Better Believe It: Steve Cannane on Scientology in Australia

Steve Canaan is a Europe correspondent for the ABC based in London prior to his posting Steve was the host of the drum a reporter at Lateline and the author of first tests Great Australian cricketers and the backyards that made them you've read that haven't you yeah totally totally years ago it's on my shelf it is actually on my father-in-law's shelf how good it is a Father's Day you're making that up but his new book is called fair game the incredible untold story of Scientology in Australia please join me in welcoming Steve Canaan thank you okay so Steve this what this book boasts characters with names like Spanky Taylor Rex beaver Homer shoma or Houmas coma Homer shoma Homer shoma not to mention people like James Packer Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch Tom Nicole John Travolta and of course Xenu or Xenu I would say Xena's Xenu Xenu so it's like somebody gave me permission to read new idea on steroids on the surface so it is it's tempting to be flippant about such an outlandish tale but your book is a forensic breakdown of what is essentially a story of widespread family tragedy in a lot of ways with a fair whack of it set in Australia what initially drew you to this story well it was completely by accident in the year 2010 I was working at Lateline as a reporter and I really didn't know much about Scientology and my colleague at four corners at the ABC Quentin McDermott had just done a fantastic program called the x-files which was about Scientology and he had a couple of stories he hadn't been able to follow up I'm not sure whether he couldn't squeeze them into the narrative of the story he was telling or whether he just did not have the time but he passed these leads on to me and so I followed them up and they they were quite amazing stories one was about the daughter of the head of the Church of Scientology in Australia the head of the Church of Scientology is some Vikki Dunstan and I spoke to her daughter Scarlett Hannah who talked about growing up in Scientology it she described it as a toxic organization she said children brought up in the organization were treated like cattle the second story I did and we ran them one night after the other was about a woman called Carmen Reyna who as an 11 year old girl had been sexually abused by her stepfather who was a Scientologist and she said that she'd been coached by a very senior Scientologist to lie to come to police and community services about her abuse so the stories were quite explosive but the way the Church of Scientology reacted was incredibly over-the-top they threatened to sue me they threatened to injunctive program I worked on they did everything during me putting the story together even anything they could to derail the process and then they bombarded the ABC with complaints and I just basically thought jeez you guys have got a lot to hide haven't you I'm going to keep looking into you so I continued to do that and I kept doing stories for Lateline and I spoke to Mike Rinder who was grew up in Adelaide he was the former head of the feared Office of Special Affairs in Scientology and he was an international spokesman for Scientology for a long time and he said that Australia was very significant in Scientology history and the way he put her he said was the first country in the world to have an inquiry public inquiry into Scientology which happened here in Victoria the first country where there were bands on Scientology that happen in Victoria South Australia and Western Australia also the first country where there was a high court decision to declare that Scientology was a religion which happened in 1983 and he also said that Australia was the first country where across the board journalists started a push back against a Scientology intimidation tactics and that's that happened from about probably about 2008 onwards in Australia and then of course the the history of l ron Hubbard the founder of Scientology's sort of first brush with Australia extends even further back than that when did he first sort of wash up on our ass l ron Hubbard came to Brisbane in 1942 serving with the US Naval Reserve tried very hard to join the US military but they wouldn't accept him he even got his local congressman to write him a note recommending him to the military except that l ron Hubbard wrote it himself he just got the stationery and wrote the it's quite it says something like I'm going off my memory l ron Hubbard is one of the most remarkable men you will ever meet so he wrote his own reference using someone else's stationery eventually got in the US Naval Reserve when basically got to the point where they'd accept anybody and l ron Hubbard came here in 1942 he only stayed for a couple of months he would later claim that a strategy helps save Australia from the Japanese in fact he was sent home for insubordination owing money to a menswear store in Adelaide Street Brisbane and also owning owing a Thompson machine gun to the Australian military l ron Hubbard also claimed that don't get me started on over on Hubbard's military record l ron Hubbard also claimed that he was machine gunned in the back in the javanese jungle by the Japanese that he lept onto a life raft and somehow made it were his way to a hundred kilometers off the coast of West Australia now I worked this out that in that rubber life raft he traveled 1,600 kilometers in shark-infested waters during the monsoon season so it was quite an act now of course it never happened and his personal nurse from 1975 to 1980 kemar Douglas says there was no sign whatsoever of wounds to his back and if you look at his military record he was not wounded during his service at all but but that that was the very beginning of him sort of building this mythology around himself because didn't he credit Dianetics which was his first sort of book and self-help type of manifesto if you will yeah he credited he's healing from those sorts of injuries he credited Dietetics that's right he was at a military hospital he claimed and he said that after World War two he was crippled and he was blinded now and that he cured himself with these techniques that he taught himself which we became the best-selling book Dianetics in the early 1950s Hubbard did not have any war wounds he was not crippled or blinded unless you unless you count conjunctivitis and ulcer that can be pretty I saw a hip and some of the symptoms that you would associate with venereal disease as being war wounds so he was not crippled he was not blinded he did not have war wounds he said he had a Purple Heart because he was wounded in battle he didn't he said he had 27 war medals he didn't he had four those four were the ones you get for turning up not further not for any actual you know valor Australians are fairly well we like to think of ourselves as a fairly cynical Bunch so what kind of people were initially attracted to Dianetics in the 50s here in Australia all kinds of people and this is one of the spent a fair bit of time in the Victorian Office of Public Records going through the transcripts of the Anderson inquiry which Kay which was the public inquiry here from 1963 to 1965 there's four million words in the transcript I didn't go through all of them obviously but you get a real snapshot of who these people were who were giving evidence in