scientology story on 4 corners tonight, page-26

no one wants to take on scientology,but here is a few paragraphs taken directly from wikipedia. if they are mistaken in fact then a scientologist can enlighten me.

Legal difficulties and life on the high seas
Scientology became a focus of controversy across the English-speaking world during the mid-1960s, with the United Kingdom, New Zealand, South Africa, the Australian state of Victoria[113][114][115] and the Canadian province of Ontario all holding public inquiries into Scientology's activities.[116] In 1966, Hubbard moved to Rhodesia, claiming to be the reincarnation of Cecil Rhodes.[117][118] Following Ian Smith's Unilateral Declaration of Independence, Hubbard offered to invest large sums in Rhodesia's economy which was then hit by UN sanctions, but was asked to leave the country.[117][119]

Around 1967 Hubbard formed the religious order known as the "Sea Organization" or "Sea Org," with titles and uniforms.[120] The Sea Org subsequently became the management group within Hubbard's Scientology empire.[121] He was attended by "Commodore's Messengers"; teenage girls who performed various tasks for him, such as fixing his shower, dressing him, and catching the ash from his cigarettes.[122][123] He had frequent screaming tantrums and instituted harsh punishments such as being confined to the ship's dirty chain-locker for days or weeks at a time, or being bound, blindfolded, and thrown overboard.[124][125] Some of these punishments were applied to children as well as to adults.[126]

A letter Hubbard wrote to his third wife, Mary Sue, when he was in Las Palmas around 1967: "I?m drinking lots of rum and popping pinks and greys..."[127] An unauthorized Hubbard biography also says that "John McMasters told me that on the flagship Apollo in the late sixties he witnessed Hubbard's drug supply. 'It was the largest drug chest I had ever seen. He had everything!'".[127] This was confirmed by Gerry Armstrong through Virginia Downsborough who said in 1967 Hubbard returned to Las Palmas totally debilitated from drugs.[128] His drug use appears to pre-date the 1967 accounts.[129] Hubbard claimed in a letter to his first wife that he had once been an opium addict. The last sentence of the letter reads: "...I do love you, even if I used to be an opium addict."[6] [130]

In March 1969, the Greek Government branded L. Ron Hubbard and his group of 200 disciples "undesirables". The group had been living aboard the 3,300 ton Panamanian ship Apollo and had been docked in the harbor of Corfu island since August. On March 18, local authorities issued a 24-hour ultimatum to the Scientologists, but Hubbard was granted an extension due to engine problems. The expulsion order was the result of mounting pressure from American, British, and Australian diplomats to examine the activities of the Apollo occupants. Most of the occupants were American, some were British, Australian, and South African.[131]

In 1977, Scientology offices on both coasts of the United States were raided by FBI agents seeking evidence of Operation Snow White, a programme to obtain information from government offices by covert and illegal means.[132][133] Hubbard's wife Mary Sue and a dozen other senior Scientology officials were convicted in 1979 of conspiracy against the United States Federal Government, while Hubbard himself was named by federal prosecutors as an "unindicted co-conspirator."[134] At this time the IRS also had evidence that he had skimmed millions of dollars from church accounts and secreted the funds to destinations overseas.[2].

In 1978, as part of a case against three French Scientologists, Hubbard was convicted of making fraudulent promises and given a four-year prison sentence and a 35,000₣ fine by a French court.[135] The case was subsequently appealed by one of the other convicts in 1980, during which the court indicated that all those who had been convicted could be pardoned if they filed their own appeals against the original ruling.[136] A second defendant did in 1981, and the fraud charges were canceled by judgment on November 9, 1981 on two more except Hubbard.[137] Hubbard himself never took any action, and the fine was never enforced.[138]

Hubbard's refusal to speak with British immigration officials about this conviction is said to have later caused the British Home Office to re-affirm an earlier decision to bar him from the UK.[139] In 1989 however the then Home Office Minister of State, Tim Renton, confirmed in writing that from 1980 until the date of his death, Hubbard had been free to apply for entry to the United Kingdom under the ordinary immigration rules and that any ban had been lifted on July 16, 1980.[140][141] The accuracy of Hubbard's self-representations were challenged in court during a 1984 custody case of a Scientologist and his former wife about two of their children. The judgment of the High court of London (Family Division) quotes the opinion of Justice Latey, that Scientology is "dangerous, immoral, sinister and corrupt" and "has its real objective money and power for Mr. Hubbard."[142]

