Inside Scientology

by Janet Reitman

  Children of Sea Org members, notably those whose parents serve at large Scientology installations, were given their own organization, called the Cadet Org.* They lived apart from their parents, in dormitory-style accommodations, with little adult supervision. At Saint Hill, the Cadet Org was housed in a dilapidated country mansion known as Stonelands. When Claire arrived, in 1979, there were about forty kids between the ages of four and sixteen, supervised by a single adult, a Scientologist in her sixties.

  Few provisions were made for the education of the kids in the Sea Org (aside from putting them to work, Hubbard never figured how to accommodate actual children in his organizations). At Saint Hill, which had no school, some children joined the Commodore's Messenger Organization, which they could do at age eight. Claire, still too young, was bused to a local elementary school in East Grinstead, whose residents, like those in Clearwater, were notably unfriendly.

  Yearning to make friends with the "normal kids"—Claire and her Cadet Org friends were, in her mind, the "weirdo kids"—she learned how to speak two languages: one for Scientology, the other for school. When she slipped up and started talking about things like overts or withholds, the other kids laughed. She'd been relieved when her mother met Hugh Whitt, an American Scientologist working at Saint Hill, and decided to marry him. Whitt had taken LSD in his youth and was prevented from joining the Sea Org because of it. As Sea Org members are not allowed to marry non–Sea Org members, Claire's mother had to petition Scientology to leave the Sea Org, and was granted permission.

  "To me, it was like a dream come true: I was finally going to get to live in a house with my parents and be like a normal kid," Claire said. But the years she spent at Saint Hill stayed with Claire even after her family moved to Los Angeles, where Hugh ran the Scientology mission of Beverly Hills. She said, "The world outside of Scientology just seemed like this vast unknown: how could I possibly live in it?"

  In 1989, when Claire was fourteen, she and her father went to Clearwater, where a friend of her father's named Richard Reiss, the base's highest-ranking auditor,* told her that joining the Sea Org would be the "right thing to do." Momentarily inspired, Claire decided she would join. But she changed her mind once she got back to Los Angeles, particularly as her mother, according to Claire, "flipped out" when her fourteen-year-old daughter told her she'd signed a billion-year contract to serve Scientology for the rest of her life. Gen understood the rigors of Sea Org life. Claire was intelligent and attractive—there were plenty of things she could do, Gen believed, and still remain true to the church.

  The reaction of Claire's mother illustrates a common dilemma for Scientologist parents, who are supposed to feel honored that their child has been selected for the Sea Org in the same way a Catholic parent is supposed to swell with pride if their child joins the priesthood. But many parents are not eager to give their son or daughter to the church, which requires signing away all legal rights to the child's welfare. "You get a lot of parents who are just beside themselves," says Sandra Mercer, whose youngest son was approached as a ten-year-old, and without either of his parents present, signed a contract—with crayon, she said—though he was not formally approached to activate his contract until he was thirteen. Mercer refused to allow her son to join until he finished high school (by which point, she added, he'd lost interest), and since she was a prominent Scientologist in Clearwater, church officials didn't push. "But I was an exception," she noted. "If you're just a rank-and-file member, you can't complain or say no."

  The scrutiny that unwilling parents receive—they may be condemned for being "counter-intentioned" to Scientology, an act of treason, if they prevent their child from joining the Sea Org—forces many into silence and even leads some to encourage their kids to make the commitment. Gen Whitt managed to delay Claire's enrollment for two years with a pledge that her daughter would help out at the Beverly Hills mission. But in 1991, when Claire was sixteen, Gen finally gave her consent. Richard Reiss reminded the Whitts that were they to refuse to let Claire go, they might be put before a church ethics board. Reiss himself might face a Scientology tribunal for his failure to recruit her unless Claire agreed to enlist.

  And so began Claire's immersion into the tightly wound, paramilitary world of the Sea Organization, where she would spend the next fourteen years of her life.

