EXCLUSIVE: The real Tom Cruise — Leah Remini exposes Scientology’s biggest asset

 
News of Leah Remini’s departure from the Church of Scientology, which she had grown up in since she was a child of 5, was made public by the Underground Bunker in July 2013. Over the next two years, she worked on a memoir that was published in October 2015 with the title, “Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology.”

The book was a huge success, landing at number one on the New York Times best seller list.

This week, she revealed to us that when she was preparing the book, she wrote most of a chapter about her personal experiences with Tom Cruise and his camp, and with revealing details about Tom Cruise behind closed doors. She portrayed the Cruise the public never gets to see: His dedication not only to Scientology but to its ruthlessness and inhumanity.

She told us that the pages weren’t included in what was published by Ballantine Books, saying that although the publisher felt it was worth printing, there were concerns that it would take over the media’s focus on the book, and would overshadow her reasons for writing it. Leah didn’t want her book to be focused on Tom Cruise.

Yesterday, we reported that Leah now believes that Cruise played a part in a 10-part television news series in Australia not being aired. It would have featured Remini, her A&E costar Mike Rinder, and, full disclosure, your proprietor. The series, titled “Scientology: Black Ops,” was going to dive into some of the same material Leah had held back from her book.

“I think it’s time for people to start waking up to the real facts here. Tom has for years manipulated his image to be the good guy, and although I believe there was a time when Tom was a decent and kindhearted person, he has morphed himself into David Miscavige and is completely dedicated to Scientology’s mission to ‘Clear’ planet Earth — which means making 80 percent of the world’s population into Scientologists,” Leah says.

“Tom has for years used Scientology and its staff to do his dirty work. Tom has used Scientology and its thugs in suits, like Tommy Davis, to break up with his former Scientologist girlfriend. He used Tommy’s ex-wife Jessica to give his girlfriend sex advice on how Tom likes it. Davis has used confidential Scientology counseling confessions to break up two Scientologists so Tom could date one of them, used confidential Scientology counseling sessions to bring a wedge between Tom and his wife Nicole because Nicole didn’t want to do Scientology anymore. And David Miscavige, through Marty Rathbun, got rid of Nicole to get Tom closer to Scientology. Tom has for years used his church to torture his employees by sending them in for interrogations at their expense, causing a woman I know to go bankrupt simply because the hours she worked for Tom made it impossible for her to raise her family. She was interrogated and punished by her church for years, causing her to lose her home. These are some of the things Tom has done that never get talked about, and I think it’s time to change that.”

To that end, Leah turned over to us numerous pages of writing, some of it polished, some of it in rough draft and notes, for us to put together in today’s story.

Here’s how the proposed chapter began…

A former Scientologist contacted me shortly after I had gone public with my departure from the Church Of Scientology after 35 years. This was in 2014.

Her name is Shawna Brakefield.

She told me her own horror stories of being in Scientology, but more so working for Tom Cruise and how Scientologists were treated while working for Tom.

This is behavior I experienced and observed myself while in Tom’s camp. Tom’s employees were cowed, and were petrified to say or do anything wrong around him. There was Jessica Feshbach and Tommy Davis always standing by, ready to pounce should any Scientology employee even look at Tom wrong. They would then be immediately sent to Scientology for a metered interrogation.

“What are your evil intentions towards Mr. Cruise?”

“What are your evil intentions towards David Miscavige, C.O.B.?”

This was done in a locked room, and you could not leave until you had “confessed” to your hidden crimes against Cruise or “C.O.B.” — Miscavige, the Chairman of the Board.

And this was costing the person nearly a thousand dollars an hour.

Working for Tom meant working for and being run by the top clergy of Scientology. You were working for Tommy Davis, and that meant you were working for David Miscavige through Tommy.

“I knew Shawna in Scientology. She worked for Tom Cruise. She was working for his production company, Odin. Then she went to work for the Screen Actors Guild, and she had always wanted to produce, which she is doing and has been very successful,” Leah tells us.

Like other people who worked for Scientology celebrities, Leah says, Shawna soon found out that she was as much working for the church as for Cruise and his company.

SHAWNA

Scientology is a movement that began with L. Ron Hubbard’s 1950 book “Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health,” a movement which he then named “Scientology” in 1952, and then the “Church of Scientology” at the end of 1953. To this day, Scientologists refer to Hubbard as “Source,” and everything he left behind — including detailed instructions on how to harass, intimidate, sue, blackmail, and “utterly destroy” Scientology enemies — is considered sacred literature in the church and must be followed to the letter.

Hubbard died in 1986 and was replaced by Miscavige, a diminutive man who has ruled Scientology using Hubbard’s policies for more than 30 years. He recently turned 60, and he and Tom Cruise are especially tight. Cruise had been lured into Scientology in 1986 by his then-girlfriend Mimi Rogers. They were married on May 9, 1987, exactly 37 years to the day after the publication of “Dianetics.”

Miscavige’s chief achievement as Scientology’s leader was re-acquiring church status and tax exemption from the IRS in 1993. But a close second is his ongoing relationship with Cruise, making sure that the actor remains an icon for the organization.

