Haggis was aghast. “They thought that comparing Miscavige to Martin Luther King was debasing his character,” he said. “If they were trying to convince me that Scientology was not a cult, they did a very poor job of it.”12
Copies of Haggis’s e-mail resignation letter were forwarded to various members of the church, although few outside of church circles knew about it. By October, the letter had found its way to Marty Rathbun. He had become an informal spokesperson for Scientology defectors who, like him, believed that the church had broken away from Hubbard’s original teachings. He called Haggis, who was shooting in Pittsburgh, and asked if he could publish the letter on his blog. “You’re a journalist, you don’t need my permission,” Haggis said, although he did ask him to excise the portion of the letter that dealt with his dinner with John Travolta and Kelly Preston and the part about his daughter Katy’s homosexuality.
Haggis didn’t think about the consequences of his decision. He thought it would show up on a couple of websites. He was a writer, not a movie star. But Rathbun got fifty-five thousand hits on his blog that afternoon.
The next morning, the story was in newspapers around the world. Haggis got a call from Tommy Davis. “Paul, what the hell!”
* * *
1 Four years before, the church had actively campaigned against Proposition 63, the Mental Health Services Act, which raised taxes to provide for increased care for the mentally ill; the proposition passed.
2 Mary Benjamin says they were never parties to the suit.
3 Now called the Tampa Bay Times.
4 Cruise’s attorney, Bertram Fields, denies this took place: “Mr. Cruise has never asked Mr. Haggis or anyone else to denounce media attacks on Mr. Cruise on the Larry King show or anywhere else or to do anything like that.”
5 The church characterizes this as an attempt at extortion.
6 The church forwarded a letter to me from Katy Haggis’s friend in which she denies losing a job because of their friendship and asserting that the church is welcoming to everyone, regardless of their sexual orientation. The friend, whose parents are both employed by the church, did not respond to a request to talk further.
7 Tommy Davis gave me an affidavit, signed by Scobee, in which she admits to having liaisons. Scobee told me there were only two incidents, both of which involved a kiss and nothing more. She says she did not write the affidavit; she says she only signed it in the hope of leaving the church on good terms so that she could stay in touch with relatives. The church maintains that it does not use confidential information derived from auditing sessions.
8 The church denies that blow drills exist.
9 According to Tommy Davis, “Mr. Miscavige has never physically assaulted Marc Headley or anyone else.”
10 Davis later said that he had never followed a Sea Org member who had blown and had only gone to see Brousseau because he was “a very good friend of mine” (Deposition of Thomas Davis, Marc Headley vs. Church of Scientology International, and Claire Headley vs. Church of Scientology International, US District Court, Central District of California, July 2, 2010).
11 Valerie Venegas told one of her sources that higher-up officials had spiked it; later, she blamed me, because I had uncovered the probe and had called to verify it with the agents (Tony Ortega, “FBI Investigation of Scientology: Already Over before We Even Heard of It,” Village Voice Blogs, Mar. 19, 2012).
12 Tommy Davis says that Martin Luther King, Jr.’s name never came up.
11
Tommy
When I first contacted Davis in April 2010, asking for his cooperation on a profile I was writing about Haggis for The New Yorker, he expressed a reluctance to talk, saying that he had already spent a month responding to similar queries. “It made little difference,” he said. “The last thing I’m interested in is dredging all this up again.” He kept putting me off, saying that he was too busy to get together, although he promised that we would meet when he was more available. “I want our time to be undistracted,” he explained in an e-mail. “We should plan on spending at least a full day together as there is a lot I would want to show you.” We finally arranged to meet on Memorial Day weekend.
I flew to Los Angeles and spent much of that weekend waiting for him to call. On Sunday at three o’clock, Davis appeared at my hotel, with Jessica Feshbach. We sat at a table on the patio. Davis has his mother’s sleepy eyes. His thick black hair was combed forward, with a lock falling boyishly onto his forehead. He wore a wheat-colored suit with a blue shirt that opened onto a chest that seemed, among the sun-worshippers at the pool, strikingly pallid. Feshbach, a slender, attractive woman, anxiously twirled her hair.
Davis now told me that he was “not willing to participate in, or contribute to, an article about Scientology through the lens of Paul Haggis.” I had come to Los Angeles specifically to talk to him, at a time he had chosen. I wondered aloud if he had been told not to talk to me. He said no.
“Maybe Paul shouldn’t have posted the letter on the Internet,” Feshbach interjected. “There are all sorts of shoulda woulda coulda.” She said that she had just spoken to Mark Isham, the composer, whom I had interviewed. “He talked to you about what are supposed to be our confidential scriptures.” That I would ask about the church’s secret doctrines was offensive, she said. “It’s a two-way street happening,” she concluded.1
“Everything I have to say about Paul, I’ve already said,” Davis declared. He agreed to respond to fact-checking queries, however.
THE GARDEN BEHIND Anne Archer and Terry Jastrow’s home in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles is a peaceful retreat, filled with olive trees and hummingbirds. A fountain gurgles beside the swimming pool. Jastrow was recounting his first meeting with Archer, in Milton Katselas’s class. His friend David Ladd, son of the Hollywood legend Alan Ladd, had invited him to visit. “I saw this girl sitting next to Milton,” Jastrow recalled. “I said, ‘Who’s that?’ ”
Archer smiled. There was a cool wind blowing in from the Pacific, and she drew a shawl around her. “We were friends for about a year and a half before we had our first date,” she said. They were married in 1978.
“Our relationship really works,” Jastrow said. “We attribute that essentially a hundred percent to applying Scientology.”
The two spoke of the techniques that had helped them, such as never being critical of the other and never interrupting.
Scientology “isn’t a ‘creed,’ ” Archer said. “These are basic natural laws of life.” She described L. Ron Hubbard as “an engineer, not a faith healer,” who had codified human emotional states, in order to guide the adept to higher levels of existence—“to help a guy rise up the Tone Scale and feel a zest and a love for life.”
Jastrow had been an acolyte in an Episcopal church when he was studying at the University of Houston, but doubts overwhelmed him. “I walked out in the middle of communion,” he said. “I was an atheist for ten years. That was the condition I was in when I started at the Beverly Hills Playhouse.” He had never heard of Scientology at the time.
Archer said that the controversy that continually surrounds the church hadn’t touched her. “It’s not that I’m not aware of it.” She added that Scientology is growing despite the public criticism. “It’s in a hundred and sixty-five countries.”
“Translated into fifty languages!” Jastrow interjected. “It’s the fastest-growing religion.” In his opinion, “Scientologists do more good things for more people in more places around the world than any other organization ever.” He added, “When you study historical perspective of new faiths, they’ve all been—”
“Attacked,” said Archer. “Look at what happened to the—”
“The Christians!” Jastrow said simultaneously. “Think of the Mormons and the Christian Scientists.”
They talked about the church’s focus on celebrities. “Hubbard recognized that if you really want to inspire a culture to have peace and greatness and harmony among men, you need to respect and
help the artist to prosper and flourish,” Archer said. “And if he’s particularly well known he needs a place where he can be comfortable. So, Celebrity Centres provide that.” She blamed the press for concentrating too much on Scientology celebrities. Journalists, she said, “don’t write about the hundreds of thousands of other Scientologists.”
“Millions!”
“Millions of other Scientologists. They only write about four friggin’ people!”
Jastrow suggested that Scientology’s critics often had a vested interest. He pointed to psychiatrists, psychologists, doctors, drug makers, pharmacies—“all those people who make a living and profit and pay their mortgages and pay their college educations and buy their cars, et cetera, et cetera, based on people not being well.”
“Who advertise in the newspapers and on television, more than any other advertisers,” Archer added.
“But this is a collateral issue, darling, in terms of what I’m talking about,” Jastrow continued. “For the first time in America’s experience with war, there are more mental illnesses from Iraq and Afghanistan than physical illnesses,” he said, citing a recent article in USA Today. “So mental illnesses become a big business.” Drugs merely mask mental distress, he said, whereas “Scientology will solve the source of the problem.” The medical and pharmaceutical industries are “prime funders and sponsors of the media,” he said, and therefore might exert “influence on people telling the whole and true story about Scientology just because of the profit motive.” He said that only Scientology could help mankind right itself. “What else is there that we can hang our hopes on?”
“That’s improving civilization,” Archer added.
“Is there some other religion on the horizon that’s going to help mankind?” Jastrow asked. “Just tell me where. If not Scientology, where?”
ANNE ARCHER BEGAN STUDYING with Katselas in 1974, two years after her son Tommy Davis was born. She was the exceptionally beautiful daughter of two successful actors. Her father, John Archer, was best known during the 1930s and 1940s as the voice introducing the radio drama The Shadow. (“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows,” he said at the beginning of the program.) He went on to appear in more than fifty films. Her mother, Marjorie Lord, played Danny Thomas’s wife on the popular television show Make Room for Daddy. With such a bloodline, it might be expected that Archer would be aiming toward stardom, but when she entered the Beverly Hills Playhouse she was coming off a television series (Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice) that she didn’t respect and that had been canceled after a single season. She was a young mother in a dissolving marriage and an actor with diminishing career prospects.
Katselas had a transformative effect. Like so many others, Archer was magnetized by this ebullient Greek, with his magnificent beard and his badgering, teasing, encouraging, and infuriating personality. He was one of the most inspiring people Archer had ever met. Where had he acquired such wisdom? Some of the other students told her that Katselas was a Scientologist, so she decided to try it out. She began going two or three times a week to the Celebrity Centre to take the Life Repair Program. “I remember walking out of the building and walking down the street toward my car, and I felt like my feet were not touching the ground. I said to myself, ‘My God, this is the happiest I’ve ever been in my entire life. I’ve finally found something that works!’ ” She added, “Life didn’t seem so hard anymore. I was back in the driver’s seat.”
When Tommy was old enough, Archer would bring him to the Playhouse while she was taking lessons. He would wander around the theater, venturing into the light booth and watching his mother learning her craft. Jastrow recalled being struck by Tommy’s poise even as a five-year-old child. “I am a really good dad, and he taught me how,” Jastrow said. He gave the example of a visit from his own parents, who had flown out from Midland, Texas, to meet Terry’s new family. After Jastrow had driven them back to the airport, Tommy said, “I notice that your dad was pretty strict with you.” Jastrow agreed that his father had been very stern when he was growing up. Then Tommy continued, “I was noticing that you’re pretty strict with me.” Jastrow pointed to that as a defining moment in their relationship. “I realized I wanted to be his friend first,” he said. “He was the senior being in that relationship.”
Anne and Terry soon found their way into Scientology, but Tommy was initially raised in his mother’s original faith, Christian Science. His father, William Davis, is a wealthy financier and real-estate developer who was once reported to be among the largest owners of agricultural property in California. He was also a well-known fund-raiser for Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, and personally contributed an estimated $350,000 a year to Republican causes. Although Tommy grew up in an environment of money and celebrity, he impressed people with his modesty. He longed to do something to help humanity. Scientology seemed to offer a direction.
Paul Haggis met Tommy at the Celebrity Centre in 1989, when he was seventeen years old—“a sweet and bright boy.” Their meeting came at a critical moment in Tommy’s life. He had just broken up with his girlfriend. Archer had taken him to the Celebrity Centre for counseling, where he took a course called Personal Values and Integrity.
Tommy’s presence immediately caused a stir inside the church. The president of the Celebrity Centre, Karen Hollander, fixed on the idea that Tommy should be her personal assistant. He was young, very rich, and handsome enough to be a movie star himself. He had grown up mixing with famous people. It would be a perfect fit. Whenever celebrities came in, there would be Anne Archer’s son. But that required coaxing Tommy to join the Sea Org. Hollander called in the younger members of her staff to woo him. “You can either go to college and get a wog education, or you can join Sea Org and be doing the best service you could ever do for mankind—and for yourself,” John Peeler, Hollander’s secretary at the time, would tell him.
Although Anne and Terry say they wanted Tommy to get a college education, they knew of the efforts to recruit him and didn’t stand in the way. That fall, Tommy entered Columbia University, but lasted only a single semester. Over Christmas break, he went back into Hollander’s office, and when he came out, he excitedly told Peeler he had just signed the billion-year contract.
His job for Hollander was to attend to the celebrities who lounged around the president’s office. Lisa Marie Presley was often there, as were Kirstie Alley, and writer-director Floyd Mutrux. John Travolta would drop by occasionally. Also in this crowd was a clique of young actors who had grown up in the church, including Giovanni Ribisi and his sister Marissa, Jenna Elfman, and Juliette Lewis. Davis would arrange for them all to go to movies together. He was charming, attractive, he had a great sense of humor, and eventually, David Miscavige began to notice. “Miscavige liked the fact that he was young and looked trendy and wore Brioni or Armani suits,” Mike Rinder observed. “He had a cute BMW. It was an image that Miscavige liked.”
Davis moved into Sea Org berthing in a dodgy neighborhood on Wilcox Street in West Hollywood. It was quite a step down from the luxurious life he had enjoyed until then. He was quickly introduced to some of the inner secrets of the organization. In about 1994, he was involved in an embarrassing cover-up when a well-known spokesperson for the church was captured in a video having sex with several other men. Amy Scobee says that church executives were frantic that their spokesperson would be exposed as being gay. Scobee and Karen Hollander set a briefcase with the spokesperson’s auditing files in the backseat of the car that Hollander was borrowing at the time—actually, Tommy Davis’s BMW—intending to take the files to Gold Base the next day for senior managers to review. Because the car was in a highly secure parking lot, they thought nothing of it. Davis returned late that night, however. He found his car and decided to take it back to the Sea Org dormitory. When he parked the car on Wilcox Street, he happened to notice the briefcase, so he locked it in the trunk and went to bed.
The next day, Scobee got a call from a sheepish Davis. He said
that someone had broken into his car and stolen the briefcase out of the trunk. “When we told Tommy what was in the briefcase, he freaked,” Scobee recalled. “He went around for a week, searching through Dumpsters.” Finally, someone approached Davis about the reward he had offered and led him to the thief, a homeless man who was trying to sell the briefcase; the contents, which were still in it, meant nothing to him. Davis gave the man twenty dollars.2 Davis was disappointed because the search forced him to miss the ceremony where John Travolta was awarded a Scientology medal.
Davis went through a period of doubt and actually considered dropping out of the Sea Org, according to Scobee, but then he recommitted and became so enthusiastic that he had the Sea Org logo—a laurel wreath with twenty-six leaves representing the stars in the Galactic Confederacy—tattooed on his arm. When Miscavige found out, he berated Davis, saying that he had violated the church’s copyright.
Davis began working with Marty Rathbun during his intensive auditing of Cruise. When Rathbun was thrown in the Hole, Davis became something more than a gofer for the star. He provided a line to Cruise at a time when the actor’s relationship with the church was not yet solidified, and his constant presence beside the superstar boosted the image of Scientology as a hip, insider network. Although Cruise is ten years older, the two men physically resemble each other, with long faces and strong jaws, a likeness that is enhanced by similar spiky haircuts. Their relationship evolved into a friendship, but one that reflected the immense power imbalance between them, as well as Davis’s position as a deputy of the church in the service of its most precious asset. Until his association with Cruise, Davis had been called Tom, but he became Tommy to distinguish him from the star. In other ways, he became more like him—his clothes, his hair, his intensity.
At the age of nineteen, Davis married a dreamy Belgian woman, Nadine van Hootegem, who was also in the Sea Org. “I made the decision to forward the aims of Scientology,” she told the ABC News program 20/20 in 1998. “I actually compare it a little bit like Mother Teresa.” She added, “It’s a fun activity to set men free.” According to Mike Rinder, Nadine Davis became intensely involved in Tom Cruise’s entourage. “Somehow dealing with Katie Holmes, she did something wrong,” Rinder says. “She became a non-person.” He says that Tommy was forced to divorce her.3
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