  Chapter 16

  Int

  SCIENTOLOGY'S PUBLICITY MATERIALS portray the Sea Organization as similar to the U.S. Marines. "The toughest, most dedicated team this planet has ever known," says one recruiting brochure. "Against such a powerful team the opposition hasn't got a chance." Though these are L. Ron Hubbard's words, the vision they invoke has been fully realized only in the era of David Miscavige. Today it is impossible to understand the Church of Scientology without understanding the Sea Org, which over the past forty years has evolved from Hubbard's private navy to Scientology's managerial elite, to its current incarnation: an executive body but also a low-paid workforce that can run the church's engines without impacting its overall revenue.

  Induction into the Sea Org begins with a boot camp known as the Estates Project Force, or EPF. In Los Angeles, the EPF is located at the Pacific Area Command Base (PAC Base) on Sunset Boulevard. Here, Claire Headley learned to march, salute, and perform manual labor. Physical work is a key training technique for new Sea Org recruits. Among the chores given people on the EPF are scrubbing pots, washing garbage receptacles, and cleaning roach- or rat-infested ducts. Claire described the work as "nasty" but ultimately noble in purpose. "The idea," she told me, "is that you do this for a few weeks and you can do any task given to you and do it right."

  After graduation, inductees are assigned a post at one of Scientology's organizations. Many kids hope to work at Celebrity Centre, where staffers are outfitted in custom-made uniforms and have a chance to mingle with movie stars. Claire was even more ambitious: she wanted to work at Int, the most exclusive Scientology facility on land. Like all public Scientologists, she'd known of the base as "Gold," the home of Scientology's film studio, Golden Era Productions, which sounded glamorous. She heard rumors that Tom Cruise was a regular there. And she'd been shown pictures of the five-hundred-acre property and its large swimming pool and golf course. There were grassy meadows, winding paths, and a small lake where swans and ducks roamed freely. With its neat white buildings with blue tiled roofs, she thought it looked like Disneyland—and in fact, this comparison with Disneyland was often used to promote the place to potential teenage recruits.

  Only the most qualified and privileged Sea Org members were posted to Gold; often they were the children of Scientology's elite. Among them were L. Ron Hubbard's granddaughter Roanne and the sons and daughters of some of Scientology's top attorneys and money managers. Claire was told she'd need to score at least 125 on an IQ test, which she did, and that she would also have to score high on a variety of leadership and personality tests. The rules were very strict: no one with family members in government or media could work at the International Base; no one with friends or family who'd left Scientology on bad terms could be assigned there either. A wholesome, virginal girl with a "clean" drug history, Claire sailed through the process, and two months after joining the Sea Org, she got her wish and was assigned a clerical position at Gold.

  At first glance, Gold did look a lot like Disneyland. Driving in through the main gate, Claire saw a beige estate house, known as the Castle, which looked like an actual castle. This housed Scientology's film wing. Nearby was a stone carriage house called the Tavern, which was where visiting VIPs often ate their meals. It was decorated in the style of King Arthur's court, complete with a sizable round table and even a stone with a sword embedded in it, like Excalibur. Across the road, rising up from the hills, was the Star of California clipper ship, which was done up in "Pirates of the Caribbean" style, with mermaid figurines and plastic crabs.

  But there were also many other buildings, most of them utilitarian looking, scattered around the property, and Cla
ire had to memorize the names and locations of all of them, and their abbreviations. Her new home, she learned right away, was far more than the film and production studio most Scientologists thought it was. This was a ruse, or "shore story," the church told the public in order to maintain the security of the base. Int was Scientology's nerve center, where every policy, legal strategy, advertising campaign, and event was planned and launched.

  Virtually everything about the Int Base was different than Claire had imagined. It was run and organized like a covert military installation. The base's location was a secret—Claire had to pledge never to divulge it to her friends or family, under the threat of treason. Leaving the compound with any documents or paperwork was forbidden. Similarly, she was not allowed to speak of her job nor of any goings-on at the base to anyone, not even to a Sea Org friend. She was banned from riding in local taxis or taking any form of public transportation; instead, she traveled on special Scientology buses or in a private vehicle driven by a staff member who'd completed a special driving course designed by L. Ron Hubbard. Every Sea Org member who wants to drive is required to attend this "car school," even if the person already has a driver's license and a car.