Among the other celebrities Scientology has attracted is Oscar-winning actress Anne Archer, whose son, Tommy Davis, was brought up in Scientology and joined its “Sea Organization,” which requires the signing of a billion-year contract and around-the-clock dedication, 365 days a year, for little or no pay. Davis became a go-fer for Cruise, and eventually moved his way up to becoming Scientology’s chief spokesman in the early 2000s.

“When a Scientologist like Shawna Brakefield was working for Tom Cruise, she learned very early on that she was also going to be taking orders from Tommy Davis, on behalf of Scientology’s ruthless leader, Miscavige.”

Leah says that Shawna described what it was like to join Scientology and achieve her goal of working for Cruise in a narrative that Leah planned to quote at length in the book. Here is that material…

Well before I ever thought of doing Scientology I had this goal in life to work with Tom Cruise.

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It was like all I was working towards. I looked up to him. I had huge admiration and respect for how he represented himself, his integrity. He had this intensity that I could relate to. I was like him (or the him I thought he was).

I remember reading Variety one day. I was like 23 years old and it announced that he formed Cruise/Wagner with Paula [Wagner]. I was like, “Damn it! Paula took my job.” LOL. Working for him would be reaching the top of the mountain for me. But it was Paul Haggis’s Production Coordinator that got me on the [Scientology] Bridge. Paul was working for the studio I was working for at the time, MTM on the CBS/Radford lot. We became friends over the years. I forgot about the goal to work for Cruise and just went about my life and career. It wasn’t until I’d been in Scientology for a while and was working on a PR project on The Last Samurai for Warner Bros International that I had connected with Drea [Doven, Odin’s executive director].

They’d been looking for a VP for Lee Anne [DeVette/Haigney/Gillotte, Cruise’s sister], and Drea fought hard to get me hired. I made it clear I was more interested in production and that working on the Cruise/Wagner side was my ultimate goal. Drea told me what they needed was a kick ass PR/Marketing person (something that came naturally to me but not my goal in life) not production and if I gave her two years on post, she’d reconsider moving me over.

[My daughter] was only 8 months old. I had no idea what I was signing up for or what hell was about to come. But there I was — a street kid, raised by blue collar workers walking the red carpet with the biggest star on the planet. I had made the “A team.” When I started seeing what it really meant to work for a Scientology celebrity, the time away from my kid, the blurring of professional and church lines, it was heartbreaking.

Here’s this guy I’ve worshiped, had on a pedestal and would have taken a bullet for and he’s allowing all this shit to go down behind the scenes with church staff “running” us like we worked for the church. The labor laws alone being violated was enough to take pause, but it would only get worse. When I began to question outpoints and write reports, Tom Davis told Drea I was a “know best” and needed to be handled. Shortly after that the interrogations would begin. My staff were being called in privately and interviewed about my every move. RTC began investigating me. I was too smart and they knew it and I had to be “controlled.”

Later when I worked for Kirstie Alley, I was miserable by month eight and quit. She was so pissed she wrote a six-page Knowledge Report on me that was never withdrawn despite my response per policy with backed-up facts to counter her damaging accusations. In her report she said she ‘investigated me further’ and called Cruise’s camp to verify my salary I had told her I was getting from him and that I expected from her. She said, “They said there was no way you were making that. More like half.” I had check stubs showing how much I made at Odin. But it didn’t matter. And by the way, I took a 50 percent pay cut to work for Cruise and Alley because it was “understood” it was a privilege to work for a celeb that was disseminating the tech [promoting Scientology].

Looking back now I realize this was Sea Org mentality. Working for a Scientology celeb was basically treated as an extension of the church, and you had great responsibility (and immense pressure) to be 100 percent dedicated to that person. Your needs came last, your family came last, your time to do the Bridge came last. You were expected to be flawless, non-human, the perfect robot, operating with no sleep under the most incredible pressure the likes of being at war, 24/7 duress. If you made one false move you’d be in sec-checking or doing Lower Conditions at the org all night after working a 12- to 14-hour day.

The only time I had to be with my kid, I was at the org eating shit. I remember leaving home every morning crying the entire way to work. I stopped putting on make-up at home because I’d just cry it off. I’d kiss my daughter goodbye in the morning and she’d be asleep before I got home. I hated myself for being an absent mother, but it was “all for the cause.” I was held to Sea Org standards. That’s what you did. Then they turn on you like you’re the plague.

When I began voicing the outpoints, my days were numbered. I felt like I was working for the mob. When you’re “in” you’re “in,” and when you piss someone off you’re at the bottom of the river. I had so much anxiety, that when my mother was diagnosed with stomach cancer during this time, plus a toddler at home, I thought I was having a nervous breakdown.

Kirstie went on to say in her report that “TC’s people” told her I was “incompetent.” Now, I’ve been called a lot of things, but never that. It was a such a slap in the face, not because I believed it, but because it was what — I’m assuming it was Lee Anne or Cass — they had to do to justify their overts. Lee Anne had been called those very words. Tom has fired her and re-hired her so many times, you’d lose track. God only knows what the church did to her when his PR began falling in her hands.

THE PUBLICIST

Tom Cruise’s PR falling into Lee Anne’s hands: What Shawna is referring to there happened early in 2004, when David Miscavige was getting ready to release the newly recovered and gung-ho Tom Cruise on the world, but there was one person standing in Scientology’s way.

