PeaceMaker, I have stated my (probably) last opinion on the subject to Mike. You seem to be trying to position the early RPF as an atrocity like the “chain locker” incidents. I do reject that becaus ethere is too much contrary data. Mike’s opinion is offset or contradicted by Urq’s and Robin Scott’s, for 2 examples. Since I have no way of reconciling contradictory testimonies, I am left only with the conclusion that I don not know and will likely never know. I was not there and did not ever experience an RPF, early or late.
In general, I find marildi’s posts most credible and responsive to the issues being addressed.
It is a lot like the brouhaha about an “Introspection Rundown”. There are people who liked it and feel they benefitted by it, and others decry it as a terrible hack job. I tend to believe Lisa McPherson received a hack job as originated by Miscavige. I don’t think what she received was an actual “introspection rundown”, but a DM atrocity.

I think it is much like all the controversies surrounding Scientology. There are opposite opinions about much of it, expressed by people who were there.. If you choose sides, well, that is what you are doing – choosing sides. As Byron Katie said, “It is not the problem that causses our suffering: it’s our thinking about the problem.”

PeaceMaker: Mike, many thanks for chipping in about the RPF with the reality-check of your personal experience and knowledge. I had a small glimmer of hope that you might find time to respond.

I have a glimmer of hope that Mike will chip in sometime when he sees something negative being stated about Hubbard or Scn that he knows is false or over the top. 🙂

As for further discussion – sorry, I’m not as much into as you are.

Mike and PeaceMaker, I was about to make a comment similar to Valkov’s, as I recall seeing comments that were quite positive about the original RPF. On a Google search, I found the following, excerpts from comments posted by people who are also considered reliable sources:

Karen Karen#1 |(De la Carriere) September 27, 2010 at 9:17 am | Reply
“It is interesting that in the main (with very few exceptions), those that lived in the same location as LRH whether on the Apollo, Creston Ranch like you for all those many years or any other location ~~those that actually spent time and interacted with him ~~ truly loved him…Barney mentioned how the LRH version of the RPF was almost like a Holiday Camp. Barney who posted just below, was on the Apollo and verifies this ~~~ penalty, punishment, extreme duress, extreme slave labor was NEVER the point of the Apollo RPF. The theory was REALLY studying up on the technology at 5 hours a day could educate them on the auditing side of it all and enhance and improve performance. If an RPFer stayed over 3 months in the RPF on the Apollo, I recall them being nudged and poked…
One thing about the Apollo. There was simply no FEAR, NO DREAD, No terror of a Madman running a meeting and punching his execs and ordering their next few years of life to be savagely changed such as shipped to Australia, RPF, failing Org etc. The Apollo was a high high ARC production machine with a sense of adventure, laughter, team activity, high spirits, FUN FUN FUN and LRH set the tone level.”
https://markrathbun.wordpress.com/2010/09/26/reverse-scientology-hypnotism/#comment-52018

Barney Rubble | April 24, 2010 at 6:52 pm | Reply
“When the RPF was developed in 1975 on the Apollo, it was at the most a 2 month program. It was essentially like being sent to the decks with 5 hours of co-audit time each day. The program was very easy.
A lot of people back then considered it almost like a holiday, compared to the the stresses of post. Also the RPF probably had at the most 10 % of the crew on it, unlike recent years when it exploded into the hundred’s.” https://markrathbun.wordpress.com/2010/04/24/miscavige-meltdown/#comment-21208

Sinar | August 9, 2010 at 6:41 pm | Reply
“The RPF is a program started during the Apollo days to rehabilitate SO members who were messing up in a matter of weeks or a few months to complete. It was not originated by LRH, though it ran under his reign. The program was ended at the Int base in the early 2000 and inmates sent elsewhere. There are sereral SO issues in terms of Flag Orders which describes the entrance qualifications for this program and justice actions, recourse, how it’s run in terms of organization, it’s end, getting 1/4 SO pay if at all, etc. Through David Miscavige’s alterations, the RPF is endless and takes years and years to complete.”
https://markrathbun.wordpress.com/2010/08/08/headley-case-dismissals-blessings-in-disguise/#comment-42114

PeaceMaker: “Do you agree that the preponderance of evidence is that the use of the chain locker was indeed inhuman and degrading and something that Hubbard ordered or at least oversaw, and that Urquhart as Hubbard’s communicator would have been aware of that or other cruelties?”

Yes, I agree. But I also take into consideration Hubbard’s severe pain during the time period after his motorcycle accident – and the fact that that severe pain is well known to cause mental problems. Here are some quotes of Urquhart and others who were there, taken from Russell Miller’s book:

“’Before the motor-cycle accident he was a very nice, friendly person,’ said Jill Goodman [who was thirteen years old when she became a messenger]. ‘Afterwards, he was a complete pain in the ass. It was like having a sick, crotchety grandfather. You never knew what he was going to be like when you went in there.’”

“’He didn’t get out of that red velvet chair for three months,’ said Doreen Smith. ‘He’d sleep for about forty-five minutes at a time, then be awake for hours, screaming and shouting. It was impossible to get him comfortable.’”

Gerry Armstrong: “’His actions definitely became more bizarre after the motor-cycle accident. You could hear him throughout the ship screaming, shouting, ranting and raving day after day.”

