According to Gary Morehead, the hulking chief of security at Gold Base at the time, a “blow drill” went into effect immediately. Morehead had refined the process to a model of Sea Org efficiency. Each year, a minimum of a hundred people attempted to escape from Gold, but few got away cleanly. Morehead’s security team kept files on members, containing bank account and credit card numbers, family contacts, even hobbies and predilections. When one senior executive fled in 1992, for instance, Morehead knew he was a baseball fan. He caught him a week later in the parking lot of the San Francisco Giants stadium.
Morehead’s team was aided by the isolation of the base—Gold was in a narrow valley in the middle of the desert, seven miles from the village of Hemet. There was a single highway, easy to patrol; mountain ranges enclosed the base on either side, and the rocky slopes were copiously supplied with cactus and rattlesnakes. Many of the Sea Org members had neither the resources nor the skills to get very far. There was an ingrained distrust of the non-Scientology “wog” world and its system of justice, as well as a fatalistic view of the reach of the church, especially among Sea Org members who, like Annie, had grown up in Scientology. Those who had cell phones used them mainly as walkie-talkies for communication on the base; phone records were monitored and the phones would be taken away if they were used to make outside calls. Few of them had cars of their own, or even driver’s licenses, so the best they could do was to try to get to the bus station before they were discovered missing. By the time the bus made its next stop, however, there was usually a member of Morehead’s team waiting for them. If that failed, Morehead’s security squad would stake out the houses of the blown member’s family and friends, using scanners that could listen in on cordless phones and cell phones, and running the license plates of everyone who came and went. When the team finally confronted their prey, they would try to talk them into returning to the base voluntarily. If that failed, occasionally they would use force.3
Most of those who fled were torn by conflicting emotions. On the one hand, they were often frightened, humiliated, and angry. They desperately wanted a life outside the organization. Some, like Annie, wanted to have children, which she was forbidden to do as a Sea Org member. On the other hand, they believed that their eternal salvation was at stake. The youthful enthusiasm that had caused them to sign their billion-year contract of service may have been dampened, but there was usually some residual idealism that the security team could appeal to. Typically, in these confrontations, Morehead would bring along the escapee’s “opinion leader,” which could be his case supervisor, or another family member who was in Scientology—his wife or his mother, for instance. In many instances, the fleeing Sea Org member didn’t even argue; he just gave up, knowing that he would probably be taken directly to RPF, where he might spend months or years working his way back into good standing.
At any time, a fleeing member could guarantee his safety by simply calling the police, but that rarely if ever happened. The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, whose jurisdiction includes Gold Base, says that there has never been an outcry of abuse, or an accusation of illegal detention from members of the church at the base. Although the Sea Org members lived inside a highly secure compound in a desert hideaway, surrounded by fences and high-tech sensors, most of them weren’t really being held against their will. On the contrary, it was their will that held them. But according to Morehead, no one who escaped ever returned voluntarily.
As soon as Morehead learned that Annie had blown, his team began combing through her personal effects, calling hotels and motels in the area, and looking for clues as to where she was headed. The easiest way of doing that was to have someone pretend to be Annie and try to book a flight, then be told, for instance, “Oh, we already have you on the eleven-ten flight to Boston.” If that didn’t work, another member would call the airlines, posing as a sick relative, and demand help in finding the missing “son” or “wife” or whatever; if the airline representative refused to give out that information, the member would continue asking to speak to a higher-up, until he got the information. In one case, it was the vice president of an airline who, thinking he was responding to a family medical emergency, gave up the pertinent details. Morehead also hired former FBI or CIA agents as private investigators. As soon as an escapee made the mistake of using a credit card, the team would know almost immediately where the charge was placed. Morehead was always surprised at how easily such supposedly confidential information could be obtained. His team quickly learned that Annie was on the flight to Boston.