Legendary Hollywood publicist Pat Kingsley.

 
To help understand this, we need to reel back a bit to review Cruise’s history in the church. After he’d been brought in by Mimi Rogers in 1986, David Miscavige, through an auditor named Greg Wilhere, encouraged Cruise to begin a relationship with Nicole Kidman on the set of Days of Thunder, which was shooting in North Carolina and Florida in 1990. Former top Scientology official Marty Rathbun explained to us that Miscavige wanted Rogers out of the picture because her father was someone Scientology refers to as a “squirrel,” someone who has left the church but continues to do Scientology independently. After encouraging the breakup, Rathbun personally made a visit to Rogers, he told us, to get her to sign a divorce settlement.

Cruise by then had fallen madly for Nicole Kidman, but she had her own problem for Miscavige: She was the daughter of a well-known Australian psychologist, and if there’s one thing Scientology hates with a white-hot passion, it’s psychology and psychiatry. This made Nicole “PTS,” a “potential trouble source,” because her father was an “SP,” a “suppressive person,” someone the church considered evil and unredeemable. But Nicole threw herself into Scientology as the relationship began, and her auditor, Bruce Hines, says that she got all the way up to OT 2 very quickly, which is a huge undertaking and would have taken enormous dedication by Kidman.

By 1992, however, she had soured on Scientology and Miscavige, and when she pulled away from the church she pulled Cruise with her. For the next eight years, but for a few exceptions, as when Cruise visited Tommy Davis at the Hollywood Celebrity Centre in 1998 for some Scientology processing, Cruise and Kidman kept their distance from the church until they broke up in 2000. In the 2015 HBO documentary “Going Clear,” Mike Rinder explained how much this drove Miscavige to distraction, especially when Cruise and Kidman were away for a year in 1996 filming the Stanley Kubrick movie Eyes Wide Shut. At the Village Voice, we revealed that throughout this period Miscavige spied on Cruise with the use of his own assistant, a photographer and filmmaker by the name of Michael Doven, Andrea Doven’s husband.

As Cruise and Kidman’s relationship was hitting the skids, Rathbun revealed in Alex Gibney’s 2015 HBO documentary Going Clear, Miscavige was told by Rathbun that Cruise wanted to know who Kidman was talking with on the telephone, and Miscavige seized on it, telling him to “get it done” and have Kidman’s phone tapped.

Subsequently, private investigator Anthony Pellicano was found to have illegally recorded Nicole Kidman’s phone calls in a criminal case that sent Pellicano to prison for 11 years. But Rathbun has always denied that it was Pellicano the church hired to spy on Kidman’s calls.

Leah says that confidential information was also pulled from Nicole’s private Scientology files in order to show Tom to encourage him to end the relationship.

After Kidman and Cruise broke up, Rathbun explained that Miscavige made Job One in Scientology getting Cruise back into the fold. Meanwhile, Rathbun told Gibney, Tommy Davis was being used to poison Tom and Nicole’s children Isabella and Connor against their mother, telling them that she was an evil “SP.” Over the next three years, Rathbun audited Cruise to get him more and more dedicated to the cause until, by early 2004, Cruise had become a zealot for Scientology.

Miscavige then wanted to unleash Cruise on the world as the organization’s evangelical ambassador, but standing in the way was Kingsley. “Hollywood’s once-most-feared woman,” the Hollywood Reporter called her in a 2013 look-back. Kingsley, the story said, “ruled Hollywood for years, dispensing favors to a few and fearsomeness to many more, terrifying reporters and editors alike — and even several of the studio executives who paid her bills — a woman who, before her 2009 retirement, held sway at the nexus of Hollywood and the media, as authoritative as she was authoritarian, as strategic as others were tactical, a giant in a land of dwarfs.”

By 2004, Scientology had been battling with her for years. Miscavige wanted Cruise to take advantage of movie press campaigns to talk about Scientology, reaching a bigger audience than ever. But Kingsley wouldn’t allow it, saying that the media campaigns were being paid for by studios, and it was unethical for Cruise to use that platform to promote his church.

Mike Rinder, who was then a top Scientology spokesman, tells us that Kingsley had shut down their efforts with the release of The Last Samurai in November 2003. But now, with Cruise even more ramped up and willing to shill for Scientology, Miscavige was determined to get Kingsley out of the way.

Rinder says that he himself made the first foray, making a visit to Kingsley’s office and trying to persuade her to allow Cruise to speak out about Scientology during the press circus for Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, which was being released in June 2004.

“At the direction of Miscavige, I went to see Pat to try to talk her into not trying to dissuade Tom from talking about Scientology. She of course had a very reasonable position — the studios are paying a lot of money to feature him in a film. They want him to promote the movie, not Scientology, in the press junkets they pay for,” Rinder says. “I liked Pat, and she was the best in the business at what she did. My efforts accomplished nothing and I was considered a failure.”

Leah says that Rinder was followed by Marty Rathbun, a sterner Miscavige enforcer, who tried to lean a little more heavily on Kingsley. But he also struck out.

It was obvious, Leah says, that for Miscavige to get his way Cruise was going to have to personally fire Kingsley, and the plan was for him to replace her with his own sister, Lee Anne.

