Blown for Good Behind the Iron Curtain of Scientology (31 page)

Three people died in three weeks at the base. Many more went to the RPF or were offloaded and declared during the construction of Building 50. So it was odd that after all that, it was not filled with people and only Dave Miscavige and his personal staff would occupy it.

Anyway, we would often be called up to meetings at Building 50 and Dave would lecture us and lay out the entire future production and international event releases for the next ten years.

The only difference between today’s meeting and yesterday’s meeting, or last week’s meeting or last month’s meeting, was that Dave had figured out a few more ways how we had all screwed something up that was already released years prior and now he was explaining to us how, once again, he was going to have to figure out a solution or work around our latest screw ups and swoop down and save the day in the end, as always.

Somehow, even though most of the facts and figures and key players in this saga were the same, the meetings would always take at least 8-10 hours to unfold. Granted, a lot of those minutes would include us just sitting there in a large room around a table while Dave Miscavige was off in another meeting, or on the phone with Tom Cruise, or eating or even sleeping.

This was a pain that I was used to. We would be reamed out for having gotten nothing done since the last meeting, and now we were in another meeting about something else that we had not gotten done. Tomorrow’s meeting would surely be about the previous day’s meeting demanding a progress report. What were we supposed to say? “Well, Sir, I did not get that done as I was with you all day getting reamed out.” No, it was widely known that Dave was the one cross ordering all of his own orders, but if anyone dared utter the words, it was an express ticket to who knows where.

So, we sat there and listened to Dave lay out his most recent act of sheer brilliance in sorting out this mess called International Scientology Expansion. He had figured it all out, what things would get released at what event, in what sequence and how this would fund the next upcoming releases. He had figured it all out: prices, how it would be packaged, how much it would cost to produce, how many people it would take to make it, you name it. It was like he was handing it to us on a silver platter. After four straight hours of him explaining it to us, now all we had to do was confirm for him that we could do it. We would break for dinner and when we returned, we would have a chance to let him know our plan.

After dinner we would usually get to sit there for 30 more minutes by ourselves to hash out what we were going to do. Most of the time, no one would agree on anything and the biggest item to be nailed down was who in the group would speak on behalf of the group. This was a double-edged sword if there ever was one. If you were picked to be the representative for the group and screwed it up and COB disagreed with what you were saying, the group would surely throw you under the bus and say to COB “we had not gone over that, Sir.” Or you would come out with flying colors and Dave would decide that you were the next best thing since sliced bread and you might be the favorite pet for a few weeks.

Usually right as Dave came back into the room, someone would hastily say that they would be the one to talk and we would see what would happen.

“So what did you guys work out?” was the usual question Dave Miscavige would ask as he walked back into the marathon meeting in progress.

“Well, Sir,” the appointed sacrificial lamb would begin. After a long-winded interpretation of how to execute COB’s brilliant plan was laid out, we would all hold our breath waiting for his answer. If objects in the room did not immediately start to fly at the person who just finished speaking, we were usually in the clear. But then sometimes, Dave would get up from his chair and slowly saunter over from across the room and launch a full out Pearl Harbor sneak attack on the person. So you could never be too sure what was coming.

“No, you guys just don’t get it! Let me explain it to you again,” Dave started saying. So after getting a second chance to hear his whole plan and then having him tell us as well how we would execute it, we are now another six hours older.

Dave wrapped up the meeting, apparently in a good mood with, “Okay, guys, I think this can really work. Thanks.”

He left and we filed outside to light up cigarettes and figure out what was next. It being nearly 1:00
 a.m.
by this point, most of our crew have already gone home or were about to, so we all decided that we were going to end on a good note, go home and get some sleep.

I headed back to my area and did a few things before heading off down to my house, which was right next to the Int Base. I rolled in around 2:00 
a.m.
and my wife came home maybe 30 minutes after me. Just as I was almost asleep there was a knock at the door.

