Scientology Leader David Miscavige on ABC News Nightline FULL

this is abc news nightlife reporting from washington ted koppel joining us live tonight is david miscavige whose formal title is chairman of the board of the religious technology center the organization which manages dianetics and scientology mr miscavige took over as the head of scientology in 1987 following the death of the church's founder on hubbard you've been sitting here very patiently for the first 15 minutes it's your turn we're going to take a short segment here to talk and then we'll take a break and then we've got the rest of the program to talk where would you like to pick up on what many in our audience i suspect have seen for the first time about the church of scientology yeah well i think uh you know i guess the first thing i would like to take up is the fact that the intro piece uh there's no question that there's some controversy surrounding scientology but if you want to look at what the real controversy is there's been stories like this one that we saw here for the past 40 years and yet during that time period scientology has continued to grow in fact it's 25 times larger today than it was in 1980 i would just like to take up a few of the falsehoods that are in there because i think this explains a lot why you have the controversy i don't know that scientology lends itself so well to the press uh in this instance uh we did agree that uh we would have your correspondence come in in fact he did have unlimited access to the church but then you get a piece like this for instance something that isn't mentioned in there is that every single detractor on there is part of a religious hate group called cult awareness network and their sister group called american family foundation now i don't know if you've heard of these people but uh it's the same as the kkk would be with the blacks i think if you interviewed a neo-nazi and asked them to talk about the jews you would get a similar result to what you have here the thing i find disingenuous is that it's not commented upon and yet in fact your correspondent forrest and deanna lee were aware of this fact and uh not only that that is the source of where they they received these people to talk to they didn't find them randomly if if i may just interrupt for a moment you realize there's a little bit of a problem in getting people to talk critically about the church of scientology because quite frankly they're scared oh no no no no no no no no let me explain something to you the the most disingenuous thing is that you have those people now let's not give the american public the wrong impression that these are people that randomly were pulled in from around the world and that they decide to talk against scientology those people aren't scared and they've been loudly speaking in the press you showed me a book you had before the show uh that has many detractors same ones so they're not really frightened that's a good story it was it was a collection of articles that has been written about the same quote what i was saying is the reason perhaps that we only hear from those folks is that there are a lot of other people who might be considered detractors of the church and they who do not belong to any organization are quite frankly afraid to come out and speak well i'm sorry no i'm sorry that story doesn't doesn't hold water because i'll tell you from my perspective the person getting harassed is myself in the church uh let me give you an example uh we did make access possible for forest that isn't to say that he took advantage of it ted for instance the subject of money comes up it comes up routinely and i'm sure we might bring it up later on the show but i in fact had uh the highest contributors of scientology gathered up so that forest could interview them to ask them why they gave money to the church and how much they had and believe me it's larger figures than these people are talking about he told me he didn't have time i said please i mean they're here he said no i don't have time i don't want to see him i offered for him to go down to our church headquarters in clearwater florida where 2000 parishioners are there at any given time from all over the world in other words you could get across selection people from germany england california florida spain italy you name it didn't want to go didn't have time uh so to represent also that this is what the church puts forth isn't so here's what i find wrong and here's where i find the common mistake the media makes i can get you a hundred thousand scientologists who will say unbelievably positive things about their church to everyone you had on there and i not only am upset about those people not being interviewed they are too and the funny thing about it and why you find us not really being that willing to speak to the media is because not just myself any scientologist will open up a paper will watch this program they're probably laughing right now saying that isn't scientology uh that's what makes media media is controversy i understand that uh and if you really looked at the big picture of what's happening in scientology it isn't really controversial certainly scientology well you're going to have to take a break very quickly i hope you understand that there's a little bit of a paradox and you're saying you know we're not going to get a chance to listen to what scientology is really about we have with us after all since you were absolutely i'm just trying i'm just trying to correct this i understand the rest of this hour in which i'll have a chance to talk to you and you can clear up some of the misconceptions we have absolutely okay okay we'll continue our discussion in a moment [Music] we return now to a conversation with david miscavige once again ted koppel i'd like to begin mr miscavige with um i guess the kind of broad question that perhaps folks at home may be asking themselves right now but let me be the guinea pig for a moment see if you can explain to me why i would want to be a scientologist because you care about yourself in life itself scientology the word means study of life study of knowledge uh and that's where it is it takes up all areas of life