While in hiding, Hubbard spent much of his time consuming American television, immersing himself in the popular culture he had missed during his fourteen years abroad. It was during one of these late-night viewing sessions that he saw Werner Erhard, the founder of Erhard Seminars Training (EST), being interviewed on television.

The sight infuriated him. Hubbard recognized Erhard as a former Scientologist who had achieved the status of Grade IV Release before breaking away. Now Erhard was gaining national attention for a slickly marketed self-improvement movement that bore unmistakable similarities to Scientology’s “processing” and “training routines.”

Hubbard viewed EST as a brazen theft of his ideas — a self-realization and enlightenment counterfeit peddled to the very public Hubbard believed he alone had the right to enlighten. Indeed, Hubbard had created the Sea Org with the ultimate goal of putting in Scientology ethics on this planet and the universe: 

I, ___________________ DO HEREBY AGREE to enter into employment with the SEA ORGANIZATION and, being of sound mind, do fully realize and agree to abide by its purpose which is to get ETHICS IN on this PLANET AND UNIVERSE and, fully and without reservation, subscribe to the discipline, mores and conditions of this group and pledge to abide by them.

THEREFORE, I CONTRACT MYSELF TO THE SEA ORGANIZATION FOR THE NEXT BILLION YEARS.

The Sea Org was a hardcore billion year contract with face-ripping ethics, sec checks, merciless stats, poverty, bad food, sleep deprivation, and the RPF. By comparison what was EST? A a two-weekend seminar where you might get called an asshole by the trainer for running your bullshit racket? 

Although EST graduates did not know it, Werner Erhard quietly employed a few former Scientology auditors on his staff. Their task was to security check other EST staff members and to “put in Werner’s ethics” whenever disloyalty or dissent surfaced.

Hubbard seethed at the thought of Werner making money by ripping off Scientology. To the Guardian’s Office, he dismissed EST as nothing more than a revival of “1950s Scientology group processing.” As an EST graduate, including completion of the six-month GSLP, we disagree—but that is a subject for another time. 

According to aides, Hubbard’s anger over Erhard’s success became obsessive. He ranted that Erhard had “stolen Scientology,” and that the Church should expose him. This period marked a resurgence of Hubbard’s paranoia about rivals and “squirrels”—those who, in his view, had stolen and corrupted his techniques. Hubbard ordered the Guardian’s Office to begin a program on Werner Erhard.

OPERATION SNOW WHITE

Still, while Hubbard ordered the Guardian’s Office to investigate Werner Erhard, he had far greater worries than Werner. In 1973, EST was only beginning its meteoric rise, but it was already drawing far more favorable media attention than Scientology. Hubbard’s true obsession lay elsewhere: what he believed were the false reports about Scientology contained in the files of Western governments.

Hubbard was convinced these official dossiers were poisoning public opinion and blocking Scientology’s expansion. He wanted those files stolen, read, and “corrected.” From this paranoid conviction, he conceived Program Snow White—a sweeping intelligence and infiltration operation that would ultimately lead to criminal indictments against his wife, Mary Sue Hubbard, and ten other Guardian’s Office officials. All signed a Stipulation of Evidence and served prison terms. Mary Sue Hubbard is seen here outside a U.S. federal courthouse. 

Washington Post photo of Mary Sue Hubbard. Colorized by The Scientology Money Project for transformative purposes.