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Caroline

Patron Meritorious
Gerry Armstrong resigned from the Church of Scientology on 12 December 1981, thirty-five years ago yesterday. Here is his letter of resignation:

Gerry Armstrong said:
Letter-from-GA-to-Barbara-1981-12-12-1.png


Letter-from-GA-to-Barbara-1981-12-12-2.png


12 Dec 1981

PA Props Dir
PA Archivist

re: Post

Dear Barbara:

This is an official note of resignation from the Archives Post and the Sea Org.

Please pass it on to the proper person.

I would have liked to spend some time with someone to turn the post over, but that simply wasn't possible. Therefore someone will have to pick up the files, etc. basically from scratch. It's actually better that way as the person will become thoroughly familiar with them rather quickly.

I would wish that Vaughn would be kept on as the biog research person to work with Omar. However, I'll probably now be an "anti-opinion leader" and any "advice" I have would be shunned like the plague.

I would wish that my Family not be contacted. I frankly don't know where I'll go right now, but will be in touch with them in the near future. It would be a bit distressing for them, and they have not all been pro-Scientology over the years.

I would also ask that I not be harassed. I know the organization is very capable of that sort of thing, but I don't wish them any ill, and I would hope they will not intend any toward me.

Someone will want to know why I (and Joyce) left. It really isn't important, however it is simply because it was time. I think everyone comes to this point in their lives.

There are disagreements, of course, and these would also preclude any further involvement at this time. But I don't have to go into those here.

I would be most grateful if you could ensure that the line to Omar is picked up again (Vaughn I hope, as he has the insight the job requires). The biography is so important to righting the scene, and Omar is one of the best friends the organization and LRH has ever had.

-2-

Any comm can be sent to this address:

c/o
115 Princess Avenue East
Chilliwack, B.C., Canada V2P 2A6

I'll turn the car over to Vaughn for now as he'll need it.

The copier, see my other note.

Files are all intact. They really require a full-time files person as they are not in a decent order at all. I spent the last several months trying to get Omar copied all the materials he would need, and more stuff kept pouring in. So the files are not in any sensible order.

Omar has a great deal of materials, but there will be holes which have to be filled. And there are a great number of important letters/docs/files, etc. which haven't been copied. His assigned terminal can pick this up.

I'll be willing to be consulted on anything. I'll just not be a part of the Church. So, actually my relationship doesn't change much. That is, I'm not any enemy as the organization sees such.

I'll be in touch after Christmas, and if there are any questions, or any way I can help at that time, just let me know.

This is a rather hasty note, as I'm rather hasty right now.

Maybe will send you something later, when I allow myself more time.

And maybe will see you again soon.

Much love,
Gerry

PS: Here are Christmas gifts for you and Dick. Have a great holiday time.

Scientology entered Gerry's letter into evidence at trial on May 17, 1984. (See Exhibit 30.)

I asked Gerry to write about the letter and his Blow Day:

Gerry Armstrong said:
It was thirty-five years ago today,

I blew the cult and there was hell to pay.

I was thirty-five.

Now over half my life I’ve been fair game.

I wrote this “official note of resignation” to Barbara DeCelle, my org board senior, knowing she would get it to “the proper person:” http://gerryarmstrong.ca/ga/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Letter-from-GA-to-Barbara-1981-12-12.pdf

The handwritten words “read” and the underlines were attorney Mike Flynn’s notes to himself for reading sections of the letter into the record at my 1984 trial in Los Angeles. Here’s trial testimony about the letter:

Reporters Transcript of Proceedings (May 23 said:
Q (Michael Flynn) And if you had planned your departure, Mr. Armstrong, with the idea of harming the organization or Mr. Hubbard, would you have taken — what files would you have taken more than any other files?

LITT (Attorney for Mary Sue Hubbard): Objection. That calls for speculation.

THE COURT (Judge Paul G. Breckenridge): Overruled.

THE WITNESS (Gerry Armstrong): Well, I think if I had planned it, I could have made off with a lot of files that would be particularly more useful than the files I have.

But the MCCS files, certainly, would have been important. The — various LRH orders into the PR Bureau like, for example, the Nobel Prize stuff, these are things which would have been available to me.

I suppose I could have made great inroads in the Intelligence Bureau if I had been real eager. But I didn’t make off with anything. But the materials that could have been obtained would have been more revealing than the ones that are here now.

Q BY MR. FLYNN: Now, you have testified on cross-examination about the gradual removal of your belongings from the organization, a box at a time; do you recall that?

A Yes.

Q Was there a policy or practice in the organization that when a person tried to leave, to keep their belongings, for the organization to keep their belongings?

