Authors: Ron Miscavige
Notwithstanding that
chewing-out
I received at St. Hill, I have to say that my dealings with David were not bad during my early years at Gold, especially compared to later times. He had taken on the duty of giving final okay for many of the products that units on the base produced, and these included music scores for films, PR events and so on. I often brought music submissions up to his office and went over them with him, and we got along well. Though he was now the leader of the church, he was still friendly with me, though our interactions became more formal and businesslike.
One time he told me, “We don't believe in nepotism. The fact you're my father doesn't cut any ice around here.” I accepted that.
After all, I was pretty proud of him for all the things he had achieved. I would overlook some things and forgive a lot of things that maybe I shouldn't have. I have a hard time playing the victim, and a lot of stuff just went by me with a “que sera” attitude. An example might be his rejecting a piece of music I had arranged. “Jesus Christ, this is a piece of crap!” he would say. “What are you guys doing down there?” instead of “Okay, here is what I had in mind, and here is where I think you went off the rails.”
A year or two after I joined, a talented musician named Peter
Schless
joined Gold. He had written the music for a big hit called “On the Wings of Love” (the lyrics were by Jeffrey Osborne, who recorded it), had played with the Allman Brothers and was an extremely competent professional. He and I worked together a lot over the years and produced a lot of music together.
It was not easy to gain approval from David for film music. At times we would bust our guts to create something that worked, often staying up all night to try to get it right. The first time I was faced with an
all-nighter
, I wondered aloud about the wisdom of trying to work when dog tired, and someone snapped at me, “If you don't like it, just go route out of the Sea Org!” I learned to stay up all night but always viewed it as a punishment rather than something noble. When you are tired, you cannot think straight, you make mistakes and usually create more trouble for yourself.
One time, Peter Schless and I stayed up for 84 hours straight, doing music for a video. We wrote the theme, arranged it and recorded all the parts so it was a finished piece that fit exactly with the video. Then we crashed into bed, exhausted. We were proud that we got it done, but it was completely nuts.
Any good times I had did not last, however; they do not last for anybody who is in David's orbit, as I have long since learned. In the
mid-1980s
, Gold built a
state-of
-
the
-art
music recording studio. No expense was spared to make it as fine as any studio in the world. Walls were two feet thick to dampen any sound from the roadway a hundred yards to the south. The studio was set on rubber plugs to separate it from the earth, further dampening vibrations. Lexan panels in the studio enhanced the sound. The theory behind its construction was to make it absolutely dead, meaning there would be no reverberation whatsoever in the studio, but reverb could be added after recording to make the music sound better for the particular venue where it would be played. The Massenburg music mixing board was one of only four in the world. The studio also had conference rooms, facilities for visiting artists to use, a kitchen, you name it. It was really top of the line.
A completely dead recording studio, besides being a near impossibility to create, was also a flawed concept to begin with, so David ordered several major overhauls of the entire facility. By 1987, he was the undisputed leader of Scientology, and his influence permeated everything at the base and over time extended to the farthest reaches of Scientology internationally. These renovations often tied up large sections of the organization for weeks or months at a time as people worked around the clock, replanning, renovating and rewiring the whole place at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe even more. Each time was a worse nightmare than the previous effort.
The modus operandi of these “evolutions,” as they were called, was “punishment drive,” which means coercing cooperation through punishment or threats thereof. In truth, that is the way the Church of Scientology operates today, and that mentality exists solely because of David Miscavige.
Here's an example of the degree to which it became institutionalized. One of David's henchmen, for there is no other term for this person, once was briefing the music department on something that needed to be done. “If you don't get this done, here is what is going to happen to you,” he said and proceeded to rattle off what awaited us for noncompliance.
“Okay,” I interjected, “that's the punishment. What's the reward if we get it done?”
“The reward is you don't get punished,” he said in all seriousness.
L. Ron Hubbard wrote in numerous policies that punishment drive does not and has never worked. When a worker continues to toil under the threat of punishment, what actually impels the worker is his own willingness. It has nothing to do with punishment or its threat. But punishment drive is the way the church operates today. Punishment is preferable to any other motivation in its eyes. “If he doesn't work, punish him. Put him on beans and rice.” Hubbard once cut an offending person's rations to simple rice and beans, which he alleged provided a complete protein diet, yet it becomes awfully unappealing three times a day for days or weeks on end. David modified the concept of carrot and stick to “stick, first, last and always.” I recall talking with him one time about how to inspire people to accomplish things, and he said, “I'll tell you how to get work
doneâkick
their ass, man.” In other words, dominate them. That flew in the face of my observations and experience with the vast majority of the people at Gold: they were willing to do just about anything to advance Scientology. They were the most willing people I ever met.
