Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief

by Lawrence Wright

Those who attempted to leave the Sea Org through the formal process of “routing out” would be presented with a freeloader tab for all the coursework and counseling they had received over the years. Claire and Marc Headley, for instance, were billed more than $150,000 when they left and told they would have to pay if they ever wanted to see their family again. Those who accept this offer can spend years paying off their debt. Those who don’t stand to lose any connection to their friends and family who remain in Scientology.

Miscavige explained that in this game the last person to grab a chair would be the only one allowed to stay on the base; everyone else was to be “offloaded”—kicked out of the Sea Org—or sent away to the least desirable Scientology bases around the world. Those whose spouses were not in the Hole would be forced to divorce. While Queen’s Greatest Hits played on a boom box, the church executives marched around and around, then fought for a seat when the music stopped. As the number of chairs diminished, the game got more physical. The executives shoved and punched one another; clothes were torn; a chair was ripped apart. All this time, the biting lyrics of “Bohemian Rhapsody” floated over the saccharine melody: Is this the real life? Is this just a fantasy? Caught in a landslide No escape from reality.

Similarly, after becoming associated with Cruise, the style of Miscavige’s life began to reflect that of a fantastically wealthy and leisured movie star. He normally awakens at noon, with a cup of coffee and a Camel cigarette. The coffee is fresh-ground Starbucks, preferably a Guatemala or Arabian Mocha Java, made with distilled water, to which he adds raw sugar and half-and-half. Then he takes breakfast, the first of his five meals. According to Miscavige’s former chef, Sinar Parman, the church leader was eating “three squares and a snack at night,” until the late nineties. One day, while on a Delta flight from LA to Clearwater, Miscavige walked to the cabin from his seat in first class and showed some photos from a muscle magazine to Parman and his steward, who traveled with him. He told them he wanted to “get ripped and have six-pack abs.” After the flight, Miscavige changed physical trainers and began taking bodybuilding supplements. He also adopted a strict diet that requires each meal to be at least 40 percent protein and to contain no more than 400 calories. Soon, he was looking like the men in the muscle magazines.

According to Claire Headley, who oversaw the finances for the Religious Technology Center between 2000 and 2004, the food costs for David and Shelly and their guests would range between $3,000 to as much as $20,000 per week. At the end of the evening, Miscavige retires to his den and drinks Macallan Scotch and plays backgammon with members of his entourage, or listens to music on his $150,000 stereo system (he loves Michael Jackson), or watches movies in his private screening room (his favorite films are Scarface and the Godfather trilogy). He usually turns in around three or four in the morning. Miscavige enjoys shooting pool or playing video games in his lounge. He has a tanning bed, and a high-end gym that few people other than Cruise are permitted to use. Although he is short in stature, Miscavige exudes physical power. He favors tight-fitting T-shirts that show off his chiseled biceps. He collects guns, maintains at least six motorcycles, and has a number of automobiles, including an armor-plated GMC Safari van with bulletproof windows and satellite television, and a souped-up Saleen Mustang that Cruise gave him to match his own. His uniforms and business suits are fashioned by Richard Lim, a Los Angeles tailor whose clients include Cruise, Will Smith, and Martin Sheen. Miscavige’s shoes are custom-made in London by John Lobb, bootmaker to the royal family. His wardrobe fills an entire room. Two full-time stewards are responsible for his cleaning and laundry. Cruise a...

The contrast with the other Sea Org members is stark. They eat in a mess hall, which features a meat-and-potatoes diet and a salad bar, except for occasional extended periods of rice and beans for those who are being punished. The average cost per meal as of 2005 (according to Marc Headley, who participated in the financial planning each week) was about seventy-five cents a head—significantly less than what is spent per inmate in the California prison system. When members join the Sea Org, they are issued two sets of pants, two shirts, and a pair of shoes, which is their lifetime clothing allotment; anything else, they purchase themselves. Although the nominal pay for Sea Org members is fifty dollars a week, many are fined for various infractions, so it’s not unusual to be paid as little as thirteen or fourteen dollars. Married couples at Gold Base share a two-bedroom apartment with two other couples, meaning that one pair sleeps on the couch. In any case, few get more than five or six hours of sleep a night. There are lavish exercise facilities at the base—an Olympic pool, a golf course, basketball courts—but they are rarely used. Few are permitted to have access to computers. Every personal phone call is listened to; every letter is inspected. Bank records are opened and records kept of how much money people have. Cultural touchstones common to most Americans are often lost on Sea Org members at Gold Base. They may not know the name of the president of the United States ...

On April 30 of each year, Scientology staff from around the world are pressed to contribute to Miscavige’s birthday present. One year, as birthday assessments were being passed around, few could contribute because they hadn’t been paid for months. Finally, staffers got their back pay so that they could make their donations. Janela Webster, who worked directly under Miscavige for fifteen years, received $325, out of which she paid $150 for Miscavige’s gift. Such presents include tailored suits and leather jackets, high-end cameras, diving equipment, Italian shoes, and a handmade titanium bicycle. One year Flag Service Org in Clearwater gave him a Vyrus 985 C3 4V, a motorcycle with a retail price of $70,000.2 Another division presented him with a BMW.