the acquiring and there were people who are teachers farmers one guy was a beekeeper all kinds of different people but I think what probably United them was that they were considered themselves free thinkers they were looking for something different they were looking for an alternative path somebody sent me an email and said that their father was involved in this group at the time and that they were interested in all kinds of different things alternative therapies conspiracy theories UFOs things different from what the mainstream in Australia was delivering at the time and some of them dabbled in Scientology so there are essentially well-meaning people yeah and Scientology of course wasn't originally touted as a religion or sold as a religion no it was when Hubbard released Dianetics it was sold as a science of the mind and how was how was he reaching these people how who was recruiting Australians at the time okay so what happened was Dianetics came out in the early 1950s he started I only had an initial print run of 6000 but it got a lot of momentum because of Joseph Campbell who was the editor of astounding science fiction and he got on board and really plugged it and so became a New York Times best seller and it started sell over here and what happened is that people in Melbourne in suburbs of Melbourne set up little Dianetics virtual workshops where they would do Dinah to counseling with each other and so pons was that murder hotbed of scienter year round essence and then yeah became the first diyanet is the first Dianetics is to set up shop there was a man called Darcy hunt and he was he was in Essendon and I found a great article written in the argus at the time of someone who visited Darcy hunt so yeah and they so started off his little backyard workshops then does he hunt set up his Dianetics workshop then people used to meet a building at Flinders railway station and it grew and in 1955 the first Scientology organization was set up in Spring Street opposite the Parliament and it was called the Hubbard of a bird Association of Scientologists international it wasn't referred to as a church and if you look at the literature even Scientology publications until the 1960s they were actively saying we are not a religion Hubbard was also originally very glowing about Australia and the potential in Australia I think he said that Australia would become the first continent outside the u.s. to go clear he thought it would become the first clear continent anywhere yes yes what did he mean by that okay so clear is it a term in Scientology at the time when well when Dianetics was released clear was the highest level subsequently it got up you had all the operating thetan levels where you would make more money out of them or you would pay more money if you're going up Scientology's bridge so by clear we meant you were clear of these m grams in your body and you had these super human capacity to for example have perfect memory so he thought that all of Australia and all of Australians would embrace Scientology well this is what he said he may have just said it as a marketing technique that he thought this may happen that he thought that Australia would be the first continent in the world full of people who were clear what about Hubbard himself what what was so appealing about him he seems like a deeply unattractive man but what was it about him that appealed people well he was charismatic he was a great storyteller I don't mean that he wrote great books I mean orally he was a great storyteller he he was able to hold an audience so he spoke in in Melbourne in 1959 at the Chevron a hotel and people talked about in the bamboo room in fact of the Chevron hotel and people talk about how you know he could hold a crowd he was charismatic he would tell jokes and spin yarns and I guess that people there were people looking for something they were looking for alternatives and he provided an alternative way of thinking it must be said - he never had mass appeal I don't know what the peak of Scientology numbers were but certainly at the moment in the last censuses 2163 people in Australia who declared themselves Scientologists so it was never even though they claimed they're the fastest growing religion it's never been a movement that's had mass appeal so it's appealed to certain people it given yeah it appealed to a small but perhaps sort of influential group of people I mean it had quite an impact quite early on part of that many people say that l ron Hubbard was just a genius marketer it was very very good at marketing and of course many Australians ended up in upper roles or roles in upper management in Scientology including Mike Rinder who you optioned before he became this official spokesperson for Scientology and then one of the particularly brilliant marketing moves was to set up the Celebrity Centre and just start to court celebrities yeah and that was the brainchild of an Australian woman that's right Yvonne Gilliam who was originally a Brisbane kindergarten teacher but she set up a college of Scientology in Melbourne with her husband Peter Gilliam and there were real pioneers of Scientology and she Hubbard in 1955 wrote a memo called Project celebrity where he talked about how it would be a really good thing to recruit celebrities because they the marketing potential would be you know sensational and who was some of this great list um the people who would never sign up to Scientology Groucho Marx Liberace Billy Graham why would Billy Graham sign up to Scientology like the Challenger Greta Garbo was another one on that list well Disney um Edward armor oh that fine journalist was one of the most finely honed detectors in the 20th century was on that list as well so it was quite at least none of those people Bob Hope was another one none of those people were ever recruited to Scientology so Hubbard identified that as an issue but Yvonne Gilliam came from it from a very different place she set up the celebrity Center in the late 1960s it was her idea she'd been working in Los Angeles selling Scientology services trying to recruit people and she just loved artists and creative types and she want cheap believed in Scientology and she wanted to help these people and she ended up um being actively involved with John Travolta and helping him at one point Yvonne was trying to recruit Elvis to Scientology as well I've been right for the bang around time Mesilla got involved so yeah yes yeah Elvis needed some help but um because what was it about celebrities that made them quite vulnerable to Scientology sell well I think with the acting profession you've got a kind of perfect storm for Scientology likes to find l ron hubbard you say find the ruin of somebody find their weakness finally find theirs the spot that you can recruit them in and actors work in an environment where there's very little work they're looking for whatever edge they can get to get that job they're quite emotionally vulnerable needy sorry Reese sometimes quite needy people I'll be helping you out later and often can you know be looking for that extra edge and in fact I talked about in the book footballers in a very similar place very small employment opportunities cutthroat world of getting employment looking for the edge so I just think that the actors in particular Californian actors were ripe for Scientology so as this sort of