by Tony Ortega
It was a long list.
In the fall of 1976, while Scientology’s top officials in Los Angeles were scrambling over what to do with Michael Meisner and Gerald Wolfe, just miles away the church’s attorneys were preparing to go to battle with Paulette Cooper. She, however, was doing her own scrambling, trying to find a lawyer who would represent her.
Virgil Roberts had left a large law firm and had gone into business with a few partners. A black man living in Los Angeles, he was interested in civil rights litigation. And a woman he knew on a lawyers’ committee on civil rights contacted him in the fall with a case she thought he might be interested in—an author from New York was being sued over the contents of a book she’d written.
He was intrigued, but he was also wary. The client, Paulette Cooper, had only about $10,000 to spend, and in just a month the case was scheduled to go to trial for an estimated six to eight weeks. In addition to the low pay and having very little time to prepare, the case was daunting because Cooper was being sued not only by the Church of Scientology of California but also in Detroit (for something Paulette had said on a radio program there), in the United Kingdom, in Toronto, and in Australia.
The Los Angeles case was the first scheduled to go to trial and would likely have a significant effect on the others. If Cooper lost badly here, there was a good chance she could get overwhelmed by subsequent losses around the world.
Roberts liked the odds. He took the case. Paulette moved to LA to prepare for the trial and had boxes of material that she’d used to write The Scandal of Scientology shipped to Virgil’s office.
In a libel trial, an author’s best defense is the truth, and her pursuit of it. Virgil rapidly began making himself familiar with the research Paulette had relied on, so he could show that she’d worked hard to provide an accurate picture and had not had a “reckless disregard for the truth,” which in part defines libel.
As they strategized about the best way to prove to the court that her book had told the truth, they thought seriously of issuing a subpoena for Charles Manson. One of the things about Paulette’s book that had bothered Scientology the most was that she had included Manson in her chapter about celebrities and the church. For several years, while he was at McNeil Island Penitentiary in Washington, Manson had become very interested in Scientology and did more than a hundred hours of auditing during the years 1963 to 1967. “I got pretty heavy into Dianetics and Scientology,” Manson later said, and Bruce Davis and Squeaky Fromme had also been involved. As Paulette indicated in the book, it was the New York Times that had first discovered Manson’s Scientology connection, but her book mentioned it on the back cover and featured it in a way that irritated Scientology officials. Wouldn’t it be something, she and Virgil discussed, to have Manson testify about his Scientology years in her trial?
Researching Scientology wasn’t the only odd part of the case for Virgil. There was also the judge, Thomas C. Yager. Eleven years earlier, in 1965, Yager had married a wealthy heiress 14 years his senior—he was 47, she was 61. They had honeymooned on Catalina Island, and sailing back to Newport Harbor four days after they had tied the knot, his bride vanished, presumably falling overboard somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Yager claimed that he’d gone below decks briefly, and when he came back up, she was gone. He didn’t call the Coast Guard, he said, because his radio wasn’t working.
Yager wasn’t charged with wrongdoing, but he did have a more difficult time getting reelected at the next local election. Now, in 1976, he was only a couple of years short of retirement.
At one point, Yager called Roberts and Paulette into his chambers. While they were talking about several different matters, he mentioned that he couldn’t accept a copy of The Scandal of Scientology they had given him, just as he couldn’t accept a copy of Dianetics, which the church had sent. But, he said, he would accept donations to a new church he’d started, “The Community Betterment Service.” Paulette tried not to show how stunned she was.
Despite his oddnesses, Yager didn’t hand Scientology any favors. For the two weeks leading up to the trial date, Scientology attorney Joel Bennett entered dozens of motions asking that passages in Paulette’s book be considered “libel per se.” In other words, the church wanted Yager to agree that there were statements in Scandal that were defamatory on their face, and would obviously cause the church harm. If the judge agreed, the church would not have to prove to a jury that the statements were untrue, and could then argue how much damage they had caused.
