Blown for Good Behind the Iron Curtain of Scientology (13 page)

“Do you have more packing tape?” I yelled out to Reiser loud enough to overpower the din of noise coming from the projectors and the large speaker blaring in the corner.

“Yeah,” he yelled back. “On the bottom shelf by the bubble wrap.”

I made my way between the metal shelves and looked on the bottom shelf. It was surprisingly empty in comparison to the rest of the office. Behind a bunch of laid out bubble wrap, which also had a sleeping bag on it, I saw a few rolls of tape that were unused.

“There is a sleeping bag down there!” I told McKay as I came back over to our makeshift packing station.

“Yeah, I would guess that Reiser has been here for a few days at least,” McKay answered back.

The packing station we had set up was on a table that had film rewinds on it. There were motorized poles that the film reels went on. Underneath there was a light table that was turned on. Just then I noticed an open bottle that had paper tape on it that said “MEK” on it. There was another one right next to it that said “PERC.” They looked like the bottles you have in chemistry class that are blood colored and have the little black plastic top.

“What is PERC?” I asked McKay.

“Film cleaner,” McKay answered.

“Perchloroethylene,” Reiser said as he walked over. He had gotten up from his Rube Goldberg projector contraption and the blaring soundtracks had stopped for now. “I use it on the films that come in from the organizations. They are really dirty and this is the only stuff that you can use to clean the films.”

“Whatever reels have sticky goo on them, I use the MEK to get that off. That’s Methyl Ethyl Ketone. If you see any tape residue on the end of the film or leader, use the PERC to get that off,” Reiser told us.

“It seems pretty potent,” I said as I squinted at the smell.

“Yeah, the fact that there is no decent airflow in this office does not help the smell,” Reiser added. He told us he was going to be right back. “I need to get something,” he said and walked out the door.

Not 30 seconds later, we heard more screaming. It was the Commanding Officer again. Reiser came flying through the door with the CO Gold a half second behind him. Reiser reeked of cigarette smoke as did the Commanding Officer.

“This guy does not leave this room until all of these films are turned over to delivery!” the CO yelled to us, pointing at Ray Reiser.

“Yes, Sir,” all three of us answer in unison as he walked out of the office.

As soon as he was gone, Reiser said that he picked the wrong stairwell spot to take a smoke break. The Commanding Officer was right above him and bitched him out the second he spotted him.

“It’s the only way I can stay awake,” Reiser said, taking another sip of his stale, cold coffee.

“How long have you been up for?” I asked Reiser.

“Not that long, since Tuesday,” he mumbled, firing his projectors back up. “Well, I actually did get two hours sleep last night, So I guess I shouldn’t complain.”

“Why is he watching the films at the same time like that?” I asked McKay.

“He has to check the picture and sound quality to make sure they can go out to the organizations,” McKay answers.

“Wow, and he can do that in his sleep?” I asked. Reiser was now slumped over and had nodded off in his chair in front of the projectors.

“Ray! Wake up!” McKay shouted. Reiser straightened up and went back to “watching” the films.

By 11:50
 a.m.
we had packed up all the films Reiser had checked. We were cleaning up and doing busy work while we waited for him to turn the next batch over to us. I could tell from the way McKay was looking at his watch that we were not going to eat, or there would be a debate on who would get to go and grab a quick bite. Right then, Reiser started swearing and throwing his arms in the air. His switcher box had broken and the audio was no longer playing over his speaker. That meant he couldn’t check any more films until he fixed it.

McKay told Reiser that we were going to lunch and we would come back afterwards to help him with whatever else he needed.

Ray did not answer us. He was already on the phone yelling at someone about “downtime.” I knew he was contemplating what the Commanding Officer would do to him. I did not want to be around for that.

“What is Reiser going to do?” I asked McKay as we walked towards the mess hall.

“He’s gonna have to make it go right,” McKay answered, knowing that Reiser was totally screwed.  

