Ken Ogger
| Ken Ogger | |
|---|---|
| |
| Birthdate | 01/24 |
| Birthday | January 24, 1949 |
| Deceased | Yes |
| Died on | May 28, 2007 |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Scientologist |
NOTE: This article discusses an offshoot. Offshoots are considered something OTHER than Scientology, as they were not developed by L. Ron Hubbard, and they have never been practiced in any Scientology Church.
The Pilot (Ken Ogger) played a notable part in the exodus from Scientology Church from 1997 when he published his Super Scio book (800 A4 pages), his Scientology Reformers Home Page (36 A4 Pages also in 1997) and his book Self Clearing (May 1998 332 A4 pages, revised 2004 392 pages). These were all published on the Internet, under the pseudonym "The Pilot" to the newsgroups alt.religion.scientology and alt clearing.technology. He sent them from "pilot@hiddenplace.com", an address which did not exist (he could not be traced from that address). It should be noted that at that time the Church of Scientology (etc.) were not aware of the danger of the Internet to their "monopoly" of Scientology, and their members could communicate to the internet, writing possibly through sites which made them anonymous. From 25 Aug 1997 Ken started sending fortnightly postings to the Internet, which again could not be traced to him, the originator (they are filed at http://www.freezoneearth.org/pilot/posts/eframeset.htm , selection were sent weekly with comments to: http://www.forum.exscn.net/showthread.php?27983-The-Pilot-Excerpts-from-his-Writings ). Thus any "Church" member could read what he wrote, and the "Church" had not installed later attempts (like early on the "net nanny" and later, rules suggesting looking at Internet was an overt) some (in and out of the "church") wrote to him via the internet public newsgroups, and he answered or commented on their posts every fortnight until 2000. Those postings (which contain some two-way comm) give some picture of conditions in broader Scientology at that time.
Brief History[edit | edit source]
Ken was born on January 24, 1949. His mother was Louise Kelly. He never met his father who had tried to kill his mother, and as a result was denied access. Ken was brought up in the family of his grandfather, and took his grandfather's surname. His identity was revealed to the Church by his estranged wife in 1999, and after that he caved in (deep apathy), had landed in hospital and was unconscious for about a month, and eventually committed suicide in 2007 in a way that made it look like murder. To this day there appear to be people who believe the "Church" murdered him.
He wrote to me and Heidrun Beer the following Biography. At that time he was aware of the possibility of the "Church" of Scientology finding out who he was and taking drastic action against him. I don't believe it has been published before now (2014). You can find the biography he published when his wife revealed him in IVy 83 ( http://articles.ivymag.org/pdf/IVy83.pdf ) page 8, a memorial issue, together with much other data and remarks about him. The following I have not edited (leaving his spelling as-is - spelling was something he was not particularly OT about :) )
Answer to Ant's Request for a Biography[edit | edit source]
From: tekfinder@excite.com
To: ivy@post8.tele.dk
Cc: office@sgmt.at
Subject: bio
Message-Id: <934849905.11551.85@excite.com>
Date: Mon, 16 Aug 1999 17:31:45 PDT
X-Mailer: Excite Mail
X-Sender-Ip: 206.117.249.4
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain
To Antony & Heidrun,
Hi,
[quoting an email from Antony]
> In IVy 43 which reaches you in a couple of days, I have reprinted. the
> article Between Lives Exploration.
>
> I would like a Pilot article in the next IVy (which I am rushing to get
> through on time).
>
> I thought of the biography. A very interesting document, though we have
> never devoted so much space to one mans life Do you have any other
> suggetions?
My first thought is that the bio is a bit dull. I assume you are talking about the public one I posted. The confidential one is a bit better but I don't want to see that one revealed because it mentions Louise and so far, Osa hasn't cognited on her yet.
You might also consider something technical. My excitement right now is about what is in the "Tech Breakthrough" and the related "Cycles of Action" posts of a few weeks ago (and the "R7" sequal, but that one needs the others to go first).
Or you could even lighten the mood with a humor post. The one that generated the most praise, both privately and on ARS was "The Sea Orger's tale" in the style of Canterburry Tales about a year and a half ago. [see http://articles.ivymag.org/pdf/IVy44.pdf page 41]
But you know your public better than I, and there is also the factor of balancing the types of content for the issue as a whole. So it is up to you, if you think that the public bio is the right thing, go ahead.
