On St. Valentine's Day, February, 1995, a very strange thing happened
in LA. All the personnel of INCOMM, along with a number of others who
had had dealings with INCOMM, disappeared behind the org's perpetually
locked doors in the "Big Blue" complex. They no longer appeared at
meals in their private dining room, even those who had non-INCOMM
spouses they normally dined with. In fact, they never even came home
any more. Late at night and early in the morning, they could sometimes
be seen parading single file, under the eagle eyes of imported
security guards, from the INCOMM offices to a locked stairwell that
leads to the INCOMM berthing wing on the fourth floor of the Main
Building (the Y-shaped building that fronts on Fountain Avenue). Apart
from that, for four months these people were rarely seen by others.
They never went anywhere unescorted by security guards (even RPFers
can be escorted by other RPFers), and seldom went anywhere, period.
They never saw their spouses or children unless it was by a chance
encounter while being herded to or from their special berthing or,
occasionally, taken elsewhere on some special task.
What the hell was going on? This was unprecedented, even in an
environment where paranoia is de rigueur. Other Sea Org members who
asked about it were told, "You are not to even *think* about it. Don't
wonder, don't speculate. Do not try to find out. Do not talk about it
with others. It is none of your business." Once in a while, before the
four months were up, someone would re-enter normal Sea Org society
from "inside," but they were silent as monks about what had happened.
Finally, toward the end, the INCOMM prison started emptying out
rapidly. People went back to post, except for half a dozen or so who
turned up on the RPF and a few who were dismissed from the Sea Org.
However, none of them said a word, and to this day practically nobody
knows what happened. When they were released, the prisoners were
ordered not to tell anyone, even those with high security clearances,
anything about what had occurred or what was done to them. The truth
is, most of the incarcerated never really found out themselves *why*
they had spent several months under house arrest and perpetual guard.
This part of the story answers the question, "Why did it happen?"
In January of the same year, I was still in OSA International. I was
working on a special project to create a newer, better computer system
for OSA to be able to search and interrelate its mountains of
dossiers, reports, legal documents, media, and other information in
order to better reach conclusions about whom to attack and how. INCOMM
was supposed to do all computerization, but they had never done much
for OSA and had little interest in helping, so OSA did it on their
own. A public Scientologist, former DSA Boston staff brought out to LA
for just this purpose, had been working with me for several years on
earlier versions of the same system. He is a programmer par excellence
and designed the system and wrote most of the software for it.
The system was so successful that users kept demanding more and more.
Finally we decided that a major new version was needed, a nearly
complete rewrite. But computer systems were not supposed to be
designed or developed outside INCOMM, and INCOMM didn't want to do it.
RTC, who directly runs INCOMM but also deals directly with OSA, had to
mediate. We could do the system ourselves, but we would have to do it
within INCOMM and under the supervision of the Commanding Officer of
INCOMM, Greg Johnston, if I recall his name correctly. Greg is the guy
pictured doing TRs in the Scientology Handbook from pages 164 through
182. Since neither my non-SO associate nor I had clearances to work in
INCOMM, we had to work in a special wing that had been set up behind
Reception. There were a few other non-cleared personnel in the same
wing doing other projects for INCOMM.
OSA Int occupies the 10th and 12th floors of the Hollywood Guaranty
Building, on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Ivar; the 12th
floor being the top. On the 12th floor is a combined conference room
and CIC. CIC stands for Command Information Center or Control
Information Center, and it's where all the important information
(other than "eyes only" ) is posted or summarized. All OSA staff are
required to brief themselves on CIC weekly, or they don't get paid for
the week. One day, I was on the 12th floor and found the conference
room had been closed off. It had been taken over by RTC. That had
happened before, so I wasn't surprised, but this lasted longer than
usual. Then, a few days later, I was told to report there. I still had
no idea what was up.
I knocked and was admitted. Warren McShane was there. So was an RTC
sec-checker named Manuela, along with two INCOMM technical personnel.
I had been "invited" because I was well known for continually finding
gaping holes in INCOMM's pathetic computer security. McShane wanted
know if I thought there were still some ways that general users could
get access to everything in the computer. I said, "Sure, probably."
Every time I had reported something, INCOMM had eventually fixed that,
but they had never done an overhaul to find similar security flaws I
hadn't happened to run across yet.
So he briefed me. A confidential report from the private computer
files of the Investigations Aide, Linda Hamel, had been posted on
a.r.s. They were trying to find out how the report could have been
gotten and who had done it. This was no minor security breach.
