HCOPL: Battle Tactics
HUBBARD COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE
Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead, SussexHCO POLICY LETTER OF 16 FEBRUARY 1969
ISSUE II
REISSUED 24 SEPTEMBER 1987(Reissued with updated distribution.)
Limited Distribution:
IMEC
OSA NW
LRH PRsConfidential
BATTLE TACTICS1 2
(This is a defense paper on material developed after 18 years of ceaseless attack by a foreign enemy. Nothing in this paper advocates physical violence or invites the physical destruction of persons.)
In these days of “cold war” when actual warfare is impossible due to atomic weapons, the warfare is waged in the press and public in the form of ideas.
If you uniformly apply the tactics and strategy of battle to the rows we get into, press or legal or public confrontation, you will win.
The enemy uses ” groups” and meetings of groups like one would use squads.
If we and they are considered as two hostile and opposing nations at war, then a huge array of tactics and strategy become visible.
One parallels in the field of thought what is used and done in the field of battle in other ages.
You don’t have to know too much about the tactics and strategy of warfare to apply this but it helps.
The end product of war, according to Clausewitz, the authority on it, is (condensed) “to bring about a more amenable frame of mind on the part of the enemy.”
But there are also wars of attrition. We are engaged in one where total destruction of us has been the enemy’s aim for, at this writing, 19 years. This is barbarian warfare, thus the enemy must have had very positive fears and terrors about us. Since he fought for total attrition. In this case it is not safe to hope for any half-way win. We must ourselves fight on the basis of total attrition of the enemy. So never get reasonable about him. Just go all the way in and obliterate him.
It is bad warfare to fight battles on your own terrain, in your own subject area. It is not good to fight in the territory of allies. Fight battles wherever possible only on enemy terrain, in and about his subject and his people, not ours. You can gauge your relative success by this. When all your battles are fought on his terrain, you are winning.
A good general expends the maximum of enemy troops and the minimum of his own. He makes the war costly to the enemy, not to himself.
Copyright (c) 1969 by L. Ron Hubbard.
All Rights Reserved.
HCO PL 16.2.69 II
Reiss. 24.9.87-2-
One cuts off enemy communications, funds, connections. He deprives the enemy of political advantages, connections and power. He takes over enemy territory. He raids and harasses. All on a thought plane – press, public opinion, governments, etc.
Seeing it as a battle, one can apply battle tactics to thought actions.
Intelligence identifies targets and finds out enemy plans and purposes, enemy connections, dispositions, etc. It is fatal to attack a wrong enemy. But it is good tactics to make the enemy attack wrong targets or persons himself.
Good intelligence pinpoints who when where what.
Good PRO plans an action and operations fights the battle.
Legal is a slow if often final battle arena. It eventually comes down to legal in the end. If intelligence and PRO have done well, then legal gets an easy win.
You can win a battle even without legal and by PRO alone.
You intend to win it without legal wherever possible.
The prize is “public opinion” where press is concerned. The only safe public opinion to head for is they love us and are in a frenzy of hate against the enemy. This means standard wartime propaganda is what one is doing, complete with atrocity, war crimes trials, the lot. Know the mores of your public opinion, what they hate. That’s the enemy. What they love. That’s you.
You preserve the image or increase it of your own troops and degrade the image of the enemy to beast level.
Always be ready to parley but watch for tricks. Don’t give the enemy breathing space.
Capture and use his comm lines. A press magnate on your side is a big win.
You have in one of these publicity wars all the factors of modern wars complete with artillery, cavalry, infantry.
For example at this writing, all fighting has been on our terrain; they knew our generals we didn’t know theirs; they had all the press, funds, government control. We are reversing this. We are fighting now on their ground. But we have a long way to go.
We will make it all the way providing we look on this in terms of active battle and not as a “if we are saintly good we will win.” The people who win wars have a saintly image but they win the war by clever and forceful use of the rules of tactics, strategy and battle.
Wars are composed of many battles.
Never treat a war like a skirmish. Treat all skirmishes like wars.
HCO PL 16.2.69 II
Reiss. 24.9.87-3-
The cold war is a war. The West is losing it because it is fighting by other rules than the rules of war. We mustn’t lose it.
L. RON HUBBARD
FounderAdopted as official Church policy by
CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY INTERNATIONALLRH:CSI:jk.ja3
Hubbard, L. R., (1969, 16 February). Battle Tactics. (Hubbard Communications Office Policy Letter).
Notes
- Document studied on Confidential GO Intelligence Course (Section 4 Part D, #6.)PDF format. ↩
- Document studied on Confidential DSA Investigations Officer Full Hat (Section K, #13). PDF format ↩
- Important Note: We have webbed both Hubbard’s original Policy Letter “Battle Tactics” of February 16, 1969 and the reissued version of September 24, 1987 in their entirety for purposes of comparison by students and scholars, as proof of Scientology as a hate group at war with good people for over thirty-four years, and as a warning to everyone of the cult’s malevolent intent. The two documents show a categorical continuity between the nature and actions Hubbard postulated for Scientology and Scientologists during his Guardian Office period and the nature and actions Miscavige requires of the cultists in this, his RTC-OSA era.
We believe that the organized beastification of good people is a crime against humanity. We believe that the obliteration of people, which “ Battle Tactics” clearly orders, is impossible without violence, indeed without murder. The order to get public opinion “in a frenzy of hate against the enemy” — by which Hubbard, Miscavige and Scientologists mean hate against the good people who oppose their criminality — demonstrates beyond any doubt that Scientology is a hate group. This document states emphatically that Scientologists are to consider themselves at war with the good people they make their “enemies,” and are to employ battle tactics in all dealings with these good people.
We believe that the good people who are the Scientologists’ targets for hate, beastification, war and obliteration have an absolute right to know the information contained in this document, and that such knowledge cannot be denied them by Scientology’s application of commercial copyright law.
We believe that the safety and security of the general public necessitate this document’s exposure and broad dissemination.
We believe that anyone considering becoming involved with the Scientology cult as a customer, employee or agent has a right to know that he or she is becoming involved with a hate group at war with good people, and should think very seriously about the consequences of any involvement.
We believe that all Scientologists have a right to know that they are being whipped into a frenzy of hatred by their cult’s leaders, that whether they have known it or not they are at war with good people, and that their labor supports, and their fees buy, the beastification and obliteration of those good people.
Finally, we believe that this document must be made universally available so that government and law enforcement officials can no longer pretend that they do not know what evil Scientology intends toward the citizens that government and law enforcement are sworn to protect, and so these officials will be denied the defense of ignorance when this criminal cult executes its final obliteration solution. ↩
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