[a] In October 1984, an American judge issued a ruling, writing of Hubbard that "The evidence portrays a man who has been virtually a pathological liar when it comes to his history, background and achievements.
"[2]: 370–71 Hagiographical accounts published by the Church of Scientology describe Hubbard as "a child prodigy of sorts" who rode a horse before he could walk and was able to read and write by the age of four.
[3]: 300 A Scientology profile says that he was brought up on his grandfather's "large cattle ranch in Montana"[4] where he spent his days "riding, breaking broncos, hunting coyote and taking his first steps as an explorer".
A thoroughly educated woman, who had attended teacher's college prior to her marriage to Ron's father, she was aptly suited to tutor her young son.
[8]: 236 Indeed, as Christiansen notes, his parents do not have important roles in his official biography and are only significantly mentioned at the beginning of the story, where their respective professions are emphasized.
[8]: 240 Hubbard's official biographers also state that, during his childhood in Montana, he was befriended by "Old Tom", a medicine man from the Native American Blackfeet tribe.
[12][14][8]: 237 According to Scientology biographies, during a journey to Washington, D.C., in 1923 Hubbard learned of Freudian psychology from Commander Joseph "Snake" Thompson, a U.S. Navy psychoanalyst and medic.
"[16] Christiansen notes that this passage implies that Hubbard consciously "planned" to live an extraordinary life, strengthening the underlying idea that from early childhood he worked towards the goals that led to Scientology.
"[17] Atack describes the event more prosaically as a meet-and-greet in which Hubbard was one of forty boys who spoke their names to the President and shook his hand.
[19] Scientology accounts say that Hubbard "made his way deep into Manchuria's Western Hills and beyond — to break bread with Mongolian bandits, share campfires with Siberian shamans and befriend the last in the line of magicians from the court of Kublai Khan".
[28] Scientologists claim he "made the first complete mineralogical survey of Puerto Rico"[29]: 7 as a means of "augmenting his Lieutenant's pay with a mining venture", during which he "sluiced inland rivers and crisscrossed the island in search of elusive gold" as well as carrying out "much ethnological work amongst the interior villages and native hillsmen".
[28] Hubbard's unofficial biographer Russell Miller writes that neither the United States Geological Survey nor the Puerto Rican Department of Natural Resources have any record of any such expedition.
The Church of Scientology claims he also worked on the Columbia serials The Mysterious Pilot (1937), The Great Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok (1938) and The Spider Returns (1941),[27] though his name does not appear on the credits.
[2]: 69 Scientology accounts of the expedition to Alaska[further explanation needed] describe "Hubbard's recharting of an especially treacherous Inside Passage, and his ethnological study of indigenous Aleuts and Haidas" and tell of how "along the way, he not only roped a Kodiak Bear, but braved seventy-mile-an-hour winds and commensurate seas off the Aleutian Islands.
[34]: 19–20 Scientology publications say he served as a "Commodore of Corvette squadrons" in "all five theaters of World War II" and was awarded "twenty-one medals and palms" for his service.
[6]: 16 He was "severely wounded and was taken crippled and blinded" to a military hospital, where he "worked his way back to fitness, strength and full perception in less than two years, using only what he knew and could determine about Man and his relationship to the universe".
[30] A. E. van Vogt recounted that Hubbard had seen combat repeatedly, and that he had once sailed his ship "right into the harbor of a Japanese occupied island in the Dutch East Indies.
[5] Scientology texts say that he returned from the war "[b]linded with injured optic nerves, and lame with physical injuries to hip and back" and was twice pronounced dead.
[33] Hubbard's official Navy service records indicate that "his military performance was, at times, substandard" and he received only four campaign medals rather than the claimed twenty-one.
He went to live at the house and investigated the black magic rites and the general situation and found them very bad ... Hubbard's mission was successful far beyond anyone's expectations.
[33] The Church of Scientology says Hubbard quit the Navy because it "attempted to monopolize all his researches and force him to work on a project 'to make man more suggestible' and when he was unwilling, tried to blackmail him by ordering him back to active duty to perform this function.