MR. DeWOLFE: Okay, sorry. I left Scientology November 23rd, 1959. ...And, the weekend around November 23rd, my wife - twenty years at the moment - she just flatly--she's the type of person that's very calm, cool, and collected; she gets angry about once a year--about once every five years. She flatly just came out and said, "Okay, you've got a choice between me and the children or Scientology. Make up your mind." This was on a Friday. And I said, "Okay. It's you and the children." Zip, off we went.

On or around this date, LRH, while in Melbourne, Australia, receives an urgent telephone call from Washington, D.C. saying that Nibs has blown. On this date, he writes an airmail letter to Marilyn Routsong: "Nibs was trying to get more money by loans from us. This may make a field upset but we'll survive. If be goes into practice anywhere or starts up a squirrel activity have HCO cancel all certificates and awards of his. He won't ever be hired back."

LRH's Aunt Tollie telephones him in Melbourne, Australia from Bremerton, Washington to say that his seventy-four year old mother has had a stroke, is very ill, and is not expected to live. LRH soon leaves for Bremerton.

Daniel Ellsberg goes on a trip "to the Pacific" for the Office of Naval Research. Ostensibly, the purpose of the trip is to "study nuclear command and control." Among his stops apparently are Okinawa and Japan. [NOTE: This is a truly out-pointy entry. Almost certainly there was some other purpose for the trip to "the Pacific," and there is no accurate information about where Ellsberg went. The only time indication in the source is "late 1959, so date is estimated, but there is evidence that Ellsberg is in Japan in early 1960 on this same trip (see 15 c. January 1960), so this is being placed at 1 c. December c. 1959.]

By the time LRH arrives in Bremerton, his mother is in a coma. He goes in to see her, holds her hand and talks to her; he tells the family afterwards he was sure she knew he was there. She dies the following day. LRH organizes the burial, orders the stone, pays all the expenses and makes arrangements for a man from the Church of Scientology to come up and accompany the body with LRH's father, Hub, and his aunt, Tollie to the funeral in Helena. Then he flies back to England from Bremerton.

Colonel J. C. King, chief of CIA's Western Hemisphere Division, sends a confidential memorandum to Allen W. Dulles, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. King argues that in Cuba there exists a "far-left dictatorship, which if allowed to remain will encourage similar actions against U.S. holdings in other Latin American countries."

As a result of this memorandum Dulles establishes Operation 40, named so because originally there are 40 CIA agents involved in the operation. The group is presided over by Vice President Richard Nixone. Tracy Barnes becomes operating officer of what is also called the Cuban Task Force.

Quoted from the source for structure of OSI and locations after change of this date:

OSI/WORLDWIDE
Established December 15, 1959

District Location
41 Anderson AFB, Guam
42 Clark AB, RP
43 Kadena AB, Japan
47 (Closed Oct 1, 1961)
46 Yokota AB, Japan
48 (Closed Oct 1, 1961)
45 Seoul, South Korean
44 Hickham AFB, HI
49 Taipei AS, Taiwan
50 TanSonNhut AB, SVN (Mar 1, 62-Mar 27, 73)
51 Bangkok, Thailand (Mar 1, 65 - ?)

[NOTE: Compare changes in district numbers to original structure 1 June 1949 (see) and structure as of changes of 1 July 1957 (see).]

Dr. Hubbard's experiments with plants come to the attention of Garden News, to which publication he reveals his conviction that plants feel pain. He demonstrates by connecting an E-meter to a geranium [also done with tomatoes?] with crocodile clips, tearing off its leaves and showing how the needle of the E-meter oscillates as he does so. The Garden News story, "PLANTS DO WORRY AND FEEL PAIN," describes LRH as a "revolutionary horticultural scientist." [IMPORTANT NOTE: See chronology entry for 1 c. July c. 1968, where CIA contractor Cleve Backster--later to become instrumental in connection with the CIA's "remote viewing" program--gains notoriety for doing polygraph experiments with plants that are near duplicates of what LRH has done in these experiments. His name has also been misspelled "Baxter," as in the following description: "San Diego polygrapher Cleve Baxter, the founder of the CIA's polygraph unit." --Christopher Anderson, Staff Writer, Boulder, Colorado "Daily Camera."]

SOURCE: Russell Miller, book: Bare Faced Messiah, Chapter 14; also, news article: "Polygraph results released," 25 May 2000, by Christopher Anderson, Boulder Daily Camera