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

by Lawrence Wright

The book arrived at a moment when the aftershocks of the world war were still being felt. Behind the exhilaration of victory, there was immense trauma. Religious certainties were shaken by the development of bombs so powerful that civilization, if not life itself, became a wager in the Cold War contest. Loss, grief, and despair were cloaked by the stoicism of the age, but patients being treated in mental hospitals were already on the verge of outnumbering those being treated for any other cause.

The scientific community, stupefied by the book’s popularity, reacted with hostility and ridicule. It seemed to them little more than psychological folk art. “This volume probably contains more promises and less evidence per page than has any publication since the invention of printing,” the Nobel physicist Isidor Isaac Rabi wrote in his review of Dianetics for Scientific American. “The huge sale of the book to date is distressing evidence of the frustrated ambitions, hopes, ideals, anxieties and worries of the many persons who through it have sought succor.”

“There is a different feel to another period in time that’s so basic it’s hard to describe,” Hubbard’s top US executive, Helen O’Brien, recalled. “If you find yourself in a room, there may be color with unfamiliar tones because of gaslight shining on it. The air has a strange quality. Its particles of dust derive from unmodern constituents. Even human bodies seem to radiate a different kind of warmth when they are covered with the fabrics of another age. Memory, per se, filters out all that. When you return, you find the past intact.”

If Scientology really did bestow enhanced powers upon its adherents, Hubbard himself should be able to exercise them. Hubbard’s frailties were obvious to everyone; among other things, his hands were beginning to shake from palsy and he was hard of hearing, constantly exclaiming, “What? What?” He sensed the presumptions that surrounded him.

The failure of Hubbard’s followers to challenge him made them complicit in the creation of the mythical figure that he became. They conspired to protect the image of L. Ron Hubbard, the prophet, the revelator, and the friend of mankind. On the other hand, there were moments when Hubbard seemed to be toying with the limits of possibility.

As for Hubbard himself, the board described him as “a man of restless energy” who is “constantly experimenting and speculating, and equally constantly he confuses the two.” “Some of his claims are that … he has been up in the Van Allen Belt, that he has been on the planet Venus where he inspected an implant station, and that he has been to Heaven. He even recommends a protein formula for feeding non-breast fed babies—a mixture of boiled barley and corn syrup—stating that he ‘picked it up in Roman days.’ ” Although Hubbard has “an insensate hostility” to psychiatrists and people in the field of mental health, the report noted, he is himself “mentally abnormal,” evincing a “persecution complex” and “an imposing aggregation of symptoms which, in psychiatric circles, are strongly indicative of a condition of paranoid schizophrenia with delusions of grandeur—symptoms common to dictators.”

Hubbard wrote to her daily, complaining of a barking dog that was interrupting his work, and various ailments—a bad back, and a lung problem that emerged from a lingering cold. He admitted that he was “drinking lots of rum” and taking drugs—“pinks and grays”—while he was doing his research. He would sign off on the letters, “Your Sugie.” Hubbard stayed only a month in Tangier before moving to Las Palmas in the Canary Islands, where one of his followers found him deeply depressed and surrounded by pills of all kinds. “I want to die,” he said. Alarmed, Mary Sue flew down to take care of him.

This, the Master of the known universe. 🤦‍♀️

Nearly every morning, when the crew was mustered, there would be a list of those sentenced to go over the side, even in rough seas. They would be fished out and hauled back onboard through the old cattle doors that led to the hold. The overboardings contributed to the decision of the Greek government to expel the Scientology crew from Corfu in March 1969. That didn’t stop the practice. None except Hubbard family members were spared. John McMaster, the second “first Clear,” was tossed over the side six times, breaking his shoulder on the last occasion. He left the church not long afterward.

A rambunctious four-year-old boy named Derek Greene, an adopted black child, had taken a Rolex watch belonging to a wealthy member of the Sea Org and dropped it overboard. Hubbard ordered him confined in the chain locker, a closed container where the massive anchor chain is stored. It was dark, damp, and cold. There was a danger that the child could be mutilated if the anchor was accidentally lowered or slipped. Although he was fed, he was not given blankets or allowed to go to the bathroom. He stayed sitting on the chain for two days and nights. The crew could hear the boy crying. His mother pleaded with Hubbard to let him out, but Hubbard reminded her of the Scientology axiom that children are actually adults in small bodies, and equally responsible for their behavior. Other young children were sentenced to the locker for infractions—such as chewing up a telex—for as long as three weeks. Hubbard ruled that they were Suppressive Persons. One little girl, a deaf-mute, was placed in the locker for a week because Hubbard thought it might cure her deafness.

Other members of the Sea Org were having a hard time coping with the blatant contradiction between Hubbard’s legend and the crabby, disconsolate figure howling in his stateroom. “If he is who he says he is, why does he have so little staying power?” Hana Eltringham wondered. “He has a motorcycle accident, he doesn’t recover quickly, and he doesn’t use Scientology techniques on himself.”

Although Hubbard could be terrifying and irrational, and comically pompous, he still held his followers in thrall. Those who were close to him saw a generous and caring leader who used his gigantic personality to keep his ship, his fleet, his organization, and his religion on track. Karen de la Carriere, a young British auditor, remembers watching Hubbard in his office screaming at one of the crew; when that person left, cowering, Hubbard swiveled in his chair and gave Karen a big wink. “He was in total control,” she realized. “It was all theatrical to create a desired effect.”

1Harriet Whitehead, an anthropologist who conducted fieldwork in Scientology in the United States and the United Kingdom between 1969 and 1971, writes of the “fundamental kinship” between psychotherapy and religion. “The cosmological system that surrounds a renunciatory discipline cannot for long remain ‘secular,’ that is, finite and this-worldly, in its orientation,” she writes. “This is one of the reasons … secular therapeutic doctrines often develop a religious or mystical cast.”

9The CIA at the time was taking note of Hubbard, mainly through newspaper clippings. “There is no indication that HUBBARD or members of his organization have been engaged in intelligence or security matters,” an agency dispatch notes. “Rather, HUBBARD appears to be a shrewd businessman who has parlayed his Scientology ‘religion’ into a multi-million dollar business by taking advantage of that portion of society prone to fall for such gimmicks” (“Scientology/L. Ron HUBBARD,” CIA dispatch, Mar. 18, 1971).

Within the church, the explanation for the raid was that some Scientologists were being charged with stealing the Xerox paper they used when they had copied the reports on the church in government files—in other words, it was just another example of jackbooted government goons twisting the Constitution in order to crack down on religious freedom. But when the indictments came out the following year, the scale of Operation Snow White was plainly exposed. Eleven Scientology executives, including Mary Sue Hubbard, were indicted in Operation Snow White. Her husband was named as an unindicted co-conspirator, although it had arisen from his original plan.

Like most celebrities, Travolta had been shielded from the church’s inner workings. The scandals that periodically erupted in the press about Hubbard’s biography, or his disappearance, or the church’s use of private investigators and the courts to harass critics—these things rarely touched the awareness of Scientology luminaries. Many simply didn’t want to hear about the problems inside their organization. It was easy enough to chalk such revelations up to religious persecution or yellow journalism.

That might explain her absence. He didn’t inquire. He readily identified with the church’s narrative that Scientology was being victimized by an intolerant and uncomprehending press, self-serving politicians, careerist bureaucrats, and reactionary police agencies looking for headlines. By publicly defending Scientology, he took on the great burden of scorn and ridicule routinely directed at the church; and in that way, he also allied himself with persecuted minorities everywhere: he was one of them.

Hubbard was becoming increasingly cranky and confused. He slept with guards outside his door, hiding in the tamarind trees that flanked his cottage. One morning he accused the Messenger outside his door of abandoning his post. “Someone came in and exchanged my left boot for a boot half a size smaller,” he said. “They even scuffed it up to make it look the same. Someone is trying to make me think I’m crazy.”

