Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief (38 page)

Miscavige said that Hubbard’s quote had been taken out of context.

“Take a minute, if you would, and see if you can put it into context for us so that it does not sound ridiculous,” Koppel said.

“Okay,” said Miscavige. “I want you to take the Catholic Church and take right now and explain to me, to make sense that the Virgin Mary was a virgin, scientifically impossible, unless we’re talking about something …” He trailed off, then said, “Okay, I’ll be like you, I’ll be the cynic. If we’re talking about artificial insemination, how could that be? If you’re talking about going to Heaven, except we have a space shuttle going out there, we have the Apollo going out there, you do that. I’m not here—” He was obviously confused and uncomfortable.

“You were a Catholic as a child, right?” Koppel asked helpfully.

“Yeah.”

“So you know full well that those issues are questions of faith.”

Miscavige wouldn’t accept the life raft that Koppel offered him. Scientology is sold as an entirely rational approach to understanding and mastering existence. “No, no,” Miscavige replied. “Talk about the Van Allen Belt or whatever, that forms no part of current Scientology, none whatsoever.”

“But what did he mean when he was talking about it?”

“Quite frankly, this tape here, he’s talking about the origins of the universe, and I think you’re going to find that in any, any, any religion, and I think you can make the same mockery of it. I think it’s offensive.”

“I’m not mocking it, I’m asking you a question,” Koppel replied. “You turn it around and ask me about Catholicism. I say we’re talking about areas of faith.”

“Well, it’s not even a matter of faith,” Miscavige insisted, “because Scientology is about you, yourself, and what you do. You’re bringing up something that isn’t part of current Scientology, that isn’t something that Scientologists study, that is part of some tape taken from, I have no idea, and asking me about it and asking me to put it in context, that I can’t do.” Later, Miscavige told Koppel that he had never heard the Hubbard tape before. (It was a part of a lecture Hubbard gave in 1963, in which he talked about the between-lives period, when thetans are transported to Venus to have their memories erased.)

After the show, Miscavige returned to the greenroom, where
Rinder,
Rathbun, and
Norman Starkey, another executive, were waiting. “How’d I do?” he asked.

“Gee, sir, you kicked ass,” one of the men said.

“It was a home run,” Rathbun assured him.

“Really?” Miscavige asked doubtfully. “Jesus Christ, I was just there and I don’t know. The guy was pissing me off so much.”

Koppel won an Emmy for that show. Miscavige took credit for it, saying, “I got Ted the Emmy
.” He even had a replica of an Emmy made and placed in the Officers Lounge at Gold Base. But he never went on television again.

THE
TIME
STORY WAS
a turning point in the church’s history. The embarrassment for Scientology celebrities undercut the church’s strategy of making the religion appear to be a spiritual refuge for the show-business elite. One of the chief appeals of the religion to prospective recruits was the perceived network that Scientology provided its members, especially in Hollywood, awarding them an advantage in a ruthlessly competitive industry. With the
Time
article, affiliation with the church became an embarrassing liability.

Tom Cruise was one of the stars who appeared to be backing away from Scientology.
²
He stopped moving up the Bridge. He and
Nicole adopted two children,
Isabella and
Connor, and began spending more
time in Sydney, Kidman’s hometown, where she could be close to her family. He hired a powerful publicist,
Pat Kingsley, who was able to enforce rigid control over the content of the interviews the star granted. Although his affiliation with Scientology was generally known, there was no more fuel for the media mill. He seemed to be putting as much distance between himself and the church as possible.

The church began to plot its counterattack. The
Cult Awareness Network, besieged by more than fifty lawsuits brought by Scientologists, went bankrupt in 1996. An individual Scientologist purchased its name and assets at auction. Soon after that, the reorganized Cult Awareness Network sent out a brochure lauding the Church of Scientology for its efforts to “increase happiness and improve conditions
for oneself and others.” The church also began a $3 million campaign
against
Time
, placing full-page ads every day in
USA Today
for twelve weeks, charging that the magazine had “supported” Adolf Hitler, for instance, by naming him the 1938 “Man of the Year” because of his dominance in European affairs. A lengthy supplement was placed in
USA Today
titled “The Story That
Time
Couldn’t Tell: Who Really Controls the News at
Time—
and Why,” in which the church claimed that
Time
was actually under the sway of the pharmaceutical industry—specifically,
Eli Lilly and Company, the maker of
Prozac. The church had charged that Prozac caused people to commit mass murder and suicide. The
Time
article was the drug company’s revenge, the church alleged.
³

Rathbun directed the ferocious legal assault on
Time
and oversaw the team of private detectives probing into
Behar’s private life. The church, employing what was reported to be an annual litigation budget of $20 million
and a team of more than a hundred lawyers to handle the suits already in the courts, filed a $416 million libel action against Time Warner, the parent company of the magazine, and Behar. Because the church is regarded under American law as a “public figure,” Scientology’s lawyers had to prove not only that the magazine’s allegations were wrong but also that Behar acted with “actual malice”—a legal term meaning that he knowingly published information he knew to be false, or that he recklessly disregarded the facts, because he intended to damage the church. Although there was no convincing evidence proving that the facts were wrong or that the reporter was biased, the case
went all the way to the
US Supreme Court, which sustained the district court’s initial ruling against the church. In the process, it cost
Time
more money
in defense costs than any other case in its history.

Rathbun’s strategy followed Hubbard’s dictate that the purpose of a lawsuit is “to harass and discourage
rather than win.” Hubbard also wrote: “If attacked on some
vulnerable point by anyone or anything or any organization, always find or manufacture enough threat against them to cause them to sue for peace.… Don’t ever defend. Always attack.” He added: “NEVER agree to an
investigation of Scientology. ONLY agree to an investigation of the attackers.” He advised Scientologists: “Start feeding lurid, blood, sex, crime, actual evidence on the attackers to the press.… Make it rough, rough on attackers all the way.… There has never yet been an attacker who was not reeking with crime. All we had to do was look for it and murder would come out.” These were maxims that Rathbun took as his guidelines.

The
Time
article capsized
Miscavige’s attempts to break free of the negative associations so many people had with Scientology. But there was an even larger battle under way, one in which the church’s very existence was at stake: its fight with the
IRS to regain its
tax-exempt status as a bona fide religion, which it had lost in 1967.

The government’s stance was that the Church of Scientology was in fact a commercial enterprise, with “virtually incomprehensible
financial procedures” and a “scripturally based hostility to taxation.” The IRS had ruled that the church was largely operated to benefit its founder. Miscavige inherited some of that liability when he took over after Hubbard’s death. A tax exemption would not only put the imprimatur of the American government on the church as a certified religion, rather than a corrupt, profit-making concern, but it would also provide a substantial amount of immunity from civil suits and the persistent federal criminal investigations. A decision against the tax exemption, on the other hand, would destroy the entire enterprise, because Hubbard had decided in 1973 that the church should not pay its
back taxes. Twenty years later, the church was $1 billion in arrears
, with only $125 million in reserves. The founder had placed Scientology’s head on the executioner’s block.

The war between the church and the IRS had already gone on for more than two decades, with both sides waging a campaign of intimidation and espionage. Miscavige accused the
Criminal Investigation Division of the IRS of engaging in surveillance of church leaders, wiretaps,
and illegal opening of the church’s mail. Now the church upped the ante
by besieging the IRS with 200 lawsuits on the part of the church and more than 2,300 suits on behalf of individual parishioners in every jurisdiction in the country, overwhelming government lawyers, running up fantastic expenses, and causing an immense amount of havoc inside the IRS. Miscavige boasted that the entire legal budget of the federal agency was exhausted: “They didn’t even have money
to attend the annual American Bar Association conference of lawyers—which they were supposed to speak at!” The church ran ads against the agency, using the images of beloved celebrities (who were not Scientologists) such as
John Wayne and
Willie Nelson, who had been audited by the IRS. “All of America Loved Lucy
,” one ad said, over an iconic photo of
Lucille Ball, “except the IRS.” A ten-thousand-dollar reward
was offered to potential whistle-blowers to expose IRS abuses. Private investigators dug into the private lives of IRS officials, going so far as to attend seminars and pose as IRS workers, to see who had a drinking problem or might be cheating on a spouse. Stories based on these investigations were promoted by a phony news bureau
the church established, and also published in the church’s
Freedom
magazine, which Scientologists passed out for free on the steps of the IRS headquarters in Washington. The hatred on both sides for the other was intense. It seemed bizarre that a rather small organization could overmatch the US government, but the harassment campaign was having an effect. Some government workers
were getting anonymous calls in the middle of the night, or finding that their pets had disappeared. Whether or not these events were part of the Scientology onslaught, they added to the paranoia many in the agency were feeling.

