Part XIV:My First Declare

After arriving back in Denver from my Flag ethics cycle, I felt very thankful to John for the session he'd given me at Flag. I remained in the wonderful state I'd achieved for a week or two. Then I received another call from the ethics officer at FOLO WUS.

Apparently, the RTC was dumbfounded to discover that I had left Flag without even a slap on the wrist. They had cancelled the findings of my Flag ethics handling and had busted the ethics officer with whom I had worked on Flag. This FOLO WUS ethics officer informed me that I must now report to LA for another ethics cycle, and once again, I was told that they had a stack of knowledge reports on me. Feeling enough was enough, I began questioning this man on the validity of his orders. But with each of my questions and policy references, he would only respond by saying that I must come out to LA immediately. I ended this one way conversation by saying that his order was illegal and that per policy, I would write him an "Orders, Query Of" and express-mail this out to him within 24 hours.

I wrote a long and detailed Orders, Query Of that fully demonstrated how my order to report to LA was both illegal and off-policy. One of the points of the query was that I'd never received copies of any knowledge reports, and per policy, copies should have been sent to me. Another example of the order's illegality was that if they wanted me to come out for an ethics cycle, they would have to specify the nature of the cycle (i.e. Board of Investigation, Comm Ev, etc.) and what the charges were. Additionally, if I were to come to LA without information about the charges, I wouldn't be able to gather refutable evidence or prepare a competent defense. I express-mailed the query within the time frame that I had promised. Even though the ethics officer had made an issue of my reporting to LA quickly, he didn't respond to my query in a timely fashion. Some time passed and I received a call from the local org. They said that I had a telex from FOLO WUS but wouldn't read it to me over the phone. I was told that I had to come into the org to get it. Thinking the telex was an answer to my query, I rushed over.

When I arrived I was told to go upstairs to one of the offices. After I had entered the room, someone shut the door behind me. The org ethics officer, her assistant and a couple of other people were in the office. The ethics officer handed me the telex. It was from the ethics officer at FOLO WUS, but it wasn't addressed to me, it was addressed to someone at the org. It read, "Get Goldstein on a plane now, any way you have to". This was the straw that broke the camel's back. No answer to my query or communication to me had been made. Just an order to the local org to get me on a plane.

The four people just stood around while I read the telex, waiting for my response. Only a few times in my life had I been as angry as I was at that moment. I went over and sat on the edge of the desk and addressed the people in the room. I calmly, but coldly told them that it appeared that they had a direct order to get me on a plane. I told them that I guessed they would have to try to comply with the order if they didn't want to get into trouble. Then I got to my feet and said that I wasn't going to LA, that I was going to walk out of this office and building, and asked them to please try to stop me. I had really hoped that they would try to stop me, as I wanted to take my anger out on somebody. As I proceeded to the door they all moved out of my way, letting me pass with no incident. It was probably for the best that they didn't try to stop me. If they had, I would later have felt badly about the harm I most certainly would have inflicted.

The next morning my doorbell ran. It was the org ethics officer's assistant. Without speaking he handed me a goldenrod issue and ran away. It was an ethics order from FOLO WUS declaring me a suppressive person. The order was filled with all sorts of vile lies. For example, one such lie was that I was providing confidential material to the field. Later that morning, I went to my office where I found copies of the declare order scotch-taped all over the outside door.

I decided to query the declare order. I ended up writing a tome, responding to each charge in the declare order with data and policy references, and going over the entire ethics scenario in detail. I made numerous copies of my query and sent them to all appropriate parties at FOLO WUS, Flag, and upper management.

Weeks went by but there was no response to my query. During this time I did get a couple of clandestine phone calls from Diana. She didn't say much and what she did say was not very coherent. She seemed rushed and harried.

Because of the situation, business was pretty bad. Also, I didn't feel like doing much with Book One. I closed the office and moved my operation into the basement of my home. I took the file cabinet with all the correspondence course student files over to John's house. When I did get student lessons in the mail, I just forwarded them to John for grading. All we were now doing with Survival Services was delivering to students doing their course. I started another business to pay my bills.

During this time, I suddenly became very popular in the Denver area. According to my declare order nobody was suppose to talk to me, but staff and public from the org and missions called and came to see me all the time, concerned with how I was doing. I got invited to more parties by Scientologists in the area than I'd ever been invited to previously. People responded to orders from the local org's ethics officer not to communicate with me by telling her to shove it.

After some time had passed, I got a phone call from someone saying that he was on a mission in Denver from the Office of Special Affairs. I asked if this was in response to my query and he confirmed that it was, saying that he and his partner wanted to come over and see me right away.

When they arrived at my home, I invited them down to my basement where I had the desks and chairs from my office set up. They sat down and immediately demanded that I give them the names of all Scientologists in the area who were in communication with me. The lead missionaire had lied when he had said that they were here in response to my query. Actually, their mission was to put a stop to people communicating with me. I told them that they had to be crazy to ask me for names. What were they going to do when I didn't give them the names, re-declare me? I was pretty outraged. When they got up to leave, I stood in front of the basement stairs and asked how they expected to leave, alive. I told them that all I would have to tell the police was that two weird people in strange uniforms came to my house and tried to assault me. After I saw that they had lost their composure and were both sufficiently frightened, I let them leave. The lead missionaire had been so scared and nervous that he actually left a copy of their mission orders on my desk! The mission orders spelled out each action they were supposed to take. Knowing what they were suppose to do, I called and warned everyone who they were coming to see. People expecting their arrival and knowing what they were going to be saying and doing, were prepared for the missionaires' visits. The missionaires soon discovered that they didn't need a list of names, as the majority of the Scientologists in Denver refused to comply with the declare order and were very adamant about their refusal.

With their mission in shambles, they showed up at a party where I was the special guest. They walked over and politely asked if they could talk with me. Saying that the declare order, and their mission were probably wrong, they would now be returning to LA. After that, everyone, including the two of them, had a good time. After the party, I drove them to the airport.

I wasn't to hear anything new from the CofS or RTC for a while.

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