Speaker 1: Also media. Hey everyone, Robert Evans here. It has been
Speaker 1: quite a summer. We've had two political conventions and I
Speaker 1: am just drained. So again, we are taking a week
Speaker 1: off and running a rerun this week. We do that
Speaker 1: occasionally because everyone deserves time off, including every now and
Speaker 1: then me. I did want to note this is an
Speaker 1: old episode on the Latter Days of l Ron Hubbard,
Speaker 1: one of our beloved podcast subjects, with Michael Swain and
Speaker 1: Abe Eperson, two of my old friends from Cracked dot com.
Speaker 1: They both have a podcast network called small Beans, which
Speaker 1: you can back on Patreon and you can find whoever
Speaker 1: podcasts are. And I also wanted to note and plug
Speaker 1: my friend Michael's novel The Climb. It's an epic fantasy
Speaker 1: memoir with some you know, magic realism elements to it.
Speaker 1: You can google The Climb Michael Swain Patreon. You can
Speaker 1: also look up The Climb wherever books are sold. I'm
Speaker 1: seeing it right now on the Barnes and Noble website.
Speaker 1: There's a bunch of other places that you can find
Speaker 1: The Climb. So check out The Climb Michael swam Just
Speaker 1: type that into Google and here's the end of l
Speaker 1: Ron Hubbard whats l running my Hubbards. I'm Robert Evans.
Speaker 1: This is Behind the Bastards, the podcast where we talk
Speaker 1: about the very worst people in all of history. And
Speaker 1: today is our super special conclusion episode of the life
Speaker 1: of l Ron Hubbard. And with me today to talk
Speaker 1: about the last ten years of the craziest man in
Speaker 1: History's life is Michael Swam and Abe Eperson.
Speaker 2: For having us.
Speaker 1: I was making cheering and crowd sounds with my mouth.
Speaker 2: Oh it's I thought it's not a mechanical.
Speaker 1: I didn't do a good job.
Speaker 3: I thought you just did that for every ten minutes
Speaker 3: to like seep out all the saliva from your No.
Speaker 1: No, you know what I do when I fuck something
Speaker 1: up like that. Though, As I toss my throw in bagels, Oh.
Speaker 2: Oh, I was aware of the throwing bagel trope. I
Speaker 2: thought they were individually thrown A three.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's angry, and they bounced right off the wall
Speaker 1: and back to me. So I'm re armed with my
Speaker 1: throwing bag.
Speaker 2: We're also in a room with dozens of panels. You
Speaker 2: could have targeted. You targeted one right by someone's head.
Speaker 1: Well, that's because the nature of the bounce means it
Speaker 1: won't hit Sophie. If I took a board to her left,
Speaker 1: it'll bounce right back to me. I'm an expert.
Speaker 3: I love that you keep them contained in the bag though,
Speaker 3: so your vigilanteism is at least kinde exactly like you're You.
Speaker 1: Get ants and rats and stuff.
Speaker 4: That's how you get rats.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I don't want rats inside the house. I
Speaker 1: only want rats in the houses of my enemies.
Speaker 2: There's only the government acceptable level of rat in this studio,
Speaker 2: and I appreciate.
Speaker 1: That, yeah, which is five.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the max, same as peanut butter.
Speaker 1: Which is why there's so many rats the open peanut
Speaker 1: butter jars from back when I had.
Speaker 2: Trying to rescue their rat friends who were in the
Speaker 2: peanut butter jars.
Speaker 3: See, I have five rats at home too, and I'm
Speaker 3: in like a ratitude situation.
Speaker 1: So I haven't seen that movie, but I think a
Speaker 1: guy cooks rats into food and that serves them to
Speaker 1: the people of friends.
Speaker 3: Abes eating rats is the correct one.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean the rent is too damn high in
Speaker 1: the rat Now, did y'all both listen to uh the
Speaker 1: three parter I did on the Life of l. Ron
Speaker 1: Hubbard or L. R.
Speaker 2: H I did.
Speaker 4: Indeed.
Speaker 1: Now I got to ask before we before we get in,
Speaker 1: were you surprised to learn that he in fact could fuck?
Speaker 2: Oh? I was ready to immediately answer no to everything
Speaker 2: you said, because I've done of like he's not the
Speaker 2: most obscure bastard you've covered. No, I've done my own research.
Speaker 2: But yeah, that was the one detail you found, the
Speaker 2: one detail that was surprising too.
Speaker 3: I also, I was very pleased because I'm like, it's
Speaker 3: not like he needed a win.
Speaker 4: No, you no, Like he definitely didn't need a win.
Speaker 1: Kind of nailed it.
Speaker 3: But it's just kind of one of those like just
Speaker 3: one of those things that like life just serves up
Speaker 3: to you, like reality just says and circumstance yeah, and
Speaker 3: you go, ah, yes, back to nihilism.
Speaker 2: That's been Like you find out Milton Burle had a
Speaker 2: foot long there and you're like why but okay.
Speaker 1: Okay, I don't know if there's one thing that came
Speaker 1: across in that book of a thousand Milton Berle jokes.
Speaker 2: I had that as a kid man. You just flashed
Speaker 2: me back to I haven't thought of it in twenty years.
Speaker 1: And I remember thinking as a seven year old reading that.
Speaker 1: I bet this guy had a fucking salami that could
Speaker 1: have knocked at head.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, well it was, says a little child, imagining.
Speaker 2: That it was dedicated to his testicles for all the
Speaker 2: weight they bear as a kid. I just didn't think
Speaker 2: anything of that, you know.
Speaker 1: It just seemed like a normal old comedian talking about
Speaker 1: the balls, speaking of old comedians talking about their balls,
Speaker 1: or not speaking of that at all. When we last
Speaker 1: left el Ron Hubbard, he'd just come ashore in Florida.
Speaker 1: After multiple years of shirking all the laws of land
Speaker 1: and most of the laws of sea. Old, ill and
Speaker 1: as crazy as a cat with an inner ear infection,
Speaker 1: Hubbard launched Operation gold Mine. This was his plan to
Speaker 1: create the Mecca of Scientology, an entire city dedicated to
Speaker 1: the religion where scientologists could rule one another in other
Speaker 1: people based on the enlightened principles of their glorious religion. Now,
Speaker 1: you guys are gonna build a mecca to your own
Speaker 1: personal religions. Where do you pick?
Speaker 2: Oh? Boy, well, I'll you got see this as an
Speaker 2: improv rule. You know you're on the spot. First answer,
Speaker 2: no censorship. What came to mind was Portland, Oregon.
Speaker 1: No that's a great place to have a call. That's
Speaker 1: where I played.
Speaker 2: Because I'm seeing you, but also because i've often that's
Speaker 2: been at the top of my list of other places
Speaker 2: to live. When I went inn F I leave VLA.
Speaker 2: But I also heard your episode about in part the
Speaker 2: history of Portland. So I feel bad saying that.
Speaker 4: I would put mine on top of Mount Rushmore.
Speaker 2: Way better yet more time to yeah, well, I.
Speaker 4: Have more time to think. Yeah. In general on Mount Rushmore.
Speaker 2: Question is would it be your face? Is your mecca
Speaker 2: in the shape of your face?
Speaker 4: Could be whatever funck I want?
Speaker 1: Just you frowning down on four presidents.
Speaker 4: On my ongoing battle to beat the president.
Speaker 1: That is what we know about a well. L Ron
Speaker 1: Hubbard was as I think we've established the craziest man
Speaker 1: who ever lived. He's a contender in that. And as
Speaker 1: the craziest man who ever lived, he picked the craziest state.
Speaker 1: And I say this as a Texan. Nobody beats Florida
Speaker 1: in the in the crazy State lottery, it's got to
Speaker 1: be Florida. And of course l Ron Hubbard picked the
Speaker 1: city of clear Water, Florida. Now there was a downside
Speaker 1: to this, which is that the site that el Ron
Speaker 1: Hubbard and his minions selected for their faith's new capital
Speaker 1: was already occupied by tens of thousands of people who
Speaker 1: were not scientologists. So this was a problem, but not
Speaker 1: an insurmountable one because l Ron Hubbard has had as
Speaker 1: he had you know, most of our last apond. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's not a theory now, hasp. Oh he's still alive.
Speaker 1: I hope his head's frozen in a jar. I'd like
Speaker 1: to see him get one more act.
Speaker 2: I'd like to see him and Ted Williams head fight
Speaker 2: each other someday.
Speaker 4: Sure, just rolling around.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things where, after everything we went
Speaker 1: through in the first three episodes, it's it's shocking to
Speaker 1: me how much gas this guy had left.
Speaker 2: In the This is only the last decade.
Speaker 1: Right, This is the last like ten years of his life.
Speaker 2: Home again. This is the Game of Thrones finale episode.
Speaker 2: This is not the whole run.
Speaker 1: Most dictators get a two part, maybe a three part like.
Speaker 2: El Ron Hubbard. This is a five part wait. Yeah, so.
Speaker 1: Clearwater, Florida, is located west of Tampa and north of
Speaker 1: Saint Petersburg on the far edge of Florida's Midwest coast.
Speaker 1: YEP it has a fine harbor, which was good because
Speaker 1: al Ron Hubbard still fancied himself a commodore. And as
Speaker 1: you pointed out there, Michael, the city's name Clearwater made
Speaker 1: it a perfect fit with ol Ron Hubbard's religious cannon,
Speaker 1: because of course clear is the state of being like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the whole goal in the scientology canon. In nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy five, when it disguised el Ron Hubbard arrived with
Speaker 1: his retinue, Clearwater was a sleepy retirement community. It went
Speaker 1: by the nickname Sparkling clear Water, and a third of
Speaker 1: its one hundred thousand citizens were over sixty five. It
Speaker 1: was not a place that prided itself on hustle and bustle.