"Investigations" means "intelligence." This is the espionage and dirty
(dirtier!) tricks division of OSA. Their "eyes only" secrets are so
secret that even other OSA personnel do not have access to them. If
somebody could get to Linda Hamel's files, then *no* information was
safe -- not even RTC's. This was the equivalent of a five-alarm fire,
except not even OSA could be told what had happened. Everybody was a
potential suspect, and all the Invest personnel were kept under watch,
in case someone who had legitimate access to the document had posted
it.
What was the document? Many of you will remember it. It was about the
incident with Tom Klemesrud. The problem with Tom was his refusal to
de-host Dennis Erlich and other anti-Scientologists for posting NOTs
materials and being a general nuisance to Scientology. They sent in
Miss Bloody Butt, who got Tom to take her home with him and then
smeared blood all over the bathroom and elsewhere and was supposed to
try to frame Tom for attacking her. The stolen document, a report
about these events, was posted through anonymous remailer
anon.penet.fi, the poster going by -AB-. -AB- had been on a.r.s. for
some time and was well known, but had never before done anything to
distinguish himself. He was just a pro-Scientology, pro-COS apologist.
So he got this document from Linda Hamel's computer files and posted
it as evidence "from the source" in favor of Scientology's version of
the story. Linda or somebody else in Invest recognized it and reported
the breach, and all hell broke loose -- but quietly, quietly.
Nobody knew who -AB- was, of course, and Julf, who ran anon.penet.fi,
was not saying. Take a moment to envision how maddening this must have
been to Miscavige and RTC: They *knew* there was a spy. They *knew*
that either it was somebody highly placed and completely trusted, or
else their entire computer system was compromised. It's difficult to
imagine which alternative would have been worse. They couldn't do a
broad purge, because they'd be getting rid of many people they utterly
depended on, and even then could not be sure of getting the culprit.
And they could not let *anyone* know of the security breach, except
the minimum number who absolutely needed to know. They didn't have
resources to do broad sec-checking; they were sec-checking the Invest
personnel who had opportunity, if not motive, to commit the crime, but
if it was a low-level Sea Org member who had found a way past the
computer's security, it could take months or years to find him by sec
checking.
The INCOMM personnel working with us were trying to crack into various
internet systems to discover clues that might lead to the identity of
-AB-. They were also investigating internally for weaknesses in their
system and searching the computers for clues as to who might have
posted the document. They were also correcting the flaws I reported to
them. The first few were easy for me: I already knew of several, which
I had been using myself, not to snoop, but to have access to programs
that made my own job more efficient. I "should have" reported them
earlier, but they were great timesavers and they were not accessible
to just anybody, so I hadn't up to that point. But then I went on to
find dozens more, particularly under the account of a former CO of
INCOMM, who had apparently set up his own access prior to moving off
the post. Quite convenient for him. It wasn't really leading any
closer to unmasking -AB-, but at least they were finally doing
something comprehensive about their truly lame security. (I know, I
know -- if only I had left *before* fixing their security -- but I
have a feeling it's still pretty bad, just in different ways. They
don't trust "wog" security systems, so they're forced to rely on their
own, often incompetent and always overworked, personnel.)
Meanwhile, Warren McShane was attacking the problem from different
angles. He told us he'd briefed the Invest personnel: He wasn't even
interested in punishing anybody, and wouldn't do so if the person
confessed; he just wanted to know *how* it had been done. I remember
thinking, "Yeah, right. That'll work." But, then again, anybody crazy
enough to do what -AB- had done (believing it would help Scientology,
and believing he'd get away with it) might be crazy enough to believe
such a bald-faced lie.
McShane took us down to the LA Police Department to talk with the
officer handling the case. We told him what we knew so far. He didn't
have much to say. He said it looked like an inside job. As if we
didn't know.
I had come to the end of my search for computer security gaps, so I
moved on. I created a database, into which I loaded all the phone
records from the PAC Base phone system, which records the number,
time, length, and station of every call, incoming or outgoing (without
the incoming number if caller ID is blocked). This was to narrow the
possibilities of who could have been posting around the times we were
concerned with. It wasn't helping much yet, but it might later.
Halfway around the globe, Julf in Finland was still refusing to tell
us anything about -AB-. McShane had contacts there and was getting
somebody to lean on Julf -- hard -- but he wasn't budging. However, we
had two things in our favor: Stealing computer data is an actual crime
under actual (not Scientological) penal codes; and, according to
McShane, some people had been using anon.penet.fi to post child
pornography, so Julf was already in hot water. I'm hazy on the
details, but I think the Finnish police got involved, and finally Julf
revealed the ISP of -AB-. He either couldn't or wouldn't tell us
-AB-'s actual identity.
