Yes, the part about Hubbard's war record could have been an article of its own:
Quote:
At the meeting, Davis and I also discussed Hubbard’s war record. His voice filling with emotion, he said that, if it was true that Hubbard had not been injured, then “the injuries that he handled by the use of Dianetics procedures were never handled, because they were injuries that never existed; therefore, Dianetics is based on a lie; therefore, Scientology is based on a lie.” He concluded, “The fact of the matter is that Mr. Hubbard was a war hero.”
In the binders that Davis provided, there was a letter from the U.S. Naval Hospital in Oakland, dated December 1, 1945. The letter states that Hubbard had been hospitalized that year for a duodenal ulcer, but was “technically pronounced ‘fit for duty.’ ” This was the same period during which Hubbard claimed to have been blinded and lame. Davis had highlighted a passage: “Eyesight very poor, beginning with conjunctivitis actinic in 1942. Lame in right hip from service connected injury. Infection in bone. Not misconduct, all service connected.” Davis added later that, according to Robert Heinlein, Hubbard’s ankles had suffered a “drumhead-type injury”; this can result, Davis explained, “when the ship is torpedoed or bombed.”
Davis acknowledged that some of Hubbard’s medical records did not appear to corroborate Hubbard’s version of events. But Scientology had culled other records that did confirm Hubbard’s story, including documents from the National Archives in St. Louis. The man who did the research, Davis said, was “Mr. X.”
Davis explained, “Anyone who saw ‘J.F.K.’ remembers a scene on the Mall where Kevin Costner’s character goes and meets with a man named Mr. X, who’s played by Donald Sutherland.” In the film, Mr. X is an embittered intelligence agent who explains that the Kennedy assassination was actually a coup staged by the military-industrial complex. In real life, Davis said, Mr. X was Colonel Leroy Fletcher Prouty, who had worked in the Office of Special Operations. (Oliver Stone, who directed “J.F.K.,” says that Mr. X was a composite character, based in part on Prouty.) In the eighties, Prouty worked as a consultant for Scientology.
“We finally got so frustrated with this point of conflicting medical records that we took all of Mr. Hubbard’s records to Fletcher Prouty,” Davis told me. “He actually solved the conundrum for us.” According to Davis, Prouty explained to the church representatives that, because Hubbard had an “intelligence background,” his records were subjected to a process known as “sheep-dipping.” Davis explained that this was military parlance for “what gets done to a set of records for an intelligence officer. And, essentially, they create two sets.” He said, “Fletcher Prouty basically issued an affidavit saying L. Ron Hubbard’s records were sheep-dipped.” Prouty died in 2001.
Davis later sent me a copy of what he said was a document that confirmed Hubbard’s heroism: a “Notice of Separation from the U.S. Naval Service,” dated December 6, 1945. The document specifies medals won by Hubbard, including a Purple Heart with a Palm, implying that he was wounded in action twice. But John E. Bircher, the spokesman for the Military Order of the Purple Heart, wrote to me that the Navy uses gold and silver stars, “NOT a palm,” to indicate multiple wounds. Davis included a photograph of medals that Hubbard supposedly won. Two of the medals in the photograph weren’t even created until after Hubbard left active service.
After filing a request with the National Archives in St. Louis, The New Yorker obtained what archivists assured us were Hubbard’s complete military records—more than nine hundred pages. Nowhere in the file is there mention of Hubbard’s being wounded in battle or breaking his feet. X-rays taken of Hubbard’s right shoulder and hip showed calcium deposits, but there was no evidence of any bone or joint disease in his ankle.
There is a “Notice of Separation” in the records, but it is not the one that Davis sent me. The differences in the two documents are telling. The St. Louis document indicates that Hubbard earned four medals for service, but they reflect no distinction or valor. In the church document, his job preference after the service is listed as “Studio (screen writing)”; in the official record, it is “uncertain.” The church document indicates, falsely, that Hubbard completed four years of college, obtaining a degree in civil engineering. The official document correctly notes two years of college and no degree.
On the church document, the commanding officer who signed off on Hubbard’s separation was “Howard D. Thompson, Lt. Cmdr.” The file contains a letter, from 2000, to another researcher, who had written for more information about Thompson.
An analyst with the National Archives responded that the records of commissioned naval officers at that time had been reviewed, and “there was no Howard D. Thompson listed.”
The church, after being informed of these discrepancies, said, “Our expert on military records has advised us that, in his considered opinion, there is nothing in the Thompson notice that would lead him to question its validity.” Eric Voelz, an archivist who has worked at the St. Louis archive for three decades, looked at the document and pronounced it a forgery.
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