Maria at the AAC
My mother-in-law was dying of cancer. Since leaving Miami org I had been taking care of her. We'd arrived at her home near Christmas time 1980, having blown at the end of November. Frankly it was weird, but in a good way, to be around all these folks who had never heard the words out-ethics or Comm Ev or SP.
It was hard because I don't think that Jeff's family thought that we had changed our belief system. I think they thought we only left staff because Jeff's mother was sick and she needed him. Jeff's sister was a born-again Christian. While she could tolerate Jeff since he was her blood relation, she didn't trust me past her nose. This meant that she was always coming over every day at breakfast, lunch, dinner to assert her control over mom's house even though we were there. Jeff had gotten a job at his family's retread shop helping out his brother Chip who since died. I was home with his mother and ended up taking care of her all day long except when Jeff's sister appeared.
I felt sort of useless there actually.
Meanwhile, the RTC did find us eventually after some time passed. I am not sure now if I went to AAC in 83 or 84. Jeff's mom died in 84; I've just checked the obit. And when I went to Int she was not long for this world. But I think I traveled while she was still very sick but not yet deceased. Since Jeff was out working and I was the one with time to kill, I was the one who got the joy of speaking to RTC when they called. I was truly the wimpiest creature in my conversations with them, yes, I gave a bit of push back but not very much. Obviously they thought I was folding otherwise why keep pounding on me? I was scared, and completely terrified of being declared, and completely unhappy that I had been treated the way I had. I was burned out and certainly did not want to go back to the Miami org but at the same time I wanted the threat of declare and the FL bill to go away.
My contact at the RTC, the genuises of Scn who were going to make it all go away, was Gary Klinger. He was very smooth over the phone. He told me there was a squirrel group in CA that had formed, the AAC. At first he didn't mention Mayo. It's obvious to me why. I had really appreciated Mayos and all that David and Julie had done for the church. I viewed them as "beautiful people." So to open up his proposal as a chance to bring David's evil enterprise down was probably not going to be a pitch I'd go for straight off the bat. In fact, never in those two or three weeks of prodding were the Mayos particularly criticized. The focus was AAC, out-tech etc. If RTC had started by giving me a R/D of how bad the Mayos were I think I would have hung up the phone.
Instead, over a period of days and weeks, Klinger talked to me about the tech, about out-tech, about the squirrels, about AAC, about my chance to "make things go right."
What a vague statement that is!! To make things go right means just about anything. It means, ok, were are in a situation, this is how we want it to play out, make it happen! And irregardless of who it hurts or if it's evil.
I was really sort of on the fence about going but I guess I was an easy mark and in a couple of weeks I gave in and decided to go. I've never really liked controversy. It's one of the things I like about this thread. We are hanging out here on the beach as the sun goes down acting silly, remembering exploits, philosophizing and anything else in between. So this visit to AAC made me VERY VERY nervous. I was going but I hoped I didn't actually have to do anything. The problem was, even if I did nothing I knew that I was basically a plant. And being a plant meant I really was doing something.
My mother-in-law was very sick and I was taking care of her so I wasn't going to be able to do what Klinger wanted just yet. At some point Jeff's sister got a nurse to come and help, providing me a gap where I could travel. It was in this time that Gary was constantly calling me on the phone, a couple of times a day sometimes, sometimes skipping a day. I would speak in hushed tones. I was surrounded by wogs. No doubt the Baptist sister-in-law had all her suspicions confirmed by my whispering and skulking around in corners with the phone. I must be whispering into the phone plotting Jeff's mother's death and imagining all the money I could steal from her will to give to Scientology!!