Lunch went by very quickly and before I knew it we were back at Building 36. This time muster went quickly, since it was right before 2:00
 p.m.
Everybody wanted to get back to post with only an hour or so left in the week.

Muster was over and we walked back to Reiser’s office. There were at least four people already there hovering around his projector station. There was a rather large fellow tinkering with the audio switcher box while the CO Gold and a few other people took turns yelling at Reiser.

A few minutes after we arrived and were pretending to be busy, the audio came back on.

“Well done, Bruce!” the CO Gold said, “Now stick around in case it breaks again. And you guys, get all these films packed up and out of here.”

The CO left and the other people that were with him followed close behind.

Ray introduced us, “Marc, this is Bruce Ploetz. He is the technician for this line. Bruce, this is Marc Headley.”

We exchanged “hellos” and Bruce went back to tinkering with another audio switcher that he had opened up.

“Is it always like this around here?” I asked McKay.

“It depends.”

“No, usually worse,” Bruce piped in.

Two o’clock rolled around and most of the films were already upstairs in the delivery area. Ray and I made our way back to the reception area to get going on my routing form.

I had to see nearly 20 different people on the routing form and McKay took me around to a bunch of them. Turned out that I had to do an Int Base Orientation Course, and a bunch of the people on the routing form I would see while doing the course, so we skipped over those for now. As we walked around, I couldn’t help but notice that people were not friendly towards McKay. Each and every person seemed happy enough to meet me, but they talked down to McKay like he was a dog or something.

“What’s your deal?” I asked Ray.

“I just got busted off post as General Manager,” McKay said, seemingly in disagreement with what he was saying.

“What is the General Manager?” I asked, never having heard of this post on any previous organizing boards I was familiar with.

“The General Manager is over all of the production divisions of Gold,” he said. “Cine, Audio and Manufacturing.”

“What happened that you got taken off post?”

“A whole bunch of overt products were sent out from Manufacturing, and a Committee of Evidence recommended that I be removed,” he answered.

“Is that why everybody is giving you the cold shoulder?” I asked.

“Yeah, probably.” We headed back to reception.

Once there, I filled out some paperwork about where my cleaning station would be and tried to find out when I would be getting the rest of my clothes and belongings from Los Angeles.

We went to dinner and after muster went back to completing the last of the routing form steps.

By the end of the night, we had completed most of the routing form, with the exception of the items that I would do on course the next day.

McKay and I parted ways and I made my way over to the bus.

I was exhausted and I smelled like a mix of MEK and PERC that had worked its way into my hands. It was 11:00
 p.m.
and my first day was brutal. Between the crazy morning and walking all over the grounds, I was wiped out.

I passed out on the bus ride home and woke up as we arrived at Devonshire.

I walked into the room and passed out on the bed.

“Get up, Marc!” Tom was standing next to my bed. I looked at my watch. It was 1:00
 a.m.
“You’re smelling up the whole apartment! You smell like gas or something!”

“It’s chemical stuff from Ray Reiser’s office,” I said as I rolled over in the bed.

“I don’t give a crap what it’s from, open a window and wash that stuff off. You’re going to gag us to death with that smell!” 

By 2:00
 a.m.
, I was out of the shower and had removed most of the smell from my hands.

By the time my head hit the pillow, I was back asleep.

The next day I started the Base Security/Public Relations Course.

The course gave the history of the International Base and what the staff were supposed to tell anyone they ran into that was NOT from the base. This was called the “shore story.”

There were a ton of rules of what could and couldn’t be done. There were several issues in the pack that laid out the rules and explained what was acceptable at the Int Base:

• No one could know that the base was located in Hemet. No family, no friends, no other staff from other organizations within the Sea Org, no one.
  
• No one could know that International Management of Scientology was here. As far as anyone in Hemet or San Jacinto was concerned, all staff at the Int Base were involved with the production of the Audio Visual materials for Scientology internationally.
  
• When in town for any reason, any name tags had to be removed and placed in a pocket.
  
• All mail was to be sent through the internal mail system. No U.S. mailboxes in town were allowed to be used for any reason whatsoever.
  
