Blown for Good - Marc Morgan Headley [111]
While Dave was playing the CD for us, I think it was during “Keep Yourself Alive,” he suddenly became ecstatic and jumped up from the table. “I just had a great idea!” he exclaimed. He was the happiest any of us had seen him in months, almost in glee about this new idea that had popped into his head. He said that we should get something to eat, and then get all of CMO Int rounded up and into the WDC conference room for a meeting in about an hour. He said to remove the table from the middle of the room and make sure that there were enough chairs for EVERY SINGLE PERSON to sit down. He was very clear to make sure we understood this part. The room was to be cleared out. Now, the WDC Conference room is much bigger than any other conference room on the base. It is two very large trailers put together with no walls or posts to block Dave’s view of anyone in the meeting. That is why he liked meeting in this room; he could be close enough to the greatest number of people in a meeting and could read their reactions.
With the table cleared out, there were a lot of people now in the room. It was all CMO Int crew with the addition of two Gold Execs. No one had a clue why we were there. We knew that Dave was happy about some idea that he had come up with while listening to a Queen album, but other than that the meeting purpose was unknown. It was now around 5:30 p.m.
Dave showed up and talked about the org boards and postings. He also talked about how there had been over 500 people that had been musical chaired off post over the last five years. (He left out the part about most of them being as a result of his orders.) He then asked a few people what “musical chairs” means. About three people answered with the Scientology definition of musical chairs: frequent post changes. No one seemed to know that it meant something else. One guy from Programs said that it was a game. Dave had him explain the game to everybody.
“Good. So you guys understand the game?” Dave asked. “Okay, well today we are all going to find out how the entirety of Scientology feels about you guys playing musical chairs with the posts of international Scientology orgs and the Int Base. We are going to play the game musical chairs, but with a twist. You are all going to walk around these chairs here. While the music plays, a chair will be removed, and whoever does not get a chair when the music stops, well, that person will be offloaded from the Int Base. Those are the rules and that is the game. Oh, and the person who is left standing when all but one chair is pulled out will stay here and help me repost the base and get Scientology expanded. This is not a joke and I am not kidding. You guys have messed with me for the last time. I am going to find out right now and right here, who is the most determined to stay here.”
You can imagine the horror on the faces in the room. There were about seventy people in the room and everybody knew that this was going to be a very cutthroat ordeal. And what did “offloaded” mean? There were so many meanings for this word at the Int Base that what he meant was not clear. To most this meant that they were going to be given $500, put on a bus to the middle of nowhere and told never to come back. Some had the hope that it meant going to a lower org, maybe. To some it meant going to the Rehabilitation Project Force in Australia, Canada or Africa where no external trouble could be caused. There was a lot of fumbling around to get the chairs into a giant circle. Dave had the Cine Sec Gold (Fed Tisi) bring up a video camera so the whole thing could be videoed. This was going to be a major