Speaker 1: The town's most prominent building was the old Fort Harrison Hotel,
Speaker 1: an increasingly decrepit monument to Clearwater's glory days. The hotel
Speaker 1: was empty and for sale. In October, the Southern Land
Speaker 1: Sales and Development Corporation purchased the old hotel. The local attorney,
Speaker 1: who represented the building's old owners, called it one of
Speaker 1: the strangest transactions he'd ever seen. The building's new buyers
Speaker 1: had paid two point three million dollars in cash, for
Speaker 1: the building, and the fact that they had two point
Speaker 1: three million in cash was literally all he knew about them.
Speaker 1: The buyers would not even admit to having a telephone number,
Speaker 1: good Little gold Smell, a grift code.
Speaker 2: It's almost impressive they didn't run a foul of Disney
Speaker 2: operatives buying land out from Florida residence.
Speaker 4: If there to.
Speaker 1: Expand any group like crazier and wealthier than the Disney
Speaker 1: Corporation in this period of time, it's the Church of Scientology.
Speaker 1: Now it's Disney.
Speaker 3: I mean, we all have a lot, like humans have
Speaker 3: a long history of just like, if you get enough
Speaker 3: people and put them in a spot, you can declare
Speaker 3: that yours.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is exactly what I planned to do someday
Speaker 1: in Oregon.
Speaker 4: Like a bunch of people.
Speaker 1: You guys saw that documentary Wild Wild Country. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: that that literally is my goal minus poisoning that town. Probably.
Speaker 2: I saw the first problem the important and I was like,
Speaker 2: it's kind of boring. They're not culty enough for my
Speaker 2: like the part of me that wants to watch it.
Speaker 2: And everyone said, something happens, So now I know what.
Speaker 2: They poison a town.
Speaker 1: Yet it they poisoned the shit out of a town.
Speaker 2: We're past spoiler range.
Speaker 1: I think they were kind of on the right though. Anyway,
Speaker 1: let's move on past that the town. Yeah. Less than
Speaker 1: a week later, the Southern Land Development Corporation bought another
Speaker 1: of the city's landmarks, the Bank of Clearwater Building. They
Speaker 1: paid five hundred and fifty thousand dollars, again in cash. Now,
Speaker 1: residents started talking after this, and they talked even more
Speaker 1: when a strange old man in a green jumpsuit showed
Speaker 1: up in town and publicly announced that the Southern Land
Speaker 1: Company would be leasing the buildings to a group called
Speaker 1: the United Churches of Florida. He claimed that the United
Speaker 1: Churches would host religious meetings and seminars there. Now this
Speaker 1: perplexed local journalists. They could find no records anywhere of
Speaker 1: the United Churches of Florida ever existing. This was because
Speaker 1: there was no United Churches of Florida, or Southern Land
Speaker 1: Development Company for that matter. Both organizations were, of course,
Speaker 1: fronts for the Church of Scientology. On December fifth, l
Speaker 1: Run Hubbard officially announced Project Power three aka Operation Normandy.
Speaker 2: I shave with that. That's it gets really close.
Speaker 1: Those three blades. Yeah, yeah, you say that with a
Speaker 1: full beard. Look, no one at this table shaves regularly.
Speaker 2: The literature, the literature they handed me made me understand
Speaker 2: that I am clean shaven. The scientology raiser works. This
Speaker 2: is just my sin coming out of my Facebook. Yeahs shave,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna get it out of it away. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Get you're shaved on the inside, which is where it is.
Speaker 4: Yeah, little hairs, little thetans, it's all the same stuff.
Speaker 1: Now. The purpose of Operation Normandy was quote to fully
Speaker 1: investigate the Clearwater City and County area so we can
Speaker 1: distinguish our friends from our enemies and handle is needed.
Speaker 1: Hubbard's overall plan to accomplish this was quote to locate
Speaker 1: opinion leaders, then their enemies the dirt scandal, vested interest
Speaker 1: crime of the enemies with overt data as much as possible,
Speaker 1: then turn this over to United Churches, who will approach
Speaker 1: the opinion leader and get his agreement to look into
Speaker 1: a specific subject which will lead to the enemy's crimes.
Speaker 1: United Churches then discovers the scandal, et cetera, and turns
Speaker 1: it over to the opinion leader for his use. Ops
Speaker 1: can be done as a follow up to remove or
Speaker 1: restrain the enemy. So Wow just gets right into it.
Speaker 1: With how do we deal with our enemies that we're
Speaker 1: gonna make.
Speaker 2: That's his tool is to blackmail so quick, Like he
Speaker 2: doesn't like someone introduces you by pointing him across the
Speaker 2: room at a party, like, oh yeah, that's my friend
Speaker 2: l Ron. He's got dirt on you. Damn. That was fast.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I mean he's like in his sixties at
Speaker 1: this point. He's experienced. He knows, he doesn't pussy foot around,
Speaker 1: like it's time. We're gonna make enemies, so we need
Speaker 1: a plan to destroy them.
Speaker 2: Our mob boat has reached land begin discovering everyone. Since
Speaker 2: you know, like.
Speaker 3: Video games where you're supposed to like you have like
Speaker 3: offense and defense and you have to power them both up.
Speaker 3: He's done this enough to know. He's like, well, it's
Speaker 3: good to be ahead of the.
Speaker 2: Curve on the defense.
Speaker 1: He's been playing for a long time exactly now. One
Speaker 1: of these enemies was a reporter for the Clearwater Son
Speaker 1: named Mark Sableman. Mark had been sniffing around the Church's
Speaker 1: operations in Clearwater, and it revealed some evidence that suggested
Speaker 1: the United Churches were really the Church of Scientology and
Speaker 1: so On January twenty sixth, nineteen seventy six, a church
Speaker 1: official named Joe Liza wrote up a scheme to get
Speaker 1: Mark fired. Quote. Have a woman elderly go into the
Speaker 1: office and in grief and mis emotions, starts screaming that
Speaker 1: she wants to see Sableman's boss. She goes in and
Speaker 1: sees this man and screams and cries about Sableman's sexually
Speaker 1: assaulting her son or grandson. The woman takes a magazine
Speaker 1: which is lurid and perverted, and throws it into the
Speaker 1: face of the man. Woman in screams, look what he
Speaker 1: gave my son. Not to mention what the pervert did.
Speaker 1: Sob sob to my Johnny, I'm going to the police.
Speaker 1: If you can't do something of that pervert Sableman, I
Speaker 1: will see that they do something to you. So journalist
Speaker 1: reveals the very basic de tale that they're secretly buying
Speaker 1: up land and this is.
Speaker 2: Going yeah, and that at one point in time sab
Speaker 2: sub to my Johnny.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's literally how it's written.
Speaker 4: Yeah, sub sub to my Johnny. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's like a song you would hear at the sacap.
Speaker 1: Or like it's it could be kind of like a
Speaker 1: like a greeting too, like sab Sob Magennia.
Speaker 2: For next episode Johnny.
Speaker 1: Sob and Majohnny's There We Go Yeah. Throughout later nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy five and early nineteen seventy six, Clearwater flooded with young,
Speaker 1: uniformed Scientologists. They began renovating the Church's new acquisitions downtown.
Speaker 1: Their presence was strange and discomfiting for locals, since the
Speaker 1: newcomers refused to answer questions on who they worked for
Speaker 1: and what they were doing. Hubbard himself supervised the construction
Speaker 1: efforts from five miles away in a condominium complex in
Speaker 1: the nearby town of Dunedin. During his few visits into Clearwater,
Speaker 1: he posed as a photographer. His initial plan was to
Speaker 1: sneak into a respected position in local society by posing
Speaker 1: as a photographer, taking pictures to encourage local tourism. In
Speaker 1: a letter to one member of the Guardian Office, which
Speaker 1: was the trunk of the Church of Scientology aimed at
Speaker 1: protecting l Ron Hubbard, he wrote, quote, taking pictures of
Speaker 1: beautiful Clearwater is the local button. My portrait of the
Speaker 1: mayor will hang in the city hall. Never fear, okay pretentious.
Speaker 2: First of all, it's clear that he was like well,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to live there. Find me the nerdiest
Speaker 2: sounding town. I gotta live in a JR. Tolkien named town.
Speaker 2: I am el Rond.
Speaker 1: After all, he is l Rond in Dunedin.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's an elf who collided with a space telescope
Speaker 2: Elron Hubble, right.
Speaker 4: Which actually just turns out to be an orc.
Speaker 2: But secondly, is he allowed back on land? I thought
Speaker 2: he was gonna get arrest.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, he's not allowed. That's why he's always in disguise.
Speaker 2: So he's like on the I mean because I thought
Speaker 2: the boat was his sort of final solved, yeah, evading LA.
Speaker 2: But even in this late stage, he's like, I'm risking it.
Speaker 1: He's risking it now he's being hidden. At this point
Speaker 1: he has a whole team of people. The Guardian Office
Speaker 1: is just there to keep people off his bad.
Speaker 2: Would sound silly if you hadn't just dropped the KKK episode. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they're like the Exalted Cyclotics.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and the King Klegal.
