INTRO
The 1982 San Francisco Mission Holder’s Conference has been recorded in the blogs and memoirs as being a milestone in Scientology’s history. I’ve read those years of ’82-’83 being compared to Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation from the early 1500’s. What the history books did not record, so much, is that the Conference was not just a single, one-off event. The original Conference was held at the S.F. Hilton Hotel on Oct. 17, 1982. During the weeks that followed, it was repeated, several times around the SF Bay area, for general staff and public. In the 1st or 2nd week of November that year, one of those replays occurred at the San Francisco Org. By the absolute chance of being in the right place at the right time, without knowing anything, I was able to sit in on that MHC replay and I watched the whole thing go down as it did. It was the very first “Scientology event” I attended. That was 39 years ago. I’ve told what I saw, bits and pieces of it, to a few people since, but haven’t written it down before.
Everybody who has spent time in the CoS and left at some point, whether they walked away or were pushed, has a story to tell. Everybody. These are usually war stories as it goes. The way I see it, the more time in you’ve spent and the further up the Bridge you’ve progressed, the bigger your story. I think of these people as having a certain amount of “Scientology Street Cred” when it comes to their efforts of trying to achieve what Scientology has to offer, while at the same time dealing with what the Church of Scientology has to offer (which would be “outpoints”, to put it mildly). Many people have a lot more of this “street cred” than I do, especially those Mission Holders themselves. I’ve known some personally and I’ve read the stories of others. I don’t claim much myself. I moved through and out of the CoS relatively unscathed. What little I might have relates to being a spectator at what history says was a watershed event; something above my paygrade at the time and one that I was completely ignorant about in the moment. It was akin to starting my bridge in the middle. As I’ll tell in this report, I never learned what that event even was until 23 years later ( thanks to the internet…didn’t the internet allow some of us to confirm what we were always suspicious about regarding the CoS before the internet? ).
At the recent request of some fellow Scientologists, I’ve put together some notes from various sources about The 1982 San Francisco Mission Holder’s Conference itself, how I came to sit in on a replay of it, what I saw then and what I’ve learned since, and the conclusions I’ve reached about it today.
A BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE CONFERENCE
I won’t go into a long description of the original Conference, as a simple web search will turn up results. I will put at the bottom of this report a few links to what I think are a few good articles. The description that is referenced the most comes from one of the Mission Holders who was there at the Conference, Bent Corydon. His book, L Ron Hubbard: Messiah Or Madman, gives the best feel for how things occurred. The Conference took place between representatives of the Senior Church Management at the time and the various Mission Holders that delivered basic Scientology services as a feeder route to more advanced services delivered by the Orgs. The purpose of the Conference was for Management to inform the Mission Holders that they were no longer going to conduct business as usual. The Church was going to exert more direct authority over them. There was a new Sheriff in town, and it was time to show’em who’s boss. Their contracts with the Church were restructured and their autonomy was taken away. Instead of being independent franchises, they were now part of a larger corporation. Legally speaking, the Church was going to use threats of Scientology copyright and trademark infringement against the Mission Holders, enforced by teams of RTC Inspectors sent into the Missions to interview personnel and review their operations. These teams would be paid for by the Mission Holders at a price of $15,000.00 a day. Fines and even jail time would be levied for violations. Exerting intimidation into the Mission Holders was a major purpose of the meeting. The Conference was intentionally delivered with overbearing brute force and bullying. According to different accounts, 4 attendees had been expelled and Declared SP at various points during that weekend. One of them was Declared because he refused to sit in the front of the room. The impact was delivered very effectively but was actually fueled by some events several years earlier which gave Church Management the “soft power” needed to really pull off what they did.
A FEW THINGS THAT LED UP TO IT
10 months earlier in Florida there was a smaller conference between Management and the Mission Holders that did not sit well with LRH. There had been tension and mistrust already developing between both sides. Back then, the Missions had much higher income than many of the Orgs and were considered by public to be a nicer place to do services at. During this time, David Miscavige had convinced LRH that the Mission Holders were turning on him and stealing public from the Orgs, thus denying those Orgs revenue from delivering services. David had basically turned LRH’s opinion of the Missions against them. The 1982 San Francisco meeting was sanctioned by LRH and driven by a sense of revenge against those Mission Holders.
Veteran Los Angeles field auditor Trey Lotz explained in an interview to Andy Nolch that in the bigger picture, the Church’s troubles with the IRS in the 1970’s were really the major mover to taking over the Missions. The Church knew that losing a lawsuit to the IRS could wipe out them out completely. They were still fighting the loss of a major lawsuit in Portland, OR and many other lawsuits were on the horizon. It became time to shore up the bank account. Prices for public services began to increase in the 70’s and the ultimate jackpot was to be found in the Missions: that was where the real money was at. Once they were taken over by the Church however, they began to decline and many eventually dismantled.
HOW I STUMBLED INTO IT
At that time, the San Francisco Org was just a cool place to hang out for me. As it was, having just moved to S.F. in September that year, I didn’t really have much of any other place to hang out. I made friends there pretty easily. Even the ones who were trying to cop a stat out of me (use me to raise their statistics) were still my friends. This had me casually sitting in the lobby on the sofa one night in early November looking at a magazine, perhaps. It was already dark outside, but suddenly I noticed that there were a lot of people coming in the front door and walking straight to the staircase leading up to the 2nd floor Div. 2 Academy. Many of them had white uniforms on. I didn’t know what the Sea Org was at the time. I think it was the Day Staff PES, Martha Kerchen, who began to join them walking up stairs. As I watched this, she waved me over and said “Hey Dave, c’mon”. She was inviting me to go upstairs with them. Having nothing better to do, I went along. When we got to the Academy, there wasn’t any room inside that I could see from the back. It was filled with public, probably close to 100, as the Academy room there was pretty big. There was obviously some sort of event that was going to take place. I must have been somewhere else in the Org when all these public individuals poured in during the hour before. Not having a chair to sit in, I just sort of hung by the door and when the event began I found a small book shelf partition in the back corner of the Academy to lean on. There might have been a stool there I sat on but by the time it began the place had become standing room only. The front of the room had several long tables lined up end to end and the 10-15 Sea Org members conducting this event sat next to each other like the Supreme Court. Adjacent to their table was another long table set up with maybe 6-8 e-meter stations assembled across it where a mass group sec-checking session was going to take place. When the speaker, a tall guy with a mustache, began talking he just went into his monologue without much of any friendly welcome, hello, glad you’re all here tonight, etc. It was straight down to business. I kept my mouth shut and figured I was just supposed to watch whatever this thing was. It felt like there was a lot of seriousness going on.
DAVID MISCAVIGE WAS THERE, BUT SAID NOTHING
While waiting for the event to begin, as I stood in the doorway, I watched the remainder of the white uniformed Sea Org Members march past me to the second entrance at the far end of the hallway. They all had a no-nonsense look on their faces as if they were there for some real business. That is, all except for one of them. One guy, much shorter than the rest, stood out to me as I watched him walk past, and was the only one I would remember aside from the main speaker. He didn’t look serious at all. In fact, he sort of had this carefree, happy-go-lucky look on his face. Instead of staring straight ahead as the rest of them did, he was glancing up at the ceiling, turning his head side to side to look at the upper corners of the hallway. He seemed to be having fun, perhaps because he knew what another power trip the whole event was going to be for him. That guy, I’d realize years later from pictures and video, turned out to be David Miscavige. He was the Master of Ceremonies at the original Conference, laying down the law and talking tough. He had personally expelled Mission Holder Kingsley Wimbush and his wife there. At this replay however, he stayed silent and just observed.
I WAS GIVEN PERMISSION TO BE THERE
After the speaker took a few minutes to give his opening remarks, he asked the audience if there was anyone in attendance who was new to Scientology or, perhaps, not a Scientologist at all. I was the only one to raise my hand. He looked at me in the back corner and asked me how long I had been in Scientology and what services I had done up to that point. I said I had been in for about 5 weeks and had done 2 basic courses: The Ups and Downs of Life and The Personal Integrity Courses. I also said that I had received 5 hours of Book One auditing. He paused, looked down at his notes and said “Alright, you can stay”. I was in.
“THE SPEAKER” WAS CLIVE DODELL, DEP. INT. FINANCE POLICE DICTATOR
The International Finance Dictator who spoke at the original Conference was Cmdr. Wendell Reynolds. I don’t know if he was there at my event. However, I learned in 2013 from a well known OT8 from Norway that this speaker was Reynolds’ deputy within the Int. Finance Police unit. Towards the end of the event I turned to Karen Houk, a Foundation staff member who was sitting close to me. I said “Karen, what’s that guy’s name?” She didn’t even turn to look at me. She just stared straight ahead at him and dead panned to me “Clive Dodell”. In hindsight, I think Karen knew what was going on with this event and wasn’t happy about it. About 8 years later or so, during the winter of 1989 to 1990, I would see this same guy once again. I spent that winter training at Flag. The FSO Chaplain at that time was a tall, dark haired lady named Jackie Dodell. One day in a hallway within the Ft. Harrison I saw Jackie and Clive walking together side by side. They may have been holding hands. I recognized Clive right away and figured they must be married.
WHAT EVERYBODY GOT LECTURED ABOUT
Since the the attendees at this event were public Scientologists and local staff members, they didn’t get yelled at and beat-up like the Mission Holders did. It was a little less “in your face”. Still, the tone and narrative dealt to them was delivered as if their lives and all eternity depended on getting the message and following through on it. The whole thing seemed to drag on and on. I didn’t know what most of it was in reference to. Only 2, maybe 3 Sea Org members spoke in total, but Clive did the most of it. I can say that compared to the original Conference, it did not have the lawyers and legal explanations of the Church/Mission restructuring that had just taken place. They did discuss the importance of KSW though, and that was the major thrust of the meeting. The following points I can remember pretty well:
1. The Declare of Mission Holder Kingsley Wimbush and the jeopardized status of his Stevens Creek Mission was very much discussed at great length early on. He was the biggest squirrel of them all at the time. Kingsley was Declared for promoting a squirrel technology within his mission that he referred to as “De-Dinging”. I’ve linked to a description of what this tech was at the bottom of this report. Ironically though, he had one of the most upstat missions in California.
2. The Ruth Minshull book, How To Choose Your People, was ordered to be removed from all the Org book stores. That book was not LRH, therefore it must have been squirrel. I could be wrong about this, but the removal of all the Board Tech Bulletin volumes was also ordered to take place. Don’t quote me on that though.
3. A bunch of people, no more than 15 I’d say, were at one point ordered to walk over to the table at the far wall and get a metered sec-check about something which I don’t recall exactly. It probably had to do with whether they had any withholds about being a squirrelly, covert-operator somewhere along the Org/MIssion lines.
4. A good handful of senior Org staff members and/or public who were well up the Bridge at that point were ordered to fly to Flag the next week to do training. This included the KSW course and perhaps the OEC Vol 0 course also. The FEBC may have been thrown in there as well. This was to be paid for by each individual at a cost of $12,000, at least.
5. Just like in the original Conference, they Declared a guy for not taking a seat up front when asked to. I’ll have more to say about that below.
I HAD NO IDEA WHAT I WAS WITNESSING
In the days leading up to the meeting, there was no discussion, notice nor promo about it that I saw or heard around the org. It must have been promoted through call-in, because the room was already filled with 100 people, it seemed, once I got up there. After the event, no one told me what it was all about and I didn’t really think to ask anyone. I never heard anyone else talk about it either. I really just forgot about it from that point on because there was no significance assigned to it for me. It was only…”only !!” 23 years later in 2004-05 or so when I read Jon Atack’s book, A Piece of Blue Sky, that I began looking at it again. In Jon’s book, he devotes an entire chapter to the Mission Holder’s Conference. Much of it is taken directly from Bent Corydon’s book. As I was reading that chapter, I began remembering what I saw in 1982. There were things told in that chapter that were nearly identical to the things I had seen. Too many and too similar to not make any connection. Still, there were also a few things that were not congruent to my memory. I couldn’t reconcile the differences but also could not assume that the parallels were just coincidence, either. I wasn’t sure what to make of it all. In the year or two that followed after reading it, I would occasionally get on the web and do a search in various forums, ESMB type boards, blogs, etc and try to find out more about the Conference. Every deep dive came up short until I finally discovered one single forum post from someone that said the MHC was repeated, for general staff and public, several times around the Bay area in the weeks that followed Oct. 17th. So that was it. That’s what must have happened. Still, though, it was just too baffling that they would expel and Declare a guy in the original Conference for refusing to sit up front and then have a chance to do the exact same thing again in a replay. In 2021, after reading Ron Miscavige’s book Ruthless, I figured out why.
SOMEONE GOT DECLARED WITHIN 15 MINUTES
At the beginning of the event, but toward the end of the speaker’s introductory comments, there was a man in the back of the room standing with his back against the wall. He had an open chair in front of him but chose not to sit down. As the speaker looked to this guy across the room, he told him that he would like to fill the chairs in the front row and requested that he come forward and take one of the available seats up there. This guy in back just shook his head and said “No”. There was a bit of defiance in his voice as well. The speaker at that point paused, looked down at his notes, then looked back up at the guy and said the following: “Ok sir, you are hereby Declared Suppressive”. It was just like that. The guy in back didn’t react. He didn’t say anything. He just continued to stand there with his head still held high and looking forward at the speaker. No one in the room said a word. No one even looked over their shoulder at the guy. The air was thick and heavy, as it was for most of the meeting. Probably everyone in the room knew what had just happened. That is, everyone except for me. I was brand new to Scientology. I didn’t know what ethics were, let alone what being Declared meant. From the way that exchange went down with the guy in back, apparently it was something consequential. Not to me, though, at least not at that time. I distinctly remember what was going through my mind when he said that. I was thinking to myself: “declared suppressive…declared suppressive…what does that mean? Is he saying that he officially thinks this guy is a jerk?” I’m not kidding. It sounds funny in retrospect. It isn’t funny to those who want to be in Scientology and get this shot at them as a weapon, as the CoS has been doing on a regular basis since the late 1960’s. As the speaker moved on with his presentation, the guy continued to stand there for another 15 minutes or so, after which he left the room.
THIS DECLARE WAS MOST LIKELY FAKED
In the last chapter or so of Ron Miscavige’s book, he makes reference to a series of meetings held by the Church in 1982 regarding the Mission Holders. He tells how some were Declared on the spot so as to intimidate all those in attendance. This was really the first formal acknowledgement I’ve read that the Conference was several meetings and not just one. Within his book, he also tells a few stories about how his son David had seemingly engineered situations to look like something they were not. The one that stood out to me was when he described being in David’s office with him and a CMO treasury messenger walked in on them to deliver David his weekly staff pay: $30.00 cash paperclipped to a receipt. The ploy was for David to make his father Ron think that David was paid no more than the rest of the Sea Org members. Ron Miscavige tells how he wasn’t duped by this at all. Within 5 minutes of reading this narrative near the end of the book, I began cogniting on what I saw myself in 1982: The Declare of that guy standing in the back of the room was staged. He actually was sitting down at the immediate beginning of the event and then stood up within the first 5 minutes or so. I don’t remember for sure if the speaker even asked him what his name was. The guy didn’t move or say anything after he was hit. It didn’t seem to phase him. It was like he didn’t care if he was Declared. Up until 2021, I figured that guy maybe was even daring them to Declare him, thinking they wouldn’t do it again after the first time. If so then that’s why it didn’t seem to bother him. I’m not so sure now. Today I’m 90% certain it was all an act. That would be consistent with how they intended to intimidate the Mission Holders using real Declares, just weeks earlier. It would be consistent with the story in Ron Miscavige’s book, as well as Mark Headley’s book, Blown For Good, about the Musical Chairs incident at the Int. Base which was meant to scare a bunch of S.O. members into fearing they were going to be deported out of the Base. It would also be consistent with how Mark describes David Miscavige always obsessing about the next World Tour Event, trying to create over-the-top impact for the audience. That would be consistent with the pictures I’ve seen in Source Magazine of all these New Ideal Org openings where the crowd outside is obviously photoshopped in, so as to mislead the viewer about how big something is when it really isn’t.
I’m sure most of those who have worked with David Miscavige would agree that PR and imagery are paramount with him.
THE CONFERENCE WENT GLOBAL AND HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF
In 2019, I took a trip to Israel to visit The Dror Center. That is a modern day Scientology Mission-like group that delivers the entire Bridge. They’ve been around since the early 90’s and were able to deliver successfully under the Church as a regular Mission until they left in 2012. They’ve been even more successful after 2012. One of their auditors, Aviv Bershadsky, I was able to sit down and talk with. I told him at one point about my experience that I’ve described here and he said something that surprised me at the time: The Conference was also replayed at St. Hill in the U.K. In retrospect now, that made sense. It was believable to hear this coming from Aviv. With Dror being a part of Scientology’s European network, perhaps he has talked with people either in or out of session who have had ties to St. Hill at some point back then. I would think he’d be in a position to know something like this.
The Dror Center struck me as one of the closest things today resembling what the successful Scientology Missions in California were like from 45 years ago, in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. If Dror was around back then, it would definitely be on The Church’s take-down radar in 1982. It’s interesting to see that 30 years after the MHC, the Church still had no problem letting go of another successful Mission. I can only guess it’s rooted in the fact that David Miscavige didn’t directly control it. When Dror left the CoS in 2012, the story of their break was no more amicable than those of the earlier Mission Holders. My comments above about “Scientology Street Cred” come to mind. I’ve linked to their website below in which they’ve posted several articles that detail their own story and many other success stories as well. Recently, Dani and Tami Lemberger, the founders of The Dror Center, reported on their website as having their highest statistics ever in 2020, when the COVID-19 global pandemic had travel across Europe greatly restricted for much of the year.
David H. Fennick, May 2021
LINKS
https://www.xenu.net/archive/audit/missions.html
http://www.sc-i-r-s-ology.com/documents/1982-10-17missionholders.html
http://www.iscientology.org/scientology-blog/384-what-de-dinging-actually-was
The Sanctuary of Standard Scientology Technology is dedicated to Pierre Ethier: a Flag trained Class XII Auditor honored as The Best Auditor on the Planet for over a decade. 