This proved to be the big break in the case, but not right away. The
ISP was Cal Tech Pasadena. Road trip! Several of us, including some
Invest personnel, piled in to a van and headed for the college. The
Invest heavies went to the computer center and demanded their help in
finding out who had posted the document. The computer center told the
Invest heavies to get lost. There were a couple more attempts, but
they went nowhere. Apparently, though, -AB- was an alumnus, or he
wouldn't have had an account there. So we trundled off to the library
and started going through yearbooks, looking at photos. After several
days of little or no sleep, and an unknown number of years since the
culprit's graduation, we failed to find anybody we knew.
We spent several hours hunting, though. When we finally came back, I
think I had a snooze and came in after dinner. "Did you hear? We found
out who -AB- is!" No, I hadn't heard. But when we had been at Cal
Tech, somebody had managed to get their access phone numbers. Since
almost nobody in the Sea Org is allowed to have an internet connection
and even fewer would have an account at Cal Tech, it was a simple
matter to find from the phone system records when and from where the
phone calls to -AB-'s ISP were made. This led directly to the night
computer operator in INCOMM. This is another name for something like
the network admin. Computer operations personnel spend their waking
hours inside the holy of holies, the glass-enclosed Computer Room.
When you have a problem with the computer, you call and ask for
"Operations," and you talk to whomever is in there at the moment. He
fixes whatever's wrong and, in between calls, does routine admin work
like backups.
Computer operators were above suspicion. It had never occurred to any
of us for more than an instant to suspect anyone in INCOMM. After we
knew, it was a forehead-slapping "DUH!", but not even McShane had
seriously believed someone in INCOMM, with complete access to
everything on every computer, would publicly post a stolen document.
It was *too* obvious. They had to know they'd be the prime suspects,
so they'd know better than to do it, because they'd get caught pronto.
Besides, -AB- from his postings seemed out of touch with reality (as
we in OSA and RTC knew it to be), and INCOMM qualifications were far
too tight to have let such a person in. Nevertheless, there he was.
I had spoken with Tom Rummelhart a number of times, but never met him
and still do not know what he looks like. But, as Tom Klemesrud
revealed several years ago, Tom Rummelhart was -AB-, and this is who
Tom Rummelhart was. He apparently had listed his occupation as
Director of Computerization, but that's a bit more grand than what he
actually was. Although he had the access of an admin, as an operator
he would not have had authority to grant or revoke anyone's accounts
on his own, create or change data structures, or do much of anything
but keep the computers running and maintained, fix problems, and carry
out certain instructions from others in INCOMM. If he was truly
"Director" of anything, he may have been the lead operator or Director
of Operations -- sort of a chief technical flunky -- but I never heard
of him being even that. As far as I ever knew, he was just a regular
operator.
According to one of the INCOMM personnel on the project, Rummelhart
had deleted the computer logs that recorded his clandestine internet
activies and his theft of the secret document. However, he had
neglected to delete all the saved earlier versions of the same logs,
which were found once we knew where to look. Tch! Even I, an unwashed
non-INCOMM lowlife who was not supposed to know such things, knew
better than that! Anyway, -AB- had been caught.
My then-wife, also in OSA, asked me, "Who is Tom Rummelhart and why
has he been in session all day with Manuela? Does it have to do with
the project you're on?" I told her he was an INCOMM operator and yes,
it had to do with our project, but I couldn't say more. His all-day
"session" would have been Manuela sec-checking the living daylights
out of him, to see what else he'd done and whether he was a plant sent
in by one of our many enemies. Unsurprisingly, he was not. It was
impossible to issue a Suppressive Person Declare on him; they'd have
had to say what he did. So he just disappeared. After that day, Tom
Rummelhart's name was never heard more in PAC.
Mission accomplished. Finally, we could go home and get some sleep.
Except I couldn't. I had been two weeks or more full time on this, and
the clock was still ticking on my real project, the overhaul of the
OSA Computer System. Also, I had to put together a proposal for making
the OSA computers utterly impervious and secure. Fortunately, my
non-SO associate had continued to work away while I was off catching
spies. A couple early mornings later, I was sitting in my office
behind INCOMM reception, trying to stay awake after having worked all
night. It was February 14th, Valentine's Day. In walked ...
- The Saint Valentine's Day Massacre -
"What Really Happened in INCOMM – Part 1" revealed the internal events
leading up to the virtual disappearance of INCOMM personnel for
several months. A confidential report from OSA Investigations Aide
Linda Hamel's computer files had turned up on
alt.religion.scientology, posted by someone calling himself -AB-. An
investigation headed by RTC executive Warren McShane identified -AB-
as Tom Rummelhart, a night computer operator in INCOMM, who was
security checked and then quietly sent far away.
