While the group traditionally treats the outside world with grave suspicion, at that time many inside the organization were discussing the way that a classic Scientology strategy had neutralized an imminent threat from the media. John Sweeney, an award-winning journalist working for BBC Television in London, had been sent to America to see if Scientology was a cult or a religion. Certain that Sweeney would be critical, they rolled out a familiar Scientology tactic to discredit him. The plan was simple but effective, to harass Sweeney and his camera team around the clock until he eventually lost his cool and “freaked out”—ideally, with the shadowing Scientology camera team there to capture the action. Showing critics to be angry or out of control fatally undermined any arguments, however coherent, they advanced about Scientology. As a former Scientologist observed, “It’s a very straightforward plan. They ‘bull bait’ you until you blow, pressuring you for so long that they mess up your mind.”
The scheme worked better than expected. In March, at Scientology’s alarmist Psychiatry of Death exhibition in Hollywood, Sweeney finally lost his temper, shouting and screaming at senior Scientologist Tommy Davis, son of actress Anne Archer, who had been hounding him throughout his trip. As Sweeney later explained, “I have been shouted at, spied on, had my hotel invaded at midnight, been denounced as a ‘bigot’ by star Scientologists, and been chased around the streets of Los Angeles by sinister strangers. Back in Britain, strangers have called on my neighbors, my mother-in-law’s house, and someone spied on my wedding and fled the moment he was challenged.”
When the confrontation was screened on the BBC’s flagship investigative TV show, Panorama, in May, it earned record ratings—and 2 million hits on YouTube worldwide. While Scientology took full propaganda advantage, spending an estimated sixty thousand dollars on promotional DVDs and other materials, the majority of comments were in favor of the beleaguered reporter. “After a week of Scientology, I had lost my voice but not my mind,” Sweeney said, now realizing, with the benefit of hindsight, that he was set up.
Even as Scientologists were discussing their coup against the BBC, Eugene Ingrams, a notorious private investigator regularly employed by Scientology, was probing the family background of Southern California radio talk-show host Vince Daniels after he had dared to criticize the work of Narconon, the group’s drug rehabilitation program, on his show. By August he had resigned from KCAA radio station, citing differences with the management.
While Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard placed great credence on black propaganda, Miscavige had succeeded beyond Hubbard’s dreams in executing the founder’s policy of using celebrities to bang the drum for the faith. Markert claimed that Miscavige indicated that stars like Tom Cruise and John Travolta would be used to spearhead the drive into Britain and Europe. Tom would build on his existing role as a roving ambassador, using his celebrity to gain access to politicians and other movers and shakers in business and showbiz. As Miscavige observed, a politician did not have to be a Scientologist to promote the cause; he just needed a good Scientologist behind him. “He made it clear that celebrities like Tom Cruise are doing everything they can to get into Europe and give Scientology a higher profile,” recalled Markert. “Miscavige sees it as a big market—Scientology has already been successful in Italy. He talked about it in depth.” The Scientology leader even boasted that Tom’s studio, United Artists, was seen within the organization as essentially a pro-Scientology outfit. He hoped to see the studio increasingly staffed by dedicated Sea Org disciples who had cut their technical teeth at the Gold production studios in Hemet. In Lions for Lambs, actor Michael Pena, composer Mark Isham, cameramen, musical technicians, and other production staff were Scientologists.
Within weeks of meeting Miscavige, Markert, sometime Scientology bookseller, intelligence officer, and church minister, wanted out and was helped to escape by a former Sea Org member before flying to Germany. His defection, as he anticipated, brought the wrath of the movement on his head, with Markert accused of being a con man, a convicted criminal, a “plant” by German security forces, someone who was only briefly in the organization and, bizarrely, a psychiatrist. The efforts of Scientology and its front group, Religious Freedom Watch, were partly successful, in that a German broadcasting station concluded that his story was contradictory and not entirely credible. However, the ferocity and extent of the attempts to discredit him could be seen as evidence of his previous value to the group, prompting Ursula Caberta to ask him if he was hiding vital information about the group.
