Prosecutions and the 1979 outcomes

On August 15, 1978, a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia returned an indictment against eleven senior officials of the Church of Scientology. The charges included conspiracy to obstruct justice, theft of government property, burglary of government offices, and unauthorized interception of government communications. Mary Sue Hubbard was named as the lead defendant. L. Ron Hubbard was named as an unindicted co-conspirator.

Nine of the eleven defendants — those resident in the United States — entered pleas on October 8, 1979 on selected counts in exchange for the dismissal of the remaining charges, and stipulated to a comprehensive statement of facts. The stipulation, filed under the case caption United States v. Mary Sue Hubbard et al., ran to 282 pages and incorporated by reference an extensive set of internal Guardian Office documents seized in the 1977 raids. The stipulation is the principal primary source for what is publicly known about the operation.

On December 6, 1979, Judge Charles R. Richey sentenced the defendants. Mary Sue Hubbard received a five-year prison term and a ten-thousand-dollar fine. The other American defendants received sentences ranging from one to five years and similar fines. Two further defendants — Jane Kember, who had been Mary Sue Hubbard's deputy at the Guardian Office, and Mo Budlong — were resident in the United Kingdom; they were extradited and convicted in 1981, with similar sentences.

L. Ron Hubbard, as an unindicted co-conspirator, was not prosecuted. He had moved into seclusion in early 1980, shortly after the sentencings of the principal defendants, and remained out of public view until his death on January 24, 1986. The Church's official position on Hubbard's whereabouts during this period was that he was engaged in private writing and research work; the court record does not address the question.