Scientology was borne from Dianetics, which L. Ron Hubbard conceived in 1950.
Recently released files show that Hubbard wrote to the FBI in 1951 to inform them that Communists had infiltrated his organization.
He offered the Bureau data on his own followers including their fingerprints.
He also claimed that Communists had driven his wife “to the point of insanity.”
His wife Sara wanted a divorce. She’d had him arrested on charges that he had drugged and kidnapped her. But Hubbard’s letter to the FBI blamed his marital woes on supposed Communists in his midst.
Hubbard also told the FBI that Dianetics could cure Communism, although he didn’t explain how. That raised the question: if Dianetics was the cure, why did Hubbard need the FBI’s assistance in rooting out the Commies in his organization?
In the same memo, Hubbard stated that the Soviets had invited him to bring Dianetics to Russia. But if his methods cured Communism, why would the Soviets permit it in their country?
Hubbard also suggested to the FBI that Communism was an illness, and Senator Joseph McCarthy was doing more to spread the sickness than to contain it.
McCarthy held anti-Communist hearings throughout the early 1950s. This began the era of the Red Scare, a conspiratorial belief that Communists — or Reds — had infiltrated American life.
J. Edgar Hoover replied to Hubbard’s letter, declining to accept the fingerprint information as something the Bureau could not do. Hubbard had everyone in his organization submit their fingerprints to the foundation’s offices anyway.
Months later, Hubbard wrote to the US Attorney General, making the accusation that the Communist Party had “wiped out a half million dollar operation for me, have cost me my health” and kept secrets from the US Government.
He went on to complain that his “alleged wife” and her lawyer had coerced Hubbard into rewriting his will in order to leave her “shares in the copyrights and Foundations.”
He also suggested that his wife orchestrated a late-night attack on him. “I was knocked out, had a needle thrust into my heart to give it a jet of air to produce ‘coronary thrombosis’ and was given an electric shock with a 110 volt current.” He also stated “I had no witnesses.”
What Communism had to do with his wild story was never explained. But it appeared to be an attempt by Hubbard to smear his wife and especially her lawyer as unpatriotic Reds.
In the same letter, Hubbard wrote that he was working with the Department of Defense, a false claim.
The FBI’s recently disclosed file shows that the agent involved in the case considered Hubbard “a mental case.”
The Hubbard Dianetics Research Foundation went bankrupt in 1952 and was then remade into a new entity — Scientology.
ALSO:
One of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s best friends was Urban Van Susteren.
Not only was he the Senator’s campaign manager, he was also best man at McCarthy’s wedding.
Urban Van Susteren had a daughter.
Her name is Greta Van Susteren.
She is a former Fox News host.
She is also a Scientologist.
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