Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 209 - The Hilarious Military Career of L Ron Hubbard

Episode Date: May 23, 2022

The founder of Scientology had a very stupid naval career Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: Russel Miller. Bare-Faced Messiah https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Cowen/warhero/intro.htm https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/primary-sources-l-ron-hubbard-leaves-the-navy https://www.thevintagenews.com/2017/11/30/l-ron-hubbard/?safari=1

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities

like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the Legion of the Old Crow today. And now, back to the show. Hello and welcome to another lovely episode of Lines Led by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe and with me again, returning champion of, I don't know, five, six times now? Sarah of It Came From the Sea. Hello, Sarah. Hello, I'm here. The fans enjoy the Sarah episodes. I enjoy the Sarah episodes, so I don't really care if the fans do. I fucking hate them.

I hate them so much. We have spent hours recording podcasts together. And if you're a regular listener of the show, you've probably noticed that over the course of the last several months, a lot of our episodes have been dark to say the least. And I thought it would be a very good idea to do one that is not so soul crushing. And Sarah actually gave me the idea to do the military career,

the illustrious heroic military career of l ron hubbard i'm gonna be honest when i like threw that out there and like an adderall fueled like haze of like here's some random ideas i really didn't think there'd be more than like a paragraph or two for you to read about good news there is a lot um i will to be all right so there really wouldn't be if he was just some guy that did not go out and in fact found a one of the largest cults in the world currently that's what it would be he would just be another shit bag um during a time like in world war ii where there had to be just so many of them because of the draft and lowering standards for officers, which is how he ended up getting

in. We love lowering standards. He wouldn't even be a blip on the radar. Well, with the exception of that time, he attacked Mexico, but we'll get there. How much like before this is your idea and this is actually I could say with certainty that this is the first episode we've done

that I can remember off the top of my head where absolutely nobody dies oh yeah because Scientology doesn't come until later and that will kill some people we're only here for the shenanigans we're not here for the murder yeah if only a Lafayette Ronald Hubbard We'll kill some people. We're only here for the shenanigans. We're not here for the murder. Yeah.

If only Lafayette Ronald Hubbard believed in that. I got to say, for a guy named Lafayette. That's a strong naval name. Yeah. Exactly. His dad is in the Navy. Okay. His dad's a fucking nerd then.

Yeah. His dad is a nerd. And from everything I can tell, a normal naval officer. But unfortunately, his son is L. Ron Hubbard. I mean, if you're a normal naval officer, it's not saying good things about you. No, I didn't mean that as a compliment. Or any officer, for that matter. And he very clearly wanted to be his dad. He actually claims a medal that his dad has, which no longer existed.

That's the weakest form of stolen valor. Yeah. And I guess I should, I should preface this whole thing with like, I don't care about stolen valor. I don't, I don't see it as this like, um,

on like unassailable sin that people use to get free food or whatever. I don't care. Yeah. It's, it's, it's nerd shit. I don't care. It's just kind of sad. Yeah, it's nerd shit. I don't care. It is however very, very funny when you establish an entire cult using it as a foundation.

If you do that, then yeah, I'm gonna laugh at you. If you're just some guy trying to get like 10% off your Kia or whatever, like I hope it works. Yeah, good luck, man. If you're just trying to get free appetizers from Chili's on Veterans Day, fucking power to you. i never go use mine you can have my like expired dependent id from when i used to be married now we're not going to dive in a lot about the church because this all happened before then but we do have to bring up the church because uh like i was explaining to

sarah before we started recording the reason that we know as much as we know is because the church because like I was explaining to Sarah before we started recording, the reason that we know as much as we know is because the church is very, very stupid and as anybody who's paid attention to the church of Scientology, they know they're incredibly litigious or at least they used to be. That's kind of died now that the internet overpowers their lawyers.

Come at me, motherfuckers. Come at me. Please don't. Please don't come at me leave me alone um parody uh public use or something um but in the 80s one of their members defected who was also the church's biographer for LRH. Oh. Yeah. So they sued him for betrayal of trust and contract or whatever because he took a lot of those documents with him that proved everything that LRH was saying.

And yes, I've been reading enough about the Church of Scientology over the last two days. I am now calling him LRH. It's quicker that way. It's easier for everybody. Hey, look, when your first name is Lafayette, you get a nickname, alright? Just a little

laughy-dobber over there. But they challenged him in court, which meant that they had to prove that these documents were real, and they failed miserably. But now they're also at the public arena for people to download and stuff. Not to mention, people have read one of the main sources I'm using is a book called Barefaced Messiah. It's very, very good. And they lay it all out pretty easily.

Though that is mostly about the church's establishment as a whole and onto his death. Like I only had to use a very little bit of it because his military career, like you point out, not that long though. And so I do have to say, if you don't know anything about the church, some of this is going to fly over your head. I assume most people have some kind of bare level understanding of it.

And if you don't, I will say it's exactly like delving into several thousand pages of badly written sci-fi. Cause he's a sci-fi author and he's a, he is the strictest definition of pulp sci-fi that you can have as what he wrote and not the good kind. I own a copy of Dianetics cause I found it and I used bookshop and the like occult section.

And it is shit. I obviously like haven't bothered to read the whole thing but you skim through it and you're just like wow nobody in the church has actually read this much like most churches have to i think they passed tests on it or something that is just like it is just bad sci-fi right i mean it doesn't have like it's supposed to be a self-help book, but has like an erupting volcano on the cover. Yeah, it does. It's kind of awesome. Though, in order to talk about why the Navy is such a funny thing to make fun of in regards to LRH, we have to explain a little bit about the church and why having an obsession with the Navy as well as naval iconography is the foundation of the church um now most people are probably vaguely aware of the existence of something called the sea org um or sea organization they like to call everything orgs for some reason um spacey cool yeah 100 your books would sell better if everything written in them was about something

orgs i'm gonna have to work on that um i will say one thing about l ron hubbard uh dianetics has certainly sold more copies than any of my books you didn't start a cult or a church and that's really where you're going wrong here yet to be fair he was in his 50s before he started his i got time time yeah got time uh but effectively the sea org is supposed to be the space navy um uh that is supposed to clear the world uh it is the the ecclesiastical arm of the church and i mean that in the most threatening way possible what does ecclesiastical actually mean? They're the ones kind of in charge of dogma. They consider them a...

I don't know. They certainly wouldn't call them a zealot. Okay, but it's like the most extreme and most dedicated part. Yeah, they're considered legally a fraternal religious order. And they do that. They call them this legally. They're clergy, almost.

Because that means legally they don't have to pay them. Because it's like a prison ship, right? Isn't that part of it? Oh, the free wins, you mean uh we'll get that we'll talk okay yeah um i'm gonna pretend i don't know anything because apparently i don't let's do it so at the establishment of the church um actually i don't know if they were specifically calling it a church quite yet or maybe in its beginning forms they had a whole ass navy they had like a flotilla they had several ships um yeah i think it was like three or

four um and that's where they existed like lrh was living on a boat just out of his mind on fucking pills um and they mostly bounced around like the mediterranean getting evicted out of ports and shit uh because they were doing crimes like you can't just form a navy and randomly show up places. Did they sail from the US to the Mediterranean? Or did they start in the Med and then just tool around there? I think they started in California, as all bad things do. I haven't made fun of California a lot on this show. I need to make up for that.

Yeah, we really got to work on it. Yeah. I just like the thought of... I know the Sea seorg's been around i didn't realize it was like maybe i did at some point i don't know i either didn't realize or didn't remember that it was so like it basically has lasted as long as the church has but the thought of just like lrh old sweaty full of pills just yelling at people from a cabin as they have to sail for weeks on end to get to the

mediterranean is extremely funny to me and demanding that everybody call him commodore with a hat and everything you can see he actually multiple multiple ships it makes my commodore he he did a interview with i think the bbc or something during this time and i have to say if you've never seen lrh in full pill like pill mode it's it's a sight to see like for one he looks like he chews on rocks like i don't um he's like very red his teeth are fucked um i mean he's he's had a lifelong smoking problem and it shows eaters for the never-ending story because he's just tune into the particularly hard fucking volumes or something um he has a very fancy smooshed commodore's hat

and he speaks in like an old timey theater accent um despite the fact he is very american he does not naturally have an accent at all um but and not the and another fun thing about this navy is it was staffed by people who had no fucking experience on boats so people were just getting like grievously injured because they had no idea what they were doing it had worked so well for him in the past you know right the closest thing to experience came from him who was a career-long shitbag in the navy and i think spent at most three months accumulatively on ships in the navy um so nowadays this the the scientology navy no

longer exists uh they do have one boat called the free winds which i believe is like a converted old-timey luxury cruise liner from the 50s or 60s. So it's actually not as big as that sounds. But it is where they go to learn all the Xenu shit, like OT level 9 or whatever. It's for the richest and by that I mean the dumbest members of a cult. Because they've been members for years. They've paid so much money to learn all this stuff. And also, it's incredibly badly maintained. And at one point, it was shut down for asbestos abatement.