itself uh things that are integral and maxims that are related to life and very existence uh let me give you an example it's better if i take that because it is such a broad-ranging subject covering so many different areas the subject of communication this is something that uh major breakthroughs exist in scientology being able to communicate around in the world around you and i think everybody would agree that this is an important subject well there's an actual formula for communication which can be understood you can drill on this formula of communication learn to drill uh but moreover uh take the person who has trouble communicating has well for some reason he can't anxiety or whatever i'll tell you what let's stick with me okay uh so far in life i haven't had a whole lot of trouble communicating now see if you can communicate to me what it is that you're going to be able to do for me that makes me a better communicator well i don't in scientology you don't do anything for somebody else scientology is something that requires somebody's active participation fun certainly i want to participate i want to be active okay what in your life do you not feel is right i feel perfectly comfortable with my life i like my job i'm happy with my family i love my wife uh i'm healthy uh i'm i'm perfectly content that's why i'm asking you what is it you can do for me well number one i would never try to talk you into that scientology's for you you see that's the funny thing about this is if i'm now going to give a sales pitch to you on scientology believe me scientology is valuable enough that it doesn't require any sales pitch but let's look at it this way then what scientology does if you look out across the world today uh you could say that if you take a person who's healthy doing well like yourself you say that that person is normal not a crazy not somebody who's psychotic you look at a wall and they call it an elephant would you agree with me on that so far okay and you can see people below that and uh crazy people criminals that i think society in general will look at and say that breed of person hasn't something quite right because they're not up to this level of personality you can understand that well we in scientology are not you see all past attempts have been to bring man up to somebody's standard of what's normal what we're trying to do in scientology is take somebody from this higher level and move them up to greater ability you see we're interested in what about those what about those folks down there well yes no you wouldn't we don't ignore them but my point is this scientology is there to help the able become more able the guy who's going around he's working he's trying to make it these people generally have something in their life that they would like to improve and in any event if you can increase that person's ability the one who's chipping in the one who's able and bring him up higher the sphere of influence that he affects in the world around him can be much greater and he can get on and do better now mr miscavige when you and i taught the first time a few months ago i said to you i was going to come after you on some of these issues i am a cynic by by nature i guess that's why i like being a reporter uh what you have described to me there fits perfectly with the image that i have of scientology namely you're interested in folks who are producing another way of saying that is you're interested in folks who've got money and who can pay to work their way up the sound that's where that's where you miss the point because in fact you know this subject of money comes up but you've got the wrong issue there the subject of money is where's it going you see another part that isn't in that piece the money in scientology isn't going to me it's not going to my colleagues that's a fact that's the fact you can call the irs and find that fact out they've audited our records and seen all of that and none of that money is going anywhere as a matter of fact the officials in the church are paid far less and live far more uh frugal existences than any other church leader our money goes to social causes that we accept you take these people we are the largest social reform group in the world do far more than any other church for the last two years we've been voted the community outreach group of the year in los angeles by the local city council the senate of california passed a resolution that's uh for our uh work with underprivileged children in california we work on getting drug addicts off drugs we support narcotic which is drug rehabilitation center using the drug rehabilitation technology of l ron albert there are 33 centers around the world over 100 000 people have been gotten off drugs we sponsor educational programs several years ago and just won't wait in just one month but how does that make your group the the the how did you put it that you do more to help the social reforms social reform than any other group in the world more than the catholic church more well no more more accurately is per size and when you put in that rate in other words how big scientology is compared to any others the amount that we do on that subject there's not even anybody comparable okay we're going to take a break we'll continue our discussion with david miscavige in a moment [Music] a conversation with david miscavige now continues here again ted koppel during one of forest series pieces a moment ago we heard one of your colleagues talking about psychiatry right right you guys are death on psychiatry the the criticism that was made was that this is foreign to the united and nazism and st uh and that your religion scientology is an american religion fair enough american of the mind yeah right that's right what does that do for christianity judaism hinduism buddhism taoism all the other isms that also did not originate in this case well no that isn't really the point the point there is this that those people the fascists the communists have used uh psychiatry to further their ends that's just the fact i mean you want to look uh at the studies that brought about the holocaust of the jews that the nazis justified killing the jews they were done at the