Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief(81)

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


[page]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 told 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.