How I trained to be a Scientology spy in order to save L. Ron Hubbard from SMERSH

[Today’s guest post is by Valerie Ross]

The minute you start Scientology’s very first course, the Communications Course, you are told they are going to teach you to be a master communicator.

What an irony it is that the biggest lesson you learn in Scientology is how to keep secrets, how not to communicate. The longer I was in, the less I shared about my past or how I felt about things that were happening in my life.

Founder L. Ron Hubbard has “tech” on how to treat people who are antagonistic to Scientology. You only tell them “good roads, fair weather.” The same unspoken principle is applied in Scientology even to those closest to you. You learn to speak only in “present time,” and don’t discuss your feelings. You don’t even discuss your courses with other students because study is structured so each person is independent from all others.

That was going to become even more important as I was reassigned (as I discussed last time) to Scientology’s spy wing in 1976, which at that time was known as the Guardian’s Office.

The first few months were kind of like my first few months in the Sea Org with some glaring exceptions. I had a place to live the minute I got there. Sure, it was a studio apartment at 1811 Tamarind, not the classiest place in the world, but it was a big step up from the Hollywood Inn. We had a laundry room, a swimming pool and hot tub, the heat worked, and I had a whole room with an en-suite bathroom and a mini-fridge and hot plate all to myself. I could lie in bed and read after I got home.

Room and board was free, like in Sea Org, I ate in the cafeteria at the Manor (which l later would become today’s Hollywood Celebrity Centre), where the food was better, and I got a breathtaking $25 a week, most of which I had nowhere to spend. I covered most of my needs for $10.00 a month back then, and even if I bought a bit of food to keep in my mini fridge, I had enough to start padding my savings account. After taxes I think I took home about $23 a week, so my savings started to grow at about $75 a month.

I treated myself to a used blue 1975 Mazda RX-3 with a rotary engine which set me back $500. What freedom! It also worked out well for the GO, as I was able to run errands for them, and when I got my “job” I had transportation without them having to worry about it.

That ate up another $10 to $15 a month for gas and oil, those old rotaries burned oil. Occasionally someone who sent me on an errand would throw me a few bucks, but it wasn’t really at the top of anyone’s list of things to do. I didn’t consider asking. The Manor was in a rehabilitation stage at that point, and the Celebrity Centre had moved from 8th Street to 1551 La Brea in an overnighter the night of November 7, 1975 and was open for business in the new location the next morning, but was nowhere near moving permanently into the Manor.

I spent most of my time training, learning how to be what Hubbard considered to be a world-class spy. His wife Mary Sue was concerned about our mental health and insisted we get auditing as well. Because a post had to be created for me, I had lots of time to train and audit.

My initial spy training consisted of TR-L (Training Routine: Lie) and all sorts of espionage techniques. It felt like I was training for some special job. Hubbard had learned just enough about the espionage community to be dangerous, and he managed to convince us that the espionage community was after Scientology and it was our job to protect ourselves from SMERSH.

Wikipedia says SMERSH was created in 1943 under Stalin as a counter-espionage unit to sniff out German spying efforts in the Red Army, watching closely for signs of dissent or defeatism. Western intelligence agencies claim the acronym meant “Sme(rt) Sh(pionam),” or “Death to Spies.” Kirill Khenkin, in his book Hunter Upside Down, says it meant Spetsial Nie Metodi Razoblachenia Schpinov, which means “Special Methods for Exposing Spies.” My guess is Hubbard took the name from the fictional SMERSH James Bond fought before he switched to SPECTRE. When LRH talked about SMERSH, he was referring to the World Federation of Mental Health and the National Association of Mental Health networks, and what he claimed were their nefarious links with intelligence and government agencies, or any other amalgam of people he perceived to be the bad guys at the time.

This is who the GO and its replacement, Scientology’s current spy wing the Office of Special Affairs, were intent on obliterating. Not just psychiatric umbrella groups but whole governments as well as individual journalists that were secretly working for them. According to LRH, we had to use their own methodology to attack them. Methodology which he claimed to have meticulously researched.

