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CITY OF CLEARWATER COMMISSION HEARINGS RE: THE CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY |
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CASEY KELLEY MR. LeCHER: Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats, members of the Commission, staff, consultants, citizens. We are going to listen to this young man and we are going to try to run through it as rapidly as possible, but also to be as thorough as possible because we do have a City Commission meeting starting in about an hour. And we are going to get started with this young man. And his name is Casey Kelley. Mr. Kelley, will you please be sworn in. CASEY KELLEY, a witness herein, having first been duly sworn by a Clerk for the City of Clearwater, was examined and testified as follows: MR. FLYNN: Mayor, before he begins, I would just like to offer two items into evidence as the next exhibits. One is a book, All About Radiation, which was discussed this morning, a copy of which this Commission looked at by a nuclear physicist and a medical doctor, which has been purchased within the last twenty-four hours from the Fort Harrison and Scientology buildings here in Clearwater. The next is the book, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, which will be offered into evidence at this point, and the purpose for which I will state at another time. (The book, All About Radiation, was marked as Exhibit No. 28, as of this date; The book, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, was marked as Exhibit No. 29, as of this date.) MR. LeCHER: Okay. Thank you. Mr. Kelley, I'd like to ask you the five standard questions that I'm asking of every witness before they testify. Number one is: Are you appearing here today and testifying under oath voluntarily? MR. KELLEY: Yes. MR. LeCHER: Number two: Have you been paid by anyone for your testimony, other than expenses for coming to Clearwater? MR. KELLEY: No. MR. LeCHER: Number three: Do you have a lawsuit against the Church of Scientology? MR. KELLEY: Not at this time. MR. LeCHER: Number four: Does the Church of Scientology have a lawsuit against you? MR. KELLEY: I hope not. No, they don't. MR. LeCHER: I hope not, too. Number five: Has anyone suggested to you that you should state anything but the truth or has anyone suggested that you should change your testimony for any reason? MR. KELLEY: No. MR. LeCHER: Thank you. Mr. Kelley, you have an outline I'd like you to follow and, then, get into it in your own words. MR. KELLEY: All right. The first thing, I'm terrified. I've never spoken in public in my life. MR. LeCHER: Well, calm down. MR. KELLEY: Let me just-- MR. LeCHER: We can ask you questions, if you'd prefer. MR. FLYNN: He'll -- MR. KELLEY: Let me -- let me -- MR. FLYNN: try and get started -- MR. KELLEY: begin on some of the background information here. I joined the Sea Org. in March of 1977 when I was going to Florida State University. I was eighteen at the time. I got to Flag Land Base -- MR. LeCHER: Could you speak a little louder? I don't think they can hear you. Pull the mike a little closer. MR. KELLEY: Okay. I got to the Flag Land Base the day after Christmas 1977, and left here in October of 1980. I'm currently enlisted in the United States Navy. I had several jobs when I was here at Clearwater. My main one was the job title called Technical Arrivals Data in Charge. It's kind of a lofty title, which meant I had -- I have no knowledge of criminal activities in the Clearwater area or any other area, actually. These are some of the things that I was doing on the job. When I was the Technical Arrivals Data -- MR. LeCHER: Excuse me. Did you say you have no knowledge or new knowledge? MR. KELLEY: No knowledge. MR. LeCHER: No knowledge. MR. KELLEY: No knowledge, none. MR. SHOEMAKER: Would you give that title again, please, Mr. Kelley? MR. KELLEY: Technical Arrivals Data in Charge. MR. SHOEMAKER: Thank you. MR. KELLEY: One of the things they tend to do is pay you in title. My job was -- I kept the accounts I kept an account record for every person that was on public lines at Flag, which is somewhere around five thousand names. I would go to treasury and go through every invoice that was written, and I had an accurate list of people who had made an advanced payment to the Flag Land Base. And the reason I did that was we would find out who had paid fully for a service and, then, we, our office would call them to get them to show up at Clearwater to do that service. It's --- especially with Scientologists, there's a lot of people that can afford to pay for these services but don't have the time to show up. So, what we would do is our office would call them and try to get them to show up earlier than they had anticipated or just get them to show up. I personally took a lot of flak from these guys. And then after they showed up, then we could deliver the service and then sell them more. You can't sell them any more if they haven't done what they already paid for. We also used this list to sell books because they used to pay a percentage of the book sale to the staff member that sold the book. So, there were some people selling books. I could go into that later. I was familiar with the ways that they got their money into the Clearwater Organization, but I wasn't directly involved with it. I wasn't -- I was in disagreement with the way they made some of their money: the high-pressure sales techniques that they used. I never -- I never -- and I still don't -- I never could tolerate that, the way they -- boy, "You've done your service and" -- drop the net. And people having to sell things and mortgage things seemingly against their will, or with great reservations -- reservations, not really wanting to but knowing that because Scientology is such a good thing, that's what they really should do