Behind the Bastards - Part One: The Last Days of L. Ron Hubbard

Episode Date: June 4, 2019

In Episode 64, Robert is joined by Michael Swaim and Abe Epperson to discuss the end of L. Ron Hubbard's life.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science?

And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's Elroning, my Hubbard? I'm Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastards, the podcast where we talk about the very worst people in all of history. And today is our super special conclusion episode of the life of Elron Hubbard. And with me today to talk about the last 10 years of the craziest man in history's life is Michael Swame and Abe Eperson. Hi, thank you for having us. I was making cheering and crowd sounds with my mouth.

Oh, it sounded mechanical to me. I didn't do a good job. I thought you just did that for every 10 minutes to like seep out all the saliva from your mouth. No, you know what I do when I fuck something up like that, as I toss my throwing bagels. Oh, I was aware of the throwing bagel trope. I thought they were individually thrown. This was a three-pack. He's angry. And they bounced right off the wall and back to me, so I'm re-armed with my throwing bagels. We're also in a room with dozens of panels you could have targeted. You targeted one right by someone's head. Well, that's because the nature of the bounce means it won't hit Sophie if I hit the board to her left. It'll bounce right back to me.

I'm an expert at drawing those bagels. I love that you keep them contained in the bag, though, so your vigilanteism is at least kind. I didn't want to get crumbs everywhere. Exactly. You get ants and rats and stuff anyway. Yeah, that's how you get rats. Yeah, and I don't want rats inside the house. I only want rats in the houses of my enemies. There's only the government acceptable level of rat in this studio, and I appreciate that. Yeah, which is five. Yeah, that's the max. Same as peanut butter. Which is why there's so many rats. It's not the open peanut butter jars from back when I had throwing peanut butter.

They tried to rescue their rat friends who were in the peanut butter jars. See, I have five rats at home, too, and I'm in, like, a ratatouille situation. I haven't seen that movie, but I think a guy cooks rats into food and then serves them to the people of France. Apes eating rats. Apes eating rat at home. That's what he's trying to tell you. Your version of ratatouille is the correct one. Well, I mean, the rent is too damn high in this town. We all really eat the odd rat. Now, did y'all both listen to the three-parter I did on the life of L. Ron Hubbard, or L.R.H.? I did, indeed. I gotta ask, before we get in, were you surprised to learn that he, in fact, could fuck?

Oh, I was ready to immediately answer no to everything you said, because I've done, like, he's not the most obscure bastard you've covered. No, not at all. I've done my own research, but yeah, that was the one detail. You found the one detail that was surprising. I was very pleased, because it's not like he needed a win. He definitely didn't need a win. He kind of nailed it. But it's just kind of one of those things that life just serves up to you, like reality just says, and circumstance. And you go, ah, yes, back to nihilism. Yeah, it's like you find out Milton Berle had a foot-long dick, and you're like, why, but okay. I don't know, there's one thing that came across in that book of a thousand Milton Berle jokes.

I had that as a kid. Man, you just flashed me back to, I haven't thought of it in 20 years. And I remember thinking, as a seven-year-old reading that, I bet this guy had a fucking salami that could have knocked a dog's head off. Yeah, well, it was dead. Just as a little child imagining that. It was dedicated to his testicles for all the weight they bear. As a kid, I just didn't think anything of that, you know. It just seemed like a normal old comedian talking about his balls. Speaking of old comedians talking about their balls, or not speaking of that at all. When we last left Elron Hubbard, he'd just come ashore in Florida after multiple years of shirking all the laws of land and most of the laws of sea.

Old, ill, and as crazy as a cat with an inner ear infection, Hubbard launched Operation Gold Mine. This was his plan to create the Mecca of Scientology, an entire city dedicated to the religion where Scientologists could rule one another and other people, based on the enlightened principles of their glorious religion. Now, you guys are going to build a Mecca to your own personal religions. Where do you pick? Oh, shit. Well, I'll just... That's a great question. You got, see, this is an improv rule, you know, you're on the spot, first dancer, no censorship.

What came to mind was Portland, Oregon. No, that's a great place to have a call. That's where I plan to have a call. I think I'm seeing you, but also because I've often, that's been at the top of my list of other places to live when I went and if I leave LA. But I also heard your episode about, in part, the history of Portland, so I feel bad saying that. I would put mine on top of Mount Rushmore. Way better. You have more time to think. Yeah, I have more time to think, in general, on Mount Rushmore.

Question is, would it be your face? Is your Mecca in the shape of your face? It would be whatever the fuck I want. Just you frowning down on four presidents? Yeah, on my ongoing battle to beat the presidents. That is what we know about Abe. Well, Elron Hubbard was, as I think we've established, the craziest man who ever lived. He's a contender in that. And as the craziest man who ever lived, he picked the craziest state.

And I say this as a Texan. Nobody beats Florida in the crazy state lottery. It's gotta be Florida. And of course, Elron Hubbard picked the city of clear water, Florida. Now, there was a downside to this, which is that the site that Elron Hubbard and his minions selected for their faith's new capital was already occupied by tens of thousands of people who were not Scientologists. So this was a problem, but not an insurmountable one, because Elron Hubbard has had, as he had, you know, most of our last three episodes. His theory just spawned.

Oh, it's not a theory. No, it has. He's bopping around. I hope his head's frozen in a jar. I'd like to see him get one more act. I'd like to see him and Ted Williams' head fight each other someday. Sure. Just rolling around. It's one of those things where after everything we went through in the first three episodes, it's shocking to me how much gas this guy had left in the day.

This is only the last decade, right? This is the last, like, ten years of his life. Hammer them home again. This is the Game of Thrones finale episode. This is not the whole run. Most dictators get a two-part, maybe a three-part, like Elron Hubbard. This is a five-part. Wait, there's more. So Clearwater, Florida is located west of Tampa and north of St. Petersburg. Clear. Far edge of Florida's Midwest coast.

Yep, it has a fine harbor, which was good because Elron Hubbard still fancied himself a Commodore. And as you pointed out there, Michael, the city's name Clearwater made it a perfect fit with Elron Hubbard's religious canon. Because, of course, Clear is the state of being, like, highly evolved. Yeah, it's the whole goal in the Scientology canon. In 1975, when a disguised Elron Hubbard arrived with his retinue, Clearwater was a sleepy retirement community. It went by the nickname Sparkling Clearwater, and a third of its 100,000 citizens were over 65. It was not a place that prided itself on hustle and bustle. The town's most prominent building was the old Fort Harrison Hotel, an increasingly decrepit monument to Clearwater's glory days.

