Val Ross: What it was like to infiltrate the FBI for Scientology

This is important to know: A lot of what I’m telling here is because I did something most people in my position didn’t do — I never stopped writing letters home.

My parents never stopped answering. My mother saved all those letters. I didn’t tell them most of what I’m saying here, but those letters with their “acceptable truths” and the photos I sent home allow me to get myself back in the headspace I was in back then. Let’s just say I’m able to “read between my lies.” Otherwise, I’d not remember most of this.

Now back to the story: May 16, 1977, I started my job at the FBI building. I wasn’t really sure what I was getting into. I envisioned a Pink Pantheresque workplace with people in dark suits and glasses sneaking around corners. L. Ron Hubbard had drilled into our heads that these guys were our sworn enemies.

I walked into a bright, well-lit, and clean office space with plants and photographs. I was welcomed by the receptionist and cheerily offered a cup of coffee or water. I took the water: no caffeine for this pregnant mama. Bear in mind that at this point, at 5-10 and starting from 120 lbs., I was throwing up all the time and fighting to gain weight in my pregnancy, so at about four and a half months pregnant I had gained a total of 10 lbs. I thought I was huge, but I didn’t even look pregnant in the photos I see of me back then.

I was taken on a tour of the offices, then to a conference room with a snack and some water where I met my bosses. I was shaking inside but I “kept my TRS in.”

I worked for three different men. They introduced themselves by their first names, they were all in shirtsleeves no ties. We discussed what I would be doing and they asked if I knew Dictaphone. I said, yes I had used one (once) but was better at shorthand. They all looked at each other. Even back then shorthand was a lost art. I ended up using shorthand more than the Dictaphone but got really good at that too.

My job was a simply clerical one. I went in an office with my steno pad and took dictation or one of “my guys” would drop a tape on my desk. I’d type it and store it to a
mag card, they’d make corrections and I’d feed the cards in, line by line, and make corrections. I was making a whopping $4.30 an hour, and I was taking home more
than $600 a month. However, I had to buy my own breakfast, lunch, and usually dinner, because my hours didn’t coincide with the Manor cafeteria, so it wasn’t all gravy. But I knew how to cook and I packed a lunch.

I bought baby clothes, a crib, a high chair, cloth diapers, arranged for a diaper service, and then splurged when Paul offered to sell me a Minolta SRT 101 for $150, including a 50 mm lens and a 100 mm zoom lens so we would have a way to photograph the baby. I still have them. They aren’t worth anything, but I laugh at the fact that that 100mm zoom weighs three times what my 600 mm zoom lens does these days.

Having a baby, even with the physician coming to our home for a home delivery, was dirt cheap in 1977. From start to finish, office visits to delivery and the follow up appointment, it cost $800 to have my daughter. I had paid that in full before she was born. It was the 1970s, and we were hippies. I carried a huge brown macrame tote bag to work with me every day. It had my lunch, along with various other items, including, but not limited to, if I remember correctly, the kitchen sink.

My bag became a pivotal part of my life during the time I spent at the FBI because it was this big old black hole. I got teased about it, but no one would have considered looking in it. And I rummaged through it on a regular enough basis that it was the perfect way to hide in plain site. No one looked twice if I put something in or took something out of my bag.

There is so much that was never brought up in the court cases for Snow White. I wish I could say what was happening behind the scenes, but the layers of secrecy were such that I only knew the bare minimum that I needed to know to get what I needed. I was told there were certain files that I was supposed to locate and that I was to copy them, return the original files to the drawers and bring the other files home with me. I don’t know how they knew what to ask for, but I do I know there were secrets in every room, and that we were taught that to spill our secrets was to besmirch our honor. The programming is hard to break through. Even telling this, I feel like I am betraying the people who put me in this position.

It was not uncommon for me to have to dig through the filing cabinets while I was working there. I had full access to the “common files” in the central area, and all I had to do to get to the more confidential files was ask one of my guys to unlock the door. Since part of my job was to attach copies of documents to the letters or memoranda I sent out for them, it was easier for them to have me dig the attachment out, copy it, and refile it than to take the time to do it themselves.

While I was in the back file room I was the most vulnerable. I had to be prepared with a ready lie if someone came in and found me in the wrong cabinet. But I had to have the room locked while I was in there, so I had a few seconds notice at least. No one even came in the room while I was there, but I was always scared. My baby always got the hiccups after I exited the file room.

I would get the files with documents I needed to attach, bring a file or two of Scientology-related documents mixed in with the files, pull the door to the file room shut, making sure I wiggled the handle in a show if ensuring it was locked and head for the copy machine. I’d make all the copies and bring the files back to my desk, conscientiously stapling each memo back and putting it back in its correct file. “My guys” were prone to stop by my desk to chit chat, and this seemed to be their favorite time to stop. My desk had a carrel and a shelf where I would put outgoing documents when completed. I got really good at keeping my hands below the carrel while talking to them. I’d get the files all collated, bend down with an armload of papers and rummage for a banana or apple while dropping the extra copies in my bag, then sit up, stack the rest nicely and get the key to the file room again.

