At the time of Hubbard"s disappearance, in 1980, a key priority for the Church of Scientology was protecting their Founder from legal action. The Operation Snow White doc.u.ments had given the public its first glimpse into the secretive world of Scientology and the mindset of its followers. Now a New York grand jury was investigating the church"s longtime hara.s.sment of the writer Paulette Cooper and the role L. Ron Hubbard may have played in it. The IRS, meanwhile, had begun a criminal investigation of Hubbard; the government suspected he was still in charge of the church and profiting from it handsomely, wherever he was.
In Los Angeles, David Miscavige, who"d impressed his superiors with his gung-ho att.i.tude and problem-solving skills, became part of a special team within the Commodore"s Messenger Organization called the "All Clear Unit." Its mission was to meet with church attorneys to find ways to get around the myriad legal issues that had driven Hubbard into exile. One way to do that, they decided, was to design a new corporate architecture for the church, an undertaking that, with Hubbard"s blessing, became known within Scientology as the "Corporate Sort-out." The overall idea, said Larry Brennan, then the senior executive in the Scientology legal department who oversaw the project, was to create a legally defensible structure that would give Hubbard and the Commodore"s Messenger Organization full legal control over Scientology while at the same time "insulat[ing] both Hubbard and the CMO from any legal liability for running the organizations of Scientology by lying about the level of control they really had." This reorganization seemed like fraud, said Brennan, but the structure was so complex that deciphering the fraud was almost impossible.
The new structure would also establish a new hierarchy, giving unprecedented power to the Commodore"s Messengers, who would soon maneuver their way into control of every facet of the organized church. "The new corporate structure made top management think they could do just about anything without legal worry," said Brennan. "In other words, Miscavige could now do just about anything he wanted and there was no one to stop him, unless Hubbard did."
Brennan, who"d served as the legal director of the Guardian"s Office, became the overseer of Scientology"s legal bureau once the Commodore"s Messengers took control of the church. He met Miscavige in 1981. Now the self-appointed head of the All Clear Unit, Miscavige was twenty-one years old and, a highly aggressive and frequently belligerent young man, had come into his own. Though he could be supportive of those upon whose approval he depended, Miscavige was mistrustful of many others, with an "almost pathological" certainty, according to one former colleague, that he, of all the Messengers, was right. To some he seemed like a reflection of L. Ron Hubbard on his very worst days, cursing and barking orders at other Sea Org members, including some staffers much older than he, or screaming at those who disagreed with him. He chewed tobacco and in meetings would frequently make a show of spitting the juice into a cup. Brennan was appalled. "As I saw him, DM was like a highly impressionable spoiled child."
DM idolized L. Ron Hubbard, the only boss he"d ever known; but unlike many seasoned Sea Org members who knew the Founder"s propensity for changing his mind, Miscavige also took everything that Hubbard said literally. And what Hubbard was saying from his secret location was, by his second year in hiding, increasingly extreme. The Founder had returned to his original love, writing fiction, in seclusion, and was at work on the book that would become his opus: Battlefield Earth.* But he was also convinced that Suppressives had infiltrated the movement, particularly the Guardian"s Office, and in missives signed only with an asterisk (in an effort to distance himself from Scientology management, Hubbard had adopted the asterisk as his "signature" on church doc.u.ments) issued directives for his aides to spit on other staff members, strike those who seemed to oppose his wishes, or even send people to jail. While it would have been an act of sacrilege to disobey L. Ron Hubbard, "some of us would still not do the most awful things Hubbard talked about as they violated our sense of right and wrong just too much," said Brennan. "DM, on the other hand, would blindly, and violently, follow such orders."
Among the first of Hubbard"s orders had been to clean up the Guardian"s Office, which the Founder had determined was infested with "criminals." Miscavige and his All Clear Unit attacked this task with gusto, soon altogether dismantling the Guardian"s Office- whose power had exceeded the Messengers" own. The first maneuver in this offensive was to remove the person Hubbard now saw as wholly responsible for the debacle: his wife, Mary Sue. Out on bail and appealing her conviction, she still held the lifetime position of Controller.
In May 1981, Miscavige visited Mary Sue in her Los Angeles office and told her that, as a convicted criminal, she could no longer be officially connected to the Church of Scientology. It would be "for the good of the church," as well as for the good of her husband, if she resigned, he said. Furious, Mary Sue refused and, in one often-told account, became so enraged that she threw an ashtray at Miscavige"s head. But the twenty-one-year-old was intractable.
Numerous Scientology officials, particularly those loyal to David Miscavige, applauded his initiative. It was felt that Mary Sue Hubbard had blackened the name of the church; now it was only right that she be ostracized. But some members of the Sea Organization, particularly those who"d known the Hubbards aboard the Apollo, believed that Mary Sue had been treated too harshly. Among them was DeDe Reisdorf, by then married and known as DeDe Voegeding.
Voegeding was the Commanding Officer of the Commodore"s Messenger Organization. L. Ron Hubbard had appointed her to this post in the spring of 1981, and it was a daunting responsibility for the twenty-three-year-old. Her job involved not only parroting Hubbard"s demands but also making executive decisions and giving orders to longtime Sea Org officials. It also required Voegeding to serve as the main communication line between the Church of Scientology at large and L. Ron Hubbard, via Pat Broeker.
Broeker had devised a strategy by which an aide needing to meet with him went to a remote pay phone to call him, let it ring twice, and then hang up, signaling for Broeker to call back. Then the aide drove to an appointed spot between Gilman Hot Springs and Los Angeles. Because these meetings generally took place at night, Voegeding wanted a male Messenger to accompany her. David Miscavige often volunteered.
Broeker was always happy to see Miscavige, who"d been his roommate for a period in La Quinta. "I think Pat was dying for someone to talk to," said Voegeding. "He was holed up with LRH." Unfortunately, Voegeding never had the time for small talk-running the church was more than a full-time job. But Miscavige and Broeker would spend an hour or two joking and smoking cigarettes. After a while, they"d developed such a rapport that they would walk off together to speak privately, leaving Voegeding waiting by the car.