The hotel was empty and for sale. In October, the Southern Land Sales and Development Corporation purchased the old hotel. The local attorney who represented the building's old owners called it one of the strangest transactions he'd ever seen. The building's new buyers had paid $2.3 million in cash for the building, and the fact that they had $2.3 million in cash was literally all he knew about them. The buyers would not even admit to having a telephone number. Good little gold eyes. I smell a grift coming. It's almost impressive they didn't run a fowl of Disney operatives buying land out from Florida residents to expand.

Any group like crazier and wealthier than the Disney Corporation? In this period of time, it's the Church of Scientology. Now it's Disney. I mean, humans have a long history of if you get enough people and put them in a spot, you can declare that yours. Which is exactly what I plan to do some day in Oregon. Get a bunch of people. You guys saw that documentary, Wild, Wild Country. Yes.

That literally is my goal. Minus poisoning that town probably. I saw the first four of those. You and the important. And I was like, it's kind of boring. They're not culty enough for the part of me that wants to watch it, and everyone said something happened. So now I know what they poisoned a town. They poisoned the shit out of a town.

Yeah, we're past spoiler range for that. I think they were kind of on the right though. Anyway, let's move on past that. Depends on the town. Yeah, less than a week later, the Southern Land Development Corporation bought another of the city's landmarks, the Bank of Clearwater Building. They paid $550,000 again in cash. Now residents started talking after this, and they talked even more when a strange old man in a green jumpsuit showed up in town and publicly announced that the Southern Land Company would be leasing the buildings to a group called the United Churches of Florida. He claimed that the United Churches would host religious meetings and seminars there.

Now this perplexed local journalists, they could find no records anywhere of the United Churches of Florida ever existing. This was because there was no United Churches of Florida or Southern Land Development Company for that matter. Both organizations were, of course, fronts for the Church of Scientology. On December 5th, Elron Hubbard officially announced Project Power 3, a.k.a. Operation Normandy. I shave with that. It gets really close to the grain. It's got those three blades. You say that with a full beard.

No one at this table shaves regularly. The literature they handed me made me understand that I am clean-shaven. The Scientology razor works. This is just my sin coming out of my face. Yeah, he's clear-shaven. I'm going to get it out of it away. You're shaved on the inside, which is where it ends. Little hairs, little feet, and it's all the same stuff.

Now, the purpose of Operation Normandy was to fully investigate the Clearwater City and County area so we can distinguish our friends from our enemies and handle as needed. Hubbard's overall plan to accomplish this was to locate opinion leaders, then their enemies, the dirt, scandal, vested interest, crime of the enemies with overt data as much as possible, then turn this over to United Churches who will approach the opinion leader and get his agreement to look into a specific subject, which will lead to the enemy's crimes. United Churches then discovers the scandal, etc., and turns it over to the opinion leader for his use. Ops can be done as a follow-up to remove or restrain the enemy. Just gets right into it with how we deal with our enemies that we're going to make. His tool is to blackmail so quick. Someone introduces you by pointing him across the room at a party like, oh yeah, that's my friend Elron.

He's got dirt on you. Damn, that was fast. I mean, he's like in his 60s at this point. He's experienced. He doesn't pussyfoot around. We're going to make enemies, so we need a plan to destroy them. Our mob boat has reached land. Begin discovering everyone's sins. You know in video games where you're supposed to have offense and defense and you have to power them both up? He's done this enough to know he's like, well, it's good to be ahead of the curve on the defense. He's been playing for a long time. Now, one of these enemies was a reporter for the Clearwater Sun named Mark Sableman.

Mark had been sniffing around the church's operations in Clearwater and revealed some evidence that suggested the United Churches were really the Church of Scientology. And so, on January 26, 1976, a church official named Joe Lisa wrote up a scheme to get Mark fired. Quote, Journalist reveals the very basic detail that they're secretly buying up land. And that at one point in time, sub-sub to my Johnny. That's literally how it's written.

Sub-sub to my Johnny. That's like a song you would hear at the sock hop. Or like, it could be kind of like a greeting too. Like, sub-sub to my Johnny. That should be your top or next episode. Sub-sub to my Johnny. Sub-sub to my Johnny. There we go.

Throughout later 1975 and early 1976, Clearwater flooded with young, uniformed Scientologists. They began renovating the church's new acquisitions downtown. Their presence was strange and discomfiting for locals, since the newcomers refused to answer questions on who they worked for and what they were doing. Hubbard himself supervised the construction efforts from five miles away in a condominium complex in the nearby town of Dunedin. During his few visits into Clearwater, he posed as a photographer. His initial plan was to sneak into a respected position in local society

by posing as a photographer, taking pictures to encourage local tourism. And a letter to one member of the Guardian Office, which was the trunk of the Church of Scientology, aimed at protecting Al Ron Hubbard. He wrote, quote, Taking pictures of beautiful Clearwater is the local button. My portrait of the mayor will hang in the city hall. Never fear.

So pretentious. First of all, it's clear that he was like, well, I'm not going to live there. Find me the nerdiest sounding town. I got to live in a JR Tolkien named town. I am Elrond, after all. He is Elrond in Dunedin. Yeah, he's an elf who collided with a space telescope, Elrond Hubbard, right? Which actually just turns out to be an orc.

But secondly, is he allowed back on land? I thought he was going to get arrested at any time. No, he's not allowed. That's why he's always in disguise and hiding. So he's like on the, I mean, because I thought the boat was his sort of final solve of evading the law. But even in this late stage, he's like, I'm risking it. He's risking it now.

He's being hidden at this point. He has a whole team of people. The Guardian Office is just there to keep people off his back. Which would sound silly if you hadn't just dropped the KKK episode, where they're like the exalted Cyclones. Oh yeah, and the King Klegel. Oh, the Klaiby. Klaiby's my Klaiby.

Unfortunately for L. Ron Hubbard, the mayor of Clearwater had no interest in being photographed by a strange old man. He was deeply concerned with this army of anonymous invaders. At one point he reached out to the United Churches and said, I am discomfited by the increasing visibility of security personnel armed with billy clubs and mace employed by the United Churches of Florida. I am unable to understand why this degree of security is required by a religious organization.

You see F more like UFC, am I right? It's like a reasonable question. It seems like you brought an army to our sleepy retirement town. And also why? A Catholic priest walking down a cobblestone street, like, oh, how you doing lads, just smacking a knight's dick into his hand? That is discomfiting. I think that's the perfect word.

