The first in a series investigating the intelligence connections to the Church of Scientology since its founding, including drug trafficking operations, founder L. Ron Hubbard\u2019s work adjacent to the CIA\u2019s MK-ULTRA, and their unprecedented infiltration of the US government.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The majority of current discourse on Scientology centers around insider revelations regarding the radical belief system coded within the pay-to-play hierarchy of the Church \u2013\u2013 e.g. allusions to an alien god named Xenu, hydrogen bombs exploding in ancient volcanoes, auditing sessions with e-Meters, and parasitic past-lives in spirit-form covering human bodies known as Thetans. The deepest secrets of Scientology are only made available to members who have diligently climbed the ranks and dished out vast sums of money. Slowly but surely, these secrets have been published on the internet by disgruntled ex-Scientologists, and thus the discussions surrounding this controversial religion have been commandeered into sensational silos. Whether intentional or not, the end result is that the immense ties of the Church to intelligence and drug trafficking \u2013\u2013 not to mention the intersection of both as it relates to the CIA\u2019s MK-ULTRA mind control program \u2013\u2013 remain largely ignored.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Scientology\u2019s methods and their extremely pervasive effects on the minds of its own cult members only truly begin to make sense when understood within the context of the non-redacted history of founder L. Ron Hubbard, including the Church\u2019s primordial Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation connections to the intelligence community, and Hubbard\u2019s own intelligence career. His role in under-discussed operations, on the behalf of US Naval and other intelligence agencies, include Hubbard\u2019s work at St. Elizabeth\u2019s Hospital in Washington, D.C. in the 1930s \u2013\u2013 the hot-bed of psychiatric research during Project Bluebird and Project Artichoke, the precursors to the infamous MK-ULTRA program \u2013\u2013 in addition to his infiltration of Jack Parsons\u2019 occult-influenced rocket program, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, whose work became the scientific foundation for NASA.<\/p> In 1953, The MK-ULTRA program was\u00a0formally authorized<\/u><\/a>\u00a0by CIA Director Allen Dulles in order to close the \u201cbrainwashing gap\u201d after the US learned of Korean mind-control techniques that had been used on American prisoners of war. As detailed later in this investigation, Scientology itself would later employ such tactics to direct fanatical members of the Church to infiltrate a handful of US agencies, including the IRS, the Treasury, and the FDA, among others, to enact an elaborate intelligence gathering operation in the largest infiltration of the US government in history \u2013\u2013 Operation Snow White.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This piece, the first in a two-part series, attempts to abridge the history of the Church of Scientology from its formation through the mid-1990s in order to properly frame an ensuing article on Scientologist Sky Dayton and his numerous internet businesses strewn across his prolific data-mining venture portfolio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ultimately, Scientology is far more than just another run-of-the-mill religion. In fact, its mostly untold history paints a picture of an organization that much more closely resembles a tax-exempt intelligence operation \u2013\u2013 signed off by the highest members of the CIA and its primordial OSS \u2013\u2013 than a wacky cult of alien worshippers invented by a pulp science-fiction author.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Remember one thing, we are not running a business, we are running a government. We are in direct control of people\u2019s lives.<\/em>\u2013\u2013 L. Ron Hubbard, Policy Letter\u00a0from<\/u><\/a>\u00a0August 5, 1959<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Lafayette Ronald Hubbard was born March 13, 1911 in Tilden, Nebraska, the son of a teacher and a US Navy officer. Hubbard spent his early childhood on various Navy bases, including a lengthy stay in the US territory of Guam. Before authoring the concepts of Dianetics and founding Scientology, Hubbard was a well-published science-fiction author. Hubbard began his ventures into the study of the mind after sailing alongside the former Navy spy and pioneering-yet-controversial psychoanalyst Commander Joseph \u201cSnake\u201d Thompson. His father, Harry Ross Hubbard, was\u00a0ordered to return<\/u><\/a>\u00a0to the east coast, and thus the Hubbard family was deployed alongside Thompson on the USS Ulysses S. Grant in 1923. Despite the young Hubbard being only 12 years old at the time of meeting, the two engaged in\u00a0friendly<\/u><\/a>\u00a0correspondence for years. Hubbard later attended George Washington University to study engineering, but would leave before graduating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hubbard encountered and befriended William Alanson White, a professor of psychiatry at the university. For the remainder of the 1930s, Hubbard stayed in Washington, D.C. and volunteered with the psychiatric community in the nation\u2019s capital, including alongside White, who was then also serving as the Superintendent of St. Elizabeth\u2019s Hospital. His former shipmate, Thompson, soon\u00a0became<\/u><\/a>\u00a0the Vice President of the Washington Psychoanalytic Association, of which White was President, and was also stationed at St. Elizabeth\u2019s hospital. Scientologist John Galusha later penned a letter to the FBI\u00a0in 1954<\/u><\/a>\u00a0stating that Hubbard was \u201ctrained in psycho-analysis in Washington, D.C.