"Mission accomplished. Finally, we could go home and get some sleep.
Except I couldn't. I had been two weeks or more full time on this, and
the clock was still ticking on my real project, the overhaul of the
OSA Computer System. Also, I had to put together a proposal for making
the OSA computers utterly impervious and secure. Fortunately, my
non-SO associate had continued to work away while I was off catching
spies. A couple early mornings later, I was sitting in my office
behind INCOMM reception, trying to stay awake after having worked all
night. It was February 14th, Valentine's Day. In walked ..."
In walked Susan Bolstadt, with a woman I didn't recognize. I hadn't
seen Susan for years – didn't realize she was still in the Sea Org.
She had been my boss briefly in 1983, while I was getting busted off
the Western U.S. Programs Chief post. After we exchanged surprised
"Hello's," Susan asked me what I was doing there. I told her, and
wondered the same thing about her. She asked me to follow her.
We went toward the interior of INCOMM. The door, always before locked
tight, stood wide open. That explained it. There had been a serious
security breach from within INCOMM, so an ethics mission had been sent
down to handle the internal out-ethics in INCOMM and make sure that
such a situation could never recur.
This is normal procedure, and I'd been through it many times in other
settings. At the higher levels, whenever someone important blows
(suddenly disappears without authorization) or turns out to have been
involved in seriously out-ethics activity, there is at least an
investigation, if not a mission. The assumptions are, first, that the
person had to have been exhibiting "indicators" (clues indicating
underlying out-ethics), and, second, that the only way the other
personnel could have missed noticing these indicators was that they
were blinded by their own out-ethics situations. Both these
assumptions are firmly based in fundamental Hubbard policy and
"technology"; therefore, they are infallible. Everyone has to do O/W
write-ups, the top execs and those most closely involved are sec
checked, and often the entire org is assigned an ethics condition
below Non-Existence. It's always unpleasant, but if can show that your
own statistics are "up" (rising), you are automatically exempted from
individually applying the lower condition.
All this flashed through my sleep-deprived brain in the instant I saw
the open door. I realized that Susan and her cohort were just
collecting up everybody they found in the org. Since I wasn't part of
INCOMM, I shouldn't be involved; I hoped I could convince Susan – then
I saw Warren McShane by the opening. Oh, good! He knew everything. He
would straighten them out and I could get back to work. Susan had me
wait behind while she went over to McShane and talked with him a bit.
I saw him nod "yes." Oh – well, probably just a formality. I'd get a
briefing or something with the rest of them, because I was in on the
deal, and then they'd send me away. They wouldn't let a lower echelon
fellow like me see the burning brimstone rain down upon INCOMM. I felt
sorry for them, but, well, they *had* missed what Rummelhart was
doing.
As we walked in I shot a cheery (if bleary), "Hi, sir!" to McShane. He
nodded and gave me one of those warm, friendly, honest smiles that
Scientologists, actors, and politicians are so good at. That convinced
me. Nothing to worry about.
I couldn't have been more wrong.
Thirty seconds later I walked in to a huge, linoleum-floored room with
dozens of people standing in two long rows. One row was males, the
other females. There were a few people standing around them in
missionaire uniforms. Nobody explained anything; nobody said a word,
except a missionaire who gave me a manila envelope and told me to
write my name on it, empty my pockets into it, and put my pager in as
well. I complied. He sealed the envelope and put it on a row of tables
covered with similar envelopes. He told me to spread my feet and hold
my arms out, and he frisked me. Then he went over me with a
metal-detecting wand. Satisfied, he sent me to stand in the male line.
We just stood there. After a while, somebody else was brought in. This
was a woman I had seen and spoken to a few times. She was also
non-INCOMM staff, working in the same non-cleared wing as I. She had
to empty her pockets. She was taken off to a private room, undoubtedly
to be frisked and "wanded" by a female missionaire. Then she joined
the female line. This went on for a while. Mostly we all just stood
there silently. Every so often a new person was brought in,
de-pocketed, detected, and deposited in either of the lines.
After half an hour or an hour, a new missionaire walked in. The male
frisker barked, "Atten-TION!" We complied. This was Liz Ingber, a Sea
Org officer and a senior executive who, as far as I know, has been one
since the Apollo days. I was impressed. There aren't many
Hubbard-and-Apollo-minted top execs left. The ones that didn't blow
mostly got busted or found unqualified and are on lower posts or in
lower orgs. Even RTC executives, though they have more power, do not
have the eminence of someone like "Mr. Ingber." (In the Sea Org,
officers are "mister" and "sir," whether male or female.)