• No outside calls were to be made from pay phones off the property.
  
• All personal mail was to be mailed in unsealed envelopes. When Security received the mail, they would read it, and if it was up to security standards, it would be sealed and sent.
  
• Someone from Security would monitor all phone calls in or out of the base. If you wanted to make a phone call, you had to do a routing from and write a Completed Staff Work to get okay to do so.
  
• If you wanted to drive a car, you had to do car school. Anyone who had not completed car school was not allowed to drive for any reason whatsoever.
  
• If you got in an accident or got a speeding ticket, you were “off the road.” To get “back on the road” you had to re-do the part of Car School you missed or re-do the entire course if this had occurred on more than one occasion.
  
• No documents of any kind were ever to leave the property. Nothing was to be taken home to berthing, under any circumstances. If you were caught with any kind of documents, you would instantly be assigned the lower condition of “Enemy.”
  
• Nothing regarding one’s post or pertaining to the base could be spoken about while off the premises.
  
• No local taxis could be used for transport.
  
• No staff member was allowed to use any public transportation for any reason whatsoever. The only transport that was to be used was transport provided or personal transport if car school had been completed and proper insurance and registration were in place.
  
• Anyone who left the base without authorization would be considered “blown”, the equivalent of what the military would refer to as AWOL.
  
• Any breach of any of the security rules would result in a Treason Condition assignment or possibly assignment to the Rehabilitation Project Force depending on what you did.
  

After studying all the rules I was required to follow, I headed down to lunch. Becoming a bit paranoid by this point, I asked some of the guys at my table about these rules.

One of the guys laughed. He said that these rules were the new “relaxed” rules! “When I first came here, I was blindfolded and came in a van with blacked out windows. I was actually here for almost 4 months before I even knew where we were!”

Before I knew it everyone was piping in. “Six years ago when I first got here, if you drove to LA, you had to be trained on how to ‘lose a tail.’ It took three or four hours to make the 90 minute trip to LA with all of the detours one had to take to make sure there was no one following you!” one girl at the table stated.

“What about all the guns they used to have in the Main booth?” another girl asked as people started up about all the crazy stuff that went on.

“That’s nothing. When I first got here, no one could even leave the property for any reason at all. There were only one or two people that were even allowed to go off the property. I was here for one full year before I went anywhere outside the gate!” said a big burly guy before getting up to clear his plate.

It was starting to sound like a Monty Python skit. I could not tell if the guys were serious or joking. No one was laughing and no one appeared to be joking, but it sounded crazy, almost like a state penitentiary. Could they be telling the truth? As Tom and I headed to the bussing stations with our plates, he leaned over to me and said, “We really have it easy compared to the good ol’ days around here, huh?”

So they were NOT joking. Wow, maybe the whole place was paranoid.

As unbelievable as it seemed, I could see how they could think this way. Instead of comparing the security rules to the freedoms most civilian people had, they were comparing it to past Int Base Sea Org members. According to most of the staff who had been around for years, compared to past times at the Int Base, we were living in a veritable Disneyland!

After studying all day, I was heading home on the bus when Tom started telling me stories about people who had been at the base for years and how we had much more freedom than anyone before.

He told me, “In the early 1980s, Hubbard was being hunted by FBI, CIA, IRS, you name it. No one knew where he was. No one in Scientology knew where he was except a few people that worked directly with him or received advices from him.”

“Advices?” I ask.

“Yeah, you see LRH did not want anyone to think that he was running the organizations or any of its management. The government were trying to show that he was profiting from the organizations and that he was making all this money from Scientology. So even though he was still directly involved with telling people what to do and how to run things, “officially” he was not. So anything that he wrote was called an ‘Advice.’ It was not actually a directive or an order; it was just ‘advice.’ None of these advices were even signed or had any of his writing on them anywhere. They just had ‘###’ at the bottom and they were from LRH. There are hundreds and hundreds of these advices on everything from the IRS, to new organizations, to how to deal with people that blow from the base.”