In his position as IG MAA RTC, Chris Guider saw the careers of many Sea Org members blossom... and inevitably wither in the poison soil of corporate Miscavology. (Chris announced his independence last September and now he and his wife, Valeska, have a beautiful new son who has filled their lives with wonder.) Ron Norton and I were never good friends, but I will say this: Flag boomed while he was the Captain FSO. In those days staff musters were fun to attend because Ron only cared about one thing: production. The ONLY thing that mattered at Flag in the '80s was moving people up the Bridge. I would have liked to have known him better. His juniors and my seniors included John Danelovich and Milt Wolf -- two men whom I still view as models of Sea Org competence and kindness. Everyone called John "Chief." On a typical afternoon, John would bust into the Solo HGC and mow everyone down with invisible machine gun bullets. We'd pretend we were getting riddled and everyone would have a big laugh. Flag was booming. These were the true glory years at Flag and we had a lot of fun in the Sea Org. We were making OTs by the bucketload. We had never even heard of David Miscavige. Ron Norton had his faults... don't we all? But he had stats too and not even David Miscavige can take that away from him. I personally don't know anything about Ron currently. Haven't spoken to him since the infamous "seance" at the Gold base (instigated by David Miscavige). Ron made mistakes but as we all know, in the presence of suppression one makes mistakes. And nowhere was supression more intense than at the headquarters of international Scientology. It is a shame that Ron seems to have landed on the wrong side of the fence today. He used to be a champion for Scientology, for making Clears and OTs. Where is he now? Ron Norton did get a raw deal and that is Chris Guider's point. Sheding light on stories like this is part of running out our 3rd-dynamic engram. ~ Thoughtful

Does anyone remember the famous Flag Internship, and a guy named Ron Norton who held that post for some 10 years before going on to become the Captain FSO for a decade?  What happened to him?

You know there is an LRH lecture on that internship and how this was the place where perfection was the norm. Norton came through there and he had some business scene and his stock kept rising.  While Captain, the Flag GI hit $1 million on a weekly basis and then $1.5 million and then $2 million. He even got Kahn Kahn status and the additional lives that go with it (which he was going to need).

By the late 1980's Norton had fostered a thriving culture where everyone wanted to get auditing at Flag, get their L's at Flag, get their case cracked at Flag, get up the Bridge at Flag, you had people everywhere buying auditing and jamming into that place for AUDITING.  With the burly Captain Norton standing over the registrars they kept at it until they sold so much auditing the undelivered auditing hours were through the roof. The delivery just couldn't keep up, in those days the money stayed on account, you see there was no Basics campaign to rip it off. So the FSO had a few million dollars in undelivered services and that was going to come back to haunt him.

For all Norton's efforts he was rewarded by "despicable Dave" with a blue boiler suit and several weeks of digging ditches and working in the earth at Int a long side him was the Captain FSSO, Milt Wolfe, also clad in a boiler suit. Their ethics were being handled and by the time they had gotten the hang of working in those boiler suits in mid summer they were ready to go back to their orgs, new men.

Norton's second run at Flag was brief and it was not long before despicable Dave ordered, "Norton had to be gotten out of there." So a long with wife Jan he ended up at Gold where she was D of P and he floated around for a while before going on a post titled D/CO New Products Gold.

New products were coming out of  Gold, then came the St Hill Special Briefing course now being produced on cassette. Despite despicable Dave's meddling Norton got those out and his stock was climbing again. He yearned to have his own command once more and by early 1994 he was off to England as the Commander in Chief of the UK. Then followed several years of success for Norton and expansion for the UK Cont.

Next came promotion, for his efforts in the UK he was made CO FCB, now in charge of middle management across the planet. This was a tough spot with despicable Dave swooping on any income available and having it diverted where only he was allowed access to it. Norton found himself with close to a thousand staff and you see  there was little in the way of finance to back the operation. So he worked it out and actually was keeping things going and his head above water by billing orgs and units for printing. He was funding the operation through Div 2 and the promotions line.

Despicable Dave didn't know but when he did Norton was put on the meter for interrogation. Things went fast now, he expressed some lewd thoughts and was gone. He found himself back at Gold, no boiler suit this time but he was working in the trash at the back of the dining facility for a while. As things went, next he was made Marketing Exec Int, after all he was one of the few people that expanded a cont while despicable Dave was around or more accurately despite him.

This was around 2001 and things at Int were really unraveling as despicable Dave hit full stride. Norton, along with a couple of hundred others, found himself being randomly assigned to different posts and then the next day labeled for "offload." His last night was the night of the infamous séance where he was hauled up in front of several hundred staff for a group "confession." This did not go well and after a few weeks at Happy Valley he was relocated to the PAC Ranch along with a dozen others who were banished there.

Norton's wife was still at Gold, his son Mike had left the SO about a year earlier and his daughter Trisha was at Flag working in Security there. Understandably this all did not sit well with him and after a few more months passed he stormed out of the PAC Ranch and made his way to LA. After demanding and getting his wife from Gold he found himself on an endless correction program, no one knew what to do with him.  

Norton even managed to get himself in front of despicable Dave during an inspection of the PAC Base. Dave pretended he didn't know anything about what had happened to him (a blatant lie) and told Norton as they were, after all, "on the same team" to send up a proposal on what post he wanted.  Norton thought long and hard about this one, being the long-term Sea Org veteran he was, he considered the fact that the only org that ever closed was in Ireland and it did not sit right with him that there was no Scientology there. So he proposed that he go to Ireland and get it going. It was a big job and one he was confident in his ability to handle and even his own ancestry went back to Ireland.

Of course this became a running joke that Norton wanted to be the King of Ireland and nothing came of it. No, Norton was gotten out of the way and put in some post at Bridge before he eventually left.

He and his wife now reside in Arizona I'm told, his son working for the border patrol and his daughter, well, she's still in security at the FSO and he wont be speaking out anytime soon about any of this if he knows what's good for his comm line with her.

Written by Chris Guider