Blown for Good Behind the Iron Curtain of Scientology (33 page)

“Okay, I know how to solve this.” Dave had Marj Habshied brought into the room from her office. Marj was working in Exec Strata. People would write in to the Executive Director International from orgs all over the planet and she would answer them for him. Most of the time Guillaume would not even see the responses or care to read them. Anyway, Marj was fresh in Dave’s mind from a flap that had recently come up, so she would decide the fate of ten people today. Dave was careful to make sure that everyone in the room knew that no one could tip Marj off as to what was going on. Everybody needed to put on a happy face and say NOT ONE SINGLE WORD to Marj when she came in.

Marj walked into the room. Dave asked her if she knew much about the different Continental areas around the world and the state of the Scientology orgs in each. She said that she was very knowledgeable about this as she got letters from all areas and knew the particular complaints in each area. Dave asked her to tell him which one she felt was the worst of all. She hemmed and hawed a bit, but eventually came up with Canada. Dave sent someone to fetch the Org photo binders for Canada that exist in the landlord office. These photos were updated weekly – binders of all orgs and Sea Org units in Canada. Marj was asked to wait until the photos arrived. Little did Marj know that she was actually deciding where ten people would end up going after being offloaded tonight. The photos arrived and, sure enough, there were pictures of black toilets crusted in filth, fifteen beds in a single room at the staff berthing, showers with green mold on the tiles, etc. The photos were horrid. In the binder it said that the management organization had been broken into just a week prior, that they were behind on rent and the staff had not been paid in many weeks. They weren’t making enough money to purchase food for the crew and some staff had been working on missions in the organizations so that they could get food and berthing money to at least support themselves.

Dave asked Marj if she was sure that this was the Cont that she considered the worst of all. She agreed and was dismissed. As soon as she left the room and was out of earshot, Dave said that the first group would be going to Canada. Dave then asked the next group who they thought the most out ethics person on the base was. This person was then brought up to the room and then their Cont was picked out. This went on for at least an hour, with Dave reading out things about the Cont, showing the pictures around the room, making sure that everybody could see that any place they went was going to suck and that no matter what, the Int Base was a resort compared to any of these places.

Finally, all Conts were picked: 1. CANADA, 2. AFRICA, 3. ANZO (Australia, New Zealand and Oceania), 4. PAC (Pacific Area Command in Los Angeles), 5. EAST US, 6. WEST US and 7. CC INT (Celebrity Centre International). The CC Int team was given their Cont by Dave. He had asked that he be allowed to decide the destination for one of the groups. CC Int did not seem that bad an area compared to the rest. There had to be a catch. The team assigned to CC INT would be a cleaning team specifically and that is all that they could do. They were a cleaning team that was assigned to ONLY PUBLIC areas and Celeb areas. Dave said that if they were fortunate enough to be going to CC they should be able to see celebrities and that he would make sure that they did. “Ashtrays, toilets, trash cans and celebrities will be your life,” he crowed.

Just when everybody thought that the torture was over, Dave said, “Well, you have got to have uniforms, too.” Dave then asked the CC INT team if they could think of someone who they thought was hip or cool to design their uniform for them. Becket Wells was brought up as a person that was up on the latest fashions and styles.

“Good,” Dave said. “Get him up here.” Dave made sure that everyone knew that the same rules applied—NO ONE was to tell Becket what was happening or say anything to him at all. ONLY Dave was allowed to talk to him.

Becket walked in and Dave told him that we were all doing an exercise and that Dave wanted him to pick out some uniform parts for some crew to wear. He asked Becket to describe the most hideous outfit that anyone would ever want to wear. With Beckett’s consultation, the outfit ended up being:

1. Pink running shoes

2. White socks that went past the knee

3. A huge cowboy belt buckle

4. Bright green short shorts

5. A pirate shirt with four inch black buttons on the chest

6. Fluorescent yellow fanny pack, and to top it off

7. A red riding hood.

“That is hideous,” Dave said and then thanked Becket for his help. As Becket left the room, Dave Miscavige turned to the CC Int team and said that this would be their uniform and that they had to wear it whenever they were in ANY public areas. He also specifically added that they could not EVER pick trash up with any sort of tool. It always had to be handled with their hands, same with ashtrays, they were to dig the butts out with their bare hands and no tools could ever be used except in the case of toilets or urinals where they could use a sponge or greenies, but no gloves or extended brushes.