I mean, that just sounds like every cruise I've ever heard of, though. Yeah. And since I think it's flagged out of the US, they actually had to take care of it. Rather than flagging it out of, I don't know, Liberia, like people do. And they're like, actually, it's legally allowed to be on fire. Yeah. We're allowed to own slaves actually there's no laws against it um now the really weird part here about the sea org is itself

is it can be fairly described as a weird religious militia that allows child semen um like because you can join you can't they'remen. They're child semen. This child soldiers doesn't work. Sailors. They're just sailors. Semen is a rank. They're ranked semen. Actually,

that's not what they're ranked. Their lowest rank is Swamper Abel rate. So child Swampers. I stand. Yeah. I stand by my previous statement that the church of scientology supports child semen um let it be known that i tried an attempt was made to walk that back and no you can legally be a minor and join the c-org i think it requires a parental uh signature or something. And it's pretty

young. But like I said, the church considers them a fraternal or a religious order. Though you should also look up the fact that they wear over-the-top naval uniforms. Everybody has to wear... They have enlisted and officer ranks. And

yeah, and they're pretty rigidly enforced. I saw more than one story of members of the sea org who have since defected who said like yeah i got thrown in like a slave camp for like a week because i didn't call someone sir once okay i haven't gotten to the slave camps yet they have a large system of slave camps all the best you know all the best organizations have these things i have looked up a picture of their uniforms and the funniest shit to me is that they just look like the most uncomfortable actual Navy uniforms. They look like if you were like,

I want to dress up like I'm in the Navy for Halloween so you get a spirit Halloween. Yeah, but they're using versions of the uniform that everybody in the Navy just fucking hated wearing. I bet these guys hate wearing it too. They're doing the worst fucking manual labor on earth while dressed like the Waffenhaus mess.

Oh, they also have a special branch. You want to guess what it's called? What's it for? Tell me what it's purpose and I'll try to guess. I don't know. So we only know it exists due to a comment from Davidid miscavige who's the current leader of the church i cannot find any new don't ask about his wife that's gonna get us sued um uh but other than the fact that we know they exist in some form or another we have no

idea what they do but since this is a church that has once literally infiltrated the government more successfully than any foreign government ever has we can assume they do weird and probably illegal things I got nothing what are they called something or the seals that's right the Sea Org has Navy Seals they're not even

trying and the dumbest part is that's an acronym it stands for like sea land and air so do they now also have an air force that we're not aware of sea land and like the airwaves radio c org oh god that sounds terrible though that probably does exist plays human music and just like recordings of lrh He's the weirdest fucking voice. I don't know how to explain it other than like, this is what like Gilbert Godfrey listens for,

for ASMR. Like it, it's the, I don't, I don't fucking know. Rest in peace, homie. I'm sorry.

You didn't deserve that. But the camp system is called the rehabilitation project force. Oh, sure. They also, they also really like the term force. But legally, you can leave whenever you want, of course. But the practice of the church is if you quit, nobody you know to include your family can never associate with you ever again.

But they also have the Project Rehabilitation Force, which is people who fuck up in that get sent to the worst version of that. No, did they really just call it the Rehabilitation Force Force? Like you failed the first one. We're just going to do it again, but harder. Yeah, pretty much. This includes legitimate prison cells like pits. I've heard the word pit used more than once. Oh, boy. prison cells uh like pits i've heard the word pit used more than once oh boy yeah this is ran by the c org but also there's like c org members put in it um yeah is it all the boat no no the

free winds is for like the rich people they don't they don't do their weird slavery shit on the free winds that's like that's very front-facing um and to join them you have to you have to set a literal billion year contract yeah that makes sense um now of course they explain this as like it's a show of your devotion to the church i call it creepy um and universally every single member of the c-org that has left the church says they get treated like shit they're physically and mentally abused they're not paid barely fed and they're used as labor until you die or run away. Um, and there's weird sex rules too.

Um, you cannot have sex. Um, you can get married, but then you have to leave, uh, the Sea Org. So,

Oh, but this is just for the Sea Org. This isn't all of Scientology. Okay. So Sea Org is just like their little incel battalion. Yeah. But there is some pretty strict rules about premarital sex in the church anyway. I believe that, yeah.

Of course, if you're famous, these rules don't apply. Case in point, all of the members of the church being got for sexual assault and that the church tried to cover up. Yay. See, they're just trying to make themselves more mainstream by covering up sex sex criminals they thought that was the line they had to cross or to be accepted they learned it from watching you harvey weinstein just david missed cabbage looking at the pope like i thought you said this would get us across the line oh god um now as as weird and and kind of funny as a vet bro starting a cult that forces people to cosplay as the Space Navy is. I mean, BRC is so close to that already.

They're there very close. Yeah. Somehow worse, because at least like, even though LRH is a fraud and a horrible person, dead or otherwise, at least he couched his and like self-help even if it didn't work and is incredibly abusive like the black rifle coffee is like we just like saying slurs and drinking overpriced coffee yeah it's like what if we opened a starbucks in rhodesia that that's that is black rifle coffee um but it should be known that l ron hubbard was in the navy he was a commissioned officer and he did serve during world war ii i will not say he fought in world war ii because he didn't he was in fact there uh more than any of us can say really yeah i mean true i mean i don't know

fetal me may have not existed yet but you know now however what that service entails depends entirely who you ask if you ask the church of scientology which they will not answer your emails i have tried l ron hubbard is a goddamn war hero whose true service is being suppressed by the united states government because of well two. They decide on which, at different times, either religious persecution or because he works so intensely with the Office of Special Naval Operations, they could never reveal

what he did. You know, we found out that they, like, immediately kidnapped a bunch of Nazis right after World War II. Like, they couldn't keep that secret. There's no way they're keeping, like, LRH's bullshit secret. Yeah, exactly. Right. of all of the things that we've learned that like no like there's one guy like like that church in ethiopia that believes that they have like the ark of the covenant they have one like junior grade lieutenant sit on a box with lrh's original dd214 and he is blinded

so he cannot read it. And every 10 years they have to swap out with a new fucking Naval Academy grad. Well, no, it's actually every six years because they hire tenure out. Fresh blood and all that. Now, if you ask the US Navy, on the

other hand, Hubbard had a short, very eventful career of him being a complete and total fuck up all while faking a series of illnesses and possibly a terrorist attack to get out of work and then bilk the va for money and i really hate to say that because that's the one redeeming quality of that he has is that he did try to cheat the va at any other point in history go for it world war ii kind of the one time you probably should have done your job it's the one time it's the one time where we were fighting nazis you probably should have done your

job the one time yeah uh and also i couldn't even tell you really what his job was uh because he got fired from so many of them the navy was like we just have to find something to use this officer for. Did he enter as an officer? Did he go like? Yes. Okay. So this podcast ventures to find what story is the right one. The Navy's. The Navy's is the right one. And this is the only time I ever get to say that the U.S. Navy was right.

You got me. L. Ron Hubbard got me to admit the Navy was right about something. Hubbard, and this may surprise Navy was right about something. Um, Hubbard, and this may surprise you, Sarah and people listening is something of a constant pathological liar about everything to do with his entire life. Um, like his history,

any point of his life, you can probably find a point that he lied about it. Um, and, uh, at this point, we really only know what really happened due to the extensive paperwork the military keeps on anybody who's ever had the misfortune of walking into one of their offices. Yeah.