But Miscavige was concerned about what Kingsley might say in the aftermath of her firing. And that’s where the “dirt file” comes in.

THE DIRT FILE

Leah picks up the story in her unpublished pages…

Pat Kingsley protected Tom Cruise from the media. She was a pioneer in her industry, the person who brokered her A-list clients for her smaller clients. She had power and control over journalists, and if you fucked with Tom Cruise, you fucked with her entire client list.

With Nicole gone, Pat was the last vestige in Tom’s world that wasn’t Scientology. And now, Miscavige would use L. Ron Hubbard policy to get Tom the freedom he needed to advance the church.

Tommy Davis had taken it upon himself to run the operation after insisting that Tom fire Kingsley. Tommy had a folder of “intel” that he had collected of Pat Kinglsey’s entire history. There were copies of financial records and other sensitive information, and photographs revealing private details of her life that Davis felt could be damaging to her if there was any backlash to Cruise after he fired her. He called it a “dirt file.”

In essence, it was blackmail.

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And it is Scientology’s written policy to Fair Game anyone who the church sees as a threat. Miscagive was prepared to destroy Pat with this “evidence” should she ever speak the truth about Cruise.

We know this, because Tommy boasted about the dirt file and showed its contents to one of Tom’s trusted employees.

Shawna Brakefield.

“He had a very thick group of documents [he showed] to me in a very kind of gloating way about the contents of it,” Shawna said. “I kind of flipped through it and noticed a few things in it while he’s telling me the contents of it and bragging about it. Tommy held up the file and said something along the lines of ‘We’ve got her’.”

Pat Kingsley was the ice wall that was blocking the church from using Tom Cruise to promote Scientology, and so she needed to be taken out. They had submerged Tom’s life with Sea Org workers, and had investigated Pat to ensure that she didn’t speak poorly about Tom.

They were prepared to destroy her life, exactly the way L. Ron Hubbard describes it in Scientology’s sacred scriptures under the Fair Game directives.

They sent Tommy to tell Pat what was in the file.

Cruise then fired Pat, and she kept her mouth shut.

In the 2013 Hollywood Reporter look-back, Kingsley finally described the scene when Cruise let her know he was letting her go, but didn’t mention Scientology’s blackmail attempt…

“His assistant called and made an appointment for Tom to come into my office. He had never been to my office before. And he came in, had a few minutes of chitchat, and he said, ‘I want you to know I’ve decided to make a change.’ I said: ‘I knew that was going to happen today. I guess I’ll probably take a pretty big hit with the media.’ And he said, ‘Well, we’ve all had those hits, haven’t we?’ I said, ‘Yeah. I’ll be OK.’ And then I said, ‘A lot of people have worked on your behalf that you’re not aware of, and I’d like to have you say hello to them.’ So I took him around, and he saw everybody and even went to see the mailman, just as cordial as could be.”

Cordial, Tom Cruise? Sure, that’s how everyone describes him. But Leah Remini makes no bones about it: She believes Cruise had to know that Tommy Davis, on behalf of David Miscavige and the church, was blackmailing Kingsley to keep quiet about what was really going on.

That summer, with his sister Lee Anne as his publicist, Cruise went on a disastrous publicity campaign for War of the Worlds as he argued bizarrely about Scientology with Matt Lauer on the Today Show, and with other reporters as well, and jumped on Oprah’s couch.

He appeared unhinged.

“He was in fact unhinged. And I blame Scientology for it,” Leah says.

THE MEDAL

Miscavige decided to reward Tom that fall by bestowing on him something the Church of Scientology had never given anyone. For years, Scientology’s highest reward for dedication was the “Freedom Medal,” a few of which were handed out each October at the annual celebration of the International Association of Scientologists (IAS). And in October 2004, Miscavige wanted to give Cruise a special, larger version of the pendant that would be called the “Freedom Medal of Valor.”

 
Leah continues…

With Pat Kingsley out of the way and safely silenced, now the Sea Org was in charge of Tom’s production company and its employees. Staff who didn’t meet expectations could now expect to be sent to the church for “correction” for any false move. Any errors at all were dealt with at the church. Which is illegal, by the way. And employees had to pay for these corrections, costing $500 to $900 an hour.

As the October award show neared, Miscavige wanted to precede the medal ceremony with a video that would be shown with highlights of Tom’s career as an ambassador for the church. Lee Anne, Tom’s sister, his publicist, and now Scientology’s hench woman in his camp, was taking orders from Tommy Davis about the video, Shawna said.

But Miscavige didn’t find the video that was produced worthy of Tom Cruise. It was “substandard and insulting to his PR.”

So Scientology’s audiovisual arm, Golden Era Productions, reshot the video from scratch and produced an entirely new reel, and had Davis drive it personally to the award show while Cruise sat in the audience. Tom had no idea that when the event started, the tape hadn’t arrived yet, and that he was going to receive an award, Shawna said.

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Tommy showed up three minutes before the video was supposed to be shown. It hadn’t been seen by PR staff or Tom Cruise, and was played for the first time in front of that audience with Cruise in the front row.

It was a way of doing things that was anything but industry standard, but the arrogance of the church knowing better had created insane chaos for Tom’s staff and for the show’s staff, and it all made Cruise look horrible.

