Blown for Good Behind the Iron Curtain of Scientology (9 page)

Applied Scholastics = APS

The Way to Happiness = TWTH

Narconon was said “Narconon” but spelled “NN”

Criminon was said “Criminon” but spelled “CN”

Social Betterment Corporations = SBCs

Hollywood Guaranty Building = HGB

Western United States = WUS

Promotional materials = promo

Eastern United States = EUS

Trained and Processed (lists of all types of Scientologists) = T&P

Statistics = Stats

Gross Income = GI

Letters Out = LO

Letters In = LI

Bulk Mail = BMO

Veronika was the Supercargo or S/C

The Executive Director was the ED

Flag Banking Officer = FBO

The Treasury Secretary was the Treas Sec

The Dissemination Secretary was the Dissem Sec

Cycle of Action or Start - Change – Stop = “a cycle”

The list went on forever.

I could not believe how abbreviated everything was. Later that day, Veronika told me something that would illustrate this to the core.

She said, “The ED ordered that I go over to PAC and see the Dissem Secs from ASHO and AO and get the WUS and EUS T&P BMO lists that we use each week for our SBC promo. I should be back here at the HGB by dinner. If the FBO or Treas Sec ask where I went, can you tell them that I am on a GI cycle for the stats.”

That translates into, “The Executive Director ordered that I go to the complex to pick up some mailing lists for our promotion, I will be back by dinner. If anyone asks for me, that’s where I will be.”

Days went by and finally I got my Fitness Board approved. It was a piece of paper that said I was fit for the Sea Org. It was actually a letdown when I saw it. I was expecting a big meeting where I’d be questioned in front of a board of people. It was nothing like that at all. In fact, after I read it, I got the impression that it was just rubber stamped and printed. I never met any of the people who approved it or even heard of them for that matter.

Veronika told me that based on my test scores; I would be posted in HCO at ABLE Int. I would be doing the same things I was already doing. There were no people posted in the entire division of HCO at ABLE. HCO was the Hubbard Communications Office. This was the area responsible for personnel, communications and ethics. Veronika’s post was the Supercargo ABLE Int. She was over the first four divisions of ABLE, the Executive Division, Hubbard Communications Office Division, the Dissemination Division and the Treasury Division. There were three or four people in the Executive Division, two people in Dissem, nobody in Treasury and no one in HCO. Veronika was the HAS HFA, or Held From Above. Anytime someone on the org board had to do jobs underneath them, this was called HFA. Veronika was wearing all of the posts in HCO HFA.

So now that I was temporarily posted in the Hubbard Communications Office, I was the HCO Area Secretary, the division head over HCO. I was surely not going to Narconon Chilocco in Oklahoma to kick back on the Indian reservation anytime soon. I was also going to be responsible for all of the posts below me that were not filled. This was another signpost moment. I spotted it, but I had gone a bit too far down the rabbit hole at this point. If I left now, I would end up with a “Freeloader’s Bill”, an invoice for the cost of the courses I had completed so far, and would face disciplinary actions or justice actions for leaving the Sea Org.

My posting was approved and HCO Area Secretary it was. As far as I knew, I was the youngest division head in the building. It was more depressing than it was impressive. I was going to have to do all of the functions of the entire division on my own. I could not complain about people since that was one of my departments! The Executive Director, Rena Weinberg, told me that I had to get more people! She briefed me on how Martha and Boris (the two people that recruited me) were supposed to get another 10 people into ABLE before they could do their new project and that this would help, but that I needed to get some new people on my own.

There was also the matter of the statistics. I had a number of these that I had to report each week. Every single Scientology organization in the world had to report their statistics each week. It was sort of a ritual. The week ended at precisely 2:00
 p.m.
on Thursday. Anything that happened up until that point in the week was counted and reported up. All of these statistics from all around the world were being funneled to a great big think tank that would analyze the statistics and give direction on how to get them back up from going down or further up. No matter who was or wasn’t reviewing them, I had to make sure that I kept track of all of the stats I was responsible for or heavy penalties would be assessed.