In the midst of this misery, which would in time become much worse, a bright spot made it all worthwhile for me in the long run. For a time, Gold did internal promotions that involved sending some of the Gold crew down to the Los Angeles organizations dressed as characters from the technical training films they produced. One of those films had an
Alice in Wonderland
theme, so people dressed up as the Mad Hatter, the Queen of Hearts, and other characters and paraded around the organizations to drum up interest in the films. One character in particular caught my eye immediately: Alice, as played by Becky Bigelow, the daughter of Tom Bigelow, the racecar driver. Becky grew up around racetracks, from midget cars in Wisconsin to the speedway at Indianapolis, where Tom ran nine times, and I soon figured out excuses to discuss business with her seniors in the marketing area where Becky worked. To my everlasting joy, my interest in her was reciprocated, and we have never looked back.
I can now state unequivocally that I have experienced marriage from both ends of the spectrum. As stressful and traumatic as my marriage to Loretta was, my marriage to Becky has been really, really wonderful, better than I could have imagined. In 25 years of marriage, I can count the number of serious arguments we have had on one hand, literally. That was a week of life with Loretta. I say that only to make the point that people who want different things from life, as Loretta and I did, have the deck stacked against them in a big way. A mongoose and a cobra should never be married. When I think about what Loretta and I put each other through, with the arguments and the fights and my striking her, it seems like another lifetime. I don't think I would even be capable of considering something like that now. If you are fortunate to have a wonderful relationship with someone, like I have with Becky, here's my advice: cherish it with everything you've got.
Becky and I were granted a weekend off, just the two of us, and were married in Las Vegas in June 1990. Neither David nor any of my other kids or Becky's family attended. David used to joke with Becky about her being his stepmom, and he accepted the fact of our marriage. It is a good thing we wed when we did because things were about to go steeply downhill for Gold. By the next month, our chances of getting hitched would have been zero for a long, long time.
On August 10, 1990, a torrential storm hit the Hemet Valley. It poured and poured, causing mudslides across State Route 79, the road that bisects the base. Meteorologists termed it a
100-year
event. There were flash floods throughout the Hemet Valley, one of which caused water damage to some buildings on the base, including David's own quarters. A drain in front of his room clogged, and water seeped under the door, soaking the carpet. His secretary had to unblock the drain herself since everyone else was out dealing with the damage at the highway.
After dinner that evening, David ordered the entire base to muster in the dining area, which was the only space large enough to accommodate everyone. He ordered the Gold staff to stand at the front, and he lashed out at us for half an hour, maybe even longer, ranting about how the damage was entirely our fault. He could brutalize a single individual verbally, which we all knew because nearly everyone had either experienced it personally or seen it done to others. On this occasion, though, he ramped up his intensity to a level none of us had seen before.
The next day, the entirety of Gold was subjected to draconian measures undoubtedly thought up by David himself. Because Gold was tasked with the maintenance and security of the base, he blamed the organization for what had happened. All privileges were revoked, every Gold staff member was assigned a condition of Confusion (meaning that our status as a group was considered well below zero), and we were forced to take part in a “boot camp” that was a travesty of the concept. It consisted of being dressed down regularly as a group by more of David's henchmen and marching around the base for hours on end. As someone who went through Marine boot camp and came out the other side a capable Marine, I can say that David's version was intended solely to nullify people, not to make them more competent. The whole crew was mustered up several times a day, and if anyone was late to a muster, the penalty was that the offending person had to stay up all that night working on some mundane task and go without sleep.
Frankly, after that flood, life in the Sea Org became a downward spiral. Almost nothing we musicians did was considered worthy of approval. Eventually, the music department had to use classic rock songs in videos because we could not get a melody approved.
And this became a bad scene indeed when almost the entire base was mired in what we called “event mode,” which in short order became a runaway freight train.
In late summer 1984, as part of the church's strategy to fund ongoing litigation, of which there was much at the time, someone came up with the idea of forming the International Association of Scientologists (IAS), a membership organization that all Scientologists had to join to receive church services. Several years earlier, after the FBI raided the church and numerous staff, including Mary Sue Hubbard, were facing prison terms, the church had established a legal defense fund that brought in a considerable amount of money. The new idea behind IAS was to repackage that fund to create a new source of income. Attorneys explained how it could be set up offshore to put it beyond the reach of the IRS or an agency of any government. Six weeks later, in October, church leaders, including David, gathered at St. Hill to sign a Pledge to Mankind to support the Aims of Scientology. The event, which signified the formation of the IAS, was videotaped and then played to Scientologists all over the world. The video proved hugely popular, but it marked the birth of a Frankenstein's monster.
That first event soon spawned others: a New Year's celebration, an LRH birthday celebration, a May 9 Dianetics anniversary, a weeklong
Freewinds
Maiden Voyage Anniversary celebration, an Auditor's Day celebration and, coming full circle, an IAS celebration every October. As time went on, another event, held at the church's Celebrity Centre in Hollywood, a study center and hotel for stars, was added to the roster. Year after year these events became more lavish, with elaborate stage decorations, specially produced videos to announce the latest church accomplishment or product for sale, graphic effects to highlight church expansion, all intended to increase the impact of speeches that church executives and, increasingly, David himself delivered by teleprompter.
To prepare for the productions, people were pulled away from their usual duties and sucked into frantic
event-related
activities. The shows became
base-wide
nightmares, although I must admit they did accomplish the only effect David truly wanted: Scientology audiences deeply impressed with Scientology's
ever-widening
impact on society under his leadership. The events became showcases for such things as Scientology's disaster relief efforts, its antidrug campaigns, and its continual push, as spearheaded by David, to make a better world through the works of L. Ron Hubbard.
The reality is, however, that these extravaganzas were Scientology's Potemkin villages. Just as Russian military leader Grigory Potemkin built fake villages to impress Catherine the Great during a tour of Crimea, David erected hollow facades of Scientology expansion and good works to amaze Scientologists. Many, if not most, of the nifty programs (for example, a new broadcast television advertising campaign “that will reach billions with the message of Scientology”) announced at events were never completed. The busy churches around the world featured in specially prepared videos were filled with parishioners who had been
press-ganged
into creating the appearance of a hive of activity, which disappeared the minute the video crew left town.
The agenda behind these events became plain after some time: they were more to cement David's position as leader of the church than to highlight any accomplishments of Scientology itself. In recent years, both aspects have become blurred entirely. Each evolution of an event was stressful for David, and his frustration levels ratcheted up as deadlines for completion of various aspects of the production came and went. For him, however, the night of the show always provided a big payoff in terms of ego boost when adoring audiences showered him with thundering ovations. As the years rolled on, the reward for anybody working on an event was simply a night's sleep.
Preparation for an event involved nearly the entire base population of several hundred for weeks and weeks, often around the clock. Pulling off one of these events requires a tremendous amount of work:
David directly manages virtually every aspect of these activities. He stirs the soup, and nothing advances to the next stage until he gives his approval. When I was involved, the usual result, which I am sure continues to this day, was that several months of production had to be compressed into a few weeks. The stress level at these times is hard to describe. Almost without exception, David was unhappy with the initial planning, speeches, videos, editing, music or the promotion. He gave no thought to deadlines or to how each step of the work depended on previous steps by other
unitsâthe
musicians, for instance, could not begin their job until David had approved the video edits. In the music department, we would do as much as we could beforehand, but mostly we had to mark time until David gave his final blessing, which was usually just days before the show. Then it would be a total madhouse, day and night, until we were done. When everything was “in the can,” the relief throughout the base was palpable because people couldn't wait to fall into bed.
I haven't looked up the word
micromanagement
in a dictionary recently, but I am convinced that if I did, I would find David's picture next to the definition. He micromanaged every aspect of every event, often complaining loudly that he had to do it because everyone else working on the event was incompetent.
Music was an integral part of each show, from opening themes to music that accompanied videos and sometimes live performances, particularly aboard the
Freewinds,
which had a week of nightly events each June.
The entire international base at Gold revolved around these events. One event ended and preparations for the next began. The music department suffered this nightmare seven times a year. Remember, we had to wait until the videos were okayed. The usual routine was that the people working on the videos stayed awake around the clock, shooting and reshooting, editing and reediting these videos to the last minute; when the final edit came to us, we had no time to do the music. It went on like this for nearly every single event, and that's no exaggeration. We were up day and night scoring, recording, mixing and then seeking approval from David's office.
For the
Freewinds
cruises, we also prepared different shows for most nights of the voyage. Unless you have worked on an event in the Sea Org at Gold, you haven't lived. Let me correct that: you haven't lived a nightmare.
Often, the stress levels ratcheted up even higher, thanks to various executives who had adopted David's methods of dealing with people. You could call it the “monkey see, monkey do” theory of executive training. It wasn't everybody who behaved like that, but those who eschewed that sort of behavior did not last too long, as I remember. One executive who did adopt David's “management style” often dealt with the music area. He has long since tired of David and is no longer in the Sea Org. While he was there and having to answer to David, though, he mimicked some of David's
people-handling
tactics.
One time, this executive came into the music area to check on the progress of a piece we were working on. Peter Schless and I were at the keyboard when the executive walked in with an arrogant sneer on his face and said, “Boy, you guys are really something. I could go upstairs on my shitty little keyboard, and 20 minutes later I could give you a piece that would blow away the shit that you guys do. Feh!” and walked out of the room in disgust.
So, added to the compressed deadlines to get something done, on top of little or no sleep, we had to deal with stuff like that. And this was going on all over the base as each area was working on its own part of the event.
This executive later demonstrated to all of us in music that his arrogance about his knowledge of music was nothing more than a facade. He prided himself on having acute listening skills that could determine what was right and what was wrong with a piece of music or a mix. His confidence in his ability in this area was supreme.
One day he was supervising us as we did a mix. He stood there listening intently, rubbing his chin wisely. A technician sat at the equalizer, a machine you can use to strengthen or weaken the sound frequencies at specific points. The idea is to get a good balance of all the low notes and high notes so everything blends together pleasantly, and an equalizer helps you do that.
“Give me one more tick at 250,” he said knowingly. That meant he wanted to slightly raise the volume at 250 vibrations a second. The technician did so.
“Okay, give me a tick at 5K,” he said, by which he meant the technician should make the sound level at 5,000 vibrations a little louder.
He listened a little longer. “Okay, take off the tick at 250.” He listened a little longer. “Okay. Perfect. It's approved,” he announced and walked out, secure in his place in the universe, shoulders back and head held high.
Well, good. Glad that is done, we all thought, as we began to note down the settings that were part of the
record-keeping
protocol for any piece of music. Only then did we notice that the equalizer had not been turned on.
Talk about the emperor's new clothes. We had a real good laugh at his expense and adjusted our attitudes toward him forever.
Among all this misery, what kept us there was our goal to make the world a better place and help mankind. The pressures and the
punishment-driven
management methods only blunted people's resolve, and their use became more frequent as time went on.
Of course, no one who considers joining the Sea Org is ever told what happens after you sign your
billion-year
contract. Can you imagine someone joining the Sea Org to go to Gold as I did and being told the truth by their recruiter? “Okay, you've decided to join the Sea Org. Congratulations and welcome. We're glad to have you as part of the team. Now, uh, chances are you aren't going to get any time for study or Scientology services or to do anything other than your job, because that's all that counts. You're going to get substandard food. The galley crew will do its best to prepare it in a way that is palatable and somewhat nutritious, but at one point the food allocation for a Gold staff member will be three dollars per person per day. Your incoming mail will be opened and read before you get it. The mail you send out will be read before it goes out. Any phone call you make will be monitored by a person listening on an extension. You will not be allowed to leave the base to go shopping at a store. If you have to see a doctor, you must have an
escortâin
other words, a
guardâso
you don't leave. Your everyday activity will be monitored minutely, and there will come a point where you will not have had a regular day off for years. This is how your life will be from this day forward. Sign here.”
It wasn't like that when I joined the Sea Org. How does it get to that point? By tiny increments. A small change here, a small change there. A slight modification of a rule here, another one there. You agree to each one because it seems like no great loss of liberty or freedom of movement or of thought. It is for the greater good, you rationalize. The next thing you know, you can't even go into town to buy Christmas presents to mail to the family you have not seen in ten years. That's how you arrive in the position I just described.
How you get any group of
peopleâa
small group, a large group, a whole
countryâto
become trapped is by their own state of mind and their own consent to be trapped. They have to be willing to be there and be trapped.
“Look,” the explanation begins, “there are people off the base causing us trouble so we need to start checking all the letters that go out. It's for your own good and the safety of the base.”
I'll tell you how this started. Around 1990 the marketing people had phones they could use to call vendors who produced the avalanche of promotion the church was sending out. One guy was using the phones to talk to his mother nearly every day and telling her about what was happening on the base, particularly as it related to Tom Cruise, who was there with Nicole Kidman. Both were doing courses and auditing at the base. The guy's mother was passing the information on to the
National Enquirer,
and you can imagine the explosion when that came to light.
Afterward, everybody had to request written authorization to call his or her family. Once that was granted, you could make your call, but somebody was always on an extension in another office, eavesdropping on everything being said. One Christmas Becky called her mother, who had been violently ill with the flu. She went on and on about her misery, all while one of the security personnel listened in. Can you imagine how mortified she would have been if she knew? Of course, the staff member placing the call cannot let on that this is happening, but you can imagine the strain it placed on the conversation. Ever since 1990, every time a Gold base staff member calls their family, that is what happens. That is the solution put in place to “solve” the problem of someone's feeding celebrity information to his mother long ago. That “solution” has caused so many more problems that it's ridiculous.