Going Clear

by Lawrence Wright

  “Almost all religious movements in their very early phase tend to be harsh,” Flinn reminded the court. He contended that they tend to evolve and become more lenient over time. As for disconnection, he declared that it was “functionally equivalent to other types of religious exclusions,” such as shunning of nonbelievers among Mennonites and the Amish. 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.

  In the 1990s, Flinn had interviewed several Scientologists who were doing RPF in Los Angeles. Their quarters didn’t look any worse than his cell in the monastery, where he slept on a straw bed on a board. He asked if they were free to go. They told him they were, but they wanted to stay and do penance.

  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.

  IN TRUTH, the IRS was ill equipped to make a case in court that Scientology—or any other creed—was not a religion. Moreover, the commissioner of the IRS, Fred T. Goldberg, Jr., had to balance the longing on the part of some of his executives to destroy the church against the need to keep his resources, both human and financial, from being sucked into the black hole that Scientology had created.

  One afternoon in Washington, in October 1991, Miscavige and Rathbun were having lunch at the Bombay Club, a swank Indian restaurant near the White House. Miscavige was fed up with the stalemate, which looked as if it could go on forever, in an endless stream of billable hours to the church’s attorneys. At the lunch, Miscavige announced to Gerald Feffer, one of their lawyers, “Marty and I are just going to bypass you entirely. We’re going to see Fred.”

  Feffer laughed at the thought that Miscavige would talk directly to the commissioner.

  “I’m not joking,” Miscavige said. “Marty, do you want to go?”

  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. Both sides had an incentive to bring the hostilities to an end, however. Miscavige and Rathbun made their carefully rehearsed presentation. Miscavige recited a litany of examples in which he felt the IRS had singled out Scientology for unfair treatment. “Am I lying?” he would turn and ask Rathbun theatrically. Rathbun had a briefcase stuffed with documents obtained from the 2,300 Freedom of Information Act lawsuits the church had filed, or the countless public records that the church had combed through. Among the many internal memos the Scientologists had gathered was one they called the Final Solution document. It was the minutes of a meeting in 1974 of several top IRS executives who were trying to define “religion” in a manner that excluded Scientology but not other faiths.

  Miscavige made it clear that the barrage of lawsuits lodged against the IRS would come to an immediate halt if the church got what it wanted, which was an unqualified exemption for all of its activities. When Miscavige finished his presentation, Goldberg called for a break, but he signaled to Rathbun to hang back. Goldberg asked him privately if the government settled, would Scientology also turn off the personal attacks in Freedom magazine?

  “Like a faucet,” Rathbun told him.

  Goldberg appointed his deputy commissioner, John Burke, who had no history with the conflict, to oversee a lengthy review of Scientology’s finances and practices. That process went on for two years. During that time, Rathbun and Miscavige commuted to Washington nearly every week, toting banker’s boxes stuffed with responses to the government’s queries. 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. Miscavige and Rathbun were very much aware that the future of Scientology, if there was one, awaited the result of the IRS probe. 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.

  Overshadowing this debate was an incident that renewed the public concern about the dangerousness of totalistic movements. In February 1993, agents for the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms tried to execute a search warrant on a religious commune a few miles east of Waco, Texas, that was run by a Christian apocalyptic group calling themselves the Branch Davidians. The leader, David Koresh, was stockpiling weapons, practicing polygamy, committing statutory rape, and was said to be physically abusing children, although that last charge was never proved. Following a shoot-out that caused the deaths of four government agents and six Branch Davidians, the FBI began a siege lasting nearly two months and culminating in a catastrophic blaze—broadcast all over the world—that consumed the entire compound. Seventy-five members of the sect died in the final assault, including twenty-five children. The Waco siege threatened to create a backlash against all new religious movements. On the other hand, the government’s handling of the siege, and the disastrous finale, provoked an international uproar. The hazards of unorthodox belief were clearly displayed, as were the limitations of police forces to understand and deal with fanatical movements.

  On October 8, more than a thousand Scientologists stood and cheered in the Los Angeles Sports Arena as Miscavige announced, “The war is over!” The IRS had settled with the church. Although the terms were secret, they were later leaked to the Wall Street Journal. Instead of the $1 billion bill for back taxes and penalties that the church owed, Scientology agreed to pay just $12.5 million to resolve outstanding disputes; the church also agreed to stop the cascade of lawsuits against the agency. In return, the IRS dropped its investigations. “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. For instance, schools using Hubbard educational methods received tax exemption. Eighty percent of individual auditing on the part of members was now a tax-deductible expense. 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.

  “And what about all those battles and wars still being fought overseas?” Miscavige continued. “Well, there’s good news on that front, too.” In the past, he observed, foreign governments would say, “You are an American religion. If the IRS doesn’t recognize you, why should we?” As a part of the settlement, Miscavige revealed, the agency agreed to send notices to every country in the world, explaining what Scientology was. “It is very complete and very accurate,” Miscavige said of the government brochure. “How do I know? We wrote it!”

  Miscavige summed up the mood in the Sports Arena: “The future is ours.”

  A MONTH AFTER the church’s historic triumph over the IRS in 1993, Rathbun blew. He had come to see Miscavige in a different light during the two years they labored over the tax case. The last six months of the tax case had been particularly arduous. During that period, he slept only about four hours a night. The former athlete was a physical wreck. “I’m only doing this for LRH,” he told himself, as he and Miscavige ate dinners together night after night in Washington and trudged back to the Four Seasons in Georgetown. “I’m not going to be this guy’s bitch for the rest of my life.”

  No doubt the stress affected Miscavige as well. On the night of his big victory speech in the Sports Arena, Miscavige showed up for a run-through, but the stage manager, Stefan Castle, was still fiddling with the cues for a complicated laser and pyrotechnic display. According to Castle, Miscavige stormed out into the arena and began to strangle him. Miscavige let him go before any real harm was done, but it was an alarming signal. Amy Scobee, head of the Celebrity Centre at the time, also noted that Miscavige’s personality began to shift immediately after the IRS decision, becoming more aggressive and hostile. At the party at the Celebrity Centre following his speech, Miscavige rudely shoved her aside as he entered. “You just want to get rid of me,” she remembers him saying.

  As far as Rathbun was concerned, it didn’t help that Miscavige scarcely acknowledged him in the speech that night. Immediately after the event, reporters from The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times were calling Rathbun to ask about Miscavige’s salary, which had been disclosed in the IRS documents. Miscavige and his wife together were making more than $100,000 a year—not an extraordinary figure by the standards of world religious leaders, but quite a contrast to the $30 a week most of the Sea Org members were earning. Miscavige was outraged by the impertinence of the reporters, and Rathbun felt that he was taking it out on him. This was all coming at a time when he had been postponing a final visit to see his father, who was dying of cancer.

  The St. Petersburg Times published an editorial demanding that Congress investigate the tax-exemption decision. Rathbun was sent to Florida to turn around the Times editorial board, who were not at all persuaded by his arguments. Miscavige was furious that Rathbun failed to handle the situation. One evening, Shelly Miscavige called everyone in Rathbun’s office together, and in front of his subordinates she stripped the captain’s bars off his uniform.

  The next day, Rathbun took four gold Krugerrands that he had stored in a safe, got on his motorcycle, and drove to Yuma, Arizona. He called his father in Los Angeles from a bar, but a church official answered. He was waiting there with Rathbun’s wife, Anne, who begged him to come back. Rathbun felt guilty and conflicted. Drinking steadily, he somehow made it to San Antonio, although he was in frequent communication with church leaders. He finally agreed to call Miscavige, who apologized for his treatment. “You know the kind of pressure I was under. Please just see me,” the church leader said, adding that he could be in San Antonio in a matter of hours. “No, I want to see the Alamo,” Rathbun told him. They agreed to meet for dinner at the Marriott in New Orleans two days later.

  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.”