Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

wrong with the Commodore. Hubbard had always said that he only got ill because his enemies
were pushing bad energy on him; it was just something saviours had to put up with, he would
explain with a shrug. Auditing was the way to exorcize bad energy.
David Mayo, the senior case supervisor in Clearwater, did not know where he was going or what he
had to do. All he was told was that an urgent, top-secret telex had arrived at the CMO instructing him
to be on the next flight to Los Angeles. He was given twenty minutes to get to the airport and didn't
even have time to say goodbye to his wife. No one was to know that he had gone. It was nightfall
when he arrived at Los Angeles airport. He was met by a Scientologist he vaguely recognized and
hurried out to a waiting car, which swept out of the airport complex and up on to Los Angeles'
bewildering network of freeways. Neither of the men in the car would tell Mayo where they were
taking him. Somewhere on the outskirts of the city they stopped at a parking lot and switched cars.
Half an hour later, in another parking lot, Mayo was bundled into a third car and this time he was
blindfolded. He asked what was going on and the driver replied: 'We're taking you to LRH. He's
sick. Keep the blindfold on until we arrive.'
Mayo was dismayed when he was at last ushered into the Commodore's room at Rifle. 'He was
obviously very ill, lying on his back almost in a coma. He could talk a little, but very slowly and
quietly. There was medical equipment all round him, including an electric pulse machine to re-start
his heart. Denk told me he thought LRH was close to death. He would have moved him into a
hospital but he thought the ride in the ambulance might finish him off. I was given his PC folders
and told to solve the problem. I started looking through the folders that night and began auditing
him next day.'[8]
Hubbard slowly recovered, proving the wondrous efficacy of auditing to everyone at Olive Tree
Ranch except, perhaps, the Commodore's auditor. Mayo was deeply disturbed by what he learned
during his daily auditing sessions with Hubbard: 'He revealed things about himself and his past
which absolutely contradicted what we had been told about him. He wasn't taking any great risk
because I was a loyal and trusted subject and had a duty to keep such things confidential.
'It wasn't just what I discovered about his past. I didn't care where he was born or what he had done
in the war, it didn't mean a thing to me. I wasn't a loyal Scientologist because he had an illustrious
war record. What worried me was when I saw things he did and heard statements he made that
showed his intentions were different from what they appeared to be. When I was with him
messengers often arrived with suitcases full of money, wads of hundred-dollar bills. Yet he had
always said and written that he had never received a penny from Scientology. He would ask to see
it, the messenger would open the case and he'd gloat over it for a bit before it was put away in a
safe in his bedroom. He didn't really spend much, so I guess it was getaway money. I didn't mind
the idea of him having money or being rich. I thought he had done tremendous wonders and
should be well paid for it. But why did have to lie about it?
'I slowly began to realize that he wasn't acting in the public good or for the benefit of mankind. It
might have started out like that, but it was no longer so. One day we were talking about the price of
gold, or something like that, and he said to me, very emphatically, that he was obsessed by an
insatiable lust for power and money. I'll never forget it. Those were his exact words, "an insatiable
lust for power and money".'
By the middle of October, the Commodore was back on his feet, back making movies. Mayo was
ordered to be an actor and was appalled by Hubbard's behaviour on the set. 'He walked around
with an electric bullhorn yelling orders through it even if the person was only a few feet away. The
crew were in a constant state of fear. He'd say he wanted a certain set built and describe it.