“I had to make excuses for what was happening to cover up that it was the church that had edited the tape and bypassed Tom’s professional staff,” Shawna said.

Golden Era had been sending crews to shoot things behind the scenes and to document his press tours because they were better at everything, Miscavige believed. And because his staff was deemed incompetent.

In every aspect of Tom’s personal and professional life, a Sea Org member was now involved.

Meanwhile, Tom was donating millions of dollars and wiring money to the church. To the point that Tom’s accountant said he needed to stop, Shawna said.

The stress and chaos was taking its toll on Cruise’s staff. The church was adding work and more confusion than was unnecessary.

Andrea and Michael Doven were put through so many expensive sec checks [interrogations], that they lost their home. They were living in a trailer in Malibu.

Tom, though, told Michael to donate $50,000 to the IAS to make up the damage he had done while working for him. This almost caused a divorce. The staff were required to work 14 plus hours a day. No overtime, all salaried employees.

On a holiday weekend, a Sea Org worker decided Tom’s house was not up to par and reported this to David Miscavige’s wife, Shelly. Six Sea Org workers were then dispatched to spend the weekend cleaning Tom’s house to white-glove perfection, and replacing dishwashers and other appliances.

Slowly but surely, all non-Scientologists were replaced with Scientologists and Sea Org members around Tom, whether they were qualified or not.

Despite the unreasonable hours and workload, any infraction would be dealt with harshly. When Andrea got pregnant after 17 years of working for Tom, his camp considered it an act of an enemy.

Anything other than servicing Tom Cruise was considered a liability. And having a baby was a distraction to Tom.

One employee’s parent had become terminally ill and was not allowed to leave to take that parent for treatment. It was “not approved,” Shawna said.

Mike Rinder adds a detail about the video showed at the event: “Gold went and got testimonials for the Cruise video from people in the industry — former co-stars and directors telling them it was a tribute video. They shot a ton of them. None of them were used because Miscavige thought they were not good enough.”

NAZANIN

The same year of the Freedom Medal of Valor event, 2004, was when David Miscavige’s wife Shelly was tasked with finding Cruise a new mate after his breakup with Penélope Cruz.

Maureen Orth, at Vanity Fair, first broke the news about that operation in 2012, explaining that Shelly had actresses auditioned without not knowing the true part they were trying out for. The process selected a stunning young Scientologist actress named Nazanin Boniadi. In the movie “Going Clear,” Gibney explained that in order to convince Boniadi to ditch her boyfriend, who was also a Scientologist, confidential information in his Scientology folders was culled and shown to Nazanin in order to convince her to break up with him. After an expensive makeover paid for by Scientology, she then dated Cruise from November 2004 to January 2005.

Leah says that this Sea Org operation to get Cruise a mate also included intimate instructions about how to please Cruise in bed.

“Nazanin was getting notes from Jessica Feshbach about how to be more aggressive with Tom sexually. Because Tom had told Tommy and Jessica, ‘I don’t like that Naz is not aggressive with me sexually, handle it.’

When Nazanin would show up on set where Tom was, he would grab her in front of everyone and stick his tongue down her throat. And when she didn’t reciprocate, she was sent to her church for fixing — and the fixers were Jessica and Tommy. Jessica said “what the fuck, chick. You made Tom look bad.”

“At one point when he did that in front of us, I said, ‘rent a room.’ And you should have seen the looks from Tommy and Jessica. I was told not to make any comments that were degrading to Tom. Ever. I asked Jessica to please not report me, and I would adjust my attitude around Tom. I was in fear that Jessica would write a Knowledge Report on me and I would then be interrogated by my church and forced to do amends to Tom for making such a disparaging comment about the son of God, Tom Cruise.”

Another time, Nazanin told Leah about being asked to join Cruise on the set of War of the Worlds. “He grabbed her and started making out with her right in front of Steven Spielberg. Nazanin was extremely uncomfortable about it. It was inappropriate on any level, doing that in public. She pushed him away. The next thing she knew, she was visited by Tommy and Jessica. ‘Don’t ever do that again,’ they told her. ‘And also, we want to talk to you about your sexual performance.’ They told her that what Tom wanted was for her to be more forward. ‘Like be more aggressive, shove your hand down his pants,’ Jessica said.”

Leah reminds us that it was Tommy Davis who delivered the news to Nazanin that Cruise was breaking up with her.

“Tom just didn’t have the time or balls to do it himself.”

In 2013, after Leah’s departure from Scientology became public, she heard from a lot of people. One of them was the head of casting at a large Hollywood studio.

“She told me she had worked very closely with Tom Cruise, launching some movie, and she said it was a fucking nightmare working with Tommy Davis. She was forced to tour Scientology’s CCHR museum [“Psychiatry: An Industry of Death Museum” on Sunset Boulevard], the Hollywood Celebrity Centre, and Bridge Publications, Scientology’s publishing arm. She said they put up with it because it was Tom. But this woman said she dared to say something. She sat with Tom and told him, ‘Do you know the religion of Paul Newman?’ He said no. ‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘Your job is to be a good actor and to promote the movie. And you can’t take these peoples’ money and do whatever you want with it. It does affect the sales of the movie.’ And after that, she never heard from any of them again,” Leah says.

