Blown for Good Behind the Iron Curtain of Scientology (22 page)

“We are screwed,” Danny said. He was right. They were in fact screwed.

Turns out that Religious Technology Center hired some private investigators to break into the property and “pretend kill” Warren McShane. They were not told how to break in or given any information on the base. They were provided with a picture of Warren and an “X” where his office was located on a crude hand drawn map of the property.

These private investigators weren’t even superfragelistic former criminals or anything. They were a bunch of yahoos that follow people and do your normal P.I. stuff. Well, Security got tested all right. As a result of this disaster, Security got a new truck, new rover bikes, new radios with spare batteries and about ten more security guards. Like that was going to make a difference.

Fire Drill #1

When we came in on the bus, it was like any other day. The only exception was that on this particular day the entire hillside behind the base was on fire!

The base crew were in a frenzy. People had fire hoses out at every building. All buildings on the entire base were being hosed down. By lunch time the fire was still going strong. The fire department had brought in several truck loads of fire crews. These particular firefighters had a unique quality: they were convicted criminals that were used to fight fires. There must have been four or five busloads of these guys right outside the perimeter fence making their way up the mountain. Because of this, the fire drill was turned into a security/intruder drill at the same time and we had people spread out all over the base with radios in case any of the prisoners decided to break into “Desert Disneyland” as they called it.

The state prisoners saved the property and got most of the fire out by the time the sun had gone down. It was actually kind of ironic: here you had the “most ethical people on the planet” and they were being saved by people that had been convicted of crimes serious enough to get them locked up. The fire was now burning on the other side of the mountain and the base was in little danger. The mountain was still smoldering and glowing with a bit of a red hue to it.

Marc Yager, Commanding Officer of the Commodore’s Messenger organization, had been in the main booth running the fire drill and was telling everyone what to do. At around 8:00
 p.m.
it looked like several smaller fires had started back up on the hill above the base. From the ground, it looked like there were firefighters near the fires. Marc Yager wanted it checked out. I was asked to go up there and see what the hell was going on. Another guy, Erick, was sent with me. We were given a radio and were told to drive up to the top of the mountain, find out what was happening up there and report back.

We jumped in a Jeep Wagoneer and made our way up Lamb’s Canyon. There was an access road that you could take to Lamb’s Canyon that eventually made its way around the mountain and placed you directly above the base. It took us a bit to get up there. From the top of the mountain, we couldn’t see anything. No fires, no base, no nothing. All we could see was lots of smoke. We would have to run down the front of the mountain a bit before we would be able to see what was happening with the fires. We did. After about five minutes of running, I started puking my guts out. I had, after all, been working a desk job for the last several years and running down mountains in thick smoke was not my specialty. While I stopped and puked, Erick had a chance to catch up.

Finally, we got to the edge of the mountain and we could make out what was happening. The firefighters had taken a break and were sitting around large camp fires that they had made and were keeping warm and resting. And to think that I threw up a perfectly good dinner to find this out. We radioed back and told the security booth that the fires that they could see were ones keeping the firefighters warm and nothing else.

Marc Yager would have none of it. He wanted us to talk to the fire captain and find out what the deal was.

When we got up close to the firefighters, we talked to the first person we saw.

“What do you guys need?” he asked as we made our way down the mountain towards him. He had a rifle in his hands and I got the impression that he was not one for messing with.

“We’re from the property down there and we just did not know why the fires had started back up,” I said, thinking it was the stupidest thing I could have said.

“Yeah, we’re just taking a break,” he said. “Did you guys figure out which one of your guys started the fire?”

“Don’t know anything about that,” I answered. “Okay cool, thanks.”

We radioed back and confirmed that the fires that they could see were camp fires and that the mountain was covered with people still. Erick and I headed back up towards the Jeep. It took us an hour to get back up to the Jeep.

We wondered who the hell would have started the fire from the base. Did the guys at the base know this is what the firefighters were saying? Wow. This was huge. We got back down to the base and everyone had gone back to their areas and the commotion had died down.

A bunch of people were yelling and screaming over by Building 36. The fire crews had to sleep. The place they had come from was hours away. They had to be back up on the mountain at sun up and needed somewhere close and secure so the prisoners could not escape during the night. Well, Muriel DuFresne, the public relations officer had freaked out about the fire crews/prisoners being on the property, so she had offered for them to stay out with the Rehabilitation Project Force at Happy Valley. Well, that would not have been such a big deal, but all of the kids were out there as well. As much as we wanted the base secure, sending a bunch of rapists and thieves to sleep next to the kids was not the brightest plan known to have come out of the public relations office in a while. The problem was that the deed had already been done and the crews were already on their way there.

So now we had a bunch of screaming parents trying to figure out how they were going to get their kids off the Ranch for the night, while convicted criminals slept a few hundred yards away on the football field.

We still hadn’t found out who started the fire. Setting a trashcan on fire is one thing. Setting a mountain on fire is quite another.

The next day it would all come out.

Kevin Posten, one of the night watch security guards, had been on watch up at Eagle the night before the fire. When he got off watch in the morning he decided to take a crap before coming down. Not being in security, I am not sure how they normally handled such situations, but apparently Kevin did not want anyone to know that he had popped a squat up there and tried to burn the toilet paper he used, so as to destroy the evidence. Well, he ended up burning the whole mountain down instead. So, he was security checked and interrogated. Turns out that taking dumps up at Eagle was not his worst secret.

Security had a long range rifle with a scope on it up at Eagle. Kevin confessed to loading it and following Dave Miscavige around the property with Dave right in the cross hairs. He had seriously considered pulling the trigger but had never done so. Kevin’s future as a security guard was not looking bright. He disappeared from the base and was never seen again. We didn’t know if he was sent to the Rehabilitation Project Force somewhere but he would never be up at Eagle again, crapping, setting fires or otherwise.