Best,
tekfinder
[Ant writing for this Scientolipedia site:]
This is not the one I was looking for.
Biography in his Post 60 is reprinted in IVy 83 page 9 http://articles.ivymag.org/pdf/IVy83.pdf
There is another one which he put in an email before he was exposed (the one in IVy 83 and post 8 was when he was exposed) - it is as follows.
Start of E-mail[edit | edit source]
Date: Fri, 12 Mar 1999 11:41:32 PST
From: tekfinder@excite.com
To: ivy@post8.tele.dk
Cc: office@sgmt.at
Subject: bio
To Antony & Heidrun,
It looks like I did accidently give you enough information to pin down who I am when I told you the BofA (Bank of America) story.
Ralph pointed out to me that the LA times story that mentions my name won a pulitzer prize and is up on the net at http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/REPORTS/PULITZER_98/N_HOLLYWOOD/violent_scr ipt.htm
My worry has never been about either of you personally, but only about the secruity of your files, emails, and the trustwortyness of people whom you might directly or indirectly leak information to.
My own flub with this BofA story shows how easy it is to pass on an interesting tale without realizing that if OSA heard it, they would have my name that same afternoon.
For that reason, I initially only revealed my identity to Ralph, Paul, & Homer. And Homer felt that his primary duty is to keep lightlink and the archives up no matter what happens, and so he felt that he shouldn't be included in secret stuff except on a need to know basis.
You probably don't realize how dangerous that BofA story is because you don't have a list of OT 7 completions to compare to the Times story, but OSA does.
Since you are now in a position of being able to leak my identity accidentally, we might as well have the benefits that come along with the dangers, so here is the brief bio that I wrote for Ralph etc.
Note that my biggest concern is in protecting Louise rather than myself. In case you don't know the old Commodore Staff positions, CS-5 was the equivallent of the modern head of the RTC.
Sooper Secret. Eyes Only. Don't leak or hint.
Somebody should know who I am just incase the Marcabians abduct me or something. And if I just say my name, it would be meaningless to most people, but OSA would get everything else from my PC folder if they found out, so I might as well do a real writeup.
Autobiography[edit | edit source]
Brief Bio -
You probably don't know me.
My name is Ken Ogger.
I grew up in Manhattan.
I was raised by my grandparents (Margaret & Arthur Ogger) but told that they were my parents. After I learned the truth, Margaret would get very upset if the subject was discussed, so I continued to refer to my actual mother (Louise Kelly) as my sister, hence people who know us will be used to us refering to each other as brother and sister. Especially as we always treated each other that way. The name on my birth certificate is Kenneth Hart (from Louise's brief teenage marriage), but I've never used it.
Margaret, Louise, and another sister/aunt named Liane were all into metaphysics very heavily. I grew up in this atmosphere as did the younger children in the family (my half brother Richard and Liane's three daughters).
By the time I was 13, we were doing table tipping seance's that had the table rising into the air on a regular basis. Also, Louise had accumulated a tremendous library of metaphysical books and was doing Rosecrucian drills among other things.
Margaret owned a deli and then later had a business making potato salid [salad] wholesale for other New York delis. Louise was managing Mellon Music's New York office (which makes her one of the few SO execs that had significant wog management experience).
I was in my teens, reading everything in sight, and searching for truth. Arthur (who had been an accountant) had died when I was 11 and this may have been another reason besides the metaphysical exposure which was driving me to search for answers.
In 1965 I read Evolution of a Science and felt that I had finally found the way out.
I joined foundation staff at the New York Org in 1966. I was still going to high school during the day. My first post was mimeo, and I read everything as I was running it off. Initially the org was tiny (maybe 20 people on each shift) but went through a soaring expansion and had about 150 on each shift by early 1968.
In 1967 I finished SS II and started the OEC and was also doing auditor training.
In 1968 I completed Class 4 and also was run on Power and went into a keyed out OT state.
My family had been dubious of Scientology, feeling that they were more advanced spiritually but I visited them on Easter weekend of 1968 while I was still in the keyed out state and demonstrated enough to convince them that Scientology was the road out.
One odd and interesting thing was that Liane had regularly recorded our palm prints because of her interest in palmistry and she took a new print and brought out the old ones and it was obvious to all of us that every line in my hands had changed totally, apparantly from getting run on power.