Another example: “A member of Tom’s team who worked so closely with him on most of his movies, they were rewriting his dialogue in films like The Last Samurai. They would spend weeks and months preparing for a movie, like it was a boot camp, just this person and Tom. They had been doing this for 15 years with him. They told me he was probably the most insecure and humble and sweet person they had known. Tom worked and worked and wanted to be so good at everything he did. But then there was an absolute turn. After his breakup with Nicole, he had become like Jeckyll and Hyde. He had morphed into David Miscavige.”

Leah reminds us that a few years later, in June of 2007, Cruise gathered the other celebrities together. “We were called by our church — Tommy and Jessica — and told it was mandatory that we be at Tom’s briefing. Most of the Scientology celebrities were there except Kirstie and John, who were not approved celebrities to be in Tom’s camp. David Miscagive personally approved who was allowed in Tom’s circle. At the meeting, Tom started with reading aloud an 11-page staple in Scientology. He then reprimanded us all and told us we needed to apply ‘KSW’ and stop being ‘dilettantes.’ This meant we needed to rededicate ourselves to Clearing the planet. The ‘talking to’ ended with all of us having to write down on paper what legitimate organizations we were going to target and infiltrate, what Hollywood powers we were going to get close to, and which celebrities we were going to try and get into Scientology. And none of us could leave until we did so.”

Cruise was preparing to begin filming Valkyrie in Berlin, but at that time of the year, Scientology also has one of its most important events, a weeklong celebration in the Caribbean on the private cruise ship the Freewinds that is known as “Maiden Voyage.”

“The member of his team told me that they set up a room at the Hollywood Celebrity Centre to prepare for the filming, which was a change. They said Miscavige walked in like he was some kind of detective. ‘What’s all this?’ Miscavige asked. They said they were preparing for a movie. ‘How long does this take?’ he asked. Months, they told him. ‘We’ll see about that,’ he said. Miscavige explained that Maiden Voyage was coming, and Tom needed to be there. They said, ‘I don’t think Tom will be attending, he is pretty dedicated to his process to prepare for his movies.’ Miscavige responded with ‘We’ll fucking see about that.’ Tom did end up going to the ship, and when the member of the team arrived, they waited for Tom. Again, Miscavige showed up, asking how long the work would require. All day and all night, they answered. Miscavige laughed. He told them that they had come for no reason. They were sent home. Then, when they arrived on the set in Berlin, they were told Cruise wanted to see them. They said that when they saw him, Tom was screaming at one of the Scientologist assistants about a chipped cup, and called her a cunt. The member of the team said that wasn’t cool with them, and they say that Tom’s sister Cass told them to go back to the hotel. At which point they were told that they were fired.”

Leah says the stories she’s heard from former Tom Cruise employees follow a repeated pattern.

“I think it’s important to show a history of Cruise using Tommy Davis and his Scientology power to abuse and bully people,” Leah says. “They used the information of Nicole’s confessional folders. They went into the folder of Nazanin’s boyfriend to find his confidential ‘trangressions’ to feed to Naz and break them up so Tom could have her. When the member of the team started making noises about Tom not being able to do what they had been hired for, they were pulled in for interrogations. ‘Do you have overts towards Tom?’ they were asked. It’s a history, and it’s a pattern. It’s all about keeping people silent about Tom, and they’re using the money and power of Scientology to silence people, like they did with the Australian news program.”

One way that Cruise silences people is through draconian non-disclosure contracts that he requires people in his life to sign, including the employees at Odin Productions. We obtained a copy of an Odin employment contract, which included a section about how much his employees could expect to pay if they dare to speak out about him.

This Agreement is for the benefit of and enforceable by Tom Cruise, as well as for the benefit of and enforceable by Odin. You acknowledge, and the parties agree, that privacy and the non-disclosure of Confidential Information are vitally important to the members of the Cruise Family and to Odin, that Tom Cruise is an internationally well known figure who will be seriously harmed both professionally and personally by the unauthorized disclosure of Confidential Information…

A list of liquidated damages amounts follows, “which they [the signer] acknowledge and agree is reasonable in light of the circumstances at the time this contract is made.”

Disclosure of confidential information: $50,000 “for each person to whom each such disclosure or repetition is made.”

Cooperating with a publication: $20 for each copy printed of a newspaper or magazine, with a minimum of $1,000,000 per publication.

$250 for each copy printed of a book, with a minimum of $1,000,000 in the US, $500,000 per territory in Japan, the UK, Germany, Italy, France, Canada, Australia, Scandinavia, or Spain.

$20,000 per theatrical exhibition.

$5,000,000 per network television broadcast.

$2,000,000 per non-network television broadcast.

$1,000,000 per foreign television broadcast in “major” territories (see above) $500,000 per broadcast in other countries.

$30 per unit for video recordings, with a minimum of $1,000,000.

$10 per unit for audio recording, with a minimum of $1,000,000.

By other public disclosure: $1,000,000 per disclosure or repetition.

No wonder, Leah points out, that most people never utter a word.

Leah says she is grateful that Thandie Newton, in a recent interview with New York magazine, revealed what it was like to work with Cruise, who gave her a Scientology book for a Christmas present.