Not long after Miscavige began accompanying her to these meetings, in August 1981, L. Ron Hubbard abruptly removed DeDe Voegeding from her post as head of the Commodore"s Messenger Organization. The reason, she was told, was that Hubbard had found out that she"d ordered Scientology"s prices reduced without his permission, a grave sin; even worse, she was accused of breaching security by hinting at Hubbard"s true whereabouts to the British writer Omar Garrison, who"d been commissioned by the church to write a biography of the Founder.
Hubbard had signed the order for her removal. Nonetheless, Voegeding felt sure that the Founder had been fed false information. "I had been with him enough times in hiding, so knew how it worked, and how it worked was that all communication to him was vetted," she said. "I"d never told anywhere where he was-I had no idea where he was. And the other things I was "guilty" of were basic management decisions I would do again, like lowering prices to bring in more customers. I still feel that LRH would have agreed, if I"d been given the chance to explain. But there was no opportunity for an explanation."
Within weeks, more Scientology officials had been removed, including Hubbard"s longtime public relations adviser, Laurel Sullivan, who was accused of "spying" on the Commodore"s Messenger Organization for the Guardian"s Office. Both Sullivan and Voegeding had been close to Mary Sue, whom Miscavige and Pat Broeker had mutually declared a "criminal."
Now, with the Controller out of the way and some of her key supporters sidelined, David Miscavige and his allies in the All Clear Unit embarked on a brutal purge of most the Guardian"s Office, stripping hundreds of people of their positions with no warning. Also removed were many other Sea Org executives who"d had nothing to do with intelligence activities but who, like Sullivan and Voegeding, had simply been close to L. Ron Hubbard or his wife. Over the next year, Miscavige, on orders from Hubbard, accused hundreds of Scientology officials of crimes ranging from stealing church funds, to disobeying Hubbard"s instructions, to being on the payroll of "external influences" such as the CIA.
The "crims," as Miscavige and his a.s.sociates called these officials, were summoned to Gilman Hot Springs, where the Messengers, led by Miscavige, ordered them to scrub floors, eat table sc.r.a.ps out of buckets, and sleep on the floor, watched over by armed guards. They were also made to endure hours of interrogation, sometimes performed by up to six Messengers at once. These were known as "gang bang" security checks.
Here is how Homer Schomer, once a chief financial officer for the Church of Scientology, described one of several gang-bang security checks he was given in the early 1980s: "It lasted from about ten o"clock in the evening to eight o"clock in the morning ... During this time I was just bombarded with these questions asking who I was working for. Was I working for the CIA? Was I a plant? Was I working for the FBI? Where was all the money I stole? Where were all the jewels I stole?"
Those officials who didn"t answer the Messengers" questions were slapped, shoved, punched, and sometimes locked in a room for hours. Often, the person being grilled would answer, the reply would be belittled, and the abuse would continue. "It was horrible what went on," recalled Larry Brennan, who was asked to partic.i.p.ate in a gang-bang "sec check" and refused. "They wanted me to scream at some poor guy they said owed money to Hubbard. I said no and walked out. I always refused to do the abuses, but I saw it happen. They knew that if they screamed in your face loud enough and intimidated you enough, you would come out with some crime. I"d never heard of anything like that [in Scientology] before."
Many Scientology executives, broken by this treatment, admitted to a wide range of criminal acts, if only to make the interrogation stop. A good number were then a.s.signed to do menial labor while awaiting judgment before a Scientology tribunal called a Committee of Evidence, which was often a.s.sembled by Miscavige. A Commodore"s Messenger named Mark Fisher, then the head of Miscavige"s household unit and his administrative chief, was chosen as a juror on several of these tribunals, in which the E-meter, now serving as a true "lie detector," proved to be a remarkably efficient, if biased, judge. Almost everyone who went in front of one of these tribunals, said Fisher, was found guilty and denounced as a traitor.
"It was completely surreal and just appalling," said Fisher, a heavy-set, good-tempered man. Just a single negative thought-about L. Ron Hubbard, David Miscavige, or anything else that might be viewed as critical of Scientology-would be discovered by the E-meter and "boom, you were denounced and out of there." (Fisher, who"d joined the Sea Org in Clearwater the same year as Miscavige, was loyal to the Sea Org mission and remained in Scientology, working for Miscavige, for nine more years.) In the end, the officials departed Gilman, having had what Miscavige described as a "severe reality adjustment," affirming their obedience, and agreeing to become church janitors or groundskeepers, or, far more frequently, to simply leave the Church of Scientology altogether. Upon doing so, many signed confidentiality agreements pledging they would never sue or speak publicly about what had happened to them.
Gale Reisdorf, who had also married and was going by her married name, Gale Irwin, had been given her sister"s job as Commanding Officer of the Commodore"s Messenger Organization.* Long before the major purging had even begun, Irwin had become concerned about David Miscavige. He seemed to take pleasure in others" misery, an irony, given that Miscavige was often miserable himself, still suffering from chronic asthma. Irwin would recall one instance in the summer of 1980 when Miscavige had a severe asthma attack and was rushed to the emergency room. He survived the attack and upon returning from the hospital said he"d had an amazing revelation. "Power," he said, "is a.s.sumed." Irwin had no idea what he meant.
But toward the end of 1981, Irwin began to think more about that statement as she considered how far Miscavige had risen in such a short time. He had taken over the All Clear Unit, sidelined Mary Sue and several others, and witnessed the removal of her sister as his boss-or had he simply commandeered her removal himself? Irwin wasn"t sure. In the same letter from Hubbard that demoted DeDe and promoted Gale, Miscavige had also been given a new job: Special Project Ops, a post that stood outside the standard chain of command, making Miscavige answerable to no one other than Broeker and Hubbard.
Irwin had no idea if Hubbard had created this post for Miscavige or if he and Broeker had come up with it themselves. But Miscavige"s friendship with Broeker bothered her. Miscavige, not Irwin, seemed to have the main line of communication to L. Ron Hubbard. And Irwin realized that this might be her fault: she had once or twice allowed Miscavige to meet with Broeker alone when she"d been too busy to accompany him.
As the messages coming from L. Ron Hubbard became increasingly paranoid, Irwin and others started to wonder exactly what Hubbard was being told. Scientology was now under scrutiny by both the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service. This would have elevated the Founder"s already profound suspiciousness to astronomical levels. In response, Hubbard began sending increasingly strident missives railing against a wide number of phantom enemies-"external influences"-whom he blamed for keeping him in exile. "You could feel his fear coming at you left, right, and center," said Julie Holloway. "He was mad about everything. No matter what we sent him, we"d get nothing good back, it was all this "external influences" stuff." At one point, Hubbard"s paranoia appeared to be at such a high point that Pat Broeker went so far as to buy armored cars for the Founder. "I mean, why?" said Holloway. "I thought that was ridiculous-who was going to be shooting at him?"
Before long, long-serving Messengers like Holloway came to see that Hubbard had stopped trusting the aides who"d served him faithfully for years. Instead, he seemed to trust David Miscavige and his group, who portrayed themselves as Hubbard"s representatives, anointed to not only carry out his wishes but also rescue Scientology from all but certain doom.
Alarmed by this unregulated hubris, David Mayo, L. Ron Hubbard"s personal auditor, pulled Miscavige aside in December 1981 and ordered him to get a security check. Miscavige balked. Outraged by his insubordination, Gale Irwin confronted Miscavige. His response, she recalled, was to physically tackle her, sending her flying through an open door.
Now genuinely afraid of Miscavige, Irwin slipped off the base at Gilman Hot Springs to call Pat Broeker, using his special callback system. Waiting at a gas-station pay phone for Broeker to return her call, Irwin suddenly saw Miscavige roll up with a number of his aides in a black van. As she"d later recall, he got out, walked to the back of the van, took out a tire iron, and as she watched, proceeded to smash the pay phone so it wouldn"t work. Then he grabbed a terrified Irwin, ordered her into the van, and accused her of mutiny. Upon her arrival back at Gilman Hot Springs, she was stripped of her position as the head of the Commodore"s Messenger Organization by Miscavige, and soon replaced with one of his own proteges, a nineteen-year-old Messenger named Marc Yeager.
Soon after, Irwin was sent to Scientology"s base in Clearwater, Florida, along with her brother and sister and their spouses, where the entire family was made to do heavy physical labor. But that wasn"t punishment enough. She and her sister, DeDe, were then sent to the sprawling new Scientology compound on Sunset Boulevard. There, they were put in a shower room and told they would live there, under twenty-four-hour guard. This was not the RPF. "We were beneath the RPF," Irwin said.
Fed up, Irwin said she wanted to leave the Sea Org. In response, she underwent the gang-bang interrogation, asked whether she was working for the CIA or plotting to overthrow Scientology. "Every once in a while, DM and one of his crew would call us over to their offices and they would scream at us," she recalled. After weeks of this treatment, Irwin felt as if she"d gone insane.
Finally, in the spring of 1982, Gale and DeDe were awakened in the middle of the night and informed that they"d been declared Suppressive Persons. After more than ten years at the highest levels of Scientology, they left that night, disgraced. Within the next few years, virtually all of the original Commodore"s Messengers who had sailed with L. Ron Hubbard aboard the Apollo were treated in much the same fashion by Miscavige and his allies and ultimately left the church.
This revolution within Scientology was at first not felt beyond the confines of Gilman Hot Springs and the international management. Many ordinary Scientologists, particularly those affiliated with its missions, were unaware of what was going on at the top. Like the McDonald"s corporation, whose methods church executives reportedly had studied, Scientology was rigorously expansion-oriented and during its first twenty years had opened missions around the globe. These franchises were of limited scope, offering lower-level Scientology services, but they were run by some of the most experienced Scientology executives; Alan Walter, for example, opened Scientology missions in New York City, Boston, St. Louis, Dallas, New Orleans, Kansas City, and Beverly Hills, among other cities. Most were extremely profitable, and by the late 1970s, the Scientology "mission network" was booming: some individual franchises grossed up to $100,000 a week.
Organized churches of Scientology, which offered a much wider range of spiritual counseling and training, made less money despite, or perhaps because of, being more tightly controlled by the larger church. As a result, many Scientology organizations struggled to pay both their bills and their staff, while Scientology franchise holders, who were allowed to keep most of their profits, could make a six-figure salary by selling some of the same Scientology services in a smaller and frequently more relaxed environment.
On October 17, 1982, roughly four hundred Scientology mission holders from across the United States were called to a meeting with church management on the fourth floor of the San Francisco Hilton Hotel. Inside a large conference room, twenty-two-year-old David Miscavige, his deputy Norman Starkey, and members of a militant unit of the Sea Organization known as the International Finance Police declared a new world order. The independence of the missions was abolished: from now on, the larger Church of Scientology would run the franchises like a diocese, with missions reduced to little more than local parishes.
The audience members were stunned. The franchises could still offer basic Scientology counseling and courses, Miscavige and his cohorts announced, but they would be required to send a much higher quota of their clientele to the nearest Scientology org, thus dramatically limiting both the missions" power and earning potential. To make sure the mission holders followed the rules, they were required to sign an agreement giving total control to a new and powerful church ent.i.ty, the Religious Technology Center, or RTC. Those who didn"t sign would lose their missions entirely and be subjected to heavy fines, or even, the new regime threatened, time in jail.
Those franchise owners who objected to the new mandate were declared "mutinous" and immediately shuffled into private rooms where, behind locked doors, they were interrogated on the E-meter to uncover their crimes. Others were ordered to Gilman Hot Springs for security checking and, in some cases, were subjected to a new punishment known as the "Running Program," in which the victims were forced to run around a pole in the high desert for up to nine or ten hours a day. Still others, like Alan Walter, were declared a Suppressive Person on the spot and expelled. The mission holders who survived were expected to turn over whatever money was demanded of them to the International Finance Police. Those who refused were swiftly excommunicated.