movement was building in in LA and around these celebrities and it was starting to quite gather momentum back in Melbourne as well you mentioned Edward morose detector before Rupert Murdoch had a good detector as well yes he yes in 2012 Rupert Murdoch tweeted Scientology's a very weird cult and this was in relation to Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise breaking up and people with the choirs Rupert Murdoch tweeting about Scientology why most media proprietors were running scare from Scientology because Time Warner obviously big rivals to Rupert Murdoch had been sued for four hundred million dollars in the 1990s for their Time magazine expose called the thriving greed thriving cult of greed and power Scientology lost that case but it cost Time Warner a lot of money it dragged on for ten years so everyone was a bit perplexed by Rupert was tweeting about Scientology but it goes back to nineteen the 1960s and not it rupert inherited the adelaide news then he bought bought the perth sunday times and he wanted to crack a big market and buy a newspaper in a big city and he bought the Daily Mirror in Sydney and with The Daily Mirror he got the truth now there might be some people in this room who remember the truth it was a scandal sheet that reported Racing Form a lot of stories about showgirls and also a lot of divorce court stuff pre no-fault divorce there was some great stories to be told in the divorce courts and truths specialised in those tales and I loved going through the microfiche of truth I've got to say and so Rupert serve truth in the 60s in Melbourne was crusading against Scientology at all times referring to it as Buncombe ology and those particular newspaper articles I wouldn't say led to the inquiry but they put it on the public agenda and certainly was part of the process that ended up leading to that inquiry so Rupert Murdoch was very supportive of the what the truth was doing then in 1968 sorry in the night late 1960s The Daily Mirror was also crusading against Scientology Rupert we know Mike's a private investigator yes can you tell us a little bit about his collaboration with Rix the aforementioned Rex beaver okay so I was looking through the hand sides of New South Wales Parliament to work out why scientology was not banned in New South Wales I wanted to see what what the debates were going on at the time and I found this great little exchange where a local Liberal MP and Sydney tabled a statutory declaration by private investigator Rex beaver now I just thought Rex in this statutory declaration said that he'd been hired by the Scientologists to spy on eleven parliamentarians clergymen psychologists psychiatrists the journalists and everson and Rupert Murdoch and I just thought that if Rex beaver was still alive I'd be able to find him because there aren't many Rex beavers in the world so anyway I've worked out through I worked out through cross-checking electoral rolls and white pages and various things that he lived in Alban at the time and then I looked up the phone in in Sydney and I looked up the phone book and there was three beavers in Auburn now the way I recently told this to a a defamation lawyer in London and then when I told him this story said so you've looked up every beaver in Auburn so which is true I did do that and I rang them up and I left messages on their answering machines and a week later I get a phone call g'day it's Rex behavior here and I was just so excited the Rex was alive that he'd found me that he called me back and I said Rex the reason I want to talk to you is that I want to talk to you about a case you worked on it 45 years ago and you may not remember it it's about Scientology and then this is lengthy pause and he says how could I forget it now Rex not only did not forget this case Rex kept exhaustive files he had his statutory declaration from 1968 he had his notebooks from 1968 he had his group certificate and his payslips which are in the book because the Church of Scientology now hires private investigators at their arms lengths so they can't so they can have plausible deniability but then they hide they hired Rex beaver and and so Rex went into the Church of Scientology in Sydney after answering an advertisement in The Daily Telegraph they put him on the cans on the e-meter and they started interrogating him asking them questions like are you have are you a homosexual have you ever been a communist all these strange questions they are asked as part of a security check anyway Rex in his words decided they were a bunch of rat bags that he'd take their money to spy on Rupert Murdoch but he'd go and see Rupert and see if Rupert wanted him to act as a double agent so Rupert of course loved the idea so he had to keep pretending that he was spying on Rupert Murdoch so Rupert gave him little bits of information like where his boat was moored where he lived little bits of information so it looked like Rex was still gleaning information about Rupert and so then he spied on the Scientologists for Rupert fed all this information to Rupert and then two weeks later the Daily Sunday Daily Mirror was ready to splash with the story of Rex beaver being hired to spy on Rupert and all these politicians and didn't rip it actually offer to help Rex by coming out of it setting up he did according to Rex he according to Rex Rupert said join me to mock up a photo with me leaving a motel with my secretary very helpful ah now and Rex said that won't be required thanks more restrained than Roberto Rex was a divorce specialist Rex was one of those guys who told me did over 2,000 cases where pre no-fault divorce you had to have evidence that your partner was cheating on you so Rex was the guy used to jump out of a cupboard surprised and take photos in the moment of passion and then run out the door Rex said he was shot out he had many milk bottles thrown at him I think he once got stuck going in a bathroom window taken capped so Rex had a pretty interesting life I think Rex should be your next book I think so yeah we'll move on from Rex I'm on a bit more of a serious note let's let's go back to the Anderson inquiry which you've mentioned which was the first inquire of its kind into Scientology in the world and and when it was initially announced Scientologists local Scientologists initially celebrated the fact that there was going to be an inquiry why why I still don't know why they did celebrate it and I got copies of cables certainly urging the inquiry and they put a sign up saying thank you I don't know why they thought an inquiry was a good idea I think they've maybe they thought that all the more mental health services would be yeah put under the microscope but the inquiry was only ever going to be about Scientology maybe they thought that the techniques of Scientology was so fantastic that under inquiry that would come out of how good it was but of course that did not happen I mean in the end anderson gave it a damning report where he described scientology as evil and that of course led to that to that ban in victoria was it a fair inquiry I mean shouldn't shouldn't people be free to worship whoever they want to worship I agree with that though at that point I would not use the term worship I would use the term belief because I think they believed in Scientology but I don't think they were worshipping I don't think the people who