It was Karsten Matthias, one of the Gold Security Guards. “COB wants you to come back in. He wants to talk to you up at the Villas,” he said in his German accent.

I dressed and headed back in. As I made my way back, I saw a few others who had been at the day’s meetings coming back as well. This was probably not going to be good. I made it up to the Villas and Dave was off in the distance dressed in his pajamas, slippers and even had a cup of tea. Shelly was standing there and told me to go over to the ship and wait for Dave there. I went over to the Star of California Clipper Ship and there were already about twenty people lined up. Some were still in uniform and some were in their sleepwear. I was wearing my uniform, knowing that it was always better to show up looking like you never left. That was a golden rule I learned and adopted years ago. Over the years, people had routinely been picked on for looking like they had just been sleeping at 5:00
 a.m.
when, of course, it was expected that they had just been working hard at whatever Dave Miscavige wanted.

People continued to trickle in and line up, until I heard the buses pull up on the highway, the loud air brakes signifying a stop and the sound of hydraulic doors opening.

As the flood of new people showed up, it was the entirety of CMO Int. Maybe a hundred or so people, plus a few Gold and CMO Gold staff who were at the meetings that had occurred throughout the previous day. Now the pool area was full of people standing around wondering what the hell was happening. The pool was lit up nicely and whoever had been cleaning it lately was doing a damn fine job. You could see every detail of the bottom of the pool surface and even the lines of the drains, etc. I was not any sort of pool expert, but I was quite impressed with this one right here, right now.

Dave came down the steps, still in his pajamas, slippers and still with his cup of tea in hand. I was amazed to see him like this. I had seen him once before in his apartment at the Hacienda near Flag early one morning in 1995 when I was switching out an amplifier that he did not like the sound of. He was in his pajamas then, too. As COB Asst answered the door in her skimpy nightgown that morning, his pajamas were not really what I remembered most, but now seeing him again reminded me of that. I wondered to myself why Shelly was not now, again, wearing her skimpy nighty, and then thought about how I had not worn pajamas since I was a kid.

Was I supposed to be wearing pajamas? I thought to myself. Could I even afford a pair of pajamas? Certainly not super duper silk ones like Dave had on. Definitely not the fuzzy indoor/outdoor sheepskin slippers Dave was sporting. Those were just over the top. They probably cost more than I make in a month, I thought. They were surely straight out of the latest Hammacher Schlemmer catalog and cost a pretty penny. I was not in the market for a pair of those any time soon.

As Dave made his way down the steps to the pool where we were all standing, he took a sip of his tea. Then he started to explain why we had all been called back in.

He was apparently upset that after the meeting broke, some or most of us had gone home. Here he was, now having to do his entire day’s planned work that he couldn’t do because he had spent his whole day explaining our jobs to us. Now, he was going to be up all night working, while we were nestled snug in our beds while visions of sugarplums danced in our heads.

Dave had decided to vent his frustration on Marc Yager, who lived in a room with Guillaume Lesevre in the Lower Villa, where Dave also lived. However, when Dave got to Marc’s room he was gone. Long story short, Dave would frequently tease and torment Yager and Guillaume about being gay becasue they lived in the same room, even though this sleeping arrangement had been set up by Dave. He frequently told Marc and Guillaume that the only expansion they ever personally achieved was in the rear ends. Well Marc Yager decided that he wasn’t going to take it anymore. He dragged his mattress out of his room, halfway across the property, and put it in a field of dirt where he decided he would sleep.

Dave promptly ordered someone to go find Marc Yager and to call everyone from the day’s meeting back in to the property immediately. He was going to make sure there was hell to pay for this. And to make sure this never happened again, we were all going to go overboard right here, right now.

“Come on, Norman, you read the quote,’ Dave prodded. “Come on, let’s get this going.”

