A Special Correspondent alerted me to this website that has photos of the work they did on the RTC Building at the Int Base, otherwise known as “Building 50”.

To give you a little more detail on what you see, and what you don’t see in these photos, I pulled together some information from a number of sources who worked on this building and this a compilation of that information. There are many more details and stories about this building that I may get to at a later date.

The shots included on the website do not include Miscavige’s actual office, but only the “Communicator/Secretary” office that adjoins his, the hallway outside his office and his “library”. These are part of the “COB wing” which is on the south/west side of the second floor.

“His” wing also includes a “COB Assistant Office” (with a secret wall so Miscavige could hide in the event of a raid by the FBI or Martians landing), a Conference Room, a bathroom and shower, a “Listening Room” (with the highest end audiophile equipment he uses to “review audio submissions”), a Kitchen, a “COB Lounge/Dining Room”, a “COB Project Room”, Typists Office, Files Room, Computer room, “Visitors” space and an Auditing Room with built in grounding wires. This entire wing is off limits to anyone other than “COB Office Staff” and those who have been summoned.



This is the “Secretaries Office” – the outer sanctum before the inner sanctum (“COB’s” Office) which is through the door on the left. The one on the right goes to what used to be Shelly’s (“COB Asst”) office.

The far left desk is Lou’s (COB Comm). Near desk just to the right is Maria Starkey’s (wife of Norman Starkey, her primary duty is taking care of COB’s dogs.

Those carpets are specially woven and are extremely expensive. Of course, this is a stupid color for carpet in an office. All desk tops are black leather. All wood is custom designed and is African anigre.

This room is a good example of why the building needed 4 locomotive size air handler units in the attic (more on that later). This room alone had some 450 incandescent light bulbs hidden in the soffit all around the room as well as the big square ceiling panels you see in the center. This is close to half a million Watts of incandescent heat producing lights – roughly equivalent to plugging in and turning on about 300 toasters or hair dryers in one room. Ridiculously overspecified lighting, done with a cost-is-no-object zeal, characterizes the entire mindset with which this building was constructed.

The cost of electricity for this great empty building (mostly for lighting and air conditioning) is about $2,000.00 per day.

All external windows in the “COB wing” (that is the entire side of the building on the 2nd floor) are 1” thick bullet proof glass. Dear Leader is extremely paranoid that there are assassins hiding in every bush.

The furniture and design for the rest of the building was not as lavish as “His spaces”, but compared to a normal office building they are Taj Mahal level. Limestone floors everywhere. All desks are made from steel and translucent corian. Many of those desks have seen little use in the decade since they were installed at great expense.

This is the hallway of the “COB Wing” – the chairs face the COB office which is the corner office of the building. They are made of “cold rolled steel” – this is what Miscavige constantly specified, but they are in fact stainless steel to create the look of “cold chrome steel” that LRH stated was to be the motif of International Management. Miscavige liked it so he took it for RTC. Cold rolled steel is common structural grade dull black steel.

The chairs were specifically designed to feel hard and cold so you knew you were in trouble before you were ushered into the bowels of Dear Leader’s inner sanctum.

The hall floor is limestone with inlaid stainless steel. No other floors in the building are like this. It was extremely expensive and difficult to create and required water jet cutting of the stone and steel to create the detailed patterns.

The walls in the hallway are made of African anigre like the offices. Originally the hallway had been narrower but Miscavige didn’t like it so it was ripped out and widened. The cherry wood that had lined the walls was also a no-go (more on that later). But then when it was redone it was constructed of SOLID anigre (which is a big no-no because the stuff turns green). It was fixed with staining etc., but at the last minute (the rest of the wing was done) Miscavige complained that he “really didn’t like the fact we left the hallway like it was” and ordered it redone again.

The original “design” for the hallways had large, almost life-size pictures of Hubbard that were to go on each panel, lit perfectly with overhead custom lighting. When the hall was completed, Dave was leaning more toward putting pictures of himself from different events up and even talking about putting pictures he took when scuba diving.

Everything you see in the hallway picture – as is true with the other pictures – is custom-made. Including the mirror, which Miscavige specified be facing his door so that he could check his image as he walked out of his office.

The table in the middle of the Library was modified to accommodate a CD player, tape deck and Stax headhpones that fits just under the middle section, and at the push of a button the whole center rises up for access to the equipment.

This is where COB is supposed to spend his 2-1/2 hrs a day studying. All shelving is custom stainless steel. The ceiling soffit is entirely coated with Luminore material (a type of paint that contains metal that ends up creating a deep metallic look).

In this room alone there are about $70,000.00 in light fixtures. The amount of different bulbs required for this building resulted in computer software being written to keep track of all the light fixtures and replacement bulbs.

This room is a total prop. Miscavige never used it or even walked into it other than to show Tom Cruise how cool his junk was so that Tom could say “Wow, Dave you are so awesome I wish I could have junk like you have”

THE “COB” OFFICE

Everything in this office is custom made. Carpets. Drapes. Woodwork. Shelving. Knick knacks.

His desk is custom made and the current one is the THIRD one that was built. The final approved design and plan (rendering) was for a stainless steel desk. It wasn’t to be machine made. It was hand made by a famous guy who designed and built many cathedral doors to very large churches. The desk cost more than a car, was ugly as sin and heavy as hell.