According to the 1965 Report of the Board of Enquiry into Scientology in the Australian state of Victoria, Hubbard falsely claimed scientific and other credentials and his sanity was "to be gravely doubted".[143] The report concluded that while Hubbard's followers are taught that they are entitled to question the beliefs, they are conditioned to believe that the teachings are correct.[144] It also notes that Hubbard's claims of finding a cure for atomic radiation is unsupported by evidence.[145] The Scientologists' response was a pamphlet entitled Kangaroo Court, describing Victoria as "the riff-raff of London's slums [...] a very primitive community, somewhat barbaric".[143]

"Fair Game" was introduced by Hubbard as a policy against people or groups that "actively seeks to suppress or damage Scientology or a Scientologist by Suppressive Acts." He defined it as: ENEMY ? SP Order. Fair game. May be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed.[146]

In July 1968, Hubbard revised this definition to a somewhat milder wording: ENEMY ? Suppressive Person order. May not be communicated with by anyone except an Ethics Officer, Master at Arms, a Hearing Officer or a Board or Committee. May be restrained or imprisoned. May not be protected by any rules or laws of the group he sought to injure as he sought to destroy or bar fair practices for others. May not be trained or processed or admitted to any org.[147] The use of the expression "Fair Game" was canceled altogether in October 1968, with Hubbard stating that

The practice of declaring people FAIR GAME will cease. FAIR GAME may not appear on any Ethics Order. It causes bad public relations. This P/L does not cancel any policy on the treatment or handling of an SP.

? L. Ron Hubbard[148]

Hubbard later explained that:

There was never any attempt or intent on my part by the writing of these policies (or any others for that fact), to authorize illegal or harassment type acts against anyone. As soon as it became apparent to me that the concept of 'Fair Game' as described above was being misinterpreted by the uninformed, to mean the granting of a license to Scientologists for acts in violation of the law and/or other standards of decency, these policies were canceled."

? L. Ron Hubbard[149]

While the number of incidents involving so-called dirty tricks or unethical actions dropped in the years that followed,[150] several judges and juries have through their decisions or comments asserted that the tactics continued beyond Hubbard's order canceling use of the term Fair Game in 1968.[151]

Personal life
Hubbard claimed that when he was four years old, he became the proteg? of "Old Tom," a Blackfeet Indian shaman.[152] In 1985, Scientologists claimed that members of Blackfeet Nation, Montana, commemorated "the seventieth anniversary of [L. Ron Hubbard] becoming a blood brother of the Blackfeet Nation. Tree Manyfeathers in a ceremony re-established L. Ron Hubbard as a blood brother to the Blackfeet Tribe."[152] Blackfeet historian Hugh Dempsey has commented that the act of blood brotherhood was "never done among the Blackfeet", and Blackfeet Nation officials have disavowed attempts to "re-establish" Hubbard as a "blood brother" of the Blackfeet.[152] Former vice president of the tribe's executive committee, John Yellow Kidney dismissed the credibility of a letter claiming to re-establish Hubbard as a blood brother.[152]

Publicly, Hubbard was sociable and charming.[153] Privately, he wrote entries in his notebook like "All men are your slaves," and "You can be merciless whenever your will is crossed and you have the right to be merciless."[7]

After a 1940 sailing trip that ended with engine trouble on his yacht, he began a three-month stay in Ketchikan, Alaska. Hubbard worked as the host of a popular maritime radio show where he was known as a "charismatic storyteller".[11]

Hubbard was also interested in and talented at hypnosis [11][154] and biographer Russell Miller mentions several incidents?including a cruel post-hypnotic 'prank' recalled by writer A.E. van Vogt?which suggest that Hubbard sometimes used his hypnotic talents capriciously on his unsuspecting subjects.[155]

During this same period, just after World War II, Hubbard was financially destitute,[7] and suffered from feelings of depression as well as suicidal thoughts, according to a letter he wrote in 1947 requesting assistance from Veterans Affairs.[156]

Toward the end of my (military) service, I avoided out of pride any mental examinations, hoping that time would balance a mind which I had every reason to suppose was seriously affected....I cannot account for nor rise above long periods of moroseness and suicidal inclinations, and have newly come to realize that I must first triumph above this before I can hope to rehabilitate myself at all.

