Bob Thomas

 

Bob Thomas, Scientology's soft-spoken apologist who appears to have a rational explanation for every facet of his Church's operation told me:

"Of course, as with any great religious movement, we get the problem of holding the organization together. You come in with the old story of the man who was walking with the Devil when they saw somebody on the path ahead of them bend over and pick up an object. The man asked the Devil what the fellow had found, and the Devil said: 'He's found Truth.' The Devil's companion then asked him: 'Why does it make you so happy that he's found Truth?' And the Devil said: 'Because I'm going to help him organize it.'

"You see, any perception of truth has to be organized, and with organization comes the imposition of human frailty. So we try to strike a balance, a golden mean, between truth and organization."

In the face of growing uneasiness about harsh Ethics within the movement, and mounting hostility outside, in 1968 Hubbard ordered a public opinion survey of the Church's current structure and practices. According to Scientology spokesmen, 318, 885 questionnaires were sent to all parts of the world.As a result of the replies received, Hubbard issued a directive dated November 15, 1968, cancelling the practice of disconnection, security checking, and fair game, and the writing down or otherwise recording of any confessional materials.Later, in a policy letter of March 7, 1969, a continuing ameliorating of Ethics procedures was indicated.

"We are going in the direction of mild ethics and involvement with the Society," Hubbard wrote. "After 19 years of attack by the minions of vested interest, psychiatric front groups, we developed a tightly disciplined organizational structure.

"I don't like to see my friends pushed around. We didn't know it at the time, but out difficulties and failures were the result of false reports put out by the small but rich and powerful, group of individuals who would deny man freedom.

"Now that we know ... we will never need a harsh spartan discipline for ourselves.

"It has become apparent that such duress is not necessary when one has a technology which sets man free."

It was partly on the basis of these policy reforms that the New Zealand Commission of Inquiry recommended that no legislative action be taken against Scientology.

In concluding their Report, the commissioners set down a word of warning and advice. "The commission feels that for the future Scientology should regard as indispensable certain rules of practice. These are:

  1. No reintroduction of the practice of disconnection.
  2. No issue of Suppressive Person or Declaration of Enemy orders by any member to any other member of a family.
  3. No auditing or processing or training of anyone under the age of twenty-one without the specific written consent of both parents; such consent to include approval of the fees (which shall be specified) to be charged for the course or courses to which the consent is applicable.
  4. A reduction to reasonable dimensions of 'promotion' literature sent through the post to individuals, and prompt discontinuance of it when this is requested."

If the Scientologists in New Zealand would observe these rules, the Report added, "no further occasion for Government or public alarm should arise...".

Neither Hubbard nor his followers made any objection to these reasonable strictures, and the Church has continued to function in New Zealand without further interference by Government authorities."New Zealand," a leading English Scientologist told me, "is the only place where we have had a decent and favourable inquiry, and it is the only place where there is no member association of the World Federation for Mental Health."When Australia's first Labour government in twenty three years took the reins in late 1972, the tide against Scientology began to turn. True to his party's promise that if Labour won in the December federal elections, Scientology ministers would be registered under the Australia Commonwealth Marriages Act, the new Attorney-General registered the Church a few months after taking office.Australian law provides that such registration is all that is needed to establish religious bona fides throughout the country. It had the effect of anulling the anti-Scientology measure passed by the Victorian Parliament, West Australia's promise to repeal was honoured in 1973, and will undoubtedly speed action on a bill to repeal similar legislation in South Australia, still pending at this writing.

The power and political influence of Scientology's enemies had dealt the movement a crippling blow in Australia. There was no doubt about that. But it was still going strong in the United States, the country in which the annihilation campaign had begun.The point of focus shifted once more to America. There, the ongoing efforts of the federal Food and Drug Administration had so far produced only limited results; and the ruling by a U.S. Appellate Court that Scientology was a bona fide religion dimmed the legal prospects as the case moved towards the Supreme Court.There was one agency of the Government, however, whose vast, complex and ever-changing code of laws and regulations made it virtually impossible for a citizen or organization ever to win a final victory against it. That was the Internal Revenue Service.

