What Marc Headley’s ‘Blown for Good’ says about Scientology ‘expert’ Hugh Martin Whitt

[Hugh Martin Whitt, Claire Headley’s stepfather, in a Scientology propaganda video]

After yesterday’s historic day, with Claire Headley testifying as an expert on Scientology for the prosecution in the Danny Masterson retrial, we went outside the courthouse and did our usual end-of-day video report.

We then accidentally sent it out only to paid subscribers, noticed it right away, and then sent it out to everyone else. However, we think that flub on our part may have kept some of you from receiving the video through e-mail, so we want to make sure you have a direct link to the video if you haven’t already seen it.

The other thing we wanted to bring up about Claire before the trial moves on to another witness this morning, is that at one point Deputy DA Ariel Anson brought up the name Hugh Martin Whitt, which is Claire’s stepfather. We learned before the trial started that the defense had made the bizarre move of putting him on their witness list as their own Scientology expert.

This seemed like pure intimidation, since Whitt has been disconnected from Claire for many years, and although he’s an OT 8 Scientologist, he wasn’t in management the way Claire was. (We have our doubts that he’s going to make an appearance in the trial at all.)

And a helpful reader pointed out that there’s some really interesting material about Whitt in Marc Headley’s terrific 2009 book Blown for Good. With Marc’s permission, we’re excerpting it here. We think it gives a really interesting insight into the man.

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Now, Claire’s step-dad, Hugh, is not the most talkative person in the world. In the 12 years that Claire and I had been married, I estimate that her stepdad and I had spoken to each other for a total of 60 minutes. That night, Hugh talked to me for probably two hours straight. Apparently, he was in major trouble over something that had happened a few months earlier. Hugh was the Executive Director of the Beverly Hills Scientology Mission. He had been doing that for over a decade. He had been a Scientology auditor for his entire career. As the head of the mission, he would routinely fly off to places all over the US and audit high paying clients for the mission. The Beverly Hills Mission had a unique ability to draw in very wealthy people to deliver to. Some of these people, however, were only in Beverly Hills doing business and lived out of state. In most cases, the orgs or missions in the person’s own area were low quality dumps and these people wanted nothing to do with them. This is how Hugh ended up flying out to where they lived and auditing them there. This had been the way the Beverly Hills Mission had ALWAYS functioned and there were never any questions about this. Until now.

Well, with the advent of Dave Miscavige’s Ideal Org Program, no org or mission was allowed to deliver services to any person that was not in their immediate “sphere of influence.” If you drew a circle around the Beverly Hills Mission and their nearest competing org or mission, and then made those circles larger until they touched each other, you would have established the sphere of influence of each of those organizations. So this meant that any person who did not live within the sphere of the Beverly Hills Mission could not receive any services from them. To add insult to injury, the way all orgs or missions were to get new people into the org and onto services was now only through E-Meter stress test tables! That was it. Dave Miscavige had piloted this technique at New York Org and had established this as the best way to get new people into the org. Based on his isolated test, he cancelled all other forms of getting new people in and made this the ONLY way that any org or mission could get new people in. Well, in Beverly Hills you didn’t find many high-class operations busting out the crappy folding table and chairs and setting up shop on Rodeo Drive next to Gucci, handing out flyers and asking the filthy rich to get a stress test! But Dave Miscavige had spoken. This was now the ONLY way orgs or missions could operate.

According to Hugh, the mission had tried this and failed miserably. They had, over a period of years, perfected an exact way to generate business and keep the mission producing. The new method with the stress test tables simply did not work for them. Based on this, they carried on doing business as usual and ignored the new rules. Months earlier Dave Miscavige told a story about something that had happened in New York. At the time it meant nothing to me and I thought it was just another story that Dave liked to tell to show that he was the boss. He had been in New York right after the new Ideal Org opened and the place was a ghost town. He demanded that the org be filled with people and could not believe that it was not packed already. While he was going around the org and trying to find where all the people had gone, he happened to run into a guy from a WISE group. David Singer was a chiropractor that had a consulting business. He would consult chiropractors on how to expand their practices and then when they did better and wanted more information, they would end up getting into Scientology. Well David Singer was walking through New York Org and ran into Dave Miscavige. Dave Miscavige did not like David Singer. According to Dave Miscavige, he approached David Singer and leaned in close so as to whisper to him, and said, “I am going to find out what you’re up to,” and then walked away.

