Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

little again and I felt closer to him than ever. He drank excessively and talked in proportion to his
intake. Grotesque tales about his family mostly and his hatred of his mother, who he said was a
lesbian and a whore . . . He is a deeply unhappy man. He said the only thing to show him affection
for the last few years, before he met me, was Calico, his cat.'[5]
In October, Hubbard returned to the East Coast for a few days and was greeted at Elizabeth with the
news that the Foundation was approaching a financial crisis - its monthly income could no longer
even cover the payroll - and Joseph Winter, the man who had done so much to validate Dianetics,
was about to resign.
Winter was deeply disillusioned with the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation. He no longer
believed that Dianetics was free from risk - two pre-clears had developed acute psychoses during
auditing - and he was extremely worried by the Foundation's continuing willingness to accept
anyone for training as an auditor.
'People had breakdowns quite often,' said Perry Chapdelaine, a Sears Roebuck clerk from Mason
City, Iowa, who was a student at Elizabeth. 'It was always hushed up before anyone found out about
it. It happened to a guy on my course, a chemical engineer. They wanted to get him out of the
school and I volunteered to stay with him in an adjoining building. He never slept or ate and was in
a terrible state, no one could do anything with him and in the end they took him off to an asylum.'[6]
Apart from what he considered to be inherent dangers in allowing anyone to audit anyone, Winter
had also begun to doubt whether the state of 'clear' was realistically obtainable. Finally, he was
frustrated by the fact that the Research Foundation was making absolutely no attempt to conduct
any serious scientific research, which was one of its avowed aims. He had voiced his growing
concern on several occasions, only to be airily dismissed by Hubbard. It became clear to Winter
that he had no alternative but to resign.[7]
Art Ceppos was largely in sympathy with Winter and also submitted his resignation. Hubbard's
reaction was typically immoderate. Angry and bitter at what he considered to be a betrayal by two of
his earliest supporters, he spread the word that Winter and Ceppos had been plotting to seize
control of the Foundation and had consequently been 'forced' to resign.[8]
It was not Hubbard's style to be satisfied with simply blackening the reputation of his enemies - he
wanted revenge. An opportunity presented itself in the unlovely form of Senator Joe McCarthy, the
self-seeking demagogue who, in February 1950, had accused the State Department of being
riddled with Communists and Communist sympathizers. The atmosphere of fear and suspicion
generated during the witch-hunts that followed cast a shadow across America; almost nothing was
worse, during the era of McCarthyism, than to be a 'Commie', or be thought to be a 'Commie'. On 3
November 1950, the general counsel of the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation in Elizabeth
contacted the FBI and said that Art Ceppos, president of Hermitage House, was a Communist
sympathizer who had recently tried to get hold of the Foundation's mailing list of sixteen thousand
names which would be 'valuable to anyone interested in circulating Communist party literature'.[9]
Hubbard stayed less than a week in Elizabeth and made little attempt to resolve the financial crisis
facing the Foundation. He had absolutely no interest in balance sheets and operated on the
optimistic, if unrealistic, belief that somehow everything would come out all right in the end. Further
problems, of a more personal nature, arose when he returned to Los Angeles: he began to
suspect his wife was having an affair. One evening he had insisted on an outlandish double date
with his wife and his lover. Barbara, who hated the idea, reluctantly showed up to meet Ron and
Sara at a Los Angeles restaurant in the company of Miles Hollister, one of the instructors from the