Blown for Good Behind the Iron Curtain of Scientology (42 page)

When Christmas eventually came, we did not get the day off. Since the New Year’s event speeches and videos were so behind, everybody had to work all day on Christmas, even if they had nothing to do with the event production. Because it would be unfair to have only the event crew miss Christmas, the theory was that the fair thing to do was to have everyone miss Christmas! Sure, that’s totally fair!

So we worked all day, during which most people ended up sitting in their offices complaining about how much it sucked that we were working on Christmas Day. But at least we got to have a 45-minute Christmas dinner instead of the normal 15-30 minute dinner break!

The only good thing about that Christmas for my wife and I was our gifts to Dave and Shelly – they were a huge hit. About a week after Christmas, my wife was told that the gift that we gave them was the most “On Source” gift they had gotten from anyone in the world! I was actually getting serious kudos from a lot of people for being so clever. I thought that I was doing pretty well. Even though Christmas totally sucked, maybe, just maybe, things were looking up.

I could not have been more correct.

The New Year’s event this year had been scheduled to occur mid-week on December 28th, so that the event could be produced on DVD and sent out to the orgs thus allowing them to have their events on New Year’s Eve.

Because I was in the Systems Department now, I had little to do with the live event. This was a huge relief for me. Normally I would have been working day and night myself, but that was not the case this year. I actually sat in the audience at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.

One of the biggest parts of the New Year’s event was always the FSM awards. The FSM (Field Staff Member) awards were given to the public Scientologists that recruited the most new people into Scientology during the prior year. Heber Jentzsch was handing out the FSM awards. I remembered this because ED Int, Guillaume
Lesevre, had given them out every year since their inception. This was the first year Guillaume
would not be handing them out and it was a huge deal.

Months before, Guillaume had severely pissed off Dave Miscavige and had been on heavy manual labor at the berthing buildings for months. It was not unusual that most of the regular event speakers would be in severe trouble right before an event, and would end up doing the event anyway. But Marc Yager and Guillaume had really been working their hardest to get on Dave’s bad side and Dave had them off his lines a lot – Dave’s “out of sight, out of mind” theory. Marc Yager was at least still doing some post functions and approving and disapproving people’s submissions, but Guillaume was doing hard labor. Not only was he outside most of the day, but he was lean and gaunt. That is one of the things about working at Gold—there were not a lot of fat people around. For people who were put on “heavy MEST work,” as it was always referred to, they were just plain skin and bones. I think when it came down to whether Guillaume was going to do the New Year’s event, he looked too bad to even walk out on stage. He looked like a cancer patient. His face was thin and he was starting to look much older than he was. He seemed beaten down like a dog. No amount of make-up could hide these features. Also, since he was being punished by Dave, there was always the slight chance that Guillaume would screw up something at the event just to spite Dave. No chances could be taken. Heber was brought in to announce the awards.

Since Guillaume was out, this was Dave’s chance to kick out some more people as well. Normally the other speakers were Mike Rinder, Marc Yager and sometimes Ray Mithoff if Dave was really desperate. So all of those guys were now out. Dave Miscavige brought in Claire Edwards from Scientology Missions International, Rena Weinberg from the Association for Better Living and Education and Don Drader from the World Institute of Scientology Enterprises.

Between Heber and the new guys, it seemed that all new people were now putting on the events, except for Dave Miscavige, of course.

Claire Edwards came from a long-time Scientology family. Both her father and brother were once declared SPs. Her father, David Gaiman, worked for years to get undeclared and her brother, Neil Gaiman, became a noted bestselling author and was undeclared and apologized to for the mistake in declaring him an “SP” in the first place.

The event started at around 7:00
 p.m.
and was over by 9:00
p.m
. My wife, Claire, and I met up with her parents, brother and two sisters. My wife had been down in LA before the event with another CMO Int staff member and had one of the organization vehicles. Since we were down in LA at the event, we managed to sneak off to Claire’s parents’ house for the rest of the night. As long as we were back at the base on post the next morning at 8:30
 a.m.
we were fine. We went over to their house to exchange gifts and catch up with them. Even though we lived less than two hours away, we usually saw them around Christmas or New Years and that was the only time we could visit them all year.

