Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

and responsibility, paid its bills promptly 'as any Phoenix business firm with which it deals can
attest' and was following a policy of quiet, orderly business. It was soon intending to make
Scientology available to the disabled 'as a public service'.
The letter was signed by John Galusha, the secretary of the HASI board of directors. It was, no
doubt, written in good faith, for Galusha was a thoroughly decent, deeply committed Scientologist.
He had been working on the railroad in Colorado when he first heard about Dianetics and had
thrown himself into it wholeheartedly. 'I thought it was a privilege to work for Ron,' he said. 'Maybe
he was a charlatan and a liar - I didn't care. The point was that the tech was good. It worked.'[14] The
'tech' was the commonly used contraction for what Hubbard, the engineer, liked to describe as 'the
technology' of Scientology.
Galusha did not get to know Hubbard particularly well, but then very few people did. Jack Horner
recalled a strange remark Hubbard once made: 'We were out the back of his house and he was
draining the radiator of his car because it was going to be unexpectedly cold that night. I said to
him, "You know Ron, it would be nice if we could be closer friends." There was a silence for a
moment, then he replied, "Yeah, it would be nice, but I can't have any friends."'
For Hubbard, the best news of 1954 came towards the end of the year when he heard from Wichita
that Don Purcell was giving up the fight for control of Dianetics. Purcell had tired of the seemingly
endless litigation and the constant attacks from Scientologists. He had also became interested in
an offshoot of Dianetics called Synergetics and when he decided to devote his future resources to
Synergetics he handed the Wichita Foundation's copyrights and mailing lists back to Hubbard,
thankful to disentangle himself from the man he had once considered a saviour.
Purcell's retreat could not have come at a more apposite moment. With Dianetics and Scientology
at last firmly under his control, Hubbard was ready to follow his own often-voiced advice: 'If a man
really wanted to make a million dollars, the best way to do it would be to start a religion.'
1. What is Scientology?, 1978 ed.
2. Ability no. 81, 1959
3. Have You Lived Before This Life?, ed. L. Ron Hubbard, 1968
4. Report of the Board of Inquiry into Scientology, State of Victoria, Australia, 1965
5. Religious Sects, Bryan Wilson, 1970
6. Interview with Carmen D'Alessio, London, Jan. 1986
7. Interviews with Helen O'Brien
8. Interview with Fred Stansfield, Burbank, July 1986
9. Evidence of L. Ron Hubbard Jr. at Clearwater hearings, May 1982
10. Bankruptcy file 23747, Federal Records Center, Philadelphia
11. Letter from office of J. Edgar Hoover to Senator Homer Ferguson, 2 Mar 1953
12. Interview with Ray Kemp, Palomar, CA., Aug 1986
13. Interview with Horner
14. Interview with Galusha, Denver, Colorado, March 1986