are involved in Scientology back then really considered it to be a religion but I think the inquiry was fair in that Scientologists got a right to be heard there were dozens of Scientologists testified but Scientologists told me that they didn't think it was fair because of the question so ours by Anderson it was a one-man inquiry it was called the board but it was really Kevin Anderson QC running it Roger boss guava who was a former Scientologists and think Scientology is a scam thinks the Scientologists got a raw deal but then Malcolm Macmillan who was a psychology is a psychologist and he was very much he attended every day of the inquiry he thinks they did get a fair deal so you get two viewpoints I think Anderson was a bit over the top with his criticisms Anderson was raised a Catholic Prive taken to Reformation and I think that there's a there's a tone of moralism about Anderson that in the modern day you feel a bit uncomfortable about you know there's sections in there where he talks about sexual perversion and moral laxity and things like that I mean I think he was right to point out how people had been swindled by Scientology but even that the term evil is such a loaded emotional term I think there were there were aspects about it that were over-the-top and I also think the ban was ridiculous I think that you can't you and Jack Kelly who was one of the main he was the leader of the Labour Party in the upper house in Victoria at the time and he was you know really getting up in Parliament and criticizing Scientology he was very much against the ban he wanted some kind of form of consumer regulation like an ombudsman who could look into fringe practices and if someone was ripped off that they could get a form of justice I actually can't fault that idea but to ban it send it underground I I think was counterproductive we are what were the implications of that ban well around a hundred Scientologists left Victoria and moved to the UK into Saint Hill where Hubbard's manor was which financially benefited Hobart Hubbard also hypnosis was banned in Victoria under the psychological Practices Act and this really pissed off Malcolm Macmillan the psychologist that I mentioned before cause he had started to do some research into the area I mean one of the ridiculous things about the Anderson the band's after the Anderson Choir is that I don't think actually arrested and successfully charged any Scientologist but some stage hypnotists got got into trouble by really nice stage janitors so so that also you know there was Peter Gilliam ransom e-meters over the border to Adelaide in a kind of undercover operation so I mean it yeah and people were practicing Scientology in their own home but then you had this crazy situation where police were raiding homes where people were practicing Scientology but they had to show evidence that they were practicing you know so you might see an e meter there but if someone's not holding the cans while the wallopers turn up well the where's the evidence it's a bit like kind of raiding one of those old casinos and you can see the roulette table but no one's on it yeah so I mean it was really preposterous that the police were involved in doing this kind of thing and did it in a way help to push Scientology from a SPEA science into a religion in a roundabout yeah I think so because around about this time there are other challenges the FDA did a raid on on Scientology in Washington and there's a memo that I got my hands on that Hubbard sent to to Australia and it said get basically get Church written on the buildings like the Hasse Hubbard Association saw it Scientologist international get people to wear dog collars get people to start referring to themselves as ministers ministers so you could use religion as a cloak to protect Scientology so that yeah that bear and the raids in the u.s. certain had an influence on how our Scientology referred to itself and at one point they started referring to themselves in Australia as the Church of new faith and that came after these bands started taking place and you saw things challenges starting to happen to the ban on a religious basis and the people lobbying and writing letters started referring to themselves as Reverend and the like which would they weren't doing before and you also write that that Hubbard learnt from the experience in Victoria because he was initially reluctantly willing to cooperate with the inquiry but after this experience of Victoria and in response to a potential UK inquiry he wrote never agreed to an investigation of Scientology start feeding lurid blood sex crime actual evidence on the attackers to the press don't ever tamely submit to an investigation of us make it ruff-ruff on attackers all the way yes some of their tactics well they he set up this is where the Guardians office comes into place which was their private investigation unit initially Hubbard decided to use private investigators but one of the problems was that private investigators like Rex beaver would be hired and then didn't like working with them and they would blab to the press or Rex's case go to the local MP and that happened in the UK so then he decided not to hire private investigators at that point and set up his own intelligence wing the Guardians office so he started to you know basically try and seek revenge on these critics he said this he talked about this kind of thing back in 1959 in his manual of justice and you can see him talking about seeking revenge on critics but they start forming an apparatus where they can basically spy on people and so yeah you start to see Scientology policy change as a result of what happens in Australia and then you also start to see in the UK the Anderson report referred to quite a lot and one of the reasons that happened was there was a journalist called Alex Mitchell who was Australian grew up in Townsville started on the Mount Mount eyes at times and worked at Rupert's day mirror in Sydney and he took copies of the Anderson report over to the UK when he went over to work for The Sunday Times and he distributed him around the bars around Fleet Street the journalists got their hands on them whenever there were reports on Scientology they referred to I quoted Anderson saying Scientology was evil and then they started to be raised in the House of Commons and then Hubbard's under increased pressure and that leads to Hubbard eventually being exiled from the UK and setting up the see organization and going onto the high seas cruising around the Mediterranean so you really see the influence that Australia played on Hubbard him going into exile the policies getting heavier then of course there's the element of high profile Australians signing on as Scientologists James Packer being one of those people Scientology worked pretty well for James didn't it it appears to be the case at one point James James his father carry a man notoriously skeptical of all forms of religion or belief except maybe the pursuit of money and that all tax tax inspectors are he thought that Scientology help James friends said that marty rathbun former Scientologists who was second in charge a scientology and was heavily involved in recruiting Joe well auditing James and helping him to stay in Scientology for a while he claimed it helped him yes so it seems like it James was at a very low point it was 2001 2002 