For example, Bennett pointed to Paulette’s reference to a quotation by L. Ron Hubbard, that before he published his book Dianetics in 1950, he had said to friends that the only way to get rich was to start a religion. (Hubbard had actually said it multiple times to numerous people, including to a teenaged Harlan Ellison.) Bennett argued that the statement essentially called Hubbard a liar, implied that he was out to commit fraud on the IRS, and therefore made him out to be a criminal.
But Virgil pointed out to the judge that Paulette had merely quoted Hubbard verbatim, and if those were the implications of his words, it wasn’t Paulette’s fault.
The judge sided with Paulette on that point, and on every single one of Bennett’s dozens of other motions, clearing them all away so that trial could begin. The church was going to have to prove that the book had libeled the church and none of the statements were going to be considered defamatory on their face. To prove libel, they would have to show that the passages in the book were not only untrue, but that Paulette had maliciously disregarded the actual facts.
Judge Yager, in other words, had made the church’s job much harder. And Virgil was feeling good about Paulette’s position. Although he’d had only a few weeks to prepare and had worked around the clock to get ready, he really believed she had a good chance to win.
Meanwhile, the church was doing what it could to improve its own chances. Each day, when Virgil went from the courtroom to his office in Century City, he would see them—dozens of Scientologists, standing on the sidewalk outside his 28th floor suite at 1900 Avenue of the Stars. When he asked about it, he was told they were concentrating on him and his office, hoping to affect his mind with their thoughts. They were also filling the courtroom each day, hoping similarly to affect Judge Yager’s mind. Through their brain waves, the Scientologists were determined to win the lawsuit.
But the day before trial was to begin, Virgil was surprised when Bennett, the church’s attorney, showed up at his office.
By now, Virgil knew quite a bit about his opponent. He knew that “Bennett” wasn’t his original name, for example. Joel was Jewish, but had given himself a WASPy last name when he wanted to marry a blueblood heiress of his own.
And it wasn’t only his name he’d changed to win her over. He had overextended himself at his firm to give his wife what she needed to live the life she was accustomed to. And initially, he told Virgil, working for Scientology had been very lucrative. But now, the church wanted results and the payments were coming less frequently.
Bennett told him that he couldn’t afford to lose this case. And he admitted that his chances at the trial weren’t looking good. He needed to have a settlement, and he needed it now, he said as he broke down right there, in Virgil’s office.
“I’m in way over my head,” he blubbered.
Virgil had other reasons to consider a settlement. There was Paulette herself. He knew he’d have to put her on the stand, and he wasn’t looking forward to it. Paulette had told him about the harassment she’d been through, and she couldn’t talk for more than a minute about Scientology without becoming heated.
He knew that if she did that on the stand, it wouldn’t go well with a jury. She sounded too angry, and not like a journalist who had merely written a book about a subject she had no connection to.
And then there was Ted Cooper. Paulette’s father had called Virgil, making sure he knew about the bomb threats and the indictment and the phone tapping.
“Mr. Roberts, can you just m
ake this go away?” Ted had asked him.
Virgil was disappointed. He knew he had a good chance to beat Scientology at trial. But he knew Paulette was also hungering for a settlement. She hated being away from New York. She didn’t enjoy driving on California freeways, which made it hard to get around. She missed her friends. And court proceedings not only produced a lot of anxiety for her, they were also tedious in their detail. She dreaded the thought of several more months living like this. And what Judge Yager had said in his chambers made her think he was too strange to handle the case correctly.
So Virgil set about trying to get Paulette the best deal he could. There were the other lawsuits around the world, for example. He told Bennett he’d get a settlement only if they were all withdrawn as well.
On the church’s side, Bennett wanted the copyright to Scandal. By 1976, five years after its original printing, the book was no longer in print, so Paulette agreed. The settlement required Paulette to turn over every copy she still had in her possession, save for one copy for herself. She also would not republish the book or comment on it publicly, and the church agreed to pay Virgil’s attorney’s fees. (A church spokesman told the press earlier that Cooper’s side had asked for $25,000.) The church attached a list of 52 statements from the book that Cooper was required to sign, saying that she had no personal information about them (they contained things she had included based on newspaper reports, such as the New York Times story about the involvement of Charlie Manson in Scientology). The church promised not to use the list “for any other purpose than to clarify or correct statements concerning Scientology.” (Scientology soon broke this promise, however, and published the list in a book of its own, and claimed Paulette had admitted to errors, when she hadn’t.)