I was also ordered to be on high alert for any talk of Scientology. It may have been discussed behind closed doors, but I did not once hear the word Scientology even whispered in my vicinity.

Just in case I haven’t made this clear, to the best of my knowledge, my husband did not have any idea I was with the Guardian’s Office, or what I did during the day at work. This was what my day consisted of. It was actually quite stress-free compared to what I would have to deal with when I went home at night.

Now that I had what Mark considered to be a full time job and he was getting a hundred or so dollars in an oil lease stipend from land his grandparents owned, he decided he needed to be on course full time.

When he got home, it was “my job” to make him a healthy dinner. I enjoyed cooking, but being pregnant and nauseous it wasn’t so much fun. Even back then, Mark was a picky eater. He had a good start on a bleeding ulcer which he “treated” with handfuls of Tums. The night I cooked Beef Bourgogne (my current husband and my children love it when I cook it), he took one bite and threw the plate in my face. That is not an alliteration, it is a fact. It was accompanied by “How can I eat this slop? Fucking mushrooms? How many damn spices did you add anyway? I have to be on course, does this have booze in it?”

I fried him a hamburger with no spices in the frying pan, and that calmed him down. But he got angry again immediately because I had to go across the street. I just took my bag and ran out with no dinner. I had to get the papers out of there.

After that night, I would leave work, go drop off the papers, race to the farmers market, get some innocuous vegetables, then race home, cook a bland meal and wait to see what I had done wrong. And there was always something wrong. “Why the fuck are you wearing heels, you slut?” “You’re pregnant, why did you carry those groceries up?” “Why do I have to go down and get the groceries out of the car, are you an invalid?” “Can’t you be more creative with your meals?” And so on. There was always a “good excuse” for him to fly off the handle and put me in my place, even if I did the exact opposite of what he complained about the day before.

And when he was angry, he hit me. He was very careful to hit me where it wouldn’t show; my ribs and upper chest, (no lower than that while I was pregnant), between my shoulder blades, up and down my shins (he would kick me with the steel covers on the toes of his cowboy boots). Then he’d cry and say he was sorry and tell me he loved me. I never felt so loved or so hated as when I was married to him. Sometimes both in the same minute.

This see-saw went back and forth like this until the morning of July 8, 1977. It was a Friday. I had taken the day off because I had a doctor’s appointment in the Valley at 10:30. Our phone rang at 5:45 am. It was Mark’s brother, Darryl, who lived with his wife in Cedars (now known as Big Blue). They were part of the live-in renos crew that was there 24/7. Cedars of Lebanon had just been purchased for just under $5 million that February. Although there were rumors spread through back channels it was $13 million, the tax assessor’s site shows it sold for $4,968,075.

Darryl was frantic, calling from a pay phone. The staff had been woken by an FBI raid at 5:15, and they were all sent out of the building in their pajamas. The rumor mill was in high swing. He wanted to know if we knew anything. He called 15 minutes later and said he must have had a bad dream, forget the earlier call, he was going to get breakfast and start cleaning. By that time I had gotten dressed and was on the balcony shooting photos of men in suits scurrying in and out of the Manor. They had already been told to zip it over at Cedars. Mark said “something is up.” I most certainly did not say “and I think I’m in it up to my ears.” TRs have never come in so handy. I was the picture of calm while wondering when they would show up on my doorstep and take me away in handcuffs.

I went to my appointment and came home as a panel truck was pulling away from the Manor. Mark said he was going to go on course at 1. I waited until I knew for sure he was in the course room and went across the street myself and down to the basement. Diana Hubbard was nowhere to be found. After discussing it with Diana’s mother Mary Sue, we decided it would look more suspicious if I quit than if I stayed, so we decided I would stay at the FBI until the end of October to see if I could find anything out.

She also asked me to make a 2 a.m. run to the newspaper stands near all the orgs and pull all the papers so the students coming on course Saturday morning wouldn’t be enturbulated. I couldn’t think of a way to do that without including Mark so I pretended I had a great idea to steal all the newspapers we could so no one would know about the raid. He enthusiastically participated. We’d go to the news stand, put in the money for a paper and take them all. He wouldn’t quit until no more papers would fit in my car. Then we took them and dumped them in the Celebrity Centre dumpster.

I called over to let Mary Sue know where they were, then went to bed, wondering what Monday at work would be like.

— Valerie Ross

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Chris Shelton is going Straight Up and Vertical

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