She ordered everyone to our side of the room, so she wouldn't be
between the two lines. She began: "You're all assigned a condition of
Confusion. You allowed an SP to infiltrate INCOMM." ("Confusion" is
the lowest ethics condition in Scientology, worse than Enemy and
Treason.) She went on about how suppressive we all were for ignoring
this threat which could have wiped out Scientology entirely and was
requiring enormous senior executive intervention to protect mankind's
only hope. Obviously, we did not care if SPs destroyed the Church, and
just as obviously, this meant we had massive crimes of our own. The
mission was going to find them and find out who else among us were
working for the enemy. "You're all under house arrest. You're not to
leave the base. You're not to leave INCOMM." And so on. She never did
say who the "SP" was or what he had actually done, which was to defend
Scientology, however misguidedly, by posting a PI report that
bolstered the Church's claims.
If I hadn't been so exhausted, I might have been angry. Instead, I was
bewildered and on the verge of insane cackling. This wasn't happening!
It couldn't be! There must be some misunderstanding … There must be
some kind of mistake … The Phil Collins song started playing inside my
head, over and over and over. It was the sound track to my Nightmare
on Fountain Street. I kept biting my tongue to stay alert and keep
from breaking out into hysterics. After Ingber's speech, the
non-INCOMM personnel were collected separately so the security guards
(that's who the friskers and watchers were) could ask us who we were
and what org we worked for. Some of them I didn't know either. They
came to a young chap with an English accent and asked his name. "Phil
Collins, sir." "There must be some misunderstanding … woo-oo-oo …
There must be some kind of mistake …." At that point I nearly did
break out laughing. I wondered if this was what it felt like to be
insane … I didn't feel insane, I didn't feel any different at all,
just tired, but that was just too much. It was impossible to believe!
Well, on the bright side, if I really was crazy, they'd have to let me
go and all this would be over. (Little did I know what had happened to
Lisa McPherson just a few weeks before.)
It wasn't until several days later that I learned the kid had actually
said, in his thick Mancunian accent, "Phil Collinson."
Well. The preliminaries ended, and it was time for us to start
applying the ethics conditions. I still had the fond notion that I'd
be out of there in a few days, so the thing to do to hasten my release
was get busy with the program. The formula for Confusion is "Find out
where you are." You have to do a locational on the area you're in,
then compare it to other areas where you've been, and then do another
locational on your present area. A locational is a type of simple
Scientology processing in which the auditor points at something and
tells the pc or pre-OT to look at it, then does same thing with
something else, and so on. There's no e-meter, and they walk around.
It's pretty informal. People "twin up" and do the process on each
other. It doesn't require any training; just read how to do it and do
it. But it *is* auditing, and the auditor's code applies – it's a
serious offense to audit someone who hasn't had enough sleep. I told
one of the security guards I'd been up all night and asked if I could
go get some sleep so I could do the Confusion locationals. He said
nope, just do it. I complied. My "twin," a kid named Don, and I walked
around this huge, nearly bare, underground room full of people,
pointing out things, or having them pointed out and looking at them.
After my Confusion formula write-up was approved by the mission, I got
to work on Treason, then Enemy, then Doubt. In those, you're just
supposed to have some realizations and make decisions and write stuff
down. That was good. I could sit down, facing the wall, and sort of
prop my head up and think about what to write. And if I occasionally
dozed off for a few minutes, nobody who cared noticed. Later on we
were fed, still in the same room. In the beginning, we spent nearly
all our waking hours in that room.
Early that first day, everybody's pagers, in the envelopes, started
beeping. Mine fired off a few minutes after I missed morning muster in
OSA Int. I told the head security guard that I needed to respond to
the pages, even if it was to tell the Director of Inspections and
Reports of OSA Int why I wasn't in and couldn't come in. The reply?
Nope. Let it beep. And so they beeped, in their sealed envelopes, for
hours and hours until they were finally all carried away. I never saw
mine, nor any of my pocket-contents, again until a few days before I
was released.
I don't know if it was that day or the next that they started putting
us to work. On my first job, several of us were taken to an ordinary
public storage facility in Burbank. My jaw hit the ground. *This* was
where INCOMM had been storing all the backups and archive tapes from –
forever! With nothing but a flimsy padlock between our top security
materials and the world's SPs! There were two large units. One was
filled wall to wall and floor to ceiling with tapes, and the other was
getting there. Of course, they were enormous tapes that held very
little data, even by the standards of the day. I estimate that the
whole mess would have fit on 1,000 CD-ROMs. But it wasn't, and we had
to get it out of there. Even OSA records were stored there. Under the
watchful eyes of our guards, who could see every twist in the hall and
every person, we chain-relayed the boxes till we had an elevator full,
then chained them out into a rental truck. We did this over and over
until the units were empty. We went back to INCOMM, and the truck went
… elsewhere. Of course, I never learned where that was. I would guess
it was to the INCOMM facility at "Int" (the Gold base).