When the deal was signed on December 5, 1976, Judge Yager congratulated Virgil on wrapping things up so neatly. For now, the battles between Paulette Cooper and the Church of Scientology were over, from Los Angeles to the UK to Australia. But if the lawsuits were over with, her book was no longer her own – a price she wasn’t unhappy to pay.
Paulette had never had an attorney work so quickly and effectively. She was relieved and grateful.
At Mary Sue Hubbard’s request, Michael Meisner made a list of all the places he’d broken into on behalf of the Church of Scientology. Meisner wrote that he’d illegally entered the Department of Justice, the IRS, the Office of International Operations, the Post Office, the Labor Department’s National Office, the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of the Treasury, the U.S. Customs Building, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the American Medical Association’s law firm, and the law firm representing the St. Petersburg Times.
On October 8, Special Agent Christine Hansen served a subpoena for Meisner’s handwriting samples on a young Guardian’s Office employee named Kendrick Moxon, who turned over nine pages of handwritten material. Meisner was told that Moxon had been instructed to turn over fake samples of his writing.
Meisner himself moved into an apartment in Los Angeles—keeping him in a motel was costing the GO too much money. And a new cover story was dreamed up for him. He had been breaking into offices because he was a journalist working on a story about lax security in government agencies. And Mary Sue Hubbard added another layer to the story: Meisner should say he was having problems in his marriage because his wife was more successful than he was. In order to prove himself, he had tried to show how much he could do on his own.
In November, Meisner moved again, into another Los Angeles apartment, and he wrote a letter to Mary Sue Hubbard, telling her that a new problem was developing. Even if he turned himself in and stuck to their latest cover story, there was still a big question to answer: Where had he been since June? The longer his hiding went on, the harder it was going to be to convince the FBI that there wasn’t a larger conspiracy to uncover. He suggested a new cover story, that he’d been visiting a friend in Canada.
Through December, as the grand jury in DC continued to investigate Wolfe, the GO kept working on an ever-more elaborate cover story for Wolfe and Meisner to use to throw off the FBI. But the cover story by now had become so complex it was taking months for the GO to get it all written down. Into March, 1977, Mitchell Hermann was still coming up with details for it.
Meanwhile, Mary Sue Hubbard fully understood the risk that Scientology was facing. On March 25, 1977 she sent out a memo to B-I staff, describing a new “red box” system that would keep sensitive documents ready to be whisked away in case of a government raid. “All the red box material from your areas must be centrally located, together and in a moveable container (ideally a briefcase), locked, and marked.” Signing under a code name, “Judy,” she gave her staff three days to get the “red box” containers ready.
As for what would go into them: “Proof that a Scnist is involved in criminal activities.” Specifically, anything that would impact L. Ron Hubbard or Mary Sue, and in particular the documents the Guardian’s Office had stolen from so many government offices should go into the briefcases.
Meisner, meanwhile, was complaining that things were taking too long, and the GO seemed to agree, as it replaced Hermann and others who were supposed to be handling the Wolfe affair. By the end of March, Meisner asked to be sent to DC to take the matter into his own hands. He also began to question the wisdom of having him plead guilty once he did return and was arrested. Meisner said he wanted to go to trial, and he thought he could convince a jury that Special Agent Hansen’s identification of him as the person she confronted at the courthouse library was faulty.
On April 20, Jane Kember angrily dressed down her employees for letting the matter take so long, and she repeated the game plan: Wolfe would plead guilty and take a light sentence as a first offender. Meisner would surrender and also plead guilty, giving a cover story for where he had been for seven months.
A week later, Meisner said he was going to leave by the end of the month for either Canada or DC and get things moving. But on April 29, he was told that the GO was keeping him in Los Angeles, and was placing two guards at his apartment.
