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

by Lawrence Wright

Two hundred Scientologists in Los Angeles and New York were mobilized to go through the books of the church’s tangled bureaucracy. The odds against success were high; the courts had repeatedly sided with the IRS’s assertion that the Church of Scientology was a commercial enterprise.

Either the panel would rule against them, in which case the church’s tax liability for the previous two decades would destroy it, or they would fall under the gracious protection of the freedom of religion clause of the First Amendment, in which case the Church of Scientology, and all its practices, would be sheltered by the US Constitution.

“The magnitude of this is greater than you can imagine,” Miscavige said that night at the Sports Arena. He held up a thick folder of the letters of exemption for every one of the church’s 150 American entities. The victory over the IRS was total, he explained. It gave Scientology financial advantages that were unusual, perhaps unique, among religions in the United States.

Two Scientology publishing houses that were solely dedicated to turning out Hubbard’s books, including his commercial fiction, also gained the tax exemption. The church even gained the power to extend its tax exemption to any of its future branches—“They will no longer need to apply to the IRS,” Miscavige marveled. From now on, the church could make its own decisions about which of its activities were exempt.

The 1990s saw the rise of apocalyptic movements in many different countries. As the millennium drew near, the theme of science fiction and UFOs became especially pronounced and deadly. In October 1994, police in Switzerland, investigating a fire in a farmhouse, discovered a hidden room with eighteen corpses wearing ceremonial garments, arranged like spokes in a wheel. Other bodies were found elsewhere on the farm. Their heads were covered with plastic bags; some had been shot or beaten. The next day, three chalets burned in another Swiss village. Investigators found more than two dozen bodies in the ruins. They had been poisoned. Some of the dead had been lured to the scene and murdered, but most were followers of Joseph Di Mambro, a French jeweler, who had created a new religion, the Order of the Solar Temple. Di Mambro’s chief lieutenant, a charismatic Belgian obstetrician named Luc Journet, preached that after death the members would be picked up by a spaceship and reunited on the star Sirius. Like Hubbard, Journet had been influenced by Aleister Crowley and the Ordo Templi Orientis. A year after these macabre incidents, the burned corpses of sixteen other members of the group were found in Grenoble, France; then, in 1997, five more members of the order burned themselves to death in Quebec, making a total of seventy-four deaths. In contrast to the Branch Davidians or the followers of Jim Jones, who were predominantly lower class, the members of the Solar Temple were aff...

Scientologists are trained to believe that whatever happens to them is somehow their fault, so much of the discussion in the Hole centered on what they had done to deserve this fate. The possibility that the leader of the church might be irrational or even insane was so taboo that no one could even think it, much less voice it aloud.

“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.

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.

This is an interesting idea. On a different note: It is hard to say what is motivating folks to be in any way associated with the DJT administration other than an abundance of (unearned) self-confidence, thin-skinnedness, and (unenlightened) self-interest. Haggis can have a nuanced view here, given where he is standing. I just have a hard, from this far away, at gauging the balance between terrible treatment and genuine good works from this Org.

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.

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.

When the BBC program ran, there was no mention of physical abuse. Rinder felt that he had spared the church considerable embarrassment. But, far from being grateful, Miscavige told him that Sweeney’s piece should never have run at all. He ordered Rinder to report to an RPF facility in England. Rinder decided he’d had enough. He blew.

“The real question is who would produce the kind of material we produce and do the kinds of things we do, set up the kind of organizational structure that we set up?” Davis asked. “Or what kind of man, like L. Ron Hubbard, would spend an entire lifetime researching, putting together the kind of material, suffer all the trials and tribulations and go through all the things he went through in his life … or even with the things that we, as individuals, have to go through, as part of the new religion? Work seven days a week, three hundred sixty-five days a year, fourteen-, fifteen-, eighteen-hour days sometimes, out of sheer total complete dedication to our faith. And do it all, for what? As some sort of sham? Just to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes?” He concluded, “It’s ridiculous. Nobody works that hard to cheat people. Nobody gets that little sleep to screw over their fellow man.”

1In my meeting with Isham, he had asserted that Scientology is not a “faith-based religion.” Leaving aside the question of what religion is without faith, I pointed out that in Scientology’s upper levels, there was a cosmology that would have to be accepted on faith. Isham responded that he wasn’t going to discuss the details of OT III, nor had I asked him to. “You understand the only reason it’s confidential is because in the wrong hands it can hurt people,” he told me, evidently referring to Hubbard’s warning that those who are not spiritually prepared to receive the information would die, of pneumonia.

Hubbard once wrote that “the old religion”—by which he meant Christianity—was based on “a very painful lie,” which was the idea of Heaven. “Yes, I’ve been to Heaven. And so have you,” he writes. “It was complete with gates, angels and plaster saints—and electronic implantation equipment.” Heaven, he says, was built as an implant station 43 trillion years ago. “So there was a Heaven after all—which is why you are on this planet and were condemned never to be free again—until Scientology.”

Wow. This guy. 🤦‍♀️

One might compare Scientology with the Church of Latter-day Saints, a new religion of the previous century. The founder of the movement, Joseph Smith, claimed to have received a pair of golden plates from the angel Moroni in upstate New York in 1827, along with a pair of magical “seeing stones,” which allowed him to read the contents. Three years later, he published The Book of Mormon, founding a movement that would provoke the worst outbreak of religious persecution in American history. Mormons were chased all across the country because of their practice of polygamy and their presumed heresy. Smith himself was murdered by a mob in Carthage, Illinois. His beleaguered followers sought to escape the United States and establish a religious theocracy in the territory of Utah, which they called Zion. Mormons were so despised that there was a bill in Congress to exterminate them. And yet Mormonism would evolve and go on to become one of the fastest-growing denominations in the twentieth, and now the twenty-first, centuries. Members of the faith now openly run for president of the United States. In much of the world, this religion, which was once tormented because of its perceived anti-American values, is now thought of as being the most American of religions; indeed, that’s how many Mormons think of it as well. It is a measure not only of the religion’s success but also of the ability of a faith to adapt and change.

One must look at L. Ron Hubbard and the odyssey of his movement against this historical backdrop and the natural human yearning for transcendence and submission.

The Amish see the Earth as God’s garden, and their duty is to tend it. The environment they surround themselves with is filled with a sense of peace and a purposeful orderliness. Individuality is sanded down to the point that one’s opinions are as similar to another’s as the approved shape of a bonnet or the regulation beard. Because fashion and novelty are outlawed, one feels comfortably encased in a timeless, unchanging vacuum. The enforced conformity dims the noise of diversity and the anxiety of uncertainty; one feels closer to eternity. One is also aware of the electrified fence of orthodoxy that surrounds and protects this Edenic paradise, and the expulsion that awaits those who doubt or question. 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.

SCIENTOLOGY WANTS TO BE understood as a scientific approach to spiritual enlightenment. It has, really, no grounding in science at all. It would be better understood as a philosophy of human nature; seen in that light, Hubbard’s thought could be compared with that of other moral philosophers, such as Immanuel Kant and Søren Kierkegaard, although no one has ever approached the sweep of Hubbard’s work. His often ingenious and minutely observed categories of behavior have been shadowed by the bogus elements of his personality and the absurdity that is interwoven with his bouts of brilliance, making it difficult for non-Scientologists to know what to make of it. Serious academic study of his writing has also been constrained by the vindictive reputation of the church.

There is no point in questioning Scientology’s standing as a religion; in the United States, the only opinion that really counts is that of the IRS; moreover, people do believe in the principles of Scientology and live within a community of faith—what else is required to accept it as such? The stories that invite ridicule or disbelief, such as Xenu and the Galactic Confederacy, may be fanciful—or pure “space opera,” to use Hubbard’s term—but every religion features bizarre and uncanny elements. Just consider some of the obvious sources of Hubbard’s unique concoction—Buddhism, Hinduism, magic, General Semantics, and shamanism—that also provide esoteric categories to explain the ineffable mysteries of life and consciousness. One can find parallels in many faiths with the occult beliefs and practices of Scientology. The concept of expelling body thetans, for instance, is akin to casting out demons in the Christian tradition. But like every new religion, Scientology is handicapped by the frailties of its founder and the absence of venerable traditions that enshrine it in the culture.

To an outsider who has struggled to understand the deep appeal of Scientology to its adherents, despite the flaws and contradictions of the religion that many of them reluctantly admit, perhaps the missing element is art. Older faiths have a body of literature, music, ceremony, and iconography that infuses the doctrinal aspects of the religion with mystery and importance. The sensual experience of being in a great cathedral or mosque may have nothing to do with “belief,” but it does draw people to the religion and rewards them emotionally. Scientology has built many impressive churches, but they are not redolent palaces of art. The aesthetic element in Scientology is Hubbard’s arresting voice as a writer. His authoritative but folksy tone and his impressionistic grasp of human nature have cast a spell over millions of readers. More important, however, is the nature of his project: the self-portrait of the inside of his mind. It is perhaps impossible to reduce his mentality to a psychiatric diagnosis, in part because his own rendering of it is so complex, intricate, and comprehensive that one can only stand back and appreciate the qualities that drove him, hour after hour, year after year, to try to get it all on the page—his insight, his daring, his narcissism, his defiance, his relentlessness, his imagination—these are the traits of an artist. It is one reason that Hubbard identified with the creative community and many of them with him.

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.”

Compared with other religions I have written about, the published literature on Scientology is impoverished and clouded by bogus assertions. Some crucial details one would want to know about the church have been withheld—for instance, the number of people who are members of the International Association of Scientologists, which would be the best guide to knowing the true dimensions of the church’s membership. The church promised to provide an organizational chart, but never did so; in any case, it would have been more notional than actual in terms of the flow of authority and responsibility, since many of the church’s executive hierarchy have been quarantined for years in the Hole at the direction of the only individual who controls the institution.

L. Ron Hubbard’s extensive—indeed, record-breaking—published works form the core of the documentary material that this book draws upon. Hubbard expressed himself variously in books, articles, bulletins, letters, lectures, and journals; one cannot understand the man or the organization he created without examining his work in each of these media.

Russell Miller’s excellent Bare-Faced Messiah (1987) was the first in-depth look at the man. Scientology unsuccessfully sued Miller, a British journalist, who says that while researching his book he was spied upon, his phone was tapped, and efforts were made to frame him for a murder he did not commit. Soon thereafter, Bent Corydon’s L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman? (1987) appeared, followed by Jon Atack’s A Piece of Blue Sky (1990). The church attempts to discredit both of these authors because they are former Scientologists who the church says were expelled from the organization. It is notable that no comprehensive biography of Hubbard has been attempted since the church’s campaign against these books. The scarcity of academic work on the church and its leaders testifies to the caution with which scholars regard the subject, as well as the reluctance of the organization to divulge information about its members, beliefs, and inner workings to qualified social scientists.

While he was researching his book, Wallis was spied upon, and forged letters were sent to his colleagues and employers implicating him in a homosexual relationship. Renunciation and Reformulation: A Study of Conversion in an American Sect, an insightful book by Harriet Whitehead, an anthropologist, appeared in 1987. Since then, contributions from the academy have been meager. At this point, I should also acknowledge the work of Hugh Urban, at Ohio State University, David S. Touretzky at Carnegie Mellon University, and Stephen Kent, at the University of Alberta. Each of these scholars has produced important contributions to the understanding of Scientology, despite the obstacles and threats posed by the church.

Court documents contain a valuable record of the history and culture of the church and its founder; this is especially true of the landmark 1991 suit Church of Scientology California v. Gerald Armstrong. David Miscavige has been shy about giving interviews, but he has provided testimony and declarations in several lawsuits, most extensively in 1990, in Bent Corydon v. Church of Scientology.

Tom Smith has conducted a number of knowledgeable interviews on his radio show, The Edge, broadcast by Hillsborough Community College in Tampa, Florida. Joe Childs and Thomas C. Tobin of the Tampa Bay Times (formerly the St. Petersburg Times) have written groundbreaking stories, especially about the abuse inside the church hierarchy. Tony Ortega has been writing about Scientology since 1995, for the Phoenix New Times, and he continued as a valuable resource in the pages and the blog of the Village Voice until his recent resignation. Several of these journalists have been harassed, investigated, sued, or threatened in various ways. I am the beneficiary of their skill and persistence.

These have taken the form of memoirs and blog postings, and they have accumulated into an immense indictment of the inner workings of the church. Among the memoirs I should single out are Marc Headley’s Blown for Good: Behind the Iron Curtain of Scientology (2009); Nancy Many’s My Billion Year Contract (2009); Amy Scobee’s Abuse at the Top (2010); and Jefferson Hawkins’s Counterfeit Dreams (2010). Kate Bornstein’s A Queer and Pleasant Danger (2012) provides an especially interesting account of the Apollo days.

Although the Church of Scientology was not a willing partner in the effort to write this book, I want to thank the spokespeople I worked with—Tommy Davis, Jessica Feshbach, and Karin Pouw—for responding to what must have seemed an endless stream of queries from me and the fact-checkers. I have no doubt that they will quarrel with the results, but the book is more accurate because of their participation, however reluctant that might have been.