Australia (see: 1963, 27.11.): The date of this hearing was September 18, 1964 and the Board's counsel,
Gordon just, was leading the evidence. The witness being interrogated was a
Scientology staff member.
Among the witnesses hostile to Scientology, two were outstanding because of
the quality and extent of their testimony.
The first of these was Dr. E. Cunningham Dax, chairman of Victoria's Mental
Health Authority and long-time active member of the World Federation for Mental
Health. Speaking from on high, Dr. Dax defined the objectives of Scientology as
indoctrination of a large number of blind, uncritical and faithful followers,
who were trained to spread Scientology principles in order to satisfy their
leader's lust for power. He said an alleged IQ test form used by Scientologists
to test a person's intelligence quotient included matters of personality,
intelligence and sometimes mental disturbance which would be impossible to
measure with accuracy in the way it purported to do.
With regard to the E-meter, Dr. Dax testified that it had been used in the
United States as a lie-detector and was an instrument not employed in normal
psychiatric practice. Grave doubts about it had been raised in America. He added
that the fact that the person being "audited" knew he had disclosed
some of his innermost secrets to an organization might have a dangerous effect
on him. A person who had confessed would often wish he could get the information
back, but he could not recover the material. "I am convinced this is enough
to induce ill-health, chronic anxiety and psychosomatic symptoms in people who
had expressed their shortcomings."
After admitting that he had never met L. Ron Hubbard, nor, indeed, ever set
eyes on him, Dax proceeded to practise the kind of remote diagnosis common to
his profession, and pronounced the founder of Scientology to be a person of
unsound mind, suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.
Various Scientology writings supported this view, he assured the Board of
Inquiry. "They display all sorts of exhibitions of histrionics and are
hysterical."
The second and even more prolific witness against Scientology who deserves
special attention was Phillip Wearne, executive officer of the Committee for
Mental Health and National Security. His testimony, comments and questions fill
a massive 348 pages of transcript - enough to make an average-size book.
Wearne first appeared before the Inquiry as a witness vehemently opposed to
Scientology and whose references to it were couched in the most intemperate
language used during the entire course of the hearings. His remarks were studded
with terms such as corpse, creature, un-person, nasty child, beast, imbecile,
monkey, zombie, and so on. ...
When the Counsel who represented the Committee for Mental Health and National
Security withdrew during the protracted Inquiry, Wearne asked the Board for
permission to represent the committee himself. Anderson granted this request and
invited Wearne to sit at the Bar table, where he asked questions, led evidence
and cross-examined witnesses.
In a lengthy statement, in the form of an affidavit sworn to before a notary
some time after the Anderson board closed its Inquiry, Wearne related in detail
the circumstances surrounding his participation in the Inquiry proceedings.
He said that one day prior to the Inquiry he was discussing Scientology with
his bank manager, who suggested that he get in touch with Dr. E. Cunningham Dax,
chairman of Victoria's Mental Hygiene Authority.
"I met Dr. Dax and explained to him my hostility to Scientology. It was
obvious to me he didn't know anything about Scientology, and he could not relate
it to any of the psychological or psychiatric disciplines because he did not
have any of the necessary lexicon of terms. He did not have the Rosetta stone,
so to speak, to translate Scientology into psychological terms and show it up to
be a perverted form of psychology.
"It was equally clear to me that he was extremely antagonistic to
Scientology and wished its destruction and saw me as a means of accomplishing
it. This became even more evident throughout the Inquiry when Dax gave his
evidence on the basis of the research and material which I had provided, which
material I had extracted in part from his psychiatric library and which he had
been so willing to study in the publications which I distributed, such as
Probe."
Wearne gathered together a handful of former Scientologists whom he carefully
briefed to give evidence before the Board of Inquiry. On the whole their testimony appears to me to be
unconvincing and ambiguous. ...
Throughout the Melbourne hearings, a mysterious observer haunted the
proceedings, a man Wearne tentatively identified as an agent for CIA.
