Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief(90)
On October 8, more than a thousand Scientologists stood and cheered in the Los Angeles Sports Arena as Miscavige announced, “The war is over!” The IRS had settled with the church. Although the terms were secret, they were later leaked to the Wall Street Journal. Instead of the $1 billion bill for back taxes and penalties that the church owed, Scientology agreed to pay just $12.5 million to resolve outstanding disputes; the church also agreed to stop the cascade of lawsuits against the agency. In return, the IRS dropped its investigations. “The magnitude of this is greater than you can imagine,” Miscavige said that night at the Sports Arena. He held up a thick folder of the letters of exemption for every one of the church’s 150 American entities. The victory over the IRS was total, he explained. It gave Scientology financial advantages that were unusual, perhaps unique, among religions in the United States. For instance, schools using Hubbard educational methods received tax exemption. Eighty percent of individual auditing on the part of members was now a tax-deductible expense. Two Scientology publishing houses that were solely dedicated to turning out Hubbard’s books, including his commercial fiction, also gained the tax exemption. The church even gained the power to extend its tax exemption to any of its future branches—“They will no longer need to apply to the IRS,” Miscavige marveled. From now on, the church could make its own decisions about which of its activities were exempt.
“And what about all those battles and wars still being fought overseas?” Miscavige continued. “Well, there’s good news on that front, too.” In the past, he observed, foreign governments would say, “You are an American religion. If the IRS doesn’t recognize you, why should we?” As a part of the settlement, Miscavige revealed, the agency agreed to send notices to every country in the world, explaining what Scientology was. “It is very complete and very accurate,” Miscavige said of the government brochure. “How do I know? We wrote it!”
Miscavige summed up the mood in the Sports Arena: “The future is ours.”
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A MONTH AFTER the church’s historic triumph over the IRS in 1993, Rathbun blew. He had come to see Miscavige in a different light during the two years they labored over the tax case. The last six months of the tax case had been particularly arduous. During that period, he slept only about four hours a night. The former athlete was a physical wreck. “I’m only doing this for LRH,” he told himself, as he and Miscavige ate dinners together night after night in Washington and trudged back to the Four Seasons in Georgetown. “I’m not going to be this guy’s bitch for the rest of my life.”
No doubt the stress affected Miscavige as well. On the night of his big victory speech in the Sports Arena, Miscavige showed up for a run-through, but the stage manager, Stefan Castle, was still fiddling with the cues for a complicated laser and pyrotechnic display. According to Castle, Miscavige stormed out into the arena and began to strangle him. Miscavige let him go before any real harm was done, but it was an alarming signal. Amy Scobee, head of the Celebrity Centre at the time, also noted that Miscavige’s personality began to shift immediately after the IRS decision, becoming more aggressive and hostile. At the party at the Celebrity Centre following his speech, Miscavige rudely shoved her aside as he entered. “You just want to get rid of me,” she remembers him saying.
As far as Rathbun was concerned, it didn’t help that Miscavige scarcely acknowledged him in the speech that night. Immediately after the event, reporters from The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times were calling Rathbun to ask about Miscavige’s salary, which had been disclosed in the IRS documents. Miscavige and his wife together were making more than $100,000 a year—not an extraordinary figure by the standards of world religious leaders, but quite a contrast to the $30 a week most of the Sea Org members were earning. Miscavige was outraged by the impertinence of the reporters, and Rathbun felt that he was taking it out on him. This was all coming at a time when he had been postponing a final visit to see his father, who was dying of cancer.
The St. Petersburg Times published an editorial demanding that Congress investigate the tax-exemption decision. Rathbun was sent to Florida to turn around the Times editorial board, who were not at all persuaded by his arguments. Miscavige was furious that Rathbun failed to handle the situation. One evening, Shelly Miscavige called everyone in Rathbun’s office together, and in front of his subordinates she stripped the captain’s bars off his uniform.
The next day, Rathbun took four gold Krugerrands that he had stored in a safe, got on his motorcycle, and drove to Yuma, Arizona. He called his father in Los Angeles from a bar, but a church official answered. He was waiting there with Rathbun’s wife, Anne, who begged him to come back. Rathbun felt guilty and conflicted. Drinking steadily, he somehow made it to San Antonio, although he was in frequent communication with church leaders. He finally agreed to call Miscavige, who apologized for his treatment. “You know the kind of pressure I was under. Please just see me,” the church leader said, adding that he could be in San Antonio in a matter of hours. “No, I want to see the Alamo,” Rathbun told him. They agreed to meet for dinner at the Marriott in New Orleans two days later.
That evening, Miscavige showed a chastened, vulnerable side of himself that Rathbun had never seen before. According to Rathbun, Miscavige promised to “cease acting like a madman.” He praised Rathbun for his part in gaining the IRS exemption. “Because you did this,” he declared, “you’re Kha-Khan.” It was a title that Hubbard had come up with in one of his policy letters for a highly productive staff member, but in the culture it was understood that such a person would be forgiven for misdeeds in future lifetimes. Hubbard had awarded it to Yvonne Gillham after she died. Rathbun knew that Miscavige was manipulating him, but he was touched nonetheless. As a further reward, Miscavige offered Rathbun the opportunity to go to the Scientology ship, the Freewinds, and cruise the Caribbean for two years doing nothing but studying and training to be an auditor. Rathbun could finally obtain OT III. It was an offer he couldn’t resist.