max planck institute of psychiatry in leipzig germany and that justified the killing of six million people if you look at the report that he before sawyer did on the mental institutions in russia several months ago he did this you saw that that was a tool of the state that's the point he's making there but let me tell you what our real problem is number one understand this psychiatry psychology that comes from the word psyche psyche means soul these people have preempted the field of religion not just scientology every other religion they right now practice and preach the fact that man is an animal and i guess that is where philosophically we're at odds with them but to understand what this word is this is not something that we started in fact 22 days after dynamics the modern science of mental health came out the attacks from the american psychiatric association started this was the first popular book on the mind ever in existence it was running up the bestseller list it was popular with the people i have the letter sent out by the man who was in the american psychiatric association asking for ad hominem reviews on the subject of dianetics these people absolutely felt that we were cutting across their vested interests and the links with which they have gone to destroy scientology and dianetics and eller and hubbard is absolutely mind-boggling they attempted to do so l ron hubbard's credibility and again i have no idea whether that video and the tape that we touch on that we heard was representative of elrond hubbard but when i hear about a man talking about having been taken out to the van ellen space radiation belt uh of of uh spaceships that were essentially the same thing as the as the dc-8 i got to tell you i mean if we're talking about this man's credibility uh that certainly raises some questions in my mind about it okay well let me ask you have you read any books on dynamics or scientology i've been i've been reading little else over the last few years i must confess i'm not a student but you haven't read dynamics or anything you're absolutely okay fine and that's why you would make a comment like that i mean let's let's not joke around here that bit that forest did there pulled out of context items and let's not forget something else by the way i told forest lawyer and i was open about this the whole time i have been in communication with nightline numerous times i said first something comes up you want to bring me up an allegation you confront me with it before this so i can do away with this garbage and not have to do it on the program dave i promise you all do it numerous calls been put in them i have never heard it from him i never heard about these to do that is take anything out of context ted can you when i talk about you know let me just give you an analogy let me give you an analogy you know you know that there are going to be a lot of folks out there and i'm sure there are a lot of scientologists and i don't want to offend anyone who truly believes this but there are a lot of people out there who look at that you say it was taken out of context take a minute if you would and see if you can put it into context for us so that it does not sound ridiculous because quite frankly the way the way it sounded there it sounded ridiculous okay well let me tell you let me ask you to do this then i want you to take the catholic church and take right now and explain to me to make sense that the virgin mary was a virgin scientifically impossible unless we're talking about something okay i'll be like you'll be the cynic if we're talking about artificial insemination how could that be you're talking about going out to heaven except we have the space shuttle going out there we have the apollo going out there you do that i'm not here today wait i'm not here to think i'm not here let me do it and you're you were a catholic as a child right yeah so you know full well that those issues are questions of faith are you telling me that what we have heard l ron hubbard say on this broadcast this evening that they to scientologists are issues of faith if that's what you're telling me then that's fine no it doesn't matter what i'm telling you there's new talk about the van allen belt or whatever is that that forms no part of current scientology when he was talking about it well you know quite frankly uh this tape here he's talking about uh the origins of the universe i think you're gonna find that in any any any religion and i think you can make the same mockery of it i think it's offensive that you're doing it here because i don't think i'm not mocking it i'm asking you a question and and you know you you turn it around and ask me about catholicism i say we're talking about well it's not even a matter of faith because scientology is about you yourself and what you do you're bringing up something that isn't part of current scientology that isn't something uh that scientologists study that is part of some tape taken from i have no idea and asking me about it and asking me to put it in context that i can so this has nothing to do with your faith if you read any books on science no now absolutely not nothing okay we're going to continue our discussion in just a moment and we're back once again with david miscavige uh i'm going to let you get to the point you want to get to but i was astonished during the break you told me you had never heard that tape before no i've never known ron hubbard no i'm not i mean it may exist there but i haven't heard it i mean i don't i don't know if you understand there are 6 000 lectures by mr hubbard there are over 20 million words of printed words in scientology and uh all these have been available in scientology so if it is there we'll find that i don't think anything's being hidden either i just personally haven't heard that tape no now you wanted to get back to the issue of the of the psychiatrist and and let me if i may by way of introduction to that uh i did not interrupt you before but you were talking about the use of psychiatry in nazi germany the use of psychiatry in the soviet union yes i would argue and i think most psychiatrists in this country would argue that what we're talking about here