\u201d by both Thompson and White.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a lecture given in\u00a0June 1955,<\/u><\/a>\u00a0Hubbard himself confirmed this mentorship:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAnd I came back to this very city in which we\u2019re giving this congress, and I took engineering\u2026 And majored, in that engineering, in finite energies, and thought of the finest energy I could think of \u2013 it must be the human mind. Experimented to discover how memory was stored, and found by no computation I could ever compute, that it \u2013 a man couldn\u2019t remember, certainly by this computation, more than three month\u2019s worth. Because there wasn\u2019t that much storage space because energies weren\u2019t that small. And I was proposed, as a young engineer, a conundrum of such magnitude that I went over to my very good friend, the head of Saint Elizabeth\u2019s Hospital\u2026 Dr. William Alan White. He said, \u2018If you pursue along this line\u2019 (\u2026he was a golf friend of mine) \u2013 and \u2018if you pursue along this line,\u2019 he said, \u2018you tell me about it from time to time,\u2019 he says, \u2018because I\u2019ll be watching.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, another fellow who had been more or less my mentor when I was a little kid \u2013 as a matter of fact, I followed in the footsteps of this man \u2013 Commander Thompson, who brought psychoanalysis straight from Vienna to the US Navy, and introduced psychoanalysis into the Navy\u2026 I told Commander Thompson about this work, I tried to get more information, and when I had turned to Commander Thompson and Dr. Alan White, I had turned to the only two probables in the country who could have shed any light on this subject at all.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Despite a fondness for his former teacher White, White\u2019s successor at St. Elizabeth\u2019s, Winfred Overholser, became an object of Hubbard\u2019s hatred following Overholser\u2019s dismissal of his Dianetic research. Hubbard lectured in\u00a01952\u00a0<\/u><\/a>about the dangers of Overholser\u2019s treatment of schizophrenics at the hospital\u2019s Chestnut Lodge. The lecture even includes mention that three members of the staff from the Chestnut Lodge were sent to service Hubbard himself during the 1930s. This overlaps with CIA activity at Chestnut Lodge, which directly involved Overholser. According to\u00a0the CIA<\/u><\/a>, in 1942, then-OSS Chief William Donovan assembled \u201ca half-dozen prestigious American scientists\u201d tasked to \u201ccome up with a substance that could break down the psychological defenses of captured spies and POWs\u201d in order to cause an \u201cuninhibited disclosure of classified information.\u201d Overholser was appointed chairman of the panel working on this \u201cTruth Drug.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to a University of London\u00a0research paper\u00a0<\/u><\/a>titled \u201cThe Role of Psychoanalytic Knowledge in CIA\u2019s ARTICHOKE and MKULTRA Documents During the Years 1947-1963: Use and Misuse of Psychoanalytic Techniques,\u201d the Chestnut Lodge \u201cheld CIA-cleared psychiatrists \u2018for in-house employees and other sensitive cases\u2019 and was officially \u2018approved by the CIA Security Office for use\u2019 in 1953.\u201d The paper asserts that \u201cthe collaboration between US-intelligence and Chestnut Lodge psychiatrists and psychoanalysts\u201d had began even earlier, during World War II. For example, Chestnut Lodge employees Mabel B. Cohen, Robert A. Cohen, and Alfred H. Stanton were \u201call security-cleared OSS-medical personnel\u201d who were, at the time, \u201cassigned to Henry A. Murray\u2019s OSS Assessment Staff.\u201d The paper also states that some of their OSS assignments were \u201cconducted at the Lodge,\u201d and that \u201cthis collaboration continued when the CIA superseded the OSS in 1947.\u201d St. Elizabeth\u2019s Hospital, the Chestnut Lodge, and the CIA\u2019s headquarters at Langley are all within a few miles of each other, and two CIA Directors, Richard Helms and Allen Dulles,\u00a0employed<\/u><\/a>\u00a0the same psychoanalyst at the Chestnut Lodge for their personal care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A\u00a0published memo<\/u><\/a>\u00a0from Paul Gaynor, the CIA Security Research chief, to Project ARTICHOKE director, Morse Allen, reads: \u201cIt is imperative that we move forward more aggressively on identifying and securing a more reliable ready group, or groups, of human research subjects for ongoing Artichoke work.\u201d According to the Alliance for Human Research Protection, the now defunct Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) was created in 1953, the same year as the aforementioned memo was written, and \u201cthe CIA found it remarkably easy to gain HEW\u2019s approval for use of Federal medical facilities as fronts for covert drug and interrogation experiments using unwitting human subjects.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Allen later suggested to Gaynor in another memo titled \u201cArtichoke Research Program\u201d that \u201cthere are some four thousand American military men who are serving court martial sentences in the federal prisons at the present time,\u201d and he suggested \u201coffer[ing] reduced sentences\u201d to these men in order to gain their consent to participate in Artichoke-related experimentation. About a week later, Allen tweaked the aforementioned memo to include \u201cfederal hospitals and institutions under the control of the [U.S.] Public Health Service.