Read Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief Online
Authors: Lawrence Wright
Tags: #Social Science, #Scientology, #Christianity, #Religion, #Sociology of Religion, #History
While talking to Haggis, Beghe was reluctant to use the word “brainwashing”—“whatever the fuck that is”—but he did say that somehow his mind had been taken over. “You have all these thoughts,
all these ways of looking at things, that are L. Ron Hubbard’s,” he explained. “You think you’re becoming more you, but within that is an implanted thing, which is You the Scientologist.”
Haggis was disturbed by Beghe’s account of what had happened after he left the church. He claimed that none of his Scientology friends would talk to him, his son had been kicked out of school, he was being followed by private investigators and threatened with lawsuits. Perhaps because Haggis had never been as much of a true believer as some members, he didn’t nurse the same sense of betrayal. “I didn’t feel that some worm had buried itself in my ear, and if you plucked it out you would find L. Ron Hubbard and his thought,” he said. But he did feel that he had been cautioned.
“
TOMMY
,”
HAGGIS
’
S LETTER
of August 19, 2009, abruptly begins. “As you know, for ten months now I have been writing to ask you to make a public statement denouncing the actions of the Church of Scientology of San Diego. Their public sponsorship of
Proposition 8, which succeeded in taking away the civil rights of gay and lesbian citizens of California—rights that were granted them by the Supreme Court of our state—is a stain on the integrity of our organization and a stain on us personally. Our public association with that hate-filled legislation shames us.”
The tone of the letter is both aggrieved and outraged, mixing Haggis’s personal experiences with the results of his one-man investigation into the church. He mentions how
Katy Haggis’s friends had turned against her when she came out to them as a lesbian. Katy had told him that another friend of hers had applied to be the assistant for
Jenna and
Bodhi Elfman, the Scientology acting couple.
Lauren Haigney, Tom Cruise’s niece in the Sea Org, had been assigned to vet the applicants. Katy says that Lauren wrote up a report saying that Katy’s friend was known to hang out with lesbians. The friend did not get the job, Katy said.
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Haggis also recounted the scene at
John Travolta and
Kelly Preston’s house, when another Scientologist made the slur about the gay
waiter. “I admire John and Kelly for many reasons; one of them is the way they handled that,” Haggis stated. “You and I both know there has been a hidden anti-gay sentiment in the church for a long time. I have been shocked on too many occasions to hear Scientologists make derogatory remarks about gay people, and then quote LRH in their defense.” He said that the church’s decision not to denounce the bigots who supported Proposition 8 was cowardly. “Silence is consent, Tommy. I refuse to consent.”
He referenced
Davis’s interview on CNN. “I saw you deny the church’s policy of disconnection. You said straight-out there was no such policy, that it did not exist,” he wrote. “I was shocked. We all know this policy exists. I didn’t have to search for verification. I didn’t have to look any further than my own home.” He reminded Davis of
Deborah’s experience with her parents. “Although it caused her terrible personal pain, my wife broke off all contact with them.… That’s not ancient history, Tommy. It was a year ago.” He added: “To see you lie so easily, I am afraid to ask myself: what else are you lying about?”
Then, he said, he had read the series of articles in the
St. Petersburg Times
. “They left me dumbstruck and horrified. These were not the claims made by ‘outsiders’ looking to dig up dirt against us. These accusations were made by top international executives who had devoted most of their lives to the church. Say what you will about them now, these were staunch defenders of the church, including
Mike Rinder, the church’s official spokesman for 20 years!
“Tommy, if only a fraction of these accusations are true, we are talking about serious, indefensible human and civil rights violations.”
He continued:
And when I pictured you assuring me that it is all lies, that this is nothing but an unfounded and vicious attack by a group of disgruntled employees, I am afraid that I saw the same face that looked in the camera and denied the policy of disconnection. I heard the same voice that professed outrage at our support of Proposition 8, who promised to correct it, and did nothing.
I was left feeling outraged, and frankly, more than a little stupid.
Haggis was especially disturbed by the way the church’s
Freedom
magazine had responded to the newspaper’s revelations. It included a lengthy annotated transcript of conversations that had taken place
prior to the publication of the series between the
Times
reporters,
Joe Childs and
Thomas C. Tobin, and representatives of the church, including Tommy Davis and
Jessica Feshbach, the two international spokespersons for the church. In the
Freedom
account, the names of the defectors were never actually stated, perhaps to shield Scientologists from the shock of seeing familiar figures such as
Marty Rathbun and
Amy Scobee publicly denouncing the organization and its leader. Rathbun was called “Kingpin” and Amy Scobee “The Adulteress.” At one point in the conversation, Davis had told reporters that Scobee had been expelled from the church because she had had an affair. The reporters responded that she had denied any sexual contact outside her marriage. “That’s a lie,” Davis told them. Feshbach, who carried a stack of documents, then said, “She has a written admission [of] each one of her instances of extramarital indiscretions.… I believe there were five.”
When Haggis read this, he immediately assumed that the church had gotten its information from auditing sessions.
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He was inflamed. “A priest would go to jail before revealing secrets from the confessional, no matter what the cost to himself or his church,” he wrote. “You took Amy Scobee’s most intimate admissions about her sexual life and passed them on to the press and then smeared them all over the pages of your newsletter!…This is the woman who joined the Sea Org at 16! She ran the entire celebrity center network, and was a loyal senior executive of the church for what, 20 years?” He added that he was aware that the church might do the same to him. “Well, luckily, I have never held myself up to be anyone’s role model.”
Haggis concluded:
The great majority of Scientologists I know are good people who are genuinely interested in improving conditions on this planet and helping others. I have to believe that if they knew what I now know, they too would be horrified. But I know how easy it was for me to defend our organization and dismiss our critics, without ever truly looking at what was being said; I did it for thirty-five years.… I am
only ashamed that I waited this many months to act. I hereby resign my membership in the Church of Scientology.
AT THE TIME
Haggis was doing his investigation, the
FBI was also looking into Scientology. In December 2009,
Tricia Whitehill, a special agent from the Los Angeles office, flew to Florida to interview former members of the church at the bureau’s office in downtown Clearwater, which happens to be directly across the street from Scientology’s spiritual headquarters.
Tom De Vocht, who spoke to Whitehill then, got the impression that the investigation had been going on for quite a while. He says that Whitehill confided that she hadn’t told the local agents what the investigation was about, in case the office had been infiltrated. Amy Scobee also spoke to Whitehill for two full days, mainly about the abuse she had witnessed.
Whitehill and
Valerie Venegas, the lead agent on the case, also interviewed former
Sea Org members in California. One was Gary Morehead, who had developed the blow drill. He explained how his security team would use emotional and psychological pressure to bring escapees back; but failing that, physical force has been used.
8
Whitehill and Venegas worked on a special task force devoted to
human trafficking. The laws regarding trafficking were built largely around forced prostitution, but they also pertain to slave labor. Under federal law, slavery is defined, in part, by the use of coercion, torture, starvation, imprisonment, threats, and psychological abuse. The California Penal Code lists several indicators that someone may be a victim of human trafficking: signs of trauma or fatigue; being afraid or unable to talk because of censorship or security measures that prevent communication with others; working in one place without the freedom to move about; owing a debt to one’s employer; and not having control over identification documents. Those conditions resemble the accounts of many former Sea Org members who lived at
Gold Base. If proven, those allegations would still be difficult to prosecute given the religious status of Scientology.
Marc Headley escaped from Gold Base in 2005; he says this was after being beaten by
Miscavige.
9
His defection was especially painful
for the church, because Marc says he was the first person
Tom Cruise
audited. In Scientology, the auditor bears a significant responsibility for the progress of his subject. “If you audit somebody
and that person leaves the organization, there’s only one person whose fault that is—the auditor,” Headley explained. Later that year, Marc’s wife,
Claire, also escaped. In 2009, they sued the church, claiming that the working conditions at Gold Base violated labor and human-trafficking laws. The church responded that the Headleys were ministers who had voluntarily submitted to the rigors of their calling, and that the
First Amendment protected Scientology’s religious practices. The court agreed with this argument and dismissed the Headleys’ complaints, awarding the church forty thousand dollars in litigation costs.
In April 2010,
John Brousseau also fled. He, too, represented a dangerous liability to the church. He had been a Sea Org member for decades; he had worked personally for Hubbard; and he knew Miscavige intimately. But what was of most concern to the church was the fact that he had worked on or overseen numerous special projects for Tom Cruise. None of these unique and costly gifts come anywhere close to the millions of dollars that the star has donated to the church over the years, but they do call into question the private benefit afforded a single individual by a tax-exempt religious organization.
Brousseau knew the lengths to which the church would go in order to find him and bring him back. He drove to Carson City, Nevada, and bought a netbook computer at a Walmart, along with an air card, then set up an encrypted e-mail account. He sent a note to
Rathbun, saying, “I just left
and I’m freaked out, and I’ve got nowhere to go.” Rathbun invited him to South Texas. Expecting that the church would have hired private detectives to stake out key intersections on the interstate highways, Brousseau stuck to county roads. It took him three days to make it to Texas. He was driving a black Ford Excursion, much like the one that he had fashioned into a limousine for Cruise.
Brousseau and Rathbun met at a Chili’s restaurant near Corpus Christi. They decided to hide Brousseau’s truck at a friend’s house. Rathbun then checked Brousseau into a Best Western motel under a different name. Despite the precautions, two days later, at five thirty in the morning, when Brousseau went out on the balcony to smoke, he heard a door open nearby and footsteps walking toward him. It was
Tommy Davis and three other church members.
“Hey, J.B.
,” Davis said. “You got yourself in some shit.”
Brousseau turned and walked away.
“Where are you going?” Davis demanded.
Brousseau said he was going to get some coffee. Davis and the Scientology delegation followed behind him. The Circle K across the street wasn’t open yet, so Brousseau went into the motel lobby. He told the receptionist, “Call the police. These guys are stalking me.”
She laughed in disbelief.
“We’ve got a room here, too,” Davis said.
Brousseau said he needed to go to the bathroom. As soon as he got back to his room he bolted the door and called Rathbun. “Marty, they came for me,” he said.
After calling 911, Rathbun jumped in his truck to go to the motel, but four cars filled with Scientologists blocked his way. He says they were led by
Michael Doven, Cruise’s former personal assistant.
Brousseau waited in his room until the police officers arrived. Davis and the others left empty-handed.
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Brousseau talked to
Whitehill and Venegas at the
FBI. He was under the impression that the federal agents were considering a raid on Gold Base. Brousseau says he was shown high-resolution photos of the base taken from a drone aircraft. He says he was told that they had even gathered the tail numbers on Tom Cruise’s aircraft, in case Miscavige tried to escape. Brousseau and others claim to have discouraged the idea, saying that such a raid would turn Miscavige into a martyr; and, in any case, no one would testify against him.
Rinder told the agents it would be a waste of time, because everyone would tell them their lives are all “seashells and butterflies
.” The investigation was reportedly dropped.
11
AFTER SENDING COPIES
of his resignation letter to his closest friends in Scientology,
Haggis wasn’t surprised when he came home from work
a few days later to find nine or ten of them standing in his front yard. “I can’t imagine why you’re here,” he joked, but he invited them to sit on the back porch and talk.
Anne Archer and her husband,
Terry Jastrow, an Emmy-winning producer for ABC Sports, were there.
Mark Isham, a composer who worked with Haggis for years, came with his wife, Donna.
Sky Dayton, the founder of EarthLink and Boingo Wireless, joined them, along with several other friends and a representative of the church that Haggis didn’t know. His friends could have served as an advertisement for Scientology—they were wealthy high achievers with solid marriages who exuded a sense of spiritual well-being.
Scientologists are trained to believe in their persuasive powers and the need to keep a positive frame of mind. But the mood on Haggis’s porch was downbeat and his friends’ questions were full of reproach.