Louise and her son Richard immediately got on course full time and trained to class 4, joined the Sea Org, and went to LA on the "flight to freedom" that founded the AO. Louise quickly finished Class 8 and became Qual Sec at the AO, later moving up to being Qual Sec on the flagship Apollo and was acting Commodore Staff 5 in between Judy Ziff and John Eastman. Eventually, when Ron was no longer around to protect her, the bad hats RPFed her and so she routed out of the Sea Org.
Aside - when she was in the RPF, her replacement as CS-5, John Eastman, visited her to find out how bad it was because he was being threatened with being RPFed too. Apparently it was dreaful enough because he folded and decided to play ball with the young turks rather than make trouble and end up in the RPF. That was around 1979 (I'm not trying to keep this rambling bio in date order).
As for myself, I hung on as a NY staff member until 1971 and then left upon completing my contract. By then I had held numerous posts including DofT, DofP, Cramming, DPV, Ethics, etc. You have already heard most of my own story.
Eventually I got into computers, doing things such as designing Citicorp's online ATM authorizing systems (I was the software architect of their OFS (online financial systems) program).
I moved to LA in 1978 and went through old OT 7 in the following year or two.
As I have said elsewhere, I searched out LRH tapes and studied them endlessly. I found the complete 20th ACC in LA Org's qual tape cabinet and New York had had the complete 16th, for example. I spent a fortune on reels and later on cassettes. And I found other tape fanatics and worked deals where we would borrow each other's tapes.
I got NOTS at AO and then went to Flag for Solo Nots within about a year of its being released. The big EP happened the next year after having been on the level about 6 or 8 months.
Then came the endless overruns, messed up reviews, and heavy ARC breaks. I didn't seem to meet various hidden standards about OT 7 completions (I'm not very PR).
Since I started before the "return every 6 months" rule and had never signed an agreement to return that often, they had no threat to force me back with and I reached the point where I wasn't going back again for more overrun.
Then they launched the ship and started delivering OT 8, and to get the ship full they made it easier to attest to OT 7.
Finally the C/S promised that I would be allowed to attest if I went back to Flag one more time, and so I did that. My completion number was, I think, somewhere in the 700s. The reg was drooling over the idea of getting me to the ship, but of course I didn't bite after having been left hanging for so many years.
When the mass exodus began in the early 80s, I decided to ignore policy and keep in comm with various friends who joined the independent field. So I freequently saw Jim Kitzmiller (we did contracting work together) while he was getting his NOTS at Valerie Stansfields and I occasionally had lunch with Tom Franklin (old friend from New York) who was active in CADA. Also, another old friend was getting audited by Filbert, so I met him and read a bit of his manuscript.
Finally I dived into doing my own solo research and found and ran the penalty universes as described in Super Scio. It was after this, that I finally went back to flag and attested to S/NOTS. That included a sec check but I had a floating TA from the penalty universe handling, so nothing came up.
I even got through a sec check at Incomm a few years ago. Still persistant FNing on everything. They needed a consultant to fix the mess they had made of their accounting system. They had used wog consultants who didn't understand policy and every Scientologist who did know policy whom they had proposed to bring on had been rejected for security reasons. So they thought that I was the solution because I was a solo nots completion. I demanded a very high hourly contracting rate and they got it approved. The work had to be done at Gilman and I was getting briefed when my folders came back from uplines with the necessary security clearance rejected. The folks at Incomm in the Complex still can't understand why wogs could get an ok to go work on the computers at Gilman but even an s/nots completion in good standing couldn't. Very funny.
I am still theoretically in good standing.
Currently I work as a programmer and software architect. My latest position is at Chasecredit. They do credit reports for home buyers, pulling data from TRW etc. I'm the guru for their online system. Their website is www.chasecredit.com, but I have very little to do with their internet stuff (except for being trotted out as their internet security chief when they have to sell TRW on their technical expertise). In a real emergency you can email me directly as oggerk@chasecredit.com, but I prefer not to use that one at all for this stuff and you should memorize the address rather than recording it anywhere.
I live relatively near the complex. I have lots of friends from the old days. Many of the old New Yorkers rose very high in the SO.
