Earlier in this thread the idea was put that Miscavige grabbed the CofS from under Ron's nose or some such idea. There may be an element of truth in that, but those of us who were around in the 60's and 70's should put the record straight for posterity and for those who came along into Scn later.
I agree with Alan, Scn was rotton at the core in those pre-Miscavige days!
I was mainly involved in the Misssion network in the UK and while they were nothing like the huge US missions talked about here, there were certain common elements.
You went to the Orgs to do your auditor training, but compared to the Misssions, the orgs were generally down-stat places with collapsed tech divisions, due to the insane pressure coming from LRH. Often the Org's tech divisions were beefed up with temporary SO missions, because all the tech staff had blown or ended-contract. Sometimes orgs were even beefed up with temporary Misssion tech staff (I even did that myself, when the org had no, zero, zilch tech personnel!).
From a Mission point of view, the orgs were tolerated as a necessity because Missions couldn't deliver auditor training above HQS. But you spent as little time there as possible and got back to the relative sanity of your Mission as soon as you could.
Although it was rationalised away, it was obvious to anyone with any critical awareness that the closer to LRH you got the madder the environment became. Missions were generally friendly, upstat and pleasant places to be, in contrast, Class IV orgs were collapsed, grubby with low-morale staff or missing staff and periodically crawling with intense SO Missionaires.
Saint Hill was better staffed with many old-time, worked-with-Ron staff, but it was an unhappy environment with tired, worn-out staff and mostly SO staff who chased each other for stats and compliances but nevertheless managed to heroically produce SHSBC grads and AO completions. It was a lovely physical environment, but not a place you wanted to stay at for too long, with a huge and long-standing ARCXen field. Crawling through SH would be Flag Missions enforcing LRH compliance with threats, low condition orders and later the RPF.
The GO? Well they were well-staffed, appeared upstat, but we all knew of the dirty tricks Ron got MSH and Jane Kember to do. If you didn't have a prediliction for spy novels, you didn't get involved with those guys!
I never went outside the UK to Flag (ship), so have no personal experience of it, but people returning from the early FEBC or from Flag Services would be mainly silent about it, but anyone with any intuition (or indeed any auditor-tech knowledge) could see an unexpressed trauma, especially from the FEBC grads. They were simply not as happy and keyed-out as org staff, who in turn were more miserable than Mission staff.
Simple observation told you that the closer you got to Ron the more unpleasant it became.
Flag Missions would arrive and extoll stories of Ron's "standards" that would make you cringe. And leave you trying to figure out how the man who was the source of all this wonderful tech could be so nuts in his own behaviour.
The local orgs, generally, were not welcome to send representatives to the Missions and they were usually so caved-in and busy handling themselves that they rarely had the spare attention to direct it at the Missions. Missions would send their public to the Orgs when they were good and ready to and would often by-pass them and send direct to St Hill instead.
Saint Hill missions would either get approval first from the Mission's ED before they arrived or would be vetted upon arrival as to what their intentions were and restricted on who they were given permission to talk to. I remember several times when we didn't let them interview our public at all, but would just let them talk to/reg us instead, both they and us knowing we weren't going to sign up for anything!
Mission holders were rather protective of their public as they intuitively knew that the SO would screw them up if given too much licence!
Missions in the UK tended to be successful, until eventually the leading lights of them were whittled away to join the Orgs, SO or St Hill and then the Missions would usually collapse due to the loss of the brightest sparks. This trend always existed in Scn. At the time, I knew of then-defunct groups and Missions from before my time that had been successful until their best tech staff were co-erced due to loyalty to Ron to become more "on-source" and join St Hill and/or the SO.
You can see how this happened as early as 1953 in Helen O'Brien's book. The reason the Philadelphia Doctorate took place in that city was due to her and Noyga's successful Dianetic Group operating in Philadelphia independently of LRH. Once they were recruted by LRH to run the Association of Scientologists, their group closed down and they were out of Scn within a year of working for him!
So from what I observed, Scn was always more nutty the closer you got to LRH. Miscavige was simply a product of this nuttiness, in my opinion. The foundation for the coup, if coup it was, was laid down by LRH. Because I saw similar behaviour/attitudes earlier by LRH acolytes (eg Alex Sibersky, Capt Bill, etc) I am reasonably certain that DM believed he was carrying out LRH intention when he busted the Missions in '82. And I have every reason to suppose that he was actually carrying out his orders. LRH and/or RTC wanted the Missions' money and public - simple as that!
The resentment of the Missions' and Field Auditor's success had existed right back to 1950.
In my time, we were viewed as slightly maverick, and "off-purpose" by the Orgs, AO and SO. We were tolerated because we produced public and staff for them. Although I also know that Missions enjoyed coming to visit us - it must have seemed like a holiday for them to get away from Ron's command intention for a few days!
So a while back on this thread, when I read about possible conspiracy theories about the CofS being taken over by insidious, external agencies, I consulted my memory of Scn life up to '82 and thought I should record my memories of the rotton core that always seems to have existed in Scn.
I think the major difference post-82 is that the outer, softer, more theta layer got peeled away. Like Alan says, it started before '82, but the rotton core has become more exposed by the LRH/RTC suicide act of collapsing the Missions.
As one of those of who remembers evidence of LRH's "toughness", "standards", "command intention", etc. I can easily see an echo or dramatisation of it in the current leader of the group.
Outside infiltration? Not in my opinion, just the rotton, maggot-infested core now visible on the surface.