Blown for Good Behind the Iron Curtain of Scientology (8 page)

Bill shook me and I was instantly awake. He was dressed, as were most of the others in the room. “You have to eat breakfast,” he said, as he walked out the door, “to be studentable.”

Again, I had the picture of him eating my sandals for breakfast as I realized I had just missed my chance for a shower! This sucks.

I grabbed some of the tasteless eggs and a piece of burnt wheat toast. Breakfast of champions around here, I thought. The entire Estates Project Force had to meet in the Vehicle Repair Unit after every meal. This was the large area right outside the EPF In-Charge office where the broken down Sea Org vehicles were parked. A bus and a few cars were parked there with their hoods open. They looked as though they hadn’t been worked on for weeks, maybe even months.

Each Estates Project Force unit lined up and reported each person as present or accounted for. After every person was verified as present or their whereabouts as known, we were briefed on who was supposed to complete the EPF that week, as well as a briefing on who and what punishments were received by those who were not performing as expected.

The EPF In-Charge seemed like a really cool laid-back guy. He was a regular-sized black fellow, probably in his late 20s, maybe early 30s. He had his uniform perfect every time I saw him and was pretty straight to the point. You could tell he had a sense of humor and smiled often. I thought to myself that this guy seemed to be happy here.

Before we went off to study, we had to do some Chinese school. Two EPFers went in front of the group with a large printout of an L. Ron Hubbard quote printed on it in huge text. The EPF In-Charge recited it and we had to parrot it back to him. He read it over and over and we repeated it back. After 15 minutes of recital, we were done.

Some of us were sent off to study while others had a different schedule, working while we studied and then studying while we worked.

When I got to the Estates Project Force course room the Supervisor met me. He gave me a list of the courses I was supposed to do. It read:

Product Zero:

1. Basic Study Manual or Student Hat

2. Basic Cleaning Course

3. Intro To Scientology Ethics Course

4. Welcome to the Sea Org Tapes

5. Basic Sea Org Member Hat Course

6. Keys To Competence Course

This was great news. I smiled as I read it. I would be out of here in no time. I told the Supervisor that I was ready to start the Tapes because I had already done the first two courses listed. I did them as a public Scientologist. The Course Supervisor was also pleased since this meant I would already be well into the courses and he could get a completion faster.

I estimated that 75% of the people in the EPF course room were kids younger than me. The other 25% ranged in age from their late teens to 40 years old. There was a huge board on the wall that showed each person and their progress on the list of courses they had to complete. The majority of people in the room appeared to be on the first few courses. I could see that I was going to be getting through this line-up faster than they were used to. I mentioned to the Supervisor that I was Fast Flow. He asked me where I did my courses to become Fast Flow. I told him I did them at Flag the year before. Having done anything at Flag was better than doing them anywhere else. “No checkouts for you then!” he said happily, “You should be able to get through these courses rather quickly.”

I listened to two entire tapes that day. The entire course consisted of five lectures total, so I figured I would be done with my first course within the next two days. The tapes were not like the study tapes I had listened to on the Student Hat course. Hubbard seemed to let his hair down a bit more, but he was still all over the place in terms of subjects covered.

On the first tape LRH talked about how it is harder to live at sea and, if you can live at sea, then you are better than the average landlubber. In the second tape he went over all the types of crews there are in the Sea Org, different types of drills that get done in the Sea Org and how to do them.

After study, we had lunch back in the galley. Someone told me that it was actually called Lebanon Hall. Turns out the entire building used to be a hospital and was called Cedars of Lebanon. Named after the trees that were used in King Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem in the Bible.

I was a bit sore from the work the day before, but took it a bit easier and made it through okay. At the end of the day, I got into the showers as soon as we got back and was able to get back to my dorm before the crowds hit.

The next day I got through two more taped lectures. The first was on why the Sea Org was so successful, which I thought was funny since the lecture was given 20 years earlier and the Sea Org had only a few thousand members worldwide. He talked about how Sea Org members handled things that came up and how they were smarter than the average bear. He also talked about how he and some of his former shipmates were stoned out of their minds on 135-proof rum in the ice-cold Alaskan Sea. I think the point of that story was how a Sea Org member needs to cope with his surroundings! The next lecture was all about how Sea Org members make things go right no matter what the circumstances. He also talks about how the Sea Org was an elite organization and that it was built upon an old pattern of past elite organizations.

I got through another day of dish washing without incident. At the end of the day I had to go get some boxes from another part of the Complex and bring them to the EPF In-Charge before I could secure for the night.

When I arrived at the EPF I/C’s office, I knocked and was asked to come in.

I was amazed at the office itself. Everything in the Vehicle Repair Unit area, which was where his office was located, was covered in dirt. However the interior of his office was well decorated with nice furniture and tons of sea-related items such as wood tillers, small model boats, etc. There were at least three or four deep blue plush couches and very nice wood coffee tables. The carpet was a bit worn but matched the overall design and motif of the room.

The EPF In-Charge was sitting at his giant wood desk with his feet perched on top of it. He was smoking a cigarette and reading a magazine. He put it down as I walked in, I could have sworn it was some kind of Playboy or Penthouse. He looked like the polar opposite of what I had seen so far. Here was the guy that was in charge of the whole operation and he had not a worry in the world. He motioned for me to place the box on the desk and as I did he said that I was “dismissed.”

As I left I couldn’t help but realize that I hadn’t seen the EPF I/C very often since I had arrived and he probably had been in the office the entire time.

The next day I completed the last lecture. It was all about how the world is one big public relations spin and anyone who wants to rule the world needs to know public relations. In the Sea Org there was a post called the Public Relations Officer and Hubbard said over and over, “it is a P-R-O world” and “P-R-O is king!” While I listened to the tape, I thought of the EPF In-Charge talking to his seniors about how hard he was working at getting people through the program. Then I realized he was probably in his office right this second, hard at work on this month’s centerfold.

