[ni'k]

Penthouse: Physical beatings?
Hubbard: Yeah. We'd strong-arm them. I did it myself. And you had to realize that I weighed around 240 pounds in those days. When I taught Scientology, no students ever blew my courses! I would go out and physically retrieve my students. You know, the Scientologists are now trying to make me out to be the worst person since Attila the Hun. They forget that when I was director of training for the organization, I trained literally thousands of people. I created a lot of the Scientology processes and procedures throughout the fifties. I really helped create and run the organization. I was very deeply involved, very directly, for seven years, during its formulation and building. So I find their attempts to discredit me amusing. I used to have a thing about saying that nobody ever ran out of my courses. If you think est is tough, you ought to have taken courses under me in the fifties!

Penthouse: What would happen if someone went to your class, decided it was bullshit, and never came back?

Hubbard: If you signed up for a course and you came to my class, I'd keep you there or go physically retrieve you if you left.

Penthouse: You'd already gotten the money, so why did you bother?

Hubbard: Because I thought I was all-knowing, all-powerful --totally arrogant and egotistical --for one thing. I was quite insufferable.

Penthouse: Your father knew this was going on?

Hubbard: Well, sure. Nobody did a thing in Scientology without his direct knowledge or consent or without his orders.

Penthouse: Did it ever go beyond these physical beatings?

Hubbard: I remember locking one girl up in a shack out in the desert for at least a couple or weeks.

Penthouse: Why were things like this never publicized?

Hubbard: Because the same reign of terror that occurred under Robespierre and Hitler occurred back then in the fifties, as it occurs now. You must realize that there is very little actual courage in this world. It's pretty easy to bend people around. It doesn't take much to shut people up, it really doesn't. In the fifties all I had to do was call a guy up on the telephone and say, "Well, I think your wife would like to know about your mistress." The response would be a shocked "Oh, my God!" I'd say, "Well, nobody really wants to divulge that kind of information. I think it would be absolutely terrible if your wife found out, so I'm going to make absolutely sure that she doesn't find out. Now, if you just drop in here for a little more auditing ... Now
you know in your heart that the critical things you've been saying about Scientology are just vindictive. They're not really true in your heart. You know that, don't you?" And the guy says. "Yeah, sure, I sure do know that!" And then, if Scientologists couldn't blackmail you, they'd create some dirt on you through their "special operations." There were quite a few of those operations. This one, for example, happened recently. I wasn't involved in it, but Scientologists tried to get an assistant attorney general of the state of California embroiled in a fake operation where a Scientologist pretended to be a nun and pretended to get pregnant by him and filed papers against him. Then in another scheme they tried to set up the mayor of Clearwater, Florida, for a fake hit-and-run accident. I could give you operation after operation that they set up like this.

Penthouse: This has been going on since the fifties?

Hubbard: Sure. It was pretty tame back then compared to very sophisticated operations like they have now. When we hid assets, for example --I remember being in Philadelphia when the FBI anc the U.S. Marshall's Office were after my father on a contempt-of-court charge. There I was running across town with my father with our complete mailing list and a suitcase full of money! Heading for the hills!

Penthouse: Where did the money end up?
Hubbard: A lot of it went abroad. But my father always kept a great deal of it around his bedroom so that he could flee at a moment's notice. In shoe boxes. He distrusted banks.

Penthouse: What kind of money are we talking about?

Hubbard: Back then? Hundreds of thousands at least. The last time I saw my father, in 1959, he mentioned that he had at least $20 million salted away.

Penthouse: Did he invest the money?

Hubbard: No. He wanted to stay really liquid. Very fluid, so he could cut and run at any time.

Penthouse: Where did all this money come from? How much did it cost to be audited, in Scientology parlance?

Hubbard: It cost as much as a person had. He had to stay in the organization, getting audited higher and higher, until he paid us as much as he had. People would sell their house, their car, convert their stocks and securities into cash, and turn it all over to Scientology.

Penthouse: What did you promise them for this price?

Hubbard: We promised them the moon and then demonstrated a way to get there. They would sell their soul for that. We were telling someone that they could have the power of a god --that's what we were telling them.

Penthouse: What kind of people were tempted by this promise?

Hubbard: A whole range of people. People who wanted to raise their IQ, to feel better, to solve their problems. You also got people who wished to lord it over other people in the use of power. Remember, it's a power game, a matter of climbing a pyramidal hierarchy to the top, and it's who you can step on to get more power that counts. It appeals a great deal to neurotics. And to people who are greedy. It appeals a great deal to Americans, I think, because they tend to believe in instant everything, from instant coffee to instant nirvana. By just saying a few magic words or by doing a few assignments, one can become a god. People believe this. You see, Scientology doesn't really address the soul; it addresses the ego. What happens in Scientology is that a person's ego gets pumped up by this science-fiction fantasy helium into universe-sized proportions. And this is very appealing. It is especially appealing to the intelligentsia of this country, who are made to feel that they are the most highly intelligent people, when in actual fact, from an emotional standpoint, they are completely stupid. Fine professors, doctors, scientists, people involved in the arts and sciences, would fall into Scientology like you wouldn't believe. It appealed to their intellectual level and buttressed their emotional weaknesses. You show me a professor and I revert back to the fifties: I just kick him in the head, eat him for breakfast.
Penthouse: Did it attract young people as much as cults today?

Hubbard: Yes. We attracted quite a few hippies but we tried to stay a way from them, because they didn't have any money.

Penthouse: A poor man can't be a Scientologist?

Hubbard: No, oh no.

Penthouse: What do you think of the great popularity of cults in this country?
Hubbard: I think they're very dangerous and destructive. I don't think that anyone should think for you. And that's exactly what cults do. All cults, including Scientology, say, "I am your mind, I am your brain. I've done all the work for you, I've laid the path open for you. All you have to do is turn your mind off and walk down the path I have created." Well, I have learned that there's great strength in diversity, that a clamorous discussion or debate is very healthy and should be encouraged. That's why I like our political setup in the United States: simply because you can fight and argue and jump up and down and shout and scream and have all kinds of viewpoints, regardless of how wrongheaded or ridiculous they might be. People here don't have to give up their right to perceive things the way they believe. Scientology and all the other cults are one-dimensional, and we live in a three-dimensional world. Cults are as dangerous as drugs. They commit the highest crime: the rape of the soul.