Ever hear of the story of “The Frog & the Scorpion”? There are three scorpions in this version.
No one’s going to believe this, but I will say it anyway. It’s because I Helped.
Almost five years after I, Scott Gordon, resumed sending financial support (usually around $45 per month on a less than $12K annual income) to Mike & Virginia who were in fear of losing their Idaho estate and not able to heat their house, Mike & Virginia McClaughry persist in using their widely-read educational, quasi-academic, research website to churn out black propaganda to punish Scott – all for what they laughably insist was an act of “extortion.”
The “extortion”? Being that Scott had left his Pueblo, Colorado house in their care, in order to reside in Argentina with his soon-to-be wife, and that a written notice to vacate at the end of March, 2021 was in Virginia’s hands, and further, that the willingness to continue paying all of their bills beyond that date given ten months in advance, had come to an end. Scott was offering to extend their stay in exchange for a simple modification to the status quo (which was that Mike & Virginia were in continuous default for over a year on a clear agreement to pay a reduced portion of their bills, and had enforced on Scott their monthly internet bill by actual, verbally threatened extortion – that Scott would be publicly shamed again with more of the same kind of internet postings made and taken down in April 2020, should he stop paying their bill, which Virginia had cleverly insisted should be in his name despite his already having his own service).
A private e-mail (immorally made public by Loren Spethman without my permission) was sent to Mike & Virginia in March of 2021, weeks before their arrangement to stay was to come to conclusion. It stated that Mike & Virginia could stay “longer, as needed” (it was understood from previous conversations that this did not mean another winter season) to find another place to go to, so long as they took care of paying the electricity they were using (and that I wasn’t), the trash service they were using (that I had not contracted for) and the internet service they were using (and which they had agreed from the very beginning to pay).
If you like, you can re-read that last paragraph carefully to really get what Virginia claims, in what she wrote, was “extortion” on my part.
Somewhere in at least one of their – around 29 – posts of their smear campaign against me, is mentioned that I, Scott Gordon, was in default on some agreement for this new arrangement hastily coming together, made in the garage of their Idaho house after the truck was either mostly or fully loaded. This “agreement” was supposed to cover what Virginia expected was for Scott Gordon to “take over what daddy was doing” (he had been paying all of their bills).
This wasn’t anything ever agreed to by me. Ever. I remember clearly that which I did agree to, and it was that I would not give up on the fight to get them to safety to continue their work just because of such harassment, and that was understood to include tampering with my family, friendships and especially, my job. The irony is that Virginia completely expected me to lose my job, she knew I lived in poverty, so it seemed to me pretty obvious that whatever we were going into was not going to be a permanent arrangement. I did not have the money to support them and I never agreed to do that. As far as I knew, I was offering the use of my house and that was quite enough and already more than I could afford.
What I had offered, before driving up in a panic to help them move out, giving up my reliable Honda Civic vehicle in deference to hauling their own second vehicle (which they incidentally had promised would be titled in my name upon arrival – this was withdrawn unilaterally days after arriving) with all of their material possessions – some designated for my own use and ownership, which was more often than not completely forgotten and negated after we arrived at my place – in as large a truck as there was to rent.
And quite in contrast to what Virginia was later to claim, I let her know over and over again by phone, that my house was small, it was under remodeling and full of remodeling dust that I was not going to have time to take care of before the rush up to Idaho the next day or so. I told her there wasn’t much room, the house was old and ugly and there was much to be done to finish it up. I told her it was a bit like urban camping and probably a lot more tolerable than living in a ditch. I made all this abundantly clear. In conversations – me especially – we often listen and tune into what we want to hear. If she continues to claim I agreed to certain stipulations I never agreed to, keep that in mind, because it goes for her as well as it goes for me.
So what Mike & Virginia claim was Virginia getting my “agreement” was in reality something of a one-sided and general lecture in a domineering tone with me, Scott Gordon, under actual duress. This was me eating sporadically and having slept 5-6 hours a night and the entire rest of the time (15-18 hours for several days straight) diligently packing and loading their possessions – heavy material often carried alone – and rescued items in the truck I rented with the last of my life savings marked for “emergency use-only.”
I do not even recall the lecture Virginia gave me except vaguely. I don’t know how long it lasted. My recollection was that it lasted a minute or so with Virginia baiting me, “Are you sure you are up for doing this? You know you can’t back out once we get going!” and me just nodding in assent and saying “Yes” when she brought the grilling to a conclusion. If indeed Mike witnessed this he would have been standing in proximity and it would have been two (supposedly “friends” as I hoped at the time) against one. As it always was throughout the time I was with them.
This is where Virginia gets my supposed retort later, after I finally got her to agree to a meeting for the three of us which she asserts was something like, “Virginia at that point I would have told you ‘anything’ to get us all going and get us out of there.” Imagine working ‘all out’ in good faith, and Virginia wants to now stop, with the truck rented and loaded, my personal vehicle sold for scrap, and impose her terms and conditions on the entire arrangement and have her husband Mike there watching it and calling that an “agreement.”
There was no backing out at that point anyway, and she knew it. The time for any special arrangements and checklist of demands would have been before I even drove up there. I realize that she was under duress, too – they were losing their estate and much of everything they had worked for – but I was put into the same state of duress as I gladly gave my help – time and energy – to a huge effort.
All this was enough, in my state of overwork and lack of rest and overload of caffeine, to lead to a stupid mistake the first night (we left after a full day packing, away from a setting sun), driving off the road the wrong direction to enter into a Montana motel parking lot. I got the truck stuck in the mud which was quite embarrassing for me and stressful for all of us – and I had to pay for it, and paid for damages. (Virginia screamed at me over that one – not right away, but the next chance she got before tearing into my personal life and screaming about how bad my grrlfriend must be, though she had almost no knowledge of her or how we managed our lives together, nor was it her business in the slightest).
Well this “agreement” was then used to justify all manner of things. Whenever Scott Gordon wanted to talk about how he was actually, factually, running out of money, he was “complaining” and “acting like everyone else who betrayed us did.” It worked, it brought me back “in line” with Virginia. But as things developed, this manipulation grew and turned to extortion. And so I, Scott Gordon, came to outgrow my own naive innocence and had to begin asserting boundaries of my own.
It wasn’t until I read Mike’s first-time statement and post earlier this year that it even occurred to me what I was dealing with (beyond Virginia’s manipulation and bullying, which was bad enough). Mike’s cold, calculating mistrust of me behind the scenes – unfairly painting me in a suspicious light and sometimes the worst possible light – was already there from the very beginning. Yet despite all that we managed to build enough trust to have friendly dealings – even most of that time quite friendly with Virginia. Even when I finally left for Argentina under duress of government lock-downs and brutal travel restrictions, although I was looking forward to their departure, remained loyal and considered them “friends.”
Then my friend and auditor (co-therapist, supposedly confidante in such matters) Loren Spethman got in between us and did his work. He started at some point furnishing Virginia with tidbits and pieces of his jabs against me coming from who-knows-where, and supposedly private e-mail copies to her of me at various times expressing my own frustration with Virginia and with the arrangement of putting them up in my very small, unfinished house, and with their going back on their word and leaving me stranded financially after I had spent all I had to get them to my place with the rented truck and almost a thousand dollars in fuel.
Actually the first hint of this additional collusion was picked up all the way back in June 2019, just weeks after moving them in and having Loren come and work on the house (I paid him for this out of what little money I could spare). Virginia blurted out during her tirade that she and Loren could overhear me talking over the Internet with my grrlfriend and that she and Loren agreed it sounded sappy and made them cringe (in so many words). They had no business listening in to my private conversations (Virginia did this quite often and would even engage me about what she “overheard” which is another rude annoyance) in the first place, and so even that early on Loren was already inserting a knife in my back despite his supposed “friendship” (20-some years and described elsewhere on this site) with me.
So in a nutshell, Mike & Virginia McClaughry feel justified – even after thousands of dollars and two years of my life in support of their work and security during that time – in maintaining a hate website (that makes what the Church of $cientology puts out pale by comparison) on me with numerous articles alleging numerous petty faults on up to serious crimes.
Mike McClaughry has openly and in writing accused me of “murder” – all at the behest of Loren Spethman, who personally witnessed me as far back as 2016, shortly after learning my neighborhood had been flagged for excessive lead levels in the soil, going over to community meetings and participating – even after a long day’s work. I shared the status of the EPA lead containment plan and realistic dangers to those in that area with Virginia and with Loren, both. In fact, I shared with Virginia the full written assessments from the EPA and from Pueblo County which laid out the risks in detail. (She tells the reader in one of her articles that she did not go over these, nor, apparently to show them to Mike, but this does not stop her in the least from continuing serious accusations against me.)
Loren Spethman claims to have been a star science student in high school (he never finished his college work). He still does not seem to understand that lead in parts-per-billion does not accumulate in the body from air blowing across the same surface day after day (heating vent systems or basement floors), but only when soil is consistently disturbed (putting new soil as dust into circulation) and skin and hands are not frequently washed after such contact – such as, especially, in gardening. So in his ignorance, he remains comfortable asserting that I knowingly exposed him (crawling in the basement for a few days time) or Mike (digging in the back yard fully clothed on his own origination for a short period of time over several weeks in 2019 and 2020) to “lethal” levels of lead.