Speaker 2: Oh the Clavy, yeah, the clay like Clavy.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately for l Ron Hubbard, the mayor of Clearwater had
Speaker 1: no interest in being photographed by a strange old man.
Speaker 1: He was deeply concerned with this army of anonymous invaders.
Speaker 1: At one point he reached out to the United Churches
Speaker 1: and said, quote, I am discomfited by the increasing visibility
Speaker 1: of security personnel armed with billy clubs and mace employed
Speaker 1: by the United Churches of Florida. I am unable to
Speaker 1: understand why this degree of security is required by a
Speaker 1: religious organization.
Speaker 2: You see more like ufc AM.
Speaker 4: I right, it's like a reasonable question.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems like he brought an army to our
Speaker 1: sleepy retirement to and also why a.
Speaker 2: Catholic priest walking out Cobblestone Street, like, oh, how you doing?
Speaker 2: It's just smacking a night stick into his hands. That
Speaker 2: is discomforting. Yeah, I think that's the perfect that.
Speaker 1: Is that is the perfect word. It became clear that
Speaker 1: the Scientologists would need to stage reveal of their organization
Speaker 1: to the people of clear Water. In early nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 1: they held a meeting at the Fort Harrison Hotel, officiated
Speaker 1: by l Ron Hubbard himself. He wore a beret, caci
Speaker 1: fatigues and headphones, and local religious leaders watched in wonder
Speaker 1: and confusion as this bizarre man presided over the setup
Speaker 1: of microphones and stage managed the production, with the press
Speaker 1: conference down to the tiniest detail. He was introduced as
Speaker 1: mister Hubbard, an engineer.
Speaker 2: We could have caught him. Why didn't I get him?
Speaker 1: One of the again, one of the like can through
Speaker 1: lines of any time you read about criminals in the seventies,
Speaker 1: Like the FBI really wasn't very good at its job.
Speaker 1: I mean, you could debate whether or not they still are.
Speaker 1: But everyone was kind of asleep at the wheel until
Speaker 1: September eleventh, which you know is part of why September eleventh?
Speaker 3: That wait, right, It's almost as if in the human narrative,
Speaker 3: there's incoonfidence has always been with us, Yes, especially of
Speaker 3: those of power.
Speaker 1: Yeah, shouldn't have been super hard to find el Ron Hubbard.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Five hundred local citizens attended the meeting, where they were
Speaker 1: shown the renovations downe to the Fort Harrison Hotel. Scientology
Speaker 1: representatives tried to reassure them that the church was a
Speaker 1: fundamentally friendly force with no nefarious aims towards their town.
Speaker 1: A spokesman for the church told them scientologists are people
Speaker 1: who don't drink or violate laws. They are friendly and
Speaker 1: want to contribute. The very next day, the Church of
Speaker 1: Scientology filed a one million dollar lawsuit against the mayor
Speaker 1: of Clearwater, Gabrielle Cazares, suing him for libel, slander, and
Speaker 1: a bevy of civil rights violations. A few days after
Speaker 1: announcing his presence in Florida and instantly suing the mayor
Speaker 1: of the town, l Ron, Hubbard went out to get
Speaker 1: a suit tailored near Dunadin. It turned out that the
Speaker 1: tailor was a science fiction fan, and since Ron was
Speaker 1: a proud narcissist, he immediately revealed his identity to the
Speaker 1: fan and told him he was staying nearby. The news
Speaker 1: percolated through the local rumor mill, and before long it
Speaker 1: was common knowledge that the Profit of Scientology was hanging
Speaker 1: out in Dunedin rather than clear Water. Now, at the time,
Speaker 1: there were numerous pending lawsuits and investigations against the church.
Speaker 1: The fact that Hubbard's location had been revealed by himself
Speaker 1: made him in credit paranoid. Within days of revealing himself
Speaker 1: to clear Water, he and his entourage fled twelve hundred
Speaker 1: miles north to Georgetown. Hubbard grew a beard and bought
Speaker 1: a new wardrobe at from a local Salvation Army store.
Speaker 1: One of his aides who'd been with him during his
Speaker 1: long boat journey, noted that it was strange because on
Speaker 1: the ship he had all these phobias about dust and
Speaker 1: smells and how his clothes had to be washed, but
Speaker 1: all that vanished when we were living together in Washington.
Speaker 2: He goes boho, kind of a massage arc for him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he had like a second religion family, like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: oh man, it's they're just pests though, right, Like they
Speaker 3: just anytime anyone might be a threat, they just throw
Speaker 3: everything at them.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna see you then.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, didn't you hear they throwing at everyone in
Speaker 2: any area they're in before they get to know anyone.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's how you react to threats when you
Speaker 1: have infinite money and are is just a lunatic.
Speaker 2: And I think it's a sign of your own Like
Speaker 2: I feel like from your previous episodes too. He walked
Speaker 2: around with a lot of darkness inside him, like there
Speaker 2: are some people who I think have done horrendous things
Speaker 2: and it really goes off them, like water off the ducks.
Speaker 2: Back his just sheer obsession with well, everyone's got dirt,
Speaker 2: everyone's got skeletons. The trick in life is just to
Speaker 2: find the skeletons first. That's the act of someone who's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I have the most skeletons, so many skeletons.
Speaker 1: Is preemptively throwing my own baby, And if.
Speaker 3: You say anything about these skeletons, I'm gonna create new skeletons.
Speaker 2: It's also incredible that he uh, I wish I could
Speaker 2: have been there in his head in the moment he's
Speaker 2: leaving the tailor's office when it turned from like it
Speaker 2: was nice meeting a fan. I shouldn't have done that.
Speaker 2: Oh hell, that was real bad al all the crime.
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, Lil ron, little rock.
Speaker 1: So he grows to Georgetown and grows a beard like
Speaker 1: we all do at some point. Now, well, Hubbard hit
Speaker 1: out in Georgetown, he continued to directive variety of clandestine
Speaker 1: operations down in clear Water. His main goal was to
Speaker 1: unseat Gabriel Kazaras, who had grown into a figure of
Speaker 1: almost luciferian importance to the scientologists, to lose that portrait.
Speaker 1: He still wants that portrait. Yet they were really worried
Speaker 1: about his moderate concern about them taking over his town
Speaker 1: with a paramilitary security force. According to the book Baar
Speaker 1: Face Messiah quote. Scientologists had gone back to his hometown
Speaker 1: of Alpine, Texas, trawled through public records, nosed around the courthouse,
Speaker 1: and even checked the headstones in the local graveyard without success.
Speaker 1: But then it was disclosed that Kazaras would be attending
Speaker 1: the National Mayor's Conference in Washington from eleventh or thirteen
Speaker 1: to seventeenth March, and the Guardian's Office made hasty plans
Speaker 1: to give him a welcome. A scientologist posing as a
Speaker 1: Washington reporter sought an interview with Kazaras and introduced him
Speaker 1: to a friend, Sharon Thomas, who offered to show the
Speaker 1: mayor the sites of Washington. Miss Thomas was, of course
Speaker 1: working for the Guardian's Office. Driving with the mayor through
Speaker 1: scenic Rock Creek Park, she temporarily lost control of her
Speaker 1: car and ran into a pedestrian, who crumpled dramatically. To
Speaker 1: the Mayor's horror, Miss Thomas accelerated away without stopping, leaving
Speaker 1: the injured man lying on the road.
Speaker 2: Is the injured man also a plant?
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a science Everyone involved as a scientologist, but
Speaker 1: the mayor.
Speaker 4: So this is like a play for no one.
Speaker 2: It's like in the Simpsons when they put on a
Speaker 2: play to convince mister Burns to fund the school or
Speaker 2: some ship, like, yeah, I wonder if they rehearsed.
Speaker 1: Oh, they must have.
Speaker 4: They must have, and it's all for him to find
Speaker 4: that important.
Speaker 1: He had a team always practicing to fake a hit
Speaker 1: and run just because he knew at some point I'm
Speaker 1: gonna need this. I'm got to be in those morning
Speaker 1: production meetings.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we're just right.
Speaker 3: And he was talking last night about not feeling like
Speaker 3: so great when he's like, he's not tall, so can
Speaker 3: we just like, let's build his platform, make him taller for.
Speaker 2: Our shortest people.
Speaker 4: They were doing this shit.
Speaker 2: I want to see the scenes that they rehearsed that
Speaker 2: were cut, Like, okay, in case the mayor gets carried
Speaker 2: off by a giant bird of prey, we have this
Speaker 2: great scene worked out. It never happened. It just like
Speaker 2: slays on the cutting room floor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, with the beatings with.
Speaker 4: So probably that's what I get the acting connection.
Speaker 2: Now, Oh that makes sense.
Speaker 4: So they had to do a lot of improv.
Speaker 1: We'll be getting a little more into that story.
Speaker 2: Thomas Cruise, Yeah, that was his first role.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Now, the plan was to use this hit and
Speaker 1: run to discredit the mayor. A Guardian's office memo noted,
Speaker 1: I should think the mayor's political days are at an end.
