Dutch put Narconon on Warning

Dutch officials have put Narconon on warning that they are under “enhanced supervision” – and could even face closure – after spot checks raised concerns about patient safety.¹

Narconon: put
on warning

Dutch health officials have put Narconon under six months of special monitoring because of concerns about patient safety, warning them they could face closure if they fail to make improvements.

The Heath Care Inspectorate (IGZ) announced its decision in a statement posted on its website Monday, after a series of spot checks on Narconon's operation raised the alarm.

Two unannounced visits early this year by the officers from the Health Care Inspectorate (IGZ) turned up deficiences that a subsequent inspection in May revealed had not been corrected.

So the IGZ has imposed the following restrictions:

• Six months of supervision, which may be extended;
• a ban on admitting drug addicts and people with serious psychological and psychiatric problems;
• all new admissions must first be examined by a doctor (and Narconon has to provide documentation to that effect)

Earlier this week, the Inspectorate posted a copy of a letter it wrote on May 24 to the director of Narconon Netherlands, Joanna Kluessien, in which it set out these restrictions.

The one-month delay in making this decision public was because Narconon had tried to block its publication, as the letter itself makes clear.

The supervision ruling and the restrictions that go with it were made after surprise inspections in February and March of this year, at the Narconon centre in Zutphen, about 30 kilometres (20 miles) northeast of Arnhem.

These inspections had themselves been prompted by anonymous complaints about Narconon which the Inspectorate had received in the previous year.

After its first two inspections, the IGZ drew up a list of changes it wanted made and delivered its report to Narconon in April. The release does not make it clear, but these appear to have involved restrictions on the kind of work Narconon is permitted to do.

The IGZ carried out a third surprise inspection on May 16 to see if Narconon was respecting the terms it had imposed: and concluded that it was not.

As the inspector's letter noted, Narconon tried to defend its position in a response sent on May 21.

Narconon's understanding of the restrictions placed on them in the April report had been that they could not treat patients suffering from physical withdrawal symptoms.

There was a disagreement over a patient admitted on May 15 suffering from a cocaine addiction.

Narconon did not think that someone who had recently been taking the drug qualified as the kind of patient they were not allowed to treat because – according to them – cocaine addiction did not involve physical withdrawal symptoms.

The letter also seems to suggest that Narconon has been ordered to hand in its WTZi certification: its authorisation to function as a care institution offering services covered by Dutch health insurance. Narconon had not been quick enough complying with the agency's instructions, said the IGZ letter.

With its accreditation pulled, it can no longer receive health insurance payments for the services it offers.²

The IGZ said that it was imposing the six-month period of enhanced surveillance in part because of the results of the May 16 inspection, which had revealed Narconon's failure to respect the restrictions imposed earlier.

As the IGZ press release put it, they had doubts about the “willingness and ability” of Narconon to comply with the terms it had set out.

The more intense supervision, again using spot checks rather than preplanned visits, is to ensure that this time, Narconon does as it is told.

But in its letter to Narconon the Inspectorate made it clear that if the situation did not improve in the coming months it would consider recommending its closure to the Health Minister Edith Schippers.

If there are still dangers for the health of your patients during or after the period of six months, than the Inspectorate will consider advising the Minister to issue an instructive measure or another corrective action available under the Health Institutions Quality Act.

In this context, that could very well mean closing Narconon down in the Netherlands.

Dutch Suppressive Guy

One of those who contacted the IGZ to express concern about Narconon's operation in the Netherlands was someone who we'll call Dutch Suppressive Guy.

DSG has posted anonymously on some of the message boards and follows developments closely.

He has put together a Dutch-language website – and the title alone suggests he does not mince his words: Scam of Scientology: een portret van een waardeloze organisatie (portrait of a worthless organisation).

In 2012 and 2013, DSG made six complaints about Narconon to the Dutch regulatory authorities, complete with a substantial amount of supporting material.

He has been good enough to forward them to Infinite Complacency and among the issues he raised, were the following:

• Narconon's relationship with Scientology

As I have argued elsewhere on this site, Narconon does not just have a relationship to Scientology, it is entirely subordinate to the movement and used both as a source of income and of recruits.³

• the dangerously large doses of Niacin (AKA Vitamin B3, Nicotinic Acid) used at Narconon “New Life Detoxification Program”

Narconon's detox programme is no more than the secular version of Scientology's Purification Rundown, developed by the movement's founder, L. Ron Hubbard.

When Scientology runs the Rundown, they describe it simply as a process of spiritual cleansing; when Narconon runs the Detox however, they say it is a process that has proven therapeutic benefits.

The dangers of taking such massive doses of Niacin were spelled out at the 2009 fraud trial of Scientology in Paris, where several defendants were convicted for the illegal practice of pharmacy.