the one tell crash he'd lost a lot of his family company's money the Murdock's had invested four hundred million dollars in one tell and they lost that at James's very low point it was depressed his father was quite quite cruel to him about how things went with one tell so he was at a low point and Tom Cruise reached out of hand and suggested he get involved in Scientology and you write that Tom Cruise had good intentions he genuinely wanted to help James he saw that James was hurting but there was another motive behind recruiting James back wasn't it yeah they wanted to get to Lachlan Murdoch and the reason I want to get to Lachlan Murdoch to get revenge on Rupert Murdoch so marty rathbun the former second in charge said that he Tom Cruise David Miscavige all agreed that it would be this coup of all cooze to get Lachlan Murdoch into Scientology Marty use the term getting our claws into News Corp if they could recruit the man who'd helped trigger the inquiry and the band that this would be this great moment of revenge for Scientology now Marty Rathbun in 1981 went through what he described as the conspiracy files in Scientology's headquarters and that he saw all these files where it said that Rupert Murdoch was considered this kind of evil overlord and part of a conspiracy theory involving pharmaceutical companies and banks to destroy Scientology so getting Lachlan to get back at Rupert became a bit of a priority now there's no indication whatsoever that James knew about this or was involved in it and certainly Lachlan was not recruited at one point he was quoted in The Daily Beast he was asked whether what he thought of Scientology and he said I share my father's views without tweeting about them so I mean James took what he needed from it and says that and and and it helped him at a tough time but he he left relatively unscathed the same couldn't be said for Nicole Kidman she was labeled an SP what does that mean that's a suppressive person they're considered enemies of Scientology Hubbard described them as antisocial so yeah Nicole's story in Scientology is very interesting because she actually was him she Tom got into science I'll go back to this beginning Tom got involved in Scientology because he fell in love with Mimi Rogers he married her Mimi Rogers was involved in Scientology because her father had set up a Scientology mission now these were allowed under the days of Hubbard but when Miscavige took over he crushed the missions because he wanted central control of Scientology so tom was in Scientology David Miscavige happy is happy about that but it's he's involved in the wrong brand so they help kill off the relationship between memory Rodgers and Tom Cruise Marty Rathbun and L ron Hubbard's former personal lawyer delivered the port divorce papers to Mimi Rogers Molly repin also said that they encouraged the relationship between Tom and Nicole but later on they found out that Nicole was the daughter of a prominent Sydney psychologist Antony Kidman and he is a suppressive person because he's a psychologist or was a psychologist and that makes Nicole in Scientology lingo a potential trouble source because she's close to the suppressive person so they've got a problem so then a man called Greg will hare who at the time was second in charge of Scientology Marty Rathbun subsequently replaced him was apparently told to sow a seed in Tom's head that Nicole was the wrong person and Miscavige told him this according to the story and will hare apparently does this Tom Cruise gets outraged because he's in love with Nicole and besotted by him and then goes back to Miscavige and says you know he's telling me that Nicole is the wrong person and so Miscavige the guy who delivered the orders then demotes will here for doing what he was meant to do which is sow the seed in Tom's head about Nicole so then they decide okay well we're the only way around this is to get Nicole involved into Scientology so when Tom and Nicole get married it's a Scientology wedding it's overseen by a Scientology order to Rhema toff Sea Org chefs do the catering in the end for a few months Nicole moves into the International base inside the compound in California where C organization staff live and she goes up to operating thetan level 2 so she gets involved but at a certain point she decides it's not for her and Marty Rathbun at actually had to deliver the course which is known as the suppressive person potential trouble source course - nicole kidman and within that course he he would have had to said something along the lines that psychology is evil psychologists evil now that would not have gone down with well with Nicole she was very close to her father she often very much and also Nicole came from a family of critical thinkers you know her mother was a member of the women's electoral Lobby you know they were campaigning against the Vietnam War her father used to hand out how to vote cards for the Labour Party would Nicole there are political family they talked about justice human rights issues around the dinner table the alarm bells would have been going off for her and at that point sometime after that point she got Tom to drift from Scientology from a for a period of about five years from 1993 to 1998 this apparently drove David Miscavige nuts they were also shooting more films overseas they were spending more time in Australia and Tom will occasionally turn up to an event he did a one-off auditing session in 1996 then Marty Rathbun got Tom Cruise back in 1998 to do about a week's worth of auditing now even though Nicole had basically got Scientology out of the relationship Tom's personal assistant was a man called Michael Dothan who was a Scientologist and Mike Rinder and Marty Rathbun both told me that basically he was paid for by Tom Cruise but he took his orders from Miscavige so they've got a spy in the house reporting back what Nicole thinks about Scientology to Scientology headquarters Marty Rathbun told me that from 1998 Dovan was told to plan to see that term again plant a seed in Tom's head that Nicole is not right for you know that the relationship you know was not right and so fast forward three years later in about January 2001 Michael Dovan calls Church Scientology says Tom wants a divorce around about this time anyone who's seen going clear will remember the exchange where Marty Rathbun talks about Tom wanting Nicole's phone to be wiretapped and apparently Miscavige said god damnit get it done and certainly I found evidence from my research that there was some kind of tapping of her phone and that people were hired to sweep her place for bugs because she knew what was going on but they couldn't find any and that's because in the end they discovered that the phone was being tapped at the telephone exchange so after that after the divorce I've been told that the children were indoctrinated that their mother was a suppressive person Leah Remini has said this John Barrasso told me that he started to hear the children and he looked after the children while tom was being audited that he heard the children when they were quite young saying this kind of thing so somebody's put it into their head the Church of Scientology of course denies it but other people say that there is evidence of them and that's a very public case of a very common Scientology tactic which is to separate families from each other