next. Anyway, back -- one of the ways that they make -- that the Clearwater Church makes money is they have three tours out, and almost all the time. They call it regging, making money. There's three tours out most all the time. There's one on the East coast, one on the West coast, and one in Europe. And they'll go from one city, either for a week, week and-a-half, two weeks, and then go the next one. And they make a lot of money that way. Especially in Europe, they make a lot of money in Europe. Since I'm talking about money, we'll go down to that. The highest single week gross income that we made when I was here was 2.3 million dollars. And that's tax free. MR. HATCHETT: Tax free. MR. KELLEY: Well -- MR. LeCHER: Well, we know all about -- MR. KELLEY: You know all about tax free, right? I think that's one of the reasons why I'm possibly here. That was a good week. I would guess that the average weekly gross income while I was there, or at least while I was on this TAD post, was anywhere between four and five hundred thousand dollars. I don't know where all that money went. The people that do don't tell. It goes to what's called Sea Org. Reserves, which is kind of a -- MR. LeCHER: Who knows that? MR. KELLEY: The people that are on the Sea Org. Reserves Committee. And that's a very few elite people. Those guys are people that have been in Scientology for a long time, usually. And they're pretty cloak and dagger. They don't -- they play their cards pretty close to their chest. In 1980, when Scientology worldwide bought a whole bunch of buildings around the world -- they bought somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty-five million dollars worth of buildings around the world, and they paid cash for all of them. Those were all -- they didn't rent anything, because there was no point in renting anything; that was just money down the tubes. They believe in buying them. The person that was in charge of the Sea Org. Reserves, the SOR Chief, came to Flag Service Organization -- you know, it was across the street -- to one of our staff meetings one Friday night, and he talked to us about it. Because the Flag Ship organization, which is -- or the Flag Service Organization is the organization here in Clearwater that delivers the services. They're the ones that do the auditing for the public people, and they sell the services. They make a majority of the money. Worldwide, they make a majority of the money. He came to our -- one of our staff meetings, and this is a quote -- Mr. Hinklenberg said - "All these buildings we bought make a dent in the reserves." The key word there is "dent." He said it made a dent in the reserves. He didn't tell us -- I mean, a dent could be two percent to seventy-five percent. He didn't say the exact percentage of the dent. Twenty-five million dollars, I would think I don't know. I don't know how much was in the reserves, he wouldn't tell us. One of-the other things that I found very interesting is they have -- they don't keep more -- any more than $40,000.00 in any one bank in the Pinellas County area. Or in the bay area, they use banks in Tampa. So, consequently, I know that they have -- I would guess at least thirty bank accounts around the area, because I've seen the treasury office and they have a stack of checkbooks, you know. They're a stack of checkbooks this high. For example, the Clearwater bank account would be used for, say, tours. And the Barnet Bank down the street would be used for phones, for example. They have it broken up so it's easier to keep track where that money's going. When I was in the FSO, we used to get a stat sheet out. We used to give a stat sheet to the Flag Bureau, which is the management organization in the West coast building. And they manage all Scientology organizations worldwide. And they publish the statistics. And usually, the organization in Clearwater's income is equal to that of the rest of the world put together. All Scientology organizations put together usually fall short of this place. And that is a lot of money. There are a lot of other Scientology organizations, also; I don't know how many there are. There's a bunch of them, including the big ones in Los Angeles. You know, our gross income here quite often was more. I'll talk down here if you -- some of my knowledge about the Guardian's Office. In early '78 -- I chuckle about this now -- I was in charge of religious image. And they had a religious image checklist that I was supposed to follow and to help get in, help to upgrade the religious image of our buildings and our personnel around Clearwater. I was working for the Assistant Guardian for Public Relations, who, at that time, was Miss Nancy Risi, who I know you're familiar with. MR. LeCHER: Yes, I remember her. MR. KELLEY: A couple of things that I was in charge -- that I was supposed to do was get certificates, minister certificates, you know -- Larry Lattimore made them, that sort of thing -- up where people could see them if they wandered into Clearwater or any one of the buildings. You know, they'd see someone who was a minister sitting there. Or crosses -- I was also supposed to build those eight-point crosses, which is next to impossible. I was also supposed to talk to our staff members and public about upgrading their image around town. You know, it was kind of hard to tell some of these people anything, you know, "Your jeans have frazzies on them." I felt kind of --it was kind of a wishy-washy job, and I wasn't real enthused about it because I didn't have the power. I was working as a minor staff member trying to do a major job. And I got it as a full-time job, and I did it maybe a couple of hours a week. I'd go around and do my checklist and find out where everything was not the way it was supposed to be, basically. And Miss Risi used to jump on me about it. What could I do? It wasn't