Olivier Saumon, lawyer for France's Order of Pharmacists, plaintiffs in the case, pointed out in his summing up that the maximum recommended dose of niacin, was 54 mg: yet Hubbard had recommended taking between 100 and 5,000 mg a day during the Rundown.

He noted too that Scientologists interpreted the dangerous side effects described by the court-appointed experts as evidence that the process was working.

“Sometimes the symptoms created – in particular by niacin – are seen as being beneficial rather than considered as being one of the dangerous effects of niacin,” he observed.

Such thinking of course, has its roots in Hubbard's insistence that “the way out is the way through” and that participants should stick with the process no matter how hard it gets.⁴

• The closure of a Narconon centre in Canada and the deaths in several US centres

DSG provided information on the closure of Trois-Rivières Narcon in Quebec, Canada after a campaign by former patient-turned-staff-member David Love.

He also informed them of the deaths at Narconon Oklahoma in the United States.

And in a later communication, DSG updated them about the sanctions handed out to Narconon Georgia for their obstruction and deceit as they tried to fend off a wrongful death lawsuit over the death of Patrick Desmond.

As reported by Tony Ortega at The Underground Bunker, Judge Stacey Hydrick sanctioned them for “...repeatedly and wilfully obstructed the discovery process both by failures to respond fully to legitimate discovery requests and, even more egregiously, by false responses”.⁵

DSG's point this time was that this kind of deception was not an isolated case in Scientology.

To illustrate his point he provided them with the killer quote from Hubbard: “THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN CONTROL PEOPLE IS TO LIE TO THEM. You can write that down in your book in great big letters.”⁶

All of which leads us nicely to:

• Inflated success claims of Narconon's efficacy

DSG pointed out that while Narconon International claimed a success rate of 75 percent, a 2008 Norwegian health ministry study had reached a different conclusion.

It stated:

There is currently no reliable evidence for the effectiveness of Narconon as a primary or secondary drug prevention program. To the extent our extensive database search could determine, no randomized controlled trials about the program have been conducted...⁷

He also tipped them off to a leaked document from Narconon International's legal affairs officer Claudia Arcabascio, which Tony Ortega revealed earlier this year.

In it Arcabascio wrote that Narconon needed to drop the claim of a 70-percent success rate as “we do not have scientific evidence of it”.

As Ortega put it in his report: “As smoking guns go, this one is high caliber and billowing.”

In fact, Arcabascio got her figures wrong. Narconon is claiming not 70 percent, but a 75-percent success rate – and while it may not be on the front page, it is still posted at their site.

It was at about this point – April 2013 – that DSG suggested they should themselves be checking in at Tony Ortega's The Underground Bunker for regular exposés of Narconon's activities.

By now, as he confessed to Infinite Complacency, an exasperated tone was creeping into his correspondence because he did not think the Inspectorate was taking him seriously.⁸

What he did not know was that the wheels were already in motion: at the time he wrote his letter, in early April, the ISG had already made two surprise visits to Narconon.

Narconon on probation

From the details provided at the IGZ website, “enhanced supervision” appears to be moving towards the upper range of measures available to the agency. Here is how the IGZ explains it:

“Enhanced supervision” is a more stringent corrective measure. The Inspectorate will impose corrective measures if there is a higher-than-average risk of failure to provide responsible care, provided that risk is not so great or immediate as to preclude the health care provider taking appropriate remedial action within a reasonable period.

The agency also says:

The inspectorate will usually impose enhanced supervision if an improvement plan has yielded insufficient results or if there is little confidence that the health care provider will be able to achieve the desired results otherwise.

This certainly appears to be what has happened here.

It is still not clear what aspects of Narconon's operations set off alarm bells at the agency. I have put in two requests for clarification to the Inspectorate but I am still waiting to hear back from them.

The IGZ's letter makes it clear it reserves the right to extend its surveillance and if necessary take the matter to the Dutch Health Minister, Edith Schippers with a view to harsher sanctions.

Narconon is on probation then.

The question is, can they actually clean up their act without abandoning Hubbard's system?

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1  This piece is an extended version of the one published on June 26 at Tony Ortega's site The Underground Bunker.

2  But in any case, this would only apply to Dutch clients and some of their intake, perhaps even most of it, comes from abroad.

3  For more on Narconon's role inside the Scientology movement, see both “Narconon: an Introduction” and “Narconon is Casualty Contact” elsewhere on this site.

4  For more on this, with the relevant Hubbard references, see “...for the Pharmacists”, my account of Saumon's closing arguments in the 2009 Paris trial, elsewhere on this site. DSG even provided the inspectors with a link to my review of the original judgment in the case (confirmed on appeal). His point was that inspectors from France's health products watchdog the AFSSAPS had testified as expert witnesses as to the dangers of the Purification Rundown during the Paris trial.

