Ruthless (11 page)

Thirteen

Life in the Sea Org

Becoming part of the Sea Org was never something I was overjoyed about doing. I knew it could be a rough ride. I had been around Sea Org members at St. Hill and in Clearwater since the early 1970s. I knew that sometimes Sea Org members were not paid their weekly allowance. I knew that the discipline was strict and that a Sea Org member's life was controlled to a great extent. I had been
self-employed
for my entire working life. I sold insurance for a time. Then I had my cookware sales. As a musician, I would receive calls to play gigs, which I could accept or not. In other words, my schedule had always been my own. I was a free spirit and an entrepreneur. This, I knew, would change when I joined the Sea Organization.

At the same time, they really helped me in my time of need. I guess you could say that I felt obligated. So, out of a sense of duty more than anything, I packed my things and drove to Los Angeles in the early summer of 1985. I knew I could offer my service and help other people and contribute to a group that had the purpose of making a better world.

The church headquarters in Los Angeles is located near the corner of Vermont Avenue and Sunset Boulevard. Purchased by the church in 1977, it was the former site of the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. The primary Scientology organizations in Los Angeles are still located in the complex, and the former main building of the hospital serves primarily as living quarters for Sea Org staffers who work at the complex.

David got me a decent room in the building, and I stayed there while I did my orientation and introductory training. Other new recruits lived in dorms that often were overcrowded. I don't deny that being the father of the leader of the church had its advantages, at least in the beginning (and make no mistake, even though Hubbard was still alive, he was in seclusion and David was the one directing the church). During that period, Dave was spending a lot of time in Los Angeles. After the protest in Portland, another legal case was heating up in Los Angeles, and David wanted protests there as well to draw attention to the injustice, as he saw it. Because we were both living at the church complex then, we used to meet after work and shoot the breeze. Things between us were still great.

Several weeks after joining, I was brought up to the Hemet base as a new staff member for Golden Era Productions. Gold, as it is known, produces all the training films, lectures, and marketing materials for Scientology organizations around the world, and it provides support services for the management entities that operate from there. Top church management is also located on the base, so the entire compound is referred to as Gold or “Int,” meaning international headquarters, or just “the base.” It is all the same facility.

As I have mentioned, the facility formerly was the popular Massacre Canyon Inn resort in Gilman Hot Springs. Hollywood glitterati took mineral baths in the spa, played golf on its course and partied in the 1950s and 1960s. Then an earthquake shut off the springs feeding the spa, and people found other places to vacation. By 1978, the place was all but shut down and Hubbard authorized its purchase. The idea was to use it as a base during the summer when the desert heat in La Quinta made that place basically uninhabitable and then return to La Quinta during cooler weather. That plan never materialized, and by spring 1979 just about all of the hundred or so staff from La Quinta had moved to the new facility.

The property was large, more than 500 acres, resting right up against the San Jacinto Mountains a few miles north of Hemet. At the time of purchase, the facility had been defunct for some time. Buildings consisted of the old spa, the Massacre Canyon Inn restaurant, a tavern, the U.S. Post Office for Gilman Hot Springs, a variety of bungalows and rooms for guests, as well as various maintenance buildings. Work crews got busy renovating the rundown facilities and repurposing spaces for church management offices and multimedia productions. Since the 1960s, Hubbard had wanted to produce training films for students learning to become auditors. Western culture had grown more visually oriented, he reasoned, and he saw that being able to demonstrate various aspects of how to use the
E-meter
or proper communication protocols would be useful to students. Hence, his desire to script and shoot these films.

Over the years, new construction has carried on more or less continuously, and nine holes of the golf course have been resurrected. Today the place is a
well-kept
, sparkling facility among the otherwise drab dairy farms and horse ranches that make up most of the Hemet Valley. The central compound consists of about 50 buildings and includes a large film studio, a
film-processing
plant, film and video editing bays, several audio recording studios, a lavish music studio, administrative offices for Scientology's international management as well as maintenance facilities. In addition it has other sports facilities and quarters that house everybody who works there. Everything is top of the line and matches in architectural design. Hubbard said the setting reminded him of the Scottish highlands, so all the buildings follow a Scottish motif, with white buildings trimmed in blue and with blue slate roofs. Hubbard was interested and involved from afar in the property renovations (he never lived at the new base), and after his death in 1986 David ensured that building continued.

To safeguard the millions of dollars' worth of equipment as well as the staff who live there, a fence with motion sensors, cameras and spotlights surrounds the central compound. The fence is topped with razor wire, ostensibly to keep intruders out; however, the spikes point
inward,
which rather indicates that the fence is meant to keep the staff in, with the sensors and cameras to alert the security guards to anyone trying to escape.

Several times the church has attempted, to no avail, to close State Route 79, which bisects the property. Cameras continually record passing traffic to provide evidence in case of people harassing the base.

When I arrived in early summer 1985, the beginning phase of renovations was more or less completed, and the number of staff had grown from a couple hundred to two or three times that. The old Massacre Canyon Inn (MCI) became the base dining facility. Eventually, the place could no longer hold the entire staff, so mealtimes were broken into shifts, with managers seated for one shift and the Golden Era Productions staff eating at another time.

Because I was a musician, I was posted to Gold's music department as a horn player and arranger. Music was considered an important aspect of Gold. It was part of every training film or video production. Everything we produced on the base went out to the rest of the Scientology world, so it was important that it be right. And, of course, the standards were high. The Golden Era Musicians, as we were called, consisted of drums, congas and percussion, bass, guitar, keyboards, a horn section with clarinet, saxophone, trombone, and me on trumpet or cornet, as well as a vocalist.

Much of the music we produced began as ideas from L. Ron Hubbard, who years before had created melodies for various training films. We took those
single-note
melodies and put chords to them. After that we did arrangements and submitted these to David for approval. Upon approval we would use the piece as the title song for a film and then write other pieces that integrated with that title piece. Film music cannot draw attention to itself but has to support the film and forward its message. We were walking a fine line, but when it worked it was plain to see. Today, when I watch a movie or television show, I can easily spot when a piece of music is working or not.

One of my first assignments at Gold was making an album with Edgar Winter based on Hubbard's
Mission Earth
series of novels. I had never met a musician as competent as Edgar. He is an excellent writer, a superb musician and a fine singer. He can do it all. His knowledge of music theory and harmony is outstanding; he is one of the most creative people I have ever met. That project turned out well.

Edgar told me about playing gigs with his brother, Johnny, another fabulous musician. One time, they had a gig at some club way out in the Texas boonies. They drove for hours to get to the place. When they arrived all they found was the charred outline of the club. It had burned down the previous day, literally to the ground.

Later that year, I came out of the music studio at Gold one day and spotted Dave some distance away with an entourage of three or four people. I called out, “Hey, Dave!” to get his attention.

He turned around and didn't say a word, but he shot me a glare that said, “Who the hell do you think you are, yelling after me like that? Do you know who I am?”

Right then was the first indication that my son had changed dramatically. Our relationship was not
father-son
anymore. He was no longer my son but the head of the Church of Scientology and that look let me know it. The church and its operations took precedence now and would from then on out. That look of his made a considerable impression on me. My role in the Sea Organization would have nothing to do with being his father. I thought to myself, Well, I better not do that again. It was not the last time something like that would happen.

His attitude worsened over the years, but that incident was the first time I encountered it. I remember one time in particular when the Golden Era Musicians were at St. Hill for a big event in the early 2000s. I was standing backstage with Dave. Nearby was a
well-known
Italian pop star who was not a Scientologist but had agreed to do the concert because he supported the church's humanitarian programs.

The Gold musicians performed their show and then played dance music for the rest of the evening. I had walked off stage for a break and not 15 feet away from me and Dave was the pop star, standing with a woman who worked for the church and acted as his handler, along with two other people. David began to dress me down in a tirade that lasted nearly a full hour; the man and his contingent could hear everything as David yelled, cursed me out, and generally ripped me apart. I was totally and utterly mortified by the entire
experience—the
head of the Church of Scientology ripping his own father apart within earshot of others. I went numb when he began, but what I can recall was that he was upset at how incompetent we all were, how we couldn't do anything right and
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
punctuated frequently with
mother—r
,
c—sucker
and all the rest. Meanwhile, the others stood stiff as boards, never turning around, and pretended that it wasn't happening. Had they not been able to hear David's rant, they would have been chatting with each
other—it
was a party, after all. They never said a word but just stood there, frozen in place by what was happening, and heard every expletive. Imagine how that might play in Italy, where family is
all-important
. It sure wasn't any longer to David. What must they have thought? Is this for real? Is this the head of Scientology and is that his father? The poor pop star wasn't even a Scientologist. He had come purely as a favor. The church had paid his airfare but that was it. And he had to stand for nearly an hour while David gave me an earful. The entire episode was shattering. The word
terrible
can't begin to describe how it felt.

I don't even remember the excuse he used to come down on me, but it went on until I finally said, “Okay, I got it.” At that point he said, “Good. I was waiting to hear that from you. That is why I was going on for the last 55 minutes,” and he turned and walked away. David and the church have always denied that he engages in demeaning or abusive conduct of this nature, but my experience plainly suggests otherwise.

Afterward, his secretary Laurisse called me into a room to do damage control. “Now, look, Dave didn't mean everything he was saying out there,” she told me, trying to smooth things over. That was a standard function of hers, to come behind David after he lost control to try to patch things up. It did not matter what the reason was for his blowup. The reasons came after the explosion, to rationalize why he lost control in the first place. The actual reason, I concluded after many more similar episodes, was that he enjoyed nullifying people and that included even his father.

Over time, I found the silver lining in these thunderclouds: if you were able to simply face the music and not react, not react internally but simply acknowledge the tirade, nothing would stick to you, and when it was over, it was over for you too.

Apart from the occasional lightning strike, however, my early experiences at Gold were for the most part enjoyable. I really enjoyed working with Edgar on his
Mission Earth
album.

Then, in January 1986, L. Ron Hubbard died. The whole base went down to the Palladium in Los Angeles, where we were given the “shore story”—in other words, a
lie—that
Hubbard had “gone exterior”—in other words, out of his
body—to
continue his research without the physical body's encumbrances. Several people spoke at the event, including David, Pat Broeker and Earle Cooley, a Boston lawyer who represented the church for years.

David spoke first and announced Hubbard's passing, framing it by saying that Hubbard had done as much research as he could do in that body, had fully mapped the route to complete spiritual attainment for all Scientologists, and was now exterior and would be continuing his research free from physical limitations. While some in the crowd may have been shocked or saddened at the news, at the end of David's presentation wild applause greeted several photos of Hubbard that were shown on the auditorium screen. More applause followed Pat Broeker's relaying of Hubbard's admonishment that there was to be no sorrow, no mourning, because Scientologists know they are spirits, not bodies. The audience thus prepared, Norman Starkey, another church executive, performed the Scientology funeral service. No one addressed the issue of whether anyone would succeed Hubbard; this was a drama that would play out over the next year or so.