Included in our studies were Confidential Policies titled “Attacks on Scientology,” “Battle Tactics,” “Counter Attack Tactics,” and “Intelligence Principles.” We were taught that we were constantly beleaguered and that we were the only good guys. We had to defend ourselves on all fronts at all times. These policies went far beyond “fair game.” For example, HCOPL 16 Feb 1969 “Battle Tactics” has these paragraphs right in the middle of three pages pages of incendiary material:

A good general expends the maximum of enemy troops and the minimum of his own. He makes the war costly to the enemy, not to himself.

One cuts off enemy communications, funds, connections. He deprives the enemy of political advantages, connections and power. He takes over enemy territory. He raids and harasses. All on a thought plane – press, public opinion, governments, etc. Seeing it as a battle, one can apply battle tactics to thought actions.” And the same policy has these words near the end:

Wars are composed of many battles. Never treat a war like a skirmish. Treat all skirmishes like wars.”

The GO and now OSA are KSW on steroids, with a huge dose of paranoia thrown in for good measure. Members are trained to believe that every government official, journalist, person in the psychiatric field, physician, and probably most people just walking down the street have it out for Scientology and it was our duty as to band together to save those people from themselves.

And, yes, for those of you who say, but you were GO, there is no GO now, every single one of these policies we studied are included in the OSA Network Orders Pack.

I need to state that I think that Mary Sue truly believed her husband’s lies. I am certain she thought he was well-educated, a decorated naval officer, and I know she trusted that “the tech” worked. She felt it her duty to further his work and protect him from harm. Mary Sue was a very smart woman. She was also a good 1950’s style wife, leaving out the fact that she was already pregnant with Diana (who was born in September 1952) when she married Ron that March.

All of us believed that he knew what he was talking about, so we trained diligently in the LRH-approved espionage methods. We were also highly compartmentalized. The level of secrecy even among each of us was elaborate. I didn’t know which of us were or weren’t GO. It was a don’t-ask-don’t-tell culture. I knew Diana was there. I know she gave me instructions. Unlike Sea Org, we did not have an Org Board posted. We knew who our seniors were and we knew which few people we could communicate to.

It was during this time that I woke up one morning realizing what a fine line there was between the truth and what was represented to you as truth. I thought I should leave, then decided I was in too deep, and walked across the street and continued my training. Everything was on a need-to-know basis. And when we were given mission orders, we were to simply comply. After I was told for about three months “just keep your damn mouth shut and don’t say anything about anything to anyone,” I was taken out of the basement of the Manor and put in the public course room where I did some other courses which were not so super secret.

Looking back, I see that LRH trained up his own troops to protect him on the front line while he cowered in the background.

My BC students had been told I was declared, but here I was, working shoulder to shoulder with Mary Sue Hubbard. My contact with Heber and Yvonne was cut way back. We were on two different paths. I did see them a few times a month, but it was in passing. Our dinners were a thing of the past. Yvonne was nicely ensconced in her office at La Brea, Heber was off doing PR missions most times.

I had very few friends and some acquaintances. I talked to a few of the residents of Tamarind, a couple of people at the Manor, but I was living such a double life that I didn’t dare say much to anyone for fear of letting something slip.

Geoffrey Lewis lived in Tamarind the same time as I did for a short time. He was fun to talk to. He was always down to earth. Shortly after I moved in, he and Glenis divorced, so it was just Glenis and Juliette, still in saggy diapers at 2 and bratty and loud. Glennis and I were not friends.

I made small talk to people in the course room to the regulars, but once again, it was superficial. Scientology and Scientologists are transient by nature, more so back in the late 1970s before Miscavige decimated the mission network, because that is how Hubbard had set it up. No one went into an advanced org to do a beginning course. There were missions, Cl IV Orgs, Advanced Orgs, Saint Hill Orgs, Celebrity Centres. You worked your way up the hierarchy, most times having to go to a different town for the next level. If you had known someone in one town, it wasn’t a surprise to see them in another town.