I was sneaking about with the phone because there was no way that the family would understand a word I was saying without thinking I sounded bonkers - all that commlines, squirrels, SPs, the tech, arcx's and so on was just gobbledegook to a wog. Tensions were very high in the house. Jeff's mom was dying. I was sneaking around talking to distant Scientologists who, it was assumed, were orchestrating my actions. I had been very close to my mother-in-law and it really bothered me that she was dying. In just those few months since arriving to her home I'd spent almost every waking minute with her. This included watching every John Wayne picture ever made, soap operas every afternoon, etc. Things that on my own I'd not run to do then. Not that I don't appreciate Johnny boy. So I was defiant of the accusing stares and at that time did not see why or how anyone would be offended by my being a Scientologist. By the way, I just now am feeling a bit confused and wondering if I got the date wrong concerning my departure from the Church. I said it was 1980. But I think it was winter of 82 only because Peach died a little more than a year later in 84. And I think I was in Venezuela in 1980. Before writing the Venezuela bit I will check my old passport which I still have. It has all the stamped dates for those travels outside the country and it will help me pinpoint the dates for AOLA too. And I can fix any wrong dates and mark them in red in the earlier posts. (I don't have Lakey's memory! So sad!)
The phone calling went on for a couple of weeks at most before I caved and decided, ok, I will go out to California. I still had aspirations of being involved with Scientology. I still believed in the tech. In the end this is what forced me to give in to RTC. Finally I agreed to do it in exchange for not being declared an SP and for a percentage reduction of my FL bill which Miami org would supposedly agree to. I was able to arrange contacts with AAC through Mission Holder and FSM Peter Scupham, who I mentioned before. I'd been in touch with him while still at Miami so this was not hard to do. I don't remember if Gary arranged that or not. If Gary suggested Peter's name or not. If Peter was involved with Gary or not. I know that Peter was involved with Mithoff as an FSM and connected to him at the AAC. And Peter really did leave Scientology and never went back. He's into other things now according to his website that I posted before.
I don't have the foggiest recollection of the flight out to CA. Did I go right to Santa Barbara or did I go to LA and Gary drove me to Santa Barbara. I think the latter. The first memory I have is of getting in a nondescript subcompact car with Gary. I found him a very weird-looking fellow. His skin was sort of terrible and he had glasses on. He reminded me a little of something slimy, his skin was greasy. There was not too much to him. He reminded me of a chameleon or rubbery grasshopper (the longer fingers if I recall and the spindly wiry body). He was all business, introduced himself, told me about the AAC, that Mayo ran it, told me about people I might meet. I don't think that as a visitor to AAC he expected that I would be interacted with Mayo on a personal basis where I was in the inner circle. He never intimated that I should try to get close to David or Julie; maybe he understood enough about AAC structure to see that it would be a gradual process for me at the AAC. But I do think that he expected that I'd have a shot at something, at least intelligence gathering, because of the prior connection to David when I trained on the Sunshine R/D pilot at int out at Gilman Hot Springs. I don't know what they call it now. (I'd rather never visit any Scientology websites so I never do. When I tried to click on info for the Going Clear movie I noticed (after clicking on it by accident) that Scientology has purchased a Google ad that appears at the top of the first page before ANY other results display.
I got to Santa Barbara. Not sure how it happened or who arranged it but a very nice lady named Hannah was putting me up, along with other AAC people. Hannah related to the Warner Bros. heirs or married to someone related. Funny, I won a writing award years later sponsored by the heir to Warner Bros. It was a very nice house. But first, before being taken over there, my first stop was the AAC. It was a nice location with a sort of barn wood/drift wood facade like you'd see in some business developments. I was a large space. There were offices along at least one side and a large central area with some desks, files, and shelving. Most of the activity seemed to be happening in this open area. The side offices were being used for auditing, c/sing, interviews, and private offices. Everyone was super nice and almost immediately I was whisked into a room to be interviewed so I could be audited. I imagine it's possible that if I had stayed that David or Julie would have been my auditors. There is no way to know. I was asked a bunch of personal questions typical of an interview, never treated with suspicion. At that time I remember I was having 2D problems with Jeff and when asked about those things I was a bit down tone, sort of down on the 2D as as general practice. LOL.
We all went to eat and a lot of very nice people who I don't remember (maybe they will show up here sometime) talked to me and introduced themselves and made me completely at home. My entire trip out there has almost no technical or admin or ethics components. It was all just a human connection that occurred, with really nice people who meant me no harm. I saw the first day, immediately, that there were no SPs here as I had been assured.
That night I was put up in Hannah's place with others. There was as very ill woman there with a bladder infection and it kept me up, causing me to pace a bit. I decided I could not stay that same day and had called Gary to pull me out. I was naive enough not to realize that of course he was going to create a scene, make me look like a plant to the AAC to divert attention from the real plant. I knew he had another BIG plant since he told me so. But he didn't tell me who. So I couldn't sleep that night. I knew that I could not let anyone at the AAC waste even one more minute on me, audit me, buy me lunch, give me a place to sleep, nothing, because I knew that these were nice people and I was there on false pretenses and needed to leave them to go about their business. I had decided that if these were SPs, ok, so was I.
By the way, as I have been writing this I got messages I do not know how to deal with from my spyware program, malwarebytes. The message was an IP address. I don't know if that means that an external IP address connected to my machine or if it simply tried. I have to check the logs. LOL. Not trying to be paranoid but it is funny since I've never seen that message. Perhaps it's a search for dirt. Perhaps it's nothing at all.
While I am a software coder my area of specialization is not in the area of intrusion handling.
The next day Hannah was a doll (very attractive and zen person!) She made me tea and treated me as an honored guest. I left that same day. I hope it's not disappointing that I have only maybe 48 hours or less to recount. I was not willing to stay another day. I realized that the AAC folks would resent me but I was not going to give them more to resent. I don't understand why it never occurred to someone that a plant wouldn't just show up- for a day or two and leave suddenly. But Mithoff probably controlled that story and made sense of it for them all such that Maria was a plant and it all made some sort of sense. I was just relieved that I retrieved NO information and that I was never privy to any. That is what I wanted!
I met Gary in a hotel as I explained in an earlier post. He took up maybe an hour or more trying to handle me to stay, threatening that my spiritual future was in jeopardy, etc. At this point he was no longer the geeky looking creepy guy. Now that I was no longer going to cooperate he was a bit more sinister looking, colder, and just looking at him scared me. Here was a guy who could not really do much to me because I'd already called home to Jeff and told him I was coming home and why, I was not SO and could not merely be put into an RPF dungeon. He really could not keep me and there was nothing stopping me from screaming if he tried something. While it was not a public space, the hotel room was one of those cheap hotels where you can hear people creaking about in the next room. I did consider that if he came close to me physically in any way I would scream.
In any case I signed the papers, he was satisfied, and I called a cab to take me to the airport. At the airport I saw Rachel Welch standing near her luggage right in public stretching out as if she was a lioness. She was quite gorgeous, really did remind me of a wild, untameable creature. An amazon. She was not a small or demure personage! She was larger than life and I would have thought so even if I had not known she was Rachel Welch. I saw another star at the airport too but I'll tell about that later since it was during my AOLA trip.
I flew home very depressed. I was depressed I did not stay at AAC with those lovely people. I was down on myself for having hurt them. I now know that since Mithoff was involved with RTC and coordinating things with them, if I had turned myself in to AAC and tried to stay Mithoff would have most likely handled that one and it would not have gone in my favor.
I was happy though that I had not given RTC a thing and that I was alive and that AAC could continue functioning. I did know there was a plant and I contacted Scupham right away upon arriving home to let him know what I knew. I tried very hard to convince him of what I was saying and to tell him about Gary. He kept cutting me off, calling me names, and basically told me I was lying and that I was persona non-grata. I felt even more devastated but I hoped that Peter (Scupham) would at least tell SOMEONE of what I was saying, even if he told them it was BS at least they would have a possible suspicion to work with. He cut off the phone call, hung up on me.
A few days later all the letters began to arrive. Letters from the Venezuela org which I had helped found (and still part of CoS), from the people there who had been my friends, letters from the AAC people too. The letters all said similar things, that I was an SP, that I was being disconnected from, to never contact them again, to express their disgust with me and their hatred. I threw away all the letters the same day after reading most of them. I did not read all of them because I was so worn out and demoralized I could not keep reading.
I can only assume that Gary was now engaging in a dead-agenting campaign such that both CoS AND the free zone thought I was an SP. LOLOL.
So there it is, my very brief foray with the AAC along with a glimpse of Rachel Welch.