Speaker 1: Of course, a fake hit and run committed by someone
Speaker 1: else did not have the derailing effect on the mayor's
Speaker 1: career that the Guardian's office at home. Yeah, but Hubbward
Speaker 1: was ready the same day with another plan to try
Speaker 1: and convince Miami's Cuban population that the Mayor of Clearwater
Speaker 1: was pro castro. So, like most of L. Ron Hubbard's
Speaker 1: hairbrain schemes, this one did not bear fruit. The commodore
Speaker 1: cooked up ideas like I Hopcook's pancakes, poorly and constantly,
Speaker 1: but all of his schemes were not half asked. And
Speaker 1: while all this was going on, the Church of Scientology
Speaker 1: was deep in the middle of the most ambitious scheme
Speaker 1: of its history to date, Operation snow White. On November ninth,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five, an agent of the Church code named Silver,
Speaker 1: walked into the Internal RESI New Service headquarters in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. He entered the office of Attorney Charles Zuvrayan,
Speaker 1: although he had no legal right to be there, and
Speaker 1: began taking documents. He made copies of hundreds of confidential
Speaker 1: tax documents and then walked out the door with them.
Speaker 1: Like the purchase of the Fort Harrison Hotel. This was
Speaker 1: done under the express orders of l. Ron Hubbard. The
Speaker 1: genesis of snow White had come in nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 1: whilst Hubbard and his Sea Org were still trawling international waters.
Speaker 1: Multiple nations refused to let the Scientologists dock at their ports,
Speaker 1: and l. Ron Hubbard decided this was due to a
Speaker 1: worldwide conspiracy to discredit his church, rather than its numerous
Speaker 1: numerous crimes.
Speaker 2: He tended to want to an asshole.
Speaker 1: A conspiracy.
Speaker 2: I'm an address up like Spider Man and ruin his
Speaker 2: good name.
Speaker 1: Hubbard tasks Scientology's investigative arm, the Guardian Office, with countering
Speaker 1: this false information. The name snow White was picked because
Speaker 1: Hubbard claimed the government's case against him was, in essence
Speaker 1: a fable.
Speaker 2: Now we call it Operation Fable. That's way cooler.
Speaker 1: Well, he went with snow White all right. Under the
Speaker 1: direction of his wife, Mary Hubbard, Operation snow White would
Speaker 1: grow into a sprawling infiltration of the US federal government
Speaker 1: at every level. Agent Silver's theft of IRS documents was
Speaker 1: just one part of the scheme. Agent Silver was really
Speaker 1: IRS Clerk Gerald Wolf, and in that capacity he was
Speaker 1: able to steal more than thirty thousand pages worth of documents.
Speaker 1: By the beginning of nineteen seventy five, the Church had
Speaker 1: actually succeeded in placing agents inside the I R S,
Speaker 1: the US Coast Guard, and the DEA. Now this scheme
Speaker 1: was executed entirely by agents of the Guardian Office. They
Speaker 1: were trained to lie, or in scientology terms, outflow false
Speaker 1: data in order to worm their way into these federal organizations.
Speaker 1: That's a good synonym for lie.
Speaker 2: Wrap my head. Yea euphemism.
Speaker 4: Cinerga is the dishonesty.
Speaker 2: Also, your name's already Wolf, agent Wolf.
Speaker 4: Wolf or I don't know, silver Wolf.
Speaker 2: Agent silver Wolf, Red Fox. That was agent Red Fox,
Speaker 2: snow Wolf. Why he's got a filthy sense of humor,
Speaker 2: but he gets shipped done.
Speaker 1: Speaking of fables, you know it's not a fable.
Speaker 4: Products yea, your heart, your heart's sewing this man.
Speaker 1: They're very you know what I don't need to see.
Speaker 1: I throw the bagels, they get right back to him.
Speaker 4: Hey, those are some products.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the services are real, but we are not.
Speaker 1: And the throwing bagels are real. My current throwing bagels
Speaker 1: are everything, bagels, kettle boiled and health baked, sliced, the
Speaker 1: bagel that won the West.
Speaker 2: And they're bruising badly, which I didn't think bagels were
Speaker 2: supposed to do.
Speaker 1: The bagel that won the West?
Speaker 4: Did they didn't know that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Did these wipe out the Cherokee?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Are these genide bagels that are.
Speaker 2: Throwing on the walls.
Speaker 3: They're everything, so they're definitely genocide. Plus I guess everything else.
Speaker 1: That's not cool.
Speaker 2: Thousands of American bison died with those bagels embedded in
Speaker 2: their skulls.
Speaker 1: Sophie, I want bagels that didn't commit genocide. Yeah, fair,
Speaker 1: Also these expired February twenty fifth.
Speaker 2: So I want us throwing bagels.
Speaker 1: Actually, the expired ones work a little bit better.
Speaker 2: So, uh, check out these ads.
Speaker 1: We're back. I shouldn't have come back when I was eating, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Right, when, Well, you fully control when you come back,
Speaker 2: so that was your choice and you can it.
Speaker 4: That's number three for those keeping track.
Speaker 1: I hit some equipment with that one, but Daniel says
Speaker 1: it's fine.
Speaker 2: We've returned from examining the ads examining antiquated woodworking tool,
Speaker 2: and I, for one will purchase one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, delicious products or services.
Speaker 1: Now what's not delicious is the throwing bagels that apparently
Speaker 1: are genocide bagels.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think they're genocide bagel.
Speaker 1: I would like to apologize to genocide victims for throwing
Speaker 1: genocide bagels.
Speaker 2: I've heard a lot of words in my time on
Speaker 2: this earth. I've never heard the combination tasty, genocide.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know. I don't eat bake, so
Speaker 1: I just throw them, so I don't know if they're tasty.
Speaker 1: I can say these are the bountiest of the bagels.
Speaker 2: So you're not even vouching for these bagels as edible.
Speaker 1: That's why they're throwing, all right.
Speaker 2: I assume they're a throwing bagel could sort of retire
Speaker 2: and end its life in my little mouth. Is that
Speaker 2: not a possible.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to say you can't, but that's not
Speaker 1: their purpose. Okay, they're everything bagels, so you can do
Speaker 1: anything with them.
Speaker 4: This bagel is my everything now, including jennocide.
Speaker 1: Yes, unfortunately, I guess, yeah, they really are.
Speaker 2: Well, if the bagel's everything, it's all good and.
Speaker 4: It's all on there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that bagel both invented the seat belt and killed
Speaker 1: John Bana Ramsay and everything. It is the spirit of Christmas,
Speaker 1: and is the spirit of Christmas as well as the
Speaker 1: spirit of Saint Louis.
Speaker 2: And is that right wing college kid who led the
Speaker 2: campaign against wearing seat belts and died in an accident
Speaker 2: that he wouldn't have lived through if he had worn
Speaker 2: his seat belt. It's all in the bagel, people.
Speaker 1: We've gotten to invest in the philosophy of what an
Speaker 1: everything bagel.
Speaker 2: Is, the cream cheese is hitler. I don't ask why
Speaker 2: it's always been that way.
Speaker 1: I think we can all agree on all right, let's
Speaker 1: get back to Ron Hubbard's life.
Speaker 2: A little bit of bagel.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit of bagel. So the Guardian Office
Speaker 1: agents were infiltrating, you know, all these federal agencies, the IRS,
Speaker 1: the DEA, the Coastguard. Much of the data gathered, like
Speaker 1: the IRS files copied by agents Silver was collected in
Speaker 1: order to help the church deal with its mountain of
Speaker 1: pending audits. At this point, it was not a religious
Speaker 1: institution in the legal sense of the word, but it
Speaker 1: was still refusing to pay taxes, so the IRS was
Speaker 1: not super happy.
Speaker 2: So it still had not secured the religious exemption.
Speaker 1: No that was not until much later.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: The Guardian's Office also used their connections to the US
Speaker 1: government to dig up dirt on their political enemies, particularly
Speaker 1: journalists who dared to write about them. According to the
Speaker 1: La Times quote, the Guardian Office saved the worst for
Speaker 1: author Paulette Cooper of New York City, who's scathing nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two book, The Scandal of Scientology pushed her in
Speaker 1: the top of the church's roster of enemies. Among other things,
Speaker 1: Cooper was framed on criminal charges by the Guardian Office
Speaker 1: members who obtained stationary she had touched and then use
Speaker 1: it to forge bomb threats to the church in her name.
Speaker 1: You're like the Nazis or the Arabs. I'll bomb you,
Speaker 1: I'll kill you, warn't one of the rambling letters. The
Speaker 1: church reported these threats to the FBI and sent the
Speaker 1: fury of the bureau crashing down on poor Paulette Cooper.
Speaker 1: She was indicted by a grand jury for making bomb
Speaker 1: threats and for lying under oath about having made the
Speaker 1: bomb threats. The truth did eventually come out, but it
Speaker 1: took two years and cost Paulette twenty thousand dollars in
Speaker 1: legal fees and six thousand dollars in psychiatric treatment. Now,
Speaker 1: Hubbard actually hated Paul that enough that he had the
Speaker 1: Guardian's Office dedicated an entire operation to destroying her, code
Speaker 1: named freak out. I found an article where she recites
Speaker 1: a small list of the things they did before reporting
Speaker 1: those fake bomb threats to the FBI.
Speaker 2: What are you doing today, honey, We're destroying this one woman.
Speaker 1: We're destroying this lady. She wrote a book.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're in Q two. I'm hoping by Q four
Speaker 2: she'll be contemplating suicide.
Speaker 1: You know, that's the goal. You know, we all get
Speaker 1: a bonus if it happens before Q four?
Speaker 2: Did the agents who infiltrated the irs, like ninety nine
Speaker 2: percent of the time have to just keep up their
Speaker 2: cover by doing things returned?
Speaker 1: I think?
Speaker 2: So, I want to know if a scientologist operative ever
Speaker 2: just processed my taxes by chance?