Though the church did try really hard to also fabricate that. And that's where the court comes in later. Now, let's tell the church's side of the story first because i cannot explain to you just how funny it is um now this is from the church's own website quote on his return from helena montana in september 1927 he joined the montana national guard this is true he did join the montana national guard from montana uh he ended up there his dad was in the navy and then did like government work and bounced around a lot um at this part of his life, he tries to make himself sound like some like Indiana Jones level adventurer for some reason, despite the fact he is 16 years old. And in church history, this is where he claims he's some kind of like Blackfoot Native American tribe blood brother or some insane shit.

Yeah, it's why he does this for any for any white person in history stop trying he could run for president now but he was only 16 uh when he joined the national guard but that you know it was 1927 you could just be like yeah i'm 18 they're like cool right like what they can do fucking reference your paperwork with something else um And this is telling because he does look to be about nine years old in the pictures that I've seen. He's not one of those people that he might be 16, but he looks to be about 19. Absolutely not.

He looks every bit of 10. Now, the only thing the church says during this time is quote, he joins the 163rd infantry, distinguishes himself as a marksman, and edits the high school newspaper. All equally important things. I can't say if he did or didn't do any of this, though I should point out in his official records, which I don't know if things have changed since then. If you've had prior service, all that shit rolls over onto your records.

You don't have separate military records for all the different like that all gets compiled there's nothing in there about ever being given any award by the Montana National Guard he was a child and it was during like peacetime what award would he have gotten

some kind of marksmanship badge since that's the only thing he likes to point out that he did there but even that is like they hand those to you at boot camp i imagine they've always been doing that yeah that's true um but he leaves the guard pretty soon after joining it and then joins the marine reserves in 1930 when he's 19 um and it's part of like this training program because he's attending george washington university for for various different brainy shit. It wasn't like JRTC or ROTC or anything like that. I think this

is before then. It's a training unit attached to his college. Also, he never graduates that college. The church insists that he did. Working class hero, LRH. Also, it begs the question how the fuck he got a commission in the Navy

right he joins before World War Two but nobody like he never graduated from any college anybody's ever been able to find time maybe he got a pass because his dad was an officer that's the only thing I could think of

the Navy notes in his record that he was a college dropout the navy loves it some nepotism too though yeah especially back then that that ran on nepotism it's baked right in um the church's website says absolutely nothing about his time in the marine reserve and i might know why he joined the reserves for only one year though in his personal interviews he claimed that he was promoted to the rank of first sergeant. Now, for people who are unaware, he is 19 years old, and this is a rank that can normally take people 20 years to attain. Yeah. Yeah.

Didn't happen. Probably not. Yeah. I'm going to shake the magic eight ball here and say unlikely. I'm going to shake the magic eight ball here and say unlikely. In the book, Barefaced Messiah, Hubbard insists that he was giving glowing reviews during his one year of service for, quote, military efficiency, obedience, and sobriety. Which, to be clear, in peacetime Marine Reserve, I could see someone be like, congratulations, you're sober. You didn't get into an alcohol-related this year you are the one i don't even believe that because

one year later he was given an honorable discharge with a note on his paperwork that said quote not to be re-enlisted and nobody has any idea why um yeah uh now like you can get things like in modern day stuff like for instance if uh if i was to re-enlist i would have a different code on my paperwork because i signed a declination of continued service statement uh when they were trying to give me orders of germany i just didn't want to go uh so that bars me from re-enlistment while i'm in and changes my reenlistment code. However, it does not bar me from rejoining. Yeah, he did.

He did something that barred him from joining the Marine Reserve, but wasn't bad enough that they like specified it or like kept him from joining anywhere else. They were just like, we don't need a lot of him. Yeah, it was still able to take him. Yeah, exactly.

It's like, what the fuck honestly after listening to the way lrh talks about himself and how he writes i think they're just like look just we he didn't necessarily do anything to get to center of the charge someone get this fucking nerd away from us we just don't want to fucking deal with them anymore now pointing i'm pointing at his pre-naval service uh now because in the grand scheme of things it's considered so important that nobody ever really talks about it the church barely even mentions it it doesn't like you can tell that it's considered unimportant because the church hardly lies about it um in

comparison to his naval career it's not nearly as funny uh hubbard joins the navy in the summer of 1941 and is commissioned as a lieutenant junior grade in the naval reserve he's actually in the naval reserve his whole career because if you if you listen to the date that's right before shit's about to go sideways in the world and a whole lot of people in the naval reserve are going to find themselves in the active duty navy uh which includes him and the funny thing is back then i don't know if they still do this or not. Whenever he had to sign his paperwork or whatever, he'd like lieutenant, junior grade. And then there was a series of numbers after it, numbers and letters that denoted what his job was and branch. And in court later, someone would point to the series of numbers and say, see, that means intelligence branch.

He was in the Office of Naval Intelligence. And someone points say see that means intelligence branch he was in the office of naval intelligence and like someone points out like that means naval reserve no it doesn't mean he was an intel it means he was barely in the navy see the thing is there is a for every good lie right there's a crumb of truth and there is truth here he was in the Office of Naval Intelligence for about five months. How? He was commissioned and the church points out that he was assigned to the Office of Naval Intelligence, which at which point he was then seconded to the U.S. Hydrographic Office. Okay. Okay.

The church then says he spent five months on a voyage that covered 1500 miles through the Puget Sound into Alaska, where, of course, because he always likes to see himself as an adventurer and a discoverer and Indiana Jones and shit. He became best friends with the Lucian natives because, of course, he did. LRH never tells a story where every native person fawns over him like white Jesus. Right. Oh, no. But the thing is that also he did such a good job that he was awarded by the Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation

the Masters of Steam and Motor Vessels license. That's literally just an operator's license for a boat. Yeah, so it's not an award. No, it's not. No. He went to school for it. Yeah. Fuck. No, it's not. No. He went to school for it. Yeah. Fuck. Now, we'll get to what he was really doing during those five months, but I will say none of that happened. He's then dispatched to Australia as World War II starts, where he, quote,

coronates relief for the beleaguered forces under General Douglas MacArthur. Quote, coronates relief for the beleaguered forces under General Douglas MacArthur. And I'm going to assume here the church means fighting in the Philippines or the Bataan Peninsula at this time. It doesn't actually say what was going on there because, you know, if it doesn't involve him directly, it's unimportant. Yeah. So he was like MWR coordinator? Less than that. So just organized beer runs. so this is still according to the church he then goes according to them became a naval instructor and chief navigation officer

and is elected to the u.s naval school of military government at princeton university the church also points out that he was wounded at this point uh this is the first time there's a there's a second time uh he is wounded according to the church in the Atlantic, where exactly they took place and how changes. I mean, even Hubbard has changed his own story. This is a pretty brief summary of the naval career that would literally go on to influence and found the very beginnings of their church. And it's very abbreviated. It did not used to be that way for very good reason they had to abbreviate it

and remember fleet of cult ships is involved here at one point and these wounds that he suffered whatever they might be though they claim that it was shrapnel he claims he was shot but it also it always goes no

and either they say outside of java and then vaguely the atlantic at some point um but all of his medical records they come back to saying he was blinded quote blinded and crippled um and he used dianetics to recover from these wounds which is yes this is how he sells it um sure cool you use self-help to get over a bullet wound i'd really like to see how you did it's like oh god i have a sucking chest wound quick think positive thoughts here just read chicken soup for the soul cramming chicken soup for the dog lover's soul into someone's bloody stump. That'll do it. Nailed it.

As we're about to go over, these vary wildly from his real record and the reason that's, according to the church, that these are fakes as is being used for his extensive operations within the Office of Naval Intelligence or also religious persecution, whichever.

Hubbard's story changed a ton when he was alive and the various different uh the various different stories that he told really do not add up uh but at various points he was fighting in the pacific while taking taking command of a corvette in the atlantic i really like to believe since he's lying so much this is just literally a chevy corvette just got one of those like fucking off-base loans just flipping shitties in the middle of the pacific ocean in his sports car um the in the official biography

published by the church he was in command of an entire squadron of british ships somehow i don't know how to tell them that's not how the military works they're not just gonna all right you just borrowed an entire squadron yeah just give me your navy real quick yeah the british very famous for

liking American military officers at this period of time. Hubbard names one of these corvettes that he's supposedly in command of, the Mist. Hold on to that name for later because it actually gets funny of where he actually got that name from. That is not the way the US names vessels, but go on.

