ZEGEL TAPE NO. 4
Spring 1987
THE RECANT
Copyright © 1987 Jon Zegel
Redistribution rights granted for non-commercial purposes.
((It is a matter of public record that the following tape was circulated coincident with a settlement that Zegel made with the RTC in 1987, the terms of which are secret. Jon was unwilling to discuss the terms of the settlement with me recently, but he said I should put this note at the beginning of the transcript.))
Hello again,
this is Jon Zegel and it's the Spring of 1987, and this is the long-awaited Tape Four.
It's been nearly three years since I've talked to you and a lot of water has gone over the dam during that time. I think this will be my best tape. I'll let you be the judge of that, but one thing I know for sure: the story you are about to hear has not been told before and it needs to be.
What you are going to hear will no doubt raise a few eyebrows and perhaps shock a few people. It's a story that's been known to only a few. We're going to talk about meetings that you were never invited to, strategies that never appeared in the AAC Journal or were never spoken of at David's ((Mayo)) lectures. These are the things I want to put into perspective for you.
But, I'm getting a little ahead of myself.
Needless to say, we have all been through an ordeal together leaving the church. The 'heyday' of the field and then the reality of what we actually ended up with in the field, and that's not much to speak of; a heap of ashes might be an apt description. I don't think this fact comes to you as any great surprise, all you have to do is look around and you can see for yourself that this is true, but the purpose of this tape is not to tell you what you already know. In the next hour, we are going to look hard at what happened, what really happened, behind the scenes in the field and I think it might answer some questions for you.
As you know, I've been in and out of the thick of this for some time. Being on the inside, I knew quite a bit that was going on in the field that you were not privy to, but even with all the first-hand data that I had, I was puzzled over why we were having so much trouble with the lawsuit that the church filed against myself, the AAC and a few others in the field. This was the suit that dealt with the stolen NOTS materials. By the way, many blamed this lawsuit as the reason why the AAC had to close down, but I knew better, for I saw the field deteriorating long before the suit was ever filed. But again, I am ahead of myself.
As to why I began this quest, I didn't understand why we were losing in the courtroom. Particularly, a case in which I thought we were innocent. Nothing added up anymore. The field had virtually disappeared. So I started asking some questions, some very hard questions and I found some answers.
To be honest, I really didn't know who to trust at this point. So while doing this I separated myself out from just about everybody. My search took me back and forth on the time track and through a pile of paper that would overwhelm any attorney.
What I found was shocking, so shocking, in fact, that at several points in time I decided that I simply didn't want to look anymore. I didn't like what I was finding and I didn't like confronting the fact that a few people I had really trusted had let me down. As for this tape, it is largely a document-based tape. I must have read a stack of documents six feet, or about 2 meters, high. Mostly court records and depositions available to anyone. From this, a time track grew, which I added to my own eyewitness knowledge of what had happened in the field.
It was not an easy job. There were many disheartening, disappointing and angry moments while I was putting that time track together. It may be that the truth will set you free, but nobody said that gathering it wasn't painful, and at times even embarrassing.
If you hear me turning pages while this tape is going on it's because, frankly, I've written out a lot of the material in advance.
Because so much of this has come from research and putting together time lines and so forth, I felt it was necessary to have accurate notes before I began. And while I'm at it, I also invite you to do your search in order to verify what I'm about to tell you. As a matter of fact, I implore you to examine this for yourself and base your conclusions on first-hand data, instead of taking someone else's word for it.
Probably the best way to start is with some current facts and then we can work from there. It is a fact that the AAC is gone ((The AAC is alive and well again in the Dominican Republic)); Stockton is gone; Kenda Craig is gone; the Clear Center is perhaps 10% of it's former self, many others are also gone.
As to those who remain, good old standard tech is just a distant memory. You probably have seen some of the garbage passed off as tech, "This is IT! THE thing to crack your case, a ouija board."
Give me a break.
And a far cry from what we were talking about back in 1983, I might add.
And if standard tech is what you are looking for, there is no place in the field to find it. That, too, is an indisputable fact. And another fact that cannot be ignored is that the US Federal courts have not been kind in their treatment of the AAC and some other field centers. All PR aside, I worked on the AAC legal case and am also familiar with other cases with other centers, so I know how things are really going and, overall, they are not going well.
That brings us to where I started my investigation. You see, the church's lawsuit reduced to it's simplest language, claimed that the NOTS material that was stolen in Denmark was transferred to David Mayo and the AAC in violation of several statutes. This, of course, is an oversimplification of the suit, but it will suffice for our purposes.
When the church first filed it's lawsuit over the theft of the NOTS material, I distinctly remember getting together with David Mayo and a few other associates up at the AAC and we discussed the case at length. We talked and talked and the more we talked the more sure I became that we had a strong defense to this case. I was assured by David that he had nothing to do with theft of the upper level materials in Denmark and that these materials had not been sent to his center, and I believed him.
But loss after loss in front of Judge Feltzer, the judge in this case, made me quite confused. I kept asking myself why were we losing, what had we done to pull this in? I couldn't quite get my finger on it.
I remember several times questioning David on this point, asking him at some length if he had anything to do with this theft, or the receipt of the stolen materials. I didn't want to waste my time defending the suit if he had actually been guilty of this, and I was not about to waste my time raising money to pay for a defense if, in fact, the AAC was guilty of a crime.
Assured repeatedly that David was innocent, we used this legal case to rally the field to raise funds for our legal defense. The battle cry became, "You could be next". To be honest, we didn't know whether the "You could be next" line was necessarily true or not, but it was an acceptable line since we really needed money and David Mayo was innocent, right?
Well, we'll see.
My objective was to question everything either side said. I didn't know who to trust or believe. Now, nearly two years later, I have a very disturbing tale to tell you. What I am about to tell you is all contained in the public records that you can find, just as I did. It's all there and I am bitter and angry with what I have found. I am bitter because I was lied to and I used my comm lines and skills to pass that lie along. That lie was used to raise money. It was used to keep another lie alive. And that really frosts me.
Let's review this whole scene and I'll show you how I came to conclude that David did indeed come into possession of the stolen NOTS pack. I came to this conclusion from publicly available evidence including many documents from the files of the AAC and the files of David Mayo himself. Some of the details you may know about, some I am sure you do not.
Basically, what happened is this. On December the 9th 1983, Robin Scott, along with two accomplices, stole three NOTS packs and a Class VIII pack from the AO in Denmark; this is now a well-known fact and is not disputed by any one. We in the field actually regarded this as good news. We all hoped we would be able to get the real NOTS data and, of course, within days of the theft we knew who had stolen the materials.
Prior to, and during this time, David insisted that these materials were unnecessary as he could reconstruct the NOTS pack from memory, but it's interesting to note that he never released anything until after the theft. The AA5 ((ACC OT V)) pack simply did not exist before the theft, even though David often talked about how much he wished he had a pack finished. Then, all of a sudden, in January 1984, not long after the theft, the pack comes out.
Advance payments were coming into the AAC and by February 1984, AA5, or NOTS, was finally being delivered. This was broadly promoted.
David had finished the pack, HIS reconstruction, time for celebration.
The RTC, however, saw it differently, and in January of 1985, they filed a suit against Robin Scott and his accomplices: Ron Lowery, Morag Belmain and Steve Bisbee. And, again, against the AAC, David Mayo, John Nelson, Harvey Haber, myself, my then wife Vivian, concerning the theft and possession of these NOTS materials. Now we're going to take a look at what I call the NOTS connection, because this is where the story gets a little bit more interesting.
To begin, let me give you some history and some idea of who the players were at the start of this game. David Mayo, John Nelson, Harvey Haber and Dede Reisdorf were all ex-CoS management people who formed the AAC in Santa Barbara. Lowery, Bisbee, and Belmain, also ex-Sea Org, formed the nucleus of a group they hoped would one day be a fully fledged AAC in East Grinstead. Robin and Adrian Scott, who had resigned from the Church in the Fall of 1983, were also former Sea Org members who worked for the FOLO UK, and at one point, Robin had even been Deputy Commanding Officer there. Adrian, who was also in FOLO UK, I believe, was the H.A.S. They would later form the AAC Kenda Craig.
But the real story begins months earlier. You know the old Dianetic command, 'Is there an earlier beginning?' Yes, there is an earlier beginning. Ron Lowery and Steve Bisbee, as early as May, or perhaps June of 1983, had stolen Solo through OT3 from AOSH UK, using an inside accomplice. This is a matter of court record. Then, in July of 1983, Jeannie Hansen, a close friend of Lowery and Bisbee, made a trip to see David Mayo. I have no evidence that the stolen Solo through OT3 materials were given to David, but it does explain a strange conversation that I had with him. I offered him the similar materials from the Clear Center. 'Thanks,' he said, 'but we have all we need.'
That was curious to me because our very first conversations, and from then on, many conversations, centered around the unavailability and scarcity of materials, and that was a constant problem. Now, all of a sudden, he seemed to have all of the materials he needed. That seemed illogical to me but I accepted it at face value. And I didn't know about the Lowery-Bisbee June theft at that time. But we still did not have the NOTS pack.
During the Fall of 1983, both Ron Lowery and Robin Scott begin a series of letters with David Mayo. Both indicate they want to affiliate with the AAC in Santa Barbara and deliver services up through Solo NOTS.
Scott indicated that he wanted to send a staff member to Santa Barbara for training. On October 1, 1983, Robin Scott attempts a theft. He approaches an AO UK staff member, asks him to steal NOTS and other confidential materials, and in exchange he would receive a 20,000 pounds per year job. The staff member tells Robin to 'shove off' and writes up the attempt.
On October 6, 1983, Bob Ainsworth of Robin Scott's group in Kenda Craig, writes to David Mayo and says he would like to deliver NOTS. And he was 'figuring out how to get the materials.' Make a note of that.
Later that Fall, Harvey Haber from the AAC in Santa Barbara traveled to Spain for a convention of Independents, and then went on to East Grinstead. During his stay there, Harvey had meetings with Ron Lowery, Steve Bisbee and Morag Belmain, among others. The seeds of the AAC/East Grinstead are sown. I can't imagine that they didn't discuss the earlier theft; and perhaps the one to come.
As late as November 17th, AAC regs are still replying to requests for NOTS or AA5 training by saying the AAC does not currently deliver that training and they cannot give a date certain when it will be available. 'Soon', was all that was said.
Then the second theft. On December 9, 1983, Scott, Lowery and Belmain travel to Copenhagen. They enter the AO in Denmark and take three NOTS packs and one Class VIII course pack, as we said before.
Scott takes one pack and goes back to Scotland. Lowery and Belmain take others and return to East Grinstead. Immediately on their return to East Grinstead, Lowery and Belmain join up with Steve Bisbee and they go directly to Martin Rustin's office to xerox copies of the stolen materials.
But here is the clincher, this is clincher number one, and one part of the story you were never told. The same day of the theft, the very day that the stolen NOTS materials were being xeroxed, the AAC made two phone calls to Martin Rustin's office. They were right in the phone records. I didn't even know about those phone calls when I was working on the legal case.
And now clincher number two. On December the 20th, Harvey Haber from the AAC in Santa Barbara picks up the phone and calls Ron Lowery in East Grinstead and they talk for over a half-hour overseas. This is no ordinary phone call and Harvey takes notes on their conversation.
Those notes have been introduced into the court.
Into those notes he states that the AAC would get 'the materials'.
Lowery, Bisbee and Belmain would not give copies of the materials to anyone other than David Mayo and the AAC. In exchange, they would get AAC affiliation. Just as a parenthetical remark, do you see the ramifications of that? They also got two for one price or 50% discount to train their staff at the AAC in Santa Barbara.
Talk about a smoking gun. Why Harvey wrote all this down I'll never know, but he did, and a copy of it is in the court files for you to see for yourself: affiliation with known thieves. This same note also mentions that John Nelson is planning a trip to East Grinstead in early January of 1984 and he will work out the fine points at that time.
David Mayo, apparently, was told of this deal soon after the telephone call. Now you must remember that as of January 1st 1984, there was still no AA5 pack at the AAC, only the lectures given by David to a select few.
In January, Nelson took off to East Grinstead and met with Lowery and Bisbee who had the stolen NOTS pack. At that time the affiliation was made official with Lowery, Besbee and Belmain as the Board of Directors of the AAC East Grinstead. Nelson also made a quick trip to Kenda Craig to talk to Robin Scott, the deals were closed just has Harvey had laid them out back on December the 20th. In addition, Kenda Craig agreed to pay over 5% of its gross income to the AAC in Santa Barbara.
I might add at this point that it was certainly ethically questionable to be in communication with these people ((Scott et al.)).
To affiliate with these people as AACs, as it is a matter of court record that these people were criminals, is ludicrous. We're talking about simple outright theft now. Regardless of the arguments, religious or philosophical, used to justify it, it was purely a criminal act like someone entering your home and stealing something from you.
But what about David Mayo getting the NOTS pack? David and I had talked a few times about the chances of getting one, but he kept saying to me that he wouldn't want to get involved with anything illegal, so no, he didn't want a hot NOTS pack. I believed him.
Clincher Number Three. All of a sudden, as if dropped from heaven, the AA5 bulletins start coming out: bang-bang-bang-bang; one after the other. In my deposition in this case, they had me go through the complete AA5 pack and read the data in each issue. Issue Number One, January, 1984; Issue Number Two, January, 1984; Issue Number Three, January, 1984. I don't think I need to continue with this, do I?
All of the bulletins of the AA5 pack all came out in one month and all of them came out in January, 1984. I didn't catch it, even as it stared me in the face. There I sat in the room with the attorneys and the papers and everything. It just never occurred to me at the time that David had written the entire AA5 pack in one month or less. The whole deal. That must have been some month.
One then must ask this burning question . . . If David Mayo could reconstruct NOTS from memory into AA5 in only a month, why hadn't he done it in the month of August, 1983? Or how about the months of September or October or November or December? People were clamoring for the services. Why wait? We considered that there was big money to be made in delivering those services. And besides, memory fails with time.
On March 13, 1984, Robin Scott was arrested in Copenhagen. On March 14, by the time the news had reached the AAC, calls were made from the AAC to Ron Lowery, Steve Bisbee and Morag Belmain. Nearly 45 minutes altogether in overseas phonecalls, all on that day. Did you know that the AAC Journal for that period originally featured a page on the new AAC Kenda Craig? No, you don't. Because these, in fact, were never mailed. Instead, they were destroyed and a new issue deleting all references to Robin Scott in the AAC Kenda Craig was produced and distributed. Now that the arrest had occurred, David needed to distance himself from Scott.
Court records show that all the terms of the agreement negotiated by Nelson and Haber were carried out. It would then be illogical to assume that the final and most important term of the agreement had also not been carried out. And that was the transfer of the stolen NOTS pack to the AAC. It would be illogical for this not to have occurred.
The evidence strongly suggests that David did possess a copy of the stolen NOTS pack. It was really quite tricky to piece all of this together. But all I did was read and take careful notes on the trial documents, the testimony in court, the depositions, and the documents used as evidence and so on. And it's all right there for anyone to see.
Now, you have to realize that I did not know all of this when I was doing my tapes, and working on raising money for the legal defense of the lawsuit. While some might not care that the materials were stolen from the Church, it bothers me. I feel betrayed when I look at how much money was spent defending a lawsuit in which we were apparently guilty.
When I take a look at how much time was spent helping David, who I feel was not open and honest with me about the facts of the case, I feel very angry. My life and future was on the line. Apparently, he just didn't care. I find it upsetting to realize that I was taken in by all of this. And the PR line that I helped forward, given to me by David Mayo, in the end turned out to be the lie.
After the suit was filed, I launched into the legal arena. From June '85 through August '85 I worked full time. I attended all depositions, hearings, read all the motions and other legal papers. It was an amazing stack of paperwork. David and I had hours of discussions about this suit, throughout which he maintained his complete innocence.
But the court hearings began in July, 1985. We were going to show the Church of Scientology, I'll tell you that. We were going to get in there and kick some butt, if you will. Unfortunately, we ate most of our meals standing up. We lost motion after motion, creating the impression that Judge Marianna Feltzer, the judge in this case, was against us. So we looked into her. But an investigation into her earlier cases showed a very low reversal rate. That is, she was rarely found to be factually or legally wrong by the higher courts. She had a reversal rate of around 4%, the lowest of any judge in that particular circuit. This was disquieting, to say the least.
And then we get to Clincher Number Four. Judge Feltzer personally compared the AA5 materials and the NOTS materials and she came back into court and this is what she said in November of 1985, now this is a quote...
"The court did not find the testimony of David Mayo credible on the issue of how he and the Advanced Ability Center came to have in their possession the documents in question in this lawsuit. The court does not believe that anyone, even Mr. Mayo, could have reproduced from memory, materials substantially identical to those stolen in Denmark from the church. The documents are too voluminous, too detailed and too nearly identical in substance and wording to have been created by Mr.Mayo without reference to the stolen documents".
The judge ordered all of the materials, AA5 or NOTS in the possession of the defendants to be turned over to the court. So that is the real story of the NOTS connection as opposed to what you were told about it. It is, by no means, the entire WHY for the field crumbling, we'll get to that later. But it is a typical example of the kind of out-ethics that has historically been present in splinters or squirrels or whatever else you want to call them. And it shocked me into beginning an independent search of what really had happened over the past five years in the field as well as just the legal case.
After I realized I had been lied to by David about the NOTS materials and then realizing that I had wasted all that time and all that money, I felt devastated. But I plowed on. I began to review the entire history of the field and my involvement with it. I wanted to know why it all turned out as it did. What I found could not be refuted, it's a story that's not been told. I think you all know that things just do not happen by themselves. People have to make them happen, and in the case of field movement of 1983 and 1984, it was made to happen and I played a large part in that movement.
You've all heard my tapes, well that's just one small part of the picture; the part of the picture we told you about and wanted you to believe contained in those tapes. I believed what I told you in earlier tapes. I didn't know that I was being sold a bill of goods, and took what I was told as truth. I never could document all that black PR.
What I was fed and in what sequence, etc., was calculated to get me to pass on the PR and lies.
For a moment, let's go back to the beginning. I resigned from the church in April of 1983. That is a story in itself, but I will not dwell on it in this tape. Suffice it to say, that upon a good honest look, the seeds of my disaffection went back many years to a couple of situations from earlier times that I was involved in, which I never got myself handled on. Instead, I got more and more strident in my complaints as time went on. And as I have come to learn, many of the conditions I was harping upon to justify my departure in a time period when some had been attempting to stir up discontent, had been caused by a management crew that had been kicked out for out-tech and out-admin in 1982. The ousted former leaders complained loud and long about management, the very conditions that they themselves had brought about.
And we shall encounter some of this earlier management crew very shortly in this tape.
There are many things that could be said about this time period of early 1983. For instance, about the real motivations of people who set up shop outside the church. A representative example is two of the key people in the LA independent field. They were known in the church for fluky tech and getting into off-beat practices well before they left the church. I am talking, of course, about Valerie Stansfield and Thea Greenburg. And they proceeded to confirm my earlier opinion of them by inventing rundowns, squirreling the tech and getting into other practices.
Let's pick up the tale from the summer of 1983, realizing that there was much that had preceded this time period, and this was not by any means the actual start of the incident. There were, by now, alarming rumors early on, like the IRS was going to take over the Church of Scientology, or it was all going to go bankrupt and I put some of this information in earlier tapes. But I have to tell you that those were rumors and those things have not come to pass.
But the field thrived on those rumors, that the church would be going under any day and it made joining the field more attractive if the CofS was going to disappear. The truth, as we now can see it, was something quite different. In fact, it was facts like IRS troubles that we'll omit from this tape. So that was the situation at the time and here is how we capitalized on it.
The Clear Center opened officially in the summer of 1983 and the AAC which I helped set up soon followed. I remember the beginning very well. The seeds were sown on a hot day in July of 1983, we all gathered in my apartment: David Mayo, John Nelson, Harvey and Donna Haber, myself and my wife at the time, Vivian. A meeting that I'll call the birth meeting of the AAC. This was before I'd done my tapes, this was before the AAC journals and the trips to Santa Barbara on weekends.
These were meetings where plans were devised and scrapped and then reworked and finally, it was the place where certain agreements were arrived at.
I must confess these initial meetings made a significant impression on me. I was electrified. I had never been on the Apollo. I have never worked at INT and the stories that I was being told by the small handful hour after hour left me speechless. Well, I don't think I have ever been actually speechless, but let's say I was stunned. These were things that I'd never heard before, things that you'd never heard before either and I assumed that if they electrified me, they would electrify you. And this I used to make my tapes appealing. Not to say that I was calculated but, looking back on it that's how it happened. And looking further back in this area I never really asked for the documentation on all the claims that were being made by David and the other members of the AAC. Which I relayed to you quite faithfully in my tapes.
At the time, it never occurred to me that David Mayo would lie to me. Besides, he had made the big jump, like myself, to leave the church. His jump might have been bigger than mine. So you might say we were comrades where a certain amount of mutual trust was expected.
Now, some four years later, I know differently.
David Mayo, in early to mid 1983, was laying tile for a living.
When we first met, he wanted to get ginned in on who was who in the LA field and how I thought he might go about getting something started. We discussed everything down to the general PR lines that would be used.
But things don't just happen by themselves, people have to plan them out and make them happen. To think that the field movement started spontaneously is ludicrous. No, it was made to happen. I know because I was there at the beginning and I worked to help make it happen. I became a spokesman for the movement in its infant stages, when it was really getting going. David Mayo and I discussed strategy at length and how to get his story out to the field.
What you are about to hear may shock you, but that is not my intention, believe me. This may seem somewhat calculated but I'm afraid in certain cases, it was. The strategy which was worked into my tapes had the following guide lines:
1. The public that we were going to go after were Scientologists primarily on lines at the church. This included any fence-sitters or people who had festering ARC breaks with the church. We were mainly interested in those who already knew Scientology worked and were ripe for the plucking. We knew that unless we promised standard tech we couldn't get many people to really leave the church. Mind you, I'm not saying standard tech was ever delivered, I'm only saying we HAD to promise it. We knew that we could only pull in the church public if we promised good standard tech.
3. This is where David Mayo came in. We pushed the line that Mayo was the highest-trained terminal in the field and that he had data on the upper levels that no one in the church had, thereby giving the field its own attraction. A classic hidden data line. It tuned in perfectly with the inside or hidden stories about the ship and INT, and so on.
But the more data I got in this research, the more I found Mayo's assertions to be false. But at the time I ate it up hook, line and sinker and sold it like gospel truth. And it was very convincing.
And what about David's knowledge of the secret unreleased, upper, upper OT levels? Well, I remember the time in 1984 when Mayo released his version of OT VIII, and what a flop! It was given to only a couple of PCs, and you never saw two more distressed PCs in your life. And that was the last we heard of David bringing out new upper levels.
That's a little story you maybe never have heard about.
4. Another part of the strategy was to give you the impression that people were leaving the church in droves. It's funny how people don't like to take the plunge all by themselves. But if you can assure them that others just like them have taken the leap, they feel more reassured. My tapes were to reassure you that it was okay to leave the church.
I'm sorry if this is shocking. It's not easy for me to be saying all of this. But the truth is the truth, and for some reason, everytime I look more and more at this scene, I see more and more exactly what did happen. It's a painful process, but try to stay with me here.
Anyway, after we worked out the strategy, we decided to implement it. In August of 1983, the Mayos, the Habers and John Nelson, along with my help, established the AAC in Santa Barbara. Per the strategy, the AAC proclaimed itself to be the best in the field, run by former high execs of the SO. We all pushed power to the AAC. We sent money, mailing lists; we took services. Yet, even when things appeared to be going well, rivalry between field groups for public and money was growing. And with it, bad blood in our 'high ARC' environment.
This is a little story that you may not have known about. Let me fill you in on what it was really like behind the scenes in the field.
At an early meeting of center owners, David Mayo was pushing for total control over the field. This fell on deaf ears. The last thing that anybody wanted was someone to be 'in control'. At that time, David claimed he wanted total control out of a desire to keep the tech standard. But, in time, it was clear that his desire for control had less to do with the tech and more to do with his being the sole deliverer of the upper levels in the field, a very lucrative position.
I helped him set up the AAC and I owned the Clear Center, so I was very much aware of what was going on and knew all about the 1.1 battles over who was top dog, and who got the most money, etc. We preached peace and love, but in the end, it was the almighty dollar that ruled.
And that brings us to what we call the Standard Tech, and its price in the field. In my tapes, I spoke to you about the marketplace and how it would create a new field that would be able to deliver services at a price the people could afford. Maybe they could afford the price, but don't kid yourself, they didn't get Standard Tech. I could tell you stories that would make your hair stand on end. About C/Ss that were never trained to be C/Ss; about Auditors that were auditing over their heads, and about C/Ss who never even looked at the folders. I could even tell you some other things that should never have occurred to anyone. And I'm not just talking about the AAC, either. This, if anything, is the story of the FIELD.
You must remember that I was trained up to Class VIII. I, at least, knew the rudiments or basics needed for Standard Tech. And even in my center, which I, at one time, regarded highly, one didn't really get Standard Tech. That's just the long and the short of it.
When the court injunction came down on the AAC and the Clear Center, everyone blamed the closing of the AAC on that decision. Well, that is not true, it was a PR line. I had seen the signs of decay earlier and had even warned David and others at the AAC about what I saw. But no significant actions were taken to correct the situation.
Let's face it, by early 1985, the field was sliding down.
I, myself, even before the court decision came down, decided that I wanted out of this completely. I was tired of the price wars, the back-biting and the attempts to deliver anything and call it Standard Tech for any price. And I needed time for my research.
If there was ever a sincere attempt to establish Standard Tech in the field, then why is our trusted leader David Mayo off doing something called Metapsychology, whatever that is.
I guess I shouldn't be so critical, I may not have been the maker of the porridge, but I certainly dished it out. And by that, I mean my earlier tapes. They were certainly a hit. Much of what I said in these tapes came from a select number of people, and now, looking at the facts, it is clear that some of what I covered on the tapes was either exaggerated or just false. But how did this happen?
Well, a lot of the information came from the founding members of AAC, with whom I met in my apartment in 1983. David Mayo was the Senior C/S International from 1978 through 1982, John Nelson was the CO CMO Int, that is one of the highest administrative officials in the church, from 1981 through 1982. DeDe Reisdorf had also been the CO CMO Int and she held that post before John Nelson from 1979 through 1981. And, boy, did they have lots to say about management when we first met. And this was the hot stuff, the inside story.
Unfortunately, as I now review these tapes and the data they gave me, it was just a collection of self-serving stories that could never be verified. Here they were, the 'leaders of the church', the supposed backbone of tech and management, sitting right in my apartment. But as the years rolled by, and I saw the way they ran the AAC, they fought amongst themselves mostly over money. So much for lofty purposes. It is possible that these are the very people we were mad at in management and it sure looks like it. But I know one thing for sure, I would not want to inherit the mess they left behind at the AAC in Santa Barbara.
I can't help but wonder what kind of a mess they left behind at the church after they left.
Perhaps it's time we should call a spade a spade. Let's face it, you and I put our trust in them and they are now all gone. And no matter what you think about the church, one fact is clear: it is still there, and from what I can see, appears to be growing. I haven't been in the church in years, since 1983. But I drove by just recently and saw all the students out there at the old roach coach behind ASHO and all the students on the streets appeared happy and productive and bouncing around. And you can't help but see the books in the public stores and Dianetics on the bestseller list. That doesn't happen by accident, either. I've never seen that happen in the field.
Please forgive me for being bitter with this, but we didn't end up with much. For that matter, what did we end up with? We ended up with no bridge. No high ARC environment or field really. We ended up with many, many people totally inactive or off into other practices. We ended up with David Mayo and company closing the AAC, which severely damaged much of what remained of the field in one fell swoop, and guess what? We all paid for it, cash, right from our pockets.
The moment the cash started to dwindle at the AAC, it closed up.
It makes one wonder about the secret bank account in Lichtenstein, that's hard for me to say, Lichtenstein, that David Mayo went to right after the AAC closed up. My attorney told me about it. We don't know how much he took out of the country, but it doesn't make sense to fly to Europe to make a $500.00 deposit. I've digressed somewhat from my story but this is something that I just didn't want to let go by.
So, let's take a closer look at my earlier tapes, starting with tape number one, which came out in the summer of 1983. First off, in Tape One I gave the impression that the church was about to go under, that the IRS was about to take over and that the church was being run by a bunch of young inexperienced management, and that the only way to save the church was to leave it and 'correct it from the field '; meanwhile, putting your money in one of the field centers. Well, time is a terrible teacher. And fact is, I was wrong.
That tape contained an allegation that LRH was to get 85 million dollars from the Church of Scientology. This created an enormous sensation, but the source of this figure was Time Magazine and only Time Magazine. There is not now, nor was there ever, even one shred of evidence that this has ever happened.
My conclusion on that tape about the tax ramifications of all that was purely my attempt to explain the transaction. Which would have been a very clever explanation had any of the events of the transaction ever taken place.
Then the story also included a segment that there was something improper about the transfer of the trademarks to the RTC. I dubbed that in to solve that imagined tax problem. At least that is how I strung the story together. The trouble is, this was just a combination of hearsay and my imagination.
Stories like these tried to paint a picture of financial impropriety. But try as I might during this recent investigation, I could find no evidence of financial impropriety. Even LRH's will, which I had the opportunity to read, and according to all accounts I could find, provided for his family and everything else went to the church.
Sorry, clean as a whistle.
Now that I have learned that things are different than I originally told you, I do feel a responsibility to at least tell you the truth, so that you can make up your own mind on things. I certainly owe you that much.
But back to the tapes. Remember the story in Tape One about David Miscavige sort of bumping off members of the All Clear Committee? This turns out to be completely untrue. What was really going on was that DeDe Reisdorf, who told me this story, was bitter about being put off the All Clear Committee. And it was just her story, and in fact, she was removed from All Clear for incompetence. The rest was just so much bull.
David Mayo also told me tales about his comm line, and yours, being deliberately cut to LRH. Same story here: a real case of sour grapes once more. Plus a little bit of reinforcement to the hidden data line.
Then there was all that PR about Mayo's 'imprisonment and torture'.
Well, first, Happy Valley has no fence around it. He could have simply walked away any time he wanted. And I have seen some evidence about his performance on post in the church that is not inconsistent with what we have seen in the AAC. And, let's be honest with ourselves, the AAC has never been a hallmark of organizational competence. As for Mayo's other stories, they just got harder and harder to believe. I mean, not even Judge Feltzer in the RTC case found David Mayo to be a 'credible witness'.
As you know from listening to my tapes, I had no great love for Don Larsen. You remember Don Larsen, the guy who, as a member of the Finance Police, spent some time terrorizing the LA area? Well, it turns out that when Larsen was found out, he was put in the RPF and then blew.
Where is he now? He is all over the press, yelling about how rotten the church is and seeking to blame what he did on the church. That does sound familiar, doesn't it?
After a while, you begin to ask yourself what the hell is going on? There is a limit to how much one can believe or simply absorb. In the beginning, I would believe just about any story that came my way. I wanted to believe them. After all, they made me right and the church wrong. Nice out-rudiment. It worked that way with a lot of people, and let's face it, much of what you believed about what was going on in the church was based initially, at least, on my tapes. And, on that information, you made decisions. The lines that seemed to stick the most in the first tape, of course, were the finance stories. People are always very concerned about the money.
But since Tape One, I have learned that the finance stories David Mayo and his crew told me had its basis in THEIR own actions and plans.
For example, did you know that David and Julie Mayo took between 10% and 15% of the gross income of the AAC? That, plus the salaries of the other principle executives, especially Nelson and Haber, brought the total in pay to executives to between 30% and 40% of the gross income, nearly half. And the salaries were going up and up.
And what about all my stories and earlier tapes about church money being couriered around the world? Well, ok, but what about David Mayo's trip to Lichtenstein, a safe banking country in Europe? By the way, a safe banking country, by that I mean it's a country that has laws like Switzerland, where the amounts of money and the names of owners of accounts are not reported to the United States. As I said earlier, one does not make an expensive trip like that just to deposit $500 in a bank account.
On my second tape, which I did in 1984, I said that LRH was an unindicted co-conspirator in the DC 9 case. And that he was also indicted by a grand jury in Tampa, Florida. Both of those stories turned out to be false. And the truth is right there in the documents.
I'm not sure where I originally got this false data, but I think it might have come from a Michael Flynn taped speech. And that is all I need to say about that..
I also spent a good deal of time in my tapes picking apart various Commodore's Messengers. I painted them as evil and sinister. The fact of the matter is, that I have never even laid eyes on most of those people and know little or nothing first-hand about any of them. All I know is that the field is now gone and the church marches on.
David Mayo, John Nelson and company wove me a story of how the church was of late involved in illegal and improper acts, that I passed on to you. That turned out to be as false as the rest of what I was told. And remember, it was Robin Scott who went to jail. These stories they told me about the Apollo, you know, trouble and then run and trouble and run, and trouble and run. Well, that's not really the history of the ship. It turns out to be the history of David Mayo and that crew.
By the time Tape Three came out, which was in the summer of 1984, the handwriting was really already on the wall regarding the field.
This is nearly six months before the church even filed suit. The church launched a number of special clean-up missions that were recovering many, and times were getting tough. Tape Three was to whip up the field one last time. There was hope that this would generate additional income, and create a common enemy: the church and LRH. Morale needed a boost and I lent a hand. I claimed that there was thousands of splinters. That was just puffing us up. Actual numbers were well below this.
As to the story of LRH's assignment of the trademarks to the RTC, do you remember that document that was notarized by David Miscavige and all that? Well, I said that that document appeared to be a forgery, which would have made the RTC a fraud and thrown all of church management into doubt. Well, it's not a forgery and, since that time, it has been through the courts, the federal courts, in fact, in New York state, and the agreement was pronounced valid.
I also talked about LRH's military career and said virtually every claim that he ever made was untrue. Obviously, if LRH was discredited the church would also be discredited. Ok, let's sort that out. I have since found much more documentation and, I was wrong. LRH was severely disabled and legally blind at the end of the war. He was highly decorated. He did see combat, and so on. It was the Armstrong claims that I based all that on. And I've since seen clear documentary evidence that those claims were false. LRH's military records, however, are true.
I also indicated, on information sent to me by Robin Scott, that the July, 1984 court decision allowed NOTS packs to be freely copied and distributed. I have since read the actual decision and the opposite of that is true. So copies are, in fact, illegal; yet another lie.
You must now realize that for a manager for one of these field groups (that's what we like to refer to them as, instead of squirrel groups) times were tough going in 1984. The income was going down, the tech was getting worse and worse. I knew when I was doing my last tape that it was important that I stress that the church was doing poorly and was about to falter. I feel kind of silly now as I talk to you, all you have to do is turn on the TV or drive by the complex, as I explained earlier to see that church is still alive and growing. I even checked the church claims that Dianetics was back on the bestseller list. Well, that turned out to be true, also. Dianetics was on the bestseller list for the New York Times for at least 29 weeks. In Publishers' Weekly, which by the way is probably the most respected publication in the publishing industry, it was on the bestseller list for 30 weeks. The LA Times for 30 weeks, B. Dalton Bookstore's bestseller lists for 35 weeks and Waldenbook's bestseller list for 35 weeks.
And since the flow of church public to the field has, for all practical purposes, stopped, it does not take a screaming genius to figure out that public are now united with the church, and are staying on-lines.
So, what conclusions can we draw from this story, now that we have laid it out? Well, to begin with, the field as a movement is gone. It was doomed from the beginning and it went the way of all such movements.
It was made up of malcontents, prima-donnas, squirrels and know-bests.
Nothing will ever be standard in that crowd. Let me tell you something, the field has failed and can never succeed, ever. Because it's built on a lie and an overt. Not because I say so, but because that is a fact.
The 'independent field' circa 1982 thru present time, has, whether you know it or not, several historical precedents. For example, Jack Horner; or Bernie Green; or Anachronistics; or The Process from England in the middle 1960's.
What do these earlier attempts have in common with the current scene and with eachother? Well, one, they were led by people who had left the church or were thrown out, whining about how bad it all was. Two, having once left the church, they tried to set up on the outside and live off the church by pulling people off-lines. And three, they all failed due to out-ethics and out-tech.
If those stories sound familiar, they should. Because that history was sadly repeated in 1982, '83, and '84. All that was supposed to be different this time, but it really wasn't. So, if you are still looking in the field for standard tech, save yourself some time. It is not there, and it never really was.
If we're going to speak of Standard Tech by its very definition, then all the groups in the field were squirrel groups and nothing more than just that. Now I can say that, since I am no longer involved either with the church or with the field and I have no vested interest either way. There simply are no cheap rides to get anything in this world and I am afraid that includes Standard Tech.
As for the field today, some have gone off into mixing practices with body balancing and therapeutic massage and channeling and ouija boards and hypnotism and God knows what else. This is not the road to real personal freedom that I was taught, that I taught to others and understood and considered to be good Standard Tech. The game simply became making money.
The AAC, from as early as 1983, was associated with and later formed affiliations with known criminals. Squirrel or splinters have always been started by people with axes to grind. They pretended to deliver the tech, grabbing what money they could before out-tech and out-ethics ruined their results and ultimately forced them out of business.
David and John Nelson and DeDe Reisdorf, the management we were so upset with, now leave us with this mess. The thought of earlier church issues comes to mind that say that Mayo and Nelson and Reisdorf left a mess behind them in the Church of Scientology. My guess? It looks to me like we are two for two.
Let's wrap the picture up here. David Mayo, John Nelson and DeDe Reisdorf planted the seeds of dissension within the church which ultimately led to the defections in '83 and '84. They apparently, in no small measure, were who we were mad at in management.
Then, here's David Mayo, come to 'lead us all to higher ground'.
There would be Standard Tech, a complete bridge, a high ARC environment, they knew best, and we happily followed. None of us, including me, knew the inside story. So what did we end up with? We ended up with no bridge, no high ARC environment or no field really. We ended up with many many people totally inactive or off into other practices. We ended up with David Mayo and company closing the AAC.
And another nagging question: Why were these top-notch experts, superduper people unable to keep the AAC afloat? We believed in them; flowed power and money to them but we were sold down the river, you and I.
Once there was trouble, they took off. Just consider this for a moment and you will see it. David and crew made the field 'legitimate', they lent credence to the idea that this was splintering and not the dreaded word squirreling. This is just too hard to overlook, we were had. I am sorry to put it in those terms but here we are. No Standard Tech, no bridge, no future. If you don't believe me, go up to Santa Barbara and see if you can find the AAC, that's the product.
If their performance inside the church was anything like it was in the field, that answers the question as to why they were in the field in the first place. But this shouldn't have been any surprise. LRH had warned from the early 1950's about squirreling, what caused it and what the inevitable results were and he said it again in RJ 38.
The whole story above is virtually right there about hard times in the church being solved by throwing out those who were corrupting the tech and shattering the lines in the church. And then these deposed staff going outside and blaming the new management for the conditions they created while still trying to profit from the church on the outside.
This is not a new story. This has happened before. But the church seems to have improved since these guys left. The defection rate, or rather the lack of defections, proves this.
Let me say a few words about the current lawsuit and litigation with the Church of Scientology in general. With over two years first-hand experience litigating with them, I speak to you with considerable experience. Litigation, that is the filing of lawsuits, is especially tough with Church of Scientology. First, they have a lot of experience and they have the resources to hire excellent attorneys. Second, they fight hard and effectively. And thirdly, in the RTC case against myself and David Mayo and others, I don't predict that we will do well.
I think we have adequately covered the reasons why. Our talk about litigation would be remiss if I didn't at least mention the fair class-action suit. My advice to you is, at this point, is do not get involved. Aside from the time and money you will spend, not to mention the mental anguish and animosity, with my view today, not only are the chances of success poor, but the only people who will ever see any real money out of this lawsuit ten years down the line will be the lawyers.
That's my opinion, but after more than two years in the trenches and study of fifteen years of church litigation, I speak with some first-hand knowledge.
Freedom, integrity and truth are never accomplished by squirreling or theft or litigation. So while I realize that this may be shocking to many of you, I have started settlement negotiations with the church in this case. I cannot see defending against a suit in which the facts bear out that we WERE in possession of the stolen documents.
David, I fear, is guilty and I'm tired of fronting for him. He had learned on the skinny lines that I was settling with the CofS and he was worried about it. First time I've heard from him since before the AAC closed. He was concerned that I might be settling out of fear, that I would no longer be able to financially manage further legal costs.
He went to great lengths to assure me that my legal expenses would be, in fact, covered. This he repeated over and over, all he could talk to me about was dollars. But my concern was not dollars, my concern was my own honesty and integrity and, unfortunately, dollars do not make an adequate substitute. Of course, I would be expected to help raise more money for the Friends of the First Amendment, which is David's legal defense fund. Oh sure, I thought, here we go again, get out there Jon, and influence the field. Sorry David, no thanks.
Thus far, I have been treated by the church with kindness, respect and courtesy, in spite of my horrendous acts against them in the past, and in spite of my indication of unwillingness to rejoin the church at this time. I have not, and will not, be paid even 'one thin dime', to quote Herber Jentzch, to settle with the church. It is painful to realize that you have lost your integrity. A great deal of this is resolved in getting honest and straight with the church. This doesn't mean that I am going back on the bridge, but it does mean that my hands are cleaner and my life is happier as I go through this process.
My happiest time was the joy of being on the Briefing Course in '74 and later the Class VIII course in '78, getting and delivering good quality tech, keeping my agreements and so on. I just felt great.
Since my decision to leave the church, it's never been quite the same. Oh, this isn't to say that I've never had any happy moments, but underlying that, gnawing at me, was the truth that I could not deny, that I was in possession of materials that I had illegally. Maybe it wasn't illegal in the eyes of the law but it was from my own sense of what was morally right. I never considered myself to be an SP and most people don't think of me as that, but I was behaving right off the HCOBs on suppressive persons, passing on rumors as fact, passing on only bad news about the church, you name it.
I was in a moral dilemma and if you find yourself feeling dispersed or sad or confused, something is nibbling at you. And I will tell you what that very well may be: You are not being honest and straight with that group you've made agreements with. I'm not saying rejoin the church, that is for you to decide.
What I am saying is that your integrity is more important than hanging onto stolen materials. We all promised to respect the confidentiality of those materials and we have broken those agreements.
And if you say, well, they didn't keep their agreements with me, I'm sorry but that's just a lot of noise, it's your own reactivity at work.
Besides, that makes no difference, your basic honesty and rightness has been compromised, as was mine. But you can fix it.
Blaming the Church of Scientology for all my troubles didn't help and, believe me, I could maunder on and on for hours about how the church did this and the church did that, goodness what a lot of charge.
And you know what, after all of those marathon bitch sessions, and I'll bet there isn't anybody that's been in more of them than I have, I never felt one bit better. I am a declared SP and, hard as it is to say, that declare is not unjust.
So here I stand before you, naked, an SP and a squirrel. For those of you who now see me as a traitor, I'm sorry, it's my choice.
I've done the research, I've done the analysis of the facts and these are the conclusions that I've reached. For those of you who have been intrigued or now have questions, chase down your answers with the vigor you'd use to search for a lost child. Call somebody, play this tape for them. Call the Org you left and find a way to resolve your differences.
There's been far too much fighting and animosity already.
I offer you one additional idea: If you have stolen materials in your possession, turn them into the church, and at the same time get your name off the litigation list. And if you are still squirreling, stop.
With my deepest affection, I close this tape with these thoughts. I hope that the truth is more important to you than the fight or 'being right'.
To all of my friends and well-wishers over the years, I thank you enormously for your affection and support. It was important for me to settle this matter with the church and with you at this time, in order for me to simply maintain my own integrity. If you have something to settle, settle it. I'm feeling better day by day and you might, too.
Jon Zegel