Speaker 1: Well not if you were filing taxes in the late seventies.
Speaker 2: Yeah maybe, Yeah, that's I have a very bad tax cheat,
Speaker 2: which is I've been filing taxes since before I was born.
Speaker 2: I'm hoping it'll pay off.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna stop paying taxes, say plus column. Here's Paul
Speaker 1: at Cooper quote. I soon got used to telephone death threats,
Speaker 1: harassing calls in lawsuits. I was occasionally followed, often conspicuously,
Speaker 1: as if to upset me, and people seem to be
Speaker 1: trying to gain access to my apartment. Then, in the
Speaker 1: basement of my small building, I discovered alligator clips on
Speaker 1: my phone wires, likely the remnants of a phone tap. Next,
Speaker 1: my cousin, who was also short and slim like me,
Speaker 1: was in my apartment alone when a man arrived with
Speaker 1: a flower delivery for me. When she opened the door,
Speaker 1: the intruder pulled a gun out of the flowers and
Speaker 1: put it to her temple. Fortunately, the gun jammed, misfired,
Speaker 1: or was empty. The man then began to choke her,
Speaker 1: and then when she pulled a way and screamed, he
Speaker 1: ran off. The police said afterward that they were mystified
Speaker 1: because there appeared to be no motive for the attack.
Speaker 1: I quickly moved to a safer, dormant building, but soon
Speaker 1: afterwards three hundred of my new neighbors received an anonymous
Speaker 1: smear letter about me, outrageously describing me as a part
Speaker 1: time prostitute with venereal disease.
Speaker 2: They really showed control with the part time though, they're like, don't.
Speaker 1: Not a full time yea wow, Yeah, that's like that's.
Speaker 3: A you know, the reason why they choose part time
Speaker 3: too is that they're like, she can't even be a
Speaker 3: full prostitute.
Speaker 1: That's a different way to take it, but you know.
Speaker 2: It's the one they took, Yeah, varsity sex work.
Speaker 1: Yet yeah, she can't. She can't entirely subsist off of that,
Speaker 1: So she's got to do the writing books about scientology
Speaker 1: thing as an off game.
Speaker 4: There's just wors lies and worst lies.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, much as I do love talking about the
Speaker 1: wacky schemes of l Ron Hubbard, it's important to remember
Speaker 1: that for every botched fake hit and run, which is
Speaker 1: just genuinely whimsical and funny, someone like Paul Atte Cooper
Speaker 1: was subjected to insane, almost unimagined torment for the crime
Speaker 1: of writing a book that angered l four. Well, it
Speaker 1: seems like it might have been actually just a torture technique,
Speaker 1: like where they were never planning to shoot her, but
Speaker 1: like that's a thing that you'll do. Like I talked
Speaker 1: to someone who was in an Iranian prison and torture
Speaker 1: for a while, and fake executions were a common thing.
Speaker 1: The ciated it too with people who captured in Iraq,
Speaker 1: where you put a gun to their head and pull
Speaker 1: the trigger but it's not loaded, because like that just
Speaker 1: really fucks with people, I guess.
Speaker 2: Because he went on to Choker and it makes you
Speaker 2: imagine like he really was sent a killer, but a
Speaker 2: jam is also pretty unlikely.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like as a torture rehearsal, like uh like just
Speaker 4: just to fuck her up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, like like yeah, they'll execute a prisoner of
Speaker 2: war with a son that has no bullet right to
Speaker 2: like to be psychological. Now.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, back in Operation snow White, over the months and year,
Speaker 1: Scientology spies had made their way into the Department of Justice,
Speaker 1: placing an operative as the secretary to an assistant US
Speaker 1: attorney who handled them mountain of Foyer requests by the
Speaker 1: Church Freedom of Information Act requests. This was the surface
Speaker 1: legitimate goal of Operations snow White. Hubbard framed it as
Speaker 1: a perfectly legal blizzard of freedom of information requests aimed
Speaker 1: at trying to figure out just why so many people
Speaker 1: thought the Church of Scientology was a nefarious entity.
Speaker 2: Now, because yeah, I'm usually pro Foyer. Toya has been
Speaker 2: a force for good mostly yep.
Speaker 1: Not in this case. So because many of these Foyer
Speaker 1: requests pertained to records that were critical and ongoing investigations
Speaker 1: into the church's rampant criminal activity, the church would be
Speaker 1: denied the right to see them, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: part of how FOYA works. The church's man and the
Speaker 1: Justice Department would be able to like know when they
Speaker 1: were like okay with the request of this document, it's
Speaker 1: being denied, and so he would get a copy of
Speaker 1: the document they were getting denied and then smuggle them
Speaker 1: out to church authorities. So this is why they were
Speaker 1: placed in what sent everyone was on, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: The IRS was l Ron Hubbard's greatest nemesis outside of
Speaker 1: the concept of psychiatry, and they were where his guardian
Speaker 1: office focused most of its efforts. At one point, an
Speaker 1: office operative managed to bug an IRIS conference room by
Speaker 1: wiring a re quarter into a wall socket that allowed
Speaker 1: him to listening on agency meetings via his car's FM radio.
Speaker 1: And another point two scientologists use their faked IRS credentials
Speaker 1: to get inside government archives and photocopy documents related to
Speaker 1: the Church. Now, the head of Operation snow White was
Speaker 1: again Mary Sue Hubbard, and when it all came crashing
Speaker 1: down spoiler, she is the one who would take legal blame.
Speaker 1: But basically everyone who has studied the Church or Hubbard
Speaker 1: agrees that he was the center of the whole conspiracy.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's almost like people who are scared that everything is
Speaker 3: conspiracy make conspiracy.
Speaker 1: Do nothing but create conspiracies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because the worldview and it's it seems like every
Speaker 2: everything is the mafia. Like everything works like the to
Speaker 2: get you right, it's the same, you just shift the.
Speaker 3: Blank and there's the you know, concept of the lieutenants
Speaker 3: or made men kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: Avon's in the clink for a year, but we got
Speaker 2: Stringer on the outside. He can run messages to weibe
Speaker 2: whatever you need. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And in l Ron Hubbard's case, he's he's Avon Barksdale.
Speaker 2: I guess he never.
Speaker 3: Spends time in a secon because he's a mythical He's
Speaker 3: more of a mythic figure.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I do think this is also the first time
Speaker 2: I've heard of spy work that is too boring to
Speaker 2: contemplate doing.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Like, do you want to be a spy?
Speaker 2: Yeah, dude, Okay, go into this I R S office
Speaker 2: and install a bug. That's kind of cool. Now, sit
Speaker 2: in a van and listen to what I r S
Speaker 2: people say all day.
Speaker 1: Drive around listening to the I r S radio.
Speaker 4: Are we cops.
Speaker 1: Kind of the opposite of cops?
Speaker 2: New cops Spock cops backwards spot cops.
Speaker 1: That's not how that works the cops.
Speaker 2: It is cops backwards spot because there's illogical.
Speaker 1: I've always said that that Commander Spock is the opposite
Speaker 1: of a copy. Yeah, you know why.
Speaker 2: The blue uniform. No, that does.
Speaker 4: Profser I'm looking for the fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I really didn't have anything there. You're just hoping
Speaker 1: something I was opody was.
Speaker 4: Somebody comedy? Now, yeah, and we failed.
Speaker 2: Logical you do for your badge guns.
Speaker 1: Right back at my feet?
Speaker 4: Number four.
Speaker 1: I you know, I hate the genocide they were complicit in,
Speaker 1: but they're damn good. Shove throwing bagels, really good throwing bagels.
Speaker 2: Friday and slip shoving bagels, those are different bagels. You
Speaker 2: need a littler bagel. Most orifices are small bagel bytes,
Speaker 2: good for show.
Speaker 1: I put bagel bites. The throwing bagels can be big.
Speaker 1: Shoving bagels need to be small enough to fit in
Speaker 1: most holes to just.
Speaker 4: Kind of ease in there.
Speaker 2: Call me old fashioned, but I like just a good
Speaker 2: old fashioned walking bagel, a little walk around town.
Speaker 4: Just you can grab on it. Yeah, not gone too
Speaker 4: much on the outside. That's a good walking bagel.
Speaker 2: Back to evil.
Speaker 1: I was ready to shoving bagels more because you know,
Speaker 1: if it's bagel bites, they make their own loop.
Speaker 2: Do they? Now?
Speaker 1: Back to science.
Speaker 2: Michael Meisner, Yeah, real good.
Speaker 1: Michael Meisner, who was the fake victim of the fake
Speaker 1: hit and run aimed at destroying the mayor of Clearwater,
Speaker 1: was also a major part of Operation snow White. He
Speaker 1: personally broke into the Department of Justice several times and
Speaker 1: organized the copying of tens of thousands of secret files.
Speaker 1: Under Meisner's direction, decoding equipment was installed to provide direct,
Speaker 1: secure communication between church headquarters in the Clearwater and the
Speaker 1: Guardian's office in Los Angeles. After Virginia o Ron, Hubbard
Speaker 1: himself wound up hiding next on Overland Avenue in Culver City, California. Literally, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was about a block away from my first home
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, me too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's where Hubbard hit after he decided he'd spent
Speaker 1: too much time in Georgetown and he had to get
Speaker 1: out of the East Coast.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So in mid nineteen seventy six, with Operation snow
Speaker 1: White at its height and Hubbard living in his third
Speaker 1: undisclosed location since returning to dry Land a year ago,
Speaker 1: Mary Sue Hubbard finally joined back up with her husband
Speaker 1: to warn him about some major problems not related to
Speaker 1: the fact that they were conducting the largest infiltration of
Speaker 1: the federal government US history.
