Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

enegade IRS agents to destroy him, so inane that the recipient at the FBI scribbled on it a notation
'appears mental'.[1] Thereafter, the FBI no longer acknowledged communications from Hubbard
'because of their rambling, meaningless nature and lack of any pertinence to Bureau interests'.[2]
No doubt somewhat to the Bureau's chagrin, Hubbard was not in the least deterred from writing.
Two weeks later, on smart new printed notepaper headed 'L. Ron Hubbard D.D., Ph.D.', he wrote
again to say he had received an invitation to go to Russia. It had come from an 'unimpeachable
source' who suggested that as he was about to be ruined by the IRS he might as well accept the
offer. 'It seems I can go to Russia as an adviser or a consultant and have my own laboratories and
receive very high fees. And it is all so easy because it has already been ascertained that I could get
my passport extended for Russia and all I had to do was go to Paris and there a Russian plane
would pick me up and that would be that.' He did not wish to reveal the name of his contact, he
added, 'because he is a little too highly placed on the [Capitol] Hill'.
It seemed Hubbard was able to resist blandishments from beyond the Iron Curtain, for through the
sweltering summer months in Washington DC he could be found lecturing at the 'Academy of
Religious Arts and Sciences', in a ten-roomed house at 1845 R Street, in the north-west section of
the city. He was still maintaining a one-way communication with the FBI and on 7 September, he
wrote to complain about the persecution of Scientologists, some of whom he alleged were being
mysteriously driven insane, possibly by the use of LSD, 'the insanity producing drug so favoured by
the APA [American Psychological Association]'. Another poor wretch, a 'half-blind deaf old man' had
been arrested for practising medicine without a licence in Phoenix by a County attorney promising
to 'get to the bottom of this thing about Hubbard and Scientology'.
On a personal basis, Hubbard pointed out that it was not uncommon 'to have judges and attorneys
mad-dogged about what a terrible person I am and how foul is Scientology . . . All manner of
defamatory rumours have been scattered around me, questioning even my sanity . . .'
It certainly was a question in the forefront of the FBI file, although Hubbard was not to know that. He
continued: 'I am trying to turn out some monographs on matters in my field of nuclear physics and
psychology for the government on the subject of alleviating some of the distress of radiation burns,
a project I came east to complete.' He also promised to forward information about the latest brainwashing
techniques in Russia.
The horror of 'brain-washing' had been an emotive talking point in the United States ever since the
end of the Korean war and the revelation that United Nations prisoners had been brain-washed for
propaganda purposes. Timely as always, Hubbard entered the debate by distributing a pamphlet
entitled 'Brain-Washing: A Synthesis of the Russian Textbook on Psychopolitics', which he claimed
was a transcript of a lecture delivered in the Soviet Union by the dreaded Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria,
architect of Stalin's purges.
It was this pamphlet he forwarded in due course to the FBI with a note explaining that it was the
Church of Scientology's printing of 'what appeared to be a Communist manual'. The Bureau's
Central Research Section examined it and concluded that its authenticity was doubtful, since it
lacked documentation of source material, did not use normal Communist words and phrases and
contained no quotations from well-known Communist works, as would be expected. Had the
Central Research Section been familiar with the works of L. Ron Hubbard, they might have noted
certain similarities in the narrative style.
The FBI did not acknowledge receipt of the pamphlet, but this did not dissuade the Hubbard
Dianetic Research Foundation of Silver Spring, Maryland, from mailing the pamphlet to influential