L. Ron Hubbard
An Apologetics Index research resource

... L. Rob Hubbard's name and likeness will forever be remembered alongside his signature book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health.

That book sparked the beginnings of Scientology, an organization founded in 1954 that now plans to open a church in Battle Creek.

Just as there are vocal critics of the Church of Scientology, there are several of Hubbard. He has been the subject of several books, including the 1987 Bare-Faced Messiah by Russell Miller that chronicles the life of Hubbard through eyes other than those of a Scientologist. Miller's book examines Hubbard's professional and personal life, which includes fathering seven children with three wives.

All of the church's scriptures, including a massive 18-volume research collection, are the work of Hubbard, who died in 1986. The church appears to continue to grow even after his death and the bookstores in Scientology churches are lined with various books, lectures and videos that are his life's work.

While Hubbard, born Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, is not ''worshipped'' by Scientologists, he is clearly honored and highly regarded by them.

... $cientology claims that 'Battlefield Earth' was an international bestseller and 5 million copies were sold! But the truth is quite different. Scientology sent staff members out to buy the books back. With this SCAM they 'created' more than 18 bestsellers and the illusion that L. Ron Hubbard is still a hot author!
Here is a quote from the San Diego Union (April 15, 1990):

"Five, six, seven people at a time would come in, with cash in hand, buying the book," said Dave Dutton, of Dutton's Books, a group of four stores in the Los Angeles area. "They'd blindly ask for the book. They would buy two or three copies at a time with $50 bills. I had the suspicion that there was something not quite right about it" Dutton only suspected what others claim to know for fact. The book's sudden success, say dozens of former Scientologists and book dealers, was the result of a church plan to create the illusion of L. Ron Hubbard as a hot author. The church, they say, sustains the myth - 15 New York Times best sellers and counting - through dubious marketing tactics and the manipulation of an obedient flock of consumers. The church's orchestration of best sellers, say former Scientologists, is merely a public relations means to a larger end. The goal is to establish an identity for Hubbard other than as the founder of a controversial religious movement. His broadened appeal can then be used to recruit new members into the Church of Scientology."

What is true is what is true for you.

We're sure this Scientology is quite a "religion" (how could John Travolta and Kirstie Alley be wrong?). But as for its founder, the late L. Ron Hubbard, well, The Smoking Gun thinks that the "Dianetics" author had a few screws loose. In these entertaining excerpts from his FBI file, Hubbard tries to snitch out a supposed Nazi and complains of being besieged by Cuban communists.

But nothing tops a 1963 bureau memo summarizing FBI file information on Hubbard, who died in 1986 at age 74. Seems that L. Ron liked to occasionally write to the FBI with "complaints about his wife and about alleged communists." In one lengthy 1951 diatribe, Hubbard spun a bizarre tale about intruders invading his apartment. He claimed, according to one of the FBI memos you'll find below, that after being knocked out, a needle was "thrust into his heart to produce a coronary thrombosis and he was given an electric shock."

This site contains copies of a number of publicly-available documents about Hubbard. The items listed below all come from public sources in the US. Most were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA); some come from the still-sealed exhibits of the 1984 case Church of Scientology of California vs Gerald Armstrong (but were obtained legally, both here in Europe and in the US). They present a rather different picture of Hubbard, showing him to have a much darker side than is officially admitted by Scientology.

History, writes the Irish historian T.W. Moody, is "a continuing, probing, critical seach for truth about the past." 1 The Church of Scientology is, rightly, critical of those who comment on its activities on the basis of conjecture or undocumented statements. It is only right and proper that its own statements about L. Ron Hubbard should be subjected to similar scrutiny. The only agenda prompting the production of this account is the desire to discover the truth about Hubbard's war years - a truth which, it turns out, is more complicated than is usually portrayed either by the Scientologists or their harsher critics.