Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief(85)

Koppel allowed Miscavige to respond to the Sawyer report. “Every single detractor on there is a part of a religious hate group called Cult Awareness Network and their sister group called American Family Foundation,” Miscavige said. “It’s the same as the KKK would be with blacks.” He seemed completely at ease.

“You realize there’s a little bit of a problem getting people to talk critically about Scientology because, quite frankly, they’re scared,” Koppel observed.

“Oh, no, no, no, no.”

“I’m telling you, people are scared,” Koppel insisted.

“Let’s not give the American public the wrong impression,” said Miscavige. “The person getting harassed is myself and the church.”

Koppel then lobbed what seemed like an easy question for a man who had spent so much time preparing for this encounter. “See if you can explain to me why I would want to be a Scientologist.”

“Because you care about yourself and life itself,” Miscavige said eagerly. He gave the example of communication skills. “This is something that major breakthroughs exist in Scientology, being able to communicate in the world around you,” he said. “There’s an actual formula for communication which can be understood. You can drill on this formula.”

“So far in life, I haven’t had a whole lot of trouble communicating,” Koppel drolly noted.

“What in your life do you feel is not right, that you would like to help?” Miscavige asked. It was a classic Scientology technique, to find a subject’s “ruin,” the thing that was blocking his access to happiness.

“I feel perfectly comfortable with my life,” Koppel replied.

Miscavige switched tactics. “Let’s look at it this way, then, what Scientology does. If you look out across the world today, you could say that if you take a person who’s healthy, doing well, like yourself, you’d say that person is normal, not a crazy, not somebody who is psychotic, you look at a wall and they call it an elephant,” he said, extemporizing. “And you can see people below that—crazy people, criminals—that I think society in general will look at and say, ‘That breed of person hasn’t something quite right because they’re not up to this level of personality.’…What we are trying to do in Scientology is take somebody from this higher level and move them up to greater ability.”

“What about the folks ‘down there’?”

“We don’t ignore them. My point is this: Scientology is there to make the able more able.”

“Another way of saying that is: you’re interested in folks who’ve got money.”

Miscavige objected, claiming that the money in the church goes to good causes. “We are the largest social reform group in the world,” he said, adding that if a person stays in Scientology long enough, he’ll have plenty of money. Then he referenced Sawyer’s report again. “The one girl there that was complaining about it, a girl named Vicki Aznaran, which by the way, this is a girl who was kicked out for trying to bring criminals into the church, something she didn’t mention.”

“You say a ‘girl.’ I think we’re talking about a grown woman, right?”

“A grown woman, excuse me,” Miscavige said. “She violated the mores and codes of the group.”

“Either you have made an accurate charge against someone or—what a number of … the pieces written about Scientology suggest is that when you have a critic before you, you destroy those people.”

“That’s easy to say—”

“You smear them.”

“That’s easy for the person to say, but she’s the one on that program smearing me.”

As for Richard Behar, the Time reporter, Miscavige remarked, “The man was on record on two occasions attempting to get Scientologists kidnapped. That is an illegal act.”

The hour had ended, but Miscavige had just made another unsupported allegation. Koppel decided to extend the show “a few minutes,” but it went on another half hour without any commercial breaks. He asked Miscavige to explain what he meant about Behar. “Some people had called him up and he was telling them to kidnap Scientologists out,” Miscavige said.

“Now, kidnapping, as you well know, is a federal crime,” Koppel observed. “So, why didn’t you bring charges against him?”

“He didn’t succeed,” Miscavige said. “Ted, Ted, you’re missing the point.”

“There is such a thing as attempted rape, attempted murder, attempted kidnapping. It’s also a crime.”

“I think you’re really missing the issue, Ted, because my point is this: That man represents himself as an objective reporter. Here he is on record a full three years before he wrote this article, stating that he felt Scientologists should be kidnapped to change their religion.

[page]“Second of all,” Miscavige continued, “let’s look at this article, and let’s not fool ourselves. It wasn’t an objective piece. It was done at the behest of Eli Lilly,” the pharmaceutical manufacturer. “They were upset because of the damage we had caused to their killer drug Prozac.”

“I’m sure you have evidence of that,” Koppel said. “You have affidavits?”

“Let me tell you what else I have—”