\u201d Shortly after, Artichoke progress reports were sent to the CIA via Gaynor about \u201cthe experiments at three federal prisons,\u201d in addition to experiments conducted at Hubbard\u2019s former haunt, St. Elizabeth\u2019s Hospital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The aforementioned OSS agent in charge of St. Elizabeth\u2019s staff, Henry A. Murray, later joined Harvard as a researcher, where he conducted the infamous Harvard Experiment, whose research subjects included Theodore Kaczynski \u2013\u2013 more famously known as \u201cThe Unabomber\u201d \u2013\u2013 in addition to supervising Timothy Leary\u2019s controversial work with psychedelic drugs. Leary\u2019s deeper connections to Scientology and intelligence will be explored later in this piece. Murray remained secretly employed by the CIA during\u00a0this time<\/u><\/a>, leading many to theorize that Murray\u2019s work were conducted as a part of MK-ULTRA or related projects. Murray was far from being the only intelligence-linked figure who served in a prominent role at Chestnut Lodge. For instance, Harry Stack Sullivan, the one-time head psychiatrist at Chestnut Lodge and founder of the William Alanson White Institute, left the hospital before helping establish a CIA-precursor, the Office of War Information in\u00a01942<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In\u00a0a lecture<\/u><\/a>\u00a0titled \u201cHow to Handle Audiences\u201d delivered by Hubbard on November 1, 1956, the Church\u2019s founder confirmed his 1930s stint at the D.C.-area mental hospital, and even boasted of tricking the workers at St. Elizabeth\u2019s using advanced hypnotism:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI hypnotized one time the staff at St. Elizabeth\u2019s. Told him they\u2019d heard a good speech and left the stage. They all came around afterwards saying, \u2018What a good speech that you gave!\u2019 They might afterwards have suspected my knowledge of the mind, but certainly not my knowledge of hypnotism. It\u2019s very easy to hypnotize groups.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n At the onset of World War II, Hubbard himself enlisted in the Navy after his stint at St. Elizabeth\u2019s. There is much discrepancy about his rank and accomplishments during the war, but by nearly all accounts \u2013\u2013 including critical biographers and the Church itself \u2013\u2013 Hubbard served as\u00a0an intelligence officer<\/u><\/a>. In 1945, upon the war\u2019s conclusion, Hubbard moved into an estate in Pasadena, CA owned by Jack Parsons, the aforementioned founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n John Whiteside Parsons was born in Pasadena, CA in\u00a01914<\/u><\/a>\u00a0and spent his early life reading science-fiction and emulating his desires for space travel in his backyard with model rockets and fireworks with his childhood friend, Edward Foreman. After numerous craters were made in his mother\u2019s backyard, and while still enrolled in high school, Parsons joined the Hercules Powder Company and began experimenting with solid-fueled rockets. He later left Hercules and, along with his childhood friend Foreman, joined the Halifax Explosives company based in the Mojave Desert. During their time at Halifax, in 1937, both of the aspiring rocketeers attended a lecture on the subject at Caltech, where they met Frank Malina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Parsons, Foreman and Malina went on to pitch Theodore Von Karman of the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratories of the California Institute of Technology (GALCIT) on their ideas of rocket propulsion, with Malina\u2019s proposal for a doctorate eventually being approved by the \u201clegendary aerodynamicist.\u201d The trio, now with access to the labs and literature available via Caltech and GALCIT, began their experiments in earnest \u2013\u2013 with their infamous explosive tendencies earning them the name the \u201cSuicide Squad.\u201d Their work formed the basis of the Jet Proposal Laboratory (JPL) on the outskirts of Parsons\u2019 hometown. As mentioned previously, the JPL was eventually incorporated into NASA, and Malina\u2019s son, Roger Malina \u2013\u2013 the\u00a0husband<\/u><\/a>\u00a0of Christine Maxwell, the daughter of Robert Maxwell and sister to Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell \u2013\u2013 later served as the first Director of this new joint venture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Long before the JPL was formalized under the Executive Branch, Parsons and his crew received funding from the US Army in\u00a01938<\/u><\/a>\u00a0to develop rocket engines to assist in the launch of small aircraft. The military was pleased with the results on their JATO canisters \u2013\u2013 \u201cJet Assisted Take Off\u201d \u2013\u2013 and funneled more money towards developing these fuel sources. The solid rocket fuel that had been developed by Parsons became \u201cthe basis of the Minuteman missile, the Titan rocket, and the Space Shuttle solid rocket booster.\u201d Despite, by nearly all metrics, the success of the primordial JPL \u2013\u2013 then-known as the GALCIT Rocket Project \u2013\u2013 Parsons soon turned his eye away from the stars and, in 1939, began focusing on the works of English Occultist, Aleister Crowley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Crowley, a member of The Hermetic Order of The Golden Dawn, joined the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) in 1910, a Freemasonry off-shoot, that was quickly influenced by Crowley\u2019s interest in his Thelemic religion, occult ceremonies, and \u201cSex Magick.