrilled that they would be returning to the States, only to be crestfallen when a message arrived from the
Guardian’s Office, just as the ship was approaching port, alerting Mary Sue that agents from US
Customs,
Immigration,
Coast Guard, DEA, and
US Marshals were waiting for them to dock, plus 180
IRS agents
waiting to impound the ship. The federal agents had
a subpoena to depose Hubbard in a civil tax case in Hawaii. A Scientologist on shore realized what was happening when he was blocked from entering the dock area. He sent a pizza
to a radio operator with a message inside to send to the ship. Hubbard was just five miles
offshore, but he suddenly broadcasted a new course over the radio—due north for Halifax, Nova Scotia—then turned sharply south and headed to the Bahamas.

Hubbard was sixty-four years old in 1975, as the
Apollo
began its circumnavigation of the Caribbean. He weighed 260 pounds
. He was still meticulously groomed, but his teeth and fingers were darkly stained
from constant smoking. He was on the run from the courts, fearful of being discovered, marked by age, and visibly in decline. In
Curaçao, he suffered
a small
stroke and spent several weeks in a local hospital. It was becoming clear that life at sea posed a real danger for a man in such frail health. His crew rationalized his obvious decline by saying that his body was battered by the research he was undertaking and the volumes of suppression aimed at him. “He’s risking his life
for us,” they told each other.

By now the rumor about the
CIA spy ship had spread all over the Caribbean, making the Scientologists unwelcome or at least under suspicion everywhere they went. They were kicked out of Barbados
, Curaçao, and Jamaica. Moreover, the
Arab oil embargo had sent the
price of fuel skyrocketing, so the roving life was getting too expensive to support. It was time to come ashore.