5  See Tony Ortega's write-up at The Underground Bunker: “SHOCKER: Court Punishes Scientology For Acting Like…Scientology”. Of course anyone who has been following developments at The Underground Bunker will know that that is only the tip of the iceberg.

6  From Hubbard's “Technique 88” up at Dutch writer and campaigner Karin Spaink's website. Veterans of the Scientology beat will know that she fought a long, bruising, but ultimately successful legal battle from the mid-90s with Scientology over her summary of the movement's upper levels. My thanks to her for helping me with the Dutch texts cited in this article.

7  “A brief summary and evaluation evidence base for Narconon prevention intervention”, a 2008 report commissioned by the Norwegian Health Directorate. The quote is from page 16 of the document.

8  An additional complication, says DSG, was that he was not receiving regular updates from them as he had chosen to remain an anonymous complainant.

A Death in France

In 1987, a French court convicted two Narconon staffers after a woman died at their centre having suffered repeated epileptic seizures. Was it their fault alone, or did their negligence spring from Scientology's teachings?

Jocelyne Dorfmann just wanted to get off her medication.

She had been taking drugs to control her epilepsy, but after eight years she had had enough of them.

Already, she had started cutting down her consumption, which had led to two fits within four days of each other. But she was determined to find a solution.

A day after the second fit, she phoned the Narconon centre at Grancey-sur-Ource, in the Burgundy region of eastern France, to ask about treatment. The very same afternoon – Thursday, November 22, 1984 – she turned up and was checked in.

A little over 12 hours later she was dead.

Dorfmann, a 35-year-old divorced mother-of-two arrived at the centre at around 2:00 pm with her partner. She had already spoken to the centre's deputy director, Bernard M. on the phone. He and a colleague, Philippe C., took her through how it worked.

The first month's care would cost 9,000 francs (a little over US $2,000 today), they told Dorfmann's partner.¹

Once admitted, she was led to what was known as the withdrawal room: Dorfmann had said she did not want to eat, but just to rest.

She warned Bernard M. that as well as her epilepsy medication she had, up until a year ago, been taking hard drugs. She also told him about her epileptic fits.

At around 3:00 pm – an hour or so after her arrival – Dorfmann had her first seizure. According to Bernard M.'s account, it lasted 45 minutes.

It was Jean-Louis D., another patient at the centre, who recognised it as an epileptic fit: he suffered from the same condition. He described the symptoms as “spasms, trembling, vomiting, muscular tension, occasional drooling and a raw cough”.

Soon afterwards, Dorfmann had another fit.

At 5:30 pm, in a bid to treat her, she was given a Calmag mix, a combination of magnesium and calcium, the only medication given at the centre.

At 6:00 pm, she went into spasms again – but the staff took them to be withdrawal symptoms.

They stayed by her side until 7:00 pm when Bernard M. left to give a talk on Narconon at a nearby town.

At around 8:00 pm, Philippe C. heard a noise on the first floor of the centre, and when he went to check he found Dorfmann on her knees at the entrance to the toilets, twitching violently.

He led her back to her room and stayed with her, assisted by Dorfmann's fellow patient, Jean-Louis D.

Dorfmann's condition deteriorated: her fits became more intense and they came more frequently; she was sweating and having trouble breathing.

By the time Bernard M. got back to the centre at around 11:30 pm, she was already semi-conscious and she lost consciousness shortly afterwards.

Between 1:30 am and 1:40 am in the morning, Dorfmann's two carers noticed that she was having increasing trouble breathing, that her lips were turning purple. She slipped into a coma.

It was only then that they decided to call for a doctor.

There was a further delay while they hunted down the key to the office that had the only phone. The call finally went through at 2:15 am.

When the doctor arrived at the centre half an hour later, there was no one waiting for him at the entrance.

He went in, went up to the first floor, and found Dorfmann. The only person still with her was her fellow patient Jean-Louis D. She was already dead.²

The autopsy concluded that she had died as a result of the epileptic fits; that she had not been properly treated when the fits started, nor given adequate emergency treatment as her condition deteriorated.

One death, two convictions

Jocelyne Dorfmann died in the early hours of Friday, November 23, 1984 – about 12 hours after her arrival at the Narconon centre.

Two years later, in November 1986, the two Narconon staffers were tried for non-assistance to a person in danger. The judgment was handed down in January of the following year.

The court acknowledged that some clients of the centre had been referred there on medical advice and that they had had regular medical check-ups during treatment.

But that was not true of Dorfmann – and at the time she checked in, only one of the three clients there had a medical certificate.

More troubling still was that shortly before Dorfmann's arrival another client who suffered from epilepsy had had fits – a direct result of his having stopped taking his medication.

On that occasion, he had had to call the doctor himself.