  Writing home from Int was an ordeal. Letters could not be sent through regular mail or Fedex, but had to instead go through the base's internal mail system, where screeners read everyone's incoming and outgoing correspondence. In a similar vein, staffers were given Nextel phones that doubled as walkie-talkies to communicate on the base, but with very few exceptions, they were not allowed to use the phones to make outside calls. They were also banned from using pay phones in town, and could make calls only from special base phones, which were monitored by censors. To get permission to do this, one had to fill out a formal request, citing the reasons for making the call.

  "All of this was so freaky, especially for a sixteen-year-old," said Claire, who immediately began to wonder if she'd made a mistake by working there. But on the other hand, the Int Base was the very heart of the whole Scientology organization, whose mission was to save the world. Every training and orientation film, every marketing strategy, every bit of technical material—dictionaries, instruction manuals, recorded Hubbard lectures, even every E-meter—all were born of the efforts of the staff members at Int, the most "on-policy," ethical, ideal organization on the planet, or so Claire believed. How could she call herself a Scientologist and not be a part of it?

  Plus, David Miscavige was at Int. Like all young Scientologists, Claire was in awe of Miscavige, who, at the events she'd attended with her parents, came across as a handsome, charismatic, youthful, tanned (thanks to a personal tanning bed aides said he utilized before every Scientology event), and most of all, totally in control. To Claire, he (she was instructed to call him "sir") appeared to be the most dedicated Scientologist on the planet.

  Like L. Ron Hubbard, Miscavige moved with an entourage, the two constants being his wife, Shelly, and his personal assistant, or "communicator," a dark-haired New Zealander named Laurisse Stuckenbrock, who was called Lou. The three of them always dressed identically, in white or black, and Shelly and Lou also carried tape recorders to take down Miscavige's every word, much as Hubbard's personal aides had scribbled his directives with paper and pen. The tapes were then rushed to Miscavige's office in the RTC building, which was located at the far north side of the base in a modern structure called Building 50. There, a pool of secretaries set to work transcribing them; then they issued transcripts so that staff could read Miscavige's thoughts and directions just as they had L. Ron Hubbard's, and, as with the Founder's, follow them exactly.*

  Stories of Miscavige's lifestyle abounded at Int, where the leader rode his customized Yamaha motorcycle around the base, leaving huge dust clouds in his wake. A car aficionado, Miscavige owned a Mazda Miata, a forest-green Range Rover, and a BMW M6, among other vehicles. He also had a custom-made, armored GMC van with bulletproof windows, which was set up as a "mobile office" with a computer, a fax, a wireless hookup, and a surround-sound audio system and satellite TV. He lived lavishly, by base standards, in private quarters, with a screening room and a $100,000 stereo system. On his birthday, each April 30, everyone at Int was required to chip in part of his or her salary to buy him a present. One year staffers got him a fancy golf cart,* another year a titanium frame mountain bike, and another, a handcrafted acoustic guitar.

  A workout fanatic, Miscavige, who rarely wore the same garment twice, was fond of extra-snug T-shirts that showed off his buff physique. On more formal occasions he wore a Hermès tie, a monogrammed Egyptian cotton shirt (handmade for him by Turnbull & Asser), and a $5,000 suit; the suit was custom-made by his Beverly Hills tailor, Richard Lim, who also made suits for Tom Cruise. Lim visited the base regularly to do the leader's fittings. Miscavige was quite particular about distinguishing himself from all others: on days when his staff dressed in uniform, the leader wore civilian clothes. On weekends, when the Sea Org was allowed to wear "civvies," Miscavige wore his navy blue Sea Org uniform, trimmed with gold braid.

