20 MAY ZEGEL TAPING
TAPE TRANSCRIPT OF JON ZEGEL
"Hello again. This is Jon Zegel and it's the Spring of 1987, and this is the long awaited tape 4. It's been nearly 3 years since I've talked to you and a lot of water has gone over the dam during that time.
I think this will be my best tape. I'll let you be the judge of that -- but one thing I know for sure, the story you're about to hear has not been told before, and it needs to be. What you are going to hear will no doubt raise a few eyebrows and perhaps shock a few people. It's a story that's been known to only a few.
We're going to talk about meetings that you were never invited to, strategies that never appeared in the AAC Journal or were never spoken of at David's lectures -- These are the things I want to put into perspective for you.
But I am getting ahead of myself.
Needless to say we have all been through an ordeal together - leaving the Church, the quote heyday unquote of the field, and then the reality of what we actually ended up with in the field.
And that's not much to speak of. A heap of ashes might be an apt description.
I don't think this fact comes to you as any great surprise. All you have to do is look around and you can see for yourself that this is true.
But the purpose of this tape is not to tell you what you already know.
In the next hour, we're going to look hard at what happened, what really happened, behind the scenes in the field and I think it might answer some questions for you.
As you know I've been in and out of the thick of this for some time. Being on the inside I knew quite a bit that was going on in the field that you were not privy to. But even with all the first hand data that I had, I was puzzled over why we were having so much trouble with the law suit that the church filed against myself, the AAC and few others in the field. ...
That seemed illogical to me but I accepted it at face value. And I didn't know about the Lawley/Bisbey June theft at that time.
But we still did not have the NOTs pack.
During the fall of 1983, both Ron Lawley and Robin Scott begin a series of letters with David Mayo. Both indicate they want to affiliate with the AAC in Santa Barbara and deliver services up through Solo NOTs, Scott indicating that he wanted to send a staff member to Santa Barbara for training.
On October the 1st 1983, Robin Scott attempts a theft. He approaches an AO UK staff member, asks him to steal NOTs and other confidential materials and in exchange he would receive 20,000 pound per year job. The staff member tells Robin to shove off and writes up the attempt.
On October the 6th, Bob Ainsworth of Robin Scott's group in Candacraig writes to David Mayo, and says he would like to deliver NOTs, and he was quote, figuring out how to get the materials, unquote. Make a note of that.
Later that Fall, Harvey Haber from the AAC in Santa Barbara traveled to Spain for a convention of independents, and then went on to East Grinstead. During his stay there, Harvey had meetings with Ron Lawley, Steve Bisbey and Morag Bellmaine, among others. The seeds of AAC East Grinstead are sown. I can't imagine that they didn't discuss the earlier theft, and perhaps the one to come.
As late as November the 17th, AAC regges are still replying to requests for NOTs or AA V training by saying the AAC does not currently deliver that training and they cannot give a date certain of when it will be available. "Soon", was all that was said.
Then the SECOND theft.
On December the 9th 1983, Scott, Lawley & Bellmaine travel to Copenhagen, they enter the AO in Denmark and take 3 NOTs packs and one Class 8 Course pack as we said before.
Scott takes 1 pack and goes back to Scotland. Lawley and Bellmaine take others and return to East Grinstead. Immediately on their return to East Grinstead, Lawley and Bellmaine join up with Steve Bisbey and they go directly to Martin Ruston's office to xerox copies of the stolen materials.
But here is the clincher, this is clincher # 1 - one part of the story you were never told - the same day of the theft, the very day that the stolen NOTs material were being xeroxed the AAC made two phone calls to Martin Ruston's office. They were, right in the phone records. I didn't even know about those phone calls when I was working on the legal case.
And now clincher # 2 - on December the 20th Harvey Haber from the AAC in Santa Barbara picks up the phone and calls Ron Lawley in East Grinstead and they talk for over half an hour overseas. This is no ordinary call. And Harvey takes notes on their conversation. Those notes have been introduced into the Court.
In those notes he states that the AAC would get quote the materials Lawley, Bisbey and Bellmaine would not give copies of the material to anyone other than David Mayo and the AAC. In exchange, they would get AAC affiliation (just as a parenthetical remark, do you see the ramification of that?) They also got "2 for 1" price or 50% discount to train their staff at the AAC Santa Barbara.
Talk about a smoking gun! Why Harvey wrote all this down I will never know but he did and a copy of it is in the court files for you to see for yourself. Affiliation with known thieves.
This same note also mentions that John Nelson is planning a trip to East Grinstead in early January 1984, and he will work out the "final" points at that time.
David Mayo, apparently was told of this "deal" soon after the telephone call.
Now you must remember that as of January 1st 1984 there was still no AA V pack at the AAC, only the lectures given by David to a select few.
In January Nelson took off to East Grinstead, and met with Lawley and Bisbey who had the stolen NOTs pack. At that time the affiliation was made official with Lawley, Bisbey and Bellmaine as the Board of Directors of the AAC East Grinstead.
Nelson also made a quick trip to Candacraig to talk with Robin Scott. The deals were closed just as Harvey had laid them out back on December the 20th. In addition, Candacraig agreed to pay over 5% of its gross income to the AAC in Santa Barbara.
I might add at this point that it was certainly ethically questionable to be in communication with these people. To affiliate with these people as AACs (as it was a matter of court record that these people were criminals) is ludicrous! We're talking about simple, outright theft now. Regardless of the arguments - religious or philosophical used to justify it, it was purely a criminal act - like someone entering your home and stealing something from you.
But what about David Mayo getting the NOTs pack? David and I had talked a few times about the chances of getting one, but he kept saying to me that he "wouldn't want to get involved with anything illegal" so no, he didn't want a "hot" NOTs pack. I believed him.
Clincher # 3 - all of a sudden, as if dropped from heaven, the AA V bulletins start coming out - bang, bang, bang, bang, one after the other.
In my deposition in this case they had me go through the complete AA V pack and read the date on each issue. Issue I - January 1984, Issue # 2 - January 1984, Issue # 3 - January 1984, I don't think I need to continue with this, do I? All of the bulletins of the AA V pack all came out in one month and all of them came out in January of 1984. I didn't catch it, even as it stared me in the face. There I sat in the room with the attorneys and the papers and everything.
It just never occurred to me at the time that David had written the entire AA V pack in one month or less. The whole deal. That must have been some month!
One then must ask himself this burning question: If David Mayo could reconstruct NOTs from memory into AA V in only a month, why hadn't he done it in the month of August, 1983? Or how about the months of September or October or November or December? People were clamoring for the services. Why wait? We considered that there was big money to be made in delivering those services. Besides memory fades with time.
On March the 13th, 1984 Robin Scott was arrested in Copenhagen. On March 14, by the time the news had reached the AAC, calls were made to Ron Lawley, Steve Bisbey, and Morag Bellmaine from the AAC - nearly 45 minutes altogether in overseas phone calls all on that day.
Did you know that, the AAC Journal for that period originally featured a page on the "new AAC Candacraig"? No - you don't because these, in fact, were never mailed. Instead, they were destroyed and a new issue, deleting all references to Robin Scott & the AAC Candacraig, was produced and distributed. Now that the arrest had occurred David needed to distance himself from Scott. ...
I became a spokesman for the movement in its infant stages when it was really getting going. David Mayo and I discussed strategy at length and how to get his story out to the field.
What you're about to hear may shock you. But that is not my intention, believe me. This may seem somewhat calculated, but I'm afraid that in certain cases it was.
The strategy which was worked into my tapes had the following guidelines:
1. The public that we were going to go after were Scientologists primarily on lines at the church. This included any fence sitters or people who had a festering ARC break with the church. We were mainly interested in those who already knew Scientology worked and were ripe for the plucking.
2. We knew that unless we promised standard tech we couldn't get many people to really leave the church. Mind you, I'm not saying Standard Tech was ever delivered - I'm saying we HAD to promise it. We knew that we could only pull in the Church public if we promised good standard tech.
3. This is where David Mayo came in. We pushed the line that Mayo was the highest trained terminal in the field and that he had data on the upper levels that no one in the church had, thereby giving the field its own attraction. A classic "hidden data line" - it tuned in perfectly with the "inside" or "hidden stories" about the ship and Int and so on.
But the more data that I got in this research, the more I find Mayo's assertions to be false. But at the time I ate it up hook, line and sinker and sold it like gospel truth. And it was very convincing.
And what about David's knowledge of the "secret- unreleased" upper upper OT levels? Well, I remember the time in 1984 when Mayo released his version of "OT 8", and what a FLOP. It was given to only a couple of PCs and you never saw two more distressed PCs in your life. And that was the last we heard of David bringing out new "upper levels!" That's a little story you maybe never heard about.
4. Another part of the strategy was to give you the impression that people were leaving the church in droves. It's funny how people don't like to take the plunge all by themselves, but if you can assure them that others just like them have taken the leap they feel more reassured. My tapes were to reassure you that it was OK to leave the church.
I'm sorry if this is shocking. ...