Just when we thought it all was over and we could at least get off to our Conts, Dave asked that each group pick one person amongst themselves who everybody could agree was the worst of the pack. The most out ethics, most disliked, whatever. The least liked person from each group was singled out. By this time, how could it get any worse?

Dave said that each of these most disliked people would be writing the issue assigning one OTHER group to the Cont they were being sent to! And it would be signed COMMANDER. So Mark Ingber who was going to Canada, was writing the issue for the PAC group and it was going to be coming from COMMANDER MARK INGBER. This was being done for all the groups and everybody had an issue that was being written by someone who was also being offloaded, but just not to the same area! Each group had their issues written up by hand. Each group was then charged with getting the issues proofread, typed, copied and ready for distribution.

Once all this was done, Dave gave everybody a final pep talk. He asked if anyone had anything to say. No one did. He said that the buses would be ready to leave at 6:00
 a.m.
It was now 1:00. Each person would need to be ready to go and NO items would be going with them except for the clothes on their backs. Of course, any spouses had already secured for the night, as had any friends, family, co-workers or people that they wanted to talk to before leaving. Anyone who had not been in the meeting was unable to be contacted. The buses would be long gone BEFORE any of these people came in for post. All the phones had been ripped out of the room so that no calls could be made to other parts of the base where staff might be working late. All communication lines were cut. About thirty minutes after the meeting ended, there were a few people saying how this was the “last chance people would have to make things right in their S.O. careers” and that “if they made the Conts expand, they probably would be able to come back to the Int Base one day far, far in the future.”

An hour later, the different groups had found their way back to their little space under a desk or in a chair and most people had gone to sleep for the night. Sobs and faint crying could be heard for hours throughout the room. If you were not crying yourself to sleep that night, someone else was doing the crying for you.

THE MORNING AFTER: The crew were rounded up and mustered. Change of plans. NO ONE WAS GOING ANYWHERE! Turns out it was going to cost a fortune to fly all these people all over the place and the logistics were not finalized as to how to ship everybody off to the different continents. Dave had called down late during the night and said that he was not willing to waste one single cent of Scientology’s money dealing with the Int Base SPs. Some people might end up going later in the day, and some might end up going that night providing everything was properly worked out. The day went by painfully slow. No one knew who was doing the logistics workouts and no one was leaving the “SP Room”. It was just more torture, everyone waiting, but nothing they could do.

Days went by and nothing ever happened. Dave Miscavige actually ended up leaving the Int base and going off somewhere for a legal case and the whole thing sort of faded away. Everybody just assumed that whenever the logistics got worked out, they would get shipped off to their Cont and until then they would make the best of it. Later we would find out that NO ONE HAD EVER WORKED OUT ANY FLIGHTS, COSTS, OR ANYTHING. It was all just one big pile of crap. Dave Miscavige never intended for anyone to leave, be offloaded to ANY Conts or wear ridiculous outfits while scrubbing urinals by hand. But he wanted us to all think that we were! 


I was working furiously to get several production targets done as ordered by Dave. I had been, like everyone else on the base, in woeful noncompliance to Dave’s orders and had not gotten several unobtainable objectives completed in the allotted time.

Dave was putting in “too gruesomes” for all those who were in noncompliance with his orders. A “too gruesome” was a punishment that was so gruesome that a person would get the objective done for fear that the gruesome punishment would be enforced if they failed to do so. All of CMO Int had scrubbed the entire galley with toothbrushes for two weeks straight. They cleaned the floors, the walls, even the grease traps, all with tiny toothbrushes.

