This Deep State and Scientology series began by establishing the Cult of Intelligence’s early and visceral need to eliminate L. Ron Hubbard and his established subjects of Dianetics and Scientology. In his 1951 book Science of Survival, Hubbard had disclosed the CIA and Military Intelligence unlawful mind control experiments on unwitting Americans. Worse, Dianetics procedure uncovered the fact and cured the damage inflicted (see The CIA vs. L. Ron Hubbard). From the outset Dianetics and Scientology processes were virtually the reverse of establishment Mental Health and its Cult of Intelligence bosses (see Military Industrial Mind Control, documenting the post World War II merger of the military and ‘mental health’).
As Hubbard evolved Dianetics and Scientology, and MK Ultra probed the depths of how to “abolish consciousness” (MK Ultra Subproject 2), the diametric opposition of the deep state vs. L. Ron Hubbard intensified.
By the mid 1950’s the conflicting purposes of Hubbard vs. Intelligence-controlled, established psychiatry came into sharp focus around a simple electronic device.
The artifact is generally known as the Galvanic Skin Response meter (GSR). Louis Jolyon “Jolly” West, the CIA MK Ultra doctor later tasked with destroying Hubbard and his Scientology movement, and organized psychiatry referred to it as an integral component of the lie detector. Hubbard called his version of the device the Electro-Psychometer (the E-Meter). He referred to it in opposite terms than the psychiatrist, also calling it a truth detector.
The psychiatrists took the reductionist view that the meter detected chemical processes within the body. This is consistent with reductionist ‘science’ which for several hundred years – and to this day – attempts to reduce all forces and energies to physical universe matter. You know, the theory that says all mis-emotion and psychological disturbance is a chemical imbalance, to be ‘remedied’ by ingestion of drugs. Materialists still maintain this crude explanation, despite its flying in the face of subsequent discoveries in quantum mechanics (See e.g., The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra). Hubbard took the opposite, vitalism view, that the meter was affected by life force – that is the energy created by the spirit, elan vital, inhabiting the body.
Significantly, a study of the meter’s namesake Luigi Galvani reveals the age-old struggle Hubbard found himself up against, life force (elan vital, the spirit) vs. chemicals, or vitalism vs. reductionist materialism. Galvani’s story was the 18th Century chapter of science burying evidence of the spirit or life force. Galvani had discovered that a being created electrical force to aid in body movement and healing processes. Consensus opted to discredit Galvani’s view. Alesandro Volta offered the alternative explanation that the forces Galvani observed were explained by the interaction of different chemicals. As “science” was funded by industry bankers – who accumulated money not by truth but instead by marketability of physical universe goods, naturally Volta won the ‘consensus’ that did and does often constitute accepted “science.” Thus, even today “science” says the GSR measures chemical changes registered through perspiration. For a deeper history on Galvani vs. Volta and the centuries-long suppression of evidence of spirit in science, see CROSS CURRENTS: The Promise of Electromedicine, Dr. Robert O. Becker, Penguin 1990).
Hubbard described how the E-Meter projected an imperceptible electric current through the body – on the order of magnitude of Galvani’s life force – and could detect impedance in the created circuit caused by thoughts interjected by the participant. It could also be explained as disruption in an electric field created and measured by the meter. In either event, a competent E-Meter operator can prove to anyone in less than a minute that without variance the E-Meter reads on thought projected by the participant. I have done so to the silent astonishment (or perhaps chagrin) of Scientology antagonists from the founder of CBS 60 Minutes to the Editor of the New York Times.
For more than thirty years, Hubbard worked with electronics engineers to calibrate his E-Meter to react as closely as possible to thought, distinguishing its signal from the noise of other bio-electric processes. Others carried on the process for another 40 years so that now the Scientology E-Meter bears little resemblance to the GSR component of the crude lie detector of ‘science.’ With the aid of the E-Meter, Dianetics and Scientology sought to clear the mind of pains associated with physical and emotional injuries of the past. The idea was to locate moments of pain, release them of the detectable electrical charge they imposed on the mind and body, and thus clear the mind and free the will of the individual. Hubbard described the process in hundreds of lectures and dozens of books as a reversal of hypnotic effect.