HARRIS (Robert Harris, attorney for CSC): Your Honor, this is beyond the scope of cross-examination.

THE COURT: Well, it goes to state of mind, I suppose.

THE WITNESS: Yes; it happened with many people throughout the time I was involved in the organization. People were not allowed to leave with the personal Scientology materials in many cases. And all kinds of impediments would have been put in the way of me getting materials out, my own personal things. That was really the reason why the stuff went out a bit at a time.

Q BY MR. FLYNN: Now, exhibit 30 is your — what you termed your official notice of resignation dated 12 December, 1981; is that correct?

A Yes.

Q Now you stated in there that, “I spent the last several months trying to get Omar copied all the materials he would need and more stuff kept pouring in.”

What did you mean by that statement, “more stuff kept pouring in,” Mr. Armstrong?

A Well, right up to the end of my stay, I kept getting more material. The final boxes of the Pers Com arrived, the final Pers Sec materials arrived, the stuff from Controller archives arrived, and there was more than I could possibly copy.

Q Now these were materials that you had been trying to procure or obtain possession of for several months prior to that?

A Yeah. I guess the Controller archives — the only reason I did not have them months before that was that Tom Vorm told me that he was simply too busy to go through all the materials, so we waited until he had a time when he was more or less free. Then he went through the materials with me.

The Pers Com materials only arrived some time in 1981, and there was such a mass of them. They were in very big boxes and they were kept for a long time in the external communications bureau, the LRH external communications bureau in another building, and I brought them over a box at a time throughout that period until I finally had all of them there, but there was such a mass of then, there was simply no way to go through them all.

Q What was your state of mind with regard to your obligation to complete the project based on the agreement that Mr. Garrison had with PDK and that you felt you had with Mr. Hubbard with regard to getting him, Mr. Garrison, documents before you left?

A Well I felt very committed to that. That is the reason that I tried to get copied everything that I could, and my wife and I worked so hard in the last two weeks to try and do that.

Q And you didn’t take any files of any nature that fell outside the biography project and you could have taken the MCCS files; is that correct?

A Well I could have done that, but I did take financial — my own personal things, and that is actually when I went back in some time in February or — either January or February I saw Vaughn Young, and I realized that there was this file of all my copies, and the reason I took that was because basically on board the ship I had run into a problem with the organization in accounting for a disbursement which I had and the rule was laid down that if you didn’t keep a copy of your turned-in accounts, then you could be liable if the organization didn’t find it, and in that case I had to pay for the amount of the disbursement because the treasury bureau at that time had lost my accounting, so I had to pay again.

So, following that, I tried as much as possible to keep copies of all the money received and all ay accounting for that money. So I went back in and spoke to Vaughn and I took — it was only my copy. The organization had all the other documents and the accounting.

Q And per your letter of 12 December, 1981 you advised the organization, particularly Barbara De Celle, of the fact that you had taken those documents in the last several months and given them to Omar Garrison; is that correct?

A Yes. I also spoke to Barbara at the same time and told her the status of everything in archives.

Q And per this letter you asked that you not be harassed by the organization; is that correct?

A Yes.

From Reporter's Transcript of Proceedings (May 23, 1984)

When I blew in December 1981, my note would end up pretty quickly with Hubbard. He was the proper person. It is inconceivable that Miscavige wouldn’t make the most of my blow with Hubbard, and everyone else.

Just three years earlier with my “Barnum and Bailey Beingness,” which he thought was joking, I’d caused Hubbard to blow his gourd. Now, after two years dutifully collecting and copying his personal archive and delivering it all to wog writer Omar Garrison, I’d blown his org.

December 1981 is when Hubbard would have started his torrent of hate-filled vitriol about me Jesse Prince identifies, which by the time Hubbard died would take up multiple bankers boxes.

What a trip!
 

PirateAndBum

Gold Meritorious Patron
See, that's what happens when you don't do a proper hat turn-over. You're stuck with the damn thing foreva! :biggrin:

Congrats on your 35th anniversary out!

It's my 9th anniversary out this month.
 

Caroline

Patron Meritorious
See, that's what happens when you don't do a proper hat turn-over. You're stuck with the damn thing foreva! :biggrin:

Congrats on your 35th anniversary out!

It's my 9th anniversary out this month.

Congrats to you too. I've been working on my 17th year out since May.

Gerry said thanks and admits he does seem to be stuck with the hat. He is still researching Hubbard's biography!

Gerry said:
Goodbugger

Jon Atack asked if I would write down something about the name “Jonnie Goodbugger” that Omar Garrison came up with for L. Ron Hubbard.

Atack spelled it Johnny Goodbugger, but I believe it should be Jonnie, after Jonnie Goodboy Tyler.

