Scientology Lies

By Bill Prescott, Sun staff writer

The son of L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the Church of Scientology, testified Wednesday his father was obsessed with controlling people and "destroyed" those who opposed him and the church.

"My father only knew how to do one thing; that was destroy them," said L. Ronald Hubbard Jr., who has changed his name to Ronald Edward DeWolf.

DeWolf contended also the elder Hubbard fabricated most of the personal qualifications and scientific expertise he claimed when forming the sect.

"I can say flat that 99 percent of what my father wrote about his own life is false," said DeWolf.

DeWolf, 47, was the second witness to testify in the opening session of Clearwater's public hearings on Scientology. Edward Walters, at one time a high-ranking Scientologist, testified earlier he would not have joined the church had he known the alleged discrepancies of Hubbard's past.

DeWolf will continue his testimony at 9 a.m. today. Also scheduled to speak, according to city consultant Michael Flynn, are Laurie Taverna, Rosie Pace and David Ray, all former workers in the church's Clearwater organization.

The scheduled 10 days of hearings are the culmination of close to a year of behind-the-scenes work by the Clearwater City Commission and Boston attorney Flynn, who has battled the sect in court for three years.

City officials have said the public hearings will help determine whether charitable-solicitation and consumer-fraud ordinances are needed to control alleged criminal activities by Scientology.

The hearings began on a tense note as Tampa attorney Paul B. Johnson, representing Scientology, walked out of the City Hall proceedings when commissioners denied him a chance to make an opening statement. Johnson said he was "shocked at the attitude" of the commission.

He contended Mayor Charles LeCher's opening remarks "showed that he's already prejudged the evidence" and called the hearings "an extravaganza" devoid of fair play.

The proceedings continued, though, as Walters described the inner workings of Scientology and DeWolf debunked the Scientology version of Hubbard's past.'

"You have to view the life of L. Ron Hubbard like a tangled ball of barbed wire," DeWolf said. "He and I used to joke that he would write a bio (each) week."

The blond, pale-skinned DeWolf described his father as a hot-tempered man prone to exaggeration.

"You see, a lot my father does is take one tiny, small fact and balloon it out," he said.

Under questioning from LeCher, DeWolf said Hubbard probably earned a maximum of $10,000 from writing for science fiction magazines before writing "Dianetics," the book that led to Scientology. He said his father earned neither the nuclear engineering nor philosophy degrees church biographies claim.

Hubbard attended one semester of a nuclear physics course, which he failed, DeWolf said.

His book was first

DeWolf credited much of the early popularity of Hubbard's book, published in 1950, to the fact that it was "the first do-it-yourself psychiatry book that came out." Hubbard then pursued the widespread interest "simply because there was so much darn money in it," DeWolf said.

In 1951 the writer then founded the Dianetics Research Foundation, based originally in New Jersey, and claimed to be able to cure all ills, his son said. New Jersey officials, however, began investigating the medical claims and charged Hubbard with practicing medicine without a license, DeWolf said.

That led Hubbard to establish the Church of Scientology as a religion - "the only solution he had to stop his legal problems," DeWolf said.

Other legal problems almost 30 years later convinced Walters to leave his post as the sect's chief expert in auditing, a Scientology counseling method.

"I was like the top surgeon in the hospital who finds the hospital is crooked," said the 44-year-old Walters, who was based in Las Vegas.

Witness disillusioned

Walters said he left the sect in disillusionment in 1979 after nine years and a $40,000 investment. Up until that time, he said, he had been involved on occasion with covert activities aimed at discrediting Scientology critics. The rationale, he said, was to protect the church at all costs from attacks from the outside world.

However, he said he began to doubt church policy when the Guardian Office - the sect's enforcement arm - denied to its own members that it had broken into federal offices. Before that, Walters said, it had been considered an honor to perform such acts.

In addition, Walters said he began noticing the disturbing effects of high-level Scientology courses.

"The people at the top were more psychotic than the people just coming in," he said.

City Commissioner James Calderbank asked Walters what "representations" he relied on to take courses.

"I relied on the fact that they told me L. Ron Hubbard was a doctor of nuclear physics, a doctor of philosophy and had studied the mind and how it works," Walters said.

He said he would not have spent money on Scientology training if he had known the version of Hubbard's past as told by DeWolf.

Throughout his testimony, Walters appeared nervous and made several references to his expectations of retribution from the church. He said if local Guardian Office personnel followed policy, they would be seeking ways to discredit the commission.

'May be destroyed'

"Hubbard won't take this lightly," he said of the hearings.

Walters predicted he and the commission would be subject to the sect's "fair game" policy.

Flynn displayed a blowup of what he said was a church document which described an "enemy" as someone who "may be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued, lied to or destroyed."

The church has said the policy was abandoned several years ago.

Walters attributed sect member's conduct to a blind allegiance to Hubbard attained through Scientology "brainwashing" techniques.

"Everything you did was written in policy and the policy was written by L. Ron Hubbard," he said.

Church spokesman Hugh Wilhere routed all questions about the hearings to Johnson, the sect's lawyer. Told of the claims made during the first day of hearings, Johnson said, "I'm really quite disturbed at the sensationalist and irresponsible unchecked statements."

He doubted the credibility of the witnesses he had sought to cross-examine. Johnson said he may return to federal court to attempt to stop the proceedings with the suit he filed this past week.

"I'm disturbed," Johnson said. "I believe in fair play, I believe in due process, I believe in the Constitution and I think all of them are taking a beating."