Flag Training Part Three

This is one of the rooms for Flag trainees. They aren’t too bad, at least back when I was training in 98/99.

The Outer Org Trainees, as they are called, live in the three motels that Flag owns about a mile from the Coachman building. Really I never paid attention to where they were in relation to other Flag buildings, but I do remember that we were right on the ocean because we could sometimes see manatees from the back of the berthing buildings.

I feel like I skipped over, entirely by accident, how I ended up at Flag in the first place and what happened those first few days.

Before I forget, a small comment about the berthing: most of the trainees were in rooms piled high with bunkbeds. One motel room normally housed about 10 trainees. It was nice, newly renovated, but very, very tight quarters.

The room pictured above were for married couple trainees. The rooms were hard to come by. Because we were in training for SuperPower and Universe Corps (sounds so fancy!), we got better rooms like this one.

Anyway, backing up to how I ended up in training…..

I was a Case Supervisor at Celebrity Centre in Hollywood. At that time, I had completed up to OT IV. I oversaw and managed all Purification Rundown services, all new people into Scientology and all staff auditing, or counseling.

There was a stir about a meeting to take place one morning and I was ordered to be there, along with several other OT’s. We all thought we were helping to get some OT’s promoted.

Never in a million years did I suspect that they would be taking me. I thought they were bringing me there to help get other people sent, not me.

Anyway, to my surprise they told us right then and there that we were going.

It was RTC, the head people of Scientology, telling us we were going. Nobody says no to these guys.

I was shocked. They wanted to send me to the management building that afternoon to start training. And so I quickly ran to my husband to tell him. At the time my marriage was already rocky, because my spouse was homesick for France and being married was a barrier for him getting home. So he was constantly vacillating about being married.

And so I spent a couple months at the management building trying to do live video showing I knew how to properly “read” the Hubbard e-meter.

I was stuck and not getting through. I wasn’t the only one.

And suddenly they told us all that we would be going to Flag.

We were all placed on next flights, with very little time to pack anything.

Nobody knew who was supposed to be paying us, so there was confusion about that for several months. So in addition to trying to study, we were trying to take care of personal needs such as soap and laundry money, with no pay. It was an oversight that finally got resolved.

On the plane I ended up sitting right next to Ray Mithoff, the Senior Case Supervisor International.

He is very, very tall. I almost felt like he was twice my height, though that may be an exaggeration.

He didn’t engage much in conversation with me, but remained polite.

We had a stopover in Dallas, and Mr. Mithoff went to find himself a steak. That’s what you do when you land in Texas. He needed food, and a lot of it. I could see, even back then, he was emaciated.

We finally made it to Tampa where we were picked up in white vans to be brought to the Flag base.

It was the next morning when I met Mr. Mithoff again, and again every day for weeks. He was running the training for the SuperPower and Universe Corps teams.

As he went down the line, with each of us introducing themselves, he recognized me from the plane.

“You are a Case Supervisor?!?! I thought you were a Gold cameraman!!!”

Ahahaha!!! Gold cameraman is part of the audio/visual crew of Scientology.

Yeah, not me.

To be continued….