The trial had also established that neither Bernard M. nor Philippe C. had any medical credentials for their work: their only qualification appeared to be that they had themselves completed a course of treatment at Narconon.

The two defendants argued that they had not known how serious Dorfmann's condition was; they had thought her condition was due simply to withdrawal symptoms.

But the court was not convinced.

At no point had they advised Dorfmann to consult a doctor about coming off her epilepsy medication – who would have advised against it, the judgment noted.

Given what she had told them about her condition, “...it is inconceivable that the victim could have been accepted without this [medical] examination and without a serious interview...,” the court added.

The defendants had themselves acknowledged that in the case of serious illness, medical treatment should not be interrupted, said the judgment.

The defendants might conceivably have failed to understand what was happening with the first fit, said the ruling: those that followed – and their growing intensity – should have made them think again.

Medical experts had confirmed to the court that such repeated fits could not be confused with withdrawal symptoms. The defendants had not even bothered to check with Dorfmann herself – while she was still conscious – as to whether these were like her previous fits.

Their failure to act was all the more difficult to understand given that a fellow patient, himself an epileptic, had told them her fits resembled his own, said the ruling. More serious still, was their failure to act immediately when her condition deteriorated.

Both defendants were convicted, given one-year suspended sentences, fined 10,000 francs and ordered to pay damages to the victim's family of a little more than 400,000 francs (allowing for inflation that's about $140,000 today).³

The Narconon centre where she spent her last hours closed later the same year and the organisation has not operated in France since.⁴

The two defendants had argued that they did know how serious Dorfmann's condition was – the court's judgment uses the word ignorer in the relevant passage.⁵ It is an interesting choice of word. In French ignorer means “not to know, to be ignorant of” – but it can also mean “ignore”.

In the event, the court did not have to decide which sense was more appropriate: they had enough for a conviction. Given the way the centre was run, Dorfmann's death was a disaster waiting to happen.

Had the court dug a little deeper however, it would have found that the defendants' criminal recklessness simply reflected the teachings of Scientology's founder, L. Ron Hubbard.

Articles in the Ignoring Epilepsy series:

1. “A Death in France” (Jocelyne Dorfmann's 1984 death at a Narconon Centre as she tried to come off her epilepsy medication)
2. “Hubbard on Epilepsy”
3. “Tory 'Magoo' Christman's Story”
4. “The Death of Heribert Pfaff I”
5. “The Death of Heribert Pfaff II”

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1   9,000 French francs comes to 1,372 euros; in November 1984 that would come to around $984; allowing for inflation, that comes to $2,230 at today prices.

2   This account is drawn entirely from the court judgment. The names of the two defendants are not given in full as their conviction will now be spent: nor did it seem necessary to give the name of the key witness.

3   415,000 francs comes to 63,300 euros; in January 1986 that would come to around $68,150; allowing for inflation, that comes to $141,604, give or take.

4   Narconon may not actually be banned in France, but with two members convicted over the first death, Scientology could be under no illusion about the vigilance of the French authorities.

There was talk in 2006 that one might open up again – or at least a line to that effect in an article in the August 3, 2006 edition of the news weekly L'Express (“D'une drogue à l'autre” by Solenne Durox).

In December of that year, deputies Georges Fenech and Philippe Vuilque presented a report to the French parliament, the National Assembly, on the involvement of “cult-like movements” in the health sector.

Citing the report in L'Express that a new Narconon might be in the pipeline they took the opportunity to outline the dangers of the Purification Rundown – as set out by Roger Gonnet in his testimony to the committee compiling the report.

The plans for the new Narconon centre never came to anything.

In 2008, Fenech was appointed to head up MIVILUDES, the government's cult watchdog, a position he occupied until 2012; Vuilque is currently head of the parliamentary working group on cults.

Note that the two deputies come from different sides of the political spectrum: Fenech is a member of the right-wing UMP Party, while Vuilque is a Socialist. But in France there has long been a cross-party consensus on the issue of cults.

5   “Attendu que les prévenus... soutiennent avoir ignorer son état de santé réelle...” (“Given that the defendants... say they did know know her real state of health...”).

The Rundown: a close call

A former Scientologist who pioneered the Purification Rundown in France told a Senate committee there how one of his clients almost died during the procedure.

Ex-member Roger Gonnet

By his own account, Roger Gonnet was once one of Scientology's most dedicated followers in France before becoming its most effective critic there.

He became an active member in 1975, setting up the Lyon branch of its operations and running it until he was declared a Suppressive Person eight years later.¹

It was he who helped get the Purification Rundown started in France, translating the relevant documents so he could run the programme at his centre.

The Rundown combines aerobic exercise, long sessions in the sauna and massive doses of vitamins and minerals.

It is a core part of the supposedly secular treatment offered at Scientology's Narconon rehabilitation centres for drug addicts.