At 2:15 am on April 30, Dick Weigand, two other GO operatives, and three guards showed up at Meisner’s apartment. They searched it for any evidence of his connection to the Church of Scientology. Meisner was given a handwritten note from Mary Sue Hubbard, telling him that if he followed orders, the GO would eventually remove the guards.
The next day, on May 1, three GO operatives and two guards arrived and told Meisner that he was being moved to a more secure apartment. He refused to go, so he was bound and gagged and put on the floor in the back of a car. After he was moved, Meisner realized it was useless to resist, so he gave the guards no more trouble, and the situation relaxed.
In DC, Gerald Wolfe’s behavior was mystifying government prosecutors. Through April, he had indicated interest in a deal: He would plead to a misdemeanor in return for cooperating with the grand jury still investigating what the break-ins were really all about. But then, after getting a new attorney, Wolfe changed his mind about cooperating with the grand jury. On May 13, he pleaded guilty to a felony, the wrongful use of a government seal. Prosecutors were stunned, and angry.
Meisner, meanwhile, was told he would not be allowed to surrender until the IRS had granted tax-exempt status to the Church of Scientology of California. But Meisner had had enough of waiting. On May 29, while out walking with his guard, he broke away, jumping into a taxi and asking to be driven to a Greyhound Bus Station. He took a bus to Las Vegas and checked into a cheap motel. The next day, he called the GO in Los Angeles. Agents were sent out to talk him into returning to LA.
When he did, he met with Henning Heldt at Canter’s Deli on La Brea. Heldt told Meisner that both L. Ron Hubbard and Mary Sue were concerned about him and were doing everything they could. Heldt told him he needed to think of his guards as friends. Meisner was moved to an apartment in Glendale, and for another month was under constant guard.
In DC on June 10, Gerald Wolfe was in
court for his sentencing. Prosecutors told the judge it still concerned them what they didn’t know about Wolfe and his partner, and why a person with no criminal record would plead guilty to a felony with a potential five-year prison sentence. It seemed to make no sense. Wolfe’s attorney, however, once again put it down to a drunken prank. And he said that the government didn’t have any evidence that Wolfe had taken any sensitive government documents. (At least, the government had no evidence of it. Not yet.)
Wolfe was sentenced to probation and 100 hours of community service, to be served in Minnesota, where he was from. But before he could leave, he was subpoenaed by the federal Grand Jury, which was still trying to figure out why Wolfe and another man had used fake IDs, and whether they had stolen documents. And again, why?
Under oath, Wolfe stuck to the cover story—that he was doing legal research at the DC Bar Association library with his friend, “John Foster.” Wolfe then told the GO what he’d testified to, so Meisner could make sure his own testimony matched it when he eventually surrendered. But Meisner was complaining again that the Guardian’s Office wasn’t really concerned about his welfare. This time, he got a handwritten note from Mary Sue Hubbard, warning him that if he ran again, he’d be on his own. He promised good behavior, and then was so cooperative, the guards relaxed around him again, even leaving him alone overnight.
Then, at 6 am on June 20, Meisner made another escape. He packed up a few clothes, caught two successive buses, and went into a bowling alley to make a phone call. Meisner called an Assistant US Attorney in DC and explained the situation. Two hours later, three FBI agents arrived at the bowling alley to pick him up. They immediately took him to Los Angeles Airport, where he was put on a plane to DC.
Christine Hansen, however, wasn’t there to celebrate. There were so few women in the FBI, she had been pulled away from the DC office (where there were two female agents) to another division which needed one. She had no choice in the matter. And the Meisner-Wolfe investigation was taken out of her hands and given to another agent, who soon was telling her that he planned to drop it. She complained, and it stayed open. But she wasn’t involved when Meisner himself finally showed up to become a witness. Meisner was given a court-appointed attorney, and he agreed to plead guilty to a felony conspiracy charge in return for cooperating fully with the Grand Jury. He was also put under protective custody of the U.S. Marshal’s office.
