Inside Scientology - Janet Reitman [62]
For nine months, the crew of the Apollo sailed around the Caribbean, stopping at various ports to shoot photographs. As a public relations effort, the Apollo All-Stars held impromptu concerts on the docks. The group maintained its cover as the Operation and Transport Company. But the mysterious ship, its odd Commodore, young crew, and penchant for secrecy still raised suspicion at every island port in which it tried to dock. One Trinidadian newspaper, having heard a rumor that the Apollo was connected to the CIA, irresponsibly suggested that in addition to housing spies, the ship was also linked, in some nefarious way, to the gruesome Manson murders in Los Angeles.
Over the summer and into the fall, Jeff began to sense a subtle change in tone aboard the ship. "I could see executives rushing around and hurrying into meetings, but people were silent about what was going on." When Jeff asked, he was told it was confidential. By autumn, the Apollo had sailed to the Bahamas. From there, a cadre of Sea Org officers disembarked and flew to the United States.
The nearly decade-long voyage of the Commodore and his Sea Org was at an end. Flag had become too small to accommodate the number of Scientologists clamoring to do the OT levels and other exclusive courses. And the Sea Organization had grown—no longer based aboard ship only, it had offices all over the world. Scientology needed to return to terra firma and establish a land base. They would choose the sleepy Gulf Coast community of Clearwater, Florida, where at the end of 1975, the Scientologists quietly began to arrive.
Hubbard, Mary Sue, and a small retinue settled five miles north, in the town of Dunedin. As with everything about him, the Commodore's location was a closely guarded secret. Once or twice, however, Hubbard ventured out, appearing in Clearwater dressed in a beret and khaki safari uniform. Unaware of what Scientology would ultimately have in store for their town, few locals even recognized him.
Chapter 6
Over the Rainbow
ON THE EVENING of May 21, 1976, two covert operatives from the Guardian's Office, Gerald Wolfe and Michael Meisner, both using forged government IDs, entered the U.S. Courthouse in Washington, D.C., intent on breaking into the office of Nathan Dodell, an assistant U.S. attorney who was investigating Scientology. After informing the security guard that they were there to do legal research, the pair signed the log at the front desk, took the elevator to the law library, and then exited through a back door and walked down the hall to Dodell's office, where they entered with a stolen key. The men made copies of six inches of government files pertaining to the investigation, returned the originals, then left.
One week later, on the evening of May 28, Meisner and Wolfe returned to the same courthouse, and using the same tactic, removed and copied even more files from Dodell's office. On June 11, they attempted to do the same thing. But this time the night librarian, having noticed the men previously, had alerted authorities. Two FBI agents approached Meisner and Wolfe as they waited in the law library for a cleaning crew to vacate Dodell's office. Telling the agents that they were doing legal research, the men presented their identification and were allowed to leave. But Wolfe had mistakenly handed the FBI his actual identification card, resulting three weeks later in his arrest for use and possession of a forged government ID. By August, a grand jury investigation into the Wolfe case had turned up Meisner's name and connected him to the Church of Scientology.
At a hidden location in Los Angeles, Meisner, at the urging of Mary Sue Hubbard, among others, agreed to turn himself in. But he was kept waiting for eight months while the Guardian's Office sought to concoct an appropriate cover story. By the spring of 1977, a frustrated Meisner threatened to leave California and return to Washington if the situation was not resolved. Instead, he was put under watch by Scientology guards on orders