That was swell for my Liability condition, though, the next one above
Doubt, because as required it was an "effective blow against the
enemies of the group," the enemy being "out-security." It's tough to
find flesh-and-blood enemies of Scientology when you're stuck inside a
room full of Sea Org members. Unfortunately, that night or the next I
almost let something into the trash that should have been shredded, so
I had to start all over again at Treason, since "OUT-SECURITY =
TREASON" in the Sea Org according to a Flag Order by Hubbard.
Fine. Not fine, but, well, shit happens. Mostly it would be just more
writing, writing, writing, and I'd have to think up a new "enemy" to
deliver an effective blow against. Speaking of writing, the next thing
we had to do when we were not working on ethics conditions or just
plain working, was to write up our overts and withholds – O/W
write-ups. That was always a good time-killer, and it didn't look like
anybody was getting loose without a sec check, and theoretically
writing up your O/Ws would shorten your time in sec checking. Plus we
were ordered to do it. I complied.
Later on my work took a number of forms, but one of the bigger jobs
was to sit with a crew inside the generator hut (you can see it from
Catalina Street, just south of the "Horseshoe" entrance to the
Complex), destroying obsolete 14" WORM cartridges that had been used
to store images of Data Files documents. We had to sand down the media
to the reflective backing and obliterate it. That ate up several
weeks. Other times we had to destroy hard drives by taking them apart
and sanding all the magnetic media off the aluminum disks. Know
something? You have never seen a strong magnet if you have not taken
apart a modern hard drive and gotten at the magnets that control the
read-write head movements. All other magnets are puny weaklings by
comparison. I was playing with a pair of them and slipped – they came
together so hard they sliced through part of my hand. And they were
not sharp-edged! We also destroyed custom read-only chips, in case the
enemy was thinking about duplicating the functionality of an INCOMM
keyboard. You split the plastic package apart and file the tiny actual
integrated circuit down to powdery oblivion. Or, if they won't split,
you file through the package till you get to the chip.
After the "de-kludge," or clean-up and destruction of all the unneeded
junk, I started working in a room adjoining the main one we spent most
of our time in. This is the INCOMM Hardware room. People who weren't
INCOMM crew were moved in there to clean and repair all the hundreds
of monitors, keyboards, and printers that had been piling up over the
years. All of them needed cleaning, so that was part of the routine,
but those of us who had some knowledge or aptitude with electronics
and a soldering iron got to do the fun work of figuring out what was
wrong and fixing it. As it turned out, the INCOMM personnel didn't
know much more about it than we did, which goes a long way toward
explaining why they had so much equipment that didn't work. So we were
on our own. We fixed what we could, cannibalized what we couldn't, and
got a lot of equipment back into use. I ran across a book on digital
electronics and taught myself about it, eventually designing an alarm
circuit for the now-ex-CO of INCOMM.
Since the Hardware room didn't open on any room except the main one,
and there was nothing seriously confidential in it, there was no need
to have a guard watching us every moment. We developed some good
friendships and had some good times in there. I really learned a lot –
including what 450 volts through your hand feels like – but it wasn't
because anybody was teaching us anything; it was because I had the
time, and nothing else to do, and no place else I could go.
One day, the Mission I/C (In-Charge) walked in and started talking to
one of my new friends, a guy of about thirty from Denmark. Obviously
something "big" had come up during this guy's sec check, and he felt
he was no longer worthy of being a Sea Org member, so he should route
out. He explained this to Liz Ingber. Did she acknowledge his remorse
and remind him that the Sea Org needed him and that he could be
redeemed? Not in the least. She simply told him that he had committed
suppressive acts and that if he left the Sea Org it would be as a
declared Suppressive Person and he could go join the Walking Dead who
would never, ever, *ever* go OT. End of discussion. Out she marched. I
didn't and don't know what his "big" overt was, but knowing what COS
considers suppressive, it's probably something like he falsified an
auditing report and said a preclear felt better when it wasn't so.