“Lethal!”
Never mind that I, Scott Gordon, dug my entire garden out while Mike & Virginia were there, and did half of the digging on the final ditch for the plumbing (Mike’s prior work, his share of this work on the trench, and even later work on a “greenhouse” – is all very much appreciated and should be hereby acknowledged – it adequately covers their stay and even some of the bills). Mike dug in the morning shade fully clothed with long pants. I dug in the afternoon sun in shorts. But no one was ever exposed to any more lead than anyone else in the neighborhood there who had lived with it for years – some of them their entire life.
“Lethal” = murder. Murder is the assertion. You don’t believe he or they would go that far as to openly, without any further consideration as to circumstances, accuse me of murder? It’s happened now many times. On Facebook. On their website. In writing.
And since I have provided numerous explanations of the questions about ‘lead’ that Loren has raised in public (including a “noisy investigation” with the EPA about my house eligibility for a clean-up that Virginia had declined and I continued to decline after they left which is entirely my business and for my own reasons besides Virginia declining), in some misguided effort to curry favor with Virginia (score public relations points) and attempts to shame me into submission (duress, extortion), I call FRAUD on all three of them.
Mike McClaughry knows very well what happened because he was there and he interacted with me personally and up close about the plumbing problems their arrival caused (overload of a system that had been working fine at low capacity). But Mike chose to portray me in the worst light possible. This is FRAUD. It is lying. It is immoral.
Virginia McClaughry knows full well what she promised me, how she manipulated me, and what really transpired in my heroic efforts to get them to safety and keep them functioning and their work protected. She has chosen to publicly shame me over and over again and has engaged in FRAUD in order to do it.
Loren Spethman is a sniveling FRAUD who pretended everything was fine between us for a long time after it obviously turns out wasn’t. He seems to have a weakness for bully-women, and no capacity for detecting and handling them, other than to do what they wish, and work for their approval as a means of relieving his own self-loathing. He stabbed me deep in the back and used private, supposedly “protected” (by Auditor’s Code or therapist protocol) communications to do it. He turned Mike & Virginia against me and then allowed Virginia to work on destroying my reputation and person, along with his own work on that same thing. His latest work on this has been to “interview” Mike and solicit and produce a full web article in doing so, to add Mike as yet another betraying friend to the weight and pressure of their campaign intended to do me in.
All in order to satisfy some vaguely brewing grudges that no one had the decency and courage to ever hint me about.
When I interrupted my personal life and rushed to help Mike & Virginia from drowning in a deep-state engineered catastrophe, I thought I was dealing with heroes and saving a valuable work.
Though I have learned much from all this, I have been forced to reconsider my support for them, my estimation of the actual value of their work (I would treat Virginia’s biases separately, but I do not find it worth doing at this point) and reconsider my initial estimation of their true characters.
I refused to back down when faced with the threats and repercussions to my own work, in order to help Mike & Virginia continue theirs. I sacrificed thousands of dollars and two years of my life to do this.
And the sacrifice continues because Mike & Virginia insist they are in the right to “expose” (punish) me for going back to my own life and getting back to my own work and purposes. They just can’t be bothered to correct the record or make things straight with me.
Mike & Virginia McClaughry act just as if they thought they had recruited me into a “billion-year” contract obliging me to go down the chute morally with their special “space force.” I said NO.
NO!!!
As for Loren, I can only feel pity for a person who would destroy himself in the eyes of the world just to get in a few cheap shots at the man and friend he apparently secretly envied (numerous others have since clued me in to Loren’s backhanded jabs at me in public venues, and then there are others who chose to view me as their enemy, and found in Loren a willing accomplice). Only pity and disgust, and deep regret for attempting to pull this wounded water buffalo out of the mud he long ago got himself stuck in.
I know you, the reader of this, probably aren’t used to that much angst in one article, but consider that I have weathered this alone for many years, and I have a hard time finding any comparable campaign of such nastiness (based in personal shaming) carried over such an otherwise academic and valued learning site as Mike & Virginia’s wordpress site – just for deciding my own life and purposes were not worth sacrificing to their petty dramas and tiring of them going back on their word. But there it is. They did it. They refuse to correct or withdraw any but the most embarrassing (for them) articles they have let fly into the public record without any excuse but what they have come since to invent.
I HAVE NOT HARMED MIKE & VIRGINIA.
I DID NOT KICK THEM OUT ONTO THE STREET.
MIKE & VIRGINIA WERE ALLOWED TO STAY FOR 20 MONTHS AFTER VIRGINIA ATTACKED ME, TRIED TO FIGHT ME AND INVITED ME TO KICK THEM OUT. AND I EVEN PAID THE ENTIRETY OF THE BILLS FOR WHAT THEY USED THE LAST 15 MONTHS.
THEY THREATENED TO DESTROY ME AND WENT ABOUT MAKING GOOD ON THAT THREAT, JUST BECAUSE I ASKED THEM TO START BACK UP PAYING SOMETHING OF THEIR FAIR SHARE. THEY LEFT MY HOUSE A WRECK AND A MESS (THOUGH I ACKNOWLEDGE THAT IT WAS NOT AS IN AS BAD A CONDITION IT WAS IN WHEN THEY ARRIVED).
MIKE AND VIRGINIA CHOSE TO PAY HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS IN STORAGE FEES AND GAS DRIVING AROUND THE COUNTRY – STORAGE FEES FOR THEIR L. RON HUBBARD LIBRARY I HAD RESCUED, AND THEIR PERSONAL THINGS I HAD OFFERED TO STORE FOR THEM – JUST TO PROVE TO THE WORLD THAT THEY COULD ‘OWN’ ME EVEN IF I CHOSE NEVER TO OWN THEM. BECAUSE THEY REFUSED TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR A $150 ELECTRIC BILL AND A $100 INTERNET SERVICE WHILE I WOULD CONTINUE TO PAY GAS AND WATER.
PLEASE TELL THEM YOU DON’T APPRECIATE THEIR FRAUD AND EXTORTION ON ANOTHER WHISTLEBLOWER.
THEY WILL TELL YOU THAT I STILL PRACTICE “AUDITING” OUTSIDE THE CHURCH. WHAT THEY WON’T TELL YOU IS THAT THE DAVID MISCAVIGE CHURCH APPRECIATES THAT EVEN LESS THAN THEIR EXPOSURE OF L. RON HUBBARD’S REAL BACKGROUND (WHICH THEY HAVE TAKEN OFF-LINE, IN ANY CASE). WE ARE ALL OPPOSED BY THE DEEP STATE. THEY HATE US ALL AND WILL USE ALL MANNER OF RESOURCES TO DESTROY US.
BY FEATURING ME AND MY PERSONAL BUSINESS ON THEIR QUASI-ACADEMIC AND POPULAR WEBSITE, THEY ARE IN EFFECT DESTROYING THEIR OWN GOOD WORK. It’s called “cutting off your nose to spite your face.”
I need Mike & Virginia to get about their own business and LEAVE ME ALONE. I support and appreciate much of the work they have done as a vital contribution to the public record. But I, SCOTT GORDON, DO NOT NEED TO BE FEATURED AS PART OF THAT PUBLIC RECORD.
I HAVE THE RIGHT TO LIVE MY LIFE.
-Scott Gordon
Watchful Navigator
(late December 2020 – an “artist’s rendition” of Virginia McClaughry, screaming and snarling obscenities up the stairs after Scott Gordon, for making an idle speculation about Aleister Crowley – the “drug fiend” and confirmed heroin addict – being more than just a “spook,” but something of a true believer and practitioner of his own, dark, satanic practices – whereupon she is then told that her research might suffer from a little… “CONFIRMATION BIAS “)
And today (30 April 2023), on David Miscavige’s 63rd birthday, we honor the children that he fathered at great cost to the life of a girl that he enslaved from the age of 12 to be the bearer of his children:
(Virginia has her own ideas about how she’s saving the planet by making the slavemasters recognize the error of their ways, at which time they will instantly become “good guys” again and stop oppressing good people)
(Virginia’s idea of communicating with me is to send out a post on the Internet and to the in-box of her subscribers – this is known as “shame-posting”)
(more shame-posting, and this post has been restored as of this year, and is being used once again, as it was then, to accuse me of conspiring to commit a crime, which is in itself, a form of extortion) 
(a little more context, as the full e-mail exchange from which Virginia has pulled one of my rushed statements out-of-context – note Virginia’s condescending attitude for me being “naive” at the time, about the role the British slavemasters – and the Harriman-Bush families on Wall Street – played to put the Nazis in power – and nowhere do I ever express admiration for Nazis – WTF?)
(because “slumlords” work full-time energetically for weeks on end, and even hire professionals at their own expense to accommodate the new guests, setting up air conditioning for V. and paying the electric bill for it…) 
Watchful Navigator 