“The only people who really know Tom Cruise are Scientologists,” Leah says. “He let that armor crack for a moment, and Thandie saw it. And although Tom is not as powerful in Hollywood as he once was, he has a powerful agent who does wield a lot of power. For Thandie to say anything must be scary for her, and there could be consequences for her career. Which is why I respect it so much.

“Anyone who says Tom is a nice guy doesn’t know him. And they also need to ask themselves what kind of a nice guy gives up his daughter to protect the Church of Scientology?”

THE DIRECTOR

When Oscar-winning director Paul Haggis left the Church Of Scientology and went public in 2009, he was targeted for destruction, Leah says.

“He’s been labeled ‘Fair Game’ by the church. And he will continue to be Fair Gamed until he is destroyed. Or until someone exposes this and stops them,” she says. “The Church of Scientology has endless amounts of money to spend on destroying their perceived enemies and it means nothing to them to spend it. They had one former member followed for 24 years at the cost of $12 million.

Leah picks up the narrative…

When Paul Haggis defected and began working with Lawrence Wright for a New Yorker story, Shawna Brakefield had moved on and was working for The Screen Actors Guild (SAG). She had left Tom Cruise’s organization, Odin Productions, but she was still a trusted member of Scientology.

Tommy Davis was now the international spokesperson for Scientology, and continued to work directly for David Miscavige.

Tommy called Shawna at SAG and asked her how much access she had to personal, private files that were held there. She explained to him that no one really had free access to the professional data of actors, producers, directors that SAG had on file.

Davis went on to explain that the Church of Scientology had a mission for her. Her orders came directly from David Miscavige, and that was to get into Paul Haggis’s private history on file at SAG and find any “dirt” on him, and any complaints (if any) that had ever been made against him.
 
She asked him why and he admitted to her that it was an operation to silence Haggis from continuing to speak out against Scientology. He wanted her to look through Paul’s file and find any complaint that had ever been made against him, by a producer, or an actor, or another writer or director — anything that would provide information about someone who considered themselves to have been victimized by Haggis. Tommy wanted names of anyone he could contact to silence Paul and hurt him.

Shawna refused. And she was put through hell for it, she said. But I have no doubt that Tommy and Scientology found another way to get the information they wanted, most likely through Paul’s confidential confessional Scientology folders.

Scientology policy states that you go after their family, their job, anything that is important to them. They will not stop until Paul’s career and reputation is destroyed. That is what this ‘religion’ demands. And that is what they will do.

Since Leah wrote those words in preparation for her book, Paul Haggis was sued in 2017 by publicist Haleigh Breest, who says that Haggis sexually assaulted her in 2013 at his Soho apartment after a film screening. Once news of her lawsuit became public, three additional women came forward, one of whom says she was raped by Haggis, and those three women (who have not been publicly identified) were allowed to join Breest’s lawsuit by the court.

Another full disclosure: We have approached Haggis in the past about a possible collaborative commercial project that did not come together. We have not spoken to him recently, however.

Leah Remini and Mike Rinder have said that they suspect the Haggis lawsuit is part of a Scientology operation to destroy the Crash director for speaking out about his time in the church. One of the three unnamed women who were added to the lawsuit denied that she was part of a Scientology operation in an article she wrote for the Hollywood Reporter, calling that accusation “offensive and false.”

Bryan Seymour, in the “Scientology: Black Ops” series, interviewed Haggis extensively. On that December day, Seymour interviewed us because he wanted us to put the operation against Pat Kingsley in context of Scientology’s decades of elaborate dirty tricks and intimidation campaigns.

He laid out much of the story you’re reading today as he explained what was going to be in his 7News special. And not only did he tell us about Tommy Davis showing off the Pat Kingsley “dirt file,” he showed us that he had sworn court testimony backing it up.

We’ll probably never see the footage that Seymour shot for his 10-part investigation. But Leah Remini says she wasn’t going to let Tom Cruise silence even more victims, and she decided to reveal these pages of her work to the world.

For that we are grateful.

 
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Source Code

“So you’ve got the other fellow’s universe and you got the physical universe. Now, the other fellow, in his universe, can cause you problems while communicating to you through the physical universe, and the physical universe itself can cause problems, and so we can get a thing called a present time problem that doesn’t have anything to do with a mental image picture. Doesn’t have anything to do with the reactive bank, but it can restimulate the reactive bank and make it harder to solve the present time problem. But a present time problem can actually exist. That’s one of the things that auditors don’t always notice.” — L. Ron Hubbard, July 27, 1965

 
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Overheard in the FreeZone

“If you love your car but can’t afford to buy the latest model, then buy some stock shares or make time to promote the car and company to others so they will consider buying it, otherwise, one not-so-fine day, you may not find your favorite brands. Please don’t let others do the hardest, most difficult work alone. Freedom and Relief is a team effort. Give. I always have, in one way or another, and I hope you will too. Give to Ron.”

 
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Random Howdy

“The regs do all the fluffing in Scientology, but there are no happy endings. It’s all a tease.”

