A Place in the Desert for New Mexico's Most Exclusive Circles
By Richard Leiby
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 27, 2005; Page D01
Secret Flying Saucer Base Found in New Mexico?
Maybe. From the state that gave us Roswell, the epicenter of UFO lore
since 1947, comes a report from an Albuquerque TV station about its
discovery of strange landscape markings in the remote desert. They're
etched in New Mexico's barren northern reaches, resemble crop circles
and are recognizable only from a high altitude.
The circles etched into the desert match the logo of the Church of
Spiritual Technology, a Scientology corporation.
The circles etched into the desert match the logo of the Church of
Spiritual Technology, a Scientology corporation. (Krqe-tv)
Also, they are directly connected to the Church of Scientology.
(Cue theremin music.)
The church tried to persuade station KRQE not to air its report last
week about the aerial signposts marking a Scientology compound that
includes a huge vault "built into a mountainside," the station said on
its Web site. The tunnel was constructed to protect the works of L.
Ron Hubbard, the late science-fiction writer who founded the church in
the 1950s.
The archiving project, which the church has acknowledged, includes
engraving Hubbard's writings on stainless steel tablets and encasing
them in titanium capsules. It is overseen by a Scientology corporation
called the Church of Spiritual Technology. Based in Los Angeles, the
corporation dispatched an official named Jane McNairn and an attorney
to visit the TV station in an effort to squelch the story, KRQE news
director Michelle Donaldson said.
The church offered a tour of the underground facility if KRQE would
kill the piece, the station said in its newscast. Scientology also
called KRQE's owner, Emmis Communications, and "sought the help of a
powerful New Mexican lawmaker" to lobby against airing the piece, the
station reported on its Web site.
McNairn did not respond to messages requesting comment; an employee
said that McNairn was traveling last week, and that no one else from
the church would be able to comment.
What do the markings mean? For starters, the interlocking circles and
diamonds match the logo of the Church of Spiritual Technology, which
had the vault constructed in a mesa in the late 1980s. The $2.5
million construction job was done by Denman and Associates of Santa
Fe, but company Vice President Sally Butler said of the circles, "If
there is anything like that out there, it had nothing to do with us."
Perhaps the signs are just a proud expression of the Scientology
brand. But there are other, more intriguing theories.
Former Scientologists familiar with Hubbard's teachings on
reincarnation say the symbol marks a "return point" so loyal staff
members know where they can find the founder's works when they travel
here in the future from other places in the universe.
"As a lifetime staff member, you sign a billion-year contract. It's
not just symbolic," said Bruce Hines of Denver, who spent 30 years in
Scientology but is now critical of it. "You know you are coming back
and you will defend the movement no matter what. . . . The fact that
they would etch this into the desert to be seen from space, it fits
into the whole ideology."
Recall if you will that Scientology traces most of mankind's woes to
an evil alien lord named Xenu, a galactic holocaust perpetrated 75
million years ago, and, uh, the field of psychiatry. (The latter is a
particular concern, as all of America now knows, of movie star Tom
Cruise.)
The church maintains two other vaults in California to preserve
Hubbard's materials and words, according to Hines and another longtime
staff member who also quit a couple of years ago, Chuck Beatty of
Pittsburgh.
"The whole purpose of putting these teachings in the underground
vaults was expressly so that in the event that everything gets wiped
out somehow, someone would be willing to locate them and they would
still be there," said Beatty, who spent 28 years in Scientology. Some
loyalists are tasked specifically with the "super-duper confidential"
job of coming back to Earth in the far-off future, he added.
The billion-year contracts are signed by members of what Hubbard, a
Navy lieutenant in World War II, called the church's Sea Organization.
The motto of that cadre, according to Beatty and Hines, who said they
were both members, is "We come back."
The New Mexico site is about a 2 1/2 -hour drive east of Santa Fe,
near the small town of Trementina. The contents of the vault itself
are not secret -- they were shown in 1998 on ABC News's "20/20."
"Buried deep in these New Mexico hills in steel-lined tunnels, said to
be able to survive a nuclear blast, is what Scientology considers the
future of mankind," ABC's Tom Jarriel said in his report. "Seen here
for the first time, thousands of metal records, stored in
heat-resistant titanium boxes and playable on a solar-powered
turntable, all containing the beliefs of Scientology's founder, L. Ron
Hubbard."
Other religions preserve their sacred texts. Nothing strange there.
Scientology leaders apparently just don't want to misplace theirs, and
maybe this is why somebody put the giant circles on the scrubland.
Because there's nothing worse than arriving from deep space, and not
knowing where to park.
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http://www.ElmerFudd.US/ http://www.rightard.org/ http://www.thedarkwind.org/
"We're going to sue your *****, AND your balls!" -- Scientology's leader
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