Mary Sue Hubbard - Downfall

Downfall

Despite her conviction, Mary Sue remained in her post as Controller of the Guardian's Office (GO). There was no shortage of work for her to do; further legal difficulties were anticipated, as it was expected that L. Ron Hubbard would be indicted by a New York grand jury investigating Operation Freakout, the GO's campaign against New York author Paulette Cooper, or by a Floridian grand jury investigating Scientology's activities in Clearwater. Around the end of February 1980, he went into hiding and remained in seclusion in the small town of Creston, California, for the remaining six years of his life. Mary Sue, who had last met her husband a few months before his disappearance, never saw or heard from him again.

Hubbard nonetheless remained active in the management of Scientology. The criminal conviction of the GO's top executives triggered a lengthy power struggle at the top of the Church of Scientology, which would lead eventually to Mary Sue being forced into retirement. Under his doctrine he believed that "mistakes do not just happen, somebody causes them, always". A disaster on the scale of the GO criminal case was clearly the result of the activities of someone hostile to Scientology – a Suppressive Person – operating within the GO. He issued an internal directive in 1979 asserting that major failures must result from the presence of multiple Suppressives, who would need to be rooted out along with their "connections". The downfall of the GO led Hubbard to distrust it, believing it to be riddled with Suppressives; he severed his communications with it and put his reliance instead on the Commodore's Messenger Organization (CMO), a group formed from the children of Scientologists whom he used as his personal assistants. The Messengers, who were mostly in their teens and early twenties, became Hubbard's sole means of communication with the Church.

In 1981, the "All Clear Unit" was established within the CMO, tasked with the purpose of making it "All Clear" for Hubbard to come out of hiding. One of its principal figures was David Miscavige, a 21-year-old Messenger who had worked as a cameraman for Hubbard. In May 1981, he met with Mary Sue to tell her that her position as Controller of the Guardian's Office was untenable. She reacted angrily; in a 1992 trial in Canada, Miscavige told the court that she had called him "some pretty nasty names" and threatened him with a large ashtray held close to his face, but she had eventually agreed to step down. She subsequently changed her mind, believing that she had been tricked, and wrote to her husband to complain but received no response. Numerous other Guardian's Office personnel were purged as well.

In July 1981, all remaining GO staff were ordered to join the Sea Org, which would thus secure the CMO's control of the Guardian's Office, and the current Guardian, Jane Kember – who was one of those convicted on conspiracy charges – was to be removed. Mary Sue strongly opposed these changes and reappointed herself Controller, rescinding the CMO's permission to investigate the GO. CMO staff investigating the GO were physically expelled from the Church of Scientology's Los Angeles headquarters, and the Controller's files were guarded day and night. Mary Sue attempted to contact her husband to rescind the CMO's takeover bid but failed, and admitted defeat when the Messengers produced an undated dispatch from Hubbard instructing the GO to be put under the CMO when its senior executives went to prison. She stood down again, being replaced by a South African Scientologist named Gordon Cook, and Jane Kember was replaced by David Gaiman, a British Scientologist.

Miscavige provided a first-hand account of these events, in an affidavit submitted in a case heard in 1994 in California, Church of Scientology International vs. Steven Fishman and Uwe Geertz. He stated:

In 1981, a Church investigation was begun into the activities of the GO. That investigation was prompted by the existence of a number of civil law suits which had been filed at that time against Church of Scientology of California and Mr. Hubbard, and which the GO was supposed to be responsible for handling. Not only was the GO not handling these suits, the GO, and particularly Mary Sue Hubbard, even refused to answer our questions about the suits because they viewed themselves answerable only to persons within the GO...

Our attempts to get information were thwarted by Mary Sue Hubbard. She informed us that she did not appreciate our investigation of the GO and that if one were needed she would do it. In March 1981 she cut all of our communication lines to the GO, except through herself. It must be noted that Mary Sue Hubbard believed her position as Controller and as the "Founder's wife" to be unassailable and beyond reproach by anyone but Mr. Hubbard -- who was not around at the time, a fact that she was well aware of. This, plus her absolute control of the GO, made it difficult for the Church missionaires to get anything done.

was made clear that we had no choice but to overthrow the GO and dismiss everyone who had violated Church policy or the law. These activities ultimately led to a complete disband of the GO. I gathered a couple of dozen of the most proven Church executives from around the world and briefed them on the criminal and other unethical conduct of the GO. Together, we planned a series of missions to take over the GO, investigate it and reform it thoroughly. On July 13, 1981, a matter of weeks after we had uncovered what was going on, and with no advance warning to the GO, a coordinated series of CMO missions were sent out concurrently to take over the GO. However, there were a number of obstacles to overcome before the termination of the GO could be accomplished. Mary Sue Hubbard was still asserting her authority over the GO from her position as Controller.

Mary Sue Hubbard was removed from her post before she went to jail. I know, because I personally met with her and obtained her resignation... At first, Mary Sue Hubbard was not willing to resign. Eventually she did so. Mary Sue Hubbard and the GO, however, did not simply capitulate. Within a day of Mary Sue Hubbard's resignation, senior GO officials secretly met with Mary Sue Hubbard and conspired to regain control of the GO. Mary Sue Hubbard signed a letter revoking her resignation and condemning the actions of the CMO. Scores of GO staff responded, locking the missionaires out of their premises and were intending to hire armed guards to bar access by me and the other Church officials who had ousted them. I then confronted the mutineers, and persuaded Mary Sue Hubbard to again resign, which ended the last vestige of GO resistance.

Speaking several years later to the St. Petersburg Times newspaper, Miscavige commented:

"I knew if it was going to be a physical takeover we’re going to lose because they had a couple thousand staff and we (the “messengers”) had about 50. That is the amazing part about it."

According to the Church of Scientology, Hubbard himself did not find out about Mary Sue's resignation until five months later.

The convictions of Mary Sue Hubbard and the other GO staff executives were upheld by a federal appeals court in October 1981, and in November seven of those convicted dropped their appeals – but not Mary Sue, who continued to fight the charges. She lost her final appeal in April 1982 and was ordered to begin a prison term in January 1983. The original sentence of five years imprisonment was not carried out, and the court ordered a study of her claimed medical problems, before eventually replacing her sentence with a four-year term of imprisonment, with parole set at 40 months. She was sent to the federal prison in Lexington, Kentucky, to serve her sentence, though in the end, she was released after only a year of imprisonment.