\u201d Parsons and his then-wife, Helen Northup, joined the OTO in 1939, and Parsons engaged in frequent correspondence with Crowley, eventually becoming the American representative of the OTO. In order to further his study of Crowley\u2019s teachings and the OTO, Parsons purchased a mansion in Pasadena to create a commune of occultists he dubbed \u201cThe Parsonage.\u201d The manor soon became a hot bed of lavish parties, orgies and occult rituals. Meanwhile, the military continued to pour funding into the GALCIT Rocket Project and, in 1942, the rocket builders founded the Aerojet Engineering Company to keep up with the increasing demand for militarized propulsion. The next year, in 1943, the military formally took over the GALCIT Rocket Project, and renamed it the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Now under military control, JPL developed \u201cseveral weapon deployment systems based on the liquid and solid fuel technology\u201d including the WAC Corporal sounding rocket, which played a large part in the construction of \u201cthe first American rocket ever to exit the Earth\u2019s atmosphere.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As his interest in the occult deepened, the military became wary of Parsons\u2019 ways, and strong-armed him into unloading his shares of the Aerojet Engineering Company. The ensuing payout provided further funding for his \u201cspiritual\u201d life and the Parsonage itself. At this time, in 1945, L. Ron Hubbard became acquainted with Parsons, and was quickly initiated into the OTO. Hubbard subsequently moved into Parsons\u2019 Pasadena estate. In a letter to Crowley describing Hubbard, Parsons\u00a0wrote<\/u><\/a>, \u201cI deduced that he is in direct touch with some higher intelligence. He is the most Thelemic person I have ever met and is in complete accord with our own principles.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hubbard and Parsons soon became inseparable, with the pair even sharing Parsons\u2019 then-partner Sara Northrup \u2013\u2013 the half-sister of Parsons\u00b4 first wife, Helen. In the winter and spring of\u00a01946<\/u><\/a>, Parsons and Hubbard toiled on a series of occult rituals in the Mojave Desert dubbed \u201cBabalon Working,\u201d in which the pair attempted to incarnate the Thelemite goddess Babalon onto Earth. Shortly after its conclusion, and having believed the ritual to be a success, Parsons\u00a0sold the Parsonage<\/u><\/a>\u00a0for cash and looked to Hubbard for business concepts to pay back the hefty expenses from their years of occult investigations. Hubbard promptly took nearly all the funds from the sale of the estate, as well as Parson\u2019s wife Sara. The pair then eloped in Mexico. While Parsons did eventually get his money back, Hubbard, Sara and Parson\u2019s sailboat continued on without him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1950, Parsons lost his security clearance after the FBI began investigating the occult scientist for the theft of \u201crocket plans,\u201d plans which the bureau claimed Parsons \u201chad planned to exchange\u201d with \u201cthe newly founded Israeli government in exchange for admission into Israel.\u201d The US Air Force told the FBI that they had been \u201cmonitoring Parsons and his relationship with Crowley,\u201d stating in a report that \u201ca religious cult, believed to advocate sexual perversion, was organized at subject\u2019s home at 1003 South Orange Grove Avenue, Pasadena, California, which has been reported subversive.\u201d According to statements made by the Church in\u00a0December 1969<\/u><\/a>\u00a0to the\u00a0Sunday Times<\/em>, Hubbard was sent by the US Navy to \u201c[break] up black magic in America.\u201d The Church wrote, \u201cHe went to live at the house and investigated the black magic rites and the situation and found them very bad\u2026 Hubbard rescued a girl they were using. The black magic group was dispersed and destroyed.\u201d In\u00a01952<\/u><\/a>, Parsons died suspiciously in an explosion at his workshop. Hours after the explosion, Parsons\u2019 mother, Ruth, purposefully overdosed on sedatives and died the same day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shortly after splitting from Parsons and settling in with his now-wife Sara, Hubbard penned the beginnings of his life work with Scientology, then-known as Dianetics, publishing his first work on the subject in May 1950.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Initially published as an article in the\u00a0Astounding Science Fiction<\/em>\u00a0magazine\u2019s May 1950 issue, \u201cDianetics: The Evolution of Science\u201d\u00a0<\/em>was written by Hubbard over\u00a0three weeks<\/u><\/a>\u00a0on an IBM typewriter. In April 1950, a month before the release of the article, the magazine\u2019s editor John W. Campbell \u2013\u2013 an extremely important figure in the blossoming science fiction scene having mentored and published Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, and Hubbard, among others \u2013\u2013 worked with Hubbard to coalesce the pre-publication hype into a foundation to spread its teachings. This culminated in the founding of the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation. Coincidentally, the same month, the CIA\u2019s mind control program Project BLUEBIRD was\u00a0authorized<\/u><\/a>\u00a0by the CIA. According to\u00a0letters<\/u><\/a>\u00a0from John Galusha \u2013\u2013 a Board member of the Hubbard Association of Scientologists International \u2013\u2013 later released by the FBI, the idea for the formation of the Dianetics Research Foundation was suggested by Charles Parker Morgan.