Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

Like all Scientologists, it had been Goldstein's long-time ambition to meet L. Ron Hubbard and
when he first got to the ship he used to contrive excuses to walk past Hubbard's research room on
the promenade deck just so that he could catch a glimpse of the great man at work. He was
amazed at the amount of paperwork that Hubbard seemed to get through, although many of his
preconceptions about the Sea Org were soon shattered. 'I had been told that Flag [the Apollo] was
perfection and that everyone was super-efficient. But then I was appointed Flag Banking Officer and
handed a real dog's breakfast: the ship's finances were in a mess. There were drawers full of
money everywhere and more than a million dollars in the safe, but no proper accounts. We paid for
everything in cash and were working with three different currencies - Spanish, Portuguese and
Moroccan - and it seemed that if anyone wanted money for something they just asked for it. I
decided it had to be done by the book and told everyone they would have to account for what they
had already spent before they could have any more. The ship was a different world, you have to
understand. It was supposed to run Scientology for the whole planet, but it was a world unto itself.'
It was also a world entirely of Hubbard's creation and he added to it, at around this time, a bizarre
new element - an elite unit made up of children and eventually known as the Commodore's
Messenger Organization. The CMO was staffed by the offspring of committed Scientologists and its
original, apparently innocuous, function was simply to serve the Commodore by relaying his verbal
orders to crew and students on board the Apollo. But the messengers, mainly pubescent girls,
soon recognized and enjoyed their power as teenage clones of the Commodore. In their cute little
dark blue uniforms and gold lanyards, they were trained to deliver Hubbard's orders using his exact
words and tone of voice; if he was in a temper and bellowing abuse, the messenger would scuttle
off and pipe the same abuse at the offender. No one dared take issue with whatever a messenger
said; no one dared disobey her orders. Vested with the authority of the Commodore they came to
be widely feared little monsters.
From 1970 onwards, messengers attended Hubbard day and night, working on six-hour watches
around the clock. When he was asleep, two messenger sat outside his state-room waiting for the
buzzer that would signal he was awake. Throughout his waking hours, they sat outside his office
waiting for his call. When he took a stroll on the deck, they followed him, one carrying his cigarettes,
the other an ashtray to catch the ash as it fell. Every minute of the Commodore's existence had to
be recorded in the 'Messenger Log' which noted when he woke, ate, slept, worked and the details
of every message he had required to be run.
It was, of course, the greatest possible honour to be selected as a messenger and it was perhaps
understandable that the girls would vie with each other to curry favour with the Commodore and
dream up ways of pleasing him, by springing forward to light his cigarette, perhaps, or reverently
dusting the individual sheets of his writing paper, particularly since they were awarded extra points
for little acts of thoughtfulness.
Doreen Smith was just twelve years old, a skinny kid with long blond hair, big eyes and smeared
make-up, inexpertly applied, when she arrived in the Azores in September 1970, to join the crew of
the Apollo. Born into Scientology, she had wanted to be a messenger for as long as she could
recall. 'I remember sitting on my luggage on the dockside and looking up at the ship. She was the
biggest ship in the port, painted all white, with these huge gold letters, Apollo, and she made a real
awesome impression on me. We had to wait on the dock to be cleared by the medical officer. I
spotted LRH, or thought I did, standing with his hand on the shoulder of a young girl in a shiny blue
short-sleeved pullover with a gold lanyard. He gave her a little shove and she went running down
deck after deck to the gangway, skidding to a stop at the bottom to welcome us on board on behalf
of the Commodore. It was the first time I'd seen a messenger.'[9]