In 1990, I was sent to LA from Washington, DC to attend a "4 to 6 week course" called Key to Life. This was held at the so-called International Training Org, diminutively referred to as ITO and housed on the sixth floor of the Hollywood Guarantee Building in downtown Hollywood.

Staff from all over the planet (!) were selected for their orgs' KTK delivery teams and sent to take this training. At one time or another I was "twinned" with an OTVIII from Germany, a high official of "Gold" and several OT staff from local orgs in Los Angeles. And me a mere Clear ...

When we arrived, we had to "route in," which in my case took over 6 weeks.

This routing in period was known about by everyone associated with the KTL training but never communicated to those of us making plans for how to survive while on full-time training in LA. It instantly doubled the length of my stay in LA, but wait! I also needed to do the Life Orientation Course, which added 4 to 6 more weeks. And there was KTL course delivery training, and training to be an auditor, supervisor or Case Supervisor because the KTL/LOC required their own version of each of these. I could easily have been there over a year, with no source of income because you can't work a "wog" job while on training at ITO.

After I completed the KTL/LOC courses, I started Level 0 training. For this I was supposed to purchase a Mark VI meter, books, etc. I had been away from home for around 6 months and knew that I couldn't go on with no income.

After I routed on to the Level 0 checksheet, I tried to see the right people to get sent home. At this point I was in no mood to spend weeks or months "routing out" so one night, on impulse, I escaped from LA. I told people I was moving from the crowded berthing in the Complex to private quarters at the Manor. Jumping in a cab, I raced to the Greyhound Bus Station and purchased a one-way ticket back to DC.

Nobody figured out that I was "blowing" until my escape was underway. In the bus station in Texas, my name was announced as having a phone call. It was the DC org ethics officer, trying to get me to go back to LA. When I refused, she promised to meet me at the bus station in DC.

I never returned to staff and was declared SP a year later. In truth I had not been org staff, but rather an off-lines person who was called in to be "cleaned up." They must have been very desperate to send me to ITO in the first place. I never would have gone if they had been truthful about how long it would take, and I never would have stayed as long as I did if they had disclosed everything I needed to know at ITO. The game was to get me involved and away from home, and then keep me there for their purposes.

Students did much of the work at ITO, running the auditing lines and other delivery chores. The more students that they could keep there under any pretense, the better it was for ITO. And of course now I get a billing from Flag every so often, trying to collect $10,000 for these courses.

It seems to me that the KTL/LOC fills a similar need at the orgs. It is a lengthy but cheap course to deliver, keeping students in the building where they can be regged for other services. The overall effect is mind numbing, looking at simplistic pictures all day and defining hundreds of words from a simple dictionary. Several of us believed that we experienced telepathic powers with other KTL students and I even had people from DC telling me that they somehow "knew" things that were going on with me in LA. These effects, delusionary or not, were above and beyond the stated claims of the KTL but illustrate the risk of being immersed so totally in any Hubbard "technology." You can lose touch, begin to believe or accept things with no rational explanation, etc.

Moral of the story? Knowing how to know is knowing when to blow.

Chip Gallo
forgot my clear number
Declared SP 1991

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