When we arrived at their house in La Crescenta, we exchanged gifts and played around with the kids. Now, Claire’s step-dad, Hugh, is not the most talkative person in the world. In the 12 years that Claire and I had been married, I estimate that her stepdad and I had spoken to each other for a total of 60 minutes. That night, Hugh talked to me for probably two hours straight. Apparently, he was in major trouble over something that had happened a few months earlier.

Hugh was the Executive Director of the Beverly Hills Scientology Mission. He had been doing that for over a decade. He had been a Scientology auditor for his entire career. As the head of the mission, he would routinely fly off to places all over the US and audit high paying clients for the mission. The Beverly Hills Mission had a unique ability to draw in very wealthy people to deliver to. Some of these people, however, were only in Beverly Hills doing business and lived out of state. In most cases, the orgs or missions in the person’s own area were low quality dumps and these people wanted nothing to do with them. This is how Hugh ended up flying out to where they lived and auditing them there. This had been the way the Beverly Hills Mission had ALWAYS functioned and there were never any questions about this. Until now.

Well, with the advent of Dave Miscavige’s Ideal Org Program, no org or mission was allowed to deliver services to any person that was not in their immediate “sphere of influence.” If you drew a circle around the Beverly Hills Mission and their nearest competing org or mission, and then made those circles larger until they touched each other, you would have established the sphere of influence of each of those organizations.

So this meant that any person who did not live within the sphere of the Beverly Hills Mission could not receive any services from them.

To add insult to injury, the way all orgs or missions were to get new people into the org and onto services was now only through E-Meter stress test tables! That was it. Dave Miscavige had piloted this technique at New York Org and had established this as the best way to get new people into the org. Based on his isolated test, he cancelled all other forms of getting new people in and made this the ONLY way that any org or mission could get new people in.

Well, in Beverly Hills you didn’t find many high-class operations busting out the crappy folding table and chairs and setting up shop on Rodeo Drive next to Gucci, handing out flyers and asking the filthy rich to get a stress test! But Dave Miscavige had spoken. This was now the ONLY way orgs or missions could operate. According to Hugh, the mission had tried this and failed miserably. They had, over a period of years, perfected an exact way to generate business and keep the mission producing. The new method with the stress test tables simply did not work for them. Based on this, they carried on doing business as usual and ignored the new rules.

Months earlier Dave Miscavige told a story about something that had happened in New York. At the time it meant nothing to me and I thought it was just another story that Dave liked to tell to show that he was the boss. He had been in New York right after the new Ideal Org opened and the place was a ghost town. He demanded that the org be filled with people and could not believe that it was not packed already. Whilst he was going around the org and trying to find where all the people had gone, he happened to run into a guy from a WISE group. David Singer was a chiropractor that had a consulting business. He would consult chiropractors on how to expand their practices and then when they did better and wanted more information, they would end up getting into Scientology.

Well David Singer was walking through New York Org and ran into Dave Miscavige. Dave Miscavige did not like David Singer. According to Dave Miscavige, he approached David Singer and leaned in close so as to whisper to him, and said, “I am going to find out what you’re up to,” and then walked away. Miscavige then sent some of his RTC staff to track down Singer and put him on the E-Meter to be interrogated.

Apparently, David Singer was planning on doing one of his consulting seminars to a bunch of doctors at the new auditorium in the New York Org. The seminar had nothing to do with the New York Org, it just happened to be a nice place that he could gather up a bunch of people and do a seminar and because he brought new people into Scientology, the org would let him do this for free. He was not even necessarily planning to get people onto service at the org. He had just arranged that a lot of East Coast chiropractors would meet up there.