But it is also among the services offered to Scientologists, in which context the movement describes it – in court at least – as a purely non-medical, spiritual process.²

But the procedure is highly dangerous, Gonnet told a French Senate committee investigating the influence of cult-like movements on the health sector.

“I nearly had deaths,” he told the senators in testimony earlier this month.

In one case in particular, he added, if he had followed the procedure set down by Scientology's founder L. Ron Hubbard, he would have killed someone.

“Cécile G.” suffered a spectacular allergic reaction while doing the Rundown at the Lyon centre.³

Cécile had already had one purification cure, Gonnet recalled. But after having minor surgery, she decided to come back for more to get rid of the toxins she thought she had accumulated during the operation.

“The very first time I checked in on her I noticed the presence of strange bubbles [on her skin], which resembled blisters,” he said.

“We discussed it, but I let her go on and I kept an eye on how things developed. When I came back, the bubbles had spread significantly.”

Now he was worried.

He took her to a doctor who was familiar with – and sympathetic to – the Rundown: he had himself done a Scientology course, but was more interested in homeopathy.

The doctor examined her and wrote out a prescription for a homeopathic treatment. They went straight to a pharmacy so she could get started on it immediately.

But she was in such bad shape there was no question of her going back into the sauna, said Gonnet. 

By 10 or 11 that night, the “bubbles” had spread even further. So they phoned the doctor back.

He told Gonnet to get her to hospital.

When Cécile checked in the following morning, the doctors took one look at her and asked to take photographs, her symptoms were so spectacular.

“She was in a really bad state and the allergic reaction was really enormous, because they photographed from head to toe when she arrived at the hospital,” Gonnet recalled.

Cécile was in pain all over her body and she had slept very badly. The bubbles had spread all over her body and were sometimes three centimetres in diameter.

The doctors identified her condition as an acute form of pemphigus, a rare auto-immune disease that causes blistering of the skin and the mucous membranes and which in extreme cases can be fatal.

But she got the proper treatment and made a full recovery, surviving the complication of a pulmonary embolism (a potentially lethal blocking of one of the arteries leading to the lung).⁴

“I think she would have died...”

Gonnet argued that by taking her to a doctor and then checking her into hospital, he had failed to respect the protocol set down by Hubbard.

Whether it's auditing – their version of therapy – or the Purification Rundown, the general principle in Scientology is “The way through is the way out”, said Gonnet.

Hubbard had once written: “What turns it on will turn it off,” Gonnet explained to the senators.⁵

“Hubbard explains that during the Purif, skin cancers can appear and disappear, rashes or any number of other things, but that one should not pay any heed to them, on the principle that what brought them to the surface will also make them disappear,” he said.

But the reason Cécile reacted so badly was because of a violent allergic reaction to sulfonamides, a kind of antibiotic, which she had been given a few days earlier when she had gone in for surgery.⁶

If he had not disregarded the protocol set down by Hubbard by taking her off the Rundown, the consequences could have been disastrous, Gonnet told the senators.

“I think she would have died in the days that followed,” he said.

As it was, he added, he learned years later that Cécile's continued devotion to Scientology had eventually proved her undoing.

Having survived her brush with the Rundown, she had continued all the way up the Bridge to Total Freedom to OT VIII – the highest level in Scientology.

But then she was diagnosed with her cancer.

Gonnet had already explained to the senators Hubbard's inflated claims for Scientology – including the possibility of curing cancer – and the movement's disdain for much conventional medicine.⁷

Instead of going to get proper medical treatment for her illness, he said, Cécile had travelleled to Scientology's Flag Land Base in Florida, the United States, for treatment.

Florida is Scientology's centre of excellence for auditing, their version of therapy.

She did not survive her cancer.⁸

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1 Gonnet says he quit over the new management's increasingly authoritarian management style. This was around the time that David Miscavige took over the movement.

2 For more on this paradox, see first post in this section “Narconon: an Introduction” – in particular the “Having it both ways” sub-section and the accompanying links.

3 This account is partly from Roger Gonnet's March 5 testimony to the French Senate's committee investigating the influence of cult-like movements in the health sector; partly from his book, La Secte: chronique d'une “religion” commerciale à irresponsabilité illimitée (Alban, Paris 1998) p118-119 of my version (also available online: search for “Le purif et les morts”); and partly from information he supplied me in response to my questions. The committee is due to deliver its report on April 10.

4 It was the hospital that diagnosed the illness, though Gonnet thinks the doctor had probably reached the same conclusion. It was obvious just to look at her, he added: by the time she was admitted to hospital, the “bubbles” or blisters had spread all over her body: they were 3-4 cm long and several millimetres thick.

5 The relevant Hubbard Communications Policy Letter (HCOPL) is “Processing”, from May 27, 1965. In it, he sets out three golden rules in auditing – Scientology's version of therapy:

1. Get the person being audited through to the end of the process;
2. “What turns it on will turn it off”;
3. “The way out is the way through”.