my job. Anyway, one of the things: We used to have Guardian's Office briefings about fairly frequently, especially, when things were getting hot with Mr. Tenney and his band every now and then, when he was raising such a fuss here. We used to get these briefings from the Guardian's office, and they were usually pretty interesting. They would always make it sound like we were winning. And one of the things that I remember was when they had the Jonestown tragedy in Guyana -- I wasn't really aware of what was going on out there. I didn't know they were a religious cult, because when you say "cult" to a Scientologist, he automatically turns you off, thinking that you don't know what you're talking about, thinking that you're anti-Scientology as soon as you say the word "cult," religious cult, dangerous cult, whatever. So, one of the things that they told us was that "You've got to keep in touch with your families during this Guyana thing, because they're going to get all concerned about you being in a religious cult." They told us to keep writing those good roads, fair weather letters. Whenever you had trouble at home, you were supposed to write: "Dear Mom," you know, "things are fine, weather is beautiful," you know, "getting a tan," you know, "went to Disney World last week." You know, you're not supposed to mention that the City of Clearwater is about ready to burn the building. You weren't supposed to tell them about the bad things, the bad news. You were supposed to just give them good roads, fair weather, just wishy-washy, ho-hum letters, which most people could see right through. Since I've gotten out, my family has said -- has told me that when they'd get these letters, they knew that it wasn't me. It seemed a little fakey to them. Anyway, there's a little thing on my outline about my -- about marriage and legal discretions. I don't know if you want me to go into that or not. MR. FYNN: It's pertinent, go ahead. MR. LeCHER: If the Attorney, Mr. Flynn, thinks it's pertinent, then, go ahead. MR. FLYNN: For a very specific reason. MR. KELLEY: Okay. I don't know about this. I was married on March 6th, '79. My wife and I obtained a marriage license and had blood tests here in Clearwater. We were married by a friend of mine in my office who is a minister. We were both ministers at the time, too, but that isn't pertinent. We were married by a Scientology minister. Four months later, we got second thoughts about the marriage, which is really not apropos here. The minister said -- Reverend Al -- he said, "Well, you don't have to worry about a divorce because I never sent your marriage certificate in." He said, "I wanted to save you some trouble in case it popped up." I said, "Hey, no sweat, great," you know. MR. LeCHER: Does your wife know she's no longer married? MR. KELLEY: Yes. MR. FLYNN: That's why it's significant, Mayor. But there still may be a legal issue and there may be a situation where neither party is exactly certain of their legal rights -- at this point as to whether they are married or divorced, because the city may have been allowing a minister of the Church to issue a marriage license which was not recorded. And both parties may now feel that they are married or divorced, and the matter is in limbo. MR. KELLEY: I hope not because she remarried. MR. LeCHER: I hope she's not a bigamist. Anyway, let's get back to reality. You're no longer married as far as -- MR. KELLEY: The reason we thought that we felt that was significant was that I don't think I was the only person to do that. MRS., GARVEY: You mean, married by a Scientologist? MR. KELLEY: Oh, no, there are tons of those. I mean, there's -- because people see that -- see, the no premarital sex law that they have, which is -- some of us had a little trouble adjusting to that, and though, we just still followed it. So, consequently, there's a lot of rapid marriages, short courtships. And at least -- you wouldn't believe -- you wouldn't believe it even if I told you. But -- and consequently, there's a lot of short marriages over there. But they're married by a Scientologist and the divorce is usually uncontested, at least amongst staff members. Anyway, let's wander off here to living conditions. I lived in all three buildings that staff members lived in while here. I lived at the Fort Harrison, the Quality Inn, and the Heart of Clearwater. Most of that time I spent in rooms with ten to twelve people in them, regular hotel rooms. Sometimes more, sometimes less. It usually averaged about eight to ten, because I had many different rooms. People would move often. When I first came on staff here, they had what's called the men's dorm. You won't believe this. We had fifty-four bunks in that room. MR. LeCHER: In one room? MR. KELLEY: It wasn't a hotel room; it was a little bigger than that. It was in the old locker room of the old Jack Heart Hotel. It was downstairs and, obviously, there wasn't a whole lot of room to move around down there. But it was definitely -- it was fifty-four bunks and -- I'm trying to remember if we had any vacancies. There was probably forty-eight men living in there at the time, and I lived there for six months. That wasn't a real pleasant place; it was pretty crowded. That's all I have for my statement. MR. LeCHER: Well, you mentioned that the money was as high as 2.3 million and averaged four to five hundred thousand dollars a week. MR. KELLEY: That's correct. MR. LeCHER: And the Sea Org. took the money. MR. KELLEY: Yes. MR. LeCHER: Do you know their names, the Sea Org. people? MR. KELLEY: I know the post titles, a couple of them. One of them was the SOR Chief, and -- boy. I'm trying to remember. I know who was in on it, how's that? One of them was the Director of Records, Assets, and Materiel. And his name was Homer Shomer. MR. LeCHER: Homer Shomer? MR. KELLEY: Homer Shomer. A nice a nice, little Jewish man, Homer Shomer and -- MR. LeCHER: Well, we don't want to get into nationalities or religion. MR. KELLEY: Well, that's another story. Anyway, Homer knew what was going on at the SOR. But, like I say, these guys played it pretty close to the chest. He mentioned to me one time about investing it in possibly gold or gems of some kind. But he definitely did not go into specifics. This was when gold was going for, I think, eight hundred dollars an ounce or something. There was speculation on what they should invest some of this money in. They also mentioned something about property. But this was just in passing. I used to hang out in his office while I was digging through invoices. But he didn't say, "We bought fourteen pounds of gold." But he said SOR was considering it, the SOR Committee. Some of the other -- one of the other posts in charge that was in on that SOR -- I can't remember the exact title. It was a person that was in charge of all treasury departments worldwide. There's a person over in the West coast -- most Scientology organizations have seven divisions. Around the world, most of them have seven. There's a person at Flag that's in charge of all of those -- of each of them. Like, this person is a person in charge of the treasury division. And she was in on it. She was in charge of all finances worldwide. But I -- MR. LeCHER: Do you think all that money went back to Los Angeles that was collected in Clearwater or was it spread to do good work in the City of Clearwater? MR. KELLEY: I don't know exactly where it went. MR. LeCHER: Where the money went. You just know you collected it? MR.-KELLEY: Right. I know where some of it didn't go. MR. LeCHER: Do you want to tell me where it didn't go? MR. KELLEY: Yeah. one of the places it didn't go was for meals for the -- food. It was not like no -- we were fed, but it was often low quality. Especially for the amount of money we were making, like, you know -- they were making -- say, we had a bad week and only made four hundred thousand dollars. You know, the expenses aren't going to come near that, you know. MR. LeCHER: Well, didn't you also get fed beans and rice? MR. KELLEY: On one occasion for a week we did, which was an interesting story. MR. LeCHER: I heard -- we -- MR. KELLEY: I mean, Miss Taverna mentioned something about that. What had happened was -- we had a person that was treasury secretary for the Flag Ship Organization who was a little off his rocker. And what he was doing, basically, was making up money. He was reporting money that hadn't actually been turned in. And so, the organization thought they had this amount of money to spend, when, in fact, it was down here, all right? And this guy was -- I mean, he was the big cheese. But he was the new kid on the block, you know, he was the boy wonder. He was making all this money; no one actually saw it. But here he was making all this money. And our gross income was over the five hundred thousand dollar mark, which, at that time, was the highest ever. I mean, it was just phenomenal. Most of it was coming from this one guy in the department. And it was just great; boy, we were all enthused about it. And then, we found out that this guy wasn't all -- he didn't have all his stuff in one bag, and he got -- they put him in the RPF. MR. LeCHER: He belonged in the RPF. MR. KELLEY: Right. I mean, this guy was nuts. He was reporting money that we didn't have. MR-. LeCHER: Was that Homer Shomer? MR. KELLEY: No. Let's not make Homer jokes. What happened was we got a telex from Ron, from L. Ron -- from LRH that said, "You thought you could make five hundred thousand dollars, so do it." And that is a quote. "You have by the end of next week to do it. You better get your honest GI up to five hundred grand or you're going on beans and rice." And our honest GI, at that time, was around three hundred, three hundred fifty, you know. MR. LeCHER: What is an honest GI? MR. KELLEY: That's what we were already making before David what's his face was falsely reporting statistics. So well, we didn't make it. We didn't come up. We didn't make five hundred thousand dollars by the deadline. We went on beans and rice. I remember that was on my birthday, 1978. And I remember it because everybody else was eating beans and rice and I had cake. it was October 13th -- MR. LeCHER: Didn't that bother you, though, to take in four or five hundred thousand a month and have beans and rice? MR. KELLEY: That's a week. MR. LeCHER: A week? A week, rather. Didn't that get you to think, you know, "They can at least afford to give me a hamburger or a steak or a lobster," or something like that? MR. KELLEY: I wasn't real pleased with it. But it -- and I really felt it was unfair to punish the whole staff because one guy was a little off, you know. I never have believed that you should punish everybody for one person's messing up. But you -- I was pretty well indoctrinated then. That was when I was new on staff and I wasn't -- I got disenchanted later on. So, this is when I was new and I was still dedicated. I think I ate at McDonald's that week. MR. LeCHER: What were you paid? MR. KELLEY: At that time, when I first came on staff, I was paid $8.60 a week. MR. LeCHER: Eighty? MR. KELLEY: Eight bucks MR. LeCHER: Eight dollars? MR. KELLEY: Eight-sixty, $8.60. That was for the first -- oh, boy, a long time, year and-a-half, until I became a full-fledged staff member and, then, it went up to seventeen-twenty. MR. LeCHER: All right. Well, how did you live? I mean, you had to buy personal things. You had to buy toothpaste -- MR. KELLEY: My main vice is pipe tobacco. You just spread your money very thin. That's all you buy is your personal things. You don't go out, eat, nothing, you know. MRS. GARVEY: You couldn't go to a restaurant often. MR. LeCHER: You couldn't go to McDonald's very often. MR. KELLEY: No. You couldn't go to McDonald's at all. Even when you were making the whole seventeen twenty, it was kind of rough to go. You know, see, when you're in the galley to eat lunch and you didn't like it, you know, you had whatever it was and you weren't enthused about that meal, you didn't go to McDonald's too often. You know, it was just kind of -- that's one of the main reasons I got out, because here I was working seventy to eighty hours a week and I'm making twenty bucks, you know. This did not jive. It just didn't add up. MRS. GARVEY: Good thinking. MR. LeCHER: Okay. MR. KELLEY: It took a while -- MR. LeCHER: Okay. So, that gave you your first clue: seventy to eighty hours a week for $20.00 and you got disillusioned then. MR. KELLEY: Right. MR. LeCHER: Most of the people that I see walking down the street look about your age. Are they existing on family money or -- MR. KELLEY: Very few. There's a few people that have family money. And those are the people you see driving. MR. LeCHER: Driving. MR. KELLEY: I tend to make things sound funny when I'm nervous. I don't want to make this sound any less serious than it is, because it is very serious. People have -- most of the people, the staff members, that do drive cars have family money. David Ziff drives a Jaguar; he has lots of family money. MR. LeCHER: Well, when you're living with fifty-five men to a room, an old locker room, didn't you question that that could be a -- cause disease or spread of disease or an epidemic -- MR. KELLEY: We were -- we kept it -- MR. LeCHER: -- or social problems, like the bathroom? MR. KELLEY: We kept that place spotless. We really did; we did keep it clean. We kept it very clean, as a matter of fact. So, there wasn't too much spread of that. MR. LeCHER: One question I'd like to ask -- and I don't know if you can answer me; you may be the wrong witness to ask this, but no one's asked it yet. Why Clearwater? And why did you come in under the United Churches of Florida? Why not what you really were? MR. KELLEY: Because I doubt if you would have sold us the buildings. MR. LeCHER: Well, I didn't have anything to do with selling the buildings. MR. KELLEY: Well, when I was here, I asked -- that was the reason that I heard was that -- it's just speculation on my part or things that I've heard from people who were here at that time. They said they couldn't have bought the building or they would have raised the price of the building at the Fort Harrison if they would have found out who it was. MR. LeCHER: But you just -- they just decided Clearwater was a nice little town they could take over? MR. KELLEY: It had big, cheap hotels. In other words -- MR. LeCHER: Big, cheap hotels? MR. KELLEY: That was another part of it. That's my wording, obviously, because the Fort Harrison was, to my knowledge -- it was rather run down when they bought it in '75. It was on a -- it was a buy, apparently. It was two million dollars or something. MR. LeCHER: I think two-five. MR. HATCHETT: Two-five. MR. LeCHER: Well, I was in there, of course, not recently, but when it was the old hotel and I remember the rooms being very small, old salesman-type hotel with little tiny beds. I remember that type of room. I don't know how you could fit -- two people in that room would be a crowd. How anyone can fit eight or ten in those little tiny, old-timey salesman-type hotel rooms -- it's got to be -- something's got to be wrong someplace. There's got to be a health hazard or it's got to cause all kinds of other problems. MR. KELLEY: I just got off a naval ship and it's pretty similar as far as size -- MR. LeCHER: They're not taking in four or five hundred thousand dollars a week, either. MR. KELLEY: Right. MR. LeCHER: Okay. I can go on, but I'm going to yield now to regging tours? MR. KELLEY: Regging tours? MR. LeCHER: Regging tours and how they channel business back to Clearwater. What is this all about, regging tours? MR. KELLEY: Regging. MR. LeCHER: Regging. MR. KELLEY: You -- it's a registrar. A person who -- a registrar is a person who takes in money. He tells the person how much he needs the service or -- and then, gets him to give him a check for the service. Like I said, they've got three regging tours that are out around the world just regging up money for the Clearwater operation. MR. LeCHER:. How do you get to be a regging? MR. KELLEY: Reg, a registrar? MR. LeCHER: It's not the best job. I mean -- MR. KELLEY: Those guys make good money; they make good bonuses. MR. LeCHER: Are they paid commission? MR. KELLEY: Yes. Not on -- they're paid commission on books. MR. LeCHER: From this four to five hundred thousand to a million or 2.3, did anybody get a cut on that? MR. CALDERBANK: Or a bonus? MR. LeCHER: Or a bonus, like -- MR. KELLEY: Oh, certainly. The whole staff -- everybody got a bonus. Everybody got at least $150.00. Everybody got at least a bonus on that one. MR. LeCHER: Even you? MR. KELLEY: Even me. Everyone did. As far as I know one person who sold 1.1 million dollars in books. One guy -- MR. LeCHER: One man? MR. KELLEY: -- in Europe, and he got, I believe it was, five percent, which is fifty grand in commission. MR. LeCHER: Was it a library? MR. KELLEY: Yes. It was a whole bunch of books. He was this gentleman in, I think it was, Lucerne, Switzerland was starting a chain of missions there. And he bought in a lump sum. He had old, European family money. Walter Hegetschweiler. No one on earth will ever -- MR. LeCHER: Walter Hegetschweiler? MR. KELLEY: Yes. I can spell it if you want me to. MR. LeCHER: Spell it, please. MR. KELLEY: I think I'm the one person at Flag that ever could. H-e-g-e-t-s-c-h-w-e-i-l-e-r. MRS. GARVEY: Good for you. MR. LeCHER: All right. I know we're getting down to the end, ladies and gentlemen, but let's just be nice and act, like good gentlemen and gentleladies. We don't want to make this a farce. MR. KELLEY: No. MR. LeCHER: This is serious. I know you're a good, entertaining witness, but this is not a farce; it is serious. And we don't want to be criticized for ridiculing another man's or woman's organization. MR. KELLEY: One thing I was told to mention was that was the bonus -- some people were paid bonuses in paper -- MR. LeCHER: Like script? MR. KELLEY: No, their account would be credited. MRS. GARVEY: Toward taking another course? MR. KELLEY: Right. And on this particular occasion, I believe that was made in cash, or a check given. He since -- the gentleman that sold the course I mean, those books to Mr. Hegetschweiler bought his auditing at that time. And a staff member doesn't ever have to buy auditing; he never has to. But rather than wait around to get his NED for OTs auditing, he just paid for it, which was, I thought it was kind of foolish myself, because a man that does that amount of business for the Church eventually will be awarded that auditing for nothing. But he turned right around and spent forty thousand of it for his auditing. MR. LeCHER: Mr. Berfield, do you have any questions you'd like to ask? MR. BERFIELD: Just a couple. Mr. Kelley, do you mind if I call you Casey? MR. KELLEY: No. MR. BERFIELD: I'm still not sure: Why or how did you ever get involved in Scientology? MR. KELLEY: I was going to Florida State University in Fort Lauderdale. MR. BERFIELD: Did you take any of their auditing courses or anything like that? MR. KELLEY: I never paid for one, other than after I came on staff. MR. BERFIELD: Did -- in taking those, have you reviewed any of those books since you've taken a course? MR. KELLEY: No, I haven't. I haven't been too enthused about hearing anything about Scientology since I got out in October of last year. MR. BERFIELD: You're no longer associated with them? MR. KELLEY: No. MR. BERFIELD: Why did you leave Scientology? MR. KELLEY: I left -- the original reason I left Clearwater was to go on vacation. And when I got on vacation, my brother had contacted some people about Scientology and had done his research on what was actually going on. And he just kind of verbally -- he asked me what I was doing in a rather point-blank way. You know, "Why are you working these hours for this amount of money?" And "Where is this money going?" And I said, "Jesus, I don't know." Then, I started thinking about it on my own. And that's how I got out. I just never returned from my vacation. MR. BERFIELD: The job that you were in, was that more of a financial management-type job? MR. KELLEY: The job is actually located in the executive division. I spent a lot of time in treasury. I saw every invoice that came in, all of them: John Travolta -- I don't want to name celebrity names, but I saw everybody's invoice. MR. BERFIELD: Did everybody -- MR. KELLEY: I had them on my list. MR. BERFIELD: Did everyone pay cash for their services or -- MR. KELLEY: Check; mostly check. MR. BERFIELD: Was there any promissory notes or anything? MR. KELLEY: No, you couldn't do that. MR. BERFIELD: You couldn't do that. MR. KELLEY: No. MR. BERFIELD: Did you - MR. KELLEY: You had to have the money on hand. MR. BERFIELD: So, you had no collection problems as far as getting the money? MR. KELLEY: The only time you'd have collection problems would be, say, a person bought some auditing. He did the auditing, but he was in the middle of an auditing action and he had -- he needed more, or else there could be dire consequences for the individual. Say, there was a possibility that he might get killed, whatever. Then, he would go in debt to the organization and get either review auditing or whatever it was that was needed. And that sometimes got pretty expensive. That's the only time a public person would owe the organization. MR. BERFIELD: Do you know how they collect their money? MR. KELLEY: I certainly do. I used to work in the office where it was done. They would call them or write them letters or basically, a lot the same way that they get regular money, except this was a little -- this seemed to be a little nastier. MR. BERFIELD: How go? MR. KELLEY: Well, you know, "You owe us money." MR. BERFIELD: Did you get that from mean, there was no force or coercion to collect this money? MR. KELLEY: None that I ever saw. They sometimes I got -- none that I ever saw. MR. BERFIELD: Did you ever see any kind of a working budget? In other words, when you took in four hundred thousand dollars a week, it cost a hundred and fifty or two hundred thousand dollars a week to run the hotel? MR. KELLEY: A working budget? Every week, the financial planning for that week would be posted. MR. BERFIELD: What would that be? MR. KELLEY: That would be, like, how much money was spent for phone calls -- well, each division, how much money they had allocated to them. For example, our office had twenty-five hundred bucks on phone calls. That's how much we were allocated; we spent more than that. MR. BERFIELD: But did you see this for the whole operation? MR. KELLEY: Oh, yes. But I can't remember too much because -- I'm sorry, because it was just -- MR. BERFIELD: No, no, no, no. MR. KELLEY: -- on a piece of paper, and if it didn't concern my office, I really wasn't paying that much attention. MR. BERFIELD: So, in other words, on a poorer week when they got four hundred thousand dollars, you don't know whether their operating budget was a hundred and twenty thousand or -- MR. KELLEY: No. I know that on a poorer week it was tougher to get something that -- it was like getting blood from a turnip to get money out of the Financial Planning Committee. I know that. For example, I used my boss's typewriter, which was his own personal electric typewriter. And I tried to get the organization to rent one for him so I could give him back his. And no one at Requests would give me a typewriter, you know, which seemed to me to be a bit odd, you know, because our office was doing an outstanding job. And yet, we still couldn't get the typewriter. You know, it's hard to get money from the organization. MR. BERFIELD: Question: When you were mentioning these living expenses -- living conditions similar to the military, did you ever have any kind of inspection or -- MR. KELLEY: Oh, yeah. MR. BERFIELD: -- from the Fire Marshall? What happened in a situation like that? MR. KELLEY: Well, it's like Lori said. I mean, you would know they were coming and there'd be a giant press to clean the place up a lot. You know, you made sure all the dormitories were all clean and neat and that sort of thing. MR. BERFIELD: But do you know if they moved beds or anything? MR. KELLEY: The only thing I can remember on that sort of deal was when a young man by the -- which doesn't really have to do with a fire inspection; it has to do with moving a person. I remember when Charles Fletcher had trouble with his parents here in Clearwater because they were -- that was a big deal here in the city. I remember the mayor was in on it or somebody; it was a big deal. His parents came down and tried to get him out of here. Well, he was living in the dorm at the time down there with forty-seven other people. They moved him up to a regular public room for the day. They put him and one other person in a regular room. They moved in some books and made it lived in so, when his parents came to visit him, he had a regular room with just one other person when, in actual fact, he lived downstairs with the rest of us. MR. BERFIELD: Just a question out of curiosity here: To this day, you do not know whether you're divorced or -- MR. KELLEY: I consider myself to be. I mean, the marriage certificate no longer -- it didn't get sent in. MR. BERFIELD: Do you know that for a fact? MR. KELLEY: Yes, because I chopped it up with a pair of scissors. MR. BERFIELD: What happens on these other marriages that are performed? Do they go through the legal steps of getting divorces if there are divorces? MR. KELLEY: If they get -- as far as I know, they do. See, that's in -- that's bad news, and you don't talk about bad news between yourselves. You know, I had several friends who got divorced last year and that was bad news; we didn't discuss it. MR. BERFIELD: Just one final question: It's still unclear in my mind what would motivate you to come down on liberty and talk to us? MR. KELLEY: A chance to get back. MR. BERFIELD: Back at -- MR. KELLEY: Back at Scientology because I feel like I got the short end of the stick for those three years, and I feel I have something to say. I had some dealings. I worked there for three years. I felt that I had some testimony that would be of value to the Commission. MR. BERFIELD: Well, do you feel it's a more vindictive one than an informative one? MR. KELLEY: No. It's because I had -- you know, I had gotten terribly emotional about the whole thing. Don't feel like I'm going to go bomb -- you know, I'm not going to go calling bomb threats or anything like that. I don't feel vindictive in an emotional way. But Scientology is something that I feel most people don't know about what really goes on up here at the Fort Harrison. And I knew. MR. BERFIELD: Do you think that should be of deep concern to this Commission and the people in -- MR. KELLEY: Definitely. MR. BERFIELD: Why? MR. KELLEY: Because they're doing things that I feel are unethical. MR. BERFIELD: For example? MR. KELLEY: Twenty bucks a week for seventy hours seems a bit one-sided to me; things of that nature. If you -- I don't know about these people that are in the Rehabilitation Project Force; things of that nature. These things should be found out about. I don't think the people of Clearwater really know what's going on. They put up a good front over there. MR. BERFIELD: Can you tell us any other things that you think we should know about or in your opinion we should be informed about? Do you think health is a factor over there? MR. KELLEY: I know that I got had blood poisoning a couple of times. But I don't know if that's still a problem now or not. MR. BUFIELD: What about the safety of the people? MR. KELLEY: Food poisoning, I'm sorry; food poisoning. Pardon? MR. BERFIELD: The safety of the people? MR. KELLEY: I don't think they're in any great physical danger. MR. BERFIELD: Do you think you could have evacuated that room with fifty some fellows if they had a fire? MR. KELLEY: Yes, because we did it a couple of times. Two nights in a row we had fire alarms that went off. MR. BERFIELD: Do you think, in your own mind, that there's been any -- in the distribution of literature here in Clearwater -- fraud or is there misrepresentation to the people of Clearwater? MR. KELLEY: I have -- I'm not that familiar with what information has been dispensed to the people of Clearwater. MR. BERFIELD: In the form of books and literature? MR. KELLEY: I always felt the literature was pretty wishy-washy, that it was just on the nature to appease the citizens of Clearwater. See, Scientology -- this operation does not -- they really don't want anything to do with citizens of Clearwater. Their the people they're concerned with are the people that are already Scientologists. That's what they're interested in. If this were a regular Scientology organization, they'd be trying to get the people of Clearwater into that building. As it is, they'd just as soon Clearwater left them alone. That's always the feeling we had when I was there. But if you must come in, we'll be cordial and show you the chapel and that sort of thing. But their main interest lies in public, in people that are already Scientologists. MR. BERFIELD: Do you think health codes over there have been violated? MR. KELLEY: I am
not that familiar with health codes. I know when I was in the men's
