I debated for a while as to whether or not I wanted to post anything else on this board. I finally decided I would get this off my chest.
A few kind of fragmented thoughts I want to express here.
I don’t remember everything about Mike Rinder’s history on staff. What I can piece together from what I recall and what others who were there have said is this:
The GO still existed when I got into the SO in 1982, but it was on its last legs. When I was on the RPF in 1984 it had just been officially disbanded. A ton of GO people were on the RPF with me. They were put there because the GO was now a terrible place filled with terrible people and they all needed to be punished. As I said in another post, Rinder was on the RPF with me, too. Ex-GO plus David Mayo followers plus everyone else Miscavige was mad at made for a big RPF.
The CMO took over the functions of the GO. That was when Mike Sutter was running it (Mid 80s). It had a different name at first. (Special Unit? Does that sound familiar?) Then it became OSA. The CO in the late 80s was Kurt Weiland. To my knowledge, both of these people came from CMO Int.
At some point Mike Rinder became CO OSA Int. My best guess is early 90s. He came from somewhere in the CMO, too. Mick Wenlock said he had been VA’s communicator in the 80s, so it may be that he wound up in OSA from that post. He bounced back and forth from the CO OSA post, to D/CO OSA post to WDC OSA (that’s CMO Int) to LRH PRO Int (head of RPR), to the RPF. And then back again. With some missions thrown in. (Now that I think of it, he was on a mission into AOLA at some point while I was there.)
I don’t know how many years Mike Rinder actually ran OSA, but I can tell you that, number one, it was not 22 years and number two, he got his orders from RTC. OSA Int is just an execution arm for RTC, which is of course just an execution arm for DM. OSA got its orders from RTC (IG Ethics RTC to be exact, who was Mark Rathbun). RTC took orders from DM. Nothing got done by OSA which wasn’t essentially a DM order.
One thing to keep in mind is that juicy little LRH datum that “stats are internally caused”. Every time OSA had a big loss (which, as you can imagine, was a LOT) the inference was that it was the fault of the staff. So, as a result, they’d get an ethics mission followed by a production mission and heads would roll. Every. Single. Time. The CO was the first head that would get lopped off. No one lasted on the CO OSA Int post for long.
There are a lot of upper level positions where a lot of terrible things were done to others. Some of you may remember my post about Bitty Miscavige. Lots I could say about her. Mariette Lindsteen, who was in RTC before she left the Sea Org, is another personal fave of mine. Both of these people are now out. Mariette lives in Sweden and writes books about cults. Bitty lives in California near or with her daughter who wrote a book about being DM’s niece. In my eyes, they did as much or more damage as Mike Rinder ever did. But no one is putting them on trial here.
As I said in another post, we all have our “items”. This list is a whole lot longer than these few people if you ask everyone theirs.
Some of us were on posts where we could do minimal direct damage to others. This is a combination of the level you were on and the position you held. I was on a post like that. Emma, who was an auditor, was on a post like that. (Unless you consider that an auditor can write “actionable KRs” which will from that point on cause untold misery for pcs. Someone out there probably hates her.)
Did I not have a post where I fairgamed people and destroyed their lives because I was somehow on a moral higher ground? Because I was incapable of inflicting that kind of damage to another person?
Well, no. The truth is, I wasn’t considered to be qual’d for OSA because of my pre-Scientology history. I wasn’t qual’d for Int, or for HCO, because of the same. So, I stayed in my little place in my service org until I finally came to my senses and blew.
Now I can safely say that I didn’t do terrible things like Mike Rinder did or like Marty did or Bitty did or like whoever did. But, if I was to have been given the jobs they had, would I have done the same things they did?
Yup. And anyone else I knew on staff would have, too. And those who say they wouldn’t either have terrible memories or are deluding themselves.
Because those were the rules and you followed them unquestioningly. What you wound up doing was totally a function of the job you wound up holding in the org you wound up holding it in. And, to a very great degree, at least in the Sea Org, what job you wound up holding and the place you wound up holding it in had little or nothing to do with what you wanted to do. And certainly what you did while you were in that position had nothing to do with what you wanted to do.
Those of us who lived it who have any kind of personal honesty know this. We may still harbor ill will to those who fucked us over or fucked over someone we knew or cared about. But even so, we get it. Those were the rules, and we followed them.
I’m not totally sure about what I want to say here. Except...the purpose of ESMB was supposed to be “Meet other exes. Share your experiences. Reunite with old friends.”
Not to run some group sec check on other exes who got put in the unfortunate position of doing damage to others when they were in.
But, that's just my opinion.
I guess that’s all I have to say.
