by Bill Straass

I was the Mechanics Chief on the Freewinds for 16 years. I served on 15-20 Committees of Evidence in my 23 years in the SO, the majority of those were on the ship. My first wife was the Dir I and R and has been the CO FSSO for the last 15 years. The following is my firsthand experiences and observations regarding the application or more correctly misapplication of LRH policy regarding justice.

In 1990 I was living in a Bridge Deck cabin with Wick Allcock. The place was always kept spotless. Wick was a very tidy and upstat long term Sea Org Officer, serving with LRH on the Apollo.    

One day when we returned to the cabin, we were shocked to find that the place had been trashed.  The covers had been torn off the bunks and thrown on the floor, the drawers had been opened and the contents dumped on the floor etc.  Then we saw the note on the table which said. “You have flunked an HCO Dekluge inspection.”  Needless to say, we were enturbulated.  Upon our investigation, we found that the Supercargo FSSO and with a CMO messenger had done the “inspection” which I referred to subsequently as “The Raid.” It was like the FBI Raid of 1977 on the Cedars Complex in PAC where 200 FBI agents trashed the place. They had done this activity all over the ship. They tried to do it in the Captains’ office but he had been warned before their arrival by some other person whose place had been trashed... When they arrived, he threw them out before they could cause any damage. I wrote a report to RTC Reports officer stating the above and that “This is the Ethics Tech used by the IRS and KGB.“ and “The motto of HCO is supposed to be “Bring Order.”

But back to the story of Comm Evs. I read all of the policy regarding Comm-Evs before I served as I wanted to do a standard  job of it.

I was the Secretary of a Comm-Ev on Brunella Gasperoni who was the Dir RAM — the post in Treasury responsible for Records, Assets and Materiel. Apparently, there was about $30,000.00 missing from the safe. There was no evidence presented that she had taken any money. Certainly, since she was responsible for the money she was guilty of something. We finished writing up our Findings and Recommendations and submitted them to the Dir I and R.

In a Comm Ev, the idea is that the committee investigates the evidence, then publishes their findings and any recommendations. There are rules. Yet in this example, I was told by the I and R that we (the Committee) were to remove Brunella from post and and if we refused, we (the Committee) would be investigated. I relayed this threat to the Chairman and he said “Tell her to go ahead and investigate us.”  This was the most minor corruption of justice that I saw.

I did another Comm-Ev on David Ashton. He had been sent for OEC FEBC training and had failed at it so he was sent back and Comm-Eved. Now, a person has no choice on whether or not he will be sent for training. Also, an organization tends to send a person that they can spare, not the best one for the job. I was never sent for training in 23 years.  We wrote up the Findings and Recommendations and sent them in for authorization.

They came back from Int Justice Chief rejected. When I looked at them I found that THEY WERE NOT EVEN THE SAME FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS THAT WE HAD SUBMITTED!

They had been altered — greatly — to add in all kinds of crap that we knew was false and for which there were NO evidence. I went to the Dir I & R (still my wife) and asked her WTF? She said that she was saving our asses as we had messed it up and that she knew things about the cycle for which there were no KRs. It was bad enough telling the Committee what to find but then to just falsify it to IJC was too much. The findings still had the signatures of the Committee members on it as the signatures were on the last page.

In around 1999 I was at the noon muster when I and three others were asked to stay behind by the acting CO CMO Ship who was Jenny Lowe. She told us that we had been personally selected by RTC to do an important Committee of Evidence. The Committee was requested by the Interested Party as he was in the RPF on the ship and was being offloaded and wanted to remain on the RPF. The acting CO CMO told us that RTC had ordered her to give him his Comm-EV and ensure that he was off the ship before it sailed in three days.

In other words, WE WERE ORDERED BY RTC TO GIVE HIM A “FAIR TRIAL” AND THEN HANG HIM. Why give him a trial at all if we are being ordered to hang him anyway?  This is the way they now operate. The know, as per LRH, that a being with clean hands generally can’t be hurt. This is per “Clean Hands make a Happy Life”.  But, if they can get you to commit overts, they can degrade you into doing anything.  We started doing the Comm-Ev.  However, there was nothing in writing to off load him, only his statement that he did not want to be off loaded. I asked the CMO for something in writing and was informed that “We can’t ask RTC for something in writing.” I asked the Interested Party and he told me that he had not seen anything in writing and that he thought that the order to off load him came from COB, but he was not sure.

Then Mr. Lowe, (she was about 16 year old) came in not happy due to our slow progress and she sat down in front of the computer and started writing the F and R’s herself!  She was going on about him being a sex pervert etc. as there were reports in the file about him dressing up in women’s clothing at INT (in his own bedroom). But she told me that she didn’t want that in the F and R’s.  She left and I struggled with what to do. Do we start writing the F and Rs backwards, i.e. we had to offload him so write that first, then find some offenses justifying the offload and then cook up the evidence (of lack of it) to show that he was guilty off the offenses??? This went on for an hour and then I snapped out of it and thought “What the hell am I doing?” I threw that away and started over.

They wanted him declared suppressive as he supposedly audited someone and falsely called F/Ns. I said OK; let’s see the folder so we can see if there are any F/N indications in it. In looking through the folder there were no F/Ns in it at all! He was pulling withholds and then not taking them to F/N.  What tech is this?  No wonder the PC blew! So I called the C/S on the case Mr. Bob Andersen  (The OT VIII C/S) and asked him. He was a trained CL IX (at least) C/S (whereas the auditor was not trained and was just an RPF “read it, drill it, do it auditor) and I got the HCOB regarding taking withholds to F/N and asked him WTF?  He said that what the auditor was doing is asking questions to make the needle dirty and then cleaning the needle. In other words he was missing withholds on purpose and then cleaning them, but not to F/N. I asked him what was the reference for this and he did not give me one.  I know of “fish and fumble” to clean a dirty needle, but to deliberately miss withholds and then not pull them to F/N seems to me to be squirrel.

The last one came as I was dying of AIDS from a blood transfusion I received in 1989 in the Freewind’s home port of Curacao which was undiagnosed.

I was an interested party in this Comm-Ev as was a number of other engineers.  There was some dust in the air and some rust particles found in the water.  There is an LRH FO which states that in the event of the above, the entire engineering force is to be Comm-Eved on a charge of “destruction of the use of property” which is a High Crime.  

There was a problem though. Our production statistics had been rising steadily for months, even years.  The “logic” used was that if you cannot hang someone who is upstat (and of course we must hang them) then the stats must be false. We were hauled into HCO and grilled on the meter for hours by the I and R about any possibility of false stats. I passed this test. The Comm-Ev was held anyway.  

When I was called before the Committee the tried to get me to plead guilty, saying that since LRH said to Comm-Ev us, that fact alone showed that I was guilty. I did not expect a fair trial, but repeatedly refused to plead guilty. When the Captain read the Finding and Recommendations aloud in the Control room he read that “The Interested Party pleaded ‘guilty’ and the Committee concurs.”

I wrote up a 20 page report to IJC showing all of the policy violated. In his reply he told me that I could request a Review Comm-Ev which I did. The Dir I and R told me that due to the seriousness of the charge, it did not matter that my stats were up. It took over a year to get the Review Comm-Ev held. I had to continue to push it even after I was no longer in the SO due to being dismissed when it was found that I was HIV positive due to a bad blood transfusion in Curacao, the ship’s home port (Which violates both State and Federal laws).

When the Review Comm-Ev was held they correctly stated that the original Committee stated that I had pleaded guilty yet in listening to the tapes, it was clear that I had pleaded not guilty. The Review Committee found me not guilty of the charge. But they recommended that a new Committee be held to determine if my stats were correct, which had never even come up in the original Committee. Since I was no longer on staff and was not expected to live very long (six doctors told my wife that I was going to die) and since my wife was still being held against her will on the ship I had more important things to do then worry about it.

Written by Bill Straass