In October 1980, right after Garrison signed his contract to write the LRH biography, I gave him a copy of Hubbard’s manuscript for Man the Endangered Species, which was published in 1982 as Battlefield Earth. The hero in the book is the humanoid stone age villager Jonnie Goodboy Tyler.

Hubbard had sent a copy of the ms to his PR Bureau, and I got assigned to copyedit his introduction. I also read the ms version around the same time Garrison read it, and we talked about the book on many occasions.

Garrison recognized very early in his reading and research in the biography project that Hubbard standardly made the heroes in his fiction physically astonishing versions of himself. “Jonnie Goodboy stood […] a muscular six feet shining with the bronzed health of his twenty years […] wind tangling his corn-yellow hair and beard, looking […] with his ice-blue eyes.”

[...]

Rest of Goodbugger
 

PirateAndBum

Gold Meritorious Patron
Congrats to you too. I've been working on my 17th year out since May.

Gerry said thanks and admits he does seem to be stuck with the hat. He is still researching Hubbard's biography!

So do I take it, from reading your Goodbugger post, that Gerry/Garrison believed Leon Brown sodomized Hubbard when he was in kindergarten?
 

Wants2Talk

Silver Meritorious Patron
Jerry - thanks for the true data. Thanks for the courage. Thanks for sharing yourself with us.

[video=youtube;BQ-jspv-Qok]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQ-jspv-Qok[/video]
 

DagwoodGum

Squirreling Dervish
Just to get it off my chest and for the record I've always hated that pretentious stupid name Jonnie Goodboy Tyler. Goodboy? WTF? stupid!
Amen brother. That made me cringe and squirm myself completely out of my skin, almost to the extent of The Apollo Stars album. I knew by these watermarks that we were't dealing with a full deck by any means...
 
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Caroline

Patron Meritorious
So do I take it, from reading your Goodbugger post, that Gerry/Garrison believed Leon Brown sodomized Hubbard when he was in kindergarten?

No, Gerry says that from a memory half as old as he is the picture that Hubbard conveyed was Leon Brown introducing him into buggery when he was a teenager in Helena, Montana. Gerry recalls that Brown was only a year or two older than Hubbard, not enough years older for that kind of kindergarten incident.

Gerry also says he saw no evidence in Hubbard’s materials of him being molested or abused as a kindergartener or prepubescent child, or at any time.
 
No, Gerry says that from a memory half as old as he is the picture that Hubbard conveyed was Leon Brown introducing him into buggery when he was a teenager in Helena, Montana. Gerry recalls that Brown was only a year or two older than Hubbard, not enough years older for that kind of kindergarten incident.

Gerry also says he saw no evidence in Hubbard’s materials of him being molested or abused as a kindergartener or prepubescent child, or at any time.

Why does Gerry not post here himself? Does it have to do with whatever papers he signed years ago?

Mimsey
 

oneonewasaracecar

Gold Meritorious Patron
No, Gerry says that from a memory half as old as he is the picture that Hubbard conveyed was Leon Brown introducing him into buggery when he was a teenager in Helena, Montana. Gerry recalls that Brown was only a year or two older than Hubbard, not enough years older for that kind of kindergarten incident.

Gerry also says he saw no evidence in Hubbard’s materials of him being molested or abused as a kindergartener or prepubescent child, or at any time.

Would he not consider being 'taught' to masturbate by an adult as a form of sexual abuse?
 

Caroline

Patron Meritorious
Would he not consider being 'taught' to masturbate by an adult as a form of sexual abuse?

Here's what Hubbard says in The Admissions:

L. Ron Hubbard said:
I have a very bad masturbatory history. I was taught when I was 11 and, despite guilt, fear of insanity, etc. etc. I persisted. At a physical examination at a Y when I was about 13, the examiner and the people with him called me out of the line because my testicles hung low and cautioned me about what would happen if I kept on masturbating. This “discovery” was a bad shock to me.

From The Admissions of L. Ron Hubbard

Hubbard does not identify his masturbation mentor, nor does he say whether his mentor was an adult.

At age 11, Hubbard was living in San Diego, California. (See Bare-faced Messiah Timeline.) Later in 1922, Hubbard and his mom moved to Seattle.

By the age of 12, when he cruised on the same ship with Commander Trouser Snake Thompson, Hubbard already had a year under his belt. Thus it is possible to safely eliminate Thompson as the Hubbard's unnamed basic sex educator.

It is altogether possible, assuming a degree of truthfulness in the Admissions, that in his mind Julia Flavia taught him to masturbate at age 11.