No, also there's never a corvette named that in either country they checked though somehow he was wounded on this ship in the Atlantic according to an interview by him in the 50s now please don't consider this an exhaustive study of his

lies because I bet that's a whole podcast series into it so like that's their version of the lines by donkeys except this is about LRH history. I'm only talking about the ones that we know specifically got caught up in court drama and therefore easily debunkable. Now let's get to the...

Let's get to his real record because holy shit. For starters, he never worked for the Office of Naval Intelligence or the Hydrographic Office. He was assigned there. He was assigned to the Naval Intelligence Office for five months in upstate New York for training. So just in TRADOC. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, they wanted to make him an intelligence officer. He was just so bad at it. They couldn't. He failed out of TRADOC. He didn't fail out of TRADOC. However, he failed himself out of a whole branch of the Navy

so after he graduated in this five month period is where they have him playing Indiana Jones out in Alaska he was in a classroom in upstate New York afterwards he was sent to Australia and he did send supplies to MacArthur and US forces on baton

small problem though that wasn't his fucking job, and nor was he allowed to do that. What? So, yeah. Instead, he ordered a blockade runner that was called the Don Isidro, who was on another mission altogether.

He was like a liaison for the intelligence attache of the US Navy to Australia. He was an aide. for the intelligence attache of the U.S. Navy to Australia. He was an aide. And he then Shanghai to ship that was on a completely different mission and then simply told it to go to Baton under the auspices of the authority of his boss, which I should point out was 3000 miles away from where it was supposed to be. What the fuck? What supplies did he have on board? I don't know.

Was he on the vessel or did he just spend the vessel? He was in Australia. I think he was in Brisbane. What the fuck? This got him immediately fired because, yeah, his supervisor, the intelligence attache, then cabled to Washington, D.C., and this is a direct quote from

the cable quote by assuming unauthorized authority and attempting to perform duties which he has no qualifications he became the source of much trouble this officer is not satisfactory for independent duty assignment he is garrulous and tries to give the impressance of his own importance he also seems to think he has an unusual ability in every line. These characteristics indicate that he will require close supervision for satisfactory performance in any intelligence duty. Oh my god. He stole a whole ship!

Indirectly! That's scathing, too. They're describing him the way you might describe a character from a mid-aught sitcom. He thinks they're good at everything. And like, tellingly, if this wasn't World War II, this would get him sent to prison. Like, for sure. It is wild that in the mid, like, it's worse that it happened in World War II, but they also have fewer options because it's fucking World War II.

That speaks to his entire career. Like, in Baldfaceiah and this other uh resource i use called ron the war hero great title honestly um it really everything boils down to he was only still in the navy because they fucking had to oh my god it sounds like he's just a detriment more than anything though too like he never did a single good thing while he's in navy yeah this is why you have to write This is why you have to write stuff down when people are fuck-ups. It's not because you hate them. It's because when you need

to kick LRH out of the Navy, you need to have a paper record. LRH going to his commander, like, just exasperated. There's no fucking paper trail for this time. He stole a whole boat. Yeah. Nobody wrote, like, a bad performance chip. We can't do anything. Now, his attempt to just you know take command

of an entire theater of operations became so well known and joked about within the Navy that Hubbard himself mentioned it in his book though I don't think they that he understood what was happening because they were laughing at him and his

story now in Ron the war hero he says quote for the next two or three years i'd run into officers and they say hubbard hubbard are you the hubbard that was in australia and i would say yes and they would say oh kind of horrified like they didn't know whether it was it was quite good idea to talk to me or not you know terrible man yeah yeah i i also don't know shit are you the same guy with the with the boat thing um now depending on which lrh you talk to uh this either happened or didn't happen um and in another version of the story that he was an anti-aircraft gunnery commander which he never was um who was tasked with shooting down Japanese

planes that got close to Brisbane, and was armed only with a Thompson submachine gun. But he was also an officer. Yes. Also, you don't shoot down planes with a fucking Thompson. But you don't. He certainly could. He'd use his mind bullets.

That's right. After this, he was kicked out of the entire pacific theater um he was sent over to the cable sensor office in new york and was for reasons nobody is quite sure of why promoted uh this is the last time he'd be promoted um now this is also officially his end of his time in the Naval Intelligence Branch, becoming a deck officer. Yeah, because like they said, this guy can't do intelligence duties. He's a lunatic. Stashed in the office building, he got pissed and requested to be put on a ship.

Any ship, preferably in active combat. Instead, he was put on the MV Mists, which is a fishing trawler retrofitted for military service. And it was then renamed the YP-422, the YP being Yard Patrol, because they were literally only used to put around the outside of naval yards for security. And he was in Massachusetts. He would not go near a war. Do you believe that he really did even ask to go to war? Or is that something he maybe talked up after the fact?

I fully believe that he was like, those guys just don't know what they had going for him. I would be the best goddamn gunnery or whatever kind of officer when facing down the Japanese Navy or whatever, because he thinks he's the best at everything. Right, that's true. He does earnestly believe that about

himself. That's the only thing I do believe about him when he says that he that he believes he could do this. I'm like, I truly do believe that you believe that. All right. You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He got fired in a month. Yeah. He was on that ship for a month.

He couldn't do yard patrol for a month. And he was I believe he was on that ship for a month. He couldn't do yard patrol for a month. And he was, I believe, he was in command of the boat because it's a fishing trawler. Like, whatever, put the fucking lieutenant in charge. Nobody cares. And he got fired. In October, he was sent back to New York again. And the vice chief of naval operations for the entire United States Navy remarked that Hubbard was, quote, not temperamentally fit for independent command.

Damn. Imagine being such a fuck up, like the third guy in charge of the entire Navy in the middle of World War II is like, yeah, I know Hubbard. Yeah, right. You don't want them to know your name. Yeah. However, kind of like we pointed out, it's World War II, and the Navy is very, very desperate. And within within another month he was kicked over to a submarine chasing training center in florida and learned how to command a anti-submarine ship over the course of 10 whole

days of training um at which point he was kicked over to oregon and given the command of the uss pc1815 which was a sub chaser um now it's probably some people might be wondering why the fuck was he stationed in oregon uh the reason is there actually had been japanese submarines that surfaced just outside of oregon uh one specifically in june of 1942 which is right before this um a Japanese settler under the command of Tagami Meiji attacked Fort Stevens, Oregon and did the dastardly duty of shelling the local baseball field. I would still be like,

if you're the people of Astoria, Oregon, you'd be pretty freaked out. Yeah, 100%. It was all to massage away their fears. Like, look, we have the best boats in the Navy to protect you in command of this weirdo. We sent you our finest ginger. We sent you the

finest officer we found in an office who was unemployed. We don't want this one anywhere near anything important. That's why we're giving him to you. That's why they stationed him in Astoria, Oregon. The Goonies hadn't quite set up shop there, so they didn't have to

hadn't happened yet, so there's nothing to lose. He was going to find that pirate treasure. I mean, quite honestly, that is what he believed he was telling people that he was doing in the Colt Navy is that they were going around looking for something to treasure. So, yeah, he is the original Goonie.

Now, in May of 1943, Hubbard, the commanding officer and his crew were about 12 miles off the shore of Cape Lookout, Oregon, when Hubbard's sonar detected something that resembled a submarine. He looked at it, said, yep, and began a riveting two-day-long battle outside of Cape Lookout, which, surprisingly, the Battle of Cape Lookout is not taught in schools for some reason. It was a two-day-long battle where Hubbard went toe-to-toe with two Japanese submarines firing off 35 depth charges,

which remind you, all of the depth charges he had on board. And when he ran out of that, he began firing cannon rounds when he swore that the subs had surfaced. Eventually, this battle was joined by Coast Guard ships, other Navy sub chasers, an observation blimp, which is just

fun. Okay, well, that person clearly was just having a good time. That's the true winner of World War II, was the guy who got stationed to a blimp in Astoria Oregon you need to bring back the world war 2 veteran I'm a blimp from the force we don't need that we need the

blimp core yeah bring back the blimpies they call themselves is that what they call themselves yeah yeah yeah yep all right and the sandwich shop stole their stole their valor stealing blimp valor is actually the only legitimate kind of stolen valor. That's the only one that should still be illegal.