<\/p> In a declassified report from the FDA, files\u00a0cited<\/u><\/a>\u00a0by ex-Scientologist investigator Mike McClaughry, \u201cthe Dianetic Research Foundation was incorporated in New Jersey, in April 1950, as a \u2018non-profit, scientific and educational corporation, the primary purpose of which is to do research in the field of Dianetics and, for the correction of all psychosomatic ills of mankind\u2019.\u201d The report lists Hubbard as President, Parker Morgan as Secretary & General Counsel, Campbell as Treasurer, alongside Sara Hubbard and Donald H. Rogers as Trustees of the Foundation. The same report also lists Parker Morgan as a \u201cformer special agent for the FBI,\u201d while his name also\u00a0appears<\/u><\/a>\u00a0on a government-hosted list of OSS Agents, confirming the primordial intelligence ties to the formation of Scientology. An FBI Memo from the L. Ron Hubbard Files dated\u00a0March 21, 1951<\/u><\/a>\u00a0also refers to Donald H. Rogers, the Director of Research at the newly formed foundation, as a former FBI agent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In\u00a0January 1951<\/u><\/a>, the New Jersey State Board of Medical Examiners filed a lawsuit against the Foundation, and Hubbard found himself in need of a new operational strategy for Dianetics. According to both\u00a0McClaughry<\/u><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0The Royal Maze<\/u><\/a><\/em>, two separate intelligence officers suggested that Hubbard incorporate Dianetics as a religion as a defense mechanism against these lawsuits. They were the aforementioned OSS\/FBI agent Charles Parker Morgan, and John Starr Cooke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In\u00a0The Game Player<\/u><\/a><\/em>\u00a0<\/em>by ex-CIA agent Miles Copeland, Copeland describes his political influence work with fellow agent Bob Mandlestam, which they referred to as \u201cOccultism in High Places\u201d or \u201cOHP.\u201d OHP was \u201ca theory of political activism based on an impressively detailed study of ways in which leaders of the world based their judgements on one form or another of divine guidance.\u201d Copeland further described the duo\u2019s theory that \u201cproperly \u2018charismatized\u2019 leaders, placed in certain positions in the \u2018free world\u2019s\u2019 \u2018key\u2019 bureaucracies, could be used as political levers by which an enlightened American foreign policy could uplift the world,\u201d which would \u201cenable a properly employed CIA to fulfill the Wilsonian pledge to \u2018make the world safe for democracy\u2019 while removing certain goings-on here and there that were inconveniencing the American way of life.\u201d Consider, for example, the influence of Presidential spiritual advisors such as Ronald Reagan\u2019s astrologer\u00a0Joan Quigley<\/u><\/a>, or\u00a0Choi Soon-sil<\/u><\/a>\u00a0over former South Korean President, Park Geun-hye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Copeland specifically\u00a0mentions<\/u><\/a>\u00a0such \u201carrangements\u201d with the Church of Scientology:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen Bob Mandlestam made similar arrangements with Scientology, the brainchild of another nut, this one a science-fiction writer named Ron Hubbard, we were on our way to having a political action capability which would make the highly expensive, largely ineffective and largely overt \u2018covert action\u2019 of Bill Casey\u2019s CIA seem trivial by comparison. \u2018MRA will hit \u2019em high, and the Church of Scientology will hit \u2018em low!\u2019 Bob liked to boast, and he was right\u2026 we planted an agent in the Scientology cult who became a \u2018clear\u2019 under the tutelage of Ron Hubbard himself, and then demanded and got more and more \u2018operation expenses\u2019 to be turned over, in addition to his own life\u2019s savings, to the cause of Dianetics.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n The\u00a01985 book<\/u><\/a>\u00a0Acid Dreams<\/em>\u00a0by Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain confirms the agency\u2019s infiltration, suggests that the aforementioned John Star Cooke had been the CIA proxy sent by Copeland and Mandlestam:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cA man of wealth and influential family connections, Cooke was no stranger to high-level CIA personnel. His sister, Alice, to whom he was very close, was married to Roger Kent, a prominent figure in the California state Democratic party; Roger\u2019s brother, Sherman Kent, was head of the CIA\u2019s National Board of Estimates (an extremely powerful position) and served as CIA director Allen Dulles\u2019s right-hand man during the Cold War. John Cooke hobnobbed with Sherman Kent at annual family reunions and is said to have made the acquaintance of a number of CIA operatives while traveling in Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Driven by an avid interest in the occult, Cooke journeyed around the world befriending an assortment of mystics and spiritual teachers. In the early 1950\u2019s, he became a close confidant of L. Ron Hubbard, the ex-navy officer who founded the Scientology organization. Cooke rose high in the ranks of the newly formed religious cult. (He was the first \u201cclear\u201d in America, meaning he had attained the level of an advanced Scientology initiate.) Before long, however, he grew disillusioned with Hubbard and they parted ways.