Inside Scientology - Janet Reitman [34]
Then there was the matter of L. Ron Hubbard himself. Though he was charming in the presence of paying customers, a "weird foxiness" made him impossible to work for. "As soon as we became responsible for Hubbard's interests, a projection of hostility began, and he doubted and double-crossed us, and sniped at us without pause," O'Brien wrote. By October 1953, the work environment had become so toxic that she and her husband, John, resigned from the Hubbard Association of Scientologists and closed the Philadelphia operation.
Hubbard seemed to accept O'Brien's departure. He was far less charitable when it came to others. This was particularly true with regard to his son Nibs, Hubbard's eldest child. A distant father even with his most recent brood, Hubbard had almost completely absented himself from the lives of Nibs and his sister, Katherine. They had grown up with their mother and grandparents in Bremerton, Washington, with only a scant idea of what their father was doing. But when Dianetics was published, L. Ron Hubbard became a celebrity. And Nibs, a red-haired, husky young man who had long sought a relationship with his father, saw his chance. Upon turning eighteen, in 1952, he made his way to Phoenix, intent on becoming a Scientologist.
Hubbard welcomed this new association with his son. Within a few years, Nibs became an auditor—"one of the best auditors in the business," as Hubbard described him—and the executive director of the Church of Scientology in Washington, D.C. Then, in November 1959, Nibs abruptly left Scientology, claiming that he could no longer afford to support his family on his meager income. Viewing his son's defection as yet one more act of treachery, Hubbard immediately drafted a letter instructing his executives to ban Nibs from Scientology and withdraw his credentials if he tried to practice Scientology independently.
Hubbard stopped short of writing to the FBI about Nibs and his transgressions (something he might have done just a few years earlier). Instead, he made an example of Nibs, showing his flock the precise consequences of stepping out of line. Hubbard declared to his followers that Nibs had "unconfessed overts," or hidden crimes, which had caused him to leave. Hubbard would soon see all such departures from his movement as stemming from unspoken transgressions, an idea that became deeply entrenched in Scientology theory and philosophy. To this day, anyone who leaves Scientology is instantly viewed as guilty of a crime. But in 1959, this idea was new, and a telling indicator of the extent to which Hubbard's own psychology was driving his new movement.
To handle perceived traitors, Hubbard devised a new form of auditing called a "security check." This was interrogation by another name, with the E-meter serving as a helpful tool. Security checking gave tremendous power to auditors; Hubbard thought of them as "detectives" and charged them with uncovering unspoken thoughts, called "withholds" in his ever-evolving language. Under this examination, to which everyone in Hubbard's world—including household staff, students, and auditors—would eventually be subjected, a battery of questions probed both public and private aspects of personal history. Had the