Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief(78)
There was one church that was especially designed to resolve this dilemma.
Cruise’s first wife, the actress Mimi Rogers, introduced him to Scientology in 1986. He had just finished filming Top Gun, which had made him the world’s biggest movie star. He had little incentive to publicly declare himself a Scientologist after the widespread opprobrium directed at Scientology following the FBI raids on Operation Snow White and the exposure of the church’s esoteric beliefs. Rumors of his involvement began to mount, however. For several years he managed to keep his affiliation quiet, even from church management. Using his birth name, Thomas Mapother IV, he received auditing at a small Scientology mission called the Enhancement Center in Sherman Oaks, which Rogers had started with her former husband. Rogers’s close friend, and former roommate, Kirstie Alley, did her auditing there, along with singer—and later, congressman—Sonny Bono, who had also been brought into the church by Rogers. Cruise would later credit Scientology’s study methods for helping him overcome his dyslexia.
The triumph of adding Cruise to the Scientology stable was fraught with problems. Mimi Rogers was at the top of that list. Her parents had been involved with Dianetics since the early days of the movement. In 1957, when Mimi was a year old, they had moved to Washington, DC, to work for Hubbard, and her father, Philip Spickler, had briefly joined the Sea Org. But Mimi’s parents had become disaffected by the end of the seventies. They were considered “squirrels,” because they continued to practice Scientology outside the guidance of the church. It would be one thing to have Tom Cruise as a trophy for Scientology, but it would be a disaster if he became a walking advertisement for the squirrels.
When Miscavige learned of Cruise’s involvement in Scientology, he arranged to have the star brought to Gold Base, alone, at its secret desert location near Hemet, in August 1989. He assigned his top people to audit and supervise the young star during his first weekend stay. Cruise arrived wearing a baseball cap and dark glasses, trying to keep a low profile, although everyone on the base knew he was there.
Cruise was preparing to make Days of Thunder that fall. He had just seen a twenty-one-year-old Australian actress, Nicole Kidman, in the thriller Dead Calm, and he was so enchanted that he cast her in a part she was far too young to play: a brain surgeon who brings Cruise’s character back to life after he crashes his race car. They had an immediate, intense connection, one that quickly became a subject of tabloid speculation.
According to Rathbun, Cruise and Miscavige now had a common interest: getting rid of Mimi. She demanded and received a church mediation of their relationship, which involves each partner being put on E-Meters and confessing their “crimes” in front of the other. But with Cruise ready to move on and Miscavige seemingly set against her, Rogers stood little chance. Marty Rathbun and a church attorney went to her home carrying divorce papers. “I told her this was the right thing to do for Tom, because he was going to do lots of good for Scientology,” Rathbun recalled. “That was the end of Mimi Rogers.”
Rogers later said that she and Cruise were already having difficulty in their marriage. He had been seriously thinking about becoming a monk, in which case marriage wouldn’t fit into his plans. “He thought he had to be celibate to maintain the purity of his instrument,” she told Playboy. “Therefore, it became obvious that we had to split.”
AFTER TWO YEARS, Annie Broeker had worked her way out of Happy Valley. She was assigned to Gold Base, which serves as the headquarters for the Commodore’s Messengers Org; Golden Era Productions, which makes Scientology films and manufactures the audiovisual materials for the church, as well as E-Meters; and the Religious Technology Center, which enforces the orthodoxy of Scientology practices. Through his position as chairman of the RTC, Miscavige directed the church’s operations, spending much of his time living on the base. Rathbun and other top executives were also living and working on the five-hundred-acre base, which was still so hush-hush that few Scientologists knew of its existence. Rathbun believed that Miscavige wanted Annie close by, in case Pat Broeker ever stirred back to life.
An ex-marine named Andre Tabayoyon, who oversaw construction of the security at the Gold Base, later testified that church funds were used to purchase assault rifles, shotguns, and pistols; he also said that explosive devices were placed around the perimeter to be used in case of assault by law enforcement officials. Surrounded by a security fence with three-inch spikes, patrolled by armed guards, and monitored by cameras, motion detectors, infrared scanners, and a sniper’s nest at the top of a hill, the property houses about eight hundred Sea Org members, in conditions that the church describes as “like one would find in a convent or seminary, albeit much more comfortable.”
Annie resumed using her maiden name, Tidman. Although she was continuously under guard, she had fallen in love with another Sea Org member—Jim Logan, the same man who had recruited Paul Haggis into Scientology on the street corner in London, Ontario. Annie had met Logan in Happy Valley when both were on the RPF. Jim and Annie married in June 1990 and moved to Sea Org berthing near Gold Base. Logan was no longer the long-haired hippie he had been in those days; he was now middle-aged and balding, with a black moustache, but he still had those intense, playful eyes and a ready laugh. His outsized, boisterous personality didn’t always fit well in the highly regimented life he had signed up for. In the summer of 1992, Logan was served with a “non-enturbulation order,” which meant that he should stop stirring things up. In October, eight men came to escort him to a detention facility where troublesome staff members were confined. Logan was told that he had been declared a Suppressive Person and was going to be booted out of the Sea Org.