Speaker 4: See.
Speaker 1: It turns out that living on a series of boats
Speaker 1: and searching for gold for like a decade, committing a
Speaker 1: vast and dizzy and crey of financial crime, spying on
Speaker 1: the government, living in a series of safe houses is
Speaker 1: kind of bad for someone's family life.
Speaker 2: He blew up those imaginary submarines.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he did blow up those submarines.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, claiming it And didn't the racist guy do
Speaker 4: it too?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: Yes, theged like Rockwell, they made the same lie.
Speaker 3: So it's almost like there's a it's a continuity of
Speaker 3: liars and like wanting to be awesome and making your
Speaker 3: own mess.
Speaker 1: You know that song Everybody Wants to Rule the World.
Speaker 1: It's like that, but with blowing up a Japanese summer.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, it's like cred in those circles.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So yeah.
Speaker 1: Things were not great with the Hubbard family at this
Speaker 1: point in time. His daughter Diana's marriage was falling apart,
Speaker 1: his son Quentin was ostensibly in the Sea York, but
Speaker 1: was constantly out of pocket and battling crippling depression, And
Speaker 1: worst of all, al Ron Hubbard's daughter Susette was dating
Speaker 1: non scientologists. Now, Mary Sue suggested that all of these
Speaker 1: problems could be solved by providing the family with a
Speaker 1: little bit more stability. So, using some of the church's
Speaker 1: literally infinite funds, they bought a gigantic compound in southern
Speaker 1: California named La Quinta. The family moved in that October.
Speaker 1: For a while, all was well. The Commodore's messengers noted
Speaker 1: that he seemed to be much more relaxed and happier
Speaker 1: after moving into his new ranch. This did not last long.
Speaker 1: On Wednesday, November seventeenth, nineteen seventy six, Hubbard received dire
Speaker 1: news his son Quentin had been found dead in his
Speaker 1: car in Las Vegas, the victim of a successful suicide.
Speaker 1: Mary Sue wept. L Ron Hubbard screamed that stupid, fucking kid,
Speaker 1: That stupid fucking kid. Look at what he's done to me.
Speaker 2: Whoop, Yeah, what happened to blame in the Thetans dude. Yeah,
Speaker 2: like he should fall to his knees and go theta Duz.
Speaker 4: I will stole my boy state Thetans.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's tragic.
Speaker 1: Yeah. According to bear Face Messiah quote, the Guardian's office, meanwhile,
Speaker 1: had moved swiftly to handle the situation. It's local representative
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas was a pit boss at the Sands
Speaker 1: Hotel by the name of Ed Walters. I had been
Speaker 1: working as a covert operator for about eight years, he
Speaker 1: said him. I had secretly tape recorded a psychiatrist and
Speaker 1: got him to talk about lobotomies to try and discredit him.
Speaker 1: And I had bugged the meetings of the Clark County
Speaker 1: Mental Health Association. Things like that. I worked on anything
Speaker 1: that ORG considered to be a threat to the Hubbards.
Speaker 2: Who's he saying this too?
Speaker 1: This is what he said to the author of Bare
Speaker 1: Face Messiah.
Speaker 2: Okay, so you he presumably got Yeah, he.
Speaker 1: Left the church at some point. He was just a
Speaker 1: classic casino pit boss slash spy for the Church of Scientology.
Speaker 2: There's your connection right here.
Speaker 4: So what info is he getting though? Look stuff like this.
Speaker 1: They want dirt on a psychiatrist. So he gets this
Speaker 1: guy drunk and bugs him talking about committing LOBOTOI yeah, yes, I.
Speaker 2: Guess lebotomy is are pretty cool. We should do more.
Speaker 1: You ching another goodass day for Ed Walters. So anyway,
Speaker 1: this is a Walters again quote. When they found out
Speaker 1: Hinton was here, I was told to get a hold
Speaker 1: of all of his medical files. There was apparently evidence
Speaker 1: that he had had a homosexual encounter shortly before he
Speaker 1: was found, and they didn't want anything like that to
Speaker 1: get out. There was a girl scientologist working in the
Speaker 1: hospital in a very secure position, and she got all
Speaker 1: the reports on Quentin and gave them to me, and
Speaker 1: I handed them over to the Guardian's office. Quentin was
Speaker 1: cremated the next day. Those who knew him suggest that
Speaker 1: he probably just wanted out of scientology, but couldn't think
Speaker 1: of a way to do so without ending his own life.
Speaker 1: According to Ed Walters, you don't just leave something like scientology.
Speaker 1: You quit and then instantly become an enemy. He knew
Speaker 1: his father violently attacked anyone who betrayed him, and he
Speaker 1: knew that the Guardian's Office would be after him as
Speaker 1: a trader. He had grown up in scientology and would
Speaker 1: have been tremendously afraid of the world out there, full
Speaker 1: of wogs and evil people. I guess he just couldn't
Speaker 1: handle it.
Speaker 2: Now, el Ron Horvard probably would have yelled the same
Speaker 2: thing if he had less scientology instead of killing or
Speaker 2: what has he done to me?
Speaker 1: Yeah? What has he done to me? Right? It's one
Speaker 1: of those things. It's crazy because like, of course they
Speaker 1: have some people in Vegas, like He's like they have
Speaker 1: this pit boss in Vegas, and they have like a
Speaker 1: lady working at a hospital. But like, I feel like
Speaker 1: at this point you get the feeling that at this
Speaker 1: point in the church's history they have people like that
Speaker 1: in pretty much every.
Speaker 2: City, every major city.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they've got scientologists scattered around who they can trust
Speaker 1: to like, yeah, we need you to get some pull
Speaker 1: some medical records for us, We need you to bug
Speaker 1: this conversation, we need you to get this guy waste
Speaker 1: or whatever.
Speaker 3: That's almost the more baffling part, because I can I
Speaker 3: can wrap my head around the concept of crazy people
Speaker 3: doing crazy stuff because they.
Speaker 4: Want to be awesome. Yeah, but the fact that they
Speaker 4: convince in mass.
Speaker 3: All these people have different walks of life that are
Speaker 3: applicable in the way of like, oh I can get
Speaker 3: I can get information from them, Like that's just what
Speaker 3: is that demographic.
Speaker 1: Well, instance, you got to keep in mind one of
Speaker 1: the things he's saying at this point in time, this is,
Speaker 1: you know, the Cold War is pretty ornery in like
Speaker 1: the late seventies. This is not that long before Red
Speaker 1: Dawn comes out, So fears high, fear is high.
Speaker 4: Elroon Hubbard.
Speaker 1: One of the ways he's billing scientology is like this
Speaker 1: is the tech, which is like his term for their
Speaker 1: their religious stuff, that this is what's going to save
Speaker 1: the world. This is going to like make a nuclear
Speaker 1: war possible. So he like, all of you are like
Speaker 1: as as like the guardians of this sacred knowledge that
Speaker 1: I've brought from space. All of you are like integral
Speaker 1: in saving the world. So these people like view themselves
Speaker 1: as secret agents, you know, in the cause of the
Speaker 1: salvation of humanity. Which if you're just like a pit
Speaker 1: boss or a lady work in the mid level position
Speaker 1: at a hospital and you want some excitement in your life,
Speaker 1: it's cool, right, Like you get to be a secret
Speaker 1: spy bug, these evil psychiatrists or whatever.
Speaker 2: Also ironic that the only place he didn't be foul
Speaker 2: with horrendous crimes is space, Like this only place he's
Speaker 2: innocent the undergrounds.
Speaker 1: Oh he did try to. He wrote letters to NASA
Speaker 1: saying that like, you're not going to get into space
Speaker 1: without our help.
Speaker 2: That's why I mentioned it is. I bet your bottom
Speaker 2: butt that this is a guy who genuinely wanted to
Speaker 2: go to space. You know, I mean I used to
Speaker 2: read a sci fi books because I write all sci
Speaker 2: fi books, and it was genuine. He loves space, He
Speaker 2: loves and space. We're all grateful that he didn't make
Speaker 2: it there.
Speaker 1: No, it didn't need l Ron Hubbard. You know what
Speaker 1: else doesn't need l Ron Hubbard? The wonderful products and
Speaker 1: services that support the show with they're advertising dollars.
Speaker 2: Why would they They're fully actualized.
Speaker 1: They're fully actualized. I've heard about these these services, yes,
Speaker 1: and the products. Uh huh. All right, well, let's all
Speaker 1: hear about them some more. We're back now. I want
Speaker 1: to be clear here. When I quoted mister Walters earlier,
Speaker 1: he said that l. Ron Hubbard's son was scared of
Speaker 1: a world filled with wogs and evil people. Now, my
Speaker 1: Australian listeners will note that the word wog is a
Speaker 1: racial slur in that country, but it also has a
Speaker 1: totally separate meaning in scientology, so Walters was not being
Speaker 1: racist against anyone there. L Ron Hubbard used the term
Speaker 1: wogs to refer to normal people who were not members
Speaker 1: of his sweet ass space cult. He to find a
Speaker 1: wog as quote muggle and it sounds like, yeah it is,
Speaker 1: and it's yeah, Hubbard said, a wog is quote a
Speaker 1: common everyday garden variety humanoid. He is a body, he
Speaker 1: doesn't know he's here, et cetera. He isn't there as
Speaker 1: a spirit at all. He is not operating as a Thetan.