When Dave found this out, he was furious. Here he was working to make new Ideal Orgs and guys like David Singer were sabotaging his efforts and using the orgs for their own profit. Dave then ordered that anyone involved with this activity be Comm Eved, with the option of being declared an SP if warranted.

So what did this have to do with Hugh Whitt, Executive Director Beverly Hills Mission? Well upon “investigation” it turned out that David Singer Enterprises, Hollander Consultants and the Beverly Hills Mission had an arrangement that these prominent doctors and professionals were being sent to do their services with the Beverly Hills Mission. As a result, the Beverly Hills Mission was one of the most productive missions in the world. It was routinely winning awards for doing so and this REALLY pissed off Dave Miscavige. They were doing well and had not been doing one thing that he had worked out. In fact they were doing the exact opposite and it was working well for them.

Hugh did not know any of this about Dave Miscavige in New York and why all this was happening. He only knew that somehow, out of nowhere, the mission was being investigated for getting clients from WISE groups and that Vanessa Stoller, the owner of the mission, was being Comm Eved and that he was going to be Comm Eved and possibly declared an SP.

He was trying to get through his OT Level 7 at Flag and this would make it nearly impossible for him to do so. If he ended up being declared, he would not be able to see his children and wife, would have to get another job and probably start his life over from scratch. If Vanessa Stoller was declared, that would surely end up closing the mission and he would have to get a new job anyway. Things looked bleak.

He told me how RTC had done inspections of the mission several times over the years and they knew exactly how the mission operated. They even had a Keeping Scientology Working Award from RTC! It all meant nothing now.

Hugh had talked to me more that night than the entire time I had known him. He was devastated. I remember thinking to myself at the time, that here was an example of the most dedicated public Scientologist around. The guy had been auditing people his entire life, he was at the mission all the time, and gave up most of his personal freedoms to do Scientology. Even with all of that, it meant nothing. He just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when Dave Miscavige was upset.

I could not tell him what I knew and why he was being put through this. I simply told him that I knew some other information that might be related to this and that this was a lot bigger than he knew. If I said anything more and it was found out about, I would surely be declared an SP myself.

After Hugh and I talked, I went back into the living room and played with the kids a bit more. They were staying up late that night so they could spend a few hours with us. A little after 3:30
 a.m.
, Claire and I left to head back to the Base.

As we drove back, Claire slept in the passenger seat and I just sat there in the driver’s seat. The radio was turned off. I sat there with only the sound of the road accompanying my thoughts. I could not help but think about Hugh and his family. How could this be happening? How could Hugh, of all people, be in trouble? I was angry, but I could not think of anything to do that would help him. If I even brought up the subject, it would be investigated how I even heard about the Beverly Hills Mission’s involvement in this. If I said anything at the Int Base it might get him in even more trouble.

When we got back and Claire woke up, I talked to her a bit about it. I told her what Hugh and I had talked about and that he was about to get royally screwed. She had no ideas about what to do either.

It was now around 5:00
a.m
. We decided to watch a DVD before going back to post in the morning. We watched
I, Robot
with Will Smith and went back to post.

That day I could not help but think about my conversation with Hugh some more. It was really bugging me. It had struck a chord and I was not able to just “forget about it.”

New Year’s Eve came.

In the Sea Org, there was a holiday that historically took place around Christmas time and this was the Beer and Cheese party. Besides Sea Org day, this was really the only Sea Org party that might possibly take place all year. Well, of course, this years’ Beer and Cheese party was postponed and would be combined with our New Year’s Eve Party.

The Beer and Cheese party was, as expected, amazing. It was only missing three things – beer, cheese and party. Everyone was called down to the dining hall at 11:50
 p.m.
There were a few tables that had Ritz crackers and some orange sodas on them. Jenny Devocht from CMO Int said that we all needed to get every one of the event items done and that we could have a good New Years if that happened. We then counted down the New Year and gave three cheers to LRH. We were dismissed and most people went back to post, wondering if we would even get the next day off. Not likely.