yeah there's a policy called disconnection where members who leave Scientology and a declared suppressive people can't see their family members again mike rinder who i've mentioned tonight he cuts when he left he walked out the door in the UK he couldn't see his wife again he couldn't see his children again he couldn't see his mother again his mother was put it was a senior woman probably in her 80s at that time living in Victoria she had to make a choice does she see continue to talk to Mike or she continued to talk to Mike's brother now Mike at the time was living in the u.s. his brother was living in Victoria and his children were living in Victoria so she would have if she decided to keep seeing Mike she would have been cut off from her other son and her grandchildren so she had to make a choice about who she saw so it's a it's a diabolical policy that tears families apart and it's just unjustifiable another figure in the media who proved Australian figure who proved to be a thorn in the side of Scientology is a person by the name of Julian Assange I think we've got a time can you please read the email sure Julian Assange sent out to his I don't know we call them followers so I'm the cyber punks email list it was what year was this ah this is the late 1990s julian assange had just avoided a hacking sentence for jail sentence for hacking he'd been hacking into NASA and other US institutions at the time and Germany is set it up a bit about the history okay so what happened was there was a university student in Melbourne at the time called David Gerard and he this is in the early days of the Internet and they had these things called use new Usenet groups and people would get on there what kind of like bulletin boards and they discussed topics and there was a one that became particularly famous called Old Religion Scientology and people started to post secret scriptures of Scientology or ex-members would tell secrets about Scientology and this became a real problem for the Church of Scientology because it's basically a cold war religion set up under a kind of a command and control model where they keep secrets and they have surveillance but the internet explodes all that they can't keep their secrets anymore because people are posting stuff and so David Gerard was this university student in Melbourne and he was posting things on old dot religion Scientology and lawyers for the Church of Scientology in California wrote to the University in Melbourne it was a Victorian University of Technology at the time and said unless you stop stop this student from using your computer's to post this information we're going to sue the university and the university to their shame put pressure on Gerard to stop doing this and well he just thought bugger you guys I'm going to set up a website ology website so he had to find somebody to host this and somebody said others this guy called Julian Assange who runs a non-profit ISP called suburbia dotnet and he went and met Assange or spoke to Assange and said look this could cause your world of pain but it's probably going to be a lot of fun and Assange suppose he said yep I'm on board I mean so so Assange being the kind of person he is he ended up wanting to find out more information about the Church of Scientology so he ends up doing a whole lot of reading about them and he sends out this email it was on the 15th of March 1996 and he's urging free speech advocates to to rally outside the Church of Scientology in Melbourne so I'll just cut in halfway through he says by the time a devotee of the church has realized the highest ot level the churches usually had them for over five figures but revenue isn't the only reason for keeping the works of Ron's occulted away a common technique used by cults to brainwash their followers is gradual immersion in cult mythology and philosophy to put it bluntly it is often advisable to keep them all wacko beliefs and practices out of your new recruits faces until they are sufficiently wacko themselves now the problem for the Church of Scientology is that on the whackos scale the higher level works of Ron hovers somewhere near the figure 10 - an outsider it is an immediate farce but to a follower who's become psychologically dependent on the church's philosophy and society and invested thousands and thousands of dollars in doing so it's just another step on the road to mental subservience what you have then is a church based on brainwashing yuppies and other people with more money than sense this may not concern you if Nicole Kidman Kate Sabrina John frum Travolta Bruce Willis Demi Moore neither of those two are involved by the way but anyway and Tom Cruise want to spend their fortunes on learning that the earth is in reality that destroyed prison colony colony of aliens from out of space then so be it however money brings power and attracts the corrupt money is something the church has a lot of not all of the church's beliefs and practices are so out of it as to be completely as irrelevant as the previous example some are quite insidious for instance l ron Hubbard devised a range of methods that could be used against critics other than enemies of the church among the list was manipulation of the legal court system and to the church the battle isn't won in the courtroom it is won at the very moment the legal process starts unfolding creating fear and expense in those the church opposes their worst critic at the moment is not a person or an organization but a medium the Internet the Internet is by its very nature a censorship free zone censorship concealment and revelation for a fees the churches raise on debt the church virus manipulation of the legal system has had computer system seized system operators forced to reveal their user personal details University account suspended and radio stations such as triple are cut their programs it is served ex cult members newspapers and many others for copyright infringement s-- loss of earnings and trade secret violation trade secret violations yes the Church of Scientology claims its religious works are trade secrets the fight against the church is far more than the net verse is a bunch of wackos with too much money it is about corporate suppression of the internet and free speech it is about intellectual property and the big and rich versus the small and smart the president the church sets today the weapons of corporate tyranny for tomorrow so that's Assange in 1996 and you can see some of the themes that he's continued throughout his and just as a little postscript of that they threatened to sue him after he after David Gerard posted four lines of these secretive OT levels 12 years later Julian Assange sets up WikiLeaks and within 12 months one one of the things he does is post all six hundred and twelve pages of the secret OT levels online through WikiLeaks and the implications of that are extraordinary because because as Assange points out there a Scientology member would pay to reach new each new level until they would literally open a suitcase yeah and read about Xenu and some of them would say what the yeah and Paul Haggis talks about that and going clear that's right and so suddenly the internet kills that business model because if those secrets are out there you know you can't suppress that and you know the mystique is gone so has the internet broken so yes yes ant