The IAS now holds more than $1 billion, mostly in offshore accounts, according to former executives of the church. Scientology coursework alone can be very pricey—as much as $400,000 to reach the level of OT VIII. That doesn’t count the books and materials or the latest-model E-Meter, which is priced at $4,650. Then there is the auditing, which ranges in price from $5,000 to $8,000 for a twelve-hour “intensive,” depending on the location and the level of the auditor. Services sold in Clearwater alone amount to $100 million a

One of the penitents was Mark McKinstry, who had been National Sales Manager at Bridge Publications when the movie version of Battlefield Earth, starring John Travolta, came out in 2000. Hubbard’s tale is about an alien race of “Psychlos,” who have turned people into slaves—until a hero arises to liberate humanity. Travolta had worked for years to get the movie made, and wound up paying a significant portion out of his own pocket. It was at the peak of his career. “I told my manager, ‘If we can’t do the things now that we want to do, what good is the power?’ ” he remarked at the time. Miscavige had been deeply involved in the filming from the beginning. He would watch dailies of the film in Clearwater while he was overseeing the handling of the Lisa McPherson case. His critiques would then be typed up and sent to the Scientology representative who was always at Travolta’s side. When the movie was completed, Miscavige called Travolta to congratulate him, saying that LRH would be proud. He predicted it was going to be a blockbuster.

“ ‘Battlefield Earth’ may well turn out to be the worst movie of this century,” the New York Times critic observed, in what proved to be a typical review. There were false accusations that the film contained subliminal messages promoting Scientology. Travolta’s career went into a lengthy dark period. Cruise later complained to Miscavige, saying that the movie was terrible for the church’s public image.5 Miscavige responded that it would never have been made if he’d had anything to do with it. McKinstry was dismayed when he went to a screening of the movie and watched people walking out or booing. His wife could see that he was upset and asked what was wrong. “Why didn’t anyone watch this movie before it was released?” he said. She reported to the church what he had said, and he was ordered to RPF.

In December, Cruise took Naz to his vacation house in Telluride, where they were joined by David and Shelly Miscavige. While they were at Cruise’s retreat, David and Shelly watched a screener of Million Dollar Baby. Afterward, Miscavige said it had been difficult to sit through. He complained about what a poor example of a Scientologist Haggis was, and said that he needed to get back on the Bridge and stop making such awful, low-tone films. Cruise agreed. “He needs to get his ethics in,” he remarked.

There are numerous examples of Scientologists who have considered or actually committed suicide, or engaged in violence, who might have been helped if they had taken psychotropic medicines. In Buffalo, New York, on March 13, 2003 (L. Ron Hubbard’s birthday), twenty-eight-year-old Jeremy Perkins stabbed his mother seventy-seven times. He was a schizophrenic with a history of violence and hallucinations, who had rejected psychiatric treatment because he was a Scientologist.

But Haggis refused to let the matter drop. “This is not a PR issue, it is a moral issue,” he wrote in February 2009. “Standing neutral is not an option.” In the final note of this exchange, Haggis conceded, “You were right: nothing happened—it didn’t flap—at least not very much. But I feel we shamed ourselves.” Since Haggis’s children had been copied on the correspondence with Davis, it helped clarify Lauren’s stance with the church. At first, Davis’s responses gave her hope, but then she realized, “They’re just trying to minimize it as much as possible.” After that, “I was totally done with the church.” The experience also helped her to see her father in a different light. “It’s like night and day from when I first moved in with him,” she said. “I didn’t know that my dad loved me.”

Belief in the irrational is one definition of faith, but it is also true that clinging to absurd or disputed doctrines binds a community of faith together and defines a barrier to the outside world.

Still, there is a kind of quiet majesty in the Amish culture—not because of their rejection of modernity, but because of their principled non-violence and their adherence to a way of living that tempers their fanaticism. The Amish suffer none of the social opprobrium that Scientologists must endure; indeed, they are generally treated like beloved endangered animals, coddled by their neighbors and smiled upon by society. And yet they are highly schismatic, willing to break off all relations with their dearest relatives on what would seem to an outsider to be an inane point of doctrine or even the question of whether one can allow eaves on a house or pictures on a wall.

MARTY RATHBUN DIVIDES the people who leave Scientology into three camps. There are those who reject the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard entirely, such as Paul Haggis; and those who still believe entirely but think that the church under David Miscavige has taken Scientology away from the original, true teachings of the founder. There is a third category, which he has been struggling to define, that includes those people who are willing neither to swallow all the dogma nor to throw away the insights they gained from their experience. Hubbard’s life and teachings are still the guideposts of their lives. “It wouldn’t stick if there wasn’t a tremendous amount of good it did for them,” Rathbun says. He’s been studying the history of other religions for parallels, and he quotes an old Zen proverb: “When the master points at the Moon, many people never see it at all, they only look at the master.”