Yeah. Yeah. Now, Hubbard was the first officer on scene, so he was given command over this entire operation. Now, the other ships, for some reason, didn't see anything, and nobody else fired another shot. But it was only Hubbard that was just blasting wildly like he was in a John Woo film. And eventually they'd left the area, Blimp

included. Hubbard was sure that they sank a submarine. He swore they saw an oil slick on the water. Nobody else saw it. And the periscope that they were firing deck guns at, one of the other um ships were like that's a log it's a it's a floating log ron shooting at a log

i mean i was really worried this was gonna end with like a very dead whale i mean that would actually give him more credit because at least he saw something alive I mean, that would actually give him more credit because at least he saw something alive. So, and funny enough, even in his own report, he notes that they shot at the periscope and then it disappeared and then came back. Which is him describing how a log goes under the water and then comes back. Right. If you were shooting an enemy periscope, you know what it wouldn't do? Return.

Bob up and down like a piece of wood. so this was a magnetic deposit oh yeah everybody knew about this other than hubbard apparently um it was like read the fucking briefs or whatever yeah uh it was a pretty well-known deposit of material that would cause the sonar to go wild whenever you're near it um and he either didn't care enough or or wanted i mean he always wanted to be a war hero right yeah because he made himself one in his own made-up church uh but everybody else knew about that's why they showed up like oh we're fucking here god damn it ron i'm just glad it wasn't a whale i feel like this is a win for me incitations everywhere uh and we do have his report which i have to say is written exactly like one of his books um here's some some excerpts i found funny

quote the first contact is very good the the target is moving left and away the bearing was clear the night was moonlit and the sea was flat calm, which is not how you fill out an incident report. That's not, you didn't need to include that. At one point he describes the second day of fighting as quote to dawn breaking over a glassy sea. Quote, all guns are now manned with great attention and it was supposed that the sub

was trying to surface. Everybody was very calm. Gunners were joking about who would get in the first shot. I bet they were. You know, I'm sure Everybody was very calm. Gunners were joking about who would get in the first shot. I bet they were. You know, I'm sure they were very calm. They're like, the lieutenant's fucking stupid, isn't he? Yeah. I think we're shooting at a log.

Who's going to have to shoot at this fucking log first? Now, he ends his report with a quote. This vessel was no credit for itself. It was built to hunt submarines. Its people were trained to hunt submarines, although exceeding its orders originally by attacking at the first contact. This vessel feels that it's done its job,

at which point it's been attended and stands ready to do it again. I love that it has morphed into his writing at the perspective of the ship. Yeah, what the fuck? Also, I love the acknowledgement. They're like, yes, we broke the rules. Yes, we did exactly what we were told not to do,

but we would do it again. Now, Sarah, what if I told you this is not the last time that he broke a lot of rules and attacked something that wasn't there? I would just be glad that he fulfilled his promise. Now, I will say that this imaginary naval battle probably wouldn't have hurt him. This actually happened a lot.

This is not the first time. And during the show, I've had to point out that someone was bombing a magnetic deposit or something. This kind of thing happened frequently as jumpy people who thought that every inch of the sea was clogged full of Japanese submarines were relying on technology that was very new and didn't have all the kinks ironed out quite yet. Right. But then he bombed Mexico. That got him in trouble. Well,

a part of Mexico. I mean, he's right. He's writing a, a very small, barely armed ship. Thank God he couldn't do two. If you gave this motherfucker a battleship.

Was he still in the same ship or like a similar size? Same ship. So the 815 yeah you can tell it's inconsequential because the navy didn't even give it a name they numbered that son of a bitch um so in june hubbard still in command had taken the 815 off the coast of san diego to take part in some naval exercises when on the return back to port he decided it'd be a very good idea to take a slight detour for some unapproved and unplanned gunnery practice. Because he had noted that the crew hadn't shot

very often. I guess they didn't see any more logs. How do they keep putting him in charge of things? I know they're desperate, but really, just have an enlisted person do this. At this point, just just fire him he has a second command who can't be any worse literally cannot be i mean i guess could be of course but a literal corpse to do less damage unlikely yeah now um he ordered them to head for the nearby coronado islands to be used as a target for gunnery

practice coronado islands are part of Mexico. Hubbard apparently did not know this and did not bother to check any fucking maps. Now, these islands were normally uninhabited in modern times, but as Mexico was as worried about Japanese subs because they're an ally of the United States, it had been turned into a duty station for Mexican Marines

and a small force of naval other naval personnel uh so hubbard ordered the ship to begin firing which it did have like a pretty like a small anti-submarine cannon so thankfully he did like i said he doesn't have a battleship out there anything yeah he also had the crew test out their small arms so machine guns rifles pistols too they're all just firing them into an island yes blindly so they're not yeah they're not aiming at anything that is smaller than an island yeah uh they're doing the amount of marksmanship that l ron hubbard was uh qualified to obtain which was shelling a metal okay he earned that and actually he didn't hit the island all that well either uh the sound of it

definitely uh freaked out the uh mexican marines who were there who suddenly thought they found themselves in the middle of world war ii like holy fuck it's real um this went on for like three hours um after this the mexican government kindly asked the united states yo what the fuck and Hubbard was fired as he was about to be punished he checked himself into the sick bay where he faked various different illnesses for two months and this would not be the last time he did this and we know that he's

faking because he admitted so so after there's a period of his life where he wrote something called affirmations now he didn't say that he wrote this. The church has all but admitted that he wrote it. It's effectively an early form of Dianetics self-help. Okay.

Confessional. He was reinventing confessions, which is a lot of what church belief is. Like they do auditing, which is effectively confessions as well, but much more punitive. Oh, it's weird. but much more punitive. It's weird. So he said, quote, your stomach troubled you use as an excuse to get out of the Navy from punishing you.

So yeah, he admitted he was faking it. Though he did eventually have an ulcer like some kind of peptic ulcer of some kind. So he did have some stomach problems. He's in the hospital for months but still the Navy couldn't get rid of him. Remember they needed officers, even one that fucking sucked so they stuck him oh just stop giving him jobs put him put him in new york you can't hurt anything there um i mean he eventually get uh put on the

uss algol which was a cargo ship like a cargo landing ship doesn't have any guns can't bomb mexico again he's not in complete control fine and this is actually where he did the best in his career though even his commander noted on top of giving him a good review they said quote he's very temperamental and it often has his feelings hurt which i don't know how often that has to happen for that to end up in your fucking evaluation i worked with a few people were like i would have written that in an evaluation form um and outside of like being a subordinate of a subordinate of a subordinate far down a chain of command where he couldn't his his duties are very very finite he couldn't fuck them up he couldn't accidentally bomb things or start wars with with

poseidon uh he was fine um and then there's a very very weird incident that happened immediately after this um while the ship was in mooring in san pedro california he went he ran to his commander and reported that he had discovered an act of sabotage he had discovered a a fire bomb which had been made out of a coke bottle which made a glass back then full of diesel with a wick in it so he found a molotov cocktail now he found this and then within a few hours of investigation the commander immediately ordered him off the ship did he also make the firebomb he almost certainly did yeah

when you're doing the sabotage right Right. It's like that fire. There was a story from a few years ago where a seasonal wildland firefighter started starting wildfires so he'd get more work. So, yeah, he's that. Now, it is true he did go to Princeton. However, it was after this. He didn't get demoted or anything for this. So I think what happened was his commander found a way to get rid of him as fast as possible without having to submit paperwork. And that was getting him into the military government course in Princeton because they immediately get him off the fucking ship and he never returned.

Yeah, right. Now, I should point out that he was not, in fact, a student of Princeton University. This is a military class that simply took place in Princeton. Also, he failed it. He failed out of military night school. Yeah. Now, the church likes to claim that he graduated from Princeton, but he went to a military school hosted by Princeton and failed,

at which point he was sent back to California where he checked himself back into the sick bay, complaining about more stomach pains. he had an ulcer but uh he stayed in this hospital for the rest of the war um how long was that wait when did he get into the hospital i want to say this is around a year so he spent like he would have spent like all told like 18 months of his military career just in the hospital significantly more time than he spent on a boat in the navy um and uh like they would get rid of him and then he'd come back like within hours just uh like symptoms are worse oh now i can't see we'll talk about his blindness a bit too because he claims blindness an awful lot um all the jerk in it yeah his mom said to

make his palms hairy um and that like and it always happened like he would say that his symptoms are getting worse and they're like we're gonna put you on this ship's like oh my tummy to be fair i mean honestly it's kind of incredible that wouldn't work in today's uh military like oh i don't feel good like we don't care like oh okay you could probably try to figure it out but you would have to be really really willing to like basically just be treated like a fucking asshole yeah

and I'm sure he was and I'm not to say that like oh in today's military I just mean it's shocking that they let him get away with that in the middle of World War 2 like no fuck you get back on a boat right yeah at some point it's just gonna be dereliction of duty or missing a missing a movement yeah most people consider this like a very long string of dereliction though i i think what benefited him is that he had a long track record of being a fucking terrible officer

so when he was assigned to a boat and people like who's this lieutenant hubbard and they see his record like you know you can stay in the hospital. It's fine. Yeah, that's fine. Yeah. Now, the church notes that he was in this hospital for the last year to several months because of a war wound that he suffered in the Pacific. So apparently the Japanese shot him with an ulcer cannon. I don't know. I don't fucking know. He eventually resigned his commission.