One of the main enforcers of this policy was Don Larson, who served for a time as head of the International Finance Police. As the official hatchet man, Larson estimated he personally sent three hundred Scientologists to the RPF. He also collected money. "If you could force someone to be scared enough of the church, they would cough up the money that you wanted," Larson told the BBC in 1987. "It was my job to scare people." Once, he recalled, he and fourteen other Sea Org executives, including David Miscavige, drove to a San Francisco mission to confront its commanding officer. It was a "beat-"em-up kind of meeting ... this has nothing to do with religion anymore, right? This is, "Where"s the money, Jack-I want the money! Where did you put the money?"" When the man insisted he didn"t have any money, in Larson"s words, "David Miscavige comes up, grabs him by the tie, and starts bashing him into the filing cabinet."
Larson, who was purged from Scientology in 1983 after a little more than a year as enforcer, described Miscavige as "a very, very macho 1950s tough guy." He liked to shoot with bow and arrow, practiced karate, and collected guns ; an avid trap and skeet shooter, he was said to own at least a dozen rifles and perhaps a dozen pistols. He surrounded himself with young men like himself, many who had grown up in Scientology, as he had. Their motto, recalled Larson, was "We"re tough, we"re ruthless"-Miscavige most of all.
Miscavige"s coup was now nearly complete. He had dubbed himself Captain of the Sea Organization and created two powerful new ent.i.ties: the aforementioned RTC, which controlled and licensed L. Ron Hubbard"s works, and Author Services, Inc. (ASI), which handled the proceeds. ASI had been created as L. Ron Hubbard"s personal literary agency, managing the sales of his books and the income he made from his non-Scientology-related works. But in fact, ASI was the clearinghouse through which Hubbard issued his orders to lower organizations and the secret funnel through which he received his money from all areas of the church-up to $1 million per week, according to the former finance officer Homer Schomer, who was an executive at ASI between April and November 1982. David Miscavige ran ASI. It was a singularly powerful position, putting him in direct control of not only Hubbard"s communiques, but also the Church of Scientology"s finances.
Scientologists were told that all of these changes, including the appointment of David Miscavige to the helm of Author Services, had not only been approved but in fact ordered by L. Ron Hubbard. Most believed this unquestioningly; a few, however, had doubts. Hubbard"s long-estranged son, Nibs, for one, was suspicious of Miscavige, and though he had been detached from Scientology since 1959, he was worried about the consolidated control the Messengers now seemed to have over the movement. In November 1982, Nibs went to Superior Court in Riverside, California; a.s.serting his belief that his father was dead or was possibly being held prisoner against his will, he sued for control of Hubbard"s a.s.sets.
In response, the Founder submitted a lengthy signed affidavit, a.s.serting that Nibs"s suit had been "brought maliciously, in bad faith," and, he indicated, for personal reasons having nothing to do with protecting Hubbard"s estate. "I am not a missing person," he said. "I am in seclusion of my own choosing. As Th.o.r.eau secluded himself by Walden Pond, so I have chosen to do so in my own fashion."*
Hubbard made a special point of stating his "unequivocal confidence in David Miscavige," whom Nibs had accused of "stealing" from Hubbard, and from Scientology, by mismanaging the Founder"s money. "Any activities which he may have engaged in at any time concerning my personal or business affairs have been done with my knowledge and authorization and for my benefit," Hubbard said. He refuted the charge that Miscavige was organizing the theft of his a.s.sets as "completely false," noting that Miscavige was a "long time devoted Scientologist." And Scientologists, he explained, "are my most trusted a.s.sociates and would never do anything to harm me, much less ... steal from me."
In June 1983, a California Superior Court judge, convinced by Hubbard"s declaration, dismissed Nibs"s case.
Now Miscavige had no rival other than Pat Broeker, who was still the sole conduit to Hubbard and, it was widely believed, Miscavige"s co-conspirator. The two men met regularly and secretly at a truck stop off the 10 Freeway, near Barstow. From there, they drove in unmarked rented cars to a safe house in the nearby town of Newberry Springs, where they exchanged boxes: Broeker giving Miscavige Hubbard"s communiques, Miscavige giving Broeker reports from various organizations and officials and also cash. "Hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash would show up for LRH in that banking box," said Mark Fisher, who then served as corporate liaison between Miscavige, ASI, and the rest of Scientology.
Virtually everything that went on in Scientology was filtered through Broeker and Miscavige, who returned to Gilman Hot Springs with increasingly angry missives from Hubbard, who continued to be convinced that Scientology was falling prey to external influences. Sea Org officials hardly knew what they were guilty of, but there was no defense, said Fisher, because while legally the corporations of Scientology were supposed to be separate, in reality they all depended entirely on Miscavige"s goodwill. "Only people who worked in the Commodore"s Messenger Organization or on other parts of the base were aware of this-it was not something known to the average Scientologist. But all of the executives understood that if they didn"t do what Miscavige ordered, he could report them to Hubbard and they"d be removed."
Before presenting anything meant for Hubbard, Miscavige screened all of the written communiques and reports. "If he didn"t like anything in them, he kicked them back [to whoever wrote them]"-or just threw them out, said Fisher. "Whoever controlled that communication line had the power, and Miscavige controlled it entirely. Hubbard just got this box, and whatever was in there is what he believed."
In January 1984, Hubbard delivered an unusual taped message to his flock t.i.tled "Today and Tomorrow: The Proof." As Jon Atack noted in A Piece of Blue Sky, it was not the typical Hubbard talk in that it was scripted, with frequent interruptions where the Founder "was asked questions, given answers, even corrected on some slight underestimation of a statistic." At the crux were a bitter indictment of what he saw as the corruption of the former management of Scientology and an elevation of individuals he called "a small hardcore group of founding members, devoted on-Policy, in-Tech Scientologists who suddenly understood what was happening ... and just as it looked like the churches were finished and about to fall into hostile hands, they suddenly isolated the infiltrators and threw them out."
It was an undisputable homage to Miscavige and his posse. But whether Hubbard was ever fully aware of the extent of Miscavige"s changes was, and remains, unclear. In five years, the young Messenger and his allies had demoted or otherwise dispensed with nearly every person who"d served Hubbard aboard the Apollo, eased out long-serving executives, and dismantled the independent franchises, a network the Founder had established and relied upon as a feeder for his movement. The overhaul did away with most of the inst.i.tutional memory, technical expertise, and earning power of the church.
