Going Clear

by Lawrence Wright

  Miscavige took the hint. “I want you to look for the prettiest women in the church,” Tom De Vocht remembers Miscavige saying. “Get their names and phone numbers.” Miscavige then assigned Greg Wilhere and Tommy Davis to audition all the young actresses who were in Scientology—about a hundred, according to Marc Headley, who observed some of the videos. Shelly Miscavige, the leader’s wife, oversaw the project personally. Wilhere and Davis immediately went to work. The women weren’t told why they were being interviewed, but they were asked about their opinions of Cruise and where they were on the Bridge. Wilhere, who was actually in the Hole at the time, was taken out of confinement, given a BlackBerry and five thousand dollars to buy civilian clothes at a Saks Fifth Avenue outlet, then sent to New York and Los Angeles to videotape the interviews. Rinder noticed that when Cruise arrived at the Freedom Medal of Valor ceremony a month later, he was accompanied by a raven-haired young actress and model, Yolanda Pecoraro. She was born into Scientology and had completed a number of courses at the Celebrity Centre and on the Freewinds, but she was only nineteen years old. Cruise was forty-two at the time.

  The Scientology search team came up with another aspiring actress, Nazanin Boniadi, twenty-five years old, who had been born in Iran and raised in London. Naz was well educated and beautiful in the way that Cruise was inclined to respond to—dark and slender, with large eyes and a flashing smile. She had studied pre-med at the University of California at Irvine before deciding to try her luck as an actress. More important for the purposes of the match, however, was the fact that Boniadi was an OT V. Her mother was also a Scientologist.

  In early November 2004, Naz was informed that she had been selected for a special program that was critical to the future of the church, but it was so secret she wouldn’t be allowed to tell anyone, even her mother. Naz was moved immediately into the Celebrity Centre, where she spent a month going through security checks and special auditing programs. She hoped the project had something to do with human rights, which was her special interest, but all she was told was that her participation would end bigotry against Scientology.

  At one point during the intensive auditing and security checks, Wilhere informed her that she would have to break up with her longtime boyfriend in order for the project to proceed. She refused. She couldn’t understand why her boyfriend posed any kind of problem; indeed, she had personally introduced him to Scientology. Wilhere persisted, asking what it would take for her to break off the romance. Flustered, she responded that she would break up if she knew he had been cheating on her. According to Naz’s friends, the very next day, Wilhere brought in her boyfriend’s confidential auditing files and showed her several instances of his infidelities, which had been circled in red. Naz felt betrayed, but also guilty, because Wilhere blamed her for failing to know and report her boyfriend’s ethical lapses herself; after all, she had audited him on several occasions. Obviously, she had missed his “withhold.” She confronted her boyfriend and he confessed. That was the end of their relationship.7

  Another time, Naz was asked what her “ideal scene for 2-D”—in other words, her dream date—would be. It was eating sushi and going ice-skating. But she wondered why that was important.

  One of her assignments was to study a bulletin of Hubbard’s titled “The Responsibilities of Leaders.” It is Hubbard’s deconstruction of the lives of the nineteenth-century South American military leader Simón Bolívar and his ferociously protective mistress, a socialite named Manuela Sáenz. Bolívar, Hubbard writes, “was a military commander without peer in history. Why he would fail and die an exile to be later deified is thus of great interest. What mistakes did he make?” Sáenz, his consort, “was a brilliant, beautiful and able woman. She was loyal, devoted, quite comparable to Bolivar, far above the cut of average humanoids. Why then did she live a vilified outcast, receive such violent social rejection and die of poverty and remain unknown to history? What mistakes did she make?”

  Hubbard’s analysis was that Bolívar knew how to do only one thing brilliantly—to lead men in battle—and therefore he tended to resort to military solutions when diplomacy or politics would better serve. “He was too good at this one thing,” Hubbard observes. “So he never looked to any other skill and he never even dreamed there was any other way.” Bolívar failed to use his immense authority to reward his friends and punish his enemies; thus his friends deserted him and his enemies grew stronger. Craving glory and the love of his people, Bolívar disdained the bloody intrigues that might have kept him in power. “He never began to recognize a suppressive and never considered anyone needed killing except on a battlefield,” Hubbard coldly sums up. “His addiction to the most unstable drug in history—fame—killed Bolivar.”