I was a math genius. I passed Mensa's entrance requirements and belonged to their organization briefly before I tired of the bullshit. I had 798 of a possible 800 on the College Boards (SATs) for Math (and a composite of over 1500). I even got some damn math award from some institute during my senior year of high school. Back in 9th grade I had founded the chess club at McBurney prep, beaten all contenders, and become the school champion (no I'm not a chess master, I've hardly played since then, barely an A level player). I was a near miss on the National Merit test.
My grades roller coastered (sometimes straight As, sometimes failures) due to both lazyness and because I enjoyed making fools of teachers who were dumber than I was (I was in a big make wrong). Even so, I got a scholarship and went to NYU.
I enrolled in a pre-med concentration (took Organic Chemistry) with a Music Major (took Music Theory) and with a special dispensation for advanced math classes (took honors calculus with the director of the Courant Institute). This was 1967.
At the same time I was Director of Tech Services on NY foundation staff with about 7 juniors under me (the org was huge, St Hill size at that time). I had gotten on foundation staff back when I was a senior in high school.
And I was training in the academy for a couple of hours after post almost every night, not just doing levels but listening to every damn extra tape that I could find to fill out the materials and get more understanding.
It's a wonder that I didn't have a nervous breakdown, burning the candle at both ends. Instead I got run on grade 5 and keyed out OT.
Then, after half a year of college, I decided to drop out and get on BOTH shifts at NY org because I believed in the tech. The university was shocked, considered me a genius, and insisted on giving me an unlimited leave of absence, but I never went back.
As for me, I had abandoned everything for the tech, and the reward was that OT phenomena was starting to happen around me. I was happy as a clam.
That is, until heavy ethics, standard tech, and all the other mess dragged me back into the mud as the insanities escallated throughout 1968-9.
By 1969 I was a shadow of my former self. The last bright spot was the time when I blew staff and easily got a job as a cost accountant for a Monsanto subsidiary (unbelievable for a 19 year old college dropout, but I could just do things like that pretty much by postulate). But after a few months of making real money I let Wayne Marple talk me into getting back on staff.
By 1970 I couldn't postulate my way out of a paper bag. That's in contrast to being in a state where I'd just wish for a 7-UP and the waitress (without being asked) would just put one down in front of me and say that I could have it for free because she had drawn it by mistake (true story from 1968).
When I left staff for the last time in 1971 I was in complete shell shock. I just loafed and mooched off my family for quite a few months and then worked a super market cash register for a few months more, it was that bad.
Finally with my back to the wall I picked up a low paying job as an accounts payable adjuster for a department store chain (Korvetts). I stayed there until 1975, slowly recovering from the dead. During that period I was married to my first wife, Jenny, who later married Dave Silberstein and joined the SO and the two of them worked at ASHO for a few years before routing out.
Around 1974 I started getting back to my former self and went in to the NY org, got a bit of auditing and retreaded class 0. An expanded grades co-audit got me to expaned grade 2 and I went clear OT on it. With that the OT state came back.
I decided that I should have a better profession, looked around and decided that computers was the thing to learn.
That week a friend called me up (out of the blue, incredible!) and offered to teach me programming. I did my usual of reading everything in sight around the clock and got a job teaching programming (!) a few weeks later. After eight months of that I became a senior systems programmer at a New York bank. The year after that I became a technical leader at Chase Manhattan, and then in 1978 I moved to LA and started consulting. In 1979 I got my first big contract and designed Sou Calif Edison's power plant maintence tracking software (I even spent a month down at the nuclear plant reading everything in sight). Eventually in the 1980s I took a high perks job as one of Citicorp's handfull of systems architects and stayed there until the end of the 80s. They were flying me around the country a lot and it was convienient for stopping off at Flag occasionally.
Through all these years, the OT state has been rare and sporatic. When its there, my wishes seem to come true, wild and improbable things happen. Objects moving is the rarest manifestation, pure serendipity is the most common.
But I am not there most of the time. Usually I suffer under the weight of the Mest universe and the feeling of being trapped.
Some might think that it is simply that when I have good luck it makes me feel good and so I think that I am OT. But the sequence is the opposite. It is always that first I have the wonderful feeling and the awareness and the certainty, and then comes the miraculous phone call or the improbable job offer.
But I can't enter the state at will or get to it by logic. Sometimes it comes from processing, but I can't get to it a second time with the same process, it is a key out effect rather than the logical consequence of the process run, and it does not rehab.
I am still struggling for understanding.
