Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief(94)

Both the German government and the Scientologists viewed their struggle through the prism of Germany’s Nazi past. Ursula Caberta, the head of the Hamburg anti-Scientology task force, compared Hubbard’s Introduction to Scientology Ethics to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf: “Hitler was thinking that the Aryans were going to rule the world, the untermenschen. The philosophy of L. Ron Hubbard is the same.” In response to such statements, in January 1997 a group of Hollywood celebrities, agents, lawyers, and movie executives published a full-page open letter to Chancellor Helmut Kohl in the International Herald Tribune. “Hitler made religious intolerance official government policy,” the letter stated. “In the 1930s it was the Jews. Today it is the Scientologists.” The letter compared the boycotts of Cruise, Travolta, and Corea to Nazi book-burnings. The letter was written and paid for by Bertram Fields, then the most powerful lawyer in Hollywood, whose clients included Travolta and Cruise. None of the thirty-four signatories of the document were Scientologists, but many were Jews. Most of them—such as Oliver Stone, Dustin Hoffman, and Goldie Hawn—had worked with the two stars or were friends or clients of Fields.

Entertainment Tonight sent the actress Anne Archer, a well-known Scientologist, to Germany on a “fact-finding mission.” She later testified before the US Congress, as did other Scientology celebrities—Travolta, Corea, and Isaac Hayes—about the suppression of religious freedom in Germany. “Individuals and businesses throughout Germany are routinely required to sign a declaration, referred to as a ‘sect filter,’ swearing that they are not Scientologists,” Travolta told Congress. “Failure to sign means that companies will not hire them, trade unions will not admit them, they will not be permitted to join social groups, banks will not open accounts for them, and they are even excluded from sports clubs, solely because of their religion.”

In April, John Travolta met with President Bill Clinton at a conference on volunteerism in Philadelphia. It was a freighted moment for the president, since Travolta was portraying a character based on him in the forthcoming movie Primary Colors. “He said he wanted to help me out with the situation in Germany,” Travolta later said. “He had a roommate years ago who was a Scientologist and had really liked him, and respected his views on it. He said he felt we were given an unfair hand in that country, and that he wanted to fix it.” Clinton set up a meeting for Travolta and Cruise with Sandy Berger, his national security advisor, who was given the additional assignment of being the administration’s “Scientology point person.”

None of this had any effect on Travolta’s character in the film, as the movie had already been shot, nor on Germany’s policy toward the church, which refused to recognize Scientology as a religion or allow members to join political parties. However, the US State Department began pressuring the German government on behalf of Scientology. The Germans were puzzled that their American counterparts seemed not to know or care about the church’s RPF camps, which the Germans called penal colonies, and the reported practices of confinement, forced confessions, and punishing physical labor, which they said amounted to brainwashing. There was a belief within the German cabinet that the church’s real goal was to infiltrate the government and create a Scientology superstate. “This is not a church or a religious organization,” the labor minister, Norbert Blum, told Maclean’s magazine. “Scientology is a machine for manipulating human beings.”





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1 Behar says that a private investigator, posing as a distraught parent, called him and begged for help with a child who had gone into Scientology. Behar had referred the caller to the Cult Awareness Network. He says he never advised kidnapping. The private investigator taped the conversation, and Behar’s attorneys subpoenaed the tape for his defense in the lawsuit brought by the church.

2 Cruise, through his attorney, denies that he ever retreated from his commitment to Scientology.

3 A spokesperson for Time categorically denied this charge.

4 According to a church spokesperson, “Mr. Miscavige was not involved in any aspect of Ms. McPherson’s spiritual progress in Scientology.”

5 The church denies that Miscavige has abused any members of the church, saying that the abuse claims have been propagated by a “group of vociferous anti-Scientologists.”





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Bohemian Rhapsody


Paul Haggis and Deborah Rennard married in 1997, soon after Paul’s divorce from Diane became final. Paul was still seeking joint custody of his three daughters. Without consulting him, Diane had taken Lauren and Katy out of the Delphi Academy, apparently intending to enroll them in public school. Paul and Diane were ordered by the court to undergo psychiatric evaluation, a procedure that Scientology abhors. In December 1998, the court surprised everyone by awarding Paul full custody of his daughters. According to court records, the ruling followed the discovery that the girls were not enrolled in school at all.

The girls were stunned. They had watched the hostilities through Diane’s eyes. No one had prepared them for the possibility that they might be taken from her—until then, it had been the three girls and their mother against the world. The girls thought the decision was unbalanced and unfairly influenced by the fact that their father had more money. Alissa vowed she would never speak to him again.