Rathbun got the message that Annie had fled the base about an hour and a half after she left. He was panicked. Annie knew as well as anyone the inside story of the secret money transfers to Hubbard, the offshore accounts, the shredding of incriminating documents. She could torpedo the church’s application for tax-exempt status. She also knew the true circumstances of Hubbard’s last days. She might even reunite with Pat Broeker, and the two of them could pose a challenge to Miscavige. Rathbun saw Annie as a potential “doomsday machine.”
According to Gary Morehead, the hulking chief of security at Gold Base at the time, a “blow drill” went into effect immediately. Morehead had refined the process to a model of Sea Org efficiency. Each year, a minimum of a hundred people attempted to escape from Gold, but few got away cleanly. Morehead’s security team kept files on members, containing bank account and credit card numbers, family contacts, even hobbies and predilections. When one senior executive fled in 1992, for instance, Morehead knew he was a baseball fan. He caught him a week later in the parking lot of the San Francisco Giants stadium.
Morehead’s team was aided by the isolation of the base—Gold was in a narrow valley in the middle of the desert, seven miles from the village of Hemet. There was a single highway, easy to patrol; mountain ranges enclosed the base on either side, and the rocky slopes were copiously supplied with cactus and rattlesnakes. Many of the Sea Org members had neither the resources nor the skills to get very far. There was an ingrained distrust of the non-Scientology “wog” world and its system of justice, as well as a fatalistic view of the reach of the church, especially among Sea Org members who, like Annie, had grown up in Scientology. Those who had cell phones used them mainly as walkie-talkies for communication on the base; phone records were monitored and the phones would be taken away if they were used to make outside calls. Few of them had cars of their own, or even driver’s licenses, so the best they could do was to try to get to the bus station before they were discovered missing. By the time the bus made its next stop, however, there was usually a member of Morehead’s team waiting for them. If that failed, Morehead’s security squad would stake out the houses of the blown member’s family and friends, using scanners that could listen in on cordless phones and cell phones, and running the license plates of everyone who came and went. When the team finally confronted their prey, they would try to talk them into returning to the base voluntarily. If that failed, occasionally they would use force.3
Most of those who fled were torn by conflicting emotions. On the one hand, they were often frightened, humiliated, and angry. They desperately wanted a life outside the organization. Some, like Annie, wanted to have children, which she was forbidden to do as a Sea Org member. On the other hand, they believed that their eternal salvation was at stake. The youthful enthusiasm that had caused them to sign their billion-year contract of service may have been dampened, but there was usually some residual idealism that the security team could appeal to. Typically, in these confrontations, Morehead would bring along the escapee’s “opinion leader,” which could be his case supervisor, or another family member who was in Scientology—his wife or his mother, for instance. In many instances, the fleeing Sea Org member didn’t even argue; he just gave up, knowing that he would probably be taken directly to RPF, where he might spend months or years working his way back into good standing.
At any time, a fleeing member could guarantee his safety by simply calling the police, but that rarely if ever happened. The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, whose jurisdiction includes Gold Base, says that there has never been an outcry of abuse, or an accusation of illegal detention from members of the church at the base. Although the Sea Org members lived inside a highly secure compound in a desert hideaway, surrounded by fences and high-tech sensors, most of them weren’t really being held against their will. On the contrary, it was their will that held them. But according to Morehead, no one who escaped ever returned voluntarily.
As soon as Morehead learned that Annie had blown, his team began combing through her personal effects, calling hotels and motels in the area, and looking for clues as to where she was headed. The easiest way of doing that was to have someone pretend to be Annie and try to book a flight, then be told, for instance, “Oh, we already have you on the eleven-ten flight to Boston.” If that didn’t work, another member would call the airlines, posing as a sick relative, and demand help in finding the missing “son” or “wife” or whatever; if the airline representative refused to give out that information, the member would continue asking to speak to a higher-up, until he got the information. In one case, it was the vice president of an airline who, thinking he was responding to a family medical emergency, gave up the pertinent details. Morehead also hired former FBI or CIA agents as private investigators. As soon as an escapee made the mistake of using a credit card, the team would know almost immediately where the charge was placed. Morehead was always surprised at how easily such supposedly confidential information could be obtained. His team quickly learned that Annie was on the flight to Boston.
Minutes later, Marty Rathbun lit out for the airport at a hundred miles an hour. He didn’t even have time to change clothes. He was wearing a T-shirt, sweatpants, and sneakers. His secretary booked a direct flight that would arrive at Boston only twenty minutes after Annie’s, and just twenty minutes before her connecting flight to Bangor.
It was winter and snowing in Boston when he landed, at ten at night, when most of the air traffic had ended. He ran through the nearly empty corridors of Logan Airport to the gate for the Bangor flight. There was a stairwell that led downstairs, and a door that opened to the tarmac. Rathbun rushed outside into the frigid air. The passengers were still on the ramp; Annie was only six feet away from him. “Annie!” he cried. She turned around. As soon as she saw who it was, her shoulders slumped, and she walked toward him.
Rathbun talked to Miscavige and said that he would get a couple of hotel rooms in Boston and bring Annie back in the morning, but Miscavige was unwilling to risk it. He told Rathbun that he had already arranged for John Travolta’s jet to pick them up a few hours later.
Annie and Jim Logan were finally divorced on August 26, 1993. He never saw her again. (She died in 2011 of lung cancer, at the age of fifty-five.)
BY HIS ACTIONS, Miscavige showed his instinctive understanding of how to cater to the sense of entitlement that comes with great stardom. It was not just a matter of disposing of awkward personal problems, such as clinging spouses; there were also the endless demands for nourishment of an ego that is always aware of the fragility of success; the longing for privacy that is constantly at war with the demand for recognition; the need to be fortified against ordinariness and feelings of mortality; and the sense that the quality of the material world that surrounds you reflects upon your own value, and therefore everything must be made perfect. These were qualities Miscavige demanded for himself as well. He surrounded Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman with an approving and completely deferential environment, as spotless and odorless as a fairy tale. A special bungalow was prepared for their stay at Gold Base, along with a private rose garden. When the couple longed to play tennis, a court was rehabilitated, at significant expense. Miscavige heard about the couple’s fantasy of running through a field of wildflowers together, so he had Sea Org members plant a section of the desert; when that failed to meet his expectations, the meadow was plowed up and sodded with grass. Miscavige assigned them a personal chef, Sinar Parman, who had cooked for Hubbard, and had a high-end gym constructed that was mainly for the use of Cruise and himself. When a flood triggered a mudslide that despoiled the couple’s romantic bungalow, Miscavige held the entire base responsible, and ordered everyone to work sixteen-hour days until everything was restored to its previous pristine condition.
In July 1990, Cruise’s involvement with the church became public in an article in the tabloid Star. (Cruise himself didn’t admit his affiliation until two years later, in an interview with Barbara Walters.)
The fact that the information was leaked, probably from a source within the church, was at once a great embarrassment for Miscavige and a relief, because Cruise’s name was now finally linked irrevocably in the public mind with Scientology. He offered an unparalleled conduit to Hollywood celebrity culture, and Miscavige went to great lengths to court him. At Thanksgiving, 1990, he ordered Parman to cook dinner for Cruise’s whole family. Miscavige even arranged for Cruise to place some investments with the Feshbach brothers—Kurt, Joseph, and Matthew—three Palo Alto, California, stockbrokers. They were devoted Scientologists who had made a fortune by selling short on the stock market. According to Rathbun, when Cruise’s investments actually lost money, the Feshbachs obligingly replenished the star’s account with their personal funds.
Early on, Cruise and Miscavige shared a powerful sense of identity with each other. They were both short but powerfully built, “East Coast personalities,” as Parman diagnosed them. They shared a love of motorcycles, cars, and adventurous sports. Miscavige was bedazzled by the glamour surrounding the star, who introduced him to a social set outside of Scientology, a world Miscavige knew little about. He had spent most of his life cloistered in the Sea Org. He was thrilled when he visited Cruise on the set of Days of Thunder, and the actor took him skydiving for the first time. Cruise, for his part, fell under the spell of Miscavige’s commanding personality. He modeled his determined naval-officer hero in A Few Good Men on Miscavige, a fact that the church leader liked to brag about.
Just before Christmas, 1990, Sinar Parman was told that Tom and Nicole were going to get married, and that he and a Sea Org pastry chef, along with their wives, would be cooking for the wedding party. Parman was assured that they would get paid for their trouble; in the meantime, they should buy some civilian clothes suitable for a cold climate. Parman went shopping and put everything on his credit card, along with a Christmas present for Cruise. Then Cruise’s private jet flew them to Telluride, Colorado, where the wedding took place. They spent three days preparing meals for guests. Cruise’s auditor, Ray Mithoff, performed the ceremony, and David Miscavige served as best man. Afterward, Parman was informed that Miscavige had changed his mind about paying for his services and the expenses incurred. Parman was left with hundreds of dollars charged to his credit card, which he struggled to pay off on his Sea Org salary—fifty dollars a week at the time.
At first, Tom and Nicole seemed like the ideal Scientology power match. They were intelligent, articulate, extraordinarily attractive people. At Gold Base, Tom reached OT III. He would have spent a considerable amount of time after that self-auditing in order to exorcise his body thetans. Although Nicole didn’t share Tom’s obvious enthusiasm for Scientology—she was a cooler personality in any case—she was drawn along by his intensity. She went Clear in no time. Within a year, she had reached OT II, but then, mysteriously, stopped. A candidate who has begun the OT levels is not supposed to pause until OT III has been achieved. Miscavige suspected the influence of a Suppressive Person—specifically, Kidman’s father, Antony Kidman, a clinical psychologist who had written several popular self-help books in Australia. From the beginning Kidman was privately considered a Potential Trouble Source.
One day at Gold Base, Marty Rathbun summoned a sixteen-year-old Sea Org member, Marc Headley, and told him that he had been selected to undergo special auditing. He was to tell no one about it, including his co-workers and his family. And by the way, the auditor would be Tom Cruise.
Headley reported to a large conference room. Right away he noticed Nicole Kidman, who was also receiving auditing, and Kirstie Alley, who he later came to believe was there mainly as a “celebrity prop,” since she did little other than read.
“Hello, I am Tom,” Headley remembers Cruise saying, vigorously shaking his hand.4 He handed Headley the metal cans that were attached to the E-Meter and asked if the temperature in the room was all right. Then he instructed Headley to take a deep breath and let it out. This was a metabolism test, which is supposed to show whether the preclear was prepared for the session. Apparently, the needle on the E-Meter didn’t fall sufficiently. Headley was so starstruck that he was having trouble focusing.
“Did you get enough sleep?” Cruise asked.
“Yeah.”
“Did you get enough to eat?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you take your vitamins?”
Headley said he never took vitamins.
“That might be the problem,” Cruise said. He went into the pantry, which was filled with snacks for the celebrities. Headley was used to the meager Sea Org fare, and he was taken aback by the cornucopia laid out for the stars to nibble on. As Cruise rummaged through the cabinets, Headley bit into a cheese Danish. The actor found several vitamins and then asked, “Do you take a lot of bee pollen?”
Headley had no idea what he meant.
“Never had bee pollen?” Cruise said excitedly. “Oh, that will do the trick for sure.”
He led Headley to his Yamaha motorcycle and rode the two of them to the base canteen. It was dinnertime, and the canteen was filled with Headley’s gawking co-workers. Headley was surprised to learn that there was bee pollen for sale, although he says Cruise didn’t pay for it; he just grabbed it and they went back to the conference room. This time, Headley passed the metabolism test, although he privately credited the Danish over the bee pollen.
According to Headley, Cruise helped him through the Upper Indoctrination Training Routines. “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. Another exercise involved telling an ashtray to stand up, at which point the preclear stands and lifts the ashtray, thanks the ashtray, and then commands the ashtray to sit down. With each repetition, the preclear’s commands get louder, so soon he is yelling at the ashtray at the top of his voice. The purpose of this drill is to come to the realization that your intention is separate from your words and the sound waves that carry them. These procedures went on for hours, as Headley robotically responded to Cruise’s commands. “You learn that if you don’t do what they say, they’ll just ask the same questions five million times,” Headley recalled. At one point, he fell asleep, but he kept responding automatically. This training went on for hours every day for several weeks, until Tom and Nicole returned to Hollywood.
When Nicole moved into Tom’s mansion in Pacific Palisades, they were under constant watch. Miscavige’s wife, Shelly, interviewed Scientology candidates for Tom and Nicole’s household staff. According to former executives, the Scientologists who worked for Cruise and Kidman reported to the church about whatever they observed. Miscavige offered the couple significant gifts of service from Sea Org members. They installed a sophisticated audiovisual system. Sinar Parman, the chef, says he helped design the kitchen. There was a comfortable, symbiotic relationship between the star and the church. The use of unpaid church clergy to help him renovate his house, hire his staff, and install sophisticated technology was simply a part of the deal.5
PAUL HAGGIS WAS ALWAYS a workaholic, and as his career took off, he spent even less time with his family. He wouldn’t get home till late at night or early in the morning. His three daughters scarcely knew who he was.
In general, Haggis was far more interested in causes than people. He drove an environmentally friendly car—a little yellow Mini Cooper with a WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER bumper sticker. The Haggis house became a regular stop for the social-justice sector of the Hollywood left. Once when Haggis threw a fund-raiser for Tibet, the Dalai Lama came. The backyard was strewn with celebrities and chanting monks. The girls thought it was hysterical. Barbra Streisand introduced herself to the Dalai Lama, and he asked what she did. “A little singing, a little dancing,” she tol
d him.
For years, Paul and Diane’s marriage had been in turmoil, and in 1983 they began an epic and bitter divorce. The proceedings lasted for nine years. The girls lived with Diane, visiting Paul every other weekend. During this period of estrangement from his wife, Haggis flew to New York with a casting director, who was also a Scientologist. They shared a kiss. He later confessed the incident during an auditing session and was sent to the Ethics Office, where he was assigned some minor punishment. He had been to Ethics before, usually for missing coursework, but he was beginning to feel that the more famous he became, the less likely he was to be rebuked for behavior that was considered “out ethics” for other members.
Anytime Haggis boggled at an illogical or fanciful piece of data, he was invariably reminded that it was his failure entirely. He had come into Scientology as an adult, so his experience outside the church still informed his judgments. When he stumbled on something in Scientology that he thought was ridiculous, he would make a mental detour around it, not wanting to spend the time and money to do the “repairs” that his supervisors would prescribe. Although he never lost his skepticism, his daughters were born into the religion. They were schooled in it from the beginning. Nearly everyone they knew was a Scientologist.
Each of the girls was a near clone of one of the parents. Alissa and Katy were Paul, pale and blond, but more sharp-featured, with dimpled noses and sculpted cheekbones. Lauren, the middle daughter, was Diane, inheriting her half-Greek mother’s olive skin and dark, Mediterranean eyes. The girls were bright, inquisitive, and cheerful by nature, but their parents’ divorce was an endless, churning, distracting, heartbreaking trauma, and it took a toll.