Speaker 4: He's such a special boy.
Speaker 1: He's not a special.
Speaker 2: Operating as a thet Yeah. I still don't even because
Speaker 2: I thought you were trying to get rid of the theme.
Speaker 1: Well, but you are a Thetan too, right, I think? So,
Speaker 1: like you're not operating, you don't realize you're a space
Speaker 1: ghost and try to inside a meat sock.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's good Thetans and there's cheating themes.
Speaker 2: So and you're saying they had locations all across the
Speaker 2: us at this time.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they're fucking everywhere.
Speaker 2: Man, sounds like there's space ghost.
Speaker 1: Coast to coast. All right, well, the episode's over.
Speaker 2: That that joke's all we needed.
Speaker 1: See you guys next week.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry we pre wrote that. We're all scientology.
Speaker 4: We talked about.
Speaker 1: Really selling it.
Speaker 2: Hey, that wasn't an actor.
Speaker 4: That's that's true.
Speaker 1: That might have been Tom Cruise. Probably not, definitely not.
Speaker 1: Shouldn't be landering a rich millionaires.
Speaker 2: He also runs too fast to ever believably be hit
Speaker 2: by a car, and I just wouldn't buy it.
Speaker 1: I also think if he if he came after you
Speaker 1: wanted to kill you, he probably do the job. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like Tom Cruise could have very easily been
Speaker 1: a special Forces guy or a murderer for hire.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is the kind of guy that with
Speaker 3: his fuck off money, he just has like a compound
Speaker 3: where he learns martial arts, where.
Speaker 1: He learns how to destroy things.
Speaker 2: So you were worried about the legal ramifications of slandering
Speaker 2: him by saying he might have been that guy, But
Speaker 2: you immediately also want to say he's probably good at murdering.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think I think he would be the
Speaker 1: first to admit.
Speaker 2: That he would be hypothetically a great murderer.
Speaker 1: When you talk to guys who like do like train
Speaker 1: Hollywood actors for gun stuff, the two people they note
Speaker 1: as being like these guys don't really need any help
Speaker 1: is Tom Cruise and.
Speaker 4: The all big movies he's been. He had to shoot guns.
Speaker 2: And if you see him behind the scenes, he's just
Speaker 2: tries hard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, heah, he works really hard. Yeah, he's a great guy. Now,
Speaker 1: you remember those two Scientology agents who orchestrated the Department
Speaker 1: of Justice breaking back in seventy six. Well after eleven
Speaker 1: months on the lamb, in early nineteen seventy seven, one
Speaker 1: of them broke and became an informant to the FBI.
Speaker 1: The bureau had been on his case for the break in,
Speaker 1: but the full story of the church's infiltration of the
Speaker 1: US government was complete news to them. They opened a
Speaker 1: massive investigation into scientology sweeping infiltration of the United States government.
Speaker 1: The investigation would culminate in a June nineteen seventy seven
Speaker 1: raid that is still one of the largest raids in
Speaker 1: the history of the FBI. One hundred and thirty four
Speaker 1: agents with crowbars and sledgehammers, tore through Scientology, HQ, and DC,
Speaker 1: as well as their offices in Los Angeles. They carted
Speaker 1: away tens of thousands of documents, including the plans for
Speaker 1: Project Normandy, revealing the church's secret goal to establish area
Speaker 1: control in the city of clear Water. The resulting court
Speaker 1: case led to eleven scientologists, including l Ron Hubbard's wife,
Speaker 1: Mary Sue, being convicted and sentenced to up to five
Speaker 1: years in federal prison. L Ron Hubbard was named by
Speaker 1: the grand jury as an unindicted co conspirator, a term
Speaker 1: we all know very well now, but the seas file
Speaker 1: should not link him directly to any crimes. He maintained
Speaker 1: his innocence up until the very end. According to the
Speaker 1: Justice Department quote, the crime committed by these defendants is
Speaker 1: of a breadth and scope previously unheard of. No business office,
Speaker 1: desk or file was safe from their snooping and prying.
Speaker 1: No individual or organization was free from their despicable conspiratorial minds.
Speaker 1: The tools of their trade were miniature transmitters, lockpicks, secret codes,
Speaker 1: forged credentials, in any other device they found necessary to
Speaker 1: carry out their conspiratorial schemes. By the way, it's worth
Speaker 1: noting that while this is happening at the height of
Speaker 1: the Cold War, the Soviet government never managed to infiltrate
Speaker 1: the United States and nearly as comprehensive or extensive a
Speaker 1: fashion as the Church of Scientology did.
Speaker 2: It seems like they should have been trying to infiltrate
Speaker 2: the Church of Science. It's like, talk to the people
Speaker 2: who really are making progress.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they now, those are the facts of the case
Speaker 1: as they exist in reality, But they are not the
Speaker 1: facts of the cases admitted by the Church of sciencelogy.
Speaker 1: In the immediate aftermath of the raid, they accused the
Speaker 1: FBI of Gestapo like brutality, which would be true if
Speaker 1: the Gestapo handed out five year sentences from massive and
Speaker 1: sweeping and filtrations of the Third Reich. Rather than just shooting.
Speaker 2: People, they had crowbars.
Speaker 1: They had crowbar The Stand League builds itself as an
Speaker 1: advocacy group of scientologists fighting bigotry against their religion. The
Speaker 1: name is an acronym for scientologists taking action against discrimination.
Speaker 1: You have to use the in and against for the acronym,
Speaker 1: which is a really great acronym. We all cut corners
Speaker 1: now and again. I use expired throwing bagels like nobody's perfect.
Speaker 1: I found an article published on the stand League's website
Speaker 1: about the snow White Program. Here's how they describe it.
Speaker 1: The snow White Program refers to the program written by
Speaker 1: Scientology founder el Ron Hubbard in nineteen seventy three for
Speaker 1: the purpose of legally correcting and expunging the plethora of
Speaker 1: false government reports about the Church of Scientology, it's leaders
Speaker 1: and members through strictly legal means.
Speaker 2: It's for legal legal twice yeah. Ps.
Speaker 3: Legals think about the word legal and think of me.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The Stanley asserts that Elroon Hubbard did not remotely
Speaker 1: contemplate anything illegal, of course not. Who's famous law follower
Speaker 1: l Ron Hubbard, who's got two thumbs in his legal
Speaker 1: this guy guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I gotta get back on my boat.
Speaker 1: Now I'm going to kidnap my baby again.
Speaker 2: Oh my wife though, damn it sucks. How she sucks?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's rough.
Speaker 1: Now it is impossible to disprove that to a point
Speaker 1: of certainty, which is why l Ron Hubbard himself was
Speaker 1: never convicted of anything. But I want to emphasize this,
Speaker 1: come the funk on.
Speaker 2: We all know all of this information.
Speaker 4: It's true.
Speaker 1: Now we're not done with the story of l Ron
Speaker 1: Hubbard yet. And in our next episode, which I'm very
Speaker 1: excited for, we're going to talk about the last phase
Speaker 1: of his life where he became an autor filmmaker and
Speaker 1: a singer.
Speaker 4: Hell yeah, hell yes, hell you believe.
Speaker 1: L RH hasn't as much?
Speaker 2: Then it doesn't even Battlefield Earth?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Oh buddy, does it involve Battlefield? Yeah?
Speaker 2: What a juicy treat. At the end of so many
Speaker 2: people come on the show and at some point in
Speaker 2: the hour ago, Yeah, this has been really depressing. Thanks
Speaker 2: for having me. Yeah, I feel like you got all
Speaker 2: the sad stuff out of the way. I mean, that's
Speaker 2: been sad shit. But man, the next one's gonna be
Speaker 2: a tree.
Speaker 1: It is gonna be a treat. But before we close
Speaker 1: this episode out, I'd like to talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more about the town of Clearwater, Florida. Now, the Fort
Speaker 1: Harrison Hotel was renamed by the Church of Scientology to
Speaker 1: flag Land Base. After renovations were finished, it became and
Speaker 1: is today the chief training center for scientologists studying the
Speaker 1: highest levels of whatever the hell scientology is. Since nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty three, scientologists have died at Flag Base. One of
Speaker 1: those dead was a young woman named Lisa McPherson, who
Speaker 1: died of a blood clot caused by dehydration in bed
Speaker 1: rest after seventeen days locked in Room one seventy four
Speaker 1: of the former hotels. Josephus Heavineth was found dead in
Speaker 1: a bathtub in his room. The water was hot enough
Speaker 1: to have burned his skin off. The official cause of
Speaker 1: death was drowning, but the coroner noted that he was
Speaker 1: found with his head above the water line. Herbert Faff
Speaker 1: died of a seizure in the hotel after he ceased
Speaker 1: taking his seizure medication in favor of a Scientology approved
Speaker 1: vitamin program.
Speaker 2: And this is the hotel from the shining you're describing this, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's essentially hotel.
Speaker 1: What they turned this building into.
Speaker 2: Go in room one seventy four, don't.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety seven alone, the Clearwater Police received one
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty emergency calls from Flag Base. At no
Speaker 1: point were they allowed to enter. For most of Scientology history,
Speaker 1: the church was in constant arrears for failure to pay
Speaker 1: state and local property taxes. Scientology was brought to court
Speaker 1: numerous times by the city and the irs for this
Speaker 1: Luckily for the church, they eventually succeeded in having Scientology
Speaker 1: to cleared a religion, which granted them tax exempt status.
