Vol. 10 No. 9 · 5 May 1988
pages 10-11 | 2673 words
Fatty
Tom Shippey
- Bare-Faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard by Russell Miller
Joseph, 390 pp, £12.95, October 1987, ISBN 0 7181 2764 1
- Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard
New Era, 605 pp, £3.50, February 1988, ISBN 1 870451 18 X
- Mission Earth. Vol. V: Fortune of Fear by L. Ron Hubbard
New Era, 365 pp, £10.75, July 1987, ISBN 1 870451 01 5
- Mission Earth. Vol. VI: Death Quest by L. Ron Hubbard
New Era, 351 pp, £10.95, October 1987, ISBN 1 870451 02 3
As its title so obviously shows, the main thesis of Russell Miller’s book is that L. Ron Hubbard, inventor of Dianetics and founder of Scientology, was all his life an incorrigible liar. That being the case, it is a pity that the book starts off with a statement which sounds hypocritical at best. ‘I would like to be able to thank the officials of the Church of Scientology for their help in compiling this biography.’ Miller says in an Author’s Note, ‘but I am unable to do so because the price of their co-operation was effective control of the manuscript and it was a price I was unwilling to pay.’ I can believe that the Church of Scientology wouldn’t co-operate with Miller, and I can certainly believe that Miller had worked out that he didn’t need to co-operate with them. But it is hard to imagine that Miller ever had any rational expectation of official help, or any desire for it. This book is a hatchet job, aimed at one of the nastier aspects of American culture, just like Miller’s last two (on Playboy Hefner and on the ‘House of Getty’); and hatchet jobs aren’t meant to be balanced and judicious. Also, as all the world now knows, they can be marketed much more successfully if there is some official body around foolish enough to take offence. In his first paragraph, Miller is just striking a pose.
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Letters
Vol. 10 No. 12 · 23 June 1988
From Andrew Milne
Your reviewer Tom Shippey wades into Russell Miller’s book on L. Ron Hubbard, rightly describing it as a hatchet job (LRB, 5 May). This is a promising start. Unfortunately, he then rambles off into a string of false reports that are as bad as Miller’s own. Shippey mentions Mr Hubbard’s war record. Yet he does so in a way that shows that his information is third-hand and inaccurate. Mr Hubbard’s Naval records have been studied by intelligence expert Col L. Fletcher Prouty. Between 1955 and 1963, Col Prouty served as Chief of Special Operations for the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and in a similar capacity with the Office of Special Operations of the Office of the Secretary of Defence. He also headed the Special Operations Office for the US Air Force. Speaking of Miller’s book, Col Prouty writes: ‘In his endeavour to paint this man Hubbard in as bad a light as he could this hack almost totally ignored the fact that L. Ron Hubbard had served with the US Navy on active duty from a period beginning from before America’s entry into World War Two on 7 December 1941 and throughout the war … in that silent service, Naval Intelligence.’ He goes on: ‘Something most important that Miller chose to overlook was the fact that Hubbard was awarded a “Unit Citation”.’ This award is most important and special. Unit Citations are made only by the President of the United States to those combat units performing particularly meritorious services.
Shippey also claims that Mr Hubbard did not present Scientology as a religion. In fact, he wrote repeatedly of the religious nature of Scientology, as in his book The Phoenix Lectures: ‘Scientology carries forward a tradition of wisdom which concerns itself about the soul and the solution of the mysteries of life … Scientology is a religion in the oldest and fullest sense.’ As for the question of whether Scientology counselling procedures work, they have been subjected to more stringent tests than Mr Shippey could conceive of.
Andrew Milne
Church of Scientology