  There were hundreds of kids on the Int Base in the 1990s, some even younger than Claire. Boys were often sent to work in the technical areas, building computer systems or working in the lighting department. Girls worked as secretaries, quality control officers, and, as Claire did for a time, "program operators," charged with making sure other base staffers were meeting their targets. This meant she was expected to exert her power by roaming the base and descending upon unsuspecting officials to demand compliance. A soft-spoken, angelic-looking girl who was well-drilled on the training routines, Claire quickly learned to scream at staffers who questioned an order, refused to address her as "sir," or in any other way challenged her authority, or "command intention."

  The base followed a protocol L. Ron Hubbard had devised called the Team Share system. Upon arriving at Int, each staffer was given five cards: one for social activities, one for pay bonuses, one for "chow," one for salary, and one for berthing. Hubbard had designed it as a motivational tool, explained Jeff Hawkins, who was also at Int, to make each staffer feel as if he or she had a stake in the organization.

  In practice, the Team Share system was a form of punishment. When a worker committed an infraction, the supervisor or ethics officer was entitled to take away a card. "If you lost your social card, you could not take any liberties"—the rare day off, awarded only to staff whose statistics were up—"or attend any events or parties," said Hawkins. "If you lost your bonus card, you would not be paid any bonuses. This was kind of a null card as we weren't paid any bonuses anyway," he added. "If you lost your pay card you could not collect your pay. If you lost your chow card you had to eat beans and rice only. And if you lost your berthing card you had to sleep outside, or in your office—you could not go home. We used to joke about having an 'air card,' and when that card was pulled, you weren't allowed to breathe."

  Virtually any executive, seeing an actual infraction, or more commonly, wishing to advance a personal vendetta, could "pull cards" on a subordinate. As a result, staffers were routinely deprived of things like money or balanced meals. Sometimes entire divisions had their berthing or pay cards revoked, meaning they'd all have to sleep at their desks or go without their weekly $50 salary.

  Even under the best of conditions, Claire's day began at seven-thirty in the morning and went until midnight, seven days a week. She had fifteen-minute meal breaks, sometimes half an hour if she was producing well. On Thanksgiving, the staff got an hour for dinner; otherwise, the schedule was the same.

  Exhausted, the staff gave in to the paranoia that was a constant at the base. They were required to report any critical statements, reports, or casual asides they'd hear, even if it meant turning in their spouse or best friend. That person would then be hauled into security checking to uncover the "crime." Only when the person confessed, recanted, and in some cases publicly retracted whatever critical statement he or she had made, would the process end. This was called a "viewpoint shift." And what it
meant, Claire quickly understood, was that everyone at the Int Base lived in fear of everyone else and what they might be saying, or reporting, about one another.

  ***

  In 1992, about a year after she arrived at Gold, Claire met nineteen-year-old Marc Headley. He too was the son of Scientologists from Los Angeles and had been recruited into the Sea Org at the age of fourteen. Unlike her, though, Marc joined immediately. Signing a billion-year contract, he'd decided, was an excellent way to get out of school—Marc attended Delphi, which he hated. Joining the Sea Org also offered the chance to make money, or at least that's what his recruiters told him, promising he'd make at least a few hundred dollars a week.

  A handsome kid with light brown hair and large blue eyes, Marc, as everyone knew, was Tom Cruise's preclear, and he was excellent at gaming the system. Though the rules on the base were always tight, Marc and his friends still managed to break them to act like teenagers: renting movies at Blockbuster, pooling their money to hold late-night pizza parties in their rooms, racing around the base on their motorcycles, and even going into the town of Hemet, a small community with several strip malls, to hang out from time to time.

  Claire fell for Marc right away. And Marc fell even harder. But the couple knew they had to be careful. Sex, even kissing, before marriage is strictly prohibited in the Sea Organization. After a few months, in August 1992, they decided to get married. Because Claire was only seventeen, and thus not able to be legally married in California, the couple went to Las Vegas to get married, then returned to Los Angeles to have a more formal wedding at the Celebrity Centre in Hollywood. Dressed in a white, off-the-shoulder gown and tulle veil she'd purchased the day before, Claire promised Marc that, in addition to being true, she would always "maintain communication" as a sign of her commitment. Marc, in a tuxedo, vowed the same. The next morning, they returned to Gilman Hot Springs.