That is the perfect word. It became clear that the Scientologists would need to stage a reveal of their organization to the people of Clearwater. In early 1976 they held a meeting at the Fort Harrison Hotel, officiated by L. Ron Hubbard himself. He wore a beret, cacky fatigues, and headphones, and local religious leaders watched in wonder and confusion as this bizarre man presided over the setup of microphones

and stage managed the production of the press conference down to the tiniest detail. He was introduced as Mr. Hubbard, an engineer. We could have caught him! Why didn't they get him? Again, one of the, like, can through lines of any time you read about criminals in the 70s, like, the FBI really wasn't very good at its job. I mean, you could debate whether or not they still are, but everyone was kind of asleep at the wheel until September 11th.

Which, you know, is part of why September 11th happens. Right, it's almost as if in the human narrative there's incompetence has always been with us. Yes, especially of those of power. Yeah, it shouldn't have been super hard to find L. Ron Hubbard. Now, 500 local citizens attended the meeting where they were shown their renovations down to the Fort Harrison Hotel. Scientology representatives tried to reassure them

that the church was a fundamentally friendly force with no nefarious aims towards their town. A spokesman for the church told them, Scientologists are people who don't drink or violate laws. They are friendly and want to contribute. The very next day, the Church of Scientology filed a $1 million lawsuit against the mayor of Clearwater, Gabriel Cazares, suing him for libel, slander, and a bevy of civil rights violations.

A few days after announcing his presence in Florida and instantly suing the mayor of the town, L. Ron Hubbard went out to get a suit tailored near Dunedin. It turned out that the tailor was a science fiction fan, and since Ron was a proud narcissist, he immediately revealed his identity to the fan and told him he was staying nearby. The news percolated through the local rumor mill,

and before long, it was common knowledge that the prophet of Scientology was hanging out in Dunedin rather than Clearwater. Now at the time, there were numerous pending lawsuits and investigations against the church. The fact that Hubbard's location had been revealed by himself made him incredibly paranoid. Within days of revealing himself to Clearwater, he and his entourage fled 1200 miles north to Georgetown.

Hubbard grew a beard and bought a new wardrobe at from a local Salvation Army store. One of his aides, who'd been with him during his long boat journey, noted that it was strange because on the ship, he had all these phobias about dust and smells and how his clothes had to be washed, but all that vanished when we were living together in Washington. He goes boho.

Kind of an Assange arc for him. He had like a second religion family. A secret man. Oh man, they're just pests though, right? Anytime anyone might be a threat, they just throw everything at him. I'm gonna see you then. Oh, didn't you hear? They throw everything at everyone in any area they're in

before they get to know anyone. It's how you react to threats when you have infinite money and are just a lunatic. And I think it's a sign of your own, like I feel like from your previous episodes too, he walked around with a lot of darkness inside him. Like there are some people who I think have done horrendous things and it really goes off them like water off a duck's back.

His just sheer obsession with, well, everyone's got dirt. Everyone's got skeletons. The trick in life is just to find the skeletons first. That's the act of someone who's like, yeah, I have the most skeletons. I have so many skeletons. Ms. preemptively throwing skeletons. I kidnapped my own baby. And if you say anything about these skeletons,

I'm gonna create new skeletons. It's also incredible that he, I wish I could have been there in his head in the moment he's leaving the Taylor's office when it turned from like, it was nice meeting a fan. I shouldn't have done that. Oh, L, that was real bad, L. All the crimes you've been committing.

Wait a minute. Lil Ron. So he grows to Georgetown and grows a beard, like we all do at some point. Now, while Hubbard hid out in Georgetown, he continued to direct a variety of clandestine operations in the water. His main goal was to unseat Gabriel Cazares,

who had grown into a figure of almost Luciferian importance to the Scientologists. He still wants that portrait. They were really worried about his moderate concern about them taking over his town with a paramilitary security force. According to the book, Bearface Messiah, quote, Scientologists had gone back to his hometown

of Alpine, Texas, trawled through public records, nosed around the courthouse, and even checked the headstones in the local graveyard without success. The mayor's conference in Washington from 13 to 17 March, in the Guardian's office made hasty plans

to give him a welcome. A Scientologist posing as a Washington reporter sought an interview with Cazares, and introduced him to a friend, Sharon Thomas, who offered to show the mayor the sights of Washington. Ms. Thomas was, of course, working for the Guardian's office. Driving with the mayor through Scenic Rock Creek Park, she temporarily lost control of her car

and ran into a pedestrian who crumpled dramatically. To the mayor's horror, Ms. Thomas accelerated away without stopping, leaving the injured man lying on the road. Is the injured man also a player? Yup, yeah, he's a scientist. Everyone involved is a Scientologist, but the mayor? This is like a play for no one.

It's like in The Simpsons when they put on a play to convince Mr. Burns to fund the school or some shit. I wonder if they rehearsed. Oh, they must have. They must have, and it's all for him to feel more important. He had a team always practicing to fake a hit and run, just because he knew at some point I'm going to need this.

I want to be in those morning production meetings. Yeah. We're just in a right. He was talking last night about not feeling like so great when he's not tall. So can we just like, let's build his platform, make him taller for everything? Who are our shortest people to put around him?

They were doing this shit. I want to see the scenes that they rehearsed that were cut. Like, okay, in case the mayor gets carried off by a giant bird of prey, we have this great scene worked out. It never happened. It's just like Slay stayed on the cutting room floor. Yeah. With the Theatons.

With the Theatons. That's why I get the acting connection now. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. They had to do a lot of improv. We'll be getting a little more into that too. And then pedestrian? Thomas Cruz.

Yeah. That was his first role. Now, the plan was to use this hit and run to discredit the mayor. A guardians office memo noted, I should think the mayor's political days are at an end. Of course, a faked hit and run committed by someone else did not have the derailing effect on the mayor's career

that the guardians office had hoped. A passenger. Yeah. But Hubbard was ready the same day with another plan to try and convince Miami's Cuban population that the mayor of Clearwater was pro-Castro. Oh, my God. Like most of Alron Hubbard's harebrained schemes,

this one did not bear fruit. The Commodore cooked up ideas like IHOP cooks pancakes, poorly and constantly. But all of his schemes were not half-assed. And while all this was going on, the Church of Scientology was deep in the middle of the most ambitious scheme in its history to date. Operation Snow White.