? L. Ron Hubbard[7]

Hubbard's first wife was Margaret "Polly" Grubb whom he married in 1933, and who bore him two children: L. Ron, Jr. (also known as Ronald DeWolf) and Katherine May (born in 1936).[157] They lived in Los Angeles, California and, during the late 1930s and '40s, in Bremerton, Washington.[158] In a 1983 interview for Penthouse magazine that he later retracted,[159] DeWolf said, "according to him and my mother", he was the result of a failed abortion and recalls at six years old seeing his father performing an abortion on his mother with a coat hanger. In the same interview, he said "Scientology is a power-and-money-and-intelligence-gathering game" and described his father as "only interested in money, sex, booze, and drugs."[160] Later, in a sworn affidavit, DeWolf stated that he had "weaved" stories about his father's harassment of others, that the charge he had made about drugs was false, and that the Penthouse story was an example of statements that he deeply regretted and that had caused his father and himself much pain. Before, in 1972, L. Ron Jr. had signed affidavits declaring the denigrating statements he had made about his father false.[161]

After the war, in August 1945, Hubbard met Jack Parsons, a researcher at Caltech and an associate of the British Intelligence occultist[162] Aleister Crowley.[163][164] By Crowley's account, Hubbard and Parsons were engaged in the practice of ritual magick in 1946, including an extended set of sex magic rituals called the Babalon Working, intended to summon a goddess or "moonchild."[165] At this time, Hubbard formed a partnership with Parsons and Betty, which they named "Allied Enterprises". To this, Parsons invested $20,970.80, Hubbard invested $1,183.91, and Betty, nothing. Hubbard came up with a plan to go to Miami with Betty, purchases three yachts, sail them through the Panama Canal, and sell them on the West Coast at a profit. Parsons soon realized that he had his girlfriend and most of his life savings stolen by Hubbard. After an attempt to catch up with Hubbard and following a court settlement, Parsons received only a promissory note for $2,900 from Hubbard.[166] The Church says Hubbard was working as an ONI agent on a mission to end Parsons' supposed magical activities and to "rescue" a girl Parsons was "using" for supposedly magical purposes.[167] Hubbard later married the girl he said that he rescued from Parsons, Sara Northrup.[168] Crowley recorded in his notes that Hubbard made off with Parsons's money and girlfriend in a "confidence trick."[169][170]

Sara Northrup became Hubbard's second wife in August 1946 while he was still married to Polly, something Sara did not know at the time[171] Hubbard left his first wife and children as soon as he left the Navy, and he divorced his first wife more than a year after he had remarried.[172] Both women allege Hubbard physically abused them.[160][173][174] Later, he disowned Alexis, claiming he was not her father and that she was actually Jack Parsons's child.[175] Sara filed for divorce on 23 April 1951, claiming that Hubbard was still legally bound to his first wife at the time of their marriage.[176] She accused him in her divorce papers of kidnapping their baby daughter Alexis, as well as torturing her.[176][177][178]

In 1952, Hubbard married his third wife, Mary Sue Whipp, to whom he remained married until his death. Over the next six years, Hubbard fathered four more children: Diana, Quentin, Suzette, and Arthur.[179] Quentin, born in 1954, was expected to one day replace his father as head of the Scientology organization.[180][181] However Quentin was uninterested in his father's plans and had preferred to become a pilot. He felt guilty about his homosexuality, and committed suicide in 1976.[181] Hubbard was prone to self-aggrandizement and exaggeration,[11] and, in 1938, he wrote a letter to then-wife Margaret "Polly" Grubb reading, "I have high hopes of smashing my name into history so violently that it will take a legendary form, even if all the books are destroyed. That goal is the real goal as far as I am concerned."[7] In 1984, during the Church of Scientology's lawsuit against Gerry Armstrong, Judge Paul G. Breckenridge Jr. described Hubbard as "charismatic and highly capable of motivating, organizing, controlling, manipulating and inspiring his adherents." However, the judge ruled against the Church, and in so doing said that "The evidence portrays a man who has been virtually a pathological liar when it comes to his history, background and achievements."[7]