Val Ross: Midnight terror in the career of a Scientology spy

[Natalie Cole was a top target for Val’s Scientology recruitment efforts]

[Valerie Ross continues her series about working for the ‘Guardian’s Office,’ which included her infiltration of the FBI. Now, after the 1977 FBI raid of the church, she’s getting used to a new role in Scientology.]

A Guardian’s Office “celebrity liaison” was a catch-all title. I was the face of Scientology for anyone who was even slightly famous and who needed some TLC. I helped plan events, and I was a quasi-recruiter for getting new celebrities into Scientology.

This meant that I spent a lot of time carrying my daughter around in her Gerry aluminum frame backpack (cool for the time) that was given to me at my baby shower thrown by my FBI coworkers. (You can see the top of the backpack and a piece of the aluminum frame in the photo where I’m picketing the FBI.)

Part of my job included organizing celebrity events for the public to attend, and part of it included going places where there were celebrities and checking to see if any of them expressed an interest in Scientology and, if so, herding them subtly in the right direction. I was also the person who ran random errands for celebrities who were busy on course or in session so they wouldn’t be distracted,

I can’t imagine recruiting celebrities these days, but back then, with Milton Katselas one of the main acting teachers at the time and a Scientologist himself, celebrities were more apt to at least poke their heads in the door of a Scientology building. It also helped that there was no Internet to spread the word if someone was disaffected.

My husband was becoming increasingly jealous of every moment I spent out of the home. He was drinking every night and he loved his Scotch, never one for just a beer.

Mary Sue Hubbard was not in great shape, spending more and more time behind closed doors. I took in typing at home to supplement our meager income, and I was lucky enough to have an IBM Selectric typewriter. So with a choice of fonts, I built up quite a clientele. This gave Mark all the reason he needed to become a full time student during the day, though I never understood how he could get blackout drunk at night then show up on course in the morning.

Rather than being upset that he did that, it was a relief. It meant that there were hours every day when my time was my own. Since I was a fast typist and my rate was by the word or the page depending on the job, I could whip out my work in no time flat and still have time to clean, cook, and do my Guardian’s Office duties, and even get a solo auditing session in during my daughter’s nap time.

The Operating Thetan (“OT”) levels were a huge disappointment to me. I got through OT I and OT II and was not even sure I wanted to go on, but the hype was so big I jumped into OT III. Opening the briefcase and reading the material was a real what-the-hell moment for me. The first thing I wanted to do was talk to someone, anyone, about what I had read. But founder L. Ron Hubbard had that covered two ways. He made sure your case wasn’t supposed to be discussed with anyone, and he emphasized that the OT materials were highly confidential. So I started auditing on them, but I certainly wasn’t thrilled with it.

Being in the OT levels meant in Scientology terminology that I was in the middle of “the non interference zone.” That meant I was to be treated with kid gloves and have the least amount of distraction in my life possible. This zone applies from Clear through OT III. During that time in my life, I was spied on the FBI, the FBI raided Scientology, I had a baby, and now my life was descending into barely controlled chaos. I audited quietly, turned in my sessions to the case supervisor (“C/S”) and continued with the hell that was my life.

The basement at the Manor (the Hollywood Celebrity Centre) was no longer fun. It was a place where I spent as little time as possible. For most people who have worked anywhere, you know who your co-workers were. You have developed a relationship of sorts with most of them. Scientology workplaces are different. You may not know the names of people in the same department as you. You know nothing of their families, they probably don’t know much about their own family. Their dreams? The common dream was clearing the planet. No one was allowed to have any other dream than that.

There were a few high-profile people I knew by name, like Arte Maren, but for every face I recognized, there were two dozen faces that were now foreign to me. I would type my mission reports at home and spend the few minutes necessary to drop them off, and get new orders then book it out of there.

