Probably the most detailed and damaging revelations concerning the myths Scientology has crafted about Hubbard occurred in a court of law. Gerald Armstrong introduced devastating documents into testimony during his trial in a 1984 suit brought against him by the Church of Scientology.
Armstrong had been a devoted member of Sea Org (a branch of the Scientolgy organization). He was also a close aid to Hubbard, who had approved him as "Personal Public Relations Research Officer" for Hubbard's Biography Project (Jon Atack, A Piece of Blue Sky, pp. 328-9, 333).
Armstrong began to collect and compile an enormous amount of extant Hubbard documents which included letters, diaries, medical records and official documents relating to Hubbard's earlier years. When Armstrong began to discover that reality had little resemblance to Hubbard's own autobiography, he left the church. Feeling threatened, he copied and/or kept the documents for his own protection.
Scientology sued Armstrong, charging him with stealing their private papers. Scientology lost the case and the evidence and documents presented in the case brought about critically revealing statements by Judge Paul Breckenridge of the Los Angeles Superior Court. He wrote, "The organization [Scientology] clearly is schizophrenic and paranoid, and this bizarre combination seems to be a reflection of its founder, LRH. The evidence portrays a man who has been virtually a pathological liar when it comes to his history, background, and achievements" (Church of Scientology v. Armstrong, No. C420153 California Supreme Court, 1984).
Armstrong demonstrated, through the documents, that contrary to Hubbard's claims, he was not educated in higher mathematics or physics, did not obtain a bachelor of science degree, was not a civil engineer, nor a nuclear physicist, was not in China at age 14, and lied about the time he did spend traveling in Asia, did not study with Lama priests, was never in India, was not crippled and blinded during the war, was not twice pronounced dead, did not cure himself with his discoveries, was not awarded 21 medals and palms, did not see combat, and that Hubbard had lied about many other things to embellish his image (Croydon and Hubbard, Jr., L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman?, pp. 220-2).
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