Both the church and the IRS faced the challenge of addressing the question of what, exactly, constituted a religion in the eyes of the American government. On the church’s side was a body of scholars who had arisen in defense of what were called “
new religious movements,” such as the
Hare Krishnas, the
Unification Church, and of course the Church of Scientology. The term was employed to replace the word
“cult,” because these academics found no reliable way of distinguishing a cult from a religion. They believe that new religious movements are persecuted and ridiculed simply because they are recent and seem exotic. Often, such experts are paid to testify in court on behalf of these organizations. In the courtroom setting, the casual distinctions that many people often make about cults and
brainwashing have proven to be difficult to sustain, as the experts pose telling comparisons with the history of mainstream religions, whose practices and rituals have long since been folded into a broad cultural acceptance.

The Church of Scientology had decided to enlist such experts following the
FBI raids in 1977, which exposed
Operation Snow White and created a major crisis in the church. There was a deliberate campaign to provide religious cloaking
for the church’s activities. A Scientology cross was created. Scientology ministers now appeared wearing Roman collars. And religious scholars were courted; they were given tours and allowed to interview carefully coached church members.

Frank K. Flinn, a former Franciscan friar and a graduate of Harvard Divinity School, has testified repeatedly on behalf of Scientology—notably, in 1984, when the Church of Scientology, along with
Mary Sue Hubbard, sued
Gerald Armstrong, the former archivist for the church. Flinn defined religion as a system of beliefs of a spiritual nature. There must be norms for behavior—positive commands and negative prohibitions or taboos—as well as rites and ceremonies, such as initiations, sacraments, prayers, and services for weddings and funerals. By these means, the believers are united into an identifiable community that seeks to live in harmony with what they perceive as the ultimate meaning of life. Flinn argued that Scientology amply fulfilled these requirements, even if it differed in its expression of them from traditional denominations.

Like
Catholicism, Flinn explained, Scientology is a hierarchical religion. He compared L. Ron Hubbard to the founders of Catholic religious orders, including his own, started by Saint Francis of Assisi, whose followers adopted a vow of poverty. Financial disparities within a church are not unusual. Within the hierarchy of Catholicism, for instance, bishops often enjoy a mansion, limousines, servants, and housekeepers; the papacy itself maintains thousands of people on its staff, including the Swiss Guards who protect the pope, and an entire order of nuns dedicated to being housekeepers for the papal apartments.

The Catholic Church also maintains houses of rehabilitation (like the
RPF) for errant priests hoping to reform themselves. Flinn saw the RPF as being entirely voluntary and even tame compared to what he experienced as a friar in the
Franciscan Order. He willingly submitted to the religious practice of flagellation on Fridays, whipping his legs
and back in emulation of the suffering of Jesus before his crucifixion. Flinn also spent several hours a day doing manual labor. As a member of a mendicant order, he owned no material possessions at all, not even the robe he wore. Low wages and humble work were essential to his spiritual commitment.

There is a place for a Supreme Being in Scientology—in Hubbard’s
Eight Dynamics, it’s at the top—but the God idea plays a diminished role compared to many religions. On the other hand, some religions worship objects—stones or icons or mandalas—rather than a deity. Scientologists don’t pray; but then, neither do Buddhists. The idea of salvation, so central to Christianity, is not so different from Hubbard’s assertion that the fundamental law of the universe is the urge to survive. Flinn compared the Scientology distinction between
preclear and Clear to Buddhist notions of entanglement and enlightenment, or Christian doctrines of sin and grace. The Scientology creed that humans are “
thetans” simply means we are beings with immortal souls, which no Christian would argue with.