I missed my friend Diana Hubbard, daughter of the founder, but as Leah Remini later learned you don’t ask after people who disappear in Scientology. I would have loved to talk to her again, to play piano duets, to see how she felt, but it was not in my very limited purview to ask questions about people who weren’t there.

I didn’t even realize it until 2012 when Mark Plummer told me about it, but the extreme irony of what I was doing — dealing with the founder’s wife (Mary Sue), the president of the Church of Scientology (Heber Jentzsch), and high-profile celebrities — was that I had a Suppressive Person declare sitting there in the files at ASHO under my maiden name. I had not been told I was declared, but my students and former co-workers thought I was. It shows just how much secrecy the entire organization is shrouded in that I was in the same town as I had been, just another department, and I was a high level Scientologist while a few miles away it was believed I was a disgrace. And those two worlds did not collide.

Meanwhile, in my high-profile not declared life, Midnight Special was in full swing, and by early 1978 I had been given a permanent backstage pass to the tapings. It sounds like kind of a glam life and to be honest, I’m not sure who got that for me, but it was my only ticket to sanity during those dark days.

I became really close with a girl named Marda. She was not a Scientologist and I didn’t ever tell her I was one. I met her at a taping. She was funny and outspoken. She was also blind. Her mother had instilled a sense of independence in her that was breathtaking to observe. With her cane and her attitude, she took on the world. I would call her and pick her up to take her with me to the tapings. I learned early on how important self esteem was in her house. One day I told her mom “it’s just Val” when I called to talk to Marda. Her mother responded. “No one is just anything. Do not do that to yourself.”

The problem was that this woman didn’t realize I was no longer looking for a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I had been beaten down by both Scientology and my husband to the point where my goal was to just escape each encounter with the world with the fewest scars possible.

Mark’s twin sisters were home from Delphi by then. At 16 they were old enough to drop out of school, and they joined the rest of their brothers and sisters in not getting a high school education. With his mom going back and forth between Flag on her upper OT levels, it became my responsibility to take care of two belligerent teenagers for months at a time. I managed to get one of them to get a job in fast food, so I chauffeured her to and from her job as well. Her other sister would accompany me on shopping trips.

I was breastfeeding and wow, I had never been endowed before but I was while breastfeeding. I kept getting leers while I was out even when carrying my child in my arms. I had a T-shirt that I wore a lot, with really fancy script embroidered right across the chest. It said Phuque U. It embodied my feelings on life at the time.

We learned to work with a minuscule budget for celebrity events. Mark’s little sister became my right hand shopper. After a crash course in creative bargaining from Amanda Ambrose, Mark’s sister and I would shop at the farmers market and use fruits vegetables and cheese in creative ways to make it look posh. We came up with ways to set up the Shrine Auditorium for each event in a unique way that put a different spotlight on that celebrity. The Shrine, balconies and all, was packed in those days for Stanley Clarke, Chick Correa, Amanda Ambrose, and half a dozen others.

Hubbard had grand ideas for a new record as well, and we were advertising in the Auditor for musicians.

As long as one of sisters was with me when I did things, Mark was fine. However I couldn’t take them to the tapings, they were underage, so they stayed home in our crowded two bedroom apartment with the baby. Mark was not the type to babysit even if he was available.

In early February, 1978 I went to a taping with Marda. Natalie Cole was the host and she was my target for the night. KC & The Sunshine Band were back performing again, either their second or third appearance.

During the taping, as KC & the Sunshine Band were performing, I told Marda the lead singer was really cute. We were right there on the front row. She said “mess with them,” so I hollered out, “hey, my friend is making eyes at you” all the guys looked at me, I pointed at Marda with her cane and dark glasses laughing hysterically. It was a moment of pure joy. After it was over that night, I dropped Marda off and went home. The present me really wishes I knew where she was now. I’d love for her to be in my life again.