Yeah. Yeah. He had Havana syndrome. Yeah. Now, he eventually resigned his commission in 1950 and the church claims that this is because the navy was going to steal all of his research i don't know i don't know what research because remember they also believe that he was in the office of well they don't believe they say he was in the office of naval intelligence he was doing research about bioelectricity um all sorts of shit and the

ulcer yeah um he spent the rest of his time uh between this and and starting scientology and a few other things you get really into the occult after this uh as well so this is before yeah he's with alistair crowley and shit yeah there's a whole like orgy that went on yeah they they attempted to summon what the the moon demon goddess or some shit it was a sex cult and he's still someone's girlfriend yeah it's honestly a very funny story but we're not the podcast for it um he now he spent the time between uh that uh and getting out of the Navy, trying to build the Navy for more money. He was claiming that he was blind and suffering from horrible, wracking stomach pain in order to get his disability rate bumped up. And he was originally given a 10% rating for the ulcer,

which sounds accurate. It sounds like what the Navy would give you, like we'll give you 10% to fuck off, especially in regards to ulcers or something. Now now this is what hubbard wrote about his time and this is from ron the war hero uh quote blinded and injured optic nerves and lame with physical injuries to the hip and back at the end of world war ii i faced an almost non-existent future my service record states this officer has no neurotic or psychotic tendencies of any kind whatsoever but it also states permanent disability permanent permanently

disabled physically which yes it would say that because it's a 10 disability rating which means legally you are physically disabled you get that note for a 0% disability rating. Well, specifically the church points to the fact that the VA rates him as permanently physically disabled because that's the point of a VA rating. They give you a disability. And of course we know this, they give you a disability rating because it is non-fixable, ergo permanent.

Not because you are physically not able to get out of your bed forever they gave him he's physically disabled due to ulcers one of my ratings is for tinnitus yeah i think i have that one i am not like impaired because i have tinnitus i just get ringing in my ears right and your paperwork would say if you stubbed your toe really bad and then they like couldn't fix it you're physically and permanently disabled because they can't fix it. This is something that no matter what they do, it will not go away. Therefore, you're permanently disabled. It's just the language that they use on these things.

So he used this later as evidence saying like, look, they said I was permanently disabled and I fixed myself using my Dianetic skills or whatever. Which, yeah, he got 10%. Might be better thanetic skills or whatever. Um, which yeah, he got 10%. Might be better than some VAs though. Yeah, maybe. Um, eventually years later,

a guy named Jerry Armstrong, uh, who was a member of the church and was the church's chosen biographer for him was researching, uh, Hubbard's history, specifically his military history, amongst so many other things that he lied about. I was like, wow, this all seems like bullshit to me.

And he went to the church and said, some of these things don't add up between the records that you're giving me and his notes. Because what Hubbard said and what the church say don't even match up because he lied so often. The church long since stopped giving up trying to, uh, trying to make the two match. Uh, so like, you wonder like how they chose Jerry Armstrong when like they didn't need

somebody who was good at writing biographies. They needed somebody who like implicitly understood the bullshit. Right. Um, I think it was one of those guys that's like, like I I've, there was a period of my life where I was really into Scientology, not like believing in it, but like learning about it.

Because it's very interesting to me. Hey, I could levitate now. Just I can't show you for some reason. Me and Tom Cruise are on the same spaceship. But like how the fuck this got so popular? Because it's obviously ridiculous, right? I mean, admittedly, it's not any more ridiculous than any other religion in my opinion the just main difference is we watched it be born so it's inherently weird it is a little bit more predatory and like how of

course numbers but yeah fundamentally right like the belief structure is not like a weirder belief structure than other religions yeah a space god throwing nukes around is no different than like the burning bush and shit um and if people could just go to a church and not be preyed upon for money and have like horrible disconnection policies and say whatever i don't care yeah but it's kind of like when we talked a long long time ago during our episode about the weird mormon militias that like that line was crossed they're very militant and dangerous so it's like yeah we can make fun of them um but like a lot of people point out that like yeah of course i believed in all this until like this happened and for a lot of like the very well

off people it was like learning about the xenu shit and they're like you gotta be fucking kidding me um or for other people who was like learning more about L. Ron Hubbard, like this guy's a fucking idiot pillhead. And at this point, he's still alive. Like Hubbard's not dead yet when this happened. Oh, yeah. He dies a few years later and he does not attend court. During the later part of his life, even the church really, he wasn't even involved in it. Right.

He was living as like, despite the fact he was fantastically wealthy from the church really he wasn't even involved in it right uh he was living as like despite the fact he was fantastically wealthy from the church he's living a life as a weird drifter like ultra paranoid off his fucking tits on pills so like yeah yeah he he didn't have a lot to do with the day-to-day running of this shit it wasn't one of his things that he just like didn't want to be alone and so he'd constantly just like show up to prominent church members houses and be like hey i'm gonna like stay here for a month entertain me fucking hot couch uh l ron hubbard everybody has to call around like who's got l ron hubbard this weekend um yeah this was this jerry armstrong guy's like what the fuck are we doing here moment it's like these especially because like a lot of the military records were pretty, they're pretty obviously lies.

I mean his own other interviews that he was watching or books he wrote, cause he still was writing during all of this as well. Just churning out sci-fi the way only pulp offers authors can, which I, I, one of the few things I respect about him is his output is incredible. I guess the pills help. I don't know.

I'm not there. Probably help. Yeah. I write one book a year. I could probably up that up to like three. If I had uncut meth, like he did. Um,

I can tell you try it. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, what watches like that reminds me, I think it was like in living color or something else. Uh, SNL, one of those skit comedy things had a pre-workout that was just like, Anyway, what watches like that reminds me, I think it was like in Living Color or something else. SNL, one of those skit comedy things had a pre-workout that was just like, or is a dietary method.

And it was just meth. I don't know, but that's like a thing that people at like pharmaceutical companies have totally sold diet pills that were just amphetamines. Yeah, they got banned after a lot of people's hearts exploded. Yeah. I think like Fen-Phen was one of them. I remember that being a big deal of people's hearts exploded. Yeah. I think like Fen Fen was one of them. I remember that being a big deal when I was a kid. Yeah, that was one. That took out so many fucking people's bad hearts.

Good God. Yeah. Anyways, that's a separate thing entirely. But this is the come to Jesus moment for old Armstrong here and he went to like his church head because he was still a believer he was like what should i do here and he immediately got fucking thrown out of the church oh um but on his way out he uh scooped up a whole bunch of documents with him and fucked off uh because there's like the original documentation uh he was put out as a suppressive person um which is considered out in bad standing with the church um and he could

be fucked with legally or otherwise have his life destroyed um a process the church insists that they no longer do but uh they probably do um and this came to the court trial or the the court case because he was sued for various different reasons by the church. Uh, I assume there's a contract involved between him and the church when it came to writing this book. And he broke that contract on top, on top of, you know,

stealing what was church property, that being the documents they brought on the church, they brought on the court. Um, the trial lasted for four weeks, 1984. And it ended with the discovery of hilariously even more lies, uh,

because the church was using their own evidence to prove that everything that he was saying was wrong while uh armstrong and his attorneys were using the documents that they had as well as people in the navy who knew hubbard uh which included a guy named thomas yeah that's incredible so they called thomas moulton who was hubbard's second in command on the 815 and it was just like so what was what was your career like did you guys see any hot combat like were you with him when he got wounded and he was like uh and now moulton of course is like that none of that ever happened but also he said that hubbard had a habit of telling people that he had survived the attack on pearl harbor he was not even in the habit of telling people that he had survived the attack on Pearl Harbor.