Among these statistics were Bulk Mail Out, Letters Out and Letters In as well as Admin Personnel / Tech Personnel. My life would revolve around these stats. For bulk mail out, I would get mailing lists from the Complex and then get the lists to the bulk mail house company who’d receive the promo from commercial printers and then mail out all these glossy fliers.

For letters out, I would have to sit at reception and type hundreds of form letters to lists of people that had donated money to ABLE Int and ask them to donate more money.

For new recruits, I would also write letters to all of the people that had filled out any personnel surveys or info questionnaires that ABLE Int had.

Bulk mail out and letters seemed easy enough to get out each week. I just had to make sure that I did a bit more each week. Week after week, no new staff showed up. Martha and Boris had gotten a bunch of people to the Estates Project Force, but none were graduating and making it to ABLE Int.

I was also in charge of Chinese School at the three daily meetings, or musters. Each day all of the crew had to line up by division in front of the org board of ABLE Int and learn every section of the board verbatim. We had to learn all of the posts, divisions and valuable final products for all areas of ABLE Int. We did this for 15 minutes each day or until the Executive Director, Rena Weinberg, said that we were done.

ABLE Int’s Valuable Final Product was
“Subvert the subverters by creating an overwhelming popularity for LRH’s social betterment technology and cause a total revolution in the fields of drug rehabilitation, education, criminal reform and morality.”

I was not sure how my writing form letters every day was “subverting any subverters” but I did them anyway. After weeks and weeks of getting no new recruits, I had to try something different. I had been assigned lowered conditions several times and was going to be given a Committee of Evidence if I did not get some recruits into ABLE. Lowered Conditions were a set of policies by LRH that dictated steps that one had to do based on Conditions of Existence. There were higher states such as “AFFLUENCE” and “POWER” and then there were the ones used as punishment within the Sea Org such as “LIABILITY”. If you were assigned lowered conditions over and over again and did not respond with increased statistics or “upstats” then you would get a Committee of Evidence, or Comm Ev. This was an ad hoc group of other staff members who acted as a military tribunal and meted out justice to fellow staff members who weren’t performing up to par. A Comm Ev could assign you hours and hours of amends or even worse, assign you to the Rehabilitation Project Force. I started going after people I knew. I called or wrote every kid I knew from Delphi. I wrote to all of the people in the files. I even called my sister in Oregon. Stephanie was going to Delphi up there. That was the boarding school version of what we had in LA. She was there for the summer. After a few hours on the phone with her I succeeded, she was going to come to LA and meet with me! I might get someone.

My sister took about three hours to join once she met me in LA. I showed her the building I worked in, told her how much money I was making, conveniently left out the part about getting my butt kicked to get new people and told her how utterly awesome everything was. She joined. I had gotten someone in! It was a miracle. I had just turned 16, so that made her 15. When she got off the Estates Project Force I knew exactly where she could work, with me in the Hubbard Communications Office. I would make her the Cope Officer. The Cope Officer is the junior below the HCO Area Secretary. The Cope Officer is supposed to do just that, “cope,” while the HAS gets more people to enlist as new Sea Org members.

My sister took a bit longer to get through the Estates Project Force. It turned out that the guy running the program, and who had gotten me through the Estates Project Force, was not only reading Playboy magazines in his office, he was sleeping with one of the younger female recruits in his office. They’d eventually blow the Sea Org together. After this there was a big shakedown on the Estates Project Force and a few more people were sent to the decks or to the Rehabilitation Project Force for not reporting any of the lewd behavior of their former boss. Steph completed the EPF a few weeks later and sure enough, she became the Cope Officer at ABLE Int. I could now spend all my time trying to get recruits and get more people into all areas of ABLE!