Arriving home, Mark was waiting for me in the dark when I walked in the door. He immediately accused me of cheating on him, told me I was screwing around, called me a whore, and began pummeling me. Welp. There went that joy. His rage woke up his sister, who called the police. They showed up about the time I lost consciousness. My next memory is waking up in the emergency room. The cops were there and people from the GO walked in the door towards me. The cops saw them and left. I was convinced to sign out AMA with no pain pills. This was the first time he broke my nose, and I’m fairly certain a rib or two, though I didn’t get x-ray confirmation and continued to carry my baby, because no one else was there to depend on.

The next morning I was called to appear in front of the Sergeant-at-Arms to write up my overts for enturbulating Mark. Yes, I got in trouble for him beating me up. This despite the fact that I was auditing on OT III and Hubbard specifically stated: “A pre-OT who is running well and making case gain should not be interrupted. And, where a person in the Non-interference Zone does need O/Ws pulled, the auditor must first obtain a C/S OK”

I just had to deal with it. I had no way of appealing to logic, either with the ethics officer or Mark. I was on a job assignment for the GO at the taping, and Natalie Cole was on the top 10 list at that time of people targeted for recruiting into Scientology. With a three-month-old child I was certainly not out looking for someone to screw. But I had a choice. I could make up some “crimes” and get through it, or I could stomp and yell and get punished worse. In Scientology you learn to breathe deep and surrender if you want to stay in. At that point I guess I still did.

As soon as the black eyes had healed, Mark snapped this photo of me (or as he put it “your fat bitchy ass”) doing dishes. I weighed 120 lbs. at 5’10” in that photo. I was not allowed even aspirin for the pain. We didn’t have it in the house. I just had to soldier on.

I felt as empty as that photo looked. Even my blue eyes had gone grey.

The next few months were pure chaos, I went where I was told when I was told, wrote up my reports, and did my best to avoid Mark’s wrath. Midnight Special was the place to be back then. No matter who was scheduled to appear, there were various artists who would show up just to chat, jam, or warm up the audience. Willie Nelson came by three times in the eight months I was there. I got a photo of him once and he autographed it on his next fly-by. I learned that if I took my camera gear, Mark was less likely to explode.

Since I was still baking bread and Art the landlord was a regular customer, I worked a deal with him to turn one of the studio apartments on the first floor into my darkroom. I would take my 8-year-old goddaughter Tracey in with me to develop the photos and she’d hold the baby and learn techniques. Seriously. No one cared if their children were in school. School was for wogs.

I got really good at traversing LA. With my trusty Thomas Brothers map in hand and usually one or both of Mark’s sisters and sometimes my goddaughter in the car too, I grew very acquainted with LA County as I ran errands for the rich and famous or scouted venues. I got so acquainted with LA that in 1987 when I took my kids and then foster daughter on a vacation to Disney, Universal Studios, Sea World, and San Diego Wild Animal Park, I was napping, my foster daughter was driving, she woke me from a dead sleep and said “I’m lost.” I looked around and said “we are in Venice Beach, PCH is 2 blocks that way, turn left and head for San Diego.”

During this chaos, I finished up OT III, OT IV and OT V, I was really trying to think of excuses not to go on because I really couldn’t figure out how any of this was helping me. The decision was made for me in an avalanche of events.

First, the indictments came down. The day they came down, Heber was on my doorstep. It was August 15, 1978 and he needed my help organizing a protest. In the real world, if you see someone for the first time just over six months after their wife’s death, the first order of business is condolences, sympathy, and then business. Yvonne’s name was not mentioned. That’s not how you do it in Scientology. She had ceased to exist.

We quickly organized a protest, and there I was protesting the same building and the same people who had given me a baby shower several months earlier. Yes, it had come to that. I had turned on the ones who had treated me with kindness at the order of my group. I do not recall feeling remorse at the time. I still felt like I was helping the good guys. The protest went off without a hitch. This was back in the day when Heber had a large group of pastors and preachers eating out of his hands. Several religious leaders showed up and we spent the day protesting. Then we packed up and went home.

The next day Mark’s sister and I went shopping for the next celebrity event at the Shrine. While we were out I told her I was pregnant again. She asked if I wanted to be. I said “does it matter?”

We came back to the apartment to find Mark in bed with a girl around his sister’s age. He went ballistic. Of course it was our fault for coming back and finding him committing statutory rape. The girl grabbed her clothes and ran out, his sister grabbed the baby and barricaded herself in a bedroom to call the police and I was left there with him.

The floor was covered in blood and I was unconscious by the time the cops arrived. This time I was admitted because I was miscarrying and hemorrhaging, and all of my fingers in my right hand and my right wrist were broken. I actually got pain meds while I was in the hospital, despite my GO handler stating “if she was conscious she would tell you not to give her those.” I heard that, but did not let on that I did as my care provider protected me.

Mark’s sister told her mother what had happened. His mother responded, “well, she must have done something to deserve it.”

My GO handler checked me out as soon as they got the hemorrhaging under control, once again with no pain meds, and a promise (a lie) that I would get follow-up care. I had a cast that a guy at the Bellevue Mission cut off with a hacksaw a few weeks later. That was the extent of my follow-up care. No police report was filed, but I was in ethics trouble again. This time, I was considered a liability to the organization because my husband kept getting me hospitalized and that was bad PR for Scientology. It was decided that we should move on.

Heber brought my ethics and pc files over and we burned them in the hibachi on the balcony. That’s how they destroyed evidence back then. This has worked out well for me because Scientology only has trace records of me in their files. They have my clear number but don’t have evidence that I was in the Sea Org although I have ex-students and ex-co-workers who know I was there. Their secrecy works both ways. They destroyed their blackmail files on me years ago in their attempt to conceal just how huge Snow White was. The government really didn’t arrest the majority of the players, but they did shut down the operation. And, Scientology pretended to dismantle their spy ring too. That was when we were sent “on extended mission.” I was still unofficially GO, but the GO was in tatters, so I’m not sure it mattered.

I was only one of the people in the organization who were let go at that time. I was given $2,500 in what I considered hush money, though no one came right out and said that. I understood that I was still at their beck and call if needed, but no longer would I receive a weekly paycheck. Basically I got just under a years’ pay to get out of their sight.

Looking back, I find it horrifying that no one even attempted to offer me an escape from Mark. But then it got worse because no Scientologist would believe me over him … ever. But we were now on our road trip to our destination. First stop: Bellevue Mission Washington.

— Valerie Ross

---

Want to help?

Please consider joining the Underground Bunker as a paid subscriber. Your $7 a month will go a long way to helping this news project stay independent, and you’ll get access to our special material for subscribers. Or, you can support the Underground Bunker with a Paypal contribution to bunkerfund@tonyortega.org, an account administered by the Bunker’s attorney, Scott Pilutik. And by request, this is our Venmo link, and for Zelle, please use (tonyo94 AT gmail). E-mail tips to tonyo94@gmail.com.

---

Thank you for reading today’s story here at Substack. For the full picture of what’s happening today in the world of Scientology, please join the conversation at tonyortega.org, where we’ve been reporting daily on David Miscavige’s cabal since 2012. There you’ll find additional stories, and our popular regular daily features:

Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in history

Avast, Ye Mateys: Snapshots from Scientology’s years at sea

Overheard in the Freezone: Indie Hubbardism, one thought at a time

Past is Prologue: From this week in history at alt.religion.scientology

Random Howdy: Your daily dose of the Captain

Here’s the link for today’s post at tonyortega.org

And whatever you do, subscribe to this Substack so you get our breaking stories and daily features right to your email inbox every morning.

Paid subscribers get access to two special podcast series…

Up the Bridge: A journey through Scientology’s actual “technology”

Group Therapy: Our round table of rowdy regulars on the week’s news