His office is of the same design you see in the pictures here but more over-the-top, though it hardly seems possible. His office has its own lounge area, fireplace, expensive audio system, private bathroom with shower, turret conference area, outside patio, and 2 layers of motorized window shades (one for sun screening and one for blackout). He has a panic button in the desk to lock all the doors to his office.

THE BACK STORY

This building was ongoing for years. In the late 90’s Bitty Miscavige had been put in charge of it after others had “failed” and then she too became persona non grata so Miscavige brought Tom DeVocht to Int in 2001. Tom had essentially COMPLETED the construction of the SP building way back then (it was held up while Dave decided/changed his mind repeatedly over how the interior “design” was to be done).

Miscavige told Tom at the time that “His building” was almost complete and there was about $2.7 million left to wrap it up. All the planning had been done and it would be a simple task to complete it.

This, of course, turned out to be nowhere near the truth.

The previous design of his wing was a Frank Lloyd Wright style with massively intricate woodwork. There were dozens of custom furniture pieces. Most of it was built in PAC by the “PAC mill” and RPF. The COB desk was built by Monteverdi Young (a prestigious fine furniture maker). Custom hand tufted plush wool carpets were made for the wing in the Frank Lloyd Wright style at a cost of more than $100,000. After the wood work was installed, COB decided that the Frank Lloyd Wright image was not “wright” for him. The rest of the building also had been finished out with cherry woodwork trim and the carpet had arrived.

But this was all what Bitty Miscavige had gotten done back when it was her turn du jour to be the hero and fix the place up. But of course she was now that “goose stepping Nazi bitch” and anything that reminded Miscavige of her tenure was gotten rid of.

It was all torn out. The Monteverdi Young desk, all the Frank Lloyd Wright furniture pieces, stained glass windows, lamps and custom wool carpets were sent to the HGB Annex for storage, to be sold off some day. The stuff never was sold, and finally last year it was all dumped or sent to Gold sets & props. Easily a couple hundred thousand in church funds that got wasted, just so Dave’s image could be right.

When Tom arrived at Int in 2001 and inspected the building, he found:

a) The entire exterior skin (stucco) of the building – every foot to foot and a half both horizontally and vertically – was cracked.

b) The exterior windows were all different colors with different grades of “UV” and looked like a checker board.

c) The roofing was curling up, literally.

d) After a more thorough inspection by an outside engineer it was determined the entire structure was off by an inch to an inch and a half from bottom to top, that is, it was NOT straight up and vertical.

e) From room to room every ceiling was a different height.

f) It was apparent that every office had at one point been completed – furniture and everything. The original cherry wood panels, cabinetry etc., had ALL been removed and where cabinetry had been removed the walls were floated so much that there were 1 to 1.5 inch gaps in the plaster around where the cabinet had once been.

g) In the attic 4 very large Trane air-conditioning units had been installed. The ducting was completely screwed up and like a maze. Two of the AC units had been put in backwards – blowing the wrong direction. Further the building had been “completed” before the A/C was installed. These A/C units are each the size of a shipping container. So, they cut holes in the ceiling and roof… but still the units were too large. So, they took these four AC units and broke them in two, negating the warranty and then put two of them in backwards.

The insanities could go on almost endlessly. This was the project that Miscavige had been personally overseeing and signing off on every tiniest detail.

Tom brought in a team of non-Scientologist professionals and did a top to bottom inspection which took about a month. At the end of the full inspection the conclusion of the General Contractor, architect, sub-contractors, and engineers simply that it would be more cost and time effective to tear the entire building down and start over, doing it right the first time.

Of course, when he told Dear Leader this, with all the specifics, Mr. Know Best responded that it was to be “fixed” no matter the cost.

This is relevant to something else that has been said by Miscavige often in his attempt to black PR Tom DeVocht. He has come up with a story that Tom “overspent” and that he (COB) had “no idea how much money he was spending” and was “shocked” when he found out how much the final total was. Yet, Miscavige received a DETAILED report with photographs EVERY SINGLE DAY on the work done on “his building” and inspected it routinely and issued a non-stop screed of orders about things that were to be done or changed. He knew every slightest detail of everything that was done. These reports had to be sent to him, with photos no matter where he was in the world. It was a major international incident if he did not get his daily “building report.”

Another interesting point Miscavige always wants to know “WHY.” He prides himself as an expert administrator and investigator. As an example, when Tom reported about the cracked stucco, Miscavige demanded to know why “so he would know who to shoot. “

A thorough investigation was done. It took 3 days of asking people and trying to find out who decided what and who was actually responsible for it. Finally when it came down to it – the person responsible was Miscavige himself.

The first installation of stucco on the building was done correctly – the right thickness and it did not crack. It was beautifully painted too. Tom cut a two by two foot section out to see what was going on. The second layer had been put on at the express order of Miscavige because he did not like the band of stone on the building protruding an inch from the stucco so he ordered another layer of stucco to make it all level.

His management of the building construction is a perfect example of how he manages the church. Complete insanity. He spends money to do whatever he “knows best” and then kills the person that he had do it for him.