I started my next course, which was a compilation of short issues written by Hubbard in the 60s and 70s about how to do things the “Sea Org” way. It included the most mundane things such as how long to spend in the shower and always to wear sandals! There was an entire issue about the type of uniforms that would be worn by who and when, etc.

After lunch, we had our normal muster with the entire EPF. Some person from the local Central Training Organization had come to tell us about a revision being made to the Estates Project Force courses. She told us that the different levels of training were being revised and
The Keys to Competence Course
was no longer a requirement to complete the Estates Project Force. That meant that anybody on the EPF that was in the middle of that course could finish the EPF right now!

Of the 50 people on the EPF, there were about five on that course. Those five people were happy to be getting out of there. Me, I only had to finish the Basic Sea Org Member Course and I, too, would be able to get out of there.

That night while cleaning in the galley, out of nowhere, about 50 people came running through and started scrubbing the floors with toothbrushes! It was like something out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Like a flock of black birds had swooped in and landed on the floor of the galley. They were all dressed in black t-shirts, black shorts and black socks with black boots. They looked similar to EPFers, but these people looked horrible. While EPFers mostly had a “newbie” look to them and were unhardened, these people had a withered look to them. None of the women had any make-up on. Most of the men had leather looking faces and thick hands with fingers that looked as though they had been doing construction work for decades. When they came in, a cloud of foul body odor came with them. It was almost enough to make me gag. It reeked worse than the galley itself.

“Looks like someone screwed up bad!” one of my co-workers leaned over and told me as we watched the crowd scrub the grout on their hands and knees.

“How can you tell?” I asked him—he said it as if it was some sort of ritual that the Rehabilitation Project Force frequently did, scrubbing floors with toothbrushes.

He then proceeded to give me the lowdown on the Rehabilitation Project Force, or RPF. “Well, normally,” he explained, “the RPF do heavy construction or jobs that go on longer than the EPF could handle. They do drywall, electrical, plumbing, you name it. They also do the really super nasty jobs like clean out the trash compactors or manure the lawns. If someone really screwed up on the RPF, then the whole group of them get punished and are forced to do things like scrub tiles with toothbrushes.”

It was not getting the tiles any cleaner, but it was a pain in the ass and humiliating. It was a lesson not to let anyone screw up. It was also a message to all Sea Org members who were not on the Rehabilitation Project Force: “Don’t end up on the RPF!”

He then went on to tell me how they didn’t get a day off. They had to sleep in designated RPF barracks. They could be on the RPF for years or for decades in some cases. They had to run everywhere they went and if they screwed up really bad, they would be sent to the RPF’s RPF. That was a separate RPF within the Rehabilitation Project Force. The penalties and punishments were worse than they were within the normal RPF and one had to get through a certain number of steps of punishment to get out of the RPF’s RPF and be on the normal RPF again. I vowed right then, I would never do the Rehabilitation Project Force no matter what happened to me.

It was my fifth day on the Estates Project Force, and I was done. It was a Wednesday and when we were done studying for the day, I only had a few hours left and I could finish my course. So instead of risking that I would not complete by Thursday at 2:00
 p.m.
, they told me to keep studying and get done today. Once I was done with the courses I would no longer be doing manual labor anyway.

Most of the other people were very surprised to see someone finish so quickly. A few other EPFers had been there for weeks or even months. I had, to my credit, already done a bulk of the required courses before I got there, so that certainly did not hurt. Lucky for me, the few courses I had already done in Scientology were on the list for the EPF.

I was supposed to get a Fitness Board in order to start working at the Association for Better Living and Education International. A group of people would review my test scores, my study record and my performance while on the Estates Project Force and decide if I was fit to join the Sea Org. Veronika Kegel at ABLE International came and met me at the Complex. She was there to pick me up and get me over to ABLE Int. I was done with the Estates Project Force and getting out of there!

I arrived at the Association for Better Living and Education. The first thing that Veronika told me was that I would start by answering the phones. I was confused. I asked her where I was being posted. She said that once my Fitness Board was approved and I was found fit for the Sea Org, my post would be assigned. But for now, I would sit at reception, answer the phones when they rang and direct incoming calls accordingly.

Before I began, I needed to go down the street and get a tie, some nice slacks and a dress shirt. Unlike the rest of the Sea Org staff, ABLE Int staff wore Uniform “K” – or “civvies” as they called them – civilian clothes.

She showed me how to use the phone system and gave me a short list of 15 staff that worked at ABLE Int.

Most of the calls were for the Registrars, Dick Story and Tom Woodruff. People were constantly coming and going for these two guys. They were either talking to someone on the phone or someone was sitting in front of them at their desks. They were asking people to donate money for Narconon, Criminon, Applied Scholastics or the Way to Happiness. Veronika explained to me that they needed to make at least $300,000 per week to meet their quota.

Everyone else seemed to sit at their computers all day and type and that was it. The Executive Director of ABLE was a white South African lady who claimed to have been in the Sea Org since she was 16 years old. She must have been in her late 30s so she had been in awhile. Her name was Rena Weinberg. She had just been brought over from South Africa where she had been the head of an Applied Scholastics group over there. Her husband was over The Way to Happiness fundraising area.

Veronika kept checking in on me and giving me extra things to do. It did not take me long to figure out that everything I was now doing were functions she had done herself before I had shown up. I was answering the phones, writing letters, filing, taking out the trash, cleaning the reception, you name it, it was my job and it all had to be done each day.

Veronika also let me in on the fact that at ABLE they never used full words, EVERYTHING was abbreviated: