Dan Koon

After the FBI raid, LRH took off and if was radio silence from July until January 1978. However, plans were already in place to begin shooting technical training films. Sometime in 1977, LRH had mentioned to one of the key crew at WHQ, Stuart Moreau, that he had always wanted to make training films to show students how to do TRs and metering correctly. Stu said he would build him a film studio and, as far as I know, that was the genus of today’s tech films.

There was an old date packing plant on the property and Stuie and the Estates guys got onto renovating it into something that would serve as a film studio. It wasn’t large, maybe only 50 or 60 feet on a side with maybe 10 or 12 foot high ceilings and a couple of smaller rooms off against one of the walls, but it would do. Work on this continued throughout the rest of 1977 until LRH’s return.

(more…)

The central building at WHQ was called Palms. It was a Spanish style two story house, nothing remarkable about it at all. Kitchen, dining area and living room downstairs, two bedrooms and bathroom upstairs and a basement. The living room served as mess hall and course room for the crew. The messengers ate in the dining area and studied there. Qual was in the basement.

A couple days after our chance meeting with LRH, we were alerted that he was coming down to Qual to talk to us. We got word through the messengers that he’d met a couple of the new auditors and they didn’t look too bad so he was coming down to see who had been assembled. None of the other recruits had run into him despite having been there for a few weeks already.

We spent the early part of the morning making the basement look as presentable as a basement can be made to look. It was large enough to hold a desk and three 6 foot folding tables and a few filing cabinets. The furnace room served as the Qual Sec’s office and folder storage. I mean, this was the Qual Division of LRH’s personal org and it was situated in a basement and not a large one at that. I don’t think LRH gave a rat’s ass what a place looked like so long as it was clean. So, we neatened the place up and got rid of the dust. LRH definitely didn’t like dust.
(more…)

I joined the S.O. in June 1977. The previous year I had finished the St. Hill Special Briefing Course, which, as most know, involves listening to hundreds of LRH lectures given between 1961 and 1966. Every night for 3 hours it is just you and LRH and this goes on for months. When you finish the course it’s a distinct letdown not having that comm line.

At any rate, I knew I was joining the SO to become an auditor under LRH. That was the recruitment pitch we were given.

The picture I had of LRH in my mind was from the photos we’ve all seen. I knew I was going to meet him one day and I figured he would just be LRH like we’ve all come to know him.
(more…)

When he first announced the project to make training films for Academy students, LRH let us know that we would also be the actors in the films. The first shooting script was issued to the crew and we learned that it was called The Professional TR Course. There were about 30 scripts for tech films and he starts with the most fundamental of fundamentals, TRs.

We read the script and the story was, as many know, about a lousy field auditor who gets put through the wringer on a TRs course and is thus able to now get good results on his preclears. Believe it or not, the script did not read as a comedy, which the final product assuredly was. LRH just got the essentials down: the shot, the setting, the action, the characters and their dialogue.

We began discussing who should try out for which part. I was being pushed to try out for the lead character, Joseph Aaronberg Howard, and I wasn’t altogether sure whether this was meant to be a reflection of my past auditing, though I hadn’t really worked as a field auditor, just mission staff. But from some of my early TRs critiques it was pretty evident that I definitely could play the part of the bumbling Joe Howard. LRH set about to make sure I could play Joe Howard at the end of the film as well.

A few of us tried out for the lead role and I got the part. LRH sent me congratulations and began sending me despatches about what was expected, simply that this film was going to be the model of TRs for all Academy students in the world. Gee, is that all, Sir?

(more…)