Title: Surprise Confession
Author: bob@minton.org (Bob Minton)
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1998 13:15:02 GMT

Now is the time to confess that I"ve been keeping a secret. That there 
was a secret may have been clear to those who scrutinized my recent 
postings carefully enough. A close look reveals rather obvious 
inconsistencies. Some ARS readers noticed this but for lack of a better 
alternative, they opted to settle for an  incorrect explanation. 

The truth is that although I"ve been immersed in stories from former 
Scientologists describing their Scientology experience in some detail, 
how likely would it be that a man with a background in investment 
banking would be able to distill these stories into the three formal 
essays I"ve presented to ARS so far? Knowing more than anyone on 
this forum about who actually composed the essays, I"ll give you my 
frank answer: *not very likely*. I"ve not even had enough time to 
answer my e-mail, much less formulate such prose. In fact, the recent 
months have been filled to the brim with meetings, making new 
contacts and trying in a variety of ways to somehow soothe the 
emotional wounds of former Church members. I have had no time to 
bone up on Arts and entertainment, or to conduct a detailed analysis of 
the underbelly of Scientology. If that"s what I"d been doing, it would 
have shown up in earlier postings. You can check and see for yourself 
that it didn"t. 

Who then wrote the "Scientology and Evil" and the "Scientology 
versus Democracy" couplet? Not me, that"s for sure, though I did edit 
the pieces a bit, just to tone them down. So, who is the Who?

Let"s start at the beginning. 

I remember my feelings when I first discovered portions of the true 
nature of Scientology --- disappointment which led quickly to outrage. 
Churches are supposed to help people, not impoverish them. They"re 
supposed to comfort people,  not drive them to the brink of insanity by 
promising paradise and delivering a hell on Earth. Churches should 
help people live creative and productive lives, not chain them to 
nonsense activities that leave virtually no room for anything but 
working for the Church or working to make money for the Church. 

I had a very receptive ear for the people that had realized they"d been 
betrayed. They wanted to do something about it but couldn"t, possibly, 
I thought, because they"d been robbed of their resources. I thought I 
could help and so I did. No one else was providing financial support to 
these people and I felt they both deserved and needed it. It may be a 
character flaw, but I don"t always feel inclined to obey when someone 
tells me there"s something I shouldn"t do --- especially if that someone 
is a bully. Writing checks isn"t so difficult if you believe it"s going to 
help someone out of a predicament that"s similar to something you"ve 
faced yourself. I did believe and I wrote the checks, but before long, I 
found myself deluged with people wanting to say one thing or another 
about what had happened to them in Scientology. A heartfelt plea to 
right a grievous wrong can be difficult to resist and so I continued to 
listen and I continued to write more checks. 

Try to imagine reading or hearing literally hundreds of stories of 
betrayal and lost hope. Imagine seeing the hurt in so many eyes and 
voices. Then imagine turning to the Church of Scientology and being 
met with a smug disdain for attempting to do anything at all. I see the 
suffering and then I see the Church that promises to relieve suffering 
condemn those who are. Then I"m condemned for trying to do 
something about it. It was an outrageous, heart wrenching situation. It 
kept me doing what I could for quite some time. Then it began to dawn 
on me. After the money"s spent,  then what? What about the future?  It 
was very discouraging  to imagine that Scientology would still be there 
luring hopeful innocents into its sticky "theta"-trap and leaving 
bewildered, disillusioned people in its wake. I"ve been told it"s the 
luckiest that leave Scientology disappointed and disillusioned. The rest 
end up as contented slaves, blind to what they"ve missed and what"s 
been taken from them, having no will left to care. 

I thought about it and eventually was forced to admit that 
indiscriminately throwing money at the Scientology problem and its 
victims was like putting a Band-Aid on an infected wound. What"s 
needed is something that would cure the infection. We need more than 
someone coming in like Santa Claus and distributing presents to the 
broken hearts and lost souls. Presents are better than nothing, but we 
need something more. A year or so ago, I didn"t know what that was. 
All I knew was that whatever it was, it wasn"t in easy reach, no matter 
how much I was willing to spend.

For me, a retired businessman, to invent the magic antidote to the social 
malaise called Scientology is asking a lot --- too much, I"m sorry to 
have to admit. My expertise is business, not religion. I"m not an artistic 
savant and I"ve made no serious study of human nature. Like I said, I 
haven"t had the time! Enlightening myself would take years and lately, 
all my spare time has been used to give audience to one shocking 
Scientology story after another. I had a feeling that sooner or later 
something had to give. I can"t keep listening to horror stories forever 
and I can"t keep writing checks, either. Everyone has limits when it 
comes to spending money. I doubt Bill Gates would have been willing 
to go further than I have, even if he were aware of what is really going 
on in Scientology. 