ology it has its killed its killed its business model not only through making its scripture if you call it that it's secret scripture public but every horror story they can't they can't control journalism like they used to be able to you know they used their legal suits used to have a chilling effect but now you know what would happen is something like Time magazine would would splash it had caused a problem for them for a little while and people would move on but now if you're an 18 year old who wants to dabble in Scientology go online and have a look and you see every horror story of abuse that's happened in the last 20 years not only that but people who were in the bubble of Scientology have had a sneaky look on the Internet and they may have had thoughts that something was wrong and suddenly they get exposed to that and that's helped drag them out so on so many levels the Internet has has killed their model can they recover no no I don't think they can there they are they're recruiting hardly anyone in Australia now and they're relying now on Taiwan as a ground to recruit and they fly people in on religious worker visas so in some countries like that perhaps but in Western countries they're not recruiting people anymore so they're following the Philip Morris model except they're not being taxed yeah that's the thing because their membership may be diminishing but their wealth certainly isn't is it what Mike Rinder told me they had two billion dollars in the bank and that's why you see them opening buildings that's the only way they can pretend that they're being successful they claim they're the fastest-growing religion but they're really going backwards but they're opening new new buildings I to me it's like a fourth Division football team building an MCG and no one turns up yeah you know no one's inside they have these Flash buildings but there's no one there what will be the thing that eventually completely breaks them is it a matter of someone like John Travolta or Tom Cruise finally seeing the light if Cruise left that'd be pretty devastating for them the next big step is what happens how long can david miscavige hang on for what happens if he dies could there be a reformation within Scientology a reformation in Scientology is very difficult because l ron Hubbard is the source so whatever he said all these all these crazy things about revenge and punishment you know it's a fundamentalist religion they don't budge from what has been written by Hubbard so it's hard to see how they can have a Reformation I certainly had to think they could have a more totalitarian leader than Miscavige and certainly Miscavige has driven the Exodus in recent years due to his policies but I just can't see them being out I think they've had their moment if all those stories I was telling you about a ron Hubbard before if he came on the scene now he'd be exposed but hang on if we talk about Donald Trump maybe mm-hmm I can let ya go sorry you know the two hours melt our minds so instead let's throw to the audience we've got a couple of right roving mics so please put your hand up very high and one of our people will find you who have we got hi Steve hi a lot of what we hear about Scientology of these more preposterous stories or anecdotes and people coming out having left I'm curious in your research have you come across anyone that in any way convincingly has sort of extolled the virtues or all the benefits of it in any meaningful way okay I should say that but no one from the Church of Scientology officially would talk to me for this book none of the leadership when I ask for interviews with certain people who were Scientologists they would not put forward people I've had conversations with people who do extol the virtues of Scientology that they say it's made them more confident that it's improved their lives so yes people have told me that one person in the book I speak to I spoke to people who one guy Roger made more who's been a lifelong Scientologist who said l ron Hubbard was one of the greatest human beings in the last 5,000 years he said it improved his IQ you know improved he improved his businesses I also spoke to Ron Siegel who's been a Scientology 50 years mate similar story he he believes it's made him a better person and that Hubbard is a genius so yes there are the people who I spoke to who were Scientologists think it works they talk about the technology working I'm not sure whether this came up in any of the research that you did but what's your take on the location of David Miscavige's wife yeah I'm now I'm not an expert on this Tony Ortega who's a New York journalist and writes about Scientology every day has got the answer to this if you look on his blog it's not something I really went into so I prefer not to answer that question except to point you to certainly she's not been seen in public for a very long time and Leah Remini the actress who's recently written a book about Scientology at a wedding I think it was one of Tom Cruise's weddings up said where is Shelley mm-hmm and confronted David Miscavige about this and this was considered outrageous people have flown over a Scientology building with a plane with a little ticker saying where's Shelly Miscavige so apparently someone reported to the police the police investigated it nothing's come of that but yes she hasn't been seen in public for a very long time but I'd point you to what Tony Ortega's written about them just while we wait for the next person you surprised by how many secrets are still can still be kept in the age of the internet when it comes to Scientology yeah it's very hard to keep secrets it is and even like mailing lists things that go out on Scientology mailing lists suddenly make it online I think information leaks out all the time or people record stuff inside the church of scientology and leaker often leaking it to Tony Ortega you know all those all those documents say you know they're all online so for your research you can go and see a lot of that stuff what you described before the secret stuff in the briefcase you know you can see that online so it's very hard in the age of Internet to to control this information a classic case of that too is the the Tom Cruise video where is in the black turtleneck jumper where he's talking about how good Scientology is and if you only Scientologist could intervene at a traffic ask accident to make a difference well that was an internal Scientology video that leaked online and the Church of Scientology once again tried to censor that and stop that being online and that led to the rise of anonymous so it's a classic thing where they try and in the age of the internet shut something down but it causes outrage amongst all the free speech advocates and it causes them more trouble than it's worth really hard to start a religion these days done back Steve Reese non-tribal doctor just a just a quick westwood you describe the the auditing process and I also think of this in sort of political in political life would you describe the auditing process and the way that auditing is used and all the questions about personal life and all that is it a black male model that essentially you're handing over every personal secret that you might have to an organization and then they can keep charging you to not reveal that secret in a similar way that where you look at you know often