Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

Most official photographs of Hubbard published by the Church of Scientology show him in
the golden days of the Apollo voyages or earlier. This one, taken from a 1973 television
documentary, shows the 'Commodore' to be deteriorating rapidly.
(From Lamont, Religion Inc., 1986)
His aching teeth appeared to trigger other complaints and Dincalci was driven to distraction trying
to nurse an intractable and irritable elderly patient who was at first reluctant to consult either doctor
or dentist. When one of Hubbard's rotten teeth dropped out, Dincalci painstakingly ground all his
food. Eventually Hubbard agreed to seek professional medical help. On visits to a chiropractor in
Greenwich Village he always wore a wig as a disguise and on one occasion Dincalci and Preston
took the be-wigged Commodore to a local Chinese restaurant for his favourite dish, egg foo yong. It
was their only social outing.
On the recommendation of an allergist, Hubbard began a regular course of injections,
administered by Dincalci, which seemed to help him. As his health improved, he started taking
more interest in the affairs of the Church of Scientology, even writing bulletins with some of his old
enthusiasm. 'He wrote tremendously fast by hand,' said Dincalci. 'It was like automatic writing you
get in the occult. He'd have a glazed look, as if he was kinda gone, his eyes would roll up and the
corners of his mouth would turn down and he'd start this frenzied writing. I've never seen anyone
write so fast.'
Now sixty-two, Hubbard was also beginning to ponder his place in posterity. The Church of
Scientology had been swift to make use of the recently enacted Freedom of Information Act, which
had revealed that government agencies held a daunting amount of material about Scientology and
its founder in their files, much of it less than flattering. Hubbard, who had never been fettered by
convention or strict observance of the law, conceived a simple, but startlingly audacious, plan to
improve his own image and that of his church for the benefit of future generations of Scientologists.
All that needed to be done, he decided, was to infiltrate the agencies concerned, steal the relevant
files and either destroy or launder any damaging information they contained. To a man who had
founded both a church and a private navy this was a perfectly feasible scheme. The operation was
given the code name Snow White - two words that would figure ever more prominently over the next
few months in the communications between the Guardian's Office in Los Angeles and the