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Cooke moved back to California, and became an important pillar in the blossoming occult scene, with numerous connections to Timothy Leary, the CIA, and many of the chemists and traffickers associated with the LSD movement. Cooke died at his home in Cuernavaca, Mexico\u00a0in 1976<\/u><\/a>, but not before being visited by Andrija Puharich, an ex-Military scientist and researcher, and Seymour \u201cThe Head\u201d Lazare, a long-time affiliate of William Mellon Hitchcock, who will be discussed shortly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Puharich was famous for his study on parapsychological phenomenon, and attempted to find military applications of such practices of remote viewing and telekinesis. His work led to the founding of the Stanford Research Institute, which\u00a0employed<\/u><\/a>\u00a0high-ranking Scientologists Hal Puthoff, Ingo Swann, Pat Price and Eli Primose. Puthoff had\u00a0worked<\/u><\/a>\u00a0for the National Security Agency, and Swann\u00a0for<\/u><\/a>\u00a0the United Nations. Their research, eventually merged under the CIA\u2019s infamous Project Stargate, was directly supervised at Langley by John McMahon, the \u201csecond-in-command under [CIA Director] William Casey. \u201cMany of the SRI empaths were mustered from L. Ron Hubbard\u2019s Church of Scientology,\u201d according to a\u00a0December 1996\u00a0<\/u><\/a>report from Alex Constantine titled \u201cCIA MIND CONTROL AT STANFORD RESEARCH INSTITUTE\u201d:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHarold Puthoff, the Institute\u2019s senior researcher, was a leading Scientologist. Two remote viewers from SRI have also held rank in the Church: Ingo Swann, a Class VII Operating Thetan, a founder of the Scientology Center in Los Angeles, and the late Pat Price. Puthoff and Targ\u2019s lab assistant was a Scientologist married to a minister of the church. When Swann joined SRI, he stated openly, \u2018fourteen Clears participated in the experiments, more than I would suspect.\u2019 At the time he denied CIA involvement, but now acknowledges, \u2018it was rather common knowledge all along who the sponsor was, although in documents the identity of the Agency was concealed behind the sobriquet of an east-coast scientist.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n According to\u00a0the CIA<\/u><\/a>, the SRI\u2019s work was funded by the CIA, the Parsons-founded\u00a0Jet Proposal Laboratory<\/u><\/a>\u00a0(now within NASA), ARPA and the Military. The CIA and the Church of Scientology had become direct partners in their advancement of psychic and paranormal research by the 1970s. However, the groundwork for this relationship appears to have started years earlier, given numerous connections between the CIA\u2019s LSD trafficking scheme and Hubbard\u2019s newly-formed personal navy, the Sea Organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI give the CIA a total credit for sponsoring and initiating the entire consciousness movement counter culture events of the 1960s.\u201d<\/em>\u2013\u00a0Timothy Leary<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Timothy Leary, a student of former St. Elizabeth\u2019s staff and OSS\/CIA agent Henry A. Murray, became\u00a0an FBI informant\u00a0<\/u><\/a>with numerous connections to the CIA over the course of his psychedelic missionary work across the United States. For starters, the estate where Leary conducted much of his LSD experiments was gifted to him by the\u00a0Mellon banking family<\/u><\/a>\u2018s William \u201cBilly\u201d Hitchcock after being visited\u00a0numerous times<\/u><\/a>\u00a0by family friend and eventual CIA Director Richard Helms. The Mellon family had\u00a0many<\/u><\/a>\u00a0family members serve in the OSS, including OSS Station Chief of London, David Bruce, who was coincidentally the son-in-law of former US Treasury Secretary, Andrew Mellon. Hitchcock himself had ties to intelligence-linked sexual blackmail operations, such as the Profumo Affair, and he also held\u00a0an account<\/u><\/a>\u00a0at Castle Bank and Trust, a mob-affiliated bank founded in the Bahamas by the CIA banker Paul Helliwell. In addition, he was a frequent guest at Resorts International-owned properties \u2013\u2013 known infamous meeting grounds of the mob, off-shore bankers, and the CIA. Hitchcock concurrently had\u00a0served<\/u><\/a>\u00a0as the banker and financial advisor to the LSD cult and drug operation, The Brotherhood of Eternal Love (BEL).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hitchcock evicted Leary off his estate in 1967, but shortly thereafter in the spring of 1968, Hitchcock traveled to the Bahamas with\u00a0LSD chemist and BEL member<\/u><\/a>, Nick Sand. Sand had been appointed the alchemist of Leary\u2019s League for Spiritual Discovery, a religion formed in\u00a0September 1966<\/u><\/a>\u00a0that \u201cincorporated psychedelic drugs as sacraments.\u201d Sand\u2019s chemistry operations, culminating in the infamously pure LSD known as Orange Sunshine, were a product of a long-time partnership with David Mantell, a Scientologist who\u00a0studied directly<\/u><\/a>\u00a0under Hubbard\u2019s successor, David Miscavige.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This trip to the Bahamas led to Hitchcock and Sand staying at an estate owned by Sam Clapp, a chair of the Fiduciary Trust Company, in addition to being a \u201ccollege-chum\u201d and long-time business partner of Hitchcock. According to\u00a0Acid Dreams,<\/u><\/a>\u00a0<\/em>Hitchcock and Clapp \u201carranged for Sand to open an account under a false name at Clapp\u2019s bank,\u201d while simultaneously looking \u201cinto the feasibility of setting up an offshore LSD laboratory on one of Bahamas secluded cays.\u201d The book furthers Hitchcock\u2019s financial activity during this trip, directly connecting his account at Clapp\u2019s Fiduciary Trust with the\u00a0CIA-front<\/u><\/a>\u00a0set up by Allen Dulles and Thomas Dewey known as the Mary Carter Paint Company (later renamed Resorts International):<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHitchcock took full advantage of his unlimited borrowing privileges at Fiduciary. At Clapp\u2019s urging he poured over $5,000,000 into unregistered \u2018letter stocks\u2019 (the kind that aren\u2019t traded publicly but tend to show dramatic gains on paper) associated with the Mary Carter Paint Company, later known as Resorts International. It was the single largest chunk of money raised by Resorts, an organization suspected of having ties to organized crime. Resorts International proceeded to build a casino on an exclusive piece of Bahamian real estate called Paradise Island\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n The\u00a01987 book,<\/u><\/a>\u00a0Hot Money and the Politics of Debt<\/em>\u00a0by R.T. Naylor, further details Hitchcock\u2019s connection with the off-shore banking enterprise linked to intelligence and organized crime, alluding to his shares in Resorts being managed by the CIA-linked bank, Castle Bank & Trust:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTo finance these activities [various efforts to topple the government of Cuba], the CIA turned to Castle Bank & Trust of Nassau. The bank was established by Paul Helliwell, a former OSS China hand with a background in drug-trade intelligence. After the war, Helliwell had run CIA front companies in Florida. Through his Bahamian bank, and a companion institution in Florida, millions of dollars were funneled for covert military operations staged off Andros Island in the Bahamas. Castle also facilitated tax evasion, and, in its trust-company capacity, voted the shares of certain nonresident owners of Resorts International, the top [Meyer] Lansky-era casino operation on Nassau. When one of those shareholders so strongly objected to the way Castle was voting his shares that he sued the bank, the scheme began to unravel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The shareholder was William Mellon Hitchcock, the New York stockbroker who had been using the Paravicini Bank of Berne, Switzerland, to circumvent the New York Fed\u2019s margin requirements. Allegedly, Hitchcock also put his business experience to work in \u2018high finance,\u2019 along with the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, whose clandestine California laboratories reportedly produced more than half the LSD that levitated political debate on American campuses in the 1960s. It was Hitchcock\u2019s friend Timothy Leary, the era\u2019s most publicized advocate of the chemical lobotomy, who got him involved with the LSD operation. The profits were laundered through the Paravicini Bank until its demise and through the IOS-controlled Fiduciary Trust in the Bahamas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After Hitchcock\u2019s lawsuit, the IRS made its move, anticipating the biggest tax-evasion bust in American history. But the CIA successfully lobbied for the inquiry to be buried, and many IRS veterans quit in disgust. But Castle Bank shut down its Caymans and Bahamas operations in 1977, and moved to the more congenial environment of Panama.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n The\u00a01985 book<\/u><\/a>\u00a0Acid Dreams<\/em>\u00a0by Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain importantly connects Castle Bank founder Helliwell with the Sea Supply, a 1950s trafficking operation\u00a0run by the CIA<\/u><\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCastle Bank was founded and controlled by Paul Helliwell, a Miami lawyer with long-standing ties to American intelligence. Helliwell\u2019s career as a spook dates back to World War II, when he served as chief of special intelligence in China with the OSS. He stayed in the Far East when the CIA was formed and bossed a bevy of spies, including E. Howard Hunt of Watergate fame. In the early 1950\u2019s, Helliwell organized Sea Supply, a CIA proprietary company that furnished weapons and other material to anti-Communist guerrillas in the hills of Burma, Laos, and Thailand. Based in the Golden Triangle, this mercenary army cultivated fields of opium poppies, and the CIA was drawn immediately into the drug connection. Helliwell also served as paymaster for the ill-fated Bay of Pigs operation in 1961. A few years later he set up Castle Bank, serving in a dual capacity as CIA banker and legal counsel for the Cuban Mafia, which prospered by selling Southeast Asian heroin in the US. Helliwell\u2019s law firm also represented [Meyer Lanksy Frontman<\/u><\/a>] Louis Chesler and Wallace Groves, both partners in Resorts International.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Sea Supply operated for\u00a0a decade<\/u><\/a>, before the\u00a0former OSS<\/u><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0CIA officer<\/u><\/a>\u00a0Helliwell wound down the operation. Helliwell passed away at age 62 in\u00a01976,<\/u><\/a>\u00a0but not before becoming infamous for advising Walt Disney to\u00a0establish shell companies<\/u><\/a>\u00a0and \u201cphantom cities\u201d in Florida during the construction of Disney World in order for the organization to \u201cavoid taxation and environmental regulation as well as maintain immunity from the U.S. Constitution.