Dear Revolver,

I pass on a big yawn to letter writer "Slug" (Revolver #28) who recirculated once again a tired old lie about L. Ron Hubbard which has been disproved in various forums around the world on many, many occasions.

I quote from a statutory declaration by David A Kyle, a publisher who was present at the meeting of literary figures at which L. Ron Hubbard was supposed to have made the statement ascribed to him so smugly by Slug.

"This allegation has always been hearsay not in accordance with my first hand knowledge of L. Ron Hubbard. I consider that the source of this allegation and many other allegations made of L. Ron Hubbard are suspect, each of these persons having their own axe to grind, as no evidence has ever been presented to back any of them with facts."

"The statement of the 1948 meeting was composed of agnostics and atheists and if any such statement would have been made, it would have been a joke and understood as such by the audience."

The intent of Slug's letter was to repeat critical accusations in such a way as to hold them to be true and he sneered at Scientologists on the basis of what he heard we believed. I have plenty of facts on hand about the effectiveness of Mr Hubbard's research and developments or about the courageous actions of the Church of Scientology's members against the real rotten spots in society (such as institutional abuses against the so-called mentally ill) but I doubt that Slug would be interested in following them up.

People get "accused" of all sorts of things. If Slug cracked a joke or was accused of saying something he didn't, I'm sure he wouldn't like to be later vilified for offending the politically correct brigade. Slug: being cool is a matter of being in touch, not snarling away about things on the basis of spiteful hearsay.

Yours sincerely
Henry Bartnik
Church of Scientology