Blown for Good - Marc Morgan Headley [145]
I could not have been more correct.
The New Year’s event this year had been scheduled to occur mid-week on December 28th, so that the event could be produced on DVD and sent out to the orgs thus allowing them to have their events on New Year’s Eve.
Because I was in the Systems Department now, I had little to do with the live event. This was a huge relief for me. Normally I would have been working day and night myself, but that was not the case this year. I actually sat in the audience at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.
One of the biggest parts of the New Year’s event was always the FSM awards. The FSM (Field Staff Member) awards were given to the public Scientologists that recruited the most new people into Scientology during the prior year. Heber Jentzsch was handing out the FSM awards. I remembered this because ED Int, Guillaume Lesevre, had given them out every year since their inception. This was the first year Guillaume would not be handing them out and it was a huge deal.
Months before, Guillaume had severely pissed off Dave Miscavige and had been on heavy manual labor at the berthing buildings for months. It was not unusual that most of the regular event speakers would be in severe trouble right before an event, and would end up doing the event anyway. But Marc Yager and Guillaume had really been working their hardest to get on Dave’s bad side and Dave had them off his lines a lot – Dave’s “out of sight, out of mind” theory. Marc Yager was at least still doing some post functions and approving and disapproving people’s submissions, but Guillaume was doing hard labor. Not only was he outside most of the day, but he was lean and gaunt. That is one of the things about working at Gold—there were not a lot of fat people around. For people who were put on “heavy MEST work,” as it was always referred to, they were just plain skin and bones. I think when it came down to whether Guillaume was going to do the New Year’s event, he looked too bad to even walk out on stage. He looked like a cancer patient. His face was thin and he was starting to look much older than he was. He seemed beaten down like a dog. No amount of make-up could hide these features. Also, since he was being punished by Dave, there was always the slight chance that Guillaume would screw up something at the event just to spite Dave. No chances could be taken. Heber was brought in to announce the awards.
Since Guillaume was out, this was Dave’s chance to kick out some more people as well. Normally the other speakers were Mike Rinder, Marc Yager and sometimes Ray Mithoff if Dave was really desperate. So all of those guys were now out. Dave Miscavige brought in Claire Edwards from Scientology Missions International, Rena Weinberg from the Association for Better Living and Education and Don Drader from the World Institute of Scientology Enterprises.
Between Heber and the new guys, it seemed that all new people were now putting on the events, except for Dave Miscavige, of course.
Claire Edwards came from a long-time Scientology family. Both her father and brother were once declared SPs. Her father, David Gaiman, worked for years to get undeclared and her brother, Neil Gaiman, became a noted bestselling author and was undeclared and apologized to for the mistake in declaring him an “SP” in the first place.
The event started at around 7:00 p.m. and was over by 9:00 p.m. My wife, Claire, and I met up with her parents, brother and two sisters. My wife had been down in LA before the event with another CMO Int staff member and had one of the organization vehicles. Since we were down in LA at the event, we managed to sneak off to Claire’s parents’ house for the rest of the night. As long as we were back at the base on