I have my sister's support in this effort and a number of old class 4s & 6s but I haven't dared to reveal myself to very many people yet.
My wife, Ann Tordai, is not in agreement with me. She feels that what is wrong is KSW #2, namely that the SO is incapable of applying the tech correctory but that the tech itself is correct and complete. She is not happy with my squirrling and extending the tech, but doesn't report me because she is very unhappy with AO which she considers to have gross out tech and out ethics.
My contacts into the SO and the complex are very tenuous, being indirect and second hand. Things like somebody who's son is doing graphics for www.scientology.org, somebody who's sister is doing tape transcript for Gold, somebody who's old friend boasted about coining the term "Ars Bigots" (all right, it was coined by big league FSM and OSA shill Jim Jackson, but don't repeat that because it might trace back to me - he might not have told may non-OSA people), and so forth.
I do not have lines into upper management although I do hear stories sometimes.
I do not know how much support I have amoung org staff or how deeply things have spread.
I just keep writing and hoping that its making a difference.
It seems really appropriate that both Louise and I had a majority of our staff experience in Qual. This really is an effort to correct the tech and the orgs.
Note that the tape "Talk on a Basic Qual" was given to Louise personally with her sitting across the desk from Ron as he spoke and he called her "The best damn Qual Sec I ever had". She is very loyal to Ron and doesn't want to have anything to do with the critics. But she believes strongly in reform, supports extending the research, and wants all the tech to get out on the net as I do.
The fact that nobody got sick when the critics started putting the OT 3 materials out on the net and talking about BTs was a big eye opener for her.
She personally recruited DM into the Sea Org. She was on a recruitment mission and had a whole bunch rounded up in a room at ASHO. And the GO ripped off the entire crew. She had to sign a secrecy agreement not to disclose that she had recruited them and could not explain why her stat was zero and had to run around like mad to recruit another batch of people. And that original crew disappeared and then reappeared in positions of power the following year. Very mysterious.
She has been in the same kind of rare sporatic keyed out OT state that I have. Actually made a vase float in the air infront of Judy Ziff once. And just as incapable of doing that stuff at will as I am.
As far as I know, we're the strongest OTs (along with a few others like Otto and maybe Filbert) that came off the bridge. A tiny handful of people who've actually moved an object once or twice infront of witnesses and can't do it again.
Don't even hint of Louise's involvement. The org does keep tabs on her because she wrote so much of the materials (data series, etc.) and OSA would be on her in a flash.
I hope that you're not disappointed because I don't have the AO HGC ready to revolt at the wave of my hand. I exaggerate the strength of my org contacts slightly in my postings so as to drive OSA PTS.
But I do think that they are building up into a self destructive frenzy. The phone calls to get me onto the s/nots certainty course are growing in volume and urgency and I've talked with other s/nots completions in good standing who think that the certainty business is money making bullshit and wouldn't go back.
Just this once I needed to run off at the mouth because I've been keeping this all so hidden for so long. If it leaks I would probably only suffer being declared and dead agented, but my sister might be physically in danger, they would see her as another David Mayo and there is no telling how psychotic they might act to prevent that from happening again.
Please keep this all in the strictest confidence.
Best,
You know who.
Books and Links[edit | edit source]
The Pilot wrote two books while he was anonymous and hidden. Both were issued electronically via the Internet to the two newsgroups which covered Scientology at that time.
The first was called Super Scio, is Copyright 1997, written in Word format, is A4/ letter size and contains 832 pages. It contains a very wide variety of speculations and data on Scientology. One of the interesting parts is the chapter on Cosmic History where he gives a fairly comprehensive, though speculative, history of thetans through a series of universes and this can be found at [[1]] . The full book is downloadable from [[2]].
The second book he wrote was called Self Clearing gives a very basic and comprehensive rundown for auditing oneself, which could be usable by a number of people. See the Scientolipedia article at [[3]]
You will find at http://articles.ivymag.org/pdf/IVy83.pdf the memorial issue of International Viewpoints (IVy) which was issued shortly after The Pilot's death, the biography he issued shortly after his wife had given him away to the "Church" and other background articles.
His Scientology Reformer's Homepage, posted on the Internet at a time when the church was not aware of the danger of truth coming to their members through the Internet, was a notable "blow to the enemy". See it here.
He was (English understatement) a slightly remarkable man. Antony A Phillips 21st. April 2014