Early on, some key people were going in session for their sec checks,
but most were continuing to work on their conditions and O/Ws. It was
during this time that Liz Ingber walked in and berated one of the
INCOMM staff, in front of everyone, for masturbating (see Sea Org's
Willie, posted three weeks ago). Another time, Susan Bolstadt made a
general announcement: She had noticed that not many of us were OT III
or above. This, she said, was an indicator that we were criminally
out-ethics. Why? Because good Sea Org members should make themselves
more valuable by going up the Bridge? No. It was because the fact that
we were withholding ourselves from case gain proved that we had
serious crimes – criminals subconsciously withhold themselves from
becoming more able because then they'd be able to harm even more
people.
Ooooo-kaaaayyyyy … I would have said it differently – you assholes at
Int rip off all our best personnel and, with pointless and frantic
micromanagement, keep the rest too busy to ever establish a staff
auditing unit, so there's nobody left to audit us, but anyway, Yes,
Sir, Point Well Taken! In retrospect, of course, I am glad I never
made it onto OT III.
I don't even remember when it was that I finally started getting my
own sec check. Since I wasn't genuine INCOMM, they didn't care how
fast they got me finished and back onto post, and I was toward the end
of the list. It was weeks after the mission's arrival before I first
went in to session. There's not a great deal to say about what went
on. I'd had many sec checks before then, and there wasn't much special
about this one. There did come a point when the auditor, Leslie
Worstell, was sure she had caught me out on Something Big, and she
wouldn't quit badgering me till I said something that sounded like
what she wanted to hear. The next day I was un-auditable – couldn't go
in session till she had done a "repair list" on her previous day's
mauling, correcting the false confession she had forced me into. This
was all confirmed on the meter and she was satisfied I hadn't lied.
Nevertheless, the report she'd written on my "confession" remained in
my ethics folder, whereas the correction never went there at all, and
probably still hasn't. Not that I'd care now, but if you're still a
COS member, I suggest you demand to see your ethics folders (they have
to show them to you by their own policy) so you can see what lies are
in it that you don't even know about.
Days turned into weeks turned into months. My sec check finished; I
had to re-start ethics conditions several times, particularly after
some RTC exec rejected my Liability formula on a fundamental point
after nearly everyone else had signed it. Most of the RTC personnel no
longer spent much time in INCOMM, leaving just the regular
missionaires. However, they had introduced a new feature into the
ethics conditions. Whereas in a normal Liability Condition you need to
get the written permission of a majority of your group (org, usually)
to be allowed to rejoin it, *this* liability required the signature of
*every single* missionaire and *every single* RTC member involved, as
well as the signature of everyone in INCOMM who was already upgraded
from Liability. There is no such stipulation anywhere by Hubbard, and
it was exceedingly "squirrel" (off source and illegal) of them,
especially as "the sole guarantors of standard tech," to add this
arbitrary requirement.
If you've been in Scientology very long, or on staff for even a while,
you've probably been assigned Liability or lower and worked your way
through it. You know what it takes: After delivering the "effective
blow" to the enemies and making amends to the good guys (which
essentially means losing a lot of sleep if you're on staff), you type
up your formula, make a bunch of copies, and pass it out to all the
staff, You have a list. They read it, and mostly they sign it, and
when you have a majority, you're done. If a few don't like it or just
hate your guts, it's no big deal. Majority rules, and they want you
back anyway to get their own stats up.
This was not like that. In the first place, there was no typing.
Typewriters no longer existed, and computers were forbidden to us
untrustworthy criminals. Everything was handwritten, with or without
carbon paper. I think we did manage to get access to the org's
photocopier for the liability formulas, so not everything had to be
handwritten several times. But the RTC personnel were hardly ever
around anymore, so it was tough to even give them a copy, and if they
didn't read it right then, you never knew when you'd get it back or
when you'd even see them again. You didn't want to seem to uppity, so
you didn't bug them about it – and they forgot about it, or some did
anyway, and it only took one. And, as it turned out, one of them
really did hate my guts. Toni, formerly Jacobsen, formerly my friend
when she was in OSA Int, whose new last name I forget, apparently had
decided that I was just a piece of out-ethics crap for ever and ever.
She'd hang on to my Liability for days or weeks and then send it back
with a senseless rejection. I never did get her signature. The mission
finally gave up too and released me without requiring it.
This was truly the liability formula from hell. It was not just my
problem – everybody went through the same thing, except the part about
being despised by Toni. Every time a new person got upgraded and went
back to post in INCOMM, that became yet another person to get a
signature from, in order to fulfill the new unanimous consent
requirement. Not only that, they were no longer confined to our big
room, so they became almost as hard to get signatures from as the RTC
personnel. In the end, many if not most of us were there for close to
four months. We worked, studied, and ate in the same room or rooms,
and slept, under guard, in dormitories crammed with bunk beds and
almost nothing else. We were watched or escorted to the shower rooms
and back. We watched the March 13 and May 9 International Event videos
inside INCOMM. We even completed courses inside INCOMM. Life, and
death, went on without us. New York George's Restaurant burned down.
We could see the smoke from our room. Timothy McVeigh blew up the
Murrah Building in Oklahoma City. We heard about it on the radio. My
father died. I had to take the call from my sister with a security
guard listening on the line in case I said or heard something I
shouldn't. Sometimes, in our sleeping room, I would just watch other
Sea Org members from our window up on the fourth floor. I actually
envied Sea Org members their freedom.
Finally, the mission got tired of hanging around. They brought in a
couple New and Improved INCOMM Security Officers from Int, since "we"
had messed it up so badly when left to ourselves. They started doing
end-time things, tying up loose ends, helping contact derelict
Liability formula signers, They put on a new CO INCOMM. People started
"graduating" faster. On June 14, four months to the day after our
imprisonment had begun, it was finally my turn. I was taken over to
the CMO Int Extension Unit in the HGB. After a while, Liz Ingber came
in to see me. She said "You know you won't be returning to OSA,
right?" I hadn't known that. I'd thought it was a strong possibility.
"Your crimes are your out-security and your other fish." "Other fish"
comes from a Hubbard Executive Directive in which he talks about
Scientologists who have other fish to fry – in other words, who are in
it for their own profit or interests or who aren't dedicated enough.
She said she didn't know if I'd be able to rejoin OSA later, and told
me I should start re-establishing an "ethics record," meaning of
course a good one, so I might later become qualified again for higher
postings. Since I didn't belong to INCOMM, she was going to remand me
to OSA Int, and they would dispose of me as they saw fit. I was not to
discuss anything that had happened or that I had learned, nor any of
the handlings that had been done, with anyone, ever, period. Not even
to OSA Int personnel or auditors. "It's none of their business," she
told me.
I was taken to a room with Coordinating Attorney Bill Drescher in it.
He gave me a bunch of paper to read. Lynn Farny came in and explained
that what this amounted to was that I was starting over in my
relationship with the Church. Whatever happened in the past was over
for good, and now I was at ground zero with a new chance to make good.
Drescher went over the documents with me and asked me, on video
camera, if I understood them. I discussed it with him a bit, made a
few minor corrections with his agreement, initialed all the pages, and
signed the document, all on video. Of course, if I hadn't, I would
have been declared a Suppressive Person at once. Nobody had to tell me
that. It had been made clear enough over the last four months. Jeannie
Gavigan witnessed and notarized my signature.
Free at last! Well, free to go back to work, either in non-secure
areas or under supervision. I did a lot of that before I finally left
OSA, and some if it is rather interesting, but it's not part of this
story. I did have to get a "Leaving OSA Sec Check" before they could
release me to the general population. Finally I was traded for
somebody OSA wanted from PAC Renovations, and my new life began.
INCOMM has been decimated. I don't think more than a dozen remained,
and I can only think of seven. Two were sent to a Class V org because
the wife was pregnant. Some left the Sea Org – I never knew if they
chose to or were kicked out. Some went to what was then FCB, Flag
Command Bureaux. Many were given to PAC Base Crew, the estates org,
the dumping ground of the formerly qualified, the punishment detail
for the terminally unfit.
But the rawest deal of all was reserved for about half a dozen. After
four months of imprisonment and degradation, of busting their asses to
get through an illegal and squirrel "ethics program" and finally
succeeding – these miserable souls "graduated" – to the RPF.
Most Scientology executives are content to weld the barn door shut
after the horse gets out. Not David Miscagive. Miscavige has to burn
down the barn. (Thanks to Keith Henson for the latter half of that
analogy.)
Well, Dave – burn away. We free horses are watching with interest.
Dan
Xref: netcom.com alt.religion.scientology:29571
Message-ID: <221442Z23011995@anon.penet.fi>
Path:
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Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
From: an144108@anon.penet.fi (-AB-)
X-Anonymously-To: alt.religion.scientology
Organization: Anonymous contact service
Reply-To: an144108@anon.penet.fi
Date: Mon, 23 Jan 1995 22:07:53 UTC
Subject: Set-up of sysop - data
Lines: 131
Dear Readers,
This is a serious matter and I do not make the below post lightly.
I have the name and phone number of the victim in the matter with
Tom Klemesrud. I will not post these, as I feel that would be violation of
her privacy before the matter has come out properly on police channels.
But due to the relevance and implications to this newsgroup I am posting the
below, and without ANY of my own comments.
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