Conversely, West and his CIA MK Ultra brethren used the GSR to measure pain inflicted on the body in the quest to capture the mind and will of the individual. Thus, West requisitioned a GSR, in the form of “polygraph” as part of his “psychophysiogical (sic) laboratory” where he would measure “noxious stimulation” inflicted on drug and hypnosis subjects. See attached 1956 West report and proposal to CIA poisoner in chief Sidney Gottlieb (see page 9 of REPORT ON RESEARCH IN HYPNOSIS).
Clearly the cult of intelligence understood the significance of Hubbard’s work and evolution. They already were acutely aware of the fact that even without the aid of the E-Meter he could and did uncover the harms the CIA was committing against human research subjects. Imagine their alarm when reckoning what else Hubbard might find out with the aid of the E-Meter. Consequently, the CIA spearheaded a multi-agency effort (including Army, Air Force and Navy intelligence), across several international governments, to stop L. Ron Hubbard in his tracks.
But, it wasn’t enough to simply destroy Hubbard. The agency simultaneously attempted to steal the man’s discoveries. This was evidenced by the activities of its one-time employee and longtime informant Cleve Backster. Mr. Backster was an acknowledged expert on the polygraph (lie detector). He hung around the spiritualist community evidenced by his claim that he met L. Ron Hubbard at a function surrounding parapsychologist J.B. Rhine in the late forties. In 1967 Backster became famous when he published a paper that detailed experiments that he performed with plants using the GSR meter (Evidence of a Primary Perception in Plant Life, International Journal of Parapsychology). According to Mr. Backster his work demonstrated that plants have measurable feelings. It became the genesis of a cultural phenomenon recognizing new dimensions about life force. A very popular book followed, The Secret Life of Plants by Peter Thompkins and Christopher Bird. A subsequent documentary by the same title featured a soundtrack created by Stevie Wonder.
Backster’s use of the crude ‘lie detector’ GSR component became the parapsychology/spiritualist standard diagnostic and experimental tool and continues to be until now. Ironically, during the ensuing decades, while improving upon that ill-tuned device, Hubbard’s E-Meter was smeared by the state-controlled corporate media as a “crude lie detector.”
Neither Backster, the CIA, nor any of those involved in creating a movement around Backster’s alleged discovery ever mentioned an embarrassing detail: The experiments Backster presented as groundbreaking had already been done and publicized nearly a decade before by L. Ron Hubbard. Of course, in keeping with the agency’s decades-long campaign to discredit Hubbard, his experiments were written off as some sort of kooky hoax. See for example, CIA-influenced Time/Life publication’s branding the E-meter as one of the “dumbest inventions.” (note, it is dated a year after Backster’s celebrated “discovery”, and ten years after the date of the photo displayed and the experiments conducted by Hubbard).
The deep state went so far as to attempt to ban the E-Meter in America through litigation spanning nearly the entire sixties. It backfired on the lead agency, the Food and Drug Administration, as even Time magazine was forced to acknowledge (Appeals: Victory for the Scientologists | TIME). However, it kept Hubbard distracted while his discoveries were hijacked.
When much of the dust had cleared, even Cleve Backster acknowledged privately that which nobody was apparently willing to admit publicly. Until recently the evidence lay quietly in the archives of the University of West Georgia. There sat a 1976 letter from Backster to a Scientology staff member. In it, he acknowledges Hubbard’s precedence: ‘His interest in plants also appears to have preceded my extensive involvement since February 1966.’ (Cleve Backster letter) This concession, buried in cordial correspondence, highlights the overlap—and the lack of crediting—in their work.
It is quite possible Backster himself had created sufficient distance from the CIA so that he truly wished to give credit where credit was due. However, this would not be the last time the CIA would rob from L. Ron Hubbard while beseeching the media and other government agencies to destroy him. Stay tuned.
Moving On Up a Little Higher 