On January 27, 1986, Captain David Miscavige, light brown hair cut short, his blue Sea Org uniform pressed and starched, epaulets sitting smartly on his shoulders, stood before a crowd of eighteen hundred fellow Scientologists at the Hollywood Palladium, in Los Angeles. "Fellow Sea Org members, Org staff, and Scientology public, I am here before you today to announce that Ron has moved forward to his next level of research," he said. A hush fell over the audience. "It is a level reaching beyond the imagination," Miscavige continued, "and in a state exterior to the body. Thus at 2000 hours, on Friday, the 24th of January, 1986, L. Ron Hubbard discarded the body he had used in this lifetime for seventy-four years, ten months, and eleven days."
L. Ron Hubbard died in a luxury forty-foot Bluebird motor home on his property in Creston, California, a 160-acre spread called the Whispering Winds Ranch. There, overlooking a vista of rolling green hills and sprawling meadows studded with wildflowers, Hubbard had been living in seclusion with the Broekers since 1983.
For a man who"d sought both notoriety and refuge his entire life, Creston, population 270, was an obscurely apropos place for L. Ron Hubbard to end up. The ranch was down a dirt road, not obvious from any approach. The neighbors rarely saw him. Those who did would later recall an old man, noticeably overweight, usually dressed in baggy trousers and a straw hat. His name, they were told, was Jack.
The three-story, ten-room ranch house had been gutted, remodeled, and then (upon Hubbard"s orders) remodeled again, making it uninhabitable while the renovations were going on. One group of painters would later tell a patron of a local tavern that the old man was so demanding he"d insisted they paint the white walls over and over again because, as he told them, they "weren"t white enough."
While the house was being worked on, "Jack" lived in the Bluebird trailer, which was parked just behind the stables. He could occasionally be seen driving a Subaru Brat around the property, or padding around the stables in his robe and slippers. Once in a while, he"d stop to chat with the Scientologist caretaker, Steve Pfauth, who was the only other full-time custodian at the ranch, aside from the Broekers. The group was generally unfriendly to outsiders, although "Jack" could surprise people. The ranch"s former fencing contractor, Jim Froelicher, later told the Los Angeles Times that he"d once asked the old man for advice on buying a camera. A few days later, Hubbard gave the contractor a 35-mm camera as a gift.
During his exile Hubbard was attended by his Scientologist physician, Dr. Eugene Denk, who was one of only a few people, other than Pat and Annie Broeker and Pfauth, who saw the Founder in his final years. Obsessed with Hubbard"s security, Pat Broeker ordered that Denk be kept in the dark about the ranch"s exact location, sometimes blindfolding the doctor during the drive there. In early 1985, Denk moved onto the property and into his own trailer, the Country Aire, where he would live for the rest of the year as he tended the Founder, who would frequently yell at the doctor to leave him alone. "LRH was not a good patient," Pfauth recalled.
Denk, setting aside all talk of "dropping the body," later stated that Hubbard had died of a stroke. His health had been failing for several years. A month before his death, said Denk, Hubbard had suffered a brain hemorrhage, which had made it impossible for him to speak and had left him bedridden. The San Luis Obispo County coroner, who briefly took possession of Hubbard"s body, accepted the diagnosis of a stroke, and a blood test revealed the presence of anti-stroke medication in Hubbard"s system. It also revealed a quant.i.ty of hydroxyzine, sold under the brand name Vistaril, an anti-anxiety medication often used to treat psychosis. This suggested that Hubbard, who"d preached against the use of "psych" drugs for decades, had been taking them himself.
This bit of information would never be imparted to the faithful, however. Nor would it be known that Hubbard had been left without medical attention for several days while gravely ill. Roughly a week prior to Hubbard"s death, Broeker, Miscavige, and several other Commodore"s Messengers took Dr. Denk on a gambling trip to Reno. While they were gone, Hubbard summoned Ray Mithoff, Scientology"s top auditor, to administer a "death a.s.sist," a form of auditing that is comparable to last rites. Whether Hubbard had ordered his aides to dispense with Denk, or whether the Messengers had taken it upon themselves to whisk him away, would never be firmly established-some former Messengers would later say that Hubbard would not have wanted his doctor nearby, as Scientology forbids a person to have any medication in the system within twenty-four hours of auditing. "Gene was the kind of guy who believed in keeping his patients alive. So if LRH wanted to leave his body, Gene wouldn"t have wanted to be a part of that," said Julie Holloway. By the time Denk returned, Hubbard was prepared. He died a few days later.
By 11 P.M., January 24, Pat Broeker had notified a small group of Scientology officials that the Founder was dead. They gathered at the ranch to await the mortician and discuss the future. The flock, of course, would have to be told that Hubbard was gone. But Scientology had to go on. And so a story was concocted.
"The being we knew as L. Ron Hubbard still exists, and is still with us," Miscavige continued, days later, from the podium. "He has simply moved on to his next step on the Bridge." This was the central theme of the official story. Hubbard, Miscavige explained to the audience, had found that his physical body had "ceased to be useful, and in fact had become an impediment to the work he now must do outside its confines." He reminded the audience that they should not feel sorrow, for Hubbard had used his life to "accomplish what no man has ever accomplished. He unlocked the mysteries of life and gave us the tools so we could free ourselves and our fellow men."
Then Pat Broeker, a tall, thin, dark-haired man who, like his boss, had not been seen publicly for six years, took the stage. "I want to reiterate that it was absolutely Ron"s causative decision to discard his body," Broeker said. Indeed, as far back as 1984, he pointed out, Hubbard had known that he"d have to "move on from where he was, through phenomena that required him to be free from enc.u.mbrances." Just a few days earlier, said Broeker, Hubbard had completed his earthly research, declared "this was it," and then "handled in [an auditing] session all things that were necessary so that he could completely sever all ties."
Broeker also announced that the balance of Hubbard"s estate, "which is substantial," would go to the church. "It is Ron"s wish and postulate that we Clear this planet now, and he has given us this gift in order to get the job done." As for who might lead the charge, neither Broeker nor Miscavige, nor any of the other representatives of Scientology"s senior management, all of whom stood onstage, said a word. "There is only one Source," said Broeker. "Source does not pa.s.s to Management. Source is Ron, the only one! The Power of Source is the Route to Total Freedom."
The crowd rose to their feet and cheered.
Chapter 8.
Power Is a.s.sumed.
Power in my estimation is if people will listen to you.
-DAVID MISCAVIGE.
THERE WAS NO PUBLIC outpouring of grief among Scientologists when L. Ron Hubbard died. To mourn excessively would have been to deny one of the fundamental tenets of Hubbard"s teachings: that one life is a mere blip on the screen of a thetan"s eternal existence. And yet, despite this a.s.surance, Scientologists were stunned by Hubbard"s demise, most notably the dedicated Sea Org members who"d spent years hoping and preparing for their leader"s return. Among them, Mark Fisher, for example, had worked diligently at Gilman Hot Springs, helping to build Hubbard"s mansion, Bonnie View. On the evening of January 27, 1986, Fisher and his wife drove to Los Angeles, attended the memorial at the Hollywood Palladium, and drove back to Hemet in silence. "My biggest dream at the time was to work for LRH directly, and now that goal and dream were shattered for me," said Fisher. "We were shocked, to say the least. We were wondering what would happen now."
Whether Hubbard had intended to will most of his estate to Scientology has been an enduring question. Just one day before he died, the Founder"s will-the third* will he"d drawn up since 1979-was revised, leaving most of his fortune to a trust, appointing as trustee Norman Starkey, a close ally of Miscavige"s and executor of the will. In previous wills, Hubbard"s personal attorney and then Pat Broeker had been named the executor. Given reports that the Founder was seriously ill for some time before he died, some conspiracy theorists have maintained, and will no doubt continue to maintain, that Hubbard"s will was illegitimate. But considering the manner in which Hubbard had always regarded his family, there is little doubt that he intended to leave the majority of his estate to the Church of Scientology. To ensure that there would be no challenge from the family, however improbable that it might succeed, Miscavige made a side agreement with Mary Sue Hubbard, whereby she agreed to a settlement of $100,000 in exchange for giving up her share of a claim to Hubbard"s estate-a fortune worth approximately $400 million. Each of Hubbard"s children by Mary Sue received settlements of $50,000. Hubbard"s children by his previous marriages, L. Ron Hubbard Jr., Katherine, and Alexis, were also paid settlements; Nibs received his after threatening litigation.
But aside from bequeathing his material wealth, Hubbard had never appointed a successor, nor had he provided his followers with a clear road map for the future. Who among them had the vision and strength of purpose to ensure that Scientology would continue to grow and prosper?
Many in the Commodore"s Messenger Organization already viewed Miscavige as that leader. Just twenty-five, he had been slavishly devoted to Hubbard, and though he spent most of his time at Scientology"s Los Angeles headquarters, where Author Services was based, he made weekly trips to Gilman Hot Springs to meet with executives in the Commodore"s Messenger Organization and other branches of the Sea Org. His wife, Michele "Sh.e.l.ly" Barnett,* a cool and pretty young woman with long strawberry-blonde hair, usually accompanied him on these trips as his a.s.sistant.
Miscavige was generally well received at the base, said the Scientologist Dan Koon. He embodied toughness, a value L. Ron Hubbard had promoted strongly within the Sea Org. If he took it to extremes, the staff at Gilman believed it had to be necessary. He had incredible "confront," or the ability to face situations head-on, one of the highest compliments a Scientologist could receive, explained Koon. "He was certainly tough, but he was extremely capable and determined to get things done." And many things did seem to be improving. Scientology"s membership and income were on the upswing, said Koon; Dianetics had made it onto the New York Times bestseller list* for the first time since 1950. Though Miscavige had nothing to do with this-the success of Dianetics was due to the work of Jeff Hawkins and his strategic marketing unit-he threw himself into projects with the unwavering pa.s.sion of a young L. Ron Hubbard, inspiring his staff to work harder, and longer, than they ever imagined they could. Koon was impressed. "You met Miscavige and you knew he was an extraordinary personality," he said. "The guy had personal power not to be believed."
If the volatile and driven Miscavige resembled one side of L. Ron Hubbard, Pat Broeker reflected another. Broeker was ten years older than Miscavige and was arguably even more devoted to the Founder, having spent the better part of the past decade in hiding with him. A handsome man with dark hair and brown eyes, Broeker was personable, well read, and charming; he was also independent. "Pat was extremely charismatic, but he didn"t like rules," said Julie Holloway. "He liked to do things his own way, and he wouldn"t ask permission; he"d just do it." Holloway recalled that Broeker once posed as a veterinarian at an animal hospital in order to buy vaccines for a litter of new puppies-simply waiting as a customer, he"d told her, would have wasted too much time. "He a.s.sumed no one was going to question him and he was just going to fake it the whole way, and he did. And that"s how he was about everything."
Unbeknownst to many people in the Sea Organization, Broeker had not spent much time at Creston during the last year of Hubbard"s life. He"d decided to turn both the Creston property and a secondary ranch in Newberry Springs into showcases for American quarter horses-posing as a gentleman rancher would be a good cover for L. Ron Hubbard, Broeker thought. He spent most of 1985 traveling around the West on horse-buying trips.
Broeker"s wife, Annie, on the other hand, had spent the years in exile catering to Hubbard"s every need. Like several of the other messengers, Annie had served L. Ron Hubbard on the Apollo, starting at the age of twelve. A quiet, pretty young woman with wavy blonde hair, she was twenty-four when he went into hiding. During the last year of Hubbard"s life in particular, she served as the link between the Founder and her husband.
As a reward, Hubbard appointed Annie Inspector General of the Religious Technology Center, at that time the highest position in the church bureaucracy. It was a job for which Annie Broeker was ill-suited, as she was painfully shy, with few friends other than those she"d grown up with on the ship. "She hadn"t been part of any sort of group or social circle from 1980 to 1986-the only people she a.s.sociated with during that time were LRH, Pat, Gene Denk, Sarge" (a nickname for Steve Pfauth, the caretaker), "a horse trainer or two, and a ranch hand," said Julie Holloway. "I remember the first time she took the stage, which was at an event in March 1986 for Hubbard"s birthday. She was a nervous wreck."
Since 1980, Broeker had rarely been seen around Gilman Hot Springs, now the home of Scientology"s film studio, Golden Era Productions, and frequently referred to as Gold Base, or International Base, or simply Int, for its distinction as the home of Scientology"s international management. When he did make an appearance, he did so in his trademark highly covert fashion. "Pat had a silver cargo van with no windows," recalled Mark Fisher. "When you saw the silver van you knew he was around, but you never saw him. He would only come out at night." Once, Fisher recalled, he did spot Broeker on the base during the day but hardly recognized him: he was wearing a long full beard as a disguise and had jumped out of his van holding an Uzi submachine gun.
Broeker could have argued that Hubbard had intended for him to become the leader of Scientology, based on a message Hubbard had written to the church management shortly before dying, t.i.tled "The Sea Org and the Future." In this, his one gesture toward giving the church a direction to move in after his pa.s.sing, Hubbard promoted himself to the role of Admiral and then bid farewell to the Sea Organization, naming Pat and Annie Broeker his "Loyal Officers,"* an appointment that suggested the baton had been pa.s.sed to them. But Broeker did not argue for this interpretation of Hubbard"s intentions-rather than return to Gold Base after closing down the ranch in Creston, he moved with his wife and several others to the Newberry Springs ranch, near Barstow. He seemed intent on continuing with the horse business. "DM thought it was crazy," said Mark Fisher. "The only reason for having the horses in the first place was to provide a cover story for LRH. But even after LRH was dead, Pat wanted to continue to spend thousands of dollars of LRH"s money on the horse ranches."
At Newberry Springs, Broeker had a small staff of aides who came and went. Annie Broeker had a retinue as well, including the Sea Org officials Vicki Aznaran and Jesse Prince, her deputies at the RTC. With Pat Broeker issuing orders from this remote location, and Annie declining to say much of anything, David Miscavige, notably unmentioned in the "Sea Org and the Future," faced little compet.i.tion for center stage.
Hubbard"s daughters Diana and Suzette, once looked upon as Scientology royalty, were given low-ranking jobs at Int: Diana became a film editor, and Suzette served as a laundress, a.s.signed to wash David Miscavige"s shirts. Anyone at Int or at Scientology"s base in Los Angeles who seemed sympathetic to Pat Broeker was also demoted, while those who remained loyal to Miscavige were elevated within Author Services. One who fell into the latter camp was ASI"s legal executive, Mark "Marty" Rathbun.
A tall, reserved, steely-eyed man, Rathbun was known within the Sea Org as Miscavige"s "enforcer." He"d joined Scientology as a twenty-year-old, in 1977, having become interested in Hubbard"s ideas, he"d later say, out of concern for his brother, who was at the time a psychiatric patient at Dammasch State Hospital in Wilsonville, Oregon, suffering from schizophrenia. "I was kind of afraid he was going to wind up living the rest of his life in the back ward, so I was seeking some tools and some answers on how I might be able to [help] him," Rathbun told the St. Petersburg Times in 2009. A Scientology recruiter he"d met on the street recommended he read Dianetics, and Rathbun signed up to take Scientology"s basic communication course. By January 1978, he had signed a billion-year Sea Org contract, and by the end of that year he was dispatched to the Winter Headquarters ranch at La Quinta.
Hubbard was just leaving the ranch for his apartment in Hemet when Rathbun arrived; the two were never personally acquainted. But Rathbun soon got to know David Miscavige. Though he was quieter and more intellectual than the hotheaded "Action Chief," Rathbun, who"d played a few years of college basketball, bonded with the younger man over sports. In January 1981, the two drove from Los Angeles to New Orleans to see Miscavige"s beloved Philadelphia Eagles play in the Super Bowl. The Eagles lost, but Rathbun and Miscavige, then twenty-four and twenty-one, formed a lasting friendship.
A talented strategist, Rathbun soon became a key member of Miscavige"s All Clear Unit. In 1983 he"d helped dismantle the Guardian"s Office, replacing it with a new legal and investigative body known as the Office of Special Affairs. Mike Rinder, another Commodore"s Messenger, would ultimately become head of OSA, but Rathbun, who also had a gift for subversive tactics, would direct legal and investigative strategy as Miscavige"s point man and, crucially, became the executive to whom Miscavige turned when he wanted an enemy investigated or an a.s.sociate "de-powered," as some Scientology executives referred to it.
It had already dawned on Miscavige that Pat Broeker was anointed in name only. As the emissary to L. Ron Hubbard, he had never been a part of Scientology"s official management structure and remained off its organizational chart. He had been removed from the day-to-day operations of Scientology for seven years. Half of the staff at Int and at the base in Los Angeles had never met him or heard of him.
Now Miscavige"s loyalists launched a whisper campaign that a.s.serted that Broeker, far from a "loyal officer," was actually a thief and an alcoholic, unfit to command. And indeed, life at both ranches was notably laid back, compared to the regimented att.i.tude on the base. To ingratiate himself with the ranch hands and other workers, Broeker had stocked beer, frozen pizza, and other snack food in the refrigerators at both Creston and Newberry Springs. His staff were permitted to watch satellite TV, sleep a full eight hours per night, and even attend concerts in nearby Paso Robles. Perhaps the worst offense was that Broeker had reportedly purchased racehorses with church funds while other Sea Org members slaved away serving Scientology. He had even invested in a new hobby-flying ultralight aircraft-and now stored one such plane, also reportedly bought with church funds, at the Paso Robles airport.
But Broeker still maintained control of Hubbard"s handwritten auditing notes, including his research for the as-yet-unreleased OT levels 915. This was Hubbard"s final legacy: original material that was both lofty in purpose and, church officials well knew, potentially lucrative. Scientology made most of its money off auditing fees; many Scientologist OTs had been waiting for the vaunted "upper levels" for years. Whoever controlled this sacred doctrine, Miscavige understood, controlled the church. The younger Messenger now set out to get it.
Toward the end of 1987, Miscavige gathered a team led by Rathbun, and together they drove to see Broeker to demand that he relinquish the doc.u.ments. Rathbun later said that Miscavige confronted Broeker but that it was Annie who "finally broke under the pressure" and, when her husband wasn"t in the room, told Miscavige where Broeker was hiding the materials: in several filing cabinets in his storage s.p.a.ce at Newberry Springs.
Not long after this confrontation, Miscavige and Broeker were in Washington, D.C., to meet with church lawyers. Taking advantage of Broeker"s absence, Rathbun, in California, a.s.sembled a team of roughly twenty men to drive to Newberry Springs. When they got there, Rathbun called the ranch"s caretaker with an alarming bit of news. He had just received a tip, Rathbun said, that the FBI was preparing to raid the property. They"d be there in two hours, and they would surely cart away every bit of paper in the place. It was essential that he be let in to safeguard Hubbard"s papers-there was no time to waste. The story, which Rathbun said he"d cooked up with Miscavige days before, "worked like a charm." Within an hour, the men had entered the ranch and, with the caretaker"s permission, took possession of the filing cabinets.*
Just after midnight that evening, Mark Fisher, one of Miscavige"s senior aides, was awakened by a call. It was Miscavige, still in Washington. In a few hours, Miscavige said, Rathbun and Norman Starkey, another ASI executive, would be arriving at the Int Base in a truck. Fisher was to let them into the "LRH safe room," a private chamber located next to his office. Miscavige didn"t elaborate on what the men were going to put in the safe, but Fisher knew it was important because Miscavige told him to change the security codes to the room once they left. "Don"t let anyone in-and especially not Pat Broeker," Miscavige said.
Fisher then got a call from Starkey. "We"re here," he said. Fisher got dressed and rode his Honda 110 up the hill to his office, on the other side of the property. Rathbun and Starkey were waiting, with several other men and a set of large filing cabinets.
The safe room, which looked like a study, had bookshelves concealing false walls. Behind these walls were safes for Hubbard"s personal valuables, including jewelry, and some filing cabinets, the contents of which Fisher never knew. "There was room for these new filing cabinets to be added, and so they just wheeled them in. Marty and Norman didn"t say anything to me about it at all, but I could tell what this stuff was," Fisher said. "LRH had been dead for over a year at that point and I a.s.sumed that his research materials were in Pat"s care. So when these papers showed up in filing cabinets in the middle of the night, and I was told that I wasn"t to let Pat near them-well, it was pretty obvious what they were."
David Miscavige now held all the cards, and Pat Broeker knew it. Soon after Miscavige acquired the doc.u.ments, Broeker left the Sea Organization and the Church of Scientology. He headed east, settling first in Colorado and later in Wyoming. For several years after, Marty Rathbun, on Miscavige"s orders, had Broeker watched by private investigators. He was never seen in church circles again.
Broeker"s wife, Annie, stayed behind. Still loyal to Scientology, she was allowed to remain in the Sea Organization, but she was forced out of her position at the RTC by Miscavige and sentenced to a period of "rehabilitation" on the RPF, along with most of the couple"s staff. The Broekers" possessions, including a new Ford Bronco, the horses, and a car that Hubbard had bought for Annie, were seized and sold by the Church of Scientology.
With his last rival out of the way, Miscavige decided to remove himself as head of ASI, which was no longer the seat of power after Hubbard"s death. The RTC, which held the rights to Scientology"s trademarks and copyrights, was now the central policing and enforcement body of the church, and to gain control over it, Miscavige purged its top officials, including the Broeker loyalists Vicki Aznaran and Jesse Prince, both of whom had signed undated resignation letters when they began their jobs (something still required of all Scientology executives). Miscavige put himself at the helm of the RTC, creating a new t.i.tle for himself: Chairman of the Board. Rathbun was appointed Inspector General of the RTC, one of the highest positions in the Church of Scientology.
Only one task remained for Miscavige: to a.s.sert that Hubbard had never intended for the Broekers to lead Scientology in the first place. In 1988, he issued a proclamation declaring the "Sea Org and the Future" doc.u.ment a fake-though Miscavige notably did not cancel the rank of Admiral that Hubbard had bestowed upon himself in this doc.u.ment. "Of course, DM never provided anything [to prove that Hubbard hadn"t written it] and no one was willing to ask and risk being sent to the RPF," wrote the church"s onetime spokesman, Robert Vaughn Young, several years later. Miscavige claimed the Broekers had fabricated the doc.u.ment and had also altered other writings of Hubbard"s creation, made during his exile. And since there were no handwritten notes or tape recordings of Hubbard"s to contradict this account, most Scientologists, including the Sea Org members at Gilman Hot Springs, accepted Miscavige"s allegation as truth. "DM had thoroughly discredited Pat by then, and the only information we had was what DM told us," said Dan Koon.
"In the end, we were told that Pat was an estates manager for Hubbard and that"s all he really was," said Tom De Vocht, another Sea Org member at the base. "Now that"s odd because "Big P," which was Pat, was carbon-copied on every piece of written advice. But Dave said no, he was an estates manager. And Annie was the laundry person. And that was accepted because Pat and Annie were people no one knew. You saw them at the LRH death event and they were like G.o.ds, but then they were gone again. And Dave"s in charge."
"For the rest of my stay in [Scientology], Pat Broeker was never mentioned," wrote Young, a Broeker loyalist who was removed from his job as head of worldwide public relations for the church and sent to the RPF in 1989. Pat "became what in Orwell"s 1984 is a non-person. He had been written out of history, with anyone who cared (such as me) being sent to the RPF or interrogated ... until they got the point, which meant ... that everyone else got the point."
Two years after being sent to the RPF, in December 1989, Annie Broeker returned to Int Base. Upon her release, she and her friend Julie Holloway went Christmas shopping. She had almost no money, Holloway recalled, since the church had seized Broeker"s valuables. But she was nonetheless determined to spend what little she had on a gift for David Miscavige. "She told me she wanted to buy something special for DM since he had helped her so much," Holloway said. "I couldn"t believe it, after everything he"d done to her." Holloway, who left Scientology in 1990, had come to hate Miscavige. But Annie, who remains at Int to this day, never expressed anything but love for him, Holloway said. "She was totally broken."