Absolutism and tyranny are deeply ingrained in all bureaucracies; but the IRS these evils have been endowed with almost limitless power. No one is beyond its reach. That is why income tax laws had been used to put gangsters behind bars when the police failed in their job of digging up the evidence needed to convict them for their real crimes.To the short-sighted, politically naive reader who asks what difference it makes that such means were used to "nail" a mobster, so long as he was put away, I have this to say:

As all history proves, such illegal methods of entrapment are first used against suspected criminals or unpopular victims; then are more widely applied to political figures and to individuals who challenge the regime or hold nonconformist views. Finally, all pretence of expediency gives way to unbridled despotism: they become the instruments of general coercion and personal revenge.

A judge of the U.S. District Court not long ago observed from the bench: "No sophisticated person is unaware that even in this very Commonwealth [Massachusetts] the Internal Revenue Service has been in possession of facts with respect to public officials which it has presented in order to serve what can only be called political ends, be they high or low. And the judge who knows the score is aware that every time his decision offends the Internal Revenue Service, he is inviting a close inspection of his own returns." In a previous work I have examined in detail the odious techniques employed by the IRS intelligence division, and I will not discuss them at length here. Suffice it to say that there is documented evidence which shows that under the guise of ferreting out tax dodgers and racketeers, secret agents of the Internal Revenue Service have, with impunity and contempt, violated both State and Federal laws. Their criminal activities have included illegal wire-tapping; use of electronic snooping gear to spy upon innocent and guilty alike; interception and opening of sealed, first-class mail; breaking and entering private homes, offices and automobiles, without a search warrant, harassment of defence attorneys; and using bugged conference rooms in IRS offices, equipped with secret microphones and one-way mirrors to monitor privileged conversations between taxpayers and their legal counsellors or accountants.

After months of careful investigation of IRS practices by the judiciary Subcommittee of the U.S. Senate, the cominittee chairman declared: "There appears to be a festering infection in the IRS."Far from instituting the reforms that were urgently called for by the hearings, IRS officials secretly aided Life magazine in a political assassination of the Senator who had dared publicly to challenge their Gestapo-like tactics.Scientologists have reason to believe that in the continuing and intensive investigation of their Church, IRS agents are employing some of the spying techniques described above.The importance the Scientology surveillance programme has for the IRS is indicated by the fact that on September 2, 1970, S. B. Wolfe, director of the Audit Division, issued a lengthy three-page confidential supplement (42G(11)6G53) to their Manual, describing the background of the Church and instructing district offices to be alert to identify any Scientology-type organizations filing returns.A special, Scientology Case Report form (M-0696) was printed by the agency's National Office and distributed to each region's Exempt Organization Program Director.In keeping with the IRS practice of disposing of investigational notes or information that might be subpoenaed in a court trial, the directive said: "On completion of this program, remaining stock of forms M-o696 should be destroyed. This report is exempt from control under IRM 1(2o)16.35 (1)(f)."

When the Founding Church of Scientology first applied to the Internal Revenue Service in 1956 for exemption from Federal income taxes, the IRS granted the application owing to the fact that the Church was duly incorporated as a religious and educational organization in the District of Columbia.Two years later, the federal tax agency sent the Church a letter withdrawing their tax-exempt status on the ground that the exposition and propagation of "tenets set forth in the books of L. Ron Hubbard, and related instruments of instruction relative to 'Scientology' in training courses, clinical courses and otherwise" did not constitute an exclusively religious or educational activity. In other words, the IRS mandarins had arrogated to themselves the power which the federal judge previously quoted said "no official, high or petty" could exercise under our Constitution... They had purported to determine what was and was not a religious belief.To any but the most innocent it must be obvious that the initiative for the IRS action did not originate within the agency itself. The decision to revoke tax exemption after it had been granted was prompted by influences at work elsewhere.

