Inside Scientology - Janet Reitman [69]
In Los Angeles, Mary Sue Hubbard was trying to stay out of jail. On August 15, 1978, she and ten other Scientologists, including Jane Kember, who remained in England, had been indicted by a federal grand jury on twenty-eight counts of theft, burglary, conspiracy, and obstruction of justice for their roles in Operation Snow White. If convicted, Mary Sue faced a fine of $40,000 and up to 175 years in prison. She and eight other defendants pleaded not guilty to the charges, and for the next year, a score of Scientology lawyers fought tirelessly to prevent the case from coming to trial. Finally, on October 8, 1979, Mary Sue Hubbard and six other Guardian's Office executives reached an agreement with the government to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy,* signing their names to a 282-page document detailing their various misdeeds, in lieu of a trial. Federal prosecutors petitioned the court, insisting the defendants be shown no mercy. "The crime committed by these defendants is of a breadth and scope previously unheard of," it stated. "No building, office, desk, or file was safe from their snooping and prying. No individual or organization was free from their despicable conspiratorial minds."
On October 26, 1979, the defendants, minus Kember and another church official, who were still fighting extradition,† stood before U.S. District Judge Charles R. Richey and formally pleaded guilty to conspiracy in Operation Snow White. Mary Sue Hubbard and three other Guardian's Office executives each received a five-year prison sentence and a $10,000 fine. The others received lesser sentences and fines, but all nine appealed on the grounds that the evidence against them had been acquired illegally. In April 1982, Mary Sue Hubbard lost her final appeal, and in January 1983, she was sent to a federal prison in Lexington, Kentucky. By then suffering from health problems, she served one year and was released. L. Ron Hubbard was named an "unindicted co-conspirator" in Operation Snow White. None of the seized Guardian's Office files linked him directly to the crimes, and the federal prosecutors failed to make a persuasive case for his involvement.
Though Hubbard remained free, he grew increasingly worried that he might be subpoenaed, or harassed by the FBI, the IRS, or attorneys for several disaffected Scientologists who were suing him for fraud. Since the late 1970s, several top aides had left Scientology, including Hubbard's longtime nurse, Kima Douglass. The Operation Snow White documents had been unsealed, meaning that the scope of Scientology's covert operations was now open to scrutiny by the press. Not even his top-secret new home seemed secure enough. On Valentine's Day, 1980, Hubbard fled Hemet with his trusted aide Pat Broeker and Broeker's wife, Annie. For the next six years, the press, federal investigators, and even his own children searched for him. He was never seen publicly again.
Chapter 7
DM
DURING HIS FINAL years in exile, L. Ron Hubbard's only conduit of communication with the world of Scientology, aside from Pat and Annie Broeker, was another young Messenger named David Miscavige. Over time, Miscavige would become Broeker's most crucial aide and, as Hubbard would later call him, "a trusted associate, and a good friend to me." It was odd, many longtime Sea Org members would note: Hubbard had neither known Miscavige particularly well, nor did he ever see him personally while he was in hiding. But Miscavige, it would become eminently clear, was a uniquely determined young man. In due course, he would make himself Hubbard's inheritor through sheer force of will.
Miscavige was born in Philadelphia in 1960 and grew up in a modest suburban home in Willingboro, New Jersey. His parents, Ronald Sr. and Loretta, a professional trumpet player and a nurse, were Catholics who raised their four children—Ronnie Jr., the oldest, followed by the twins David and Denise, and the younger sister, Laurie—to believe in Jesus and attend Mass at least somewhat regularly. Despite his Catholic faith, Ronald