Two months and zero recruits later, I was up for a Comm Ev. I hadn’t recruited anyone else, and Stephanie had been false reporting how many letters were being written. It was a disaster. I was going in front of a Committee of Evidence and there was no way around it.

I was a wreck. I was interviewed by a bunch of people on why I did not get any recruits into ABLE Int. I had no good answers as to why I was so bad at getting people into the Sea Org. The only thing I could come up with was the Sea Org was not a very glamorous place where people wanted to work. I also brought up that I was supposed to be in Narconon Chilocco and was not supposed to have been assigned to ABLE, that wasn’t what was promised to me. They would have none of it.

The committee decided that I was improperly posted, in fact the posting was illegal and that while I was a useless recruiter, I never should have been put on the post in the first place. I was reassigned until properly posted. All I could think of was that I was NOT going to the Rehabilitation Project Force.

Now that my sister was my boss, so to speak, she had me writing her letters on a full time basis. Between writing letters for her, I was also working in the Treasury Division. I was filing and getting the accounts in order. The Flag Banking Officer was doing all the Treasury functions which was not her job, so anything I did was helping her.

The Flag Banking Officer was part of the finance network, which was internationally based at “Int”. Int was a mysterious place that was where all orders and some people came from every once in a while. No one knew where “Int” was or how to get there, but it was where all of the head honchos in the Sea Org were posted. The Flag Banking Officer was going back to Int and someone else was supposed to take over for her. As part of this turnover, the new person on the post was not supposed to be doing any treasury functions, instead it would be done entirely by Treasury staff, which was comprised of only me. The Flag Banking Officer told me that I should tell everyone that I was going to be the Treasury Secretary and that was that. I wasn’t sure about this, since my last Division head post did not turn out very well.

After a few weeks, the new finance person arrived on post and I was introduced to him as the Treasury Secretary. I went along with it and no one said anything different. No posting order, no red tape. I had just decided to help and it became my official post.

I did well with my new title. Besides being good with numbers, I really liked money! I did all the payroll, checks, and bills, kept all the files, did bank deposits, etc. I became extremely skilled on issues that had to do with business taxes and how filings for the IRS were done. It was 1989, I was 16 years old and doing taxes for an international company that made hundreds of thousands of dollars, probably millions actually. There was a huge project going on at the Complex, called the Audits Tax Force. The tax force was comprised of different treasury staff from organizations all over the place that were responsible for the tax filings for their organization. Everything within the tax project was reviewed by two staff members, Ellen Reynolds and Coby Knight. They worked in the Int Finance Office and were regarded as the gods of taxes in Scientology. There were rules we had to follow to make sure that all of the laws were being adhered to in terms of taxes being taken out of pay, and which staff members were under a certain age. There were hundreds of kids throughout the Sea Organization who were under-age and they had lists of all of them! I saw the list once and it was pages and pages long. I was told that those kids were worth more than they were being paid in a year just in terms of a tax write off! I was amazed at how much paperwork there was involved in dealing with taxes.

There was one point where it was debated that ABLE Int staff members should not be getting minimum wage because the other Sea Org units weren’t paid even a fraction of minimum wage. They were paid $35 per week. For a few weeks, I was instructed to make out all of the payroll checks to the staff, and then have them sign the checks back over to the organization. This way, the money was paid out on the books, but the staff would “donate” it back to the institution. The first week I tried this was a nightmare. First, the staff weren’t going along with the idea very well. The few who did endorse their checks told me that they would be reporting this to the Executive Director, Rena Weinberg. Then, when I got to the bank to deposit the few checks I had, the teller gave me a weird look and brought her supervisor over. He flat out refused to deposit the checks. He explained to me that you cannot have employees sign over checks back to the company. Big no-no. I ended up giving everybody back their checks and telling them it was a big mistake.

Later, when I went back to the Audits Tax Force, they told me that the minimum wage would continue at ABLE Int until something else was sorted out. There was too much scrutiny from the IRS to screw everything up on behalf of the Association for Better Living and Education’s tiny payroll.