Hubbard said:
(z) That I need not subscribe to any moral code of sex anywhere. That I am constant to Sara. I have no terrors of sex or sexual conduct. Only pleasure and beauty are contained in it. That I may please myself with the act or be pleased with sexual things. That the sexual matters taught me by Flavia do not apply. My chastity lies in loving Sara.

(a1) That I will not forget these things but will enjoin them with all related ideas as more powerful than any other ideas in my head.

From The Admissions of L. Ron Hubbard

Hubbard might have been so hung up he was the only Homo Sap in history who required supervision in masturbation. But I think we would be stretching it too much to assume that the person or entity who had him under instruction was an adult.
 

Gib

Crusader
Here's what Hubbard says in The Admissions:



Hubbard does not identify his masturbation mentor, nor does he say whether his mentor was an adult.

At age 11, Hubbard was living in San Diego, California. (See Bare-faced Messiah Timeline.) Later in 1922, Hubbard and his mom moved to Seattle.

By the age of 12, when he cruised on the same ship with Commander Trouser Snake Thompson, Hubbard already had a year under his belt. Thus it is possible to safely eliminate Thompson as the Hubbard's unnamed basic sex educator.

It is altogether possible, assuming a degree of truthfulness in the Admissions, that in his mind Julia Flavia taught him to masturbate at age 11.



Hubbard might have been so hung up he was the only Homo Sap in history who required supervision in masturbation. But I think we would be stretching it too much to assume that the person or entity who had him under instruction was an adult.

I don't think Hubbard was taught to masturbate. We all figure it out without instruction. LOL

This is a wrong path, IMHO. He was just hung up on it from whatever he learned at the time when wanking off was considered a sin, early 1900's. And that includes women at the time.

What was it that Hubbard said, I think the PDC's, or maybe later, that all men (women) masturbate. Well, how did he come up with that conclusion?

Simple, he was the C/S at the time and read all the sins of PC's and found out they wanked off, and then enter in Hubbard's rhetoric to persuade people to get people into his game known as scientology.
 

pineapple

Silver Meritorious Patron
This is a wrong path, IMHO. He was just hung up on it from whatever he learned at the time when wanking off was considered a sin, early 1900's. And that includes women at the time
I learned that it was a sin in the mid-1900's. The reason it was a sin for guys was because you were wasting your vital essence, which was intended to be used only for procreation. This wasn't the case with women, however, since they didn't lose anything when they did it. (I suppose they could have "deflowered" themselves -- broken the hymen -- if they really got into it, which would have made it appear they weren't virgins when they got married.) As I recall, the sinfulness of masturbation was much less of a biggie for girls.
 

Clay Pigeon

Gold Meritorious Patron
I learned that it was a sin in the mid-1900's. The reason it was a sin for guys was because you were wasting your vital essence, which was intended to be used only for procreation. This wasn't the case with women, however, since they didn't lose anything when they did it. (I suppose they could have "deflowered" themselves -- broken the hymen -- if they really got into it, which would have made it appear they weren't virgins when they got married.) As I recall, the sinfulness of masturbation was much less of a biggie for girls.
Based in scripture Piney

Old Testament somewhere; "It is better to leave your seed in the belly of a whore than spill it by the wayside"
 

pineapple

Silver Meritorious Patron
Based in scripture Piney

Old Testament somewhere; "It is better to leave your seed in the belly of a whore than spill it by the wayside"
Right -- for guys. But women don't have seed. Hence no big deal was made of masturbation for women, contrary to what Gib said. That was my point.
 

guanoloco

As-Wased
Here's what Hubbard says in The Admissions:



Hubbard does not identify his masturbation mentor, nor does he say whether his mentor was an adult.

At age 11, Hubbard was living in San Diego, California. (See Bare-faced Messiah Timeline.) Later in 1922, Hubbard and his mom moved to Seattle.

By the age of 12, when he cruised on the same ship with Commander Trouser Snake Thompson, Hubbard already had a year under his belt. Thus it is possible to safely eliminate Thompson as the Hubbard's unnamed basic sex educator.

It is altogether possible, assuming a degree of truthfulness in the Admissions, that in his mind Julia Flavia taught him to masturbate at age 11.



Hubbard might have been so hung up he was the only Homo Sap in history who required supervision in masturbation. But I think we would be stretching it too much to assume that the person or entity who had him under instruction was an adult.

About the time he's being admonished for masturbation (13 years old) Sarah Northrup is born.
 

TomKat

Patron Meritorious
Amen brother. That made me cringe and squirm myself completely out of my skin, almost to the extent of The Apollo Stars album. I knew by these watermarks that we were't dealing with a full deck by any means...
You didn't like out-of-tune horns? :)
 
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