He was not even in the Navy at the time. And he had also been the only survivor on his entire destroyer. Yeah. So he was not only was he just like a reflexive liar when it came to his own church, like even in his day to day life before he was a big shot, like just a fucking lieutenant. He was lying about everything. It's like just the compulsion for him. Yeah. The church contended that the Naval records that Armstrong brought, uh,

uh, that showed, you know, his real history, which was a normal career with a very normal amount of ribbons and metals that just, that decidedly showed that he was not a combat veteran were faked. Um,

and they had his real paperwork of which showed amongst other things two purple hearts and like 25 different medals there's a lot um most this doesn't matter to me we'll talk about one in question that's very funny um for the records easily like of the records that the military keeps which have not always been like very thorough metals and like just your dd214 that has been like pretty consistent for a very long time and just like being something that you can pull publicly yeah like you can pull ours pretty easily i mean it's they're foiled so everything gets blacked out but like like for instance uh i actually don't have a Combat Action badge on my DD214 because I just never submitted it.

And my records have my last name. My Combat Action badge has my last name spelled incorrectly. I think I've joked about that before. I know I've actually posted it to Twitter. Because someone did FOIA my records once way, way back in the day, several years ago when Hooligans first came out and a lot of people got mad and, and,

and someone was insistent that I was lying and none of this ever happened. So they FOIA my records and like, look, he doesn't even have a combat action badge, which not everybody has one. Even if you've been in combat, it all depends if your commander wants to submit paperwork or not. I'm like,

I'm missing one. I'm missing an award because I got it awarded to me three weeks before i got out of the navy and it just didn't like the paperwork wasn't submitted in time right and like right like i have it it was mailed to me after the fact but no it's not in my records and i just don't really give a shit right and that's kind of why i never submitted mine as well like i got uh uh awarded it have the paperwork and they're like, make sure you submit that for whatever, for whatever, IPERMs or whatever. And at that point, I already knew I was getting out.

So I was like, why do I care about promotion points? I'm not getting promoted. I'm getting the fuck out. And that's what I did. It doesn't matter. Yeah, anyways. It's all just stuff that is so easy to look up. It has been easy to look up for decades.

Yeah, yeah. And if you're lying i mean and it's it's like something it's small shit it's not like a bronze star or silver star or purple heart which are very that those are going to be there um and famously when this goes to court you can just be like so like the thing is like you could ask the navy for records and they will have all of your records even not the 214 that they'll have that has ever been submitted in your name even back then um and like that will come up and the navy's like he's gonna be fucking purple hearts well he like claimed to have been up around alaska for months too and that just feels like a really easy one to to like poke holes and since he was never anywhere like the closest he got to Alaska

was fucking Oregon that's not even the first like adventure thing that he lied about I mean he truly saw themselves some revolutionary adventurer he wanted to be that guy in the 1800s or whatever that found an island and befriended

the locals he wanted to be that so bad the white savior so bad and you never bad. He wanted to be the white savior so bad. And you never trust somebody who wants to be the white savior. I'm shocked he never ended up in Hawaii. So he'd get cooked on the shore. But, you know, unfortunately. But King Command Man couldn't take this one out for us. Now, he also submitted records that showed he was, quote,

been crippled and blinded uh right now the record they submitted was the one that i had quoted from above um which was uh from the book that hubbard wrote himself um the one that you know he was crippled and blinded and physically disabled permanently other notes they submitted as evidence uh that they claimed were from the military the hospital were handwritten and clearly in Hubbard's own handwriting. They found a colonel who supported their theory

that the military or the government had altered his papers, or a process he delightfully called sheep-dipped for some reason. What? Those papers have been sheep-dipped. Yeah, that's...

Obviously. Sure. They pinned down a sheep and just rubbed the papers, all of them, tracking you, sir. Got it. To get rid of the static, yeah. Now, he admitted in court, however,

that all of the resources he used to come to that conclusion had been given to him by the church. So he was paid probably. Yeah, there was no evidence. He's a church member, but he is, however, very stupid. So we do have that going for us. You can always find somebody who's a little bit naive and has a grudge that will say whatever you want.

Yeah, true. Now, adding to the wounded story in court, this expanded to two different wounds, one the Pacific and one the Atlantic. the wounded story in court this expanded to two different wounds one the pacific and one the atlantic now the one of the atlantic isn't very specific but the one that was in in the pacific was supposed to have happened off the coast of java which is a place he never was the closest he'd ever yeah i will say this he was in fact in the pacific theater at one point in australia yeah um however uh we actually from the from the date he says he was wounded, we have a medical report that was submitted four months after

that date. And remember, this wound is supposed to be pretty severe. It was a chest wound. It was supposed to have crippled him. So in 1942, he had pink eye hemorrhoids and quote, urethral discharges. Gross. Clap.

Motherfucker, don't rub your eyes. Wash your damn hands. Those goddamn Japanese submarines shot me full of VD and shit in my eyes. It's the only possible solution here. Now, one thing, the church and him continually bring up the fact that he was blinded.

They use the word blinded a lot. He was not blind. Rubbed a bunch of gonorrhea into your fucking eyeballs. The poop is mixing with the clap. It's forming a film over my eyes. Sort of like super conjunctivitis. So let's talk about his eyesight because he did have eyesight a bad eyesight the navy notes that he had very bad eyesight and that's actually why when he originally attempted to join the navy

he was refused from active naval service and why he ended up in the reserve and then by the time he was moved over it didn't fucking matter world war ii happens we'll give mr mc we'll give mr mcgoo a rifle we don't give a shit. That makes the Oregon thing that much funnier, too. The fucker couldn't see shit, and he's out here describing a glass EC. Well, the thing is, the Navy actually found a revolutionary new way to correct his eyesight using a device known as glasses. Yes. They noted it was corrected to 2020 using glasses. Another bit of evidence from around the war here.

It was pretty funny. In a case of Hubbard lying so often he just can't keep his shit straight. So remember when he spent the entire rest of his career in a hospital? Now, and he crippled and blinded, unable to get up. Descriptors that he used.

This is a quote from Ron the War Hero. Quote, there is, of course, nothing in Hubbard's file that would support these claims. In fact, for the man who's supposedly been quote physically shot to pieces which is another term he uses he seemed to have led a remarkably active life during this time and two

separate statements he made in 1950 in the 1950s Hubbard claimed that while on leave in Hollywood on July 25th 1951 he was attacked by three petty officers, one with a broken bottle. However, because of the advanced knowledge of judo,

Howard was able to fight them off. Simply judo his way out of that fucking problem. And Ron the War Hero points out, this is a very impressive, if not impossible, for a blinded cripple. End quote. I don't like using that word but

it is used in all of the quotes I apologize I just love the idea like it's obviously made up but three petty officers just like three e4s and e5s are so sick of his shit they track him down with a broken bottle now the obvious problems of the story being that he's supposed to be bedridden

and he just fucking judo chopped his way out of a fucking three-way bar fight. And two, this happened in 1951. He'd been in the Navy for a fucking year. Who was he taking leave from? You know. However, my personal favorite is the forgery that the church

submitted for evidence to be his real file that they had and they're locked safe or whatever. It claims that he was awarded the quote Dutch Victory Medal. This was not a medal given out for World War II service. It was, however, given out during World War I, and his dad was awarded it. That's the one he chose from his dad to try to steal?

Yeah, he would have been about seven years old. At the end of World War One. Fighting to protect a bunch of tulips. Creating the world's first NFTs. Now. Another funny thing here. Is on that. Those records. The old DD-214.

Now. All DD-214s are signed by a discharging officer. I think mine was probably signed by an NCO or something because I was enlisted. Mine was signed by a civilian. Perfect. Upon investigation, it was discovered that the name used for the discharging officer that was signed on the paperwork simply did not exist. Yeah. There we go.

