Factchecking: The Apostate (2011)

In his Paul Haggis profile in The New Yorker, Lawrence Wright touched on Hubbard’s involvement with Jack Parsons and quoted some new claims in this story made by Scientology spokesperson Tommy Davis about Hubbard and Robert Heinlein.

After the war, Hubbard’s marriage dissolved¹, and he moved to Pasadena², where he became the housemate of Jack Parsons, a rocket scientist who belonged to an occult society called the Ordo Templi Orientis. An atmosphere of hedonism pervaded the house; Parsons hosted gatherings involving “sex magick” rituals.

In a 1946 letter, Parsons described Hubbard: “He is a gentleman, red hair, green eyes, honest and intelligent.” Parsons then mentioned his wife’s sister, Betty Northrup, with whom he had been having an affair. “Although Betty and I are still friendly, she has transferred her sexual affections to Ron.” One day, Hubbard and Northrup ran off together. In the official Scientology literature, it is claimed that Hubbard was assigned by naval intelligence to infiltrate Parsons’s occult group. “Hubbard broke up black magic in America,” the church said in a statement.

[…]

At the meeting, Davis brought up Jack Parsons’s black-magic society, which Hubbard had supposedly infiltrated. Davis said, “He was sent in there by Robert Heinlein”—the science-fiction writer—“who was running off-book intelligence operations for naval intelligence at the time.” Davis said, “A biography that just came out three weeks ago on Bob Heinlein actually confirmed it at a level that we’d never been able to before.” The book to which Davis was referring is the first volume of an authorized Heinlein biography, by William H. Patterson, Jr.³ There is no mention in the book of Heinlein’s sending Hubbard to break up the Parsons ring, on the part of naval intelligence or any other organization. Patterson says that he looked into the matter, at the suggestion of Scientologists, but found nothing.⁴

Notes