Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

LA Foundation. 'I think Sara must have known what was going on,' said Barbara. 'She was very
hostile. At one point in the evening we were talking about guns and she said I looked like the type to
carry a Saturday night special.'
The dinner party back-fired on Hubbard - his lover's date became his wife's lover. Miles Hollister
was twenty-two years old, tall, dark-haired and strikingly handsome, a graduate of Bard College in
New York State, where he had been president of the student body, and a sportsman of some
repute - he was the first man to land a swordfish off the coast of Florida using light tackle. In short,
he was everything that Hubbard was not: young, attractive, sporting and well-connected. It was
hardly surprising that Hubbard conceived a passionate loathing for the young man and predictable
that he would retaliate. His first move was curiously elliptical - he summarily fired two of Hollister's
closest friends at the Foundation, claiming they were Communists.
Jack Horner, who was by then working at the Los Angeles Foundation, attempted to intervene on
their behalf. 'They were both nice guys and highly trained instructors and I tried to get them off the
hook. I went and confronted Hubbard in his office and said, "You can't fire those guys, you don't
have any evidence." He ranted and raved, pacing up and down, and said, "You don't understand. I'm
fighting a battle here. I might lose some people on the way, but I'm going to win."
'Hubbard was willing to do anything, for him it was any means to an end. A couple of weeks later he
got mad at a fellow named Charlie Crail, who had helped set up the LA organization. They had
some disagreement about how the place should be run. He called me and another guy into his
office and told us to go and steal Charlie's Dianetics certificates. We told him we wouldn't do it and
that he shouldn't count on us for that kind of operation. He couldn't understand it. As far as he was
concerned, because he had signed the certificates they belonged to him. There were lots of
incidents like that, but I was usually prepared to go along with them because I felt his genius far
outshone his craziness.'[10]
With his suspicions festering, Hubbard's relationship with Sara deteriorated rapidly. One night they
had a violent row and Sara shouted at him, 'Why don't you just go off and spend the weekend with
some pretty girl!' Hubbard stormed out of the house, picked up Barbara Kaye and drove to a motel
in Malibu, where he spent much of the weekend moodily swigging whisky.
'He was very down in the dumps about his wife,' said Barbara. 'He told me how he had met Sara.
He said he went to a party and got drunk and when he woke up in the morning he found Sara was
in bed with him. He was having a lot of problems with her. I remember he said to me I was the only
person he knew who would set up a white silk tent for him. I was rather surprised when we were
driving back to LA on Sunday evening, he stopped at a florist to buy some flowers for his wife.'
Barbara kept a meticulous diary in which she constantly analyzed and re-analyzed her affair with
Hubbard, speculated on his mental condition and recorded day-to-day drama. On Monday 27
November, she noted that Hubbard burst into her office that morning 'tremendously emotionally
disturbed'. Sara had tried to commit suicide over the weekend by taking sleeping pills, he said,
after Barbara had spoken to her on the telephone. He assumed Barbara had told her about their
affair.
It was not true. Barbara had telephoned to speak to Hubbard about Foundation business and had
only exchanged a few words with Sara after learning Ron was not at home. Hubbard would not
believe it: he had audited Sara and 'recovered an engram' indicating that her suicide attempt was
triggered by Barbara's telephone call.