Blown for Good - Marc Morgan Headley [85]
“Where are you going with our event video?” he demanded.
“I’m confiscating it,” I said as I walked away toward the lobby exit.
“You can’t do that, it’s our only copy!” he exclaimed.
“Sure I can. I’m the quality control and I just did.” I answered.
I was amazed that they even had a copy. How did they get it? Where did they get it? There was more to this story than I knew.
On a hunch I walked across the street to another organization. As I entered the lobby, sure enough, the event was playing there as well. It was not as bad as the first video but it was definitely not something that I would ever pass off as okay. I went over and removed the tape. Again, a staff member came over to try and stop me.
“Can I help you?” he asked me.
“Yeah, you can tell me where you got this video tape,” I told him.
“Well, we got it from the events unit like we always do,” he said, trying to grab it back out of my hand.
“Well, it is being confiscated for being low quality. It’s no good. I am from Gold and you are not getting this tape back,” I said as I walked out.
I didn’t even look at the video playing in the next lobby I entered; I removed it from the machine and made my way outside to my car parked in the lot.
I have to get back to Gold and find out who is making these videos, I thought to myself. I wondered how many videos were out there and where they had come from.
When I rolled into the base, it was starting to get dark. I made my way back to my office with the confiscated videos. The Commanding Officer, Wendell, and the Watchdog Committee member for Gold, Ken Mortensen, were both sitting in the next door office and they saw me as I walked in.
“Marc, can you come in here for a minute,” Ken said.
I walked in. There were several executives standing around the room.
“We just got some telexes from LA. It appears you stole all of their event videos in a single afternoon. Why would you do this, Marc?” Ken asked.
It appears that during my trip home, the staff down in Los Angeles had been busy little bees.
Before I could even answer, Wendell chimed in with his two cents. “You know that this is the most important event in Scientology’s history and you are directly cutting across COB’s message to the public by taking those videos.”
Now I was confused. The videos were shit. It was my job to take the videos. I was the quality control for all Scientology videos!
“The video copies were sub-standard and faulty at best,” I told them, “And they were not made here and no one authorized them to be made. They were pirate copies.”
“It doesn’t matter, Marc, you are cutting across COB’s message to the public. You can consider yourself off post if you do not give video copies back to those orgs tonight! Go sort this out,” Ken told me, while Wendell nodded in agreement.
I left and headed down to video editing. I was distraught to say the least. Here it was my job to control the quality of videos being made and if one single video was found that was not okay, it was my butt. I found some bad videos and then was told that I would be taken off post if I didn’t give them back.
I walked into video editing and sat down to try and figure out what I was going to do. No sooner had I arrived, COB and Marc Yager came walking in. COB looked at me and saw I had a very worried look on my face.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asked in a pissed off voice.
I could tell that these would be my last few minutes at the base.
“Well, Sir, I heard about a video playing down in LA that was bad quality. I went down to LA, verified that it was bad quality and then found a few more at the other LA organizations and I confiscated them. Now I was told by Wendell and Ken that if I do not give the videos back to those organizations tonight