Power Drill & Blow Drill

It was Saturday night during the summer and it was hot out even for Gilman Hot Springs. It was close to 95 degrees outside and it was pitch black. The past few weeks had been extremely hot day after day and with temperatures over 100 degrees every day the air conditioners on the base had been running constantly.

The base got its electricity from Southern California Edison. When the temperatures got into the triple digits, it was guaranteed that the base would max out the feed coming in from Edison to the property and whenever that happened, the power would shut down completely.

There was some sort of safety mechanism installed that would blow the power out. It was like a giant circuit breaker for the entire property.

We had been told earlier in the day that on Sunday it was supposed to be over 110 degrees. The power was sure to go out.

Whenever the power went out, anybody who had anything to do with the power drill, would jump up from whatever they were doing, spread out all over the property and turn off everything in their assigned building. That way, when the power was ready to come back on, we would not have such a huge load on the overall base power feed and the people assigned to each building could turn some things back on in each place and keep the power lines from overloading. All in all, this involved about sixty people.

With a Scientology event coming up in a few weeks, there were several areas of the base that were going to be up all night. One of these was Special Effects. They did all of the special video effects for all event videos. Flying through space, fancy graphics, fire, smoke, flyovers, you name it, they did it. There were about five people in Special Effects that did the work of about twenty-five. When it got close to an event, these staff could be counted on to be in their offices all day and all night.

A kid by the name of Power Coleman was one of two people in Special Effects who could crank out shots. Power was a mix between a surfer dude and a computer geek. He was very talented and smart when it came to computers, but had the apparent intellect of a waterlogged tree branch and although he never did drugs, you could swear he was high on something. He had an awkward glee about him that made you like him, but not take him seriously.

Power was sitting at his computer when he got a call from his girlfriend, Elsa. Elsa wanted to “talk to him”, which most likely meant that she wanted to break up with him. If you are not married in the Sea Organization, you cannot have any sort of sexual relations with anyone, and if you do you will be assigned to the Rehabilitation Project Force when it is found out about. If Elsa broke up with Power, there was a good chance he would not be getting laid for years. Elsa and Power had loosely planned to get married in the next few months. So while Power was concerned about what the outcome of the meeting would be, if he wanted to salvage his relationship with her, it was a must. As he was going to be up all night, it would have to be in the morning when he went home to take a shower. Power lived at the Kirby Apartments in Hemet and Elsa lived about two miles away at the Vista apartments in San Jacinto. He decided he would walk over to Vista from Kirby in the morning after he got home. They would meet at Vista at 10:00
 a.m.

Even though it was still very hot outside, the night went by quickly and Power managed to get on the 8:30
 a.m.
bus to the Kirby apartments where he lived. He hadn’t slept a wink all night and was really tired. He walked into his room where a few of his roommates were cleaning. It was Sunday morning, so most people were supposed to be cleaning from 8:30
 a.m.
to 11:45
 a.m.
even though most people slept in or did their laundry for the week. Power was going to take a shower and head over to meet Elsa. By the time he had taken a shower it was already 9:30
 a.m.
He had to hurry if he was going to make it to Vista by 10:00
 a.m.
It would take at least 30 minutes if he walked fast or even ran some of the way.

He made his way out of the Kirby apartments toward Menlo Street. He was starving. The last food he had was at midnight the night before. He stopped at the Kirby market on the corner and got himself a jug of orange juice. He chugged the whole thing right there. Not only was it 100 degrees outside, but he had to get to Vista in the next 15 minutes. He would have to run the whole way to make it on time. He started running. After only five minutes of running, he had made good progress and was almost at the halfway point. Then it happened. As Power was running along the sidewalk and just about to cross an intersection, he passed out. Now, most of the time when you see someone pass out in a movie or on TV, they are either standing or sitting. Not very often do you see someone pass out while running full speed. That was exactly what Power did. Hitting the ground at that speed did a fair bit of damage. If he would have landed on the concrete sidewalk, it would not have been that bad, but the normally grassy area next to the sidewalk was gravel. Hemet is big on its gravel and small pebble sized rock lawns. These rocks were not friendly to his face as he came crashing down. Power laid there unconscious and bleeding for a few minutes, before an elderly couple on their morning walk spotted him. They called 911 and an ambulance was dispatched to pick him up.

Once he was loaded into the ambulance, they were able to bring him around. He appeared to be delirious, but otherwise not seriously injured. He was on his way to the hospital.

Meanwhile, at the Vista Apartments, 10:00
 a.m.
had come and gone. Elsa waited for Power until 11:00
 a.m.
, and then left to get ready and catch the 11:45
 a.m.
bus to the Base.

As Power was rolled into the Emergency Room, the nurses had already found his wallet in his pants pocket. He had no identification and no money. The only thing in his wallet was a Blockbuster Video card. It was not even Power’s card. He had borrowed it from another staff member weeks before. Even though renting videos was not a regular occurrence, some staff managed to sneak off during the night and get a video here and there. Power was one of these people. But as he did not have any ID or a bank account or credit card, he had borrowed someone else’s Blockbuster card. The card belonged to a Peter Cook and there was a phone number listed. Although probably a common name, Peter Cook was a guy that worked in marketing.

“Okay, Peter, what seems to be the problem today?” The nurse asked Power as they took vital signs and got him cleaned up.

“My name is not Peter. It’s Power,” Power told the nurse.

“Okay, honey. So what happened to you?” the nurse repeated.

“I don’t know. I was running and the next thing I know I was in the ambulance,” Power told her, truly not knowing that he had face planted while running full speed down the street.