From: michael pattinson (karethian@aol.com)
Subject: Reposted classics 41: Chris Owen on writing to Ron.....
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
View: (This is the only article in this thread) | Original Format
Date: 2001-07-30 21:00:35 PST

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From: Chris Owen (chriso@lutefisk.demon.co.uk)
Subject: GO FILES: The secret of SO #1
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
(This is the only article in this thread)
Date: 1999/04/23

 

YOU CAN ALWAYS WRITE TO RON

All mail addressed to me shall be received by me.

I am always willing to help. By my own creed, a being is only as
valuable as he can serve others.

Any message addressed to me and sent to the address of the nearest
Scientology Church will be forwarded to me directly.

L. RON HUBBARD

Standing Order #1 - the first sentence in the quotation above, which is
from the frontispiece of the 1978 edition of "What Is Scientology?" - is
one of the oldest and symbolically most important policy instructions in
Scientology. It was reissued in HCO Policy Letter 18 December 1961,
"Standing Orders" (though it appears to have been promulated some time
earlier). It continues to be in force even now, 13 years after
Hubbard's death, though obviously in a suitably modified form. SO #1
symbolises Scientology's openness and willingness to help any member
with any problem whatsoever.

Or does it? The real purpose of SO #1 was rather different. First, it
is quite apparent that Hubbard himself did not even see many (probably
most) of the letters sent to him through SO #1 channels. During his
periods in seclusion/hiding in the 1970s and 1980s, he cut himself off
from the outside world (including Scientology); although he continued to
direct his "church" and write new policies and doctrines, he did not
take part in mainstream Scientology activities. Replies to SO #1
letters by and large came from members of his personal secretariat, the
Hubbard Communications Office.

So what did happen to SO #1 letters? The answer is that they were used
by Scientology's intelligence service, the Guardian's Office, to detect
problems and troublemakers at an early stage, despite the supposed
confidentiality of the SO #1 line. In the late 1960s, a document
entitled "SO No I Line Write Up" was distributed to the staff of the
United States Guardian's Office and to those at the headquarters of the
GO, Guardian's Office World Wide (at Saint Hill Manor in England). This
document was one of the thousands seized by the FBI in 1977 and later
released to the public. I am not sure who its author was; it is signed
simply, "Helen". The document was part of the training materials for
new GO intelligence operatives in a section covering "internal
security".

The "Write Up" states:

Put a line in with the LRH COMM AIDE of your liaison office (UKLO,
USLO, [name deleted]) and arrange for a member of your office to see
each SO No I Letter and the carbon of Ron's reply to it. This must
include the entheta ones too.

Obtain a log book, ... divide the page in two, and keep one half for
'Good' letters and the other half for 'Bad' letters. In the left hand
margin write down all the orgs in your continent.

When you receive a batch of letters, do the following with each
letter. Read the letter. If it is favourable mark a slash on the
appropriate page for the month in which the letter was written, in
the favourable column, of the nearest org to the origination point of
that letter. If the letter is entheta or indicates that all is not
well, mark a slash in the Bad column.

If there is data in an SO No I of interest to another [Guardian's
Office] bureau, copy the letter and route to the bureau concerned.
(letters indicating mishandling of celebrities, doctors etc goes to
PR for their information, Gross tech outnesses or consistent tech
outnesses go to D/G [Deputy Guardian] Tech. Copy letters concerning
PTS's [Potential Trouble Sources], Mental cases, mixed practises,
beefs from celebrities etc for your own files. Send to WW [World
Wide] any letters of interest to them.

At the end of each month, the SO #1 letters were to be counted up and
tabulated in the form:

SO #1 LINE

LONDON
Favourable - x
Unfavourable - y

SAINT HILL
Favourable - x
Unfavourable - y

and by this means the relative success of individual orgs could be
determined, to put alongside the all-important income and recruitment
figures.

The Guardian's Office was obviously well aware that the effectiveness of
the SO #1 line would be compromised if the use to which the letters were
put was revealed. The "Write Up" cautions, "it should not be broadly
known that you see them", showing a clear intention to deceive
Scientologists as to the real nature of the SO #1 line. However, some
of the letters "will require quiet looking into as real trouble can be
averted by this", while "the SO I line also will give you insight into
outnesses in the orgs".

Note that this offered a useful means of exposing those who dared
complain, as the SO #1 line was useful in revealing situations such as
"too many PTS's on lines". Many ex-Scientologists have reported their
SO #1 letters being answered evasively, ignored or, in the worst case,
landing them in disciplinary trouble. One cannot help but be reminded
of schemes such as Mao's "Hundred Flowers of Thought" in the 1950s,
where free discussion was encouraged to flush out dissenters, who were
then ruthlessly purged.

--
| Chris Owen - chriso@lutefisk.demon.co.uk