I remember that period.
A whole bunch of issues, HCOB's and PL's were revised with blatant non-LRH italics added in or reworded for obvious legal reasons. It was a big effort to cover-your-ass by parsing stuff that was controversial or just plain weird legally.
All it did was create mistrust of management.
Thanks, cakemaker!
Not everyone was on staff through those periods to remember, but it is one of the points that is a basic point of the FZers and Indies with which I agree.
In the late 70s/early 80s, after the FBI raid, we first saw revisions in italics. The first batch seemed to be for PR reasons, then the next batch seemed to correct grammar and English (which were often poor in LRH lectures.) These weren't so bad at first, but it was still a big
since even with these revisions, they were still signed "L Ron Hubbard" as if they were exact quotes when they were not.
If L Ron was carrying on in tapes and going off on one of his crazy rampages against psychiatry (as he often did), why hide these inconsistencies from staff and Scientologists? Why make that garbage into policy at all? A lecture is a lecture, it doesn't mean it's an order. or it should be one. Same with a lot of other stuff.
It's easy to just chalk it all up to "L Ron, the evil cult leader and manipulator," but it's more complicated than that. Group/cult behavior encouraged absolute adherence and acceptance of every word that came out of that man's mouth. The more he was treated like a God, the more he believed he was and lorded it over others, but his faults only became bigger and riddled all through Scientology doctrine and tech and the bigger he became in cult members' minds, the less likely it was that anyone would ever challenge or correct him.
There is a story I heard many years ago from a Messenger about L Ron when he was at Gold. Some of you here may have also heard it. L Ron was walking through the studios and stopped to watch some of the dancers practicing. It reminded him of something from his childhood, so he mentioned it. He told them how much he had enjoyed a certain backwards shuffle (i.e., the Michael Jackson moonwalk) and how he had admired the way the dancers glided across the floor. Then he left.
All the following week, the dancers practiced that moonwalk. When L Ron came back, he was furious to find that they dropped what they were doing over just a casual comment he made and he ordered them back to their original assignment. He asked, "Why does everyone take every comment I make literally?" (or similar)
I believe that story. 100%.
Whether a person believes L Ron was evil all the way through or not, it wasn't long after that that he took off in his Bluebird. Remember how we were always told he was "researching upper levels" or "returned to his first love, writing science fiction," only to find out years later that at first, he was playing 'Director' at Gold, then he was gone for years, hiding from the world in his super-camper. Then he returned with what sounds like dementia and was cared for by Annie Broeker while he lost any sanity he might have had left. Not an uncommon sort of timeline for a cult leader, though.
Meanwhile, the lies, lies, lies. Old policies that should never have been policies kept but slightly changed, now with no more italics, no original references. And it appears even the OSA Directives have writings within writings, i.e., notes in OSA hat packs on subversive ways to do things, supposedly secret advices by L Ron, etc. But they are out of context, they are all 60s stuff based on his irrational tirades and that cult tendency to de-humanize some group or individual as ''the enemy" and justify acting like a psychopath to destroy those perceived in such a way. So cult members acted on Elron's tirades and went well beyond that, and still do, just like cult members always have, because no true believer would ever accept that there were times that Hubbard was just rattling off at the mouth and should be ignored.
Stuff that should have been dumped after the FBI raid instead came back and grew back like weeds to poison whatever it touched. And the policies. Like canceling Fair Game, but keeping the idea and policy deeply imbedded in PTS/SP tech references and OSA references.
They could have just canceled it. DM and the rest who took over when L Ron wanted nothing more to do with his out-of-control cult monster could have eliminated the worst of the crazy, or at least made an effort to do so. Instead, the same crap just went further underground.
I hate Scientology.