We have already examined compelling evidence. that such influences were indeed active behind the scenes. As an added example:

Six months before Scientology's trial in the U.S. Court of Claims, the director of AMA's Bureau of Investigation wrote a letter to David W. Meister, executive secretary of the Peoria Medical Society, in which he said: "For your confidential information, some agents of the Internal Revenue Service were in the office not too long ago and we gave them a bundle of information on 'Scientology', Hubbard and their operations."Scientology attorneys filed a protest against the IRS ruling and asked reinstatement of their exempt status, but IRS refused.The Church's response was to bring suit in the U.S. Court of Claims, arguing that the action taken by IRS was "arbitrary, prejudicial and erroneous".The Internal Revenue Service answered by denying the charges and at the same time filing a counter-claim against the Founding Church for $3,262.75, together with interest, for the fiscal year beginning July 25, 1955 and ending June 30, 1956. The trial did not begin until July 5, 1967. After six days of testimony by witnesses for both sides, the court ruled that the Church was not entitled to an exemption because part of its earnings inured to the benefit of private individuals.

According to the Government's own audit, Hubbard's entire income from all Scientology sources during the taxable years in issue (June 1955 through June 1959) averaged less than $2o,ooo a year, including royalty on his books and fees for lectures given by him at various Scientology congresses. Mrs. Hubbard, an officer of the Church, received an average of less than $4,000 per year, as did L. Ron Hubbard, Jr., who held responsible jobs in the organization.In what Church attorneys called "argument by innuendo", the Government implied to the Court that the Hubbards were receiving immense sums of money from all Scientology Churches collectively and that on that basis the exemption ought to be denied the Founding Church of Scientology.If this were true, asked Scientology lawyers, why hadn't the Government introduced evidence to that effect? The record was barren of any such evidence.The Founding Church of Scientology immediately filed a petition for amendment of judgment or for a rehearing. A year later, the case was heard before the full court of seven judges.The court carefully avoided the underlying issue of the case, that is, the question of whether the Government and the courts are entitled to judge or characterize a religious practice for purposes of allowing or denying tax exemption,

Writing the opinion for the court, judge Collins declared: "The court finds it unnecessary to decide whether plaintiff is a religious or educational organization as alleged, since, regardless of its character, plaintiff has not met the statutary conditions for exemption from income taxation."Thereafter, none of the precedent cases cited by the opinion were concerned with religious bodies. Instead, they involved such organizations as The Broadway Theatre League of Lynchburg, Va., Birmingham Business College, Texas Trade School and Underwriters' Laboratories, Inc.

The nit-picking, letter-of-the-law opinion cited as evidence that some of the Church's net earnings inured to the benefit of private individuals, included such bagatelles as the fact that Hubbard had use of an automobile at the organization's expense and that the Church provided and maintained a personal residence for Hubbard and his family. Mrs. Hubbard had received rent for property owned by her that was leased to the Church. And there was "a completely unexplained figure of $25o, and loans of $8oo were received in 1958-59". There was also the weighty fact that L. Ron Hubbard, Jr. had been reimbursed for expenditures of approximately $2oo in 1957-8 and 1958-9. And so on.

The court concluded as a matter of law that the Founding Church of Scientology was not entitled to a tax-exempt status, and dismissed their petition.If this ruling were allowed to stand, it would provide legal authority for the Internal Revenue Service to act against not only the Founding Church in Washington, but all the branch Scientology centres throughout the United States. The enormous sums in back taxes and interest that could be assessed for all the years involved could be ruinous to the Scientology movement in America.The only remaining legal recourse open to the Founding Church of Scientology was to petition the Supreme Court to review its case. Accordingly, attorneys for the Mother Church asked the High Court for a writ of certiorari, arguing that denial of tax exemption to a particular religion constitutes discrimination among religions and is therefore a violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment.