Blown for Good - Marc Morgan Headley [82]
People were being brought in to attend the event from all over the United States. They had people flying in from all over the world. All the rich Scientologists were being told, “It does not matter where you live, you have to come to this event and be there live.” And of course, in true Scientology style, this was all being done at the last possible minute with the least amount of warning possible.
The event would take place on October 8th, 1993. As the date approached, more and more staff members were staying up all night to complete the preparations. Everything had to be perfect. We still did not know what the hell was even going to happen. A few people in the editing bay knew something was up. They were putting together graphics for the event but they were completely random. It looked like things from the past 40 years of Scientology’s history.
A week before the event rumors were flying around the base. Documents were being brought in to be photographed and made ready for the event.
We had one week left before the biggest event in Scientology’s history. This was either going to be the best thing to happen or the worst. Most of us at Gold had our money on the latter.
All the cameras at the event were TV style cameras. They had at least seven cameras throughout the Sports Arena plus the cable cam flying overhead. All these cameras were fed to the large production truck that was controlling all of the audio and video recordings of the event. There was a huge control station inside the truck and banks and banks of video recorders.
The audio and lighting inside the Sports Arena was being controlled from a large platform in the back of the arena facing the stage. There was a huge audio mixing board with a few people at it and a huge lighting board with a few more guys at it. The guy controlling the cable cam was also situated there and he had a TV showing the cable cam feed.
The night of the event came. The Sports Arena was about two thirds full. In addition to the public Scientologists, all West Coast organization staff and Sea Organization staff were in attendance which made up at least 2000 people.
The event opened with a laser light show and a flag twirling honor guard procession. Then Dave Miscavige talked for two hours. Most of us couldn’t understand a word he said. The audio in the Sports Arena was horrible once you got up past the floor seats. So a thousand people heard what he said and the rest of us just clapped when we saw the people in the floor sections clapping. I knew that the audio staff would be losing at least one or two people to the Rehabilitation Project Force after this event. But that would be a small portion of the fun we had in store for us.
At the end of the event, Dave Miscavige announced that the war with the IRS was finally over. There was a big fanfare, falling confetti and standing ovations which continued for at least fifteen minutes. Dave then handed out some Waterford crystal awards to the tax attorneys.
Then Marc Yager, Guillaume Lesevre, and Ray Mithoff each gave a short five-minute speech and the event ended with David Pomerantz singing a new song called “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now.” Cheddar had less cheese in it than this. From our perspective, besides the horrible audio, it was anyone’s guess what would happen next.
The next day back at the base trouble was already brewing. There were unseen problems that had gone on throughout the event and Dave Miscavige was furious.
It seemed like anything that could go wrong did.
We all knew the audio was horrible in the arena, was it was also horrible on stage? Supposedly Dave was losing his voice because he was fighting to even be able to hear himself throughout the entire event.
When Dave got up to start talking on stage, the teleprompters were not properly aligned. So instead of having two teleprompters for him to read his speech from, he had one third of one teleprompter and the other was completely unreadable throughout the entire event. Also, the lighting was screwed up and a spotlight was trained directly on Dave the