Scientologists had money making schemes, not jobs, and places to stay, not homes. The Manor, when it was purchased by Scientology in 1973 for $1.5 million, was a derelict building, slated for demolition. In 1977, with renovations barely starting, CC was in the embryonic stages of migrating to the new building. A few classes were held at the Manor, but the large majority were still at the La Brea building. Once I finished my Spy training, I started on my CLIV internship there.

I had most Saturday evenings free. I usually went to the laundry room in the hour between course and dinner and auditing at night and got a load of laundry out of the way every couple of days, so I didn’t have to wait around for a free machine on Saturday afternoons. Mary Sue did her best to give us at least a few free hours on Saturday and we had most of Sunday free.

When I first met Mark M., he was employed selling office supplies at a Scientologist-owned business over the phone. He was proud of what he did. It was shady. He explained that he would sell someone a dozen pens, for example. A couple of weeks later, he would call them and let them know their back order for a gross of pens had come in and ask how they wanted to pay for it. A high percentage of the people bit. I was still in a moral enough frame of mind at that point to be appalled by him telling me that, but kept my mouth shut. About a week after we met, the office supply operation was raided by the LAPD and shut down.

There were 5 Saturdays in April 1977. On the 4th Saturday of that month, I was married to Mark M. in a wedding dress sewn by my mother, him in a suit he borrowed from his big brother, with a baby due the first of November.

Our very Scientology marriage ceremony, read directly from the “Ceremonies of The Founding Church of Scientology” book was officiated by his brother, Darryl.

We were moved out of the studio apartment at 1811 Tamarind to a 2-bedroom apartment on the 3rd floor, where we would stay until we left LA. Mark had no idea what my job was, he thought I was a full-time student.

I didn’t know Mark when I married him. We had gone on a few dates and spent a total of possibly 20 hours together before getting married.

I had the opportunity to leave the day after we got married and stayed. We woke up together for the first time the morning after my wedding. We were getting ready to go to Disneyland with my family before they went back home. He said something and I reached up and laughingly ruffled his hair. He started yelling at the top of his lungs about me never touching his hair. I just stood there. I said softly “this whole thing was a mistake. I’m leaving now.”

He started ridiculing me, telling me “You’re pregnant, how are you going to do this alone, you’ll never make it in your own.” By then I had enough Scientology programming that I just decided he was right. He wasn’t violent with me that day. Just loud and made sure to put me in my place. I stood there “with my TRs in” and took it. Then I turned around and walked into the bedroom to get dressed for the day. My illusion of freedom was gone. I was trapped.

After the office supply place was raided, Mark worked sporadically as a carpenter and always had a place to spend every penny he earned. Fortunately, we had a real kitchen in the new place and I started baking bread at dawn Sunday and baked until dusk. With people stopping by to buy a loaf or two all day, and after earning back my initial investment for supplies, I earned $15 a week or so on bread. Some weeks when I was particularly industrious, I would make sugar cookies, snickerdoodles and chocolate chip cookies while the bread rose.

I still didn’t have official duties with the GO, although they had plenty of one off spy-type missions for me to do in the interim. Twice I had to go to several areas gather up all the newspapers the minute they hit the stands because something bad was going to be in it about Scientology. What? I don’t know. It was my job to get the papers, not to read them. A few times, I just went to a restaurant and sat near a group of people eating while “reading a book” and reported back on what they were saying. It was all so James Bond.

While I waited for an assignment I spent some time helping Heber and Yvonne set up a checklist regarding CC events which had every step allowing them to go off without a hitch, including food prep, etc. When I left CC on May 4, 1977, I did not realize it would be the last time I would see my friend Yvonne. She was transferred to the new PR Org in June 1977.

The parking lot at La Brea CC had a driveway with a concrete ramp on it that went slightly uphill. John Travolta was appearing in Kotter at the time and had purchased a
used Mercedes. On one of my trips to the La Brea location in May, 1977, I, four months pregnant, helped John push his stalled Mercedes up the ramp of the parking lot.