On November 9th, 1975, an agent of the church, codenamed Silver, walked into the Internal Revenue Service headquarters in Washington, D.C. He entered the office of Attorney Charles Zuvrayan, although he had no legal right to be there and began taking documents. He made copies of hundreds of confidential tax documents

and then walked out the door with them. Like the purchase of the Fort Harrison Hotel, this was done under the express orders of Alron Hubbard. The genesis of Snow White had come in 1973, whilst Hubbard and his Sea Org were still trawling in international waters. Multiple nations refused to let the Scientologists dock at their ports.

And Alron Hubbard decided this was due to a worldwide conspiracy to discredit his church, rather than its numerous, numerous crimes. Everyone thinks I'm an asshole. Must be a conspiracy. I'm going to dress up like Spider-Man and ruin his good name. Hubbard tasked Scientology's investigative arm,

the Guardian Office, with countering this false information. The name Snow White was picked because Hubbard claimed that the case against him was, in essence, a fable. Now, call it Operation Fable. That's way cooler. Well, he went with Snow White. Under the direction of his wife, Mary Hubbard, Operation Snow White would grow into a sprawling infiltration

of the U.S. federal government at every level. Agent Silver's theft of IRS documents was just one part of the scheme. Agent Silver was really IRS clerk Gerald Wolfe, and in that capacity, he was able to steal more than 30,000 pages worth of documents. By the beginning of 1975, the church had actually succeeded in placing agents inside the IRS,

the U.S. Coast Guard, and the DEA. Now, this scheme was executed entirely by agents of the Guardian Office. They were trained to lie, or in Scientology terms, outflow false data in order to worm their way into these federal organizations. That's a good synonym for lie. Flow, I'm wrapping my head around that euphemism.

Outflow false data. Synergia is the dishonesty. Also, your name's already Wolfe. Agent Wolfe was better than Agent Silver. Or Silver Wolfe, or I don't know. Agent Silver Wolfe. Red Fox, no, wait, that was an addition. Agent Red Fox.

Snow Wolf. White Fox. He's got a filthy sense of humor, but he gets shit done. Speaking of fables, you know what's not a fable? What? Products? Oh, they're real. Your heart's so in this, man.

They're very, you know what? I don't need the guff. See, I throw the bagels, they come right back to me. Hey, those are some products. The services are real, but we are not. The services are real, and the throwing bagels are real. My current throwing bagels are everything bagels, kettle-boiled and health-baked sliced,

the bagel that won the West. And they're bruising badly, which I didn't think bagels were supposed to do. The bagel that won the West. I didn't know that, yeah. Did these wipe out the Cherokee? Are these genocide bagels that I throw in on the wall? Those bagels.

They're everything, so they're definitely genocide, I guess everything else. That's not cool. Thousands of American bison died with those bagels embedded in their skulls. Sophie, I want bagels that didn't commit genocide. Fair. Yeah, fair.

Also, these expired February 25th. I want fresh throwing bagels. Actually, the expired ones work a little bit better. So, check out these ads. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what?

They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI, sometimes, you gotta grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys,

we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark. And not in the good badass way.

He's a nasty shark. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then, for sure, he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys. On the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI

isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday.

I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus? It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio App,

Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories.

But there was this one that really stuck with me. About a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost.

This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space. 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back! I shouldn't have come back when I was eating. Yeah, right when you put that in your mouth. Well, you fully control when you come back,

that's your choice, and you can survive with it. That's number three for those keeping track. I hit some equipment with that one, but Daniel says it's fine. We've returned from examining the ads, the antiquated woodworking tool, and I, for one, will purchase one. Yeah, delicious products or services. Now, what's not delicious is the throwing bagels

that apparently are genocide bagels. Yeah, I think they're genocide bagels. I like to apologize to genocide victims for throwing genocide bagels. I've heard a lot of words in my time on this earth. I've never heard the combination, tasty genocide. I mean, I don't know. I don't eat bagels. I just throw them, so I don't know if they're tasty.

I can say these are the bounciest of the bagels. Oh, you're not even vouching for these bagels as edible? That's why they're throwing bagels, Michael. Okay, all right. I assumed a throwing bagel could sort of retire and end its life in my little mouth. Is that not a possibility? I'm not going to say you can't, but that's not their purpose.

They're everything bagels, so you can do anything with them. This bagel is my everything now. Including genocide. Yes, unfortunately. I guess, yeah, they really are everything bagels. Well, if a bagel is everything, it's all good and all evil. It's all on there. That bagel both invented the seatbelt

and killed John Benet Ramsey. Everything. And is the spirit of Christmas as well as the spirit of St. Louis. And is that right when college kid who led the campaign against wearing seatbelts and died in an accident that he would have lived through if he had worn his seatbelt?

It's all in the bagel, people. We've gotten too invested in the philosophy of what an everything bagel is. The cream cheese is Hitler. I don't ask why, it's always been that way. I think we can all agree on that. All right, let's get back to... What is this bit?

It's a little bit of bagel. So, the Guardian Office agents were infiltrating all these federal agencies, the IRS, the DEA, the Coast Guard. Much of the data gathered, like the IRS files copied by Agent Silver was collected in order to help the church deal with its mountain of pending audits.

At this point, it was not a religious institution in the legal sense of the word, but it was still refusing to pay taxes, so the IRS was not super happy. So it still had not secured the religious exemption? Until much later. Now, the Guardian's office also used their connections to the US government to dig up dirt on their political enemies,

particularly journalists who dared to write about them. According to the LA Times, The Guardian Office saved the worst for author Paulette Cooper The Church reported these threats to the FBI The truth did eventually come out, but it took two years and cost Paulette $20,000 in legal fees and $6,000 in psychiatric treatment. Now, Hubbard actually hated Paulette enough

that he had the Guardian's office dedicated an entire operation to destroying her, code named Freak Out. I found an article where she recites a small list of the things they did before reporting those fake bomb threats to the FBI. What are you doing work today, honey? We're destroying this one woman's life.

We're destroying this lady. She wrote a book. Yeah, we're in Q2. I'm hoping by Q4 she'll be contemplating suicide. That's the goal. We all get a bonus if it happens before Q4. Also, did the agents who infiltrated the IRS, like 99% of the time, have to just keep up their cover by doing tax returns?

I think so. I want to know if a Scientologist operative effort is my taxes by chance. Well, not if you were filing taxes in the late 70s. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, I have a very bad tax cheat, which is I've been filing taxes since before I was born.

I'm hoping it'll pay off in the end. You're going to stop paying taxes early. You're going to have to stay in a plus column. Here's Paulette Cooper. I soon got used to telephone death threats, harassing calls, and lawsuits. I was occasionally followed, often conspicuously as people seemed to be trying to gain access to my apartment.

Then, in the basement of my small building, I discovered alligator clips on my phone wires, likely the remnants of a phone tap. Next, my cousin, who was also short and slim like me, was in my apartment alone when a man arrived with a flower delivery for me. When she opened the door, the intruder pulled a gun out of the flowers and put it to her temple.

Fortunately, the gun jammed, misfired, or was empty. The man then began to choke her, and then when she pulled away and screamed, he ran off. The police said afterward that they were mystified because there appeared to be no motive for the attack. I quickly moved to a safer Dorman building, but soon afterwards, 300 of my new neighbors received an anonymous smear letter about me,

outrageously describing me as a part-time prostitute with venereal disease. They really showed control with the part-time, though. They're like, don't drag her through the night. Not a full time. Not a full time. Wow. That's a...

The reason why they chose part-time, too, is that they're like, she can't even be a full prostitute. That's a different way to take it. But you know it's the one they took. She hasn't made varsity sex work yet. Yeah, she can't entirely subsist off of that. So she's got to do the writing books about

Scientology thing as an off-gauge. They're just worse lies and worse lies. Now, much as I do love talking about the wacky schemes of L. Ron Hubbard, it's important to remember that for every botched fake hit-and-run, which is just genuinely whimsical and funny, someone like Paulette Cooper was subjected to insane, almost unimaginable torment

for the crime of writing a book that angered L. Ron Hubbard. It murdered her. Well, it seems like it might have been actually just a torture technique, where they were never planning to shoot her, but that's a thing that you'll do. I talked to someone who was in an Iranian prison and tortured for a while, and fake executions were a common thing.

The CIA did it, too, with people who captured in Iraq, where you put a gun to their head and pull the trigger, but it's not loaded because that just really fucks with people. I guess because he went on to choker it, it makes you imagine he really was sent to kill her, but a jam is also pretty unlikely. Like as a torture rehearsal?

Just to fuck her up. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they'll execute a prisoner of war with a son that has no bullets to be psychologically violent. Now you're fucked up! Enjoying the next 40 years! Now, meanwhile, back in Operation Snow White,

over the months and years, Scientology Spies had made their way into the Department of Justice. Placing an operative as the secretary to an assistant U.S. attorney who handled the mountain of foyer requests filed by the Church, Freedom of Information Act requests. This was the surface legitimate goal of Operation Snow White.

Hubbard framed it as a perfectly legal blizzard of freedom of information requests aimed at trying to figure out just why so many people thought the Church of Scientology was an affairious entity. Now, because... I'm usually pro foyer. Like foyer has been a force for good, mostly. Not in this case.

Because many of these foyer requests pertained to records that were critical to the Church's rampant criminal activity, the Church would be denied the right to see them, which is part of how foyer works. The Church's man in the Justice Department would be able to know when they were like, okay, they requested this document, it's being denied,

and so he would get a copy of the document they were getting denied and smuggle them out to Church authorities. So they knew what everyone was on. Yeah, exactly. Now, the IRS was Elron Hubbard's greatest nemesis outside of the concept of psychiatry, and they were where his Guardian Office

at one point an office operative managed to bug an IRS conference room by wiring a recorder into a wall socket that allowed him to listen in on agency meetings via his car's FM radio. At another point, two Scientologists used their faked IRS credentials to get inside government archives and photocopy documents related to the Church.

Now, the head of operation Snow White was again Mary Sue Hubbard, and when it all came crashing down, spoiler, she is the one who would take legal blame. But basically everyone who has studied the Church, or Hubbard, agrees that he was the center of conspiracy. Yeah, it's almost like people who are scared

that everything is a conspiracy, make conspiracies. Yeah, do nothing but create conspiracies. Yeah, because of the worldview. And it seems like everything is the mafia. Like everything works like the mafia. To get you.

Right, it's the same, you just shift the blame to a lower down person and keep the, you know... Concept of the lieutenants are made men, kind of stuff. Yeah, and the one who's in the clink for a year, but we got Stringer on the outside, and he can run messages to Wee Bay, whatever you need. Yeah, and in Elron Hubbard's case,

he's Avan Barksdale. I guess. Except he never spends time in a cell. Yeah, because he's a mythical, he's more of a mythic figure. Yeah, I do think this is also the first time I've heard of spy work that is too boring to contemplate doing. Oh my God.

Like, do you want to be a spy? Yeah, dude. Okay, go into this IRS office and install a bug, that's kind of cool. Now sit in a van and listen to what IRS people say all day, every day. Drive around listening to the IRS radio. Are we cops? Kind of the opposite of cops.

Yep, new cops. Spock? Yeah. Is Spock cops? That's not how that works. It's the cops, Spock. Oh yeah, it is, it is. The cops backward are Spock. I've always said that Commander Spock

is the opposite of a cop. You know why? The blue uniform. No, that doesn't work. Living long in the years. Living long in Prosper, I'm looking for the pun. Yeah, I really didn't have anything there. Okay, you're just hoping somebody was going to...

I was hoping somebody was going to pass that ball back. Somebody comedy now. Yeah, and we failed. That is psychological. Hand over your badge and gun. Yeah. Throw these bangles. Right back at my feet. I hate the genocide they were

complicit in, but they're damn good throwing bagels. Really good throwing bagels. Friday in slip, shoving bagels. Those are different bagels. You need a littler bagel. Most orifices are small. Bagel bites. Yeah, good for shoving. I put bagel bites.

Throwing bagels can be big. Shoving bagels need to be small enough to fit in most holes. To just kind of ease in there. Call me old fashioned, but I like just shoving bagel a little walk around. You can grab on it. It's not got too much on the outside. That's a good walking bagel.

Back to evil. I was ready to talk about shoving bagels more. Because you know, if it's bagel bites, they make their own lube. Do they now? Back to Scientology. Bagel bites. Michael Meisner. Michael Meisner,

who was the fake victim of the fake hit and run aimed at destroying the mayor of Clearwater, which is also a major part of Operation Snow White. He personally broke into the department of justice several times and organized the copying of tens of thousands of secret files. Under Meisner's direction, decoding equipment was installed to provide direct secure communication

between church headquarters in Clearwater and the guardians office in Los Angeles. After Virginia, O'Ron Hubbard himself wound up hiding next on Overland Avenue in Culver City, California. I lived there. Yeah, that was about a block away from my first home in Los Angeles. Wow, yeah, me too.

O'Ron Hubbard hid after he decided he'd spent too much time in Georgetown and he had to get out of the east coast. Wow. So in mid-1976, with Operation Snow White at its height and Hubbard living in his third undisclosed location since returning to dry land a year ago, Mary Sue Hubbard

finally joined back up with her husband to warn him about some major problems not related to the fact that they were conducting the largest infiltration of the federal government in U.S. history. See, it turns out that living on a series of boats and searching for gold for like a decade committing a vast and dizzying crea financial crime spying on the government

living in a series of safe houses is kind of bad for someone's family life. He blew up those imaginary submarines. Yeah, he did blow up those imaginary submarines. Oh, yeah, that's right. I'm claiming it. And didn't the racist guy do it too? Yes, yes.

George Lincoln Rockwell, they made the same lie. So it's almost like there's a continuity of liars and like wanting to be awesome and making your own mess. You know that song Everybody Wants to Rule the World? It's like that, but with blowing up a Japanese submarine. Yeah, yeah. It's like cred in those circles.

Yeah. So yeah, the things were not great with the Hubbard family at this point in time. His daughter Diana's marriage was falling apart. His son Quinton was ostensibly in the Sea Org, but was constantly out of pocket and battling crippling depression. And worst of all, Elron Hubbard's daughter, Suzette,

was dating non-scientologists. Now, Mary Sue suggested that all of these problems could be solved by providing the family with a little bit more stability. So, using some of the church's literally infinite funds, they bought a gigantic compound in Southern California named La Quinta. The family moved in

that October. For a while, all was well. The Commodore's messengers noted that he seemed to be much more relaxed and happier after moving into his new ranch. This did not last long. On Wednesday, November 17, 1976, Hubbard received dire news. His son Quinton had been found dead

in his car in Las Vegas, the victim of a successful suicide. Mary Sue wept. Elron Hubbard screamed. That stupid fucking kid. That stupid fucking kid. Look at what he's done to me. What happened to blaming the Theatons, dude? Like he should fall to his knees

and go, Theatons! You stole my boy! You stole my boy, Theatons! Yeah, that's tragic. Yeah, according to Bearface Messiah, quote, The Guardian's office, meanwhile, had moved swiftly

to handle the situation. Its local representative in Las Vegas was a pit boss at the Sands Hotel by the name of Ed Walters. I had been working as a covert operator for about eight years, he said. I had secretly tape recorded a psychiatrist and got him to talk about lobotomies to try and discredit him. And I had bugged the meetings of the Clark County Mental Health Association.

Things like that. I worked on anything that Org considered to be a threat to the Hubbards. Who's he saying this to? This is what he said to the author of Bearface Messiah. Okay, so he presumably got the program at some point. Yeah, he left the church at some point. He was just a classic casino pit boss slash spy for the church of Scientology.

There's your mouth connection right there. So what info is he getting, though? Like stuff like this. They want dirt on a psychiatrist, so he gets this guy drunk and bugs him talking about committing lobotomies. He gets to be like, yeah, I guess lobotomies are pretty cool. We should do more. He's like, got you, mother fucker.

Cha-ching, another good ass day for Ed Walters. So anyway, this is Walter's again. When they found out Quinton was here, I was told to get a hold of all of his medical files. There was apparently evidence that he had had a homosexual encounter shortly before he was found,

and they didn't want anything like that to get out. There was a girl Scientologist working in the hospital in a very secure position, and she got all the reports on Quinton and gave them to me, and I handed them over to the Guardian's office. Quinton was cremated the next day. Those who knew him suggest that he probably just wanted out of Scientology but couldn't think

of a way to do so without ending his own life. According to Ed Walters, you don't just leave something like Scientology. You quit and then instantly become an enemy. He knew his father violently attacked anyone who betrayed him, and he knew that the Guardian's office would be after him as a traitor. He had grown up in Scientology and would have been

tremendously afraid of the world out there, full of wogs and evil people. I guess he just couldn't handle it. Now, L. Ron Hubbard probably would have yelled the same thing if he had less Scientology instead of killing him. What has he done to me? It's one of those things that's crazy because, of course, they have some people in Vegas.

He's like, they have this pit boss in Vegas and they have a lady working at a hospital, but I feel like at this point, you get the feeling that at this point in the church's history, they have people like that in pretty much every city. Every major city in the United States. They've got Scientologists scattered around who they can trust to like,

we need you to pull some medical records for us. We need you to bug this conversation. We need you to get this guy wasted or whatever. That's almost the more baffling part and I can wrap my head around the concept of crazy people doing crazy stuff because they want to be awesome. But the fact that they convince,

in mass, all these people of different walks of life that are applicable in the way of like, oh, I can get information from them. Like, that's just... What is that demographic consistency? You got to keep in mind one of the things he's saying at this point in time.

The Cold War is pretty ornery in the late 70s. This is not that long before Red Dawn comes out. Right, so fear is high. Fear is high. Elrond Hubbard, one of the ways he's billing Scientology is like, this is the tech, which is like his term for their religious stuff. This is what's going to save the world.

This is what's going to make a nuclear war possible. So all of you are like the guardians of this sacred knowledge that I've brought from space. All of you are like integral in saving the world. So these people view themselves as secret agents in the cause

of the salvation of humanity. Which, if you're just like a pit boss or a lady working in a mid-level position at a hospital and you want some excitement in your life, it's cool, right? Like, you get to be a secret spy, bug these evil psychiatrists or whatever. Also ironic that the only

place he didn't befoul with horrendous crimes is space. I think that's the only place he's innocent. He totally got the underground. He wrote letters to NASA saying that you're not going to get into space without our help. That's what I mentioned.

I bet your bottom butt that this is a guy who genuinely wanted to go to space. I used to read his sci-fi books because I read all sci-fi books. It was genuine. He loves space. He loves him to space. We're all grateful that he didn't make it there.

No, it didn't need L. Ron Hubbard. You know what else doesn't need L. Ron Hubbard? The wonderful products and services that show with their advertising dollars. Why would they? They're fully actualized. They're fully actualized. I've heard about these. These services and the products?

Let's all hear about them some more. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson,

in a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI, sometimes, you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys,

we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark. And not in the good badass way.

He's a nasty shark. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you

that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science.

And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial

to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus. It's all made up.

Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know

is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me.

About a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991 and that man, Sergei Kreklev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country,

the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space. 313 days that changed the world.

Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, Apple Podcasts. It's Muggles! And it sounds like Muggle. There's good Theatons and there's cheating Theatons, I think.

And you're saying they had locations all across the U.S. at this time. Oh yeah, they're fucking everywhere, man. It sounds like there's Space Ghosts coast to coast. Alright, well the episode's over. That joke's all we needed. See you guys next week.

I'm sorry, we pre-wrote that. We're all Scientologists. We talked about jokes all the time. We're really selling it around on the cold. That wasn't an actor, though. That's true, that one was real. Might have been Tom Cruise. Probably not.

Definitely not, shouldn't be slandering a rich millionaire. He also runs too fast to ever believably be hit by a car as a pedestrian. I just wouldn't buy it. I also think if he came after you wanted to kill you, he'd probably do the job. I feel like Tom Cruise could very easily

have been a special forces guy or a murderer for hire. He's the kind of guy with his fuck off money. He just has a compound where he learns martial arts and stuff. Where he learns how to destroy things. You were worried about the legal ramifications of slandering him by saying he might have been that guy.

But you immediately also want to say he's probably good at murdering. I mean, I think he would be the first to admit that. Sure, sure, sure. He would be, hypothetically, a great murderer. When you talk to guys who train Hollywood actors for gun stuff,

the two people they note as being like these guys don't really need any help is Tom Cruise and Keanu Reeves. And Keanu Reeves. Yeah, because all the movies he's been in before he's had to shoot guns. And if you see him behind the scenes, he just tries hard.

Yeah, he works really hard. He's a great guy. Now, you remember those two Scientology agents who orchestrated the Department of Justice back in 76? Well, after 11 months on the lam in early 1977, one of them broke and became an informant to the FBI. The Bureau had been on his case for the break-in,

but the full story of the church's infiltration of the U.S. government was complete news to them. They opened a massive investigation into Scientology's sweeping infiltration of the United States government. The investigation would culminate in a June 1977 raid that is still one of the largest raids in the history of the FBI.

134 agents with crowbars and sledgehammers tore through Scientology HQ in D.C. as well as their offices in Los Angeles. They carted away tens of thousands of documents, including the plans for Project Normandy, revealing the church's secret goal to establish area control in the city of Clearwater. The resulting court case led to 11 Scientologists,

including Elron Hubbard's wife, Mary Sue, being convicted and sentenced to up to five years in federal prison. Elron Hubbard was named by the grand jury as an unindicted co-conspirator, a term we all know very well now, but the seized file should not link him directly to any crimes. He maintained his innocence up until the very end, according to the Justice Department.

The crime committed by these defendants is of a breadth and scope previously unheard of. No business, office, desk, or file was safe from their snooping and prying. No individual or organization was free from their despicable conspiratorial minds. The tools of their trade were miniature transmitters, lockpicks, secret codes, forged credentials,

and any other device they found necessary to carry out their conspiratorial schemes. By the way, it's worth noting that while this is happening at the height of the Cold War, the Soviet government never managed to infiltrate the United States in nearly as comprehensive or extensive a fashion as the Church of Scientology did. It seems like they should have been trying

to infiltrate the Church of Scientology. It's like talk to the people who really are making progress. Yeah, they fucking nailed it. Now, those are the facts of the case as they exist in reality, but they are not the facts of the cases admitted by the Church of Scientology. In the immediate aftermath of the raid, they accused the FBI of Gestapo-like brutality,

which would be true if the Gestapo handed out five-year sentences for massive ensweeping violations of the Third Reich rather than just shooting people. They had crowbars. They had crowbars. The Stand League builds itself as an advocacy group of Scientologists fighting bigotry against their religion. The name is an acronym for Scientologists

Taking Action Against Discrimination. You have to use the N and against for the acronym, which isn't really a great acronym procedure, but we all cut corners now and again. I use expired throwing bagels like nobody's perfect. I found an article published on the Stand League's website about the Snow White Program. Here's how they describe it.

The Snow White Program refers to the program written by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard in 1973 for the purpose of legally correcting and expunging the plethora of false government reports about the Church of Scientology, its leaders and members through strictly legal means. It's a big tip-off for you. Legal twice and PS.

Legal. Just think about the word legal and think of me. The Stand League asserts that L. Ron Hubbard did not remotely contemplate anything illegal. Of course not. Famous law follower L. Ron Hubbard. Who's got two thumbs when it's legal? This guy.

I gotta get back on my boat now. I'm gonna kidnap my baby again. No collusion. Oh, my wife though. Damn, it sucks how she sucks. Yeah, that's rough. Now, it is impossible to disprove that to a point of certainty, which is why L. Ron Hubbard himself was never convicted of anything.

But I want to emphasize this. Come the fuck on. We all know all of this is known information. It's true. Now, we're not done with the story of L. Ron Hubbard yet. And in our next episode, which I'm very excited for, we're gonna talk about the last phase of his life where he became an auteur filmmaker and a singer.

Hell yes. Hell yes. Can you believe LRH has this much gas left in the tank? I am so high of this. And it doesn't even involve Battlefield Earth? Oh, yeah. Oh, buddy. Oh, wow. What a juicy treat at the end.

So many people come on the show and at some point in the hour go, yeah, this has been really depressing. Thanks for having me. I feel like you got all the sad stuff out of the way. I mean, there's been sad shit, but man, the next one's gonna be a treat. It is gonna be a treat.

But before we close this episode out, I'd like to talk a little bit more about the town of Clearwater, Florida. Now, the Fort Harrison Hotel was renamed by the Church of Scientology to Flagland Base after renovations were finished. It became, and is today, the chief training center for Scientologists studying the highest levels

of whatever the hell Scientology is. Since 1980, three Scientologists have died at Flagbase. One of those dead was a young woman named Lisa McPherson, who died of a blood clot caused by dehydration in bedrest after 17 days locked in room 174 of the former hotel. Jesus. Josephus Havenith was found dead in a bathtub in his room.

The water was hot enough to have burned his skin off. The official cause of death was drowning, but the coroner noted that he was found with his head above the water line. Herbert Faff died of a seizure in the hotel after he ceased taking his seizure medication in favor of a Scientology-approved vitamin program. And this is the hotel from the shining you're describing, right?

Yeah, that's essentially what they turned this building into. Don't go in room 174. Don't. In 1997 alone, the Clearwater police received 160 emergency calls from Flagbase. At no point were they allowed to enter. For most of Scientology history,

the church was in constant arrears for failure to pay state and local property taxes. Scientology was brought to court numerous times by the city and the IRS for this. Luckily for the church, they eventually succeeded in having Scientology declare a religion, which granted them tax-exempt status. The way they did this was pretty fascinating.

They basically bombarded the IRS as an organization and individual IRS executives with lawsuits until they got their way. We'll probably talk about that in the tale in a later episode. According to a recent report in the Tampa Bay Times, the city currently owns more than $260 million in property in downtown Clearwater.

Most of these buildings are empty and undeveloped, and many in Clearwater blame the church for the fact that downtown Clearwater has remained incredibly underdeveloped compared to downtown St. Petersburg and Tampa. The church is able to exercise a huge amount of control over the city of Clearwater due to their ownership of much of its downtown area

and the economic power of their religion. According to FSU News, Scientology leader David Miscavige introduced a retail strategy to Clearwater's redevelopment agency. The plan requires use of not just property owned by the church, but at also every property in a three-block by four-block area

that encompasses all of downtown. The plan involves attracting a few major retail brands and then filling open spaces with hand-picked businesses similar to an outdoor mall. The proposal will give the church total control over the downtown area in regards to development and management of properties. The church's redevelopment plan has not yet been made public,

nor will it be subject to a vote. Cool. I understand what the area... He's like, this church is important to me. I made trillions of dollars, but I need area control. What's area control? Well, I want to decide if there's a sparrows or an old spaghetti factory there.

I want it to be what I want it to be. This is... Who gives a shit, dude? This is the decision of his predecessor. For Elron Hubbard, taking over this town, which the church controls like 40 years later today, this was like a two-week project for him. Right.

He was there for like a month or so. Elron Hubbard himself had ever spent more than a couple of days actually inside the city limits of Clearwater. They still control this, and it was just sort of a vague plan of his for a couple of weeks before he moved up to Georgetown and grew a beard. Take rise to town.

I like it. Take it for me. With these mythic figures, yeah. The entire sea org is just like, whatever he said, what beautiful drippings came out of this horrible mall. We need to make that a religion because there's only so much that he said.

I mean, he said a lot, but... It's like there's still people in Clearwater who have to deal with the consequences of Elron Hubbard's passing fancy every day. Well, I guess we have to justify this shit. I also kind of want to go there now because I didn't know there existed

like a company town for Scientology. I got to imagine because they're freaking annoying to be around. They must have pushed out anyone who had an easy opportunity to leave or felt like, so by now, 40 years later, I just want to go to a town where you're like,

90% certain everyone around you is a Scientologist that whole time. Or another person gawking at all the Scientologists. I wonder if there's ever at the time like, he would listen to music or like it was really to stand up comedian and would like watch it and stuff.

And then everyone was like, I guess that's another God amongst us. You get the feeling from Elron Hubbard that he did not consume a lot of other people's media. Right. That's probably true. Yeah. We will be talking about Star Wars a little bit in the next episode. I can't wait. This is going to be...

It is going to be great, but first, you know what else is going to be great? What? Is y'all plugging your fluggables? Oh, yeah. Yeah, we're in the P-Zone. The P-Zone. Welcome to the P-Zone. I thought that's the P-Zone. What's the cookie with that? That's a Pizookie. The BJs. The P-Zone and we'll blast you with

a Pizooka full of Pizookies. All right, guys. We have things we do. Throwing bagels around the table. Oh, no. Oh, shit. Oh, man. You're under the bagels now. My associate Abe here and I have a little outfit called Small Beans. It's a podcasting network

and is about to branch into web video. Yeah. And I think it's very important that you find out more about that at patreon.com. Or on the Small Beans YouTube channel, because we are right now in the process of producing a little show where four friends sit around analyzing

pop culture, accompanied by illustrations and clip packages. And there's a good chance that a lot of your audience likes that show because it feels familiar to them and exciting. This sounds familiar to another show that I know you were on in the past. No, it's unlike any other show.

Well, this is the launch of a legally distinct show from all other shows. I love legally distinct. Off hours. Off hours. What you do in your off hours? You analyze pop culture.

Hey, this is Robert Evans cutting in from the future. When we recorded this episode, off hours was not yet done. It was just a dream and Michael and Abe's beautiful, beautiful eyes. But now it is, in fact, a reality and you can watch it

right now on the internet if you go to YouTube and look up off hours if your life got rebooted, what kind would it be on the Small Beans channel? Please check it out off hours if your life got rebooted, what kind would it be? It's a fun

show. It's important to me because all of my friends are involved and because internet comedy, if you don't know, is having some hard times these days. And Michael and Abe and a good group of many of my former coworkers, who are all great people, are trying to keep it alive,

keep it user supported, you know, avoid having to do ads, avoid a lot of that mess and try to make beautiful content that makes people laugh and makes the world more bearable. So please go to the Small Beans channel on YouTube, check out the first episode of Off Hours, share

it with your friends, donate to Small Beans and keep the world laughing. That's all I do. Or you research horror. The reason we chose that name is because the acronym is O, like, oh, I might want to watch this. And then F. Fun. F.

Friends. Fun with friends. Oh, fun with friends. Oh, fun with friends. And it's, you know, after your work hours. It's like after hours would have worked too. It's the kind of thing I would watch when I put down my throw-in bagels for the day and I pick up my relaxin' bagels. Right. Yeah, yeah.

Just unwind with the soothing, dulcet tone. I am pitching a Frasier episode that I think will convince you to throw a bagel or two at the screen. Okay. Yeah, he might be bad. Yeah, Frasier might be bad, guys. So many surprises like that and more.

At patreon.com slash Small Beans. Small Beans. Thank you. Alright, I'm Robert Evans. You buy shirt. You buy shirts. You buy shirts now. You can also just buy shirts in other places if you want a shirt. It's legally

required in many outdoor areas in the United States because I'm fucking president. Or you can listen to my other podcast. It could happen here if you want to be sad. It will make your day worse with knowledge. Listen to it.

And I have a Twitter and an Instagram at BastardsPod. Well, Sophie runs both of those. I don't understand Instagram. It frightens and confuses me. But you can look at those things. They exist. They're in the world. We have a website

down where you can find all the sources for this, including Bareface Messiah, which you can find free online. I think it's out of copy, right? I don't know. I did buy a copy of it, but you can also find it for free online without torrenting it. Just want to increase the chance the church got a little of your money. Well, no, they didn't publish that book.

They do not like that book. They hate the book. It's a hell of a read, though. Speaking of cutting room floors, as we were earlier, the number of LRH stories that I didn't include in this podcast just because I couldn't make a 14-hour podcast about all Ron Hubbard, fucking wild. Anyway,

I'm going to throw some bagels. Y'all continue your commute or your poop. Yeah! Number five. The episode's over. Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the

2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen.

Listen to Alphabet Boys on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the Earth for 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Listen to CSI on Trial on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.