dormitory down there that MR. BERFIELD: You made a general statement that the people of Clearwater should know about it. If you had some announcement, what would you tell the people of Clearwater? MR. KELLEY: if I was a citizen of Clearwater, I wouldn't want them in my town because it's a it's a dangerous organization. MR. BERFIELD: Dangerous in what respect? MR. KELLEY: Dangerous to the minds of young people. MR. BERFIELD: Do you think they could have an effect on my children since they live here or just the ones coming in? Mg. KELLEY: It's -- I would -- I really don't feel like they pose that much of a threat to the City of Clearwater, because they really don't want to have any thing to do with Clearwater. They really don't want to deal with the people in Clearwater. But if it's looked upon favorably here, maybe it will be looked upon favorably elsewhere, see. And I don't think it should be looked upon favorably in the slightest at all, whether it be Clearwater or anywhere. MR. BERFIELD: But if I understand your statement, you would just alert the people of Clearwater that they are a dangerous organization? MR. KELLEY: In my opinion, they are; in my opinion, they are. MR. BERFIELD: You would -- you would or would not recommend anybody going into Scientology? MR. KELLEY: I would recommend against it with all my heart and soul going into it and getting out of it. That's another thing that I would like known. The average Scientologist doesn't know about some of these clandestine -- they don't know about any of these clandestine activities that -- I don't know if anyone's testified on it or not. But some of the harassment of Mr. -- former Mayor Cazares or the Saint-Petersburg Times writers. They hear about that stuff, some of these harassments, wire taps, and things, and these the Scientologist doesn't believe it. They figure that's just noise to sell papers, when, in fact, it's actually occurring. The average Scientologist you see walking on the street probably isn't a bad person, but he's misled by the organization, by the policies of the organization. MR. BERFIELD: Now, you say they're misled. Do you know this to be a fact? MR. KELLEY: Yes. MR. BERFIELD: Can you give us a for instance? MR. KELLEY: The one for instance I give is an incident that happened to me in my home after I got out of Scientology, an incident of harassment, which I don't know if it's -- that's a - MR. LeCHER: That's very pertinent. MR. KELLEY: When I was on leave well, before I went on leave in Portland or Vancouver, Washington where my brother lives, my brother called everyone from the FBI, to the CIA on down to find out about Scientology. He kind of knew that it wasn't all that it was cracked up to be, but he didn't really know what to do about it until he called a lot of people -- a bunch of people until he got in contact with someone who knew about religious cults or cult activities. So when I came home, he had a stack -- you know, he had a stack of papers, some affidavits and things like that. And he proceeded to ask me a few questions to which I didn't have logical answers for. So, I got out, and I decided to stay home. But shortly the day after that, Bob and I we went to a business meeting in Seattle and left his wife at home alone. When we came back, we found her sitting in the closet with a gun in her hand terrified. What had happened was is the day after Halloween, someone came to the door wearing a Halloween mask, knocked on the door, she opened -- it was a screen door. She opened up the door, they asked if Casey Kelley was there. She said, "No," and started to close the door on the people. They came into the house, harassed her, exposed themselves, threatened her, saying, "You better leave Casey alone or it can get worse. Don't call the cops." That sort of thing. No one else in that area knew I was there. I had no friends because I hadn't been there for three years. I had no friends in that area that would do something, you know, off the wall like that. My family didn't even know I was there, except -- with the exception of my brother. He was the only one who knew I was at his home. That made it very real to me. That made it kind of hit home. The average Scientologist does not know about that sort of thing taking place. How can a religion do that if it's a bonafide religion? MR. LeCHER: We don't want to -- MR. KELLEY: That's another -- MR. LeCHER: that's under religious beliefs and -- MR.KELLEY: That's right; I'm sorry. MR. LeCHER: -- we don't want to hear about that. MR. BERFIELD: Mayor, I could go on all evening -- MR. LeCHER: So could I, but I think we'd better switch around. We do have a meeting -- another meeting to attend -- it's twenty-five to five -- at five, and I have to go back to my colleagues to my right to see if they have something they would like to add. MRS. GARVEY: I don't have a lot of questions to ask, but I can start in the morning. MR. LeCHER: Is there anything you'd like to say in conclusion, sir? MR. SHOEMAKER: Can you stay over, Mr. Kelley? MA. KELLEY: Yes, I can. MR. LeCHER: All right. Why don't you stay over then, and speak with Mr. Flynn. There may be something we want to ask you again. At this stage, ladies and gentlemen, this particular meeting is adjourned, and we'll reconvene with the regularly scheduled City Commission meeting at five o'clock. (whereupon, the hearing was adjourned until 9:00 a.m. on Friday, May 7, 1982.) C E R T I F I C A T I O N I, Karen E. Rizman, a certified court reporter and Notary Public, do hereby certify that the foregoing hearing transcript of the City of Clearwater Commission Hearings Re: The Church of Scientology, pages 4 through 273, is a true and accurate transcription of my dictated tape recordings of the proceedings taken at the Clearwater City Hall, Clearwater Florida, on Thursday, May 6, 1982. Karen E. Rizman
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