We lined up at the diving board of the pool. Norman Starkey recited the age-old Flag Order for the overboard drill. “We commit your sins to the waves. May you arise a better thetan.” Or something to that effect. After Norman said this, a person would jump off the diving board into the pool, swim over to the side, climb out and stand back in line around the pool. It was more weird than embarrassing. The pool was heated. I mean it was not like this was really that horrible. I am sure some people were glad that their uniforms were now going to get a free wash, and as an added bonus they would get a bath in as well.

What was worse about this particular incident was that one gal got up on the diving board — if she weighed less than 250 pounds I would have been surprised. You would have to butter this girl’s hips to squeeze her through a doorway. She was not only big but she was very rotund. She was the last person to have to go in. You could see that she was worried and did not think that she should be getting up on the board. She was clearly expecting someone to stop her from doing it, but that never came. When she got up on that diving board and started walking forward, the end of the board was, literally, touching the water. In the back of my head, I was truly concerned that she might get hurt if she tried to walk off, the sheer force of the diving board springing back up would surely catch her in the back as she moved off the end. As Norman read out the obligatory line, the end of the board was literally dipping into the water.

Dave was watching from the side of the pool. Was he really going to let this take place? I was disgusted. I mean, I could care less that I had gotten wet and was standing there in my uniform dripping wet, but making this poor woman do this was just plain wrong. She must have been in her 50s and had been at the base for at least 25 years.

“Wait a minute, Rae!” Dave finally said, “Come back.”

She barely maneuvered turning around on the end of the diving board. I was sure she was somehow going to get hurt here.

Wow, that was close. I really thought he was going to make her do it. But then, just when I thought Dave Miscavige possibly might have some tiny shred of decency left somewhere in him, he yelled out, “Go and walk into the shallow end!”

He made her walk back off the board and then all the way to the other end of the pool and slowly walk into the shallow end, down the steps and, holding onto the railing, go under water and then walk back out.

This sucks, I said to myself. There was nothing to be learned here. All Dave had done that night was prove to us that he was evil and enjoyed watching other people suffer. Not only had we all been dragged back in from our beds, we were now wet and presumably we should not go back home fearing that we might get chucked back in the pool a few hours later. What kind of lesson did we learn? I don’t even know what lesson we were supposed to learn that night. I just don’t know. Even though this was a pain that I was used to, I know that for me personally, another switch flipped in my head and it was not one in favor of Dave Miscavige.

t was another day in hell. We had been restricted to the CMO Int/WDC conference room for two months now. The basic explanation was that until all org boards and postings for the Int Base, Middle Management and Class V Orgs were done (the entire management and organizational structure of Scientology), we were not allowed to leave. We had to sleep under our desks each night and food was brought in. We were allowed to go down to the Gold Estates building for showers if we went down real early. We were not allowed to be seen while other base staff were around. We were allowed to go to different areas of the Base only if it had something to do with a specific order Dave had issued. If we were found to cross order COB in any way while we were in any area, it was an immediate RPF assignment. There was nothing we could do. Anyone who had an external facing post was not allowed to send any traffic out. All telex lines and orders from the base were cut by COB. Because all of the traffic coming from the base was cross ordering HIS strategies, he ordered no traffic be passed on to ANY orgs or management units. All of the internal facing posts were involved in the org boards and postings.

The org boards and postings for all of Scientology management had been added to the list of things Dave wanted done in July 1999.

Actually, the New Years 2000 event sealed the deal on these and was the flap of the century if you want to call it that. The entire event had to be re-done digitally after it was held live at the Sports Arena. This took two months to do over, at least.

Following that disaster, Dave’s continuing statement of why the event had been such a catastrophe was that NO ONE HAD A POST AND NO ONE AT THE INT BASE WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR ANYTHING. That was in 2000. It was now 2004 and we were locked up in the conference room. This was but the latest in a series of “too gruesomes” meant to make people crack under the pressure, and finally do something that Dave has asked for. Typically, Dave Miscavige asked for a lot of things in any given day. If one someone were to keep track of everything thing he asked for and typed them up, it would take them — oh, wait, he had a staff of eight people that did this as their sole function! They were: