Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief(72)
David Miscavige speaking at the inauguration of the Church of Scientology in Madrid, 2004
Miscavige was also well schooled in intrigue. Although he was still quite a young man, he had been running operations for Hubbard for several years, with brutal efficiency. In order to eliminate Hubbard’s designated successors, however, Miscavige needed a lieutenant with similar qualities of remorselessness and total commitment.
MARK RATHBUN CAME FROM a distinguished but deeply troubled family. His father was a graduate of the US Naval Academy. His artistic mother was the daughter of Haddon Sundblom, the illustrator who created some of the most enduring images in American commercial history—Aunt Jemima, the Quaker Oats man, and the famous Santa Claus drinking a Coca-Cola beside the Christmas tree. The Rathbun family lived in Marin County, a Bohemian enclave just north of San Francisco. When Mark was a young child, his mother had a series of nervous breakdowns. On five or six occasions she received what was the standard treatment of the day, electroshock therapy. In September 1962, when Mark was five, his mother’s body was found floating in San Francisco Bay. Her car was parked on the Golden Gate Bridge.
Mark turned into a restless young man. He went to college to study creative writing but dropped out in order to experience the real world. In 1976 he was living in a camp of migrant workers, hoping to become the next Jack London, when he learned that his brother Bruce had become catatonic and had been committed to a state hospital in Oregon.
Mark hitchhiked to Portland to oversee Bruce’s care. He carried around a backpack full of books on Buddhism and the works of Jiddu Krishnamurti. Although it is easy to see in hindsight that the nineteen-year-old Mark Rathbun was primed, because of his troubled background and questing philosophy, to become a part of the Church of Scientology, it wasn’t clear to him at the time. His current spiritual mentor, Krishnamurti, preached against the idea of messiahs, but he also stated that every individual has the responsibility for discovering the causes of his own limitations in order to attain universal spiritual and psychological freedom. That resonated with Hubbard’s aim of “clearing the planet.”
Psychotherapy had evolved somewhat from the indignities that had been inflicted on their mother; it had moved into pharmacology. But drugs didn’t seem to offer a solution to Bruce’s problems; in Mark’s opinion, his brother was just being warehoused, held in a chemical straitjacket. Rathbun got a job as a short-order cook at Dave’s Deli, and each day, when he went to the bus stop in downtown Portland on his way to the hospital, he would pass the Scientology mission on Salmon Street. He would banter with the Scientology recruiters and soon got to know them by name. One day, he told a recruiter, “I’ve got ten minutes. Why don’t you give me your best shot?” The Scientologist started pitching the Hubbard communications course, which at the time cost fifty dollars. It immediately appealed to Rathbun. “The problem is, I’ve only got twenty-five bucks to my entire name,” he said. The recruiter let him take the course, and threw in a copy of Dianetics as well.
In that first course, Rathbun went exterior. It was completely real to him. All the Eastern philosophy he had absorbed had been leading to this moment. He finally realized that he was separate from his body. Hadn’t this been the point of the Buddha’s teachings—to isolate the spirit and end the repetitive cycle of life and death? From that moment on, Rathbun never looked back. He was transformed.
Another recruiter persuaded Rathbun that he would be better able to deal with his brother’s problems if he had more training, which he could afford if he joined the Sea Org. Rathbun signed the billion-year contract in January 1978.5
A few months later, Rathbun was sent to work in LA. One night, he was assigned to escort Diane Colletto, the twenty-five-year-old editor of Scientology’s Auditor magazine, from the publications building to the Scientology complex in Hollywood where they both lived. It was late at night on August 19, 1978. Diane was a petite and mousy intellectual, with thick glasses. A diligent worker, she was often the last to leave the office. On this night, she was frightened.
Diane’s husband, John Colletto, a highly trained auditor, had recently been declared a Suppressive Person. John had gotten into an argument with church officials over a matter of policy. After being declared, he went to visit a Scientology chaplain, who could see that he was having a breakdown. He kept crying and grabbing his head in despair. At that point, he was forcibly detained in the RPF. He spent several weeks there, but managed to escape. Diane was ordered to disconnect from him. She told the chaplain that John had threatened her, saying that if he couldn’t have Scientology, then neither could she.
Rathbun—a big man, a former college basketball player—knew nothing of this as he rode back to the berthing with Diane in her Fiat. She was uncommunicative. She drove north on Rampart Boulevard, where the Pubs Org was located, to Sunset, and then left on Santa Monica Boulevard. It was mid-August, but there was a breeze from the ocean and the night air was unseasonably cool. As soon as Diane turned the corner from North Edgemont Street onto Fountain Avenue, in front of the Scientology complex, a pair of headlights on high beam blinded them, then a car rammed into them, pinning Diane’s vehicle against the curb.
Rathbun was in shock, but he managed to get out of the passenger side of the car. They had come to a stop in front of a small house with a picket fence. He saw the man in the other car get out and run toward Diane, who was still in the driver’s seat. Rathbun came around the front of the car, just in time to hear a popping noise and the sound of glass shattering. It was the first time in his life he had ever heard a gunshot. Jesse Prince, who was in RPF on the seventh floor, heard the sound and rushed to the windows. People were shouting, “John Colletto!” Everyone knew immediately what was happening.