Ken Urquhart: “After his motorcycle accident he sat in his room in great pain. Bellows were coming out and messengers were the only ones allowed in. The messengers had to wash and feed him. This was in ’73, early in the year. He was bellowing with pain and frustration…”

https://www.holysmoke.org/cos/books/bare-faced-messiah.pdf

The RPF ties in with this. In the Russell Miller interview quoted above, Ken goes on to say why and how the RPF was formed:

“The RPF [Rehabilitation Project Force] came into existence while he was in his cabin after the accident. A guy called Gary Watson, who was the port captain, sent in some kind of programme of action to the Commodore and the Commodore set up a unit to take care of rebellious people or those not fitting in. I set up the RPF but it became very much different from what I envisaged – which was a place where you could be removed from the stress and strains of bureaucracy, with some physical work every day to take their attention off themselves and in the other half of day they could audit each other on problems they had. After the accident people were asking themselves why he was making such a fuss. Indeed, why was he in pain? The justification was again he was doing such an important job.”

The above shows that Urquhart did not try to deny or lessen Hubbard’s misdeeds, or accept the excuses (“justification”) that people gave for them. At the same time, however, he gives Hubbard extremely high praise for his positive contributions. This is the reason I say he takes the “middle ground” – meaning that he goes to neither extreme, either that Hubbard could do no wrong or that he was nothing but evil.

Mike, evidently Ken Urqhart does not agree with your assessment of the early RPF. Neither does Robin Scott. This leaves readers like me, who were not there and didn’t experience it, in the position of deciding that I may never really know the truth of it. Apparently for som eit was a good thing, and for others, a bad thing. That seems so characteristic of the whole LTH/scientology thing.

Mike, many thanks for chipping in about the RPF with the reality-check of your personal experience and knowledge. I had a small glimmer of hope that you might find time to respond.

marildi and iamvalkov, can we now accept that the preponderance of evidence is that RPF and the use of the chain locker that preceded it were abusive and inhumane, and that the few reports to the contrary are outliers? (perhaps explained by denial, particularly by the abused who later became perpetrators themselves, or else something like Stockholm syndrome)

For the sake of discussion I am willing to assume, and actually think it not unlikely, that Urquhart may have thought in his own mind when he created the RPF that it actually could be something positive. How exactly we should regard that and some other points when evaluating his reliability as an observer and source, would be part of what we might discuss further.

p.s. Since the issue is how the RPF started out, I thought I would see what I could find about the earliest RPFs. The only testimony I could locate is actually about the very first one, from Monica Pignotti: “Hubbard claimed that the RPF was an act of benevolence on his part to “rehabilitate” psychotic criminals. Actually, in my opinion and experience, the RPF was a prison camp.
On January 10, 1974, an ethics order was issued assigning the first group of people to the RPF. My name was on that list, I believe, because I had spoken my mind one too many times and was considered a troublemaker. ” (Affidavit, September 26, 1989)

I think anyone who was on the Apollo for the formation of the RPF would find the benign description of it pretty (un)funny. It became the overnight terror of everyone on board that they would be sent to lower hold one to join the RPFers living in the dark down there being fed leftovers of the already seriously shitty food, not allowed to speak to anyone without being spoken to etc etc. It has not changed much in its essentials since it was created. The only thing different now is that it became virtually impossible to complete “the program” once FPRD was invented.

marildi and valkov, regarding the origins of the RPF and Urquhart, including Urquhart’s reliability as a supposed “middle of the road” source, I’d like to make a thorough response. But first I’d like to determine whether we seem to have some grounds for further discussion, and would ask you to briefly address the following question.

The RPF was preceded by and reportedly created to replace the use of the chain locker (and some other more obscure programs) which, as widely and I think quite reliably witnessed, included Hubbard consigning a small child to it for a week, left to cry and soil himself, and putting an older man there for a month. Do you agree that the preponderance of evidence is that the use of the chain locker was indeed inhuman and degrading and something that Hubbard ordered or at least oversaw, and that Urquhart as Hubbard’s communicator would have been aware of that or other cruelties? Or do you have some more favorable view that you would defend?

I want to note that my opinion was actually swayed by reading the links that marildi sent (including as I admitted a skim of the longer piece that I’d read before), and then doing some further research of my own – I determined that Urquhart, who I once saw as a more sympathetic figure (perhaps in part because I had contact with him), was actually more willfully blind, culpable and unapologetic than I had realized. I would have been glad to have been swayed the other way if I thought the evidence warranted it, and there are others of his peers who I now view more favorably as a result of being in communication with them to research the actual history of certain issues – and then verifying their accounts and perspectives. valkov, I’m aware of the dangers of running afoul of Godwin’s Law, but I made the specific and limited comparison to Eichmann’s frame of mind (not his actions) that I did for carefully considered reasons that I would be glad to explain (and, can you suggest any comparison to make of an unrepentant totalitarian functionary, even if you don’t agree with my characterization in Urquhart’s case, that is clear and powerful without risking being “hyperbolic”?).

Thank You

I guess I’m trying to say your comparison of an RPF Ken might have originated, and Adolph Eichmann’s actions is more than a stretch. It strikes me a a totlally false comparison, more like Trumpian hyperbolic propaganda about the “horrible” state of the USA than than anything else. I think you lose whatever audience you may have gained, when you go to such extreme statements.

Not to make a big deal of it, but my understanding is that the original RPF was nothing like what it has been in more recent years. I believe I have read one or two positive accounts by people who did it back then.