Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

seeing action.
Armstrong would not believe it. He set the documents aside and resolved to start his research at
the beginning, in Montana, where Hubbard had grown up on his grandfather's huge cattle ranch.
But he could find no trace of any property owned by the family, except a little house in the middle of
Helena. Neither could he discover any documentation covering Hubbard's teenage wanderings
through China. In Washington DC, where Hubbard was supposed to have graduated in
mathematics and engineering from George Washington University, the record showed he dropped
out after two years because of poor grades. And of Hubbard's fabled expeditions as an explorer
there was similarly no sign.
'I was finding contradiction after contradiction,' Armstrong said. 'I kept trying to justify them, kept
thinking that I would find another document that would explain everything. But I didn't. I slowly came
to realize that the guy had consistently lied about himself.'
By the summer of 1981, Armstrong had assembled more than 250,000 pages of documentation
about the founder of the Church of Scientology, but despite the gaping holes appearing in
Hubbard's credibility, he remained intensely loyal. 'My approach was, OK, now we know he's
human and tells lies. What we've got to do is clear up the lies so that all the good he has done for
the world will be accepted. I thought the only way we could exist as an organisation was to let the
truth stand. After all, the truth was equally as fascinating as the lies.'
Armstrong's pleas to clear up the lies fell on deaf ears. Since Hubbard had gone into seclusion, the
Church of Scientology had been taken over by young militants known as 'messengers'. When
Hubbard was the commodore of his own navy, the messengers were little nymphets in hot pants
and halter tops who ran errands for him and competed with each other to find ways of pleasing
him. Eventually they helped him dress and undress, performed little domestic tasks like washing
his hair and smearing rejuvenating cream on his fleshy features, and even followed him around
with an ashtray to catch the falling ash from his cigarettes. As the commodore became more and
more paranoid, beset by imagined traitors and enemies, the messengers became more and more
powerful.
In November 1981 Armstrong presented a written report to the messengers, listing the false claims
made about Hubbard and putting forward a powerful argument as to why they should be corrected.
'If we present inaccuracies, hyperbole or downright lies as fact or truth,' he wrote, 'it doesn't matter
what slant we give them; if disproved, the man will look, to outsiders at least, like a charlatan . . .'
The messengers' response was to order Armstrong to be 'security checked' - interrogated as a
potential traitor. Armstrong refused. In the spring of 1982, Gerald Armstrong was accused of
eighteen different 'crimes' and 'high crimes' against the Church of Scientology, including theft, false
pretences and promulgating false information about the church and its founder. He was declared
to be a 'suppressive person' and 'fair game', which meant he could be 'tricked, cheated, lied to,
sued or destroyed' by his former friends in Scientology.
'By then the whole thing for me had crumbled,' he said. 'I realized I had been drawn into Scientology
by a web of lies, by Machiavellian mental control techniques and by fear. The betrayal of trust began
with Hubbard's lies about himself. His life was a continuing pattern of fraudulent business
practices, tax evasion, flight from creditors and hiding from the law.
'He was a mixture of Adolf Hitler, Charlie Chaplin and Baron Munchausen. In short, he was a con
man.'