observing British politics I think is just who has the most skeletons and who has the most stuff on the next guy yeah which keeps that sort of game rolling along but do you think that the auditing is basically a black male model of business I don't know if it was designed in that way but in practice it certainly works that way and many people I've spoken to said that information has come out about them that could there's no other way it could have come out except if someone had access to their auditing files so just to explain when you do auditing the order to ask you very personal questions often explicit questions about sex sexual practices sexual partners maybe your drug taking past for example so you have all these records of information that you would not want to get out and it is ripe for blackmail and you know the Church of Scientology says will they respect what goes on in auditing as you know like save like the Catholic Church would confession but in practice that does not happen and you know it's a perceived threat to people think well I've said all these things and even if anyone doesn't say anything to you you think well what happens what happens if I do leave and it is recorded it I mean there are people have reams and reams of files on themselves yeah massive massive what they call pre-clear folders so in going clear tom de vocht i think it was talked about how David Miscavige had been listening to Tom Cruise's auditing and was laughing about them and joking about his his sexual experiences so you know if that's true that's a massive you know invasion of people's personal rights and personal space and there's a theory that that's what keeps John Travolta yeah I've heard that theory that you know he doesn't want he feels like that's held over him I don't know if that's true or not but I've certainly heard that um a number of times do we have any more questions we do Steve do you expect to be sued well I've done an around about 10 or 11 stories for Lateline and almost all the time they threatened to sue me so far they haven't sued me I got a couple of legal letters in the lead up to this book threatening to sue me so far they haven't sued me I don't know if they're going through the book with a fine-tooth comb yet a Church of Scientology has had an interesting couple of responses to the book in the last week one was a statement to the Daily Mail that likened my book to a hate crime and they said something like that then errors are too numerous to mention or something like that but then another statement came out to a Current Affair which said they hadn't read the book so I don't know how they worked out it was like a hate crime or not anyway I don't know whether they I don't know if they'll sue me or not they haven't sued for a long time so they have other methods that they use against journal yeah they certainly use primary investigators have you ever experienced any of those tactics I haven't Brian Seymour from channel 7 as have had the the whole you know people coming up to him with video cameras in his face Paulette Cooper in the 1970s in New York they tried to frame her for a bomb threat bomb hoax which would have landed her in jail for a number of years they also very nearly succeeded yeah that close yeah they only I mean she got cleared because the FBI raided the Church of Scientology on another matter which was operation snow white which is where they were stealing tens of thousands of documents from the tax department the Department of Justice so that she got lucky that they found the policy to frame her in then in their files they also leaf litter to her apartment block her whole apartment block in New York City saying that she was a prostitute with venereal disease who molested children so what they did to Paulette Cooper was a disgrace and they have never apologized for him and and they they now say all that was some rogue unit that got disbanded well they've never come out and apologized to her and in fact they ended up spying on her for about 40 years so Paula Cooper is an incredibly courageous woman and you know her book was one of the first to lift the lid on on Scientology I don't think they behave like that now with journalists but they certainly you know Tony Ortega had his emails hacked by a private investigator a couple of years ago you know so they still try it on well someone's try it on yeah got time for one more question if it's out there what is it that they claim makes them a religion well they don't believe in a God they believe in reincarnation I believe in coming back look my attitude to it is if someone if someone calls something a religion that's fine by me if you if you're a raster fairy and you say that's my religion to me that's your personal choice or same with if you're one of the Jedi Knights who've been calling themselves Jedi Knights and that you honestly think that's your religion that's fine so to me calling yourself a religion is a personal thing I think more and more interest interesting question and sensors where the Hubbard believed that was a religion and I don't actually think he did in 1953 he wrote a letter to Helen O'Brien a Scientology executive where he was talking about maybe it's time to pursue the religion angle I also found a got my hands on a document in the 1970s around the time of those rights that I was talking about before where he was talking about a Legal Defense Fund and maybe we should set up a non-profit Legal Defense Fund and he's talking about how that would work with the Church mock up these are his words I spoke to a documentary maker called charleen and he had a fascinating conversation with Hubbard off-camera where he said Hubbard admitted this is in the 1960s that Hubbard admitted that it was a scam it was designed to make money and that he he likened it to fly fishing with his father when he designed lures with his father and he would design these lures to deceive fish to catch them and to wheel them in so I don't think Hubbard believed it was a religion but if a Scientologist tells me it's their religion and that's what they believe in I don't have a problem with that it then leads though to a broader question and also the 1983 High Court decision found Scientology to be a religion but I think there's a question mark about whether all religions some people would say whether any religions should have tax-free status and Nick Xenophon has been talking over the last five years about bringing in a public benefit test that if you're a religion and you get tax-free status that you have to prove that you work for the public good that you had a dedication to charitable works and I think the Church of Scientology would very much find it hard to get over that bar if such a test was brought in and retain tax-free status in Australia please join me in thanking Steve Canaan thanks David thank you visit Wheeless Entercom for the best in books writing and ideas from Melbourne Australia and the world

Channel: WheelerCentre

Views: 75,700

Rating: 4.7254901 out of 5

Keywords: Ideas, scientology, Melbourne, Australia, Australian history, History, Religion, Cult, Journalism, Non-fiction, Steve Cannane, L Ron Hubbard, Alex Gibney, Louis Theroux, James Packer, Julian Assange, Pop culture, Church of Scientology

Id: 91YWrejC71o

Length: 64min 10sec (3850 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 23 2016