 
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Full Court Press: What we’re watching at the Underground Bunker

Criminal prosecutions:
— Danny Masterson charged for raping three women: Arraignment scheduled for September 18.
— Jay Spina, Medicare fraud: Sentencing is set for August 27 in White Plains, NY
— Hanan and Rizza Islam and other family members, Medi-Cal fraud: Next pretrial conference set for Jan 12 in Los Angeles

Civil litigation:
— Luis and Rocio Garcia v. Scientology: Oral arguments set for August 30 at the Eleventh Circuit
— Valerie Haney v. Scientology: Forced to ‘religious arbitration.’ Hearing on motion for reconsideration set for August 11
— Chrissie Bixler et al. v. Scientology and Danny Masterson: Sept 4 (CSI/RTC demurrer against Riales, Masterson demurrer), Oct 7-19 (motions to compel arbitration)
— Jane Doe v. Scientology (in Miami): Jane Doe dismissed the lawsuit on May 15 after the Clearwater Police dropped their criminal investigation of her allegations.
— Matt and Kathy Feschbach bankruptcy appeal: Oral arguments were heard on March 11 in Jacksonville
— Brian Statler Sr v. City of Inglewood: Amended complaint filed, trial set for Nov 9, 2021

 
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Scientology’s celebrities, ‘Ideal Orgs,’ and more!

We’ve been building landing pages about David Miscavige’s favorite playthings, including celebrities and ‘Ideal Orgs,’ and we’re hoping you’ll join in and help us gather as much information as we can about them. Head on over and help us with links and photos and comments.

Scientology’s celebrities, from A to Z! Find your favorite Hubbardite celeb at this index page — or suggest someone to add to the list!

Scientology’s ‘Ideal Orgs,’ from one end of the planet to the other! Help us build up pages about each these worldwide locations!

Scientology’s sneaky front groups, spreading the good news about L. Ron Hubbard while pretending to benefit society!

Scientology Lit: Books reviewed or excerpted in our weekly series. How many have you read?

 
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THE WHOLE TRACK

[ONE year ago] When your ex is into Scientology, a custody battle can get cosmically worse
[TWO years ago] Why did a 26-year-old ‘Clear’ kill herself at Scientology’s spiritual mecca?
[THREE years ago] Derek Bloch on fighting Scientology ‘disconnection’ in an unaired TV series
[FOUR years ago] How Scientology split up teen sweethearts who reunited more than 40 years later
[FIVE years ago] A new look inside Scientology’s bomb-proof vaults, and a visit to Hubbard’s final rodeo
[SIX years ago] Scientology Sunday Funnies: The Nancy Cartwright countdown to godhood edition!
[SEVEN years ago] Jon Atack: A Case of Scientology Fair Game Deflected with Disinfecting Sunlight
[EIGHT years ago] Scientology’s Worlds Colliding: Bert Leahy and David Edgar Love Together in Oklahoma on August 25!
[NINE years ago] Tom Cruise Proves He Has a Sense of Humor, Signs Anti-Scientologist’s Guy Fawkes Mask

 
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Posted by Tony Ortega on July 27, 2020 at 07:00

E-mail tips to tonyo94 AT gmail DOT com or follow us on Twitter. We also post updates at our Facebook author page. After every new story we send out an alert to our e-mail list and our FB page.

Our new book with Paulette Cooper, Battlefield Scientology: Exposing L. Ron Hubbard’s dangerous ‘religion’ is now on sale at Amazon in paperback and Kindle formats. Our book about Paulette, The Unbreakable Miss Lovely: How the Church of Scientology tried to destroy Paulette Cooper, is on sale at Amazon in paperback, Kindle, and audiobook versions. We’ve posted photographs of Paulette and scenes from her life at a separate location. Reader Sookie put together a complete index. More information can also be found at the book’s dedicated page.

The Best of the Underground Bunker, 1995-2019 Just starting out here? We’ve picked out the most important stories we’ve covered here at the Underground Bunker (2012-2019), The Village Voice (2008-2012), New Times Los Angeles (1999-2002) and the Phoenix New Times (1995-1999)

Other links: BLOGGING DIANETICS: Reading Scientology’s founding text cover to cover | UP THE BRIDGE: Claire Headley and Bruce Hines train us as Scientologists | GETTING OUR ETHICS IN: Jefferson Hawkins explains Scientology’s system of justice | SCIENTOLOGY MYTHBUSTING: Historian Jon Atack discusses key Scientology concepts | Shelly Miscavige, 14 years gone | The Lisa McPherson story told in real time | The Cathriona White stories | The Leah Remini ‘Knowledge Reports’ | Hear audio of a Scientology excommunication | Scientology’s little day care of horrors | Whatever happened to Steve Fishman? | Felony charges for Scientology’s drug rehab scam | Why Scientology digs bomb-proof vaults in the desert | PZ Myers reads L. Ron Hubbard’s “A History of Man” | Scientology’s Master Spies | The mystery of the richest Scientologist and his wayward sons | Scientology’s shocking mistreatment of the mentally ill | The Underground Bunker’s Official Theme Song | The Underground Bunker FAQ

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Our non-Scientology stories: Robert Burnham Jr., the man who inscribed the universe | Notorious alt-right inspiration Kevin MacDonald and his theories about Jewish DNA | The selling of the “Phoenix Lights” | Astronomer Harlow Shapley‘s FBI file | Sex, spies, and local TV news | Battling Babe-Hounds: Ross Jeffries v. R. Don Steele