Speaker 1: The way they did this was pretty fascinating. They basically
Speaker 1: bombarded the IRS as an organization and individual IRS executives
Speaker 1: with lawsuits until they got their way. We'll probably talk
Speaker 1: about that in the Tail in a later episode. According
Speaker 1: to a recent report in the Tampa Bay Times, the
Speaker 1: Church of Scientology currently owns more than two hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty million dollars in property in downtown clear Water. Most
Speaker 1: of these buildings are empty and undeveloped, and many in
Speaker 1: Clearwater blame the church for the fact that downtown Clearwater
Speaker 1: has remained incredibly underdeveloped compared to downtown Saint Petersburg and Tampa.
Speaker 1: The church is able to exercise a huge amount of
Speaker 1: control over the city of Clearwater due to their ownership
Speaker 1: of much of its downtown area and then economic power
Speaker 1: of their religion. According to FSU News quote, Scientology leader
Speaker 1: David Miscavige introduced a retail strategy to Clearwater's Community Redevelopment Agency.
Speaker 1: The plan requires use of not just property owned by
Speaker 1: the church, but at also every property in a three
Speaker 1: block by four block area that encompasses all of downtown.
Speaker 1: The plan involves attracting a few major retail brands and
Speaker 1: then filling open spaces with hand picked businesses, similar to
Speaker 1: an outdoor mall. The proposal will give the church total
Speaker 1: control over the downtown area in regards to development and
Speaker 1: management of properties. The church's redevelopment plan has not yet
Speaker 1: been made public, nor will it be subject to a vote. Cool,
Speaker 1: why do you need that?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 2: Why? I don't understand what the area he's like? This
Speaker 2: church is important to me. I made trillions of dollars,
Speaker 2: but I need area control. What's area control? Well? I
Speaker 2: want to decide if there's a Sparrows or you know,
Speaker 2: an old spaghetti factory there. Well, and this is wanted
Speaker 2: to be what I wanted to be. This is who
Speaker 2: gives a ship, dude.
Speaker 1: This is the decision of his predecessor. Because for l
Speaker 1: Ron Hubbard taking over this town which the church controls
Speaker 1: like forty years later today, this was like a two
Speaker 1: week project for him, right like he was he was
Speaker 1: there for like a month or so. El Roonn Hubbard
Speaker 1: himself never spent more than a couple of days actually
Speaker 1: inside the city limits. Of clear Water, like they still
Speaker 1: control this and it was just sort of a vague
Speaker 1: plan of his for a couple of weeks before he
Speaker 1: moved up to Georgetown Town.
Speaker 4: I like it with these mythic figures.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like uh uh, the entire sea org is just
Speaker 3: like whatever he said, what beautiful drippings came out of
Speaker 3: his horrible mom You need to make that a religion.
Speaker 4: Because there's only so much that he said.
Speaker 1: I mean, he said a lot, but it's like there's
Speaker 1: still people in Clearwater who have to deal with the
Speaker 1: consequences of l Ron Hubbard's passing fancy right, yeah every day.
Speaker 4: Well, I guess we have to justify this ship.
Speaker 2: So kind of want to go there now because I
Speaker 2: didn't know there existed like a company town for scientology. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 2: I gotta imagine, because they're freaking annoying to be around.
Speaker 2: They must have pushed out anyone who had an easy
Speaker 2: opportunity to leave or felt like so by now forty
Speaker 2: years later. I just want to go to a town
Speaker 2: where you're like ninety percent there and everyone around you
Speaker 2: as a scientologist at all time, or another person gawking
Speaker 2: at all the scientologists.
Speaker 3: I wonder, I wonder if there's ever at the time
Speaker 3: like he would listen to music or like it was
Speaker 3: really the stand up comedian and would like watch it
Speaker 3: and stuff. And then everyone was like, I guess that's
Speaker 3: another god amongst us.
Speaker 1: You get the feeling from l Ron Hubbard that he
Speaker 1: did not consume a lot of other people's media, right.
Speaker 4: That's probably true.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we will be talking about Star Wars a little
Speaker 1: bit in the next episode.
Speaker 4: I can't wait.
Speaker 1: This is gonna be It is gonna be great. But first,
Speaker 1: you know what else is going to be great? What
Speaker 1: is y'all plugging your pluggables? Oh yeah, yeah, we're in
Speaker 1: the Pizzo.
Speaker 2: Please to the zone.
Speaker 4: I thought that's the pizza zone.
Speaker 2: What's the cookie with that? That's a pazuki the p zone,
Speaker 2: and we'll blast you with theka full of pazookies.
Speaker 1: All right, guys, we have things we do throwing bagels
Speaker 1: around the table. Oh god, you're under the bagels now.
Speaker 2: My associate ape here and I have a little outfit
Speaker 2: called small Beans. It's a podcasting network and is about
Speaker 2: to branch into web video, and I think it's very
Speaker 2: important that you find out more about that at patreon
Speaker 2: dot com. Slash small Beans or on the small Beans
Speaker 2: YouTube channel, because we're right now in the process of
Speaker 2: producing a little show where four friends sit around analyzing
Speaker 2: pop culture, accompanied by illustrations and clip packages. And there's
Speaker 2: a good chance that a lot of your audience likes
Speaker 2: that show because it feels familiar to that. I'm exciting.
Speaker 1: This sounds familiar to another show that I know you
Speaker 1: were on.
Speaker 2: Any other Well, this is the launch of a legally
Speaker 2: distinct show from all other shows called off off Hours,
Speaker 2: Off Hours, off doing your off hours, the analyze.
Speaker 1: Analyzed pop culture. Hey, this is Robert Evans cutting in
Speaker 1: from the future. When we recorded this episode, Off Hours
Speaker 1: was was not yet done. It was just a dream
Speaker 1: and Michael and Abe's beautiful, beautiful eyes. But now it
Speaker 1: is in fact a reality and you can watch it
Speaker 1: right now on the internet if you go to YouTube
Speaker 1: and look up off Hours. If your life got rebooted?
Speaker 1: What kind would it be? On the small Beans channel,
Speaker 1: please check it out Off Hours, If your life got rebooted?
Speaker 1: What kind would it be? It's it's it's a fun show.
Speaker 1: It's important to me because all of my friends are involved,
Speaker 1: and because internet comedy, if you don't know, is having
Speaker 1: some hard times these days, and Michael and Abe and
Speaker 1: a good group of many of my former coworkers who
Speaker 1: are all great people, are trying to keep it alive,
Speaker 1: keep it user supported. Uh you know, you know, avoid
Speaker 1: having to do ads, avoid a lot of that mess,
Speaker 1: and and try to make beautiful content that makes people
Speaker 1: laugh and makes the world more bearable. So please go
Speaker 1: to the small Beans channel on YouTube. Check out the
Speaker 1: first episode of off Hours, share it with your friends,
Speaker 1: donate to small Beans, and and keep the world laughing.
Speaker 2: That's all I do, is you research horror.
Speaker 3: The reason we chose that name is because it's the
Speaker 3: acronym is oh, like, oh, I might want to watch.
Speaker 2: This and then have fun fun friends, fun with friends.
Speaker 4: Funds is oh fun with friends, Oh, fun with friends.
Speaker 2: And it's you know, after your work hours, like after hours. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it after hours.
Speaker 1: It's the kind of thing I would watch when I
Speaker 1: put down my throwing bagels for the day and I
Speaker 1: pick up my relax in bagels.
Speaker 4: Right, yeah, yeah, just unwined with the soothing dulcet tone.
Speaker 2: I am pitching a Fraser episode that I think will
Speaker 2: convince you to throw a bagel or two.
Speaker 4: It's yeah, okay, yeah, he might be bad as you
Speaker 4: might be bad, guys.
Speaker 2: So many surprises like that and more at patreon dot
Speaker 2: com slash small beans, small.
Speaker 1: Beans all right, I'm Robert Evans. You buy shirt te
Speaker 1: public behind the you can buy you. You can also
Speaker 1: just buy shirts and other places if you want a shirt.
Speaker 1: It's legally required in many outdoor areas in the United
Speaker 1: States because of the fucking president. Or you can listen
Speaker 1: to my other podcast It could happen here. If you
Speaker 1: want to be sad, it will. It will make your
Speaker 1: day worse with knowledge. Listen to it. And I have
Speaker 1: a Twitter in an Instagram at Bastards pod well Sophie
Speaker 1: runs both of those. I don't understand Instagram. It frightens
Speaker 1: and confuses me. But you can look at those things.
Speaker 1: They exist, They're in the world. We have a website
Speaker 1: behind the Bastards dot com where you can find all
Speaker 1: the sources for this, including bare Face Messiah, which you
Speaker 1: can find free online. I think it's out of copyright.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I did buy a copy of it,
Speaker 1: but you can also find it for free online.
Speaker 2: The chance the church got a little of your money,
Speaker 2: Well no they don't.
Speaker 1: They didn't publish that book. They do not like that book.
Speaker 1: It's a hell of a read, though, Like the speaking
Speaker 1: of cutting room floors. As we were earlier, the number
Speaker 1: of LRH stories that I didn't include in this podcast
Speaker 1: just because I couldn't make a fourteen hour podcast about
Speaker 1: al Ron Hubbard fucking wild. Anyway, I'm going to throw
Speaker 1: some bagels. Y'all, continue your commute or your poop. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the episode's over. Behind the Bastards is a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit
Speaker 1: our website cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts.