Blown for Good Behind the Iron Curtain of Scientology (41 page)

Over the past ten years, everything had turned into something audio/visual. No one at the Int Base was knowledgeable in enough different fields to be able to comprehend how any of these systems could be designed, much less produced and installed.

After fifteen years at Golden Era Productions, I had worked in pre-production, shoot production, post-production, manufacturing and had done system installations in orgs all over the world. I had more cumulative experience than anyone at the Base.

Anyone who had anywhere near the systems experience that I had, was blown or long gone.

Russ Bellin, the CO CST, was the only person who could boast to having this much experience with newer more modern types of systems. But Russ Bellin had recently been given the task of designing a few A/V systems and had failed. I got those same systems designed and approved by Dave Miscavige.

I was told by Lisa Schroer, the CO Gold, that Dave Miscavige wanted to have a meeting with me on systems later in the day. I headed over to the Cine Conference room in the Lower Lodges.

Dave showed up as did several other people from CMO Int and CST. Most of the people in the room had attended at least 50 meetings on the subject of systems. Nothing had been getting done on systems for years. I was actually the first person to get any new systems approved in over ten years. In addition to this, there had been more than five different A/V Systems Directors in the last few years and each one of them had been assigned to the Rehabilitation Project Force. So each time a new person went on post, everything would start from scratch.

Dave did his usual recap of everything that had occurred on systems in the last few years and where we stood. This was needed because people changed posts so often that you could have more than half the people in the room with no idea what had happened or what Dave had asked for in the last five meetings on the subject. Well, I had just gotten several Audio Visual systems for the orgs approved by Dave Miscavige and he brought this up as a good thing.

Then he told me what he wanted now. He wanted every single system for every single org designed, built and submitted to him for approval. Once approved, he wanted them built for all orgs. This was huge. One org alone had over $300,000 worth of systems in it. Building all of the systems for all orgs would easily be a 100 million dollar project. I had already mapped out most of these systems and this was known. But I had not formally proposed any of them. Several of them were fairly simple in design and simply needed to be funded in order to be built and proposed. That was it. It was huge, but it was clear cut and straightforward.

After the meeting, the CO Gold met with me to go over what I was going to do. I had already done most of the design work and just needed to build and program the systems and do the overall proposal.

By the end of the week I had a proposal ready for Int Finance that included what I needed to buy in order to get the proposal done. It was all of the equipment components for the individual systems and all of the ancillary items that would be needed to fabricate each system.

While that proposal was up, I streamlined how the new breed of systems would be produced. Until I started working on them, there had been a hodgepodge of different types of systems and formats being used. You had 16 mm film, 35 mm film, xenon based, tungsten based, cassettes, CDs, DVDs, VHS, etc. No system had any basic structure that was similar to any other system.

A few years earlier, another Gold staff member and I had designed and come up with a Hi-Def Film projection system that was computer based. We had an HD playback computer that was custom programmed and employed a revolutionary playback system, which was not only completely hard disk based, but was completely secure. Dave had a huge concern about the security of the media, and any system designed would have to be completely secure so that even if stolen, its built-in security features would render the media useless.

Well, we had designed this film system and it was completely computer based and driven by many different methods of remote control.

After designing the HD film rooms, they were being installed in all of the new orgs. I had overseen the installation in over 20 film rooms and each one was a huge hit.

Shortly thereafter, Russ Bellin had completely bombed on designing a personal film system called a “Reg System.” The Reg (Registrar) system was something that an org Reg could sit someone in front of and play a film that would sell them on the service that the person was supposed to do next. It took all the guesswork out of selling new services and as long as there was a film for the service, the person could watch it and then pay for the service.

Russ Bellin had hired the same outside professional designers that had designed the new Mark VIII Ultra E-Meter. The designs were then made into styrofoam prototypes and built into wood cabinets. They looked like Wal-Mart A/V system cabinets with a bizarre style to them. They sucked. Dave Miscavige rejected them out of hand.

I worked out a design that looked like a candy red sports car that had been turned into a huge TV with speakers. It was completely self-contained and looked cool. It sounded awesome. It was a 3.1 speaker system, years ahead of its time. It was also computer based.

The third and final system that would cement my place in Golden Era A/V systems history would be the Bookstore system. Dave Miscavige had laid out what he wanted in a system for the bookstores in every org.

Russ Bellin attempted to produce this and came up short. His designs were still reminiscent of his ugly Reg system designs. That gave me an idea.

I designed and built a Bookstore system that looked like it was from the same family of systems as my Reg System. This new bookstore system would also be computer based.

So, as with all of the other systems that I had designed and gotten approved by Dave Miscavige, I would make all the systems computer based. This would greatly simplify the entire process of designing and building systems and give us a stable base as well as an upgrade path for everything that was being installed. All of the menus and screens to control the systems would be Flash based, and since I had someone who could do all of that programming, we were set.

I could do all programming and designs in house and the only things that I would need to purchase for my proposal would be the computers, screens, speakers and fabrication materials.

After a few days, I had not heard back on my finance proposal. I went to CMO Int and saw Marc Yager. Marc was still a declared SP. He was being addressed by Dave Miscavige in dispatches as INT BASE SP MARC YAGER or just INT BASE SPs if the dispatch was to more than a few of the SPs.

Well, at this point not only was he an SP, but he was the single point of approval on all International Finance items. He was the one approving all the weekly Financial Planning disbursements and if you wanted any money for anything, he had to approve it.

Well, when I went and met with him, he said that in order for him to approve any finances for systems, I would have to have approval on them by COB! I could tell he was trying to screw me over. He was there when Dave told me what he wanted. He knew that I could not get the systems approved without the money and that COB would not approve the systems without the prototypes being submitted.

He made it very clear, unless I had a dispatch from COB specifically stating that I was to get funding from Int Finance, that I would not get any, period. He told me that my only other option was to get the money from Gold FP. That was the equivalent of saying, “you are never going to get the money, ever.” Gold FP could barely pay for food for the crew much less computers and crap for upcoming projects. I was screwed.

This was typical of the Int Base. People trying to stop others from getting something done just to spite them. I was doing well. I was getting stuff done, I was producing high quality systems that were being installed all over the world. I had produced over 700 HD film systems, over 350 Reg systems, totaling millions of dollars, and now Marc Yager was going to shut me down on a $30,000 finance proposal for prototypes? Not a chance.

It took me a few hours to figure out a plan. I had no idea that this plan would ultimately change my life forever.

There was a huge warehouse in LA, called the Bandini warehouse, that was a shared storage and production facility used by both Golden Era and Bridge Publications. So much room had been taken up by the new E-Meters being stored there, that a lot of older stuff was being cleared out and thrown away.

I had received a list a few weeks earlier of all of the old systems items that were located in the warehouse, with information on what was being thrown out and what was being sold.

One of the items on the list being thrown out was several pallets of 20-year-old 16 mm projectors still in the original boxes. There were stacks and stacks of these being chucked into dumpsters. I wrote down to the warehouse manager and asked him to have them sent up to me at Gold and that I would get rid of them at my end.

I looked on Ebay and found there were several of these projectors being sold for over $500. And the ones being sold were old used ones that had been damaged or had parts missing. The ones I had were still in the original packaging and had been unopened for the most part.

I had an Ebay account and a Paypal account that I used on occasion for personal purchases.

I did a new proposal on how I was going to get the money I needed. I was going to sell off all of the crap that had been accumulated in systems stocks over the last 20 years. I estimated that I could sell off $50,000 worth of old equipment and unneeded items that would never be used on the new AV systems, and that were otherwise already being thrown away.

My division head, all Gold Division heads, top executives and finance staff had approved the proposal. In order to sell any org equipment, one had to have the authorization from all of these people. So, there it was, I had the approval in writing. I started selling the items right away.

Within the first week, I had made $3,000. I had pallets arriving daily from the warehouse in LA. I was selling the items faster than I could get them up to the Int Base. After a few weeks, I had made $15,000. All the while, I was still getting my systems designed, programmed and was assembling my overall proposal to Dave Miscavige.

After a few weeks, one of COB’s Office staff came down to see me and we decided that with what I had put together, I could submit my proposal. The systems that I had actually built, I could have ready to demonstrate, and any others I could just show pictures of how the system would look and what items it would consist of. This worked for me.

In a few days I completed the submission and sent it up. As with all submissions to COB, they had to go through about five other people before they could be presented to him. The routing on my submission was the following:

TO: COB RTC

via: CO CST

via: CO CMO INT

via: CO GOLD

via: MFG SEC GOLD

FROM: A/V SYSTEMS DIRECTOR GOLD

The submission went back and forth with the Manufacturing Sec several times to fix points that might be interpreted wrong or lead to someone having to do more work than they wanted to.

Then it bounced around between the CO Gold and CO CMO INT several times and parked with CO CMO INT while event stuff was being worked on.

Being the end of the year, Christmas was coming up. At Christmas time, when you were at Gold, you could usually count on getting some sort of year-end bonus. Every year, it would get smaller, but still, each year, you would look forward to the small chance that this year’s bonus would be awesome. Well that year, I think it was $35. That was less than one dollar a week as an end of the year bonus. Awesome.

In addition to that, because the crew had to buy a group gift for COB and COB Asst, $10 was taken out of each person’s pay for the two weeks before Christmas for the gifts. Dave would usually get a $10,000 handmade suit from High Society Custom Tailor in Beverly Hills and Shelly, his wife and personal assistant, would get some sort of clothing item worth more than I made all year long. This did not only happen at Christmas. This same sort of thing happened on Dave and Shelly’s birthdays as well. I was there for 15 years and each birthday and Christmas they got a gift that was easily worth more than a few thousand dollars. Also this was not something that only Gold did; Gold was actually considered the cheapskate of all orgs! Because we had so many people, we could get away with just giving a few bucks. And if you did
not
give, you were “disaffected or had Black PR on Dave”. RTC staff would sometimes pony up $100 each for their org’s present. RTC, IAS, CST, ASI, CMO INT, CMO GOLD CMO PAC, CMO CW, CMO EU, CMO EUS, CMO SHIP, CMO ANZO, FLAG, and other orgs all did this. In 2004, ASI gave Dave a brand new BMW 645Ci for Christmas! If Dave Miscavige did not get over $50,000 dollars worth of gifts each birthday and Christmas, I would be surprised.

Well, I decided that this was crap and that I would get something for Dave and Shelly from my wife and I, and that the $40 auto deduction would not apply to me. When I picked up my pay those weeks, I told the payroll officer that I was getting them my own gift and was not to have my pay deducted.

The week before Christmas Day, we got two hours to do our Christmas shopping at Wal-Mart. The buses were filled with people in shifts and everybody went to Wal-Mart, bought what they needed, climbed back on the buses and came back.

Each year the Christmas shopping time had gotten shorter and shorter, but this was insane. I considered a gift from Wal-Mart an insult and I certainly was not going to purchase gifts for Dave and Shelly from Wal-Mart.

Since I had an Ebay account, I decided to get something that was unique and would be cool. I bought Dave a Depeche Mode album, which is what I usually gave him each birthday and Christmas anyway. I found an original printing of a book that L Ron Hubbard’s uncle, Elbert Hubbard, wrote called
A Message to Garcia
.
The book is referenced in a few policies. There were a few different ones on Ebay that I could get, all fairly cheap, so I bought all of them. When I got them in, the best one was printed in the early 1900’s and was the original leatherbound booklet in mint condition. I had a little wood box and wrapped some velvet around some foam and put the booklet inside.