In the context of auditing, this has involved physically preventing clients leaving the auditing room until the auditor is satisfied that the session is over. But what Gonnet is saying is that this same principle was used in the context of the Purification Rundown – which created the potential for disastrous consequences.

In his book, Gonnet also wrote that he had heard of one client who following the Rundown's programme of exercise, sauna sessions and massive doses of niacins, vitamins and minerals for six months; of another who experienced serious circulatory problems. And he knew of a case of purpura that required months of medical care. Purpura is when the skin becomes discoloured because the blood vessels have burst. (p118, op cit).

6 Cécile had her second Purification Rundown just two days after her operation, which had involved taking sulfonamides. It was only once she was in hospital that she recalled she had had a reaction to sulfonamides when she was four years old. (Presumably the medical staff asked the right questions.)

7 As far back as 1965 senior lawyer Kevin Anderson QC had noted Hubbard's claims to be able to cure cancer in a devastating report commissioned by the State of Victoria, Australia.

Anderson observed: “In A History of Man, Hubbard wrote: 'Cancer has been eradicated by auditing out conception and mitosis', …In 'Scientology: issue 15-G,' Hubbard writes, 'Leukaemia is evidently psychosomatic in origin and at least eight cases of leukaemia had been treated successfully by dianetics after medicine had traditionally given up. The source of leukaemia has been reported to be an engram containing the phrase 'it turns my blood to water'.' (page 121)

In the conclusions to the report, Anderson added that Scientology was harmful “...medically, morally and socially”. (p161)

Even for those emerging from the movement the risk persisted, he wrote. “...Hubbard's ideas may be so entrenched in their minds that they will still feel compelled to shun the proper medical and other treatment which they may well require.” (p161)

Summing up, he wrote: Scientology is practised by 'auditors' who have no medical training; they use dangerous techniques; they are unable to recognize symptoms and diagnose particular mental and physical conditions of ill health; they indiscriminately apply dangerous techniques irrespective of the circumstances; they not only administer the wrong treatment, but also poison their patients' minds against orthodox medicine and thus prevent them from obtaining proper medical treatment which they may require. (p164).

8 For more examples of Scientologists' conviction that auditing could treat cancer, see “Peta O'Brien's Letter: Medical Neglect”, elsewhere on this site.

Narconon is "Casualty Contact"

Internal documents make clear that Narconon is a variation on “casualty contact”, a recruitment policy Hubbard developed for Scientology in the 1950s.

See here for full size

In the opening section of this part of the website, “Narconon: an Introduction”, I argued that Scientology's insistence that Narconon was an independent organisation is hard to sustain.

Narconon, while acknowledging that it runs along principles created by L. Ron Hubbard, plays down the Scientology angle on its website.

But the fact is that much of Narconon's programme is derived from Scientology materials; and most, if not all of its senior staff are Scientologists.

To really understand Scientology's relationship with Narconon however, you need to look at the methods L. Ron Hubbard's used to spread the word about his movement.

From the early years of Dianetics and then Scientology, Hubbard was obsessed with what he called dissemination: getting clients in through the door and paying for courses.

His methods were as cynical as they were creative.

Perhaps the most striking example of his approach is a method he called “Casualty Contact”. This is what he advised his followers in a 1956 edition of the Professional Auditors Bulletin:

Every day in the daily papers one discovers people who have been victimised one way or the other by life. It does not much matter that the newspapers have a full parade of oddities in terms of accident, illness and bereavement occuring at a constant parade before the eyes.

The essence of "Casualty Contact" is good filing and good personal appearance¹

Go through the daily papers looking for such items, he advised. And if the address is not in the story itself, contact the newspaper presenting yourself as a minister and get it from them.

As speedily as possible he makes a personal call on the bereaved or injured person...

He should represent himself to the person or the person's family as a minister whose compassion [sic] was compelled by the newspaper story concerning the person...

He should avoid any lengthy discussions of Scientology and should talk about the work of ministers and how all too few ministers these days get around to places where they are needed...

Even at this early stage then, Hubbard was careful to cover his tracks. And he also spelled out the need to use “acceptable truths” to get past the gatekeepers.

Using his Minister’s card, an auditor need only barge into any nonsectarian hospital, get permission to visit the wards from the Superintendent, mentioning nothing about processing but only about taking care of people’s souls, to find himself wonderfully welcome... Some hospitals are sticky about this sort of thing, but it’s only necessary to find another.[My emphasis]

“Don’t pick on the very bad off unconscious cases,” he advised, in one particularly callous aside. “Hit the fracture ward and the maternity ward.”

And don't forget to leave your card, he added.

...[Y]our statement, "The modern scientific church can cure things like that. Come around and see," will work. It’s straight recruiting.²

Chasing ambulances

In a 1956 Hubbard Communications Office bulletin, “After the Flood”, Hubbard described a variation on the same theme: he called this one “Illness Researches.³

Hubbard explained how in 1951, the early days of Dianetics, he had successfully worked this routine with his wife Mary Sue Hubbard.

The exact wording of the ad was as follows: “Polio victims. A research foundation, investigating polio desires volunteers suffering from the aftereffects of that illness to call for examination at address.”

When people turned up, usually after a phone interview, they were given three hours of auditing – after which most had already showed some improvement, wrote Hubbard.

The auditing was given free of charge. It was given under the guise of investigation and was in actuality a research project.

Any auditor anywhere can constitute himself as a minister or an auditor, a research worker in the field of any illness. In that he is not offering to treat or cure the illness but is strictly investigating it, the laws concerning medicine do not obtain to him...

It is best that a minister representing himself as a "charitable organization," which is what he is, do the research so that the ad would then read: "Polio victims—a charitable organization investigating polio desires to examine several victims of the aftereffects of this illness. Phone So-and-so"

Perhaps, for once, Hubbard was not telling tall tales about the results he obtained: if the results he described were accurate, it is as shrewd an exploitation of the placebo effect as you could wish for.⁴

Nevertheless this approach, like its cousin Casualty Contact, is little more than a kind of ambulance chasing.

Having set out the technique, Hubbard added a couple of lines to head off any qualms about the methods used.

The interesting hooker in this ad is that anyone suffering from a lasting illness is suffering from it so as to attract attention and bring about an examination of it. These people will go on being examined endlessly.

This hints at a core part of Hubbard's philosophy: that everybody is responsible for the bad things that happen to them. As a Scientologist might put it: “They pulled it in.”

Not to worry then, if you have to be a little economical with the truth to get the patients in – because really, they are just asking for it.

Teasing out the disturbing implications of this kind of thinking is work for another day.⁵

The bridge to The Bridge

So what does this have to do with Narconon?

We have seen how, with Casualty Contact and the Illness Research, Hubbard was perfectly ready to stoop to ambulance chasing in the hunt for new recruits.

Narconon should be seen as the logical evolution of this approach.

For with Narconon, Scientologists no longer had to go looking for the sick; now, the sick came to Scientology – or rather its pseudo-medical alter ego.

A sceptical reader might feel that this is stretching the point. Fortunately however, Scientology has provided the documentary equivalent of the smoking gun.

“Woo Hah” at Why We Protest posted a revealing Scientology leaflet, an internal document vaunting Narconon as a way to get people on to Scientology's Bridge to Total Freedom.

"NARCONON helps get people up RON's bridge to freedom...,” it declares.

"NARCONON is freeing people from crime and drug abuse with standard tech, and starting them up RON'S bridge to total freedom.

"WHO CAN YOU START ACROSS THAT BRIDGE?

"NARCONON IS THE BRIDGE TO THE BRIDGE!"

And just in case we missed the point, there's an illustration to go with it: a bridge leading to another bridge.

At the entrance to the first is written “Narconon enter here.” That bridge leads directly to the second bridge where over the entrance is written: “The Way to Total Freedom” – in other words, Scientology.

That document dates back to a 1974 edition of Narconon News.

But you can find similar material from the time since Hubbard's death and the rise to power of David Miscavige.

Do Not Pass Go

“Woo Hah” directed me to another Scientology document at researcher Dave Touretzky's Stop Narconon site which clearly puts Narconon on the Scientology organigram. This one is from the May 2004 edition of International Scientology News, well after Miscavige's rise to power.

See here for full size

This document includes a diagram, in which arrows radiate out from a central symbol representing a Scientology Org to other symbols, representing various groups.

Some of the arrows lead to recognised subsidiaries of Scientology, such as its precursor Dianetics, the system Hubbard developed before he had hit on what he once called “the religion angle”.⁶

But other arrows lead to groups which, according to the official line, are secular organisations with no link to the Church of Scientology – apart from the fact that they are based on Hubbard's writings.

Two lead to the World Institute of Scientology Enterprises (WISE), the Trojan horse the movement uses to infiltrate the business sector – and to milk Scientology-run businesses.

One leads to the Way to Happiness Foundation, which promotes Hubbard's book of the same name, a supposedly secular let's-teach-the-world-to-sing collection of platitudes.⁷

But three of the arrows on the chart lead directly from the Scientology to the Narconon symbol.

Go to Narconon. Go directly to Narconon. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.

Dave Touretzky sums up what this means, in his inimitable no-bullshit manner.

“Although Narconon explicitly denies that it is part of Scientology, this is clearly a lie intended only for the general public.