  Manuela Sáenz might have saved him. She had qualities that he lacked, but she, too, made mistakes. For all her cleverness, she never contrived to make Bolívar marry her, which would have given her the standing that she badly needed. “She was utterly devoted, completely brilliant and utterly incapable of bringing off an action of any final kind,” Hubbard notes. “She violated the power formula in not realizing that she had power.” She should have taken on the portfolio of Bolívar’s secret police chief (as Mary Sue did for Hubbard). “She was not ruthless enough to make up for his lack of ruthlessness and not provident enough to make up for his lack of providence,” Hubbard writes. “She was an actress for the theater alone.”

  In Hubbard’s view, the moral of Bolívar and Sáenz’s tragedy is that those with power must use it. Someone close to power, like Manuela, has to dedicate herself to enlarging the strength of her partner. “Real powers are developed by tight conspiracies of this kind,” Hubbard writes. If Manuela had been willing to support Bolívar completely, Hubbard concludes, she would have been a truly historic figure, rather than being “unknown even in the archives of her country as the heroine she was.”

  Nazanin Boniadi was obviously being groomed for leadership. Why else would she be reading about Bolívar and Sáenz? But what lesson was she supposed to draw? She was puzzled by the demands the church was placing on her, which had little to do with human rights. Along with the security checks and the coursework, Naz was told to have her braces taken off and was given very expensive beauty treatments. Wilhere informed her that the “director” of the special project had decided that her hair had too much red in it, so a stylist to the stars came to the Celebrity Centre to darken and highlight her hair. Then came the shopping spree. Wilhere took Naz to Rodeo Drive and spent twenty thousand dollars for her new wardrobe.

  Finally, Naz and Wilhere flew to New York, first class. She guessed that the mission would finally be revealed to her. They stopped at the New York Org, ostensibly on routine business, but there they happened to run into Tom Cruise. Tommy Davis was with him. Although it all seemed like a happy coincidence, Naz was a little flustered. Not only was Cruise the biggest star in the world, he had also just been accorded the highest honor in Scientology. She said to him, “Very well done, sir.” (Later she was corrected for saying that, because you don’t commend your senior.)

  Cruise was charming. He said that he and Davis were headed over to the Empire State Building and then to Nobu for some sushi—why didn’t they join them? Afterward, they all went skating at Rockefeller Center, which was closed to the public while they were on the rink. It was beginning to seem a little too perfect. She spent that first night with Cruise in the Trump Tower, where he had taken an entire floor for his entourage.

  Cruise invited Naz to hang out on the set of War of the Worlds, which was shooting in Athens, New York, the next morning. At the end of the day, Davis accompanied her back to the city. In the limo, he handed Naz a non-disclosure agreement. There was no lawyer present, and she wasn’t given a copy of what she signed. He informed her that the “mission” was now off the table. This—the relationship with Cruise—was far more important. Davis warned that if she did anything to upset Cruise he would personally destroy her.

  Naz wasn’t resista
nt. She wanted to help the world, and she had faith that Scientology could do that. Cruise was dazzling. Scientology was deeply important to both of them. It was obviously meant to be, so why question it?

  According to several knowledgeable sources, within a few weeks Naz moved into Cruise’s house. Davis and Jessica Feshbach were constantly tutoring her in how to behave toward the star. One evening, she and Cruise had dinner with several Scientologists, including Tommy Davis and Cruise’s niece, Lauren Haigney, who was in the Sea Org and was posted to Gold Base. She had been Katy Haggis’s best friend all through their childhood. They were at the Delphian School together. At the dinner, Lauren talked about her friendship with Katy, and how she had decided to break off their relationship when Katy said she was a lesbian. Naz was shocked, not just by the comment but by the fact that everyone agreed with her decision.8

  In December, Cruise took Naz to his vacation house in Telluride, where they were joined by David and Shelly Miscavige. While they were at Cruise’s retreat, David and Shelly watched a screener of Million Dollar Baby. Afterward, Miscavige said it had been difficult to sit through. He complained about what a poor example of a Scientologist Haggis was, and said that he needed to get back on the Bridge and stop making such awful, low-tone films. Cruise agreed. “He needs to get his ethics in,” he remarked.

  Naz was having an awful menstrual period, and she wanted to beg off the festive dinner they had planned, but she knew she was obliged to play the hostess. Still, she felt miserable and her mind was foggy. A couple of times, Miscavige addressed comments to her, and she couldn’t quite understand what he said. Miscavige speaks in a rapid-fire Philly brogue, and Naz had to ask him to repeat himself more than once. The next day, both Davis and Cruise dressed her down for disrespecting the church leader—specifically, for “insulting his TR 1.” In Scientology lingo, that refers to the basic Training Routine about communicating with another person. Naz had embarrassed Miscavige because he wasn’t able to get his message across. Davis said that her conduct was inexcusable. If she was in pain, she should have taken a Tylenol.

  With his characteristic intensity, Cruise himself later explained the seriousness of the situation: “You don’t get it. It goes like this.” He raised his hand over his head. “First, there’s LRH.” He moved his hand down a few inches. “Then, there is COB.” Bringing his hand down to his own eye level, he said, “Then there’s me.”

  Two weeks later, Jessica Feshbach told Naz to pack her things. Cruise was too busy to say good-bye. Naz’s last glimpse was of him working out in his home gym.

  Davis later explained to her that Cruise had simply changed his mind about the relationship, deciding that he needed someone with more power. But the star was willing to make amends by paying for a package that would allow her to attain OT VII. Continuing up the Bridge would help her deal with her grief and loss, Davis assured her.

  In February 2005, Naz went to Clearwater to take the courses. At first, she was treated like a VIP, but soon one of her friends noticed dramatic changes in her—she was weeping all the time. Naz confided that she had just gone through a wrenching breakup with Tom Cruise. The shocked friend immediately reported her to Ethics. Naz was assigned a condition of Treason and ordered to do reparations for the damages she had done to the group by revealing her relationship with Cruise. She was made to dig ditches and scrub public toilets with a toothbrush. Finally, in June, she worked her way back into good standing with the church, but she was ordered to stay away from the Celebrity Centre. Davis advised her to go live in some far corner of the world and never utter another word about Tom Cruise.9

  The search for a new mate for the star now went beyond Scientologists. Cruise briefly courted the Colombian actress Sofía Vergara, whom he met at a pre-Oscar party hosted by Will and Jada Pinkett Smith, but that relationship dissolved when Vergara refused to become a Scientologist. The religion was a crucial factor, both for Cruise and for the church. Cruise was particularly interested in Jennifer Garner. Other actresses were invited to the Celebrity Centre to audition for what they believed was a role in the Mission: Impossible series. The names included Kate Bosworth, Jessica Alba, Lindsay Lohan, Scarlett Johansson—and Katie Holmes.

  Holmes was an ingenue with almond-shaped brown eyes, who described herself as a twenty-six-year-old virgin. She had been a top student at an all-girls Catholic high school in Toledo, Ohio, but like Tommy Davis, she had dropped out of Columbia University after a single semester. Soon she was starring on the teenage soap opera Dawson’s Creek and had a modest film career in coquettish roles. Church researchers discovered an interview she had given to Seventeen in October 2004. “I think every young girl dreams about [her wedding],” Holmes told the magazine. “I used to think I was going to marry Tom Cruise.” She had developed a crush on the actor when he appeared in Risky Business. At the time, she was four years old.

  Katie and Tom met in April 2005. “I was in love from the moment that I shook his hand for the first time,” she later told talk-show host Jay Leno. Cruise is famous for his ardent courtship—flowers, jewelry, and imaginative dates. He took Katie on a nighttime helicopter ride over Los Angeles, with take-out sushi. Within a little more than two weeks, she had moved into Cruise’s Beverly Hills mansion, fired her manager and agent and replaced them with his representatives, and had begun to be accompanied by Jessica Feshbach, who was explained in press interviews as being her “best friend.”

  In May, Cruise appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show. The audience, nearly all women, were in a near-hysterical state of anticipation even before Cruise came out on the stage, so his behavior has to be seen against a backdrop of a highly titillated screaming mass, to which he responded like a surfer catching a massive wave. He pumped his fist in the air and knelt on the floor. “Something’s happened to you!” Winfrey exclaimed.

  “I’m in love!” he explained.

  “We’ve never seen you behave like this before!”

  “I know!” Cruise said, jumping backward onto her couch. Then he grabbed Winfrey’s hands and began wrestling with her. “You’re gone!” she kept saying. “You’re gone!” It was a scene of complete delirium.

  Cruise’s spectacular and highly public romance was overshadowing the promotion for War of the Worlds, the movie he had just made with Spielberg, which would be released the following month. A few weeks after the Winfrey show, Cruise did an interview with Today show host Matt Lauer as Holmes sat nearby. The questions were friendly, and Cruise seemed happy and relaxed until Lauer mentioned that Holmes had agreed to take up Scientology. “At this stage in your life, could you be with someone who doesn’t have an interest?” Lauer asked.

  “You know, Scientology is something that you don’t understand,” Cruise responded. “It’s like, you could be a Christian and be a Scientologist, okay.”

  “So, it doesn’t replace religion,” Lauer offered.

  “It is a religion, because it’s dealing with the spirit. You as a spiritual being.”

  Lauer then asked about a comment that Cruise had recently made about actress Brooke Shields, who had written that antidepressants had helped her get through her postpartum depression. “I’ve never agreed with psychiatry—ever!” Cruise said. He was dressed in black, his muscular arms on display; he had a stubble beard and his hair was draped in bangs across his forehead. He radiated an athletic intensity and a barely contained fury. “As far as the Brooke Shields thing, look, you’ve got to understand, I really care about Brooke Shields. I think, here’s a wonderful and talented woman. And I want to see her do well. And I know that psychiatry is a pseudo-science.”

  “But, Tom, if she said that this particular thing helped her feel better, whether it was the antidepressants or going to a counselor or psychiatrist, isn’t that enough?”

  “Matt, you have to understand this,” Cruise said, glowering. “Here we are today, where I talk out against drugs and psychiatric abuses of electric-shocking people—okay, against their will—of drugging children with them not kno
wing the effect of these drugs. Do you know what Adderall is? Do you know Ritalin? Do you know now that Ritalin is a street drug? Do you understand that?”

  “The difference is—”

  “No, no, Matt.”

  “This wasn’t against her will, though.”

  “Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt.”

  “But this wasn’t against her will.”

  “Matt, I’m asking you a question.”

  “I understand there’s abuse of all these things.”

  “No, you see, here’s the problem,” Cruise said. “You don’t know the history of psychiatry. I do.”

  Lauer was taken aback by Cruise’s aggressiveness, but he pressed on. “Do you examine the possibility that these things do work for some people? That yes, there are abuses, and yes, maybe they’ve gone too far in some areas. Maybe there are too many kids on Ritalin. Maybe electric shock—”

  “Too many kids on Ritalin?” Cruise said, shaking his head. “Matt.”

  “Aren’t there examples where it works?”

  “Matt, Matt, Matt, you don’t even—you’re glib. You don’t even know what Ritalin is.” He said there were ways that Shields could solve her depression—he mentioned diet and exercise—other than drugs. “And there are ways of doing it without that, so that we don’t end up in a brave new world. The thing that I’m saying about Brooke is that there’s misinformation, okay. And she doesn’t understand the history of psychiatry. She doesn’t understand in the same way that you don’t understand it, Matt.”

  SCIENTOLOGY’S HISTORY OF psychiatry holds it responsible for many of the ills that have affected humanity—war, racism, ethnic cleansing, terrorism—all in the pursuit of social control and profit. The church has opened an exhibit, “Psychiatry: An Industry of Death,” on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. It describes the often grisly and benighted practices that have characterized the evolution of the profession, including madhouses, lobotomies, electroshock therapy, and the proliferation of psychiatric drugs to treat spurious diagnoses. Scientology views this history as a long march by psychiatrists to manipulate human behavior and institute world government.