Not long after I started, I was seeing the end of the road for my conflict 
with Scientology and the end wasn"t a happy one. I had been willing to 
pursue many paths, and did, some extremely unusual, for someone who 
really wanted to make a difference. What I could do still wasn"t 
enough. So perhaps you can imagine my surprise and relief when I 
received an e-mail message from someone who eventually claimed to 
have been one of  a group of five people who were responsible for 
birthing the Church and all the materials of Scientology. 

It was quite a surprise. Five people??? I thought there was only one!! 
Apparently there"s a possibility that what we all thought just isn"t true. 
I can now say with growing certainty that if your faith says the Cof$ 
has just one founder, then you"ve fallen for another of Scientology"s 
"artful illusions". There"s no doubt that L. Ron Hubbard was the lead 
actor in the Scientology story. He surely had a hand in conceiving and 
writing much of the materials. But he wasn"t the only one. 

Yes, it seems that L. Ron Hubbard may have had an editor. If what I"m 
told is true, actor Hubbard also had a director, who doubled as the 
financial manager and accountant. Another writer functioned as art 
consultant. This one was responsible for many of the original ideas that 
underlie the Scientology scripts and performances. There was also a 
German national, a woman, who was the acting consultant. The acting 
consultant was married to the art consultant. The relationships are 
where it really starts to get complex. From what I"m told, it only 
seemed simple because that"s how it was supposed to seem. The work 
of a group became the work of one so the one would appear 
superhuman. From what I"m told, only a small fraction of the material 
attributed to Hubbard was actually written by him.

If you"re finding any of this hard to believe, I have to admit I had a 
hard time believing it too. I still have some serious doubts. Everything 
seems to depend on whether Ralph "Dorian" has been telling me the 
truth. Ralph "Dorian" was Hubbard"s editor, or so he tells me. I put 
"Dorian" in quotes because he"s told me this name is a pseudonym. He 
still hasn"t told me his real name and I don"t have any way of checking 
it out. I"m well aware that he could be lying about his past. Fortunately 
there are some reasons to believe this unlikely. First, he seems to be the 
right age (late seventies, early eighties). Second, he lives in a palatial 
mansion on an enormous piece of land. It"s very obvious that he has a 
considerable amount of capital at his disposal. Third, he hasn"t asked 
me for money and assures me he never will. In fact, he"s told me 
repeatedly that if he ever asks for money, I should consider him a fraud 
and sever connections with him immediately. Fourth, the editor has a 
son. Richard (probably not a pseudonym since I accidentally overheard 
his father casually calling him "Ricky" once) is of a plausibly correct 
age and he confirms the whole story. He also has some pretty good 
stories of his own to tell which mesh almost seamlessly with what his 
father said. And fifth, on the estate can be found a windowless room. It 
must have been about 10x13 feet, with 9 foot ceilings and is set in the 
center of the main house. As a conservative estimate, I"d say that about 
one third of the volume of this room is packed with literally hundreds, 
maybe thousands of notebooks and loose-bound packets of worn, 
yellowed pages. There were boxes and tall bookcases of them. I spent 
some time sitting at a large wooden desk in the middle of the room. I 
was free to look at whatever I liked. It seemed like most of the 
documents were a mixture of typewriter print and handwritten notes. I 
saw at least three different styles of handwriting on them. I"m no 
handwriting expert, but from what I could tell, it"s quite possible the 
pages could contain what I"m told they do --- the rough draft, "working 
versions" of Scientology books and technical bulletins. Though I 
obviously didn"t have time to read them all, what I have seen was 
certainly interesting, to put it mildly.

Don"t think I went in there a believer. It"s fair to say I was guardedly 
optimistic. I would never have agreed to jump the hurdles to get to our 
first meeting unless I anticipated something that would really impress 
me. Richard Dorian sent me some unusually insightful stuff right from 
the start, and neither father nor son has let me down yet. Regardless, on 
the outside chance I am being fooled because I was never actually a 
Scientologist, I"m reserving judgement until more of their material 
comes out to be "tested" on others. Seventy-eight year old father Ralph 
and son Richard are either amazingly brilliant actors, storytellers, 
forgers, etc. --- or --- there"s a lot more to Scientology than what even 
the serious investigators have so far been privy to. 

It"s incredible to hear the senior Dorian speak. I wish I could have 
brought along a tape recorder. He sounds suspiciously like the late L. 
Ron Hubbard. "Whatever"s true for you is what"s true... you don"t have 
to believe any of it... just test it and see if it works."--- I can see why 
so many people fell for Scientology. I"m also looking for something 
that "works" (to expose Scientology). When someone comes along and 
lays a good possibility in my lap, it"s difficult to pass it up. What the 
Dorian pair offers is exciting, no doubt. But because of all he"s told me 
about artful deception, I still feel I must reserve judgement. I strongly 
recommend that you do the same. For all I know, it could still be some 
kind of elaborate trick.

There are some other red flags as well. As I said, I don"t know enough 
about Scientology to rule out the possibility that the "working version" 
documents are fakes. But Dorian Senior has also refused to allow me to 
introduce him or his son to anyone else. 

Mr. Dorian Sr. explains the second red flag in several ways. He 
pointedly told me that it"s lucky that there are any founding artists left 
willing to come forward at all. He also says the proof that we"re all 
looking for is best presented in a "non-standard, unexpected" way. He 
says the Scientologists are trained character assassins. (I"d have to 
agree.) Even if his story is one hundred percent accurate and 
documented from beginning to end on *film*, the Scientologists have 
been well armed with the techniques that could either discredit it or 
suppress it. I guess he should know. He says that naively bringing them 
"proof" is like leading a horse to water that the horse is sure contains or 
conceals a deadly poison of some kind. The horse won"t drink it and 
neither will the Scientologists. And they"ll try their damnedest to make 
absolutely certain no one else drinks it as well. Still, he assures me, 
there"s more than one way to persuade a horse to drink. If you read his 
material, it"s clear that he seems to know what he"s talking about.

Another justification concerns safety. If he brings out proof that would 
convict Scientology and its management of fraud, he may also be 
convicting himself, and possibly even his son as an accomplice. He 
doesn"t trust the governments of the world to all grant him immunity in 
one stroke, nor does he expect that he and his son would  be safe from 
certain people, ex-Scientologist and true believer alike, who would love 
to either pay them both back --- or permanently eliminate them. I grant 
that the Senior Dorian may be a little paranoid, but if I were him, I 
think I"d probably feel the same way.

Yet another justification is that for most of his life, and for all of his 
son"s life, they"ve both been perfectly invisible to the public with 
regard to the father"s clandestine professional role. That was the plan, 
and apparently it worked. Neither of them is interested in surrendering 
to a media circus and the potential for other dangers of various sorts. 
Just to do someone else a favor?? They both agree that if they"re going 
to volunteer to work for other people"s benefit, they"re going to do it 
their way... that"s it, end of discussion. I guess they"ve become 
accustomed to the luxury of privacy. In the last few months I"ve had a 
personal taste of what a loss of privacy can be like and so I can"t find 
reason to blame them. But once again, they"ve assured me that their 
way of handling the situation is going to be much more effective...

What am I supposed to say to all this? I must admit that I don"t have 
complete certainty that I"m not somehow extending the deception. 
What would you do? If they wanted to, the Dorians could go back into 
hiding and leave us all hanging out on a limb. I"m trying to be as 
diplomatic as possible, waiting and hoping for the best.

If you"re wondering why they came to me, that was one of the first 
things I asked about. Ralph Dorian replied by saying he doesn"t trust 
ex-Scientologists. He said he knows what"s happened to them. For this 
reason, he was waiting for a non-Scientologist to show up who was 
sufficiently committed to the cause of exposing the "larger" story. 
Apparently, when he read about how much of my money I had put 
where my mouth was, I passed muster. 

Another thing I asked them is if they want to get rid of Scientology. 
While Richard was unequivocal, Ralph Dorian gave me an answer that 
sounded strange and cryptic at first, but which now makes a lot of 
sense. He expands on it in his accompanying introduction. 

If Dorian Junior and Senior have gone to the time and trouble to 
deceive me, I haven"t found the selfish motive. I suppose time will tell. 
But so far Ralph Dorian doesn"t come across as a man of pretense. He 
readily admits to being an "artist". He didn"t use the word "con-artist" 
but after listening for a while it doesn"t take long to figure out what 
he"s talking about. Both Dorians are willing to talk on in great depth 
about how to deceive people. I"ve listened to hours and hours of it. 
They have a lot to say, especially the father. Considering their wealth, 
someone has apparently been successful in plying the family trade. 
Amazingly, the specific "trade" we"re talking about here is co-founding 
a religion by helping to write and edit its stories and scripts! 

But the fact that the so called "working version" documents could be 
fakes remains a sore point with me. I"m putting my reputation and 
peace of mind on the line here and I don"t want to be disappointed. 
Though I"ve been nearly convinced by the handwriting similarities, it"s 
very difficult for me to place complete confidence in Dorian and son 
without getting the authenticity matter settled. Dorian Jr. suggested a 
solution which I repeated for the father"s benefit. I asked that he allow 
me to post a fictionalized version of one of the rough-draft documents 
for the inspection of Scientologist and ex-Scientologist alike. After 
considerable persuasion, he finally agreed. The fictionalized document 
has certain names and trademarked words either partially or wholly left 
out. Naturally I asked for something significant. Dorian Senior picked 
it out. It retains the title "Translation-Draft 411 Series", the same name 
on the actual document I saw at the Dorian estate. 

Now I leave the question up to you. Could the rough draft that I"ve seen 
actually correspond to a genuine Scientology document? If so, which 
one? You decide. Please read Dorian Senior"s introduction and the 
fictionalized rough-draft itself, and let me know what you think. 


Bob Minton


Next: An Introduction, by Ralph Dorian



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