The Church of Fear: Inside The Weird World of Scientology (3 page)

To counter-attack, Hubbard created a policy called ‘Fair Game’ where enemies of the Church could be ‘injured, tricked, sued, lied to or destroyed’. Russell Miller says he faced a terrifying campaign of harassment by the Church for his heretical biography.

What did Miller think of the Church’s claim that it is a religion? ‘It exhibits all the symptoms of a classic cult. It draws people in when they are vulnerable; it causes them to disconnect from their friends and family; it makes them believe that the truth is within the cult and the world is a dangerous place.’

L Ron’s Church suffered scandal after scandal in the sixties and seventies. On the run from the authorities, it went, like the owl and the pussycat, to sea. Miller tells the story hilariously in his book on Hubbard. After one stormy crossing too many the Church and its Founder ended up back in the United States. Perhaps the darkest days for the Church were in 1977 when the FBI discovered that the Church had been running two operations, one to frame the journalist Paulette Cooper by sending bomb threats to itself as if from her and the other to penetrate the US Government. The FBI arrested Mr Hubbard’s wife, Mary Sue and other senior Scientologists, and LRH himself went on the run, vanishing off the face of the earth.

In 1984 the Church was accused of blackmailing its adherents to stay in, lest their intimate secrets be leaked out. Blackmail is a heavy word. But it was used by Judge Breckenridge sitting in the Los Angeles Superior Court, in his ruling against the Church and in favour of a group of ex-Scientologists, led by Gerry Armstrong, the chap who’d previously compared Mr Hubbard to Chaplin and Hitler. The Church had asked Armstrong, a dedicated Scientologist, to prepare documents for a planned biography of the Founder. Armstrong duly dug around the attic at Gilman Hot Springs, an old gamblers’ den on the edge of the Californian desert, handpicked by the Church as its secret base, now known as Gold or Int. In the attic Armstrong found a treasure trove of paperwork on Mr Hubbard but they proved to Armstrong’s satisfaction that Hubbard was a liar and a fantasist. He ran for it, taking the documents with him. The Church sued Armstrong and his fellows, and lost.

Judge Breckenridge wrote in his judgment: ‘The picture painted by these former dedicated Scientologists, all of whom were intimately involved with LRH, or Mary Jane Hubbard, or of the Scientology Organization, is on the one hand pathetic, and on the other, outrageous. Each of these persons literally gave years of his or her respective life in support of a man, LRH, and his ideas. Each has manifested a waste and loss or frustration which is incapable of description.’

Judge Breckenridge found: ‘Each [ex-Scientologist] has broken with the movement for a variety of reasons, but at the same time, each is still bound by the knowledge that the Church has in its possession his or her most inner thoughts and confessions, all recorded in “Pre-Clear (P.C.) folders” or other security files of the organization, and that the Church or its minions is fully capable of intimidation or other physical or psychological abuse if it suits their ends. The record is replete with evidence of such abuse.’

Judge Breckenridge continued: ‘The practice of culling supposedly confidential “P.C. folders or files” to obtain information for purposes of intimidation and or harassment is repugnant and outrageous.’

The judge cited a 1970 French police investigation into the Church, which concluded that ‘under the pretext of “freeing humans” (it) is nothing in reality but a vast enterprise to extract the maximum amount of money from its adepts by pseudo-scientific theories… pushed to extremes (a machine to detect lies, its own particular phraseology) to estrange adepts from their families and to exercise a kind of blackmail against persons who do not wish to continue.’

Nothing much had changed, said Judge Breckenridge: ‘From the evidence presented to this court in 1984, at the very least, similar conclusions can be drawn. In addition to violating and abusing its own members civil rights, the organization over the years with its “Fair Game” doctrine has harassed and abused those persons not in the Church whom it perceives as enemies. The organization clearly is schizophrenic and paranoid, and this bizarre combination seems to be a reflection of its founder LRH. The evidence portrays a man who has been virtually a pathological liar when it comes to his history, background, and achievements. The writings and documents in evidence additionally reflect his egoism, greed, avarice, lust for power, and vindictiveness and aggressiveness against persons perceived by him to be disloyal or hostile. At the same time it appears that he is charismatic and highly capable of motivating, organizing, controlling, manipulating, and inspiring his adherents. He has been referred to during the trial as a “genius,” a “revered person,” a man who was “viewed by his followers in awe.” Obviously, he is and has been a very complex person, and that complexity is further reflected in his alter ego, the Church of Scientology.’

Hubbard died in 1986, a weird recluse. His autopsy said he was full of VISTARIL® or hydroxyzine hydrochloride, prescribed for disturbed or hysterical patients, and, of course, the very kind of psychiatric drugs the Church condemns.

But that was all a very long time ago. In the 21st century the Church is engaged in a pretty much successful global march to win respect and the right to call itself a religion. The church boasts of having 11 million square feet of property around the world, a somewhat idiosyncratic index of holiness.

In October 2006 the Church was set to open its spanking new
£
25 million centre in the City of London. Our Great British Weather, sadly, rained on their parade. Drizzle, drizzle, relentless drizzle. I came along to do a spot of filming from the street. As soon as we started, an official of the Church, Janet Laveau, asked us to stop filming. I told her we worked for BBC Panorama and the law allowed us to film in a London street. She said that they had blocked the street, it was a private function and she had a problem with Panorama. Janet was referring to the BBC Panorama documentary, ‘
The Road to Total Freedom?
’ filmed in 1987, 23 years before I joined the BBC. I repeated that that the BBC is allowed to film in London streets. We could not film inside the Church (or Org, in
SciSpeak
) but we could film on the street. I pointed out to her that had I been a car, she would have had a point because cars were not allowed on the road today. But I was not a car.

We filmed a top City of London copper, Chief Superintendant Kevin Hurley, splendidly reassuring in his uniform, walk up to the podium. The police chief praised the Church as a ‘force for good’ in London, ‘raising the spiritual wealth of society’.

It was time for the pope of Scientology to wow the faithful. David Miscavige bounded onto the stage to the rapture of the crowd, not perhaps as big as the organizers had planned. The Church of Scientology claims to have more than 10 million devotees worldwide, with 123,000 in the UK but the crowd did not look much bigger than a thousand people, if that. Quite a few seemed to be European, not British, as if they had been shipped in to bulk the numbers. But they all loved Miscavige. In the flesh, he has the manner of a high-end estate agent, smooth, polished, markedly short. The drizzle never stopped. The umbrellas twirled prettily.

‘Thank you very much,’ said Miscavige. ‘It’s a pleasure to join you on a day that genuinely qualifies as momentous…’

Miscavige is an Angel to some, a devil to others. A former Catholic high school drop-out, born in Philadelphia and raised in a suburb of that great city just across the state line in New Jersey, Miscavige suffered from asthma and allergies until his father, a trumpet player, took him along to a Scientologist and he was cured. The family embraced Scientology and moved to Saint Hill in England, where Miscavige, a precocious achiever, became an auditor at the age of 12. He joined the Sea Org – the Church’s priesthood – and became a favourite cameraman and messenger of Mr Hubbard. When the old prophet died in 1986, Miscavige rose to the top, proclaiming to grieving Scientologists that LRH had ‘discarded the body he had used in this lifetime.’

Intense, clever, Miscavige is known in the Church’s peculiar corporate-speak as Chairman of the Board or COB. He is given to grand claims: ‘If you’ve heard we’re the fastest growing religion on earth - it’s true.’

To the Church’s apostles, like Cruise and Travolta, Miscavige is a great servant of mankind. Some outsiders might consider that he has proved to be a deft and formidable operator, especially good at exploiting the weaknesses of those who criticise the Church. Ex-members of the Church, some of whom remain Scientologists and some of who no longer have anything to do with Scientology, say their experience of Miscavige was somewhat different, to put it mildly.

Whatever the truth about its leader, it is a fact that under Miscavige the Church of Scientology has been gaining acquiescence around the world.

In Germany, forever fearful of repeating the terrible mistakes of history, the Church of Scientology has faced serious, government-backed scrutiny for decades because of fears that it is a totalitarian organisation. The Church has fought back. In 1996 a number of famous Americans wrote an open letter to the then Chancellor, Helmut Kohl. Signatories included Bertram Fields (who just so happens to be Tom Cruise’s lawyer), Goldie Hawn, Dustin Hoffman, Larry King, Mario Puzo, Tina Sinatra, Oliver Stone and the late Gore Vidal. They wrote: ‘In the Germany of the 1930s, Hitler made religious intolerance official government policy. In the 1930s, it was the Jews. Today it is the Scientologists… We implore you to bring an end to this shameful pattern of organized persecution. It is a disgrace to the German nation.’

In 2008, Tom Cruise starred as the great anti-Nazi German hero, Claus Von Stauffenberg in the film ‘
Valkyrie
’. That raised the question whether Scientology’s number one parishioner, Cruise, had made a brave film about a German hero. Or whether he had pulled off a great PR coup by taking on the role of a great enemy of totalitarian power, while being a member of what some say is a totalitarian cult – and in so doing subtly undermining one of the Church’s strongest critics.

In the United States, it is a similar story of official hostility to the Church weakening under attack, then morphing, first into acquiescence with the Church’s assertion that it should be classed as a religion, then actively promulgating that claim to other countries. The Church of Scientology had long been considered a business, not a religion, in the United States. In 1993 that changed when during the Clinton Presidency the Inland Revenue Service reversed its previous position and declared the Church a religion, saving it millions in taxes and giving it a shield against those who would dare criticize it. A week after the great breakthrough, 10,000 Scientologists went to an arena in LA. Chairman of the Board Miscavige took to the stage in black tie and spoke for two-and-a-half hours flanked by two flaming torches. He denounced the Church’s enemies, swayed by a hive-mind of psychiatrists, ‘pea-brained psych-indoctrinated mental midgets’ bent on creating a ‘slave society’, damned the IRS civil servants as ‘vampires’ and warned the Church’s foes: ‘We know who they are and we’ll get to them last.’ Miscavige’s trademark manner of address seems to include common themes of vilification and revenge.

Miscavige announced the headline news: ‘There will be no billion dollar tax bill which we can’t pay. There will be no more discrimination. There will be no more 2,500 cases against parishioners across the US. The pipeline of IRS false reports won’t keep flowing across the planet. There will be no more nothing – because on October first, 1993, at 8:37 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, the IRS issued letters recognizing Scientology and every one of its organizations as fully tax exempt! The war is over!’

Everyone clapped.

On this side of the Atlantic, many councils give the Church local tax breaks but as far as the Charity Commissioners are concerned, for the purposes of English charity law: ‘Scientology is not a religion.’

In Britain, Scientology’s war, as it were, is not over.

L Ron Hubbard was, whatever else you think of him, a shrewd man who knew that harnessing the power of celebrity to his cause was a smart thing to do. He jumped on the celebrity bandwagon faster than most. Miscavige has followed in his master’s footsteps. Ex-Scientologists say that the Church under Miscavige deliberately groomed and cocooned its celebrities, making life sweet for them in its own Celebrity Centres. In return, the Church’s celebrities have banged the drum for Scientology. Its film and TV star apostles include Cruise, Travolta, Kirstie Allie from ‘
Cheers
’, Anne Archer, Nancy Cartwright, the actress who voices Bart in TV’s ‘
The Simpsons
’, Elisabeth Moss, who played Peggy Olson in
Mad Men
, and, before they left the Church, Jason Beghe, star of
GI Jane
and TV dramas like
CSI
and
Californication
and Larry Anderson of
Star Trek: Insurrection
and
Aliens Go Home. ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
’, Will Smith, has never publically committed to Scientology, but Smith has said: ‘I just think a lot of the ideas in Scientology are brilliant and revolutionary and non-religious.’ In 2010 Smith gave $1.2 million to a school in California he founded which uses L Ron’s ‘Study Technology’.

In Britain, again the picture is not so rosy. The Church can point to just one MP who has told the House of Commons it is not a cult and a single man of the cloth, the Bishop of Norwich, who has questioned the ‘unexamined assumption’ that it is a cult. There are no celebrities who have embraced the Church of Scientology hook, line and sinker. The nearest the Church got to landing a British celeb was Peaches Geldof, who appeared to have a brief fling with the Church in 2009. She is now out.

TV stars like Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson and Jonathan Ross entertain Tom Cruise on their shows and do not seem to question him much or at all about Scientology. Perhaps this is not remarkable but in his autobiography Ross gives the Church the benefit of the doubt. Ross writes in his book, ‘
Why Do I Say These Things
’: ‘I don’t think Scientologists get a fair deal. I don’t know enough about the religion itself… But I do know that the handful of people I’ve met who’ve happened to be Scientologists have been some of the nicest and most courteous of any it has been my pleasure to spend time with.’ Ross cites John Travolta – ‘very happy and stable and together’, Will Smith – ‘if he is one’ – and Tom Cruise: ‘incredibly down to earth for a star of his stature. When he walks into a room, he pays attention to everyone, no matter what job they’re doing on a shoot – getting the coffee, doing the make-up, lugging the camera or sound equipment around – he doesn’t differentiate… when he leaves the room, everybody loves him’.