When did Carl Barney’s career in Scientology begin?  That is a part of Barney’s biography that he and his defenders try to keep in the dark. We ferreted out the time and other landmarks in previous articles. Barney began studying Scientology in the early 1960s while visiting Australia. In 1967 he was a student at Saint Hill (Sussex, England), in those days the headquarters of the Church of Scientology. In 1969 he became “Clear” and began being groomed for management. By sometime in 1970 or possibly 1969 he had reached the rank of Class VIII Auditor and Operating Thetan, and is running Church of Scientology franchises in Los Angeles and San Diego. This meant paying L. Ron Hubbard 10% of his revenue in return for use of the names “Dianetics” and “Church of Scientology,” and for use of Hubbard’s recorded lectures, books, and other instructional material. [1]

Barney could have started his own “self help” school. Instead he cashed in on the name “Church of Scientology” and L. Ron Hubbard’s personality.  He chose the con man’s path and stuck to it.

Sometime in 1979 Hubbard revoked his franchise licenses and Barney’s Co$ career was over.

So the years of Barney’s heavy involvement in the Church ran from the late 1960s through the 1970s, the heyday of Scientology and, to hear him tell it, Scientology’s Golden Age.

It is very easy to prove – the evidence is overwhelming – that Co$ was loony all through those years. But before we present the evidence let’s examine more closely the reason Barney gives for leaving Co$, in his own words and through his friends at The Objective Standard / Objective Standard Institute.

From “Regarding Carl Barney and Scientology” by Craig Biddle (TOS), Part One of its three parts:

In Part Two, after Mr. Biddle tells us that  “Carl is a profoundly good man” (ordinarily good, even very good or amazingly good, isn’t enough to describe Barney, he is profoundly good):

Part Three of Mr. Biddle’s article quotes Barney himself:

Andrew Bernstein, contributing editor of The Objective Standard, continues the defense in his article, “A Tribute to Carl Barney.”  Like Mr. Biddle he bases it on talks with the man himself.  Regarding why Barney left the “movement” (a disguise word for  Church of Scientology) Mr. Bernstein says:

So much for Barney’s fantasy world.  Now for reality.

oOo

It’s hard to imagine that Barney and Mr. Biddle think they can get away with presenting the Church of Scientology as once an honest business.  A flood of leaked Co$ documents, exposé books, biographies, autobiographies, and documentaries are available describing both the years when Barney was in training and when he was part of running the show. There is no way he can get away with lying about it now.

It is true that one can find people who think Scientology helped them. One can find people who think electro-shock treatment helped them. One can find happy Moonies. The question is, did it help them objectively? The psychology of quackery is well-known. Are they really better off and what was the actual cause? Was the method worth the price compared to other methods? Were any people harmed? To answer those questions regarding Co$ we will examine the alleged help being given and the training of the people giving the help.

In previous articles we unearthed some telling Co$ documents about Barney when he was active in Co$. [2]  Here we broaden our inquiry to include material not specifically about Barney but still from when he was a student at Saint Hill and later when he was running his Church missions.

oOo

Quoting the narrator of the 1967 British documentary  “Scientology: A Faith For Sale”:

Also leaked is a folder containing transcripts of all the lectures except the 17th.  From the  info  file in the folder:

The takeaway is that Hubbard was expounding on malignant body Thetans etc. from the beginning of Barney’s involvement in Scientology. Barney did not leave Co$ when it got wacky and weird, to use his words, it was wacky and weird when he started.

And he must know this.

oOo

Now about that film. In 1967 the British television production company Granada Productions made a documentary, one in its World in Action investigative reporting series, about Saint Hill called  “Scientology: A Faith For Sale.”  It begins with a scene of gregariously happy Scientologists. The narrator tells us that Scientology is “a mixture of science fiction and psychotherapy,” which, we note, contradicts Barney’s claim that the science fiction element of Co$ was ten years in the future.  Later in the film a Saint Hill representative makes an analogy that illustrates how highly they regarded L. Ron Hubbard:

The documentary features interviews with several satisfied Scientologists and two disgusted former ones. Of the latter the French woman is especially articulate. She first talks about people who get roped into Scientology. Note that 100 pounds sterling in 1967 would be worth about 2,650 dollars today, and that she uses the phrase “last straw” to mean something like “last resort.”)

About that last:  auditing consists of relentless criticism-self-criticism, continuous confession to a higher level Scientologist monitoring a “lie detector” of dubious worth – a combination of Freudianism, the Catholic confessional, and an electronic gimmick. [5]

The parts of the 1967 documentary featuring this interview are collected here (click picture):

oOo

In 1968 Granada Productions made a second documentary about Scientology:  “The Shrinking World of L. Ron Hubbard.”  It features the only known filmed interview of Hubbard that he did not himself control. [6]  We quote a few highlights.  The narrator is speaking:

In what follows, to convert 1968 pounds sterling to present-day dollars, multiply by 27, which accounts for both inflation and the currency difference.