"Now this chappie," said Wearne, "appeared about the second
day of the Board of Inquiry and was a constant shadow-you know-if you looked
around at any time of the day, you would find him there; and he was always
approaching me and talking to me about the Inquiry and how it was going and
what the witnesses were doing and how they should be handled and so on. He
didn't know what he was talking about, really - but as he insisted on inviting
me for lunch practically daily, I felt obliged to listen to him anyway.
"He made it his business to keep in close contact with me. I became
embarrassed by the number of times that he wined and dined me, brought liquor
to my flat and irritated me by constant and inept suggestions concerning
Scientology witnesses. On one occasion, Doug Moon, who considered him an
intolerable ratbag, when probed by him as to what evidence he would give,
abused him in tones of high anger and left the flat, slamming the door behind
him.
"I was tolerant because, while I realised he did not have a clue about
how our programme against Scientology should be conducted, he was trying to do
his best and I assume was being paid for it. If I remember rightly, I made him
a member of the Committee for Mental Health and National Security and gave him
a card which no doubt is held in a repository of honour in his archives either
at the CIA office or whoever else was paying him.
"I rather prefer the idea that the security service that employed him
was the CIA because both he and his brother-in-law were employed in a finance
company which had a set of offices to the rear of the United States Consulate, an
organization which I approached at one time to interview the CIA man in
charge." (O. Garrison, Hidden
Story of Scientology, pg. 150-158)
Hubbard himself did not appear to give testimony before the Board, a fact
which is dwelt upon at some length by the Anderson Report. The report does not
mention, however, that solicitors for the Scientology organization in Melbourne
on September 28, 1964, formally requested that the state of Victoria pay
Hubbard's travelling and incidental expenses to fly to Australia from England to
give evidence.
The request was refused, as was a proposal that the Board appoint some
representative in England to hear evidence from Hubbard there.
Regarding the latter suggestion, Anderson said that such evidence taken on
Commission was a very poor substitute for actual oral evidence before a
tribunal. "One has to see the witnesses, observe their demeanour. In fact,
one has to see whether they are 'Dear Alice-ing' you to determine whether what
they are saying are things you, as a tribunal, should accept. I feel that I
could get no assistance from Mr. Hubbard's evidence if all I had before me was
his evidence taken on Commission. It would only be the bald written word without
any means available of appraising the demeanour of the witness and those other
multitude of things which one's professional training and years of life, for
that matter, enable one to form some fair appraisal of the weight which would be
given to the evidence."
While thus refusing to consider evidence in the form of interrogatories put
to Hubbard by an experienced lawyer in England, Anderson based his eventual
findings upon what he called "the great body of scientific evidence ...
experts in a variety of fields, scientific and otherwise". That is, he
relied upon psychiatrists, doctors, lawyers, university professors and others,
most of whom had never come closer to Scientology than the "bald written
word", here declared to be so unsatisfactory.
Critics of Scientology and its founder have said that Hubbard had had no
intention of coming to Melbourne; that the request for expense money had been
made, knowing that it would be rejected.
If true, it merely shows that Hubbard was using good sense. Only four months
prior to the request, Dr. E. Cunningham Dax, chairman of the Mental Health
Authority in Victoria, had publicly declared Hubbard to be of unsound mind.
There was open discussion among the legal profession that he could now be
charged with fraud.
Gordon Just, Counsel assisting the Board had reportedly said that "the
people" of Victoria were so irate against Hubbard that they might do him
physical injury if he were available. When the Scientologists' lawyer asked that
the authorities guarantee Hubbard's personal safety, Just replied that this
could not be done because it would interfere with the ordinary workings of the
law.
The newspapers were treating the Inquiry with the kind of biased
sensationalism usually reserved for an especially gruesome murder trial. There
is no need here to quote from the fulsome stories that dominated the Melbourne
dailies during the hearings. (O. Garrison, Hidden
Story of Scientology, pg. 158-160)