\u201d Similar tactics were later employed by the Church of Scientology during their takeover of Clearwater, Florida in the 1980s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While seemingly unconnected to the story of Scientology and L. Ron Hubbard at first glance, Sea Supply seems to have served as an inspiration and template for Hubbard\u2019s Sea Organization, with numerous connections to the aforementioned CIA-driven drug trafficking nexus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the Spring of 1966, Congressman J. William Fulbright, then-chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, initiated an investigation into the CIA\u2019s impact on foreign policy.\u00a0Reporting<\/u><\/a>\u00a0from the\u00a0Boston Globe\u00a0<\/em>specifically alluded to Sea Supply as an example of such operations by the intelligence agency. The report makes the case that \u201cspying is a fact of modern international life; our enemies spy, and so must we,\u201d before concluding that \u201cincreased congressional scrutiny of the CIA does not need to jeopardize national security.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In\u00a0May 1966<\/u><\/a>, Congressman Fulbright appeared on NBC\u2019s\u00a0The Today Show<\/em>\u00a0to explain the reasoning for placing three committee members on a Congressional board to oversee CIA activities:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe principle [sic] argument, I believe, is that most of the least publicized difficulties that have appeared in the press in recent years regarding the CIA have almost always been in the field of foreign relations. A number of the Committee feels that this is the area which has caused considerable question and in some cases criticism \u2013\u2013 that it would be the responsibility of the committee to be represented there. And some of us, including myself, feel that if such a committee was created that it would improve the relations of the Senate and the public with the CIA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rather than being a reflection upon the CIA, I feel that it would be an improvement in our relations and would tend to modify, if not eliminate, to a great extent, the criticisms that I think sometimes arise out of a feeling that there is not sufficient and not as careful supervision of this agency as there ought to be.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Richard Helms \u2013\u2013 the\u00a0godfather<\/u><\/a>\u00a0of MK-ULTRA, the long-time friend of Helliwell\u2019s business associate Billy Hitchcock, and CIA Director since March 1966 \u2013\u2013 went so far as to\u00a0pen a letter<\/u><\/a>\u00a0that July in the\u00a0St. Louis Globe-Democrat<\/em>\u00a0\u201cexpressing pleasure at a newspaper editorial critical of Fulbright.\u201d Needless to say, the Central Intelligence Agency was losing agency and gaining Congressional oversight, much to the dismay of Helms, and the major aspects of the intelligence agency were in dire need of a rebrand that would allow them to continue operating far beyond the reach of the public sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the start of\u00a01965<\/u><\/a>, Hubbard arrived in Spain\u2019s Canary Islands to begin research and writing on the advanced \u201cOT levels<\/u><\/a>.\u201d In fact, it was during\u00a0a lecture<\/u><\/a>\u00a0given on\u00a0the Canary Islands<\/u><\/a>\u00a0by Hubbard that the first inkling of OT III was announced \u2013\u2013 the level that introduced Xenu to the highest level of Scientology\u2019s initiates. At the end of\u00a0June 1965<\/u><\/a>, Hubbard gave a lecture titled \u201cThe Well-Rounded Auditor,\u201d in which he exclaims that the US government has been \u201ctrying to seize Scientology in the United States.\u201d In\u00a0July 1965<\/u><\/a>, CIA agent E. Howard Hunt is selected by Richard Helms to travel to Spain on\u00a0behalf<\/u><\/a>\u00a0of the agency. The month before Helms officially became head of the CIA, Hubbard once again\u00a0returned<\/u><\/a>\u00a0to the Canary Islands, in February 1966. According to\u00a0ABC Spain<\/em>, Hubbard signed\u00a0a contract\u00a0<\/u><\/a>with Helms and the CIA that year, although no direct record of any such contract exists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shortly after, in\u00a0July 1966<\/a>, the IRS informed the Church they will be recommending the revocation of their tax exemption status. On\u00a0September 1, 1966<\/a>, Hubbard officially resigned from all Scientology management positions. Three weeks later, on\u00a0September 21, 1966<\/a>, Hunt returns to Washington, D.C. \u201cfrom a highly secret assignment he has been on in Spain for a little over a year.\u201d Shortly thereafter, Hubbard officially creates the \u201cSea Project\u201d in a Scientology policy letter dated November 10, 1966. On\u00a0November 22<\/a>\u00a0of that year, the Hubbard Exploration Company Limited was incorporated in London, and by the end of the year, the primordial \u201cSea Org\u201d secretly purchased its first ship \u2013 the Enchanter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![](\"https:\/\/www.activistpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Grow-Network-Soil-800x534-1.png\"\/)
<\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\nSt. Elizabeth\u2019s, the OSS, and Project Artichoke<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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The Parsonage<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Clipping from a newspaper obituary of Parsons \u2013\u00a0Source<\/a><\/code><\/sup><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nDianetics and the CIA\u2019s Influence on Scientology<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Drug Running, LSD, and The Sea Org<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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The Sea Organization<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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