Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief (40 page)

That evening, Miscavige showed a chastened, vulnerable side of himself that Rathbun had never seen before. According to Rathbun, Miscavige promised to “cease acting like a madman
.” He praised Rathbun for his part in gaining the IRS exemption. “Because you did this
,” he declared, “you’re
Kha-Khan.” It was a title that
Hubbard had come up with in one of his policy letters for a highly productive staff member, but in the culture it was understood that such a person would be forgiven for misdeeds in future lifetimes. Hubbard had awarded it to
Yvonne Gillham after she died. Rathbun knew that Miscavige was manipulating him, but he was touched nonetheless. As a further reward, Miscavige offered Rathbun the opportunity to go to the Scientology ship, the
Freewinds
, and cruise the Caribbean for two years doing nothing but studying and training to be an auditor. Rathbun could finally obtain OT III. It was an offer he couldn’t resist.

That was a rewarding time for Rathbun. But as soon as he got off the ship after his time away, Miscavige called him into his office and said, “I finally know who
my SP is. The two years you were gone was the only unenturbulated time in my life.” He ordered him to Clearwater, his rank broken, as a trainee. That didn’t last, either. A number of tabloid sensations arose surrounding Scientology celebrities—
Lisa Marie Presley was divorcing
Michael Jackson,
Kirstie Alley was divorcing
actor Parker Stevenson—and Miscavige again turned to Rathbun to cool the press down.

Then, on December 5, 1995
, a Scientologist named
Lisa
McPherson died following a mental breakdown. She had rear-ended a boat that was being towed in downtown Clearwater, Florida, near the church’s spiritual headquarters. When paramedics arrived, she stripped off her clothes and wandered naked down the street. She said she needed help and was taken to a nearby hospital. Soon afterward, a delegation of ten Scientologists arrived at the hospital and persuaded McPherson to check out, against doctors’ advice. McPherson spent the next seventeen days under guard in room 174 of the
Fort Harrison Hotel.

For Scientologists, McPherson’s mental breakdown presented a confounding dilemma. McPherson had been declared Clear just three months before, after ten years of courses and auditing and substantial contributions to the church. The process had been like “a gopher being pulled
through a garden hose,” she later said, but it had been worth it. “I am so full of life I am overwhelmed at the joy of it all!” she wrote. “WOW!”

Clears are supposed to be invulnerable to mental frailty. People on the base knew that McPherson had been acting strangely before her breakdown. Marty Rathbun, who was at Flag Base during this time, remembers seeing McPherson screaming in the hallways of the Fort Harrison Hotel, because she had just been declared Clear. “
Aaaaaah! Yahoo!
” she cried. She looked insane. How did she get to be Clear when she was obviously irrational? And who was responsible for deciding that she had achieved that state? According to Rathbun and several other former church officials who were present at the time, the case supervisor who pronounced
Lisa McPherson Clear was David Miscavige. He had gone to Flag in the summer of 1995 to take over the auditing delivered at the base. He would also supervise the treatment of McPherson that followed.
⁴

When McPherson entered room 174, she was a lovely, shapely young woman. She underwent an
Introspection Rundown, the same procedure that Hubbard had developed on the
Apollo
two decades earlier to treat psychotic behavior. It involved placing McPherson in
solitary confinement and providing her with water, food, and vitamin supplements. All communication had to be in writing. Instead of calming down, McPherson stopped eating. She screamed, she clawed her attendants, she spoke in gibberish, she fouled herself, she banged her head against the wall. Staff members strapped her down and tried to feed her with a turkey baster.

On December 5, McPherson slipped into a coma. When church members decided
to take her to the hospital that night, they bypassed the
Morton Plant Hospital, just down the street, where McPherson had originally been seen, and drove her forty-five minutes away, passing four other hospitals, to the
Columbia New Port Richey Hospital, where there was a doctor affiliated with the church. The woman they finally wheeled into the emergency room was skeletally thin and covered with scratches, bruises, and dark brown lesions. She was also dead. She had suffered a pulmonary embolism on the way to the hospital. In the eyes of the world press, Scientology had murdered Lisa McPherson. She was one of nine
Scientologists who had died under mysterious circumstances at the Clearwater facility.

The night after McPherson died, Rathbun got word from church officials to wait for a call at a pay phone at a nearby Holiday Inn. “Why aren’t you all over
this mess?” Miscavige demanded, when Rathbun answered the call. “The police are poking around. Do something.”

Rathbun discovered that church officials in Clearwater had already lied in two sworn statements to the police, claiming that McPherson hadn’t been subjected to an Introspection Rundown. The church’s official response, under Rathbun’s direction, was to continue to lie, stating that McPherson had been at the church’s Fort Harrison Hotel only for “rest and relaxation” and there was nothing unusual about her stay. In the meantime, Rathbun went through the logs that McPherson’s attendants had kept. As many as twenty people had been rotating in and out of McPherson’s room; some of them were scratched and bruised from trying to subdue her; that was hardly the isolation and absolute silence and calm that the Introspection Rundown called for. Rathbun noted that, among other entries in the logs, one of the caretakers admitted that the situation was out of control and that McPherson needed to see a doctor. In the presence of a Scientology lawyer, Rathbun handed several of the most incriminating logs to a church executive, and said, “Lose ’em.”

The McPherson case loomed over the church for five years, with an
ongoing police investigation, protests in front of Scientology facilities, lawsuits on the part of the family, and endless unwanted press. Embarrassing details emerged
, including the fact that McPherson had spent $176,700 on Scientology services in her last five years, but she had died with only $11 in her savings account. Rathbun and
Mike Rinder, the church’s spokesman, were responsible for managing the situation, but Miscavige supervised every detail. The level of tension was nearly unbearable.

Rinder had the particularly unrewarding task of defending the church to the public. He was articulate and seemingly unflappable, and he had a talent for disarming hostile interviewers. He had been a Scientologist since he was five years old, in South Australia, when the religion was banned. He had sailed with Hubbard aboard the
Apollo
. Few had a deeper experience of the religion than he and no one was more publicly identified with it. But even Rinder could not quell the furor that arose from the McPherson affair.

Perhaps because of Rinder’s lifelong service to the church, Miscavige saw him as a rival; or perhaps the leader’s frustration with the continual bad press made his spokesperson a particular object of his wrath. At any rate, Marty Rathbun got a call from
Shelly Miscavige around Christmas in 1997, the first year of the protests over Lisa McPherson’s death. Rathbun was back at Gold Base. Shelly said that Dave wanted him to report to his quarters right away. Rathbun rushed down the hill to Miscavige’s bungalow, where Shelly was waiting just outside the screen door. A moment later, Mike Rinder, who had also been summoned, came racing around the corner of the house. According to both men, the screen door suddenly flew open and Miscavige came out, wearing a terry-cloth bathrobe. According to Rathbun and Rinder, Miscavige hit Rinder in the face and stomach, then grabbed him around the neck and slammed him into a tree. Rinder fell into the ivy, where Miscavige continued kicking him several times.
⁵
Rathbun just stood there, stunned and puzzled about why he had been ordered to watch this display. Afterward, he decided that he was there to back up Miscavige in case Rinder had the nerve to resist. He was the “silent enforcer
.”

Rathbun’s management of the defense in the McPherson case
was one of his most successful accomplishments for the church. The medical examiner in the case,
Joan Wood, had vehemently denied the church’s assertion that Lisa McPherson’s illness and death were sudden. Her health had obviously deteriorated over a long period. She had been without liquids for at least five days, the medical examiner told a reporter, saying, “This is the most severe case
of dehydration I’ve ever seen.” She ruled that the cause of death was undetermined, and the State of Florida filed criminal charges against the church. If the church were to be convicted of a felony, it could lead to the loss of its tax exemption
and then its probable extinction.

Miscavige and his team brought to bear Scientology’s two greatest assets, money and celebrity. The church was building up a strong defense in its case by hiring some of the most prestigious medical examiners and forensic scientists in the country—experts who questioned Joan Wood’s conclusion that the likely cause of death was a blood clot caused by dehydration. One of the local lawyers retained by the church arranged a personal meeting between Miscavige and Wood’s attorney,
Jeffrey Goodis. Miscavige and Rathbun made a number of presentations to Goodis, trying to persuade him that his client was in legal jeopardy because of her ruling in the McPherson case. Wood was known as an unflappable witness
and a formidable opponent to defense attorneys; her testimony would be crucial if the case went to trial. Rathbun says that Miscavige repeatedly warned Goodis that the church was going to discredit his client and sue her “into the Stone Age
.” Four months before the McPherson case was set to go to trial, Joan Wood changed her ruling
to say that McPherson’s death was “accidental.” The State’s case collapsed, charges against the church were dropped, and Wood avoided a lawsuit. Wood retired and became a recluse. She told the
St. Petersburg Times
that she suffered panic attacks
and insomnia. (She died of a stroke in 2011.)

The civil case against the church on the part of McPherson’s family continued, however, along with the negative publicity.
Tom De Vocht, who was head of the Flag Land Base in Clearwater, says he arranged a meeting with
Mary Repper, an influential political consultant who had led the campaigns of many of the state and local officials in the area, including the state attorney who had filed the criminal charges against the church. Repper had the reputation of being anti-Scientology, but she agreed to have lunch with Rinder, Rathbun, and Miscavige at the
Fort Harrison Hotel. It turned out that she was a fan of the soap-opera
star
Michelle Stafford, who was a Scientologist. Repper was invited
to Los Angeles to meet her at a Celebrity Centre gala. When she returned, Repper began hosting a series of dinners
and lunches for local officials to meet other Scientology celebrities.
Tom Cruise
dropped by Repper’s house on several occasions to enjoy her famous coconut cake and schmooze with local officials including the mayor of Tampa and influential lawyers and judges. He showed clips of his movies and testified about how Scientology had changed his life. Fox News host
Greta van Susteren provided sunset cruises on her yacht. Repper held a brunch
for Michelle Stafford; the guests were mainly women who were fans of
The Young and the Restless,
including the secretaries of local judges. Meantime, the church threw black-tie galas in the ballroom of the Fort Harrison Hotel, where
Edgar Winter,
Chick Corea, or
Isaac Hayes would perform. The Pinellas County sheriff attended these events, along with the mayors of Clearwater and Tampa, as well as a number of lawyers and judges who had been targeted by the church as community leaders. Rathbun says that when Miscavige learned that Jeffrey Goodis and his wife were big fans of
John Travolta, they were invited to a gala at the Fort Harrison Hotel, and Travolta was asked to thank them for their help. Rathbun says the star was told, “This guy is really going
to bat for us.”

The church poured money into local charities. According to Rathbun and Rinder, the idea was to change the climate
of public opinion and thereby influence the attitude of the courts toward the church. Rathbun says there was a parallel campaign to discredit Lisa McPherson’s family as golddiggers who were exploiting their daughter’s death.

In a recent deposition, Rathbun estimated that the entire campaign to shut down the prosecution of the church cost over $20 to $30 million
. (The civil suit brought by the family settled for an undisclosed sum in 2004.)

SCIENTOLOGY WAS UNDER ATTACK
elsewhere in the world as well.
Germany, acutely sensitive to the danger of extremist movements, viewed Scientology with particular alarm. In
Hamburg, in 1992
, the state parliament created a commission to investigate “destructive groups,” a category that included the
Church of Satan,
Transcendental Meditation, and the
Unification Church, but was mainly aimed at Scientology. Scientologists were barred from holding government jobs and forbidden to join Germany’s main political party, the Christian
Democratic Union, because they weren’t considered Christians. The youth wing of the
party organized boycotts of Cruise’s first
Mission: Impossible
and Travolta’s movie
Phenomenon
. The city of Stuttgart
canceled a concert by Chick Corea when it was discovered that he was a Scientologist. Seventy percent of Germans
favored the idea of banning the organization altogether.

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 affluent, well-educated members of the communities they lived in, with families and regular jobs, and yet they had given themselves over to a mystical science-fiction fantasy that turned them into killers, suicides, or helpless victims.