The narrator, after saying that the staff at Saint Hill is friendly and usually helps people who go there (belied by what comes later in the film):

Camera on young woman standing on stage receiving her Clear certificate; the man handing it to her is speaking:

After more in that vein there is a clip from an interview of Hubbard on his yacht – a converted cattle ferry – in the Mediterranean. He speaks in a weary, oracular voice. He is soon caught in a demonstrable lie.  The narrator:

The movie narrator then introduces a former Scientologist who used to be a crewmember on the yacht. Clips from an interview of him are interleaved with clips of the interview with Hubbard:

When in the other clip the interviewer asks Hubbard what he is doing in the Mediterranean, he says he is studying ancient civilizations. He sends out scouts to the islands and when they report back anything interesting he investigates it himself.  Robinson comments:

Robinson describes his growing disillusion with Scientology:

In the other clip there is a long debate between the interviewer and Hubbard about the size of Hubbard’s income and its source. Hubbard insists that he makes no money from Scientology, all his money comes from his earlier career as a fiction writer.  Robinson comments:

Those are some highlights of the 1968 documentary.  Watch it in full here:

oOo

oOo

Wikileaks provides a collection of Hubbard’s internal confidential memoranda describing Scientology’s Operating Thetan levels.  From Wikileaks’ summary: [7]

oOo

Paulette Cooper, a freelance journalist and author, wrote an article critical of Co$ published in Queen magazine (subsequently Harper’s Bazaar), the December 1969 issue:

In response Hubbard declared her “Fair Game” and unleashed several operations to ruin her life.  There was “Operation Daniel” (slander her),  “Operation Dynamite” (frame her for a bomb plot) – both in 1972 – and “Operation Freakout” (have her committed to a psychiatric hospital) – in 1976.  They are summarized in the Wikipedia entry:

Barney must have known about this.  Did he protest, did he ever speak out?

To repeat a quote of Barney:

Barney’s statement is not an honest mistake.  Who is he trying to fool?

oOo

Many interesting or disgusting facts about Scientology’s heyday can be found at

Carl Barney owned four Co$ missions in Los Angeles and one in San Diego from 1969 or 1970 to sometime in 1979.  Cheryl Sola began taking courses in Los Angeles starting in November 1977. She describes her experience at the beginning in the first chapter of The Cheryl S Story:

It is easy to discover how bad Scientology was during its alleged Golden Age when Barney peddled its quack psychological nostrums.  An overflowing cornucopia of material gives the lie to Barney’s Big Lie.

oOo

Carrie-Ann Biondi, occasional contributor to The Objective Standard, repeated Barney’s Big Lie – perhaps innocently – on TOS’s Facebook page in a comment vetted and approved by TOS (they don’t allow criticism, try it and you will be shadow-banned):

oOo

Barney says he taught only the good parts of Scientology at his missions in the 1970s.  He also says, not too consistently, that Hubbard forced him to teach the bad parts.  In either case, Hubbard had no patent on personal improvement; why didn’t Barney just start his own school?  Why pay a crank so that he could advertise as a purveyor of “Dianetics” and be part of his “Church?”  Why pay a crank for his nutty tapes and books, his silly E-meter?  If Barney had run his own school under his own name he would have been completely independent of Hubbard.  But he didn’t do that.  He knew a good thing when he saw it – the only meaning of good in Mr. Biddle’s “profoundly good man” apparent in Barney’s long Co$ career – and chose the path more lucrative.

He may have begun, in the early 1960s in Australia, as a victim himself but once he began rubbing shoulders with Co$ management he must have realized what was going on.  Instead of bailing out and warning others as countless ex-Scientologists have done, he chose to join the victimizers.  And he made that decision every day for 9 or 10 years – until Hubbard made another decision for him.

No “Orgs versus Missions” story will explain that away. [8]

oOo

Barney’s defenders in the orbit of organized Objectivism include  Craig Biddle,  Andrew Bernstein,  Robert Begley,  Chris Locke,  Richard Salsman,  C. Bradley Thompson,  Michael Hurd,  Carrie-Ann Biondi,  and (to the extent that he defended Scientology when Barney was donating to ARI)  Yaron Brook. [9]

People in the orbit of organized Objectivism who recently attended a dinner or party at Barney’s mansion, complete with butler and chef, include  Biddle, Bernstein, Thompson, Begley, Salsman (five among those above);  and  Leonard Peikoff,  Alex Epstein,  Andrew Lewis,  Lisa VanDamme,  and  James Valliant.

The affairs are held in the shadow of two sculptures by  Richard Minns,  whose “Atlas Award” Barney supports financially (as he has many of the above people at one time or another).  See  Who Is Richard Minns?

1  Source cover showing the year and table of contents.  Page 12 showing a map of Barney’s missions.  More commentary:  Who Is Carl Barney?  and  Andrew Bernstein’s Tribute to Carl Barney.

A glossary of Scientology jargon can be useful.  Here are three:

Dictionary of the secret language of ScientologyThe Language of ScientologyGlossary of Scientology & Dianetics Terms

The last is from a Co$ website.

2  For example see  Barney Tells His Story,  with special attention to Source, “the official publication of Scientology Coordinated Services” – Barney’s headquarters. Note that back then in 1970 Barney used the word “Church” and called his Co$ centers “missions.”

3  From:
wikileaks.org/wiki/Scientology_cult_Hubbard_Class_VIII_Assists_Xenu_lecture_recording_1968

Audio of the 10th lecture:
file.wikileaks.org/file/scientology-hubbard-class-viii-xenu-tape.mp3

Transcripts of all but one of the 19 lectures in a zip file:
file.wikileaks.org/file/scientology-hubbard-class-viii-xenu-transcripts.zip

4  Unfortunately the documentary uses this clip to introduce an interview of a satisfied Scientologist in which the interviewer asks the nonsensical question: “Have you been brainwashed?”  In other words, “How do you know what is real?” This would take hours even for a professional philosopher to answer.

Another point:  Hubbard probably wrote the book Brainwashing: Communist Manual of Instructions of Psychopolitical Warfare (1955), attributing authorship to Stalin’s secret police, as argued at the defunct website  Scientology Culture. (In commentary on Co$, the book is usually referred to as Psychopolitics Manual or Brainwashing Manual.) This book may just have been a scheme to cash in on current political events.  Brian Ambry in his  Revisiting the Textbook on Psychopolitics argues that Scientology was built on the ideas in the book.  Other articles about this, and the book itself, can be found by searching the website Scientology Research – see the link in the main text above – for either psychopolitics or brainwashing.

Criticism-self-criticism, which Co$ makes heavy use of (as opposed to rational self-criticism), is a well known technique of covert persuasion.

5  The word “confessional” occurs in early Scientology documents which you can find leaked on the Internet, though provenance is hard to trace. One example, from Freezone, is introduced by:  “LRH revises HCOB 23 December 1971 C/S Series 73, The No-Interference Area Clarified and Re-Enforced. In this he says:”  (I leave off my and the leaker’s quote marks.)

SECTION III:  THOSE PERSONS COMPLETED ON OT III AND/OR COMPLETED ON ANY LEVEL ABOVE OT III:A. CAN BE GIVEN, BETWEEN ANY OT LEVELS ABOVE OT III:1. Auditing:

Any required PTS Handling that does not use Dianetics.
Prepared Lists, as applicable, with special instructions followed for handlings on

Clears and OTs.
Purification Rundown.
Happiness Rundown.
L10, L11, L12.
Confessionals.
The handling of postulates, considerations, attitudes, evil purposes or evil intentions.
False Purpose Rundown.
O/Ws.
Disagreement Checks.
Black PR handling.
Rudiments.
Method One Word Clearing.

Then there are these Co$ advertisements from the early 1970s. Note the cross, which according to Barney today isn’t there. (The cross goes back to at least 1963, see footnote 2 of  Barney Sticks to His Story.)

Ad from The Auditor #77 (1972) -click to enlarge-

Ad from The Auditor #84 (1973) -click to enlarge-

Hubbard was worried about the FDA (and similar agencies in Britain and Europe) charging him with selling medical equipment, and practicing psychotherapy, without a license. But quackery, no license required, is still quackery. To use a favorite epithet of Barney’s defenders, it is still “mysticism.”

6  Ability – “Official Publication of Dianetics and Scientology in the Americas ... Hubbard Communications Office Continental” – issue #143, November 1962, contains an advertisement for Hubbard’s book Have You Lived Before This Life?

7  “Church of Scientology collected Operating Thetan documents”
wikileaks.org/wiki/Church_of_Scientology_collected_Operating_Thetan_documents

8  Barney’s defenders make much of the fact that he has given millions of dollars to ARI and an unknown amount to TOS/OSI. They are unworthy enterprises (ARI might as well stand for the Anti Rand Institute) but in any case he did part with the cash. Millions would be a lot to you or me but how much is it to Barney? He once claimed his schools alone were worth somewhat over half a billion dollars. So, for example, 20 million dollars would be a small fraction of his net worth.

But why donate at all?  What does Barney get out of giving money to what we call “organized Objectivism?”  Or setting up the Prometheus Foundation?  We can only conjecture. Perhaps he thinks Objectivism justifies actions in his Co$ past and his CEHE present. More than once Barney has proclaimed that he does not accept un-earned guilt. Very well, but there seems to be a lot of earning in his life that he tries to hide. From his behavior he seems to think Objectivist-selfish means conventional-selfish, despite Rand’s patient explanations to the contrary and his own parroting of Objectivist bromides.

9  See  Yaron Brook On Scientology.