I sat down at a typewriter at the end of the day May 4, 1977 to type up my “mission report” and Diana walked by, stopped and said “oh, you type!” I just shrugged my shoulders and said “yes”. We had typewriters in our home from when I was born, starting with my dad’s old Underwood which put him through college and which I learned to type on. I was hunting and pecking at 3, using touch type method by the time I was in Junior High. My dad treated my mom to an electric early on and upgraded to a Selectric for the family shortly after they came out because we all typed too fast and jammed the keys on my dad’s old machine and even the new electric occasionally.

So yes, I typed around 100 wpm. So, my “hat” was discovered. They had been looking for someone to plant at the FBI, but the FBI hired temps through Kelly Services and the temps had to type more than 75 wpm and be trained on a Mag Card II typewriter. That was state of the art back then, a typewriter with a magnetic storage card that could record up to 2 1/2 pages of information, which you could read back into the typewriter line by line and make corrections to a previous document. I know it sounds archaic now, but back then it was quite amazing.

Because only the highest tech offices had these machines, the FBI would foot the bill for Kelly Services to train a competent prescreened person on the machine. And since I was obviously superior, being a Scientologist and all, I was the one for the job! I was told to go to Kelly Services the next morning and started my training immediately (at $3.50/hour!). GO still paid me and I was taking home over $125/week with Kelly while training. I finished my training in 4 days, on May 10, and was scheduled to start at 8:00 am May 16, 1977.

In the meantime, Kelly Services offered me the chance to make some more money while waiting for the other job to start. I jumped at the chance. On May 11-13, I stood on street corners handing out full packs of American Lights cigarettes as an advertising campaign. It was amazing how many people took them.

I took the checks I was earning while training and while handing out cigarettes, and like a dutiful little wife, opened a joint checking account in the Bank of America which had a branch right next to Kelly Services where I could collect my weekly check and deposit it there. I kept my savings account secret. I took $15 out of it and put it in the joint checking account and opened a savings account with Bank of America with another $15. Mark thought that was all that was left in my savings account by then.

I kept my secret savings account for the remainder of our marriage. It was not a big amount, the most money I ever had in it after splurging on the Mazda was $982, but I
used my parents address as the mailing address to mail the statements, they didn’t forward them to me at my request. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I believed I had
just enough money hidden from Mark that I could cut and run if it every got bad enough. But just how bad was I going to let it get before I decided it was bad enough?

I was given one more lifeline that last day on the American Lights job. One of the other guys, I don’t remember his name, about my age, who was working the campaign always had a corner near mine. We joked during our morning briefing, we chatted briefly when we went back to refill our bags with more cigarettes (they went fast!) and we usually sat and talked for a few minutes after we finished for the day. I felt like I looked like an elephant, but my pregnancy didn’t really show much to others, I guess. When you’re 5’10” tall and weigh 120 lbs., the belly has a way to go before you look pregnant.

Anyway, the last day of the job, he asked me out to dinner afterwards. I was surprised, because I didn’t see him that way, he was just another person to talk to. I said “oh” he kind of backpedaled. I said, “no, in a different time or place, I’d jump at the chance, but I’m married and pregnant.” Yes, I was wearing my wedding ring, he hadn’t even looked until then. His mouth sort of dropped open and he left the room.

I sat there for a minute by myself. He was my age, maybe even a year or two older, but in that moment, I felt at least 40 years older than him and like I had just kicked a cute little kid. Then I squared my shoulders and walked out of the room, dropped off my weekly timecard and headed for home, savoring the last time I would be wearing coveralls and earth shoes to work.

Monday I was going to be dressed up in a skirt and heels making $4.30 an hour in my quest to help LRH take down the FBI and save the world.

— Valerie Ross

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Chicago gets its Ideal Org today!

Our helper went by yesterday, and as we suspected Scientology waited until the very last minute to begin assembling a stage outside the be-ribboned Chicago Ideal Org on Clark Street for today’s grand opening.

We can’t wait to see which local dignitaries Dave has managed to rope into giving speeches at today’s ceremony!

And if you see people struggling to understand why this is opening in Chicago, and why today, please direct them to the explainer we published a couple of weeks ago.

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Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in history

Avast, Ye Mateys: Snapshots from Scientology’s years at sea

Overheard in the Freezone: Indie Hubbardism, one thought at a time

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