Again. Stable genius at work. Plz be mindful. 🧑‍🔧👷‍♂️👩‍🏭

IN AN EFFORT to lighten the mood, several of the crew made up a comic skit and gave a video of it to Hubbard. He was offended; he was sure they were mocking him. “He was shouting at the TV,” one of his executives recalled. “He sent the Messengers to find the names of everyone involved.”

FOR YEARS, Hubbard’s declining health was a secret known to few in the upper levels of the church. Only a handful of his closest followers were allowed to see him. He had made no clear arrangements for a successor, nor was there any open talk of it. There was an unstated belief that Operating Thetans did not grow frail or lose their mental faculties. Old age and illness were embarrassing refutations of Scientology’s core beliefs.

Hubbard suffered a severe stroke on January 16, 1986, at the Creston ranch. He realized that he was in his final days. He summoned Ray Mithoff, one of his most senior Messengers, to help him put his affairs in order and administer a “death assist.” He didn’t ask to see any of his family members; indeed, one of his last actions was to sign a will reducing their inheritance, except for a provision for Mary Sue, who received $1 million, which may have been a part of the agreement that had kept her from testifying against him. He had previously disowned his daughter Alexis, an embarrassing reminder of his bigamous marriage to Sara Northrup. Hubbard was in a nightgown, pacing up and down, saying, “Let’s get this over with! My head is hurting!” He signed the will with a shaky hand. Hubbard also proclaimed Flag Order 3879, “The Sea Org & the Future,” in which he promoted himself to Admiral and retired the rank of Commodore. He instituted a new rank, that of Loyal Officer, after the stalwart members of the Galactic Confederacy who had imprisoned the tyrannical overlord Xenu. Hubbard appointed only two persons to serve at that level, Pat and Annie Broeker. They were an attractive couple, his closest advisers; he was clearly passing them the scepter. “I’ll be scouting the way and doing the first port survey missions,” Hubbard promised his followers. “We will meet again later.”

His body had suffered the usual insults of old age, along with the consequences of obesity and a lifetime of heavy smoking. Dr. Denk had given him injections of Vistaril, a tranquilizer, usually prescribed for anxiety. Whatever powers Scientology was supposed to bestow were no more evident in the death of its founder than they had been in his life.

Miscavige announced to the assembled Scientologists that for the past six years of exile, Hubbard had been investigating new, higher OT levels. “He has now moved on to the next level,” Miscavige said. “It’s beyond anything any of us has imagined. This level is, in fact, done in an exterior state. Meaning that it is done completely exterior from the body.” Someone in the audience whistled in amazement. “At this level of OT, the body is nothing more than an impediment, an encumbrance to any further gain as an OT.” The audience began to stir as the realization began to sink in. “Thus—,” Miscavige said, then paused and adjusted the microphone. “Thus, at two thousand hours, Friday, the twenty-fourth of January, A.D. 36 [that is, thirty-six years after the publication of Dianetics], L. Ron Hubbard discarded the body he had used in this lifetime for seventy-four years, ten months, and eleven days.” Miscavige turned to a large photograph of Admiral Hubbard with the waves behind him and began to applaud. “Hip, hip, hooray!” he cried, as the audience echoed him. “Hip, hip, hooray!”

During the memorial service at the Hollywood Palladium, Broeker had told the assembled Scientologists that Hubbard had made significant breakthroughs in his research. At that point, the highest level possible on the Bridge to Total Freedom was OT VII (OT VIII would not be introduced for another two years). Broeker surprised everyone by saying that before Hubbard dropped his body, he had completed the OT IX and OT X levels. Broeker even held up a handwritten page that he represented as being from OT X. It was a very long string of numbers, which he said was a date. It was so far back in time he couldn’t denominate it, except to say it was “twelve down and fifteen across,” about 180 numerals altogether. “I wanted to show the significance, the magnitude of what he’s done,” Broeker had said. The audience had tittered in amazement. The little teaser about the OT X materials reinforced Broeker’s standing as the new leader of the church. Only he knew what lay ahead.

Every new religion faces an existential crisis following the death of its charismatic founder. Through his missionary work, Paul the Apostle kept Christianity alive after the crucifixion of Jesus. Brigham Young rescued the Church of Latter-day Saints following the murder of Joseph Smith by leading the Mormon exodus across the Great Plains into Utah. Religious geniuses arise all the time, but the historical test falls upon the successor, whose fate is to be forever overshadowed by the founder.

Other possible successors had been purged or had fled the organization, however, leaving only the Broekers as rivals. Neither of them was a match for Miscavige.

Over the past six years, Pat Broeker and David Miscavige had forged a powerful alliance. Broeker had been on one side of the gate, controlling all access to Hubbard; Miscavige had been on the other, acting as the conduit for the church. Broeker deliberately stayed in the shadows, setting up elaborate drops for the messages that had passed to and from Hubbard’s hideaway, sometimes adopting disguises and carrying an Uzi machine gun when he left the ranch. He fancied himself a crafty undercover operative. The consequence of his secrecy, however, was that even Scientology insiders knew little about him.

In order to eliminate Hubbard’s designated successors, however, Miscavige needed a lieutenant with similar qualities of remorselessness and total commitment.

“Look at the wall,” Cruise would have said, according to Hubbard’s specifications. “Thank you. Walk over to the wall. Thank you. Touch the wall. Thank you.” The purpose of this exercise, according to Hubbard, is to “assert control over the preclear and increase the preclear’s havingness.” Cruise went on to ask Headley to make an object, such as a desk, hold still, or become more solid.

“You learn that if you don’t do what they say, they’ll just ask the same questions five million times,” Headley recalled.

The 1980s had been a devastating period for the church’s reputation, with Hubbard’s disappearance and eventual death, the high-profile lawsuits, and the avalanche of embarrassing publicity. Miscavige hired Hill & Knowlton, the oldest and largest public relations firm in the world, to oversee a national campaign. The legendarily slick worldwide chairman of Hill & Knowlton, Robert Keith Gray, specialized in rehabilitating disgraced dictators, arms dealers, and governments with appalling human-rights records. As representatives of the government of Kuwait, Hill & Knowlton had been partly responsible for selling the Persian Gulf War to the American people. One of the company’s tactics was to provide the testimony of a fifteen-year-old girl, “Nayirah,” to a human-rights committee in the US House of Representatives in October 1990. Nayirah described herself as an ordinary Kuwaiti who had volunteered in a hospital. She tearfully told the House members of watching Iraqi soldiers storm into the prenatal unit. “They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die,” she said. The incident could never be confirmed, and the girl turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States and had never volunteered at the hospital.

Gray had also worked closely with the Reagan campaign. He regaled the Scientologists with his ability to take a “mindless actor” and turn him into the “Teflon President.”

“Those who criticize the church—journalists, doctors, lawyers, and even judges—often find themselves engulfed in litigation, stalked by private eyes, framed for fictional crimes, beaten up, or threatened by death,” Behar noted. He accused the Justice Department of failing to back the IRS and the FBI in bringing a racketeering suit against the church because it was unwilling to spend the money required to take the organization on. He quoted Cynthia Kisser, head of the Cult Awareness Network in Chicago: “Scientology is quite likely the most ruthless, the most classically terroristic, the most litigious and the most lucrative cult the country has ever seen.”

“The church says it now has centers in over seventy countries, with more on the way,” Sawyer said. Heber Jentzsch, the president of the Church of Scientology International, was featured, claiming a membership of eight million people. Sawyer also interviewed defectors, who talked about their families being ripped apart, or being bilked of tens of thousands of dollars. Richard Behar, the Time reporter, recounted how Scientology’s private investigators had obtained his phone records. Vicki Aznaran, a former high official in the church, who was then suing the church, told Sawyer that Miscavige ordered attacks on those he considered troublemakers—“have them, their homes, broken into, have them beaten, have things stolen from them, slash their tires, break their car windows, whatever.”

“You realize there’s a little bit of a problem getting people to talk critically about Scientology because, quite frankly, they’re scared,” Koppel observed. “Oh, no, no, no, no.” “I’m telling you, people are scared,” Koppel insisted. “Let’s not give the American public the wrong impression,” said Miscavige. “The person getting harassed is myself and the church.”

“Let’s look at it this way, then, what Scientology does. If you look out across the world today, you could say that if you take a person who’s healthy, doing well, like yourself, you’d say that person is normal, not a crazy, not somebody who is psychotic, you look at a wall and they call it an elephant,” he said, extemporizing. “And you can see people below that—crazy people, criminals—that I think society in general will look at and say, ‘That breed of person hasn’t something quite right because they’re not up to this level of personality.’…What we are trying to do in Scientology is take somebody from this higher level and move them up to greater ability.” “What about the folks ‘down there’?” “We don’t ignore them. My point is this: Scientology is there to make the able more able.” “Another way of saying that is: you’re interested in folks who’ve got money.” Miscavige objected, claiming that the money in the church goes to good causes. “We are the largest social reform group in the world,” he said,

The whole exchange from this section is fascinating. It reads like DJT’s twitter feed.

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.

Again. Another strong parallel to DJT - his ego, and his enablers.

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 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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 o...

One of Flinn’s most interesting and contested points had to do with hagiography, by which he meant attributing extraordinary powers—such as clairvoyance, visions of God or angels, or the ability to perform miracles—to the charismatic founders of a religion. He pointed to the virgin birth of Jesus, the ability of the Buddha to “transmigrate” his soul into the heavens, or Moses bringing manna to the people of Israel. Such legends are useful in that they bolster the faith of a community, Flinn said. The glaring discrepancies in Hubbard’s biography should be seen in the light of the fact that any religion tends to make its founder into something more than human.

In the Book of Leviticus, for instance, which is part of the Torah and the Old Testament of the Christian Bible, idolaters and those who have strayed from the faith were to be stoned to death. That practice has disappeared; instead, Orthodox Jews will sit Shiva for the nonbeliever, treating him as if he is already dead. “So this kind of phenomenon is not peculiar to Scientology,” Flinn concluded. The implication underlying Flinn’s testimony was that Scientology is a new religion that is reinventing old religious norms; whatever abuses it may be committing are errors of youthful exuberance, and in any case they are pale imitators of the practices once employed by the mainstream religions that judges and jurors were likely to be members of.

Flinn admits to having been a cutup when he was in the order, and he felt out of place. “I was an Irishman in a sea of Germans.” He would be sent out to dig the potato field as punishment for his misbehavior. However, when he finally decided to leave his order, instead of being incarcerated or given a freeloader tab, he was given a dispensation releasing him from his vows. He never felt the need to escape. He took off his robe, put on civilian clothes, and walked away. His spiritual adviser gave him five hundred dollars to help him out. He was never punished or fined, or made to disconnect from anyone.

The two men hailed a cab after lunch and went to 1111 Constitution Avenue, the IRS headquarters, and announced to the security officer that they wanted to see the commissioner. “Is he expecting you?” “No, but if you phone him on the intercom and tell him we are from the Church of Scientology, I’m sure he’d love to see us.” Within a few moments, several of the commissioner’s aides came down to the lobby. Miscavige told them that he wanted to bury the hatchet. He said he knew how much hatred there was on each side, going back for decades, and that an intervention from the top was necessary. An hour later there was a call in their hotel room saying the commissioner would see them the following week. In that first meeting with Goldberg, in a drab government conference room at a giant table, Miscavige, Rathbun, and Heber Jentzsch were facing about a dozen upper-level government bureaucrats, including the commissioner. The level of distrust between the negotiating parties was extreme, made even greater for the IRS representatives who knew that Scientologists had stolen documents and wiretapped meetings in that very building.