L. Ron Hubbard was an opportunist who lied consistently about his past, as part of a process of self-glorification. He was an arrogant, amoral egomaniac. Incapable of admitting his mistakes, he continually created scapegoats. The pure motives of his followers were exploited to build a secret mountain of cash. Hubbard was an outright plagiarist, who eventually could not bear to acknowledge anyone else's originality. He had a supreme distrust of the motives of all of humanity, despite his bland generalizations about man's basic goodness. This goodness would only be revealed after the individual had achieved some unspecified state of "OT." Hubbard was a paranoid, power hungry, petty sadist who paraded his inadequacies through ever more frequent tantrums. Revelling in his disciples' adulation, he spent his last years in seclusion, surrounded by sycophants. He had an alarming ability to keep all the many compartments of his life and his past separate, even, so it seems, in his own mind. Nonetheless, such a complicated man cannot be confined in such tidy definitions. Although the facts form a comprehensive picture, perhaps we have only caught glimpses of the man behind the many masks.

As the Wollersheim case demonstrated, Scientology "auditing" can have a profoundly destructive effect After a survey of 48 groups, Conway and Siegelman reported that former Scientologists had the highest rate of violent outbursts, hallucinations, sexual dysfunction and suicidal tendencies. They estimated that full recovery from Scientology averaged at 12.5 years.

Members are entirely saturated with Hubbard's delusional and unscientific view of the universe. They come to see themselves as part of a small elite, harassed on all sides by a gigantic conspiracy. Scientologists speak and think in an elaborate language created by Hubbard (Scientology dictionaries run to over 1,000 pages of definitions). They are drilled to present a calm, cheerful appearance, whatever their real feelings. Most become "auditing junkies", unable to face life without regular "sessions". All aspects of the individual's life are invaded, as Hubbard held forth on almost every subject from business management to child rearing.

Scientology induces a phobic reaction towards mental health practitioners, so ex-members are usually unwilling to seek professional help in untangling themselves. This situation is compounded by the inability of most mental health practitioners to understand the cult experience. So most former Scientologists drift into other cult groups, or derivatives of Scientology such as est (the Forum or Landmark), Avatar, Dianasis, Re-Evaluation Co-Counselling, or Idenics.

Having stolen Parsons' girl and his money, Hubbard carried on with magical practices of his own devising. Scientology attempted to reclaim documents which recorded these practices in its case against former Hubbard archivist Gerald Armstrong. Some $280,000 was paid to publishers Ralston Pilot to prevent publication of Omar Garrison's authorised biography of Hubbard. However, Garrison retained copies of thousands of Hubbard's documents and showed me one which had been referred to in the Armstrong trial. The Blood Ritual is an invokation of the Egyptian goddess Hathor, performed by Hubbard during the late 1940's. As the name suggests, the ritual involved the use of blood. Hubbard mingled his own blood with that of his then wife (the girlfriend he had stolen from Parsons and with whom Hubbard contracted a bigamous marriage.)

48. The techniques of Dianetics and Scientology induce uncritical euphoria and heighten suggestibility. Scientologists are forbidden criticism of Hubbard, his organizations, his techniques, and of other Scientologists except in written reports to those organizations [JCA-112], [JCA-113]. Such "ethics reports" are encouraged. To even attempt to discuss the processing techniques is termed "verbal tech[nology]" and forbidden [JCA-114]. Offenders are subjected to a "Committee of Evidence", a Scientology tribunal, for the commission of a "Suppressive Act" or "High Crime". Such "High Crimes" are considered the equivalent of murder [JCA-115].

Anyone who thinks that the Communist regimes of Central Europe are exclusively the work of criminals is overlooking a basic truth: the criminal regimes were made not by criminals but by enthusiasts convinced they had discovered the only road to paradise. They defended that road so valiantly that they were forced to execute many people. Later it became clear that there was no paradise, that the enthusiasts were therefore murderers.

The Road to Paradise? Hmm.

I was a member of the Scientology cult for nine years. During that time I undertook many courses and by the time I left was in the middle of the 24th of the 27 available "levels" of Scientology - the fifth section of the Operating Thetan course. I left when I began to find out about the hidden agenda and activities of Scientology which I describe in this paper. Along with most scientologists, I had no idea of these disgraceful, immoral and criminal activities. I believed that I was a member of a vital, world-saving group which would lead to a world without "criminals, insanity or war", as Scientology leader Ron Hubbard claimed. (1) I resigned from the Church of Scientology in 1983, and began to interview other former members and collect court documents and testimony relating to Scientology. Seven years later, my book A Piece of Blue Sky was published, after a court battle in New York. Former Hubbard aide, Robert Vaughn Young whose excellent article was published in a recent Spiegel magazine has called my book the definitive work on Scientology. I have spoken with literally hundreds of former members, and read tens of thousands of pages of records and court documents, ranging from Hubbard's college and navy records through to the revelations of high-ranking defectors as recorded in sworn testimony. I have endeavoured to make this information a matter for urgent public debate.

The files name several other investigators employed in the operation to discredit Miller. One, who identified himself as Doug Reynolds, hired a yellow Rolls-Royce and posed as a wealthy benefactor willing to publish critical books about scientology in an attempt to extract information from Jon Atack, a former member of the cult and adviser to Miller.

Atack was unsure about Reynolds but gave him a draft of a book he was preparing about scientology. He has spent the last year fighting legal battles with the cult over the book, which he expects to be published in she United States next month.