“What the Church of Scientology tells its own members is that Narconon is 'the bridge to The Bridge', i.e., another route by which people can be recruited into Scientology.”

And Touretzky provides more such material at the documents archive section of Stop Narconon site.⁸

I confess, I am a little embarrassed I didn't come across this material before.

Clearly – as they say in the badlands of Why We Protest – I need to lurk moar.

So let's make this page a work in progress.

Let's make this page a clearing house for any Scientology or Narconon documents that give the game away about the true relationship between Scientology and Narconon.

All contributions gratefully received.⁹

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Update #1: Narconon and the GO

Here's a document from a Hubbard internal memo dating back to 1972 (also part of Dave Touretzky's excellent archive).

See here for full size

It was seized during the 1977 FBI raids that led to the conviction of several senior Scientologists – including Hubbard's wife Mary Sue – and subsequently released under Freedom of Information requests.

Hubbard writes:

The incomparable Guardians Office has been running the Narconon(Drugs-no) Program over the world.

The Program is now fully subsidized - state paid - in one country and one state and contributed to by governments in several other locale...

The GO should not hide its light under a basket [sic] - if it could.

Narconon is the ONLY successful drug rehabilitation program on the planet. It is being recognized as such.

Highly commended.

The Guardians Office (GO) of course was the precursor of the Office of Special Affairs (OSA).

It was responsible for external affairs – and the kind of dirty tricks that got its senior officials jailed following those FBI raids.

What for? For the “...brazen, systematic and persistant burglaries of United States Government offices in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, California, over an extended period of at least two years.”

The full story has been told at length elsewhere: but that's Hubbard's “incomparable Guardian's Office” for you.

This document is a clear admission from Hubbard that Scientology's intelligence wing was running Scientology.

Not so much a smoking gun then, as the perp caught red-handed at the scene of the crime with the weapon in his hands.

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1From the “Professional Auditors Bulletin” of February 28, 1956, quoted at Chris Owen's excellent page on casualty contact. It was a similar story in “Dissemination Tips”, a policy letter from around the same period.

2From “Dissemination Tips” a Hubbard Communications Office Bulletin, September 15, 1959, posted at Caroline Letkeman's site. She has also scanned in extracts from the original document. Summing up at the end of the bulletin, Hubbard wrote: “Don’t explain. Penetrate. Don’t overwhelm. Penetrate.” In other words, it's all about control.

3“After the Flood”, January 24, 1956, HCO Bulletin, which again you can find at Caroline Letkeman's site – and again, she has posted scanned extracts from the original document.

4It would be hardly surprising if a bit of care and attention had helped relieve some symptoms, at least in the short term. And the trance-induced suggestion inherent in basic auditing techniques might also have played their part. But it would a long way from there to the extravagent claims that Hubbard was accustomed to making for his system, particularly in the 1950s.

5The warped thinking behind this philosophy – that somehow you are responsible for all the bad things that happen to you – is Hubbard's half-arsed version of karma (which, with his usual flair for the poetic, he called the overt-motivator sequence). And as crazy as it might sound to the outsider, it helps explain how Scientologists justify some of their more callous behaviour.

For the official version, see this barely coherent account at one of Scientology's websites: you won't know whether to laugh or cry. For a more useful analysis, see this post in the “Scientology Thought Control” series at the Ask the Scientologist blog (which has recently moved over to WordPress). Just Bill's replies to the comments below the post sketch out how he thinks the Buddhist concept of karma differs from Hubbard's more toxic version.

6“I await your reaction on the religion angle. In my opinion, we couldn't get worse public opinion than we have had or have less customers with what we've got to sell... We're treating the present time beingness, psychotherapy treats the past and the brain. And brother, that's religion, not mental science.” From an April 10, 1953 letter to Helen O'Brien, one of his followers, extracts of which are posted at Carole Letkeman's website.

7The injunctions and advice offered in Hubbard's The Way to Happiness are quite breathtakingly asinine. “Do not murder”, one heading advises. “Do not tell harmful lies”, says another. Harmless ones then, are presumably all right. Addressing his Scientology followers, Hubbard once wrote: “Handling truth is a touchy business also... Tell an acceptable truth.” He put it even more bluntly in another internal document: “THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN CONTROL PEOPLE IS TO LIE TO THEM.” For the documented sources and more along the same lines, see Lying as a Religious Rite by Ted Mayett and Keshet.

It has probably already been done, but setting Hubbard's holier-than-thou injunctions from the Way to Happiness alongside some of his more deranged internal policy Scientology letters would be an instructive exercise.

8I think much of Touretzky's research on Narconon has been incorporated into the joint project he put together with British researcher Chris Owen: Narconon Exposed, another invaluable resource.

9You can contact me by submitting a reply to this post, or at any of the main suppressive message boards (Why We Protest, Clambake, the Tipping Point and others), where I post as Albion.