click on image above to goto WIRED Magazine site with original article Alt.Scientology.War

Jump to PART TWO NOW ONLINE - The St. Valentines Massacre

Jump to: A New Missive from Dan Garvin illustrating Litigation ops done to handle David Mayo lawsuit ( at bottom )

What Really Happened at Scientology's secret INCOMM facility

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 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.

Above: photo of Tom Klemesrud from photo of Tom Klemesrud from Wired Magazine December 1995, alt.scientology.war cover story cover story

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.

Editor's link: Read The Original -AB- posting

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.

Editor's Link: See Letter to LA Police Department from Tom Klemesrud)

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 ...

To Be Continued

Dan

Part TWO - The Saint Valentine's Day INCOMM 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 Garvin

Sometime between Summer 1992 and about April 1994:

I was in charge of keeping the OSA Computer System running and updated. My office, and the server, were at the far end of the hall in what is now the north wing of ASHO, on the third floor. Across the hall from me was the office of Doug Jacobsen, who ran covert operations for OSA International.

One fine day, I was asked to come into Doug's office. Long-time Scientology private investigator Eugene Ingram was there. Doug briefed me that they had an agent employed at an enemy attorney's office. If I remember correctly, the attorney was Jerold Fagelbaum, the attorney who defended David Mayo and Church of the New Civilization against RTC's trademark infringement litigation. The agent was a woman. From the attorney's office, she spoke with Doug on the phone while I was present in Doug's office, although I did not hear her voice.

The attorney office had been renting a personal computer and was now returning it. The agent knew the rental company and enough details that we should be able to pick out the right computer and rent it again ourselves. I was brought in because I knew how to recover data from "deleted" files.

After Doug got all the data, we left for the computer rental store. Ingram was with us. Doug, and I think Angel Casillas, also went. We went in the store and asked for details like which computer had been returned when. None of them really fit the description, but finally we got down to one that was the closest possibility, and Ingram rented that one. We brought it back to OSA Int and into another Investigations office. Ingram stayed with me so he'd be able to testify as to "chain of possession," i.e., that nobody else had put the data on the computer after it was rented. I was looking for any data from Fagelbaum's office, but of course the real prize would be evidence of something illegal that could be used to nail (or blackmail?) Fagelbaum.

I searched the hard drive, including all the "deleted" files, but never came up with anything indicating it had ever been used by Fagelbaum's office. There were a lot of data fragments from Tutor-Saliba, a big construction firm in the LA area, but nothing of interest to the Church. Evidently, the computer we really wanted had either not been returned to the store, or had been rented out to someone else before we got there. We never found out.

Although nothing came of that "investigation," the fact remains that the "Church" of Scientology had a covert operative employed in a law firm against which the Church was litigating. This operative undoubtedly had access to attorney-client-privileged information. This is also somewhere around the time COS used Interpol to get David Mayo's home surrounded by police and searched, and himself taken at machine-gun point to a disgustingly unsanitary Dominican Republic jail, where he was held without food or water before being interrogated and eventually released. For details, go to http://www.freezone.org/reports/e_mayo02.htm

This was one "adventure" in one day of my life. There are people who do practically nothing else all day long, every day of the year: At OSA Int, in Continental OSA offices, and in Class V org DSA offices all over the planet.

Praise Ron -- or else!

Dan

P.S.: Wipe -- don't just delete -- your defunct computer files, and periodically wipe the free space on your hard drive. Shred or burn your paper trash. Use a cross-cut shredder, not a strip shredder. Use PGP for communications you wouldn't want Scientology to read. Encrypt information you want to keep but don't want Scientology to get -- even if your home is broken into or raided and your computer stolen or confiscated. Keep backups of everything important in a secure location. It's easy and cheap. OSA does it. You should too, especially if you are on the crime cult's radar.

From: spawnofxenu@yahoo.com (SpawnOfXenu)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
Subject: MESSAGE TO SEA ORG, SCN STAFF AND PUBLIC
Date: 5 Dec 2003 12:59:00 -0800
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This is a message to all Sea Org and $cientology staff members - most
of whom will not know this information about the corporation they're
working for.

I am a former high-level Sea Org member. I was at the "Int Base" or
"Gold" for 10 years and a Scientologist for over 20 years. The info
I'm about to pass on to you is legit and something that I'm sure OSA
and RTC would NOT want you to know about.

All staff members know that their Ethics Dept. keeps an "ethics file"
for each staff member. This file contains and accumulates reports
written by other staff members for things such as policy violations,
"out-ethics" activities - really anything that another would consider
to be "out ethics" to the group. It also contains O/W write ups and
session reports auditors are required to write up and send to a
person's ethics file in certain cases. Ethics files are used as a
"tool" by an Ethics Officer or executive to help spot the "SPs" or
"PTSes" within the organization who are stopping the lines and
blocking the "flows". A "fat" file means you've either got an SP or
PTS on the line and there are various ways an EO or exec goes about
sorting this person out. Most staff members know the above info as it
is contained in basic ethics policies written by Hubbard. Public
Scientologists also know that an ethics file is kept on themselves by
their local Ethics Dept. which is used in the same way as above.

Another file kept for every Scientologist is a PC folder or Pre-Clear
folder. This folder is labled as "Priest Penitent" and is only to be
accessed by Scientology Ministers or authorized personnel such as a
Case Supervisor or your auditor. Which is a complete falsehood and
you'll see why later in this message. This folder contains the reports
and worksheets from every auditing session or confessional a person
has ever had. This information is supposed to be confidential and held
in confidence. The ONLY instance where an auditor is supposed to
report to Ethics something from an auditing session, is if the staff
member or public was intentionally withholding something from Ethics
and "getting it off" in session to avoid ethics handling or
discipline.

Last but not least is the "Personel File". This file contains basic
personnel info such as tests and other write ups used to qualify staff
members for certain positions in the organization. It also contains a
person's "Life History" write-up. This write up is done by the staff
member when being hired and contains every drug you've ever taken and
how many times, every close friend and relative you have with contact
info, every sexual experience you've ever had (in full detail)
including masturbation, etc... When you're done with this write-up,
anyone who reads it will know pretty much everything about your life
and some.

Now, I'll move on to the main reason for this message. A few years
ago, I was on an RTC mission to input staff member information into a
computer data base. With this data base you can type in any staff
member's name and pull up their information instantly.

First we went through every person's Personnel file and typed in their
entire Life History write up, their recent test scores, and any other
pertinent info required in the data base.

We then had to go through every ethics file and for each report enter
in what the report was about, who it was from and a summary of what
the report was about i.e. "Knowledge Report from Staff Member A:
Reports that Joe Blow was not doing his job and instead was smoking a
cigarette during post time, being idle." We also had to type in every
O/W write up - at least the "important" things from each write up.
Things like "I should have taken a shower today but didn't" were left
out of course. So, you can imagine how much information from the
ethics files were entered.

Now here's the killer, all the PC folders were gone through in the
same manner! It was mainly the confessionals and sec checks that were
inspected, but it was done and you can only imagine how "off policy"
and "out tech" that is.

The said purpose of this data base was to be a tool for executives and
HCO personnel to see if staff members were qualified for certain
"posts" or jobs in the organization. That's just not true because
nobody needs to know your PC folder info for post qualifications!

When we were given the order from RTC to go through the PC folders, I
remember thinking that something wasn't right about it, but as a staff
member, you know you're not to question ANYTHING that RTC orders. RTC
are the GODS of Scientology and if its from RTC you just better do it,
no questions asked. "They must have a really good reason for this."

This data base was only available at Int and middle Management, but
was supposed to be exported to every HCO around the world. I don't
know if that ever happened as I left before I ever knew. After the
mission completed, I went back to my post in HCO. I still had access
to the data base and would log in on occasion being curious about any
changes being made or any other added functions. And lo and behold,
public information was now being added in the same way. You could also
look up who had been declared PTS or SP and read any information
entered on the individual.

Imagine if Hitler had had this tool at his disposal... 

Possibly Dan Garvin from his experience in INCOMM can shed more light
on this as well.

Sincerely,
S.O.X.

"In an age of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." George Orwell

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