Which meant that it was pretty obviously a complete forgery. And honestly, the best part about this whole thing is they actually had his real signature. The actual discharge paperwork. They could have just used that name, but they didn't. They signed so many

DD-214s. They don't go over them. They're not going they don't go over them they're not gonna remember this guy you could just use their name well not to mention if you use the real name and they do find this guy say he's still alive retired whatever like hey did you sign the discharge paperwork for uh lafayette ronald hubbard's like yeah yes there's a record of that and like instead they just like i don't know calvin smith us nc or whatever yeah fuck it in case you're wondering the church lost the shit out of this case um oh that might be one of the last times they lost a court case oh there's a better one uh this so

the we don't normally have positive things to say about the united kingdom on this podcast but i will say this that Their courts are very blunt in their rulings, and sometimes it's very funny. So there's another court case about virtually the same thing going on a few weeks later, maybe it was a few months, in the UK's Royal Courts of Justice, and the judge, Justice

Lately, put it fussily in his final statement. Quote, that he was a much-decorated war hero. He was not. That he commanded a much decorated war hero he was not that he was that he commanded a corvette squadron he did not that he was awarded the purple heart a gallantry decoration for those wounded in action he was not wounded and he was not decorated that he was crippled and blinded in war and cured himself with dionetics techniques he was not crippled he was not blinded and he never fought in war it's just like running down a checklist

going nope nope you might see why if you go to their website now their details about his war history is significantly trimmed back and that is the illustrious incredible military

career of Lafayette Ronald Hubbard lieutenant senior grade is like so much stupider than I expected it to be I when you honestly when you I knew about some of this because like I read about this

before yeah I've I heard about his bombing the magnetic deposit or the mineral deposit it was magnetic whatever I've, I heard about his bombing, the magnetic deposit or the mineral deposit. It was magnetic, whatever. I've heard about the Mexico thing. I had a vague understanding about a lot of the dumb shit.

I didn't know about the full breadth of it. And I can, I can honestly say very happy. I'm very pleased with this. Sounds like it was a real pain in the ass. Yeah. Right. I am. Okay. Imagine you're the, It sounds like it was a real pain in the ass. Yeah, right?

Okay. Imagine you're that molten guy that got called in fucking 30 years later or whatever. And he's like, what the fuck? Imagine 30 years from now, you're called to testify against some shithead officer that you served with very briefly because they started a fucking cult and started suing people. I would be so fucking funny. There are so many people I've worked with that. Like if I got called to testify like for or against them, I would agree to do it.

And I would just shit talk on like, I would see under oath, just talk about how much they sucked to work with. It does sound kind of great, honestly. Um, and they're like, wait, what did Ron do now? Oh, yeah. Right. Started Scientology. Oh, great. much they sucked to work with it does sound kind of great honestly um yeah and they're like wait what did ron do now oh yeah right started scientology oh great like this is before like

i mean there's a really good chance that he had no fucking idea what scientology was because it's the 80s the internet isn't a thing you can't like localized it first too right where it was like devoted followers but they were all kind of internal to each other I mean if I think it really dependent on where this guy lived like if you lived in California because they're like

they were huge in LA I think they actually still are you probably fucking heard about them because they did like their dianetics stress tests as recruitment drives at the to mention, Dianetics blew the fuck up despite the fact every fucking psychologist on Earth called it, like, this is... Point, what the fuck

are you talking about? This is actively harmful. Which is why the church rapidly pivoted to seeing psychology and they compare psychologists to Nazis in death camps and shit. Yeah, of course. It's all based on spite. Talking about your feelings, that's some

Nazi shit. Everybody knows that. Yeah, unless you're doing it in our not ominous looking building at all. So, Sarah, we do a segment on this show called Questions from the Legion. And if you'd like to ask a question from the Legion, donate

to the show. It's like a buck. Legion donate to the show it's like a buck get access to the Patreon we have a running post from March I'll have to make another one where it's like 170 comments now fuck of different questions

and I'm slowly working my way through them so this question comes from the Patreon. It says, what is the best prank you've ever witnessed? Okay, so to preface, I was an intel, which means I only worked with a bunch of loser nerds and I was a loser nerd. So the best-

I wasn't intel, but I am a loser nerd. The best prank that I witnessed wasn't because the prank was good. It's because of how poorly executed it was where when I got to trade off a bunch of people who were in the holding department, like holding division wanted to prank one of our chiefs. But again, losers and nerds.

And so what they came up with was just wrapping everything in his office in tinfoil, which like wrapping everything in like plastic wrap or gift wrap is like is a prank people will do sometimes but i have no idea why they went yeah i don't know why they went with tinfoil though so everything was very shiny which was pretty funny but also it was like loud it was just like crinkly as fuck while they're all like giggling to themselves in this office and then they're all getting like cut on sharp ass tin foil and so they do this

the real prank is we covered his office in our blood I know he's on leave too so like they do this while he's on leave it just looks like shit and then he gets back and he doesn't do or say anything to react to it so they went through hours and you know rolls and rolls of

fucking tin foil and then he just sort of like crumpled it all up and put it in the garbage and never responded to it i think that's the way to go about that because the point of a prank is to get a reaction out of someone oh yeah he won yeah he won that hands down um i think the best prank i ever witnessed and once upon a time i i'm sure it doesn't exist anymore, there was a video of it. And if I had the video, I couldn't show it anyway because it was nudity. So I actually, I think I wrote about this in Hooligans, but I don't remember. There was, we had a shower trailer on our tiny little outpost that worked one day out of the week.

So we'd all rush in there and get showers. that worked one day out of the week. So we'd all rush in there and get showers. And there was one guy in our unit who was very uncomfortable being around other naked people, which fine, whatever. That's not what the prank is about. But it also meant that we knew he showered late at night and alone. So in the shower, it was winter.

So nobody wanted to stay in the shower trailer for very long. So you effectively just ran a towel over yourself real quick and then ran out to get back to the tent where the heater worked and two people in my squad climbed to the top of the shower trailer they fuckload a baby powder

because it was like the one thing that we had a ton of because you use baby powder for a lot of shit when you're constantly doing disgusting foot patrols and stuff and barely showering. And they pop the cap on these two giant... I don't know. This is enough baby powder to last years one to

four on a baby's lifespan. Pop the top on both of them. And they waited for him to come out. And his name was Sergeant Blue. I don't know if he listens to this show, but... Sorry, dude. I actually had no part of it. I don't know if he listens to the show, but sorry, dude. I actually had no part of it. I only witnessed it because we had these cameras that were meant to, of course, scan the road outside in case we get attacked or whatever because we're in the middle of a war zone.

And we pointed them inward so we could watch because we knew the prank was coming. Like responsible soldiers. And I was one of the people watching. Blue walks out and the guys just jump fucking baby powder on him he disappears in a cloud of white and it's just stuck to him so he has to like he goes back

in because he has to take another shower he's like covered in sludgy baby powder yeah it's stuck to him because he's wet so he goes back and take a yeah he's probably better than the rest of us um comes back out he gets it again oh my god and at this point he just stays naked and starts trying to climb the trailer to get at these guys assuming that you know with the first one you'd be out of your system but that's where you'd be wrong because

what the fuck else we you going to do right you had foresight there was planning involved here yeah we literally used military resources to prank him um and so he's scrabbling up on this thing naked because he couldn't put on his clothes because they were now covered in baby powder so he's

going to walk back on a towel um so yeah it was like a high speed naked guy chased through the outpost covering the white no definitely not um and then the afghan commandos who are living with those are very confused um yeah that was that i really wish i still that fucking video but alas i do not probably better for him that you don't yeah probably i mean it's probably better for him that people don't pour baby powder on him either, but whatever. Sometimes you've got a lot of baby powder and nothing to do with it, though.

Like, whom's among us? And that's exactly how these bad things happen. It's like nobody disliked him. This wasn't like done out of spite. Like, if we hated someone, we wouldn't prank them. We just don't care about them. Yeah. But, you know, boredom and baby powder equals naked guy covering baby

powder what if it had been powdered lube you know very slippery uh sarah thank you so much for joining us uh plug your show i have a show um i have a podcast that i put out occasionally um called it came from the sea where i talk about ocean science and ocean related topics you can find that anywhere you listen to podcasts and we are also on twitter at from the sea pod it's the first podcast and specifically in whale song i wish maybe one day that's what my degree is going to be in actually yeah whale linguist um everybody thank you for listening to the show if you like what we is going to be an actually a whaling list. Everybody, thank you for listening to the show.

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And I don't know why it helps us, but it does because algorithm algorithms are things that exist. If I can say the word correctly. And until next time, lie about your military service and start a sci-fi cult. Do it.