This was after digging ditches out at the berthing buildings job site. Dave just kept thinking up more and more jobs for them to do. I was even asked if there were any really nasty dirty jobs in Sets & Props that the CMO Int crew could do as a too gruesome punishment assignment.

One day when I was heading over to the castle, I saw a huge cloud of dust over to the Northwest of the Studio, in the direction of the aeration ponds. The aeration ponds were two huge football field-sized ponds that contained all of the sewage that was created on the property. Huge underground pumps moved the sewage from all over the property to the aeration ponds. There was a large fountain in the middle of a small adjacent pond that would aerate the sewage and after many months the solid waste would either evaporate into the air or settle at the bottom and the water would slowly seep back into the water table of the property.

As required by law, the solid waste was supposed to be removed from the ponds every so often. For this, the aeration ponds would be allowed to completely dry out in the hot desert sun and a backhoe or some sort of heavy equipment would come in and empty out the solid waste, after which the pond would then get filled back up with fresh water and the process would start all over again with new waste.

Well it looked like the new too gruesome had been found. All of the Int staff were now out in one of the newly dried aeration ponds and were emptying out all of the solid waste by hand. I could not believe it at first. But I was assured this was correct by some of my crew who had helped set up a few huge work light towers out there so they could work well into the night. I could not imagine how that could even be healthy. I am sure that OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) rules forbid such activity without some sort of breathing apparatus or masks or something.

The same day I noticed the huge dust cloud coming from that direction of the property, I was called to the executive offices. When I got there, the Commanding Officer explained to me that the Commodore’s Messenger organization staff were out at the aeration ponds now and that several of the targets that were not completed by them relied on targets that I had not gotten done and that by request of Marc Yager, I, too, was to go out to the aerations ponds and clear them out.

Just when I thought that I would never truly believe what they were doing I would get to experience it firsthand. And, of course, I had my “good buddy,” Marc Yager, to thank for it.

I was driven out to the pond by Security. Danny Dunagin, naturally, who else. I was teamed up with a girl from Int who was supposed to watch me and make sure I did not try to take off.

I arrived at the aeration pond. It was at least as big as a football field, maybe even bigger. It was at least twelve feet deep and the bottom two feet was the solid waste that needed to be removed. There were a hundred or so crew working there. All were in T-shirts and shorts or jeans. A few here and there had small white painter’s masks on, but for the most part, people were unmasked and breathing the dust clouds that filled the air. Most crew were in the middle of the dry ponds picking up solid waste and filling small five gallon paint buckets that would then be passed out in a long line and dumped in piles outside the pond. The handling of the solid waste was what created the huge dust clouds. As you picked up the waste, it would crumble in your hands and make dust. Multiply that times a hundred people walking, handling and moving all that waste and that made a pretty big cloud. A giant cloud of dust made up of excrement was what I was breathing in. I tried to wear a mask, but with the temperatures being in the high 90s, the sweat just mixed with the dust and made mud around the mask. It seemed worse than just breathing the dust.

By dinner time, I had absolutely no appetite whatsoever. I spent the entire time allotted to grab a quick bite to blowing out my nose and coughing up crud that had made its way into my mouth over the past several hours. We went back into the pond and worked into the night. By the end of the night I had been completely covered with sweat and crap dirt. Every pore had been penetrated or covered and in between dry heaving and coughing full time, I was exhausted. At midnight we all made our way over to the garage where we were supposed to take showers. I hosed myself down while waiting in the line for a shower. There were only two or three showers and at least 40-50 guys and by the time I got into a shower, the water was freezing cold. We were allowed to sleep until 6:00
 a.m.
, at which point we were awakened, given some trays of cold soggy eggs and sent back out to the ponds. This went on for two days. I was the only crew member from Gold there, everyone else was from CMO Int.