File talk:Information on the Hollywood Guaranty Building part 1 of 2.ogv

 

Transcript

[1]

Question: So you were in the Sea Organisation at the HGB in Los Angeles. Can you tell me about that?

Aaron: Yeah I was there in the Hollywood Guaranty Building, that's what it's called, it's owned by the Sea Organisation or the Church of Scientology International and it's located at 6331 Hollywood Blvd. It's pretty much the public face of management of the Sea Org and I was there in 19, late '92, '93, '94, '95, and early '96.

Question: Ok. So, do the general public or indeed even Sea Org members, know the full scope of the operations there?

Aaron: I think they've got some idea of the scope - what happens there. I mean, from, it would be interesting to know what people know and what they don't know. As an example, generally in the command channels of scientology the HGB is seen to hold this middle management, the Flag Command Bureau - y'know which you have one section there, the Flag Bureau, which runs all the management offices around the world in the different continents. Then you have WISE International, Scientology Missions International, ABLE International, the Office of Special Affairs International, the International Training Organisation - which then trains all the administrators in all the different organisations around the planet.

What I don't think people know, I don't really know how relevant it is, but in that building, it's twelve stories, and what a lot of people don't know is that this whole building is very important to the operations internationally. Not just because it holds what's known as middle management, but it represents an unusual situation in the Sea Organisation. Here's an example...

Up at international level you have Gold and what they call the "Watchdog Committee," although it really is just Division 4A of CMO International, and over here you have the Executive Director International, located outside the Riverside and Int Base and so forth. And considering there's a lot of different organisations everywhere, but in reality they all stem through the HGB. Any personnel going to international go through the HGB. All communications from any organisation go to the HGB then they go out through another organisation or they go from there to international. In other words, HGB is like a stem on a tree where we have scientology below as the root system, the liaison offices, the orgs, the missions, and then it stems very sharply to the HGB and then from there it goes out up to International Management.

Some things that people may not know about the function of the HGB - we all know it's got the L Ron Hubbard Life Exhibition at the bottom, but what a lot of people don't know is that there is a secret LRH apartment, not an office, an LRH apartment on the 10th floor. And it's on the Northeast side of the building, Northeast corner of the building, and it takes up almost 1/3 to half of the entire floor space. This is been built on a slight, if that's the blueprint of the building, the offices have been built on a slight slant like this, and what happens is that the elevators open up on the floor and the most Northern Eastern, the most Eastern elevator actually doesn't open on the 10th floor unless you have the special key.

And what annoys me about this is that this apartment was built for Ron Hubbard, who's dead, and not only that the cost of it is in the millions of dollars. We have a gigantic lounge there, a walk-in closet for him, a gigantic bedroom, a walk-in shower that's just laid in with Italian marble, it's got some of Ron's personal possessions there such as his jumper that he wore in the Saint Hill photo, some of his old razors, a closet full of clothes - they're not fakes, they're the real things. The Italian marble alone is probably around $2-300 USD a square foot. I mean it's some of the most expensive marble you, this is L Ron Hubbard's apartment, it's not just his office. We have gold-plated cutlery, we have 2-ft wide candles, we have animal furs, Roman-depicted sculptures across the top of his bed - what annoys me about this is that the Sea Org and scientology keep crying poor.

And I know for a fact that in 1996, we had over $1,000 million USD in the reserves figure, ok, and I got that from the person who was in charge of reserves. Ok? That's how much cash they had. And this is had, had to have cost several million dollars to make and no one ever used it. And we've got Sea Org members sitting out there in rooms, ok, 10ft by 10ft, that are housing six to nine staff members and they're told the money is better spent on, on, on building organisations and this and that, and building up the war chest against these enemies of scientology. And we've got this apartment built - it's even got the messenger office where there are computers set up in case Ron comes back, where these messengers can work, and this is utterly ridiculous. It's got a private kitchen - it's HUGE. Like an apartment like this in Los Angeles would just cost millions for such a, for such a thing.

That annoys me.

But away from that, and talking about the operations of the building, this is how it really works: the CMO, the Commodores Messenger Org at the building, is known as the International Extinction Unit (IXU) and that holds several departments that are very uncommon to any other operation in the Sea Org. Before I go through what those are, I just want to explain that your average staff member is sitting is his office doing his thing and he sits there all day doing his thing. If he's an auditor he's in the room, if he's a course director he's in the course room, if he's in Division 2 in central files he's over here. HCO's are always running, HCO's staff are going everywhere all the time, they're in charge of all communications, personnel and their affects. So they're always around and HCO staff see everything - they are the police. And CMO is the police of management. In the CMO there's no real boundaries, everybody in CMO knows what the other messenger is doing. It's like an HCO and even that has its own HCO, a Hubbard Communications Office, which polices the messengers themselves, but usually messengers don't require much policing. And it acts like one unit that thinks like one person and acts - that's why messengers get things done.

Now, there are several departments, I was saying, that are in CMO that are not in any others. First of all, Flag Bureau is responsible for communications between organisations and they handle the traffic called particles such as folders or what have you. Any information going to International Management is what's known as the External Communications of HCO, then CMO, and we have a personal driver which drives up to International Management with the package containing anything for International Management and comes back.

So CMO always knows everything that's going into management. And that's on the Northeast of the building outside the loading dock area just inside there, that's where the CMO's communications are established so they can quickly go outside and drive these particles off. Ironically, although he's a messenger with status he actually wears a blue boiler suit and looks very much like a labourer. But in actual fact he's in charge of the most important communications in existence - everything going international and back. So you wouldn't know, you would think he was a labourer, he's not, he's actually a very senior messenger with a very high security clearance - in fact, that person has the highest security clearance in all of CMO. Me, as the HAS, the HCO chief, above him, I didn't even have the security clearance. Because he has to go to locations like international, archives, with these materials and no one can open those up.

Now the other division of CMO that a lot of people don't know about is that every single communication by email and by telex goes through what's called the Authorisation Verification and Correction unit (AVC). And that's located in CMO. The reason why it's located there is that while management have their instructions, it's only CMO that know whether or not those orders should really go out. And that's where they cut communications or alter communications or decide if those programs are inappropriate at that point in time. So the CMO is very much on the communication lines of the entire planet. The other department that they have is at, uh - recently, back in '95, and it's probably still the case to this day, CMO was on the 10th floor with the L Ron Hubbard office and the L Ron Hubbard apartment. Then RTC decided to have an office there so the messengers moved to the next floor down and then RTC became established over there and their offices were even more - well not more extensive, but almost as labour intensive.