Here the story becomes as murky as any when trying to penetrate the labyrinthine world of Scientology and the mind-set of its followers. When I formally asked a lawyer acting for Scientology why they had devoted so many resources to vilifying someone they claimed had only been a member for a brief period of time, his response was intriguing. In a written reply, he categorically stated: “Christian Markert has never met with or spoken with Mr. Miscavige and has never been to Golden Era Productions’ facilities. The first time he set foot in a Scientology church was when he joined staff at the Church of Scientology of Buffalo at the beginning of April 2007, claiming he had a desire to enlighten people about Scientology. He was hired to become that church’s bookstore clerk.”
Yet a letter, dated March 9, 2007, which originates from the Church of Scientology’s own legal office in Buffalo, directly contradicts that assertion. The letter was in support of Markert’s application for a visa as a temporary religious worker: “Mr. Markert is fully qualified to receive an R-1 Visa as he has been a Scientologist for about ten years and in the past three years has demonstrated his high skill in the field of Dianetics. His knowledge and skill in Church scriptures is very much needed by the Church in Buffalo to assist as a minister at the church.”
A church minister or con man? Ursula Caberta believes that the fuss surrounding Markert stems directly from Tom’s friend David Miscavige. Under Scientology policy it is a high crime for a church member to fail to write a “knowledge report” about anyone they suspect of being about to leave or “blow” the organization. It would be inconceivable for Miscavige to be seen to be associated with a renegade so soon before his departure. Technically, he would be failing in his duty and would have to be punished. Hence the vigorous attempts to discredit the hapless Markert.
If he was in fact a practitioner of Scientology’s dark arts, Markert saw into the heart of the organization. “Scientology is not about money,” he said. “It is not a religion; it is an extreme political organization. All Hubbard wanted was world power. He wanted to run the planet.” Tom Cruise’s work in spreading the word about his faith gave what Markert now considers to be a “dangerous and criminal cult” a spurious legitimacy. “He makes Scientology seem innocent and safe, especially to the young. After seeing what I have seen, I have no hesitation in saying that Tom Cruise is one of the most dangerous celebrities in the world.”
While this is a statement by a disillusioned defector, it is by no means an isolated or maverick opinion. Perhaps a fairer assessment is that Tom Cruise achieves his power and influence by cleverly exploiting the fact that we live in a sound-bite media society and worship at the temple of celebrity. He is a leading member of a modern breed of celebrity advocates who use their star status to gain access to the corridors of power, the TV studio, and the cover story.
Just as Bob Geldof and Bono have effectively used their contacts and celebrity to fight against Third World poverty, so Tom Cruise has campaigned for his controversial religion. The difference is that Bono and Geldof want to change the world, while Tom is part of an organization that wants to conquer the planet. Whereas Geldof and Bono’s mission is out in the open, Tom’s organization operates by disguise, hiding behind focused campaigns against specific drugs like Ritalin or antidepressants when its true purpose is the “global obliteration” of psychiatrists and other health-care professionals.
Unlike politicians, celebrity advocates like Tom Cruise are able to avoid detailed scrutiny of their polic
ies or positions. Media outlets are simply delighted to have them in front of the camera or on the magazine cover. As long as Tom’s presence or picture boosts ratings and sales, journalists are prepared to jump through any hoop, such as attending Scientology courses, in order to gain access. For that matter, as then White House aide Scooter Libby demonstrated, politicians love to feel the warm glow generated by a Hollywood star in their midst. In this sycophantic climate, Tom has become the master of the sound bite, promoting his controversial cause by assertion rather than argument, offering slogans instead of intellectual substance. For instance, how many politicians could have stated unchallenged, as Tom did during a TV interview on Entertainment Tonight in 2005, that psychiatry was a “Nazi science” and that methadone, a drug used to fight heroin addiction, was originally called Adolophine after Adolf Hitler? Although neither statement is accurate, Tom’s popularity as an actor inevitably give his pronouncements weight and authenticity.
In an era when Tom is much more powerful than the average senator, with a worldwide reach and influence, he and Scientology are given a free pass, one that they have used to great effect. For example, according to the Mental Health Matters Political Action Committee, some twenty-eight Scientology bills have been introduced by members of the Arizona state legislature aimed at limiting access to treatment and medication for children with mental health disorders. On its Web site, the lobbying group asks voters if they want Tom Cruise to make future decisions about mental health care in their state. It is therefore ironic that, unbeknownst to the actor, Dr. Gary Lebendiger, Tom’s stepbrother from his father’s second marriage, is a child psychiatrist.
Of course, Tom is merely a smiling conduit for the philosophy of the man he calls his mentor, L. Ron Hubbard. By definition, everything LRH wrote about psychiatry—and, for that matter birth, marriage, and life—is deemed sacred and inviolable. His word is Scientology lore. Neither Tom nor any other Scientologist can deviate from his teachings or his policies. This is one of the fatal flaws in Tom’s prognosis for the planet. Take Hubbard’s obsession with psychiatry. Apart from the personal slight he felt when mental health experts dismissed his book Dianetics, the bedrock of Scientology, Hubbard was learning and writing about psychiatry in the 1940s and ’50s, when inquiry into what makes the brain tick was still in its relative infancy.
Psychiatry, like computing, is an evolving science. For Hubbard to make universal rules and edicts about the science of mental health is akin to laying out iron laws about computing based on the cumbersome machines of the postwar period, when it took rooms full of equipment to perform fewer functions than today’s microscopic silicon chips. Philosophically, Hubbard’s worldview was defined by the state of the planet just after World War II. It is intellectually static, unable to accept or absorb any progress in civilization since then. It is no exaggeration to state that Scientology is the intellectual equivalent to the Flat Earth Society, a group locked in a time warp, inexorably bound by the rules defined by its founder. Even today, for example, high-ranking Scientologists communicate by encrypted telex—rather than more modern methods such as e-mail—because Hubbard decreed it.
If, like the Flat Earth Society, Scientology were content to be a parochial, inward-looking club, there would be little enough harm in it. But it is not. The relentless expansion of the organization and its front groups has been made possible by the charm and persuasiveness of its poster boy, whose modernity, familiarity, and friendliness mask the totalitarian zeal of his faith. Perhaps the media, politicians, and public should examine Tom’s claims with greater rigor and skepticism. When comedians ridicule Tom Cruise, the joke may be on him—but it is also on ourselves.
More than any star today, Tom is a movie messiah who reflects and refracts the fears and doubts of our times, trading on the unfettered power of modern celebrity, our embrace of religious extremism, and the unnerving scale of globalization. While advances in science, medicine, and technology give the illusion of modernity, the world is seemingly gripped by a harking back to apocalyptic fundamentalism. Current discourse all too often resembles that of the period before the Age of Reason and Enlightenment when messianical theories held sway. In the marketplace of ideas, rational debate and scientific method are frequently shouted down by the most extreme—and unproven—dogmas. And Tom has been one of those shouting the loudest, selling the dubious, unproven wares of his faith.
In an age of material plenty and spiritual famine, Tom Cruise is compelling—and dangerous—because he stands for something, extolling the virtues of a faith that is parodied and feared in equal measure. This faith, like his own personality, exists and thrives by disguise. Truly theirs is a match made in heaven—if they believed in it.
While he is clearly “one of the premier American actors of his generation,” taking his rightful place alongside such luminaries as Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, and Julia Roberts when he received this honor from New York’s Museum of the Moving Image in November 2007, there is another dimension to Tom’s appeal. What you see is not what you get. With his boy-next-door good looks, energy, and winning smile, he should join the likes of Tom Hanks and Jimmy Stewart as one of the ordinary guys with universal audience appeal, an actor who makes us feel safe and secure in an uncertain world. Yet his history suggests that the man behind the smile is altogether more edgy, threatening, and even sinister. Steven Spielberg recognized this quality when he directed him in Minority Report. Spielberg instructed Tom not to smile for the role because he understood the iconography of the Cruise grin. On one occasion he burst into a characteristic smile and Spielberg found himself thinking, “I get it. He has that deliciously indescribable magic that cannot be analyzed or replicated. He is in every sense a movie star.”
He is a man, too, of contradictions: an uncertain child waiting for an undeserved blow from his father, an adult searching for certainty and control. An alpha male who does his own stunts, lest there be a challenge he could not meet, seeking approval from the ghost of his bullying father. Now a father himself, he clearly loves family life and yet crusades for a faith that routinely sets loved ones against one another. A romantic who falls in love in a heartbeat and yet walks away without a backward glance. A certain, purposeful presence but a man who hates to be alone. During a career spanning a quarter of a century, he has played pilot, doctor, secret agent, warrior, assassin, vampire, and war hero. Perhaps the most complex character he has ever played is Tom Cruise himself.
UPDATE
It was the Tom Cruise blockbuster of the year, watched by an audience of millions around the world. Yet even though the sensational film was the talk of the water cooler for weeks, the nine-minute solo performance, entitled “Tom Cruise on Tom Cruise,” did not have its premiere in a movie theater.
From this humble debut on the Internet, the film of Tom, unshaven and dressed in a black turtleneck as he talked about his passion for Scientology, rapidly exploded into a global phenomenon. Viewers gawped and giggled as the movie star, in a performance both rambling and inarticulate, tried to explain his religious credo. The only people not smiling were Tom Cruise and his church. As the actor later told Oprah Winfrey about the video, “I was receiving an award that evening for global literacy. It was a very private moment. I’m actually talking to my congregation.”
Actually he was being awarded Scientology’s first-ever Freedom of Valor medal at a 2004 gala for thousands of fellow believers at Scientology’s English headquarters, Saint Hill Manor. Although I mentioned salient features of his pre-taped interview in the original edition of this book, the video proved that a picture, especially a moving picture of the biggest Hollywood star in the world, was worth 10,000 words.
Its release ignited a firestorm of controversy. This was Tom Cruise as never seen before, unguarded, unvarnished and, to many, unhinged. He spoke as though in a dazed reverie, almost as if he were communing with himself. From time to time, he would laugh maniacally for little or no reason. His speech was peppered with Scientology jargon, confirming
his credentials as an ardent follower of his faith.
As the Mission: Impossible theme played in background, he explained how Scientologists were the “authorities on getting people off drugs, the authorities on the mind,” and the only people who can bring peace and unite cultures. As an ambassador for his faith, he insisted that the world’s politicians were waiting for Scientologists to provide solutions to global problems. “Traveling the world and meeting the people that I’ve met, talking with these leaders . . . they want help, and they are depending on people who know and can be effective and do it and that’s us. That is our responsibility to do it.” Such was his dedication to “clearing the planet” that he had little time to enjoy his private jets, custom-made motorbikes, race cars, $35-million home in Hollywood, or skiing and snowmobiling at his mountain retreat in Colorado. “I wish the world was a different place. I’d like to go on vacation and go and romp and play . . . but I can’t.”
Despite his absolute certainty that only he and his fellow believers could solve the problems of the planet, he warned his congregation that the journey would be “rough and tumble . . . wild and woolly.” Finally, a portentous voiceover announced that “Tom Cruise has introduced LRH [L. Ron Hubbard] technology to over one billion people of earth. And that’s only the first wave he’s unleashed. Which is why the story of Tom Cruise, Scientologist, has only just begun.”
Tom Cruise Page 36