was the misuse of psychiatry in both those countries well okay and if we're talking about the misuse fine in any event i think any use that ends up killing people is a misuse and i think that's a hell of a record to have but let me get back to where it was because it does tie in you say the misuse but i don't know if you're aware that there was a plan in 1955 in this country ted to repeat what was done in russia there was going to be a siberia usa set up on a million acres in alaska to send mental patients they were going to lessen the commitment laws you could basically get into an argument with somebody and be sent up there this sounds very odd nobody's ever heard about it that's in no small part thanks to the church of scientology i must say though when that bill was killed in congress the war was on with psychiatry where they declared war on us and i want you to understand something let me just ask you to be specific on that you were talking about a bill having been brought into congress for the setting inside of a million acres in alaska you got it for people and mental health mental health patients what was who was the sponsor of that bill what was the bill number i mean well sure we're gonna well i have a copy of it and if you want it i can give it to you all of these documents all of these documents were made available to forest if they're not on here i don't know why but i do have them and i will make it available was that was that bill ever voted on did it ever oh yes so yes it was a major major major flat for the psychiatrist when it got voted down because then the slogan around the country began siberia usa and it was really the first time that psychiatry had been denigrated publicly that they weren't the science that they had been promoting themselves to be and they took it upon themselves then to start dealing with anybody who would oppose them they definitely saw dianetics and scientology as opposing them not only in terms of their brutal treatments such as electric shock and prefrontal lobotomy which are specific things that we're against but also for the fact of the people that were going to dianetics and scientology and not there they went to the food and drug administration they went to the american medical association they arranged an informant to go into our headquarters here in washington dc and infiltrate the organization over the next five years i have documents on this too they wanted to get somebody in the church to recommend medical treatment couldn't get them to do it walk in and say i want to be cured medically people wouldn't do it they finally went so far as getting the head of the dc morals the moral department of the d.c police to send his daughter in as an informant pregnant to get an abortion to ask the church to do it a frame job the church didn't go for it they did then raid the church when you say they you're telling about who now i am talking this is a the apa ama food and drug administration these people were all coordinated doing these activities and it went on for five years ted you have to understand we only find this out recently they then proceed to raid our church now the following takes place they killed one of our executive directors they literally murdered the food and drug administration hired an informant to go into our organization in seattle washington uh his wife was there he wasn't for scientology she was they said great report on her and report on scientology he proceeded to do so several weeks later murdered the head of our organization the food and drug administration never told us that it was their informant instead wait instead they got with the dc i mean with the seattle police and went undercover in the organization on the homicide investigation to rifle our files at that same time and here's where the media comes in a man interviewed l ron hubbard for the saturday evening post came out with an unbelievably bad article in that magazine of course scientology said you're part of this food and drug administration thing and of course he said oh excuse me you just sound like the french which is very easy to say what do i find out 20 years later through the freedom of information act i find out that this man a man named james phelan had been well the saturday evening post had been written to by the food and drug administration to get a discrediting article written on mr hubbard and scientology to help their case against us that this man then went and interviewed mr hubbard he interviewed him for two days mr hubbard provided him with tapes and transcripts the man came back here to the united states mr hubbard was in england and provided those transcripts to the food and drug administration for their case a full week before he ever wrote his article we have got to take another break we'll continue our discussion in a moment mr miscavige i must admit i'm curious uh you have been the head of the church of scientology now for what a little over ten years uh not not really the head there but certainly a senior scientologist yes during all that time you just told me again earlier this evening you have not done any interviews a tell me why and b why now why now okay why not let me tell you something i once added up all the press that had been written about me before the first reporter called trying to speak to me and from around the world it stacked up to four and a half feet by then it was myth and legend uh and then uh only on one or two occasions can i think of that somebody has asked to speak to me but never to interview me it was always i want to ask you about some allegations and to that degree i'm not interested i gave you the story about this reporter quite frankly from my view a lot of the people who have written stories on scientology are doing it from a certain pitch they already have their story somewhat made up uh they've already made up their mind it's a waste of my time i have to be honest why now it's live okay it is live uh as you know initially i mean you asked and we have been talking to each other absolutely and negotiating now for about nine months that really has never happened initially we wanted you to come on because you folks were really upset about