Miscavige then sent some of his RTC staff to track down Singer and put him on the E-meter to be interrogated. Apparently, David Singer was planning on doing one of his consulting seminars to a bunch of doctors at the new auditorium in the New York Org. The seminar had nothing to do with the New York Org, it just happened to be a nice place that he could gather up a bunch of people and do a seminar and because he brought new people into Scientology, the org would let him do this for free. He was not even necessarily planning to get people onto service at the org. He had just arranged that a lot of East Coast chiropractors would meet up there. When Dave found this out, he was furious. Here he was working to make new Ideal Orgs and guys like David Singer were sabotaging his efforts and using the orgs for their own profit. Dave then ordered that anyone involved with this activity be Comm Eved, with the option of being declared an SP if warranted. So what did this have to do with Hugh Whitt, Executive Director Beverly Hills Mission? Well upon “investigation” it turned out that David Singer Enterprises, Hollander Consultants and the Beverly Hills Mission had an arrangement that these prominent doctors and professionals were being sent to do their services with the Beverly Hills Mission. As a result, the Beverly Hills Mission was one of the most productive missions in the world. It was routinely winning awards and this REALLY pissed off Dave Miscavige. They were doing well and had not been doing one thing that he had worked out. In fact they were doing the exact opposite and it was working well for them.

Hugh did not know any of this about Dave Miscavige in New York and why all this was happening. He only knew that somehow, out of nowhere, the mission was being investigated for getting clients from WISE groups and that Vanessa Stoller, the owner of the mission, was being Comm Eved and that he was going to be Comm Eved and possibly declared an SP. He was trying to get through his OT Level 7 at Flag and this would make it nearly impossible for him to do so. If he ended up being declared, he would not be able to see his children and wife, he would have to get another job and probably start his life over from scratch. If Vanessa Stoller was declared, that would surely end up closing the mission and he would have to get a new job anyway. Things looked bleak. He told me how RTC had done inspections of the mission several times over the years and they knew exactly how the mission operated. They even had a Keeping Scientology Working Award from RTC! It all meant nothing now. Hugh had talked to me more that night than the entire time I had known him. He was devastated. I remember thinking to myself at the time, that here was an example of the most dedicated public Scientologist around. The guy had been auditing people his entire life, he was at the mission all the time, and gave up most of his personal freedoms to do Scientology. Even with all of that, it meant nothing. He just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when Dave Miscavige was upset.

I could not tell him what I knew and why he was being put through this. I simply told him that I knew some other information that might be related to this and that this was a lot bigger than he knew. If I said anything more and it was found out about, I would surely be declared an SP myself. After Hugh and I talked, I went back into the living room and played with the kids a bit more. They were staying up late that night so they could spend a few hours with us. A little after 3:30 a.m., Claire and I left to head back to the Base. As we drove back, Claire slept in the passenger seat and I just sat there in the driver’s seat. The radio was turned off. I sat there with only the sound of the road accompanying my thoughts. I could not help but think about Hugh and his family. How could this be happening? How could Hugh, of all people, be in trouble? I was angry, but I could not think of anything to do that would help him. If I even brought up the subject, it would be investigated how I even heard about the Beverly Hills Mission’s involvement in this. If I said anything at the Int Base it might get him in even more trouble. When we got back and Claire woke up, I talked to her a bit about it. I told her what Hugh and I had talked about and that he was about to get royally screwed. She had no ideas about what to do either. It was now around 5:00 a.m. We decided to watch a DVD before going back to post in the morning. We watched I, Robot with Will Smith and went back to post. That day I could not help but think about my conversation with Hugh some more. It was really bugging me. It had struck a chord and I was not able to just “forget about it.” New Year’s Eve came. In the Sea Org, there was a holiday that historically took place around Christmas time and this was the Beer and Cheese party. Besides Sea Org day, this was really the only Sea Org party that might possibly take place all year. Well, of course, this years’ Beer and Cheese party was postponed and would be combined with our New Year’s Eve Party. The Beer and Cheese party was, as expected, amazing. It was only missing three things – beer, cheese and party. Everyone was called down to the dining hall at 11:50 p.m. There were a few tables that had Ritz crackers and some orange sodas on them. Jenny Devocht from CMO Int said that we all needed to get every one of the event items done and that we could have a good New Years if that happened. We then counted down the New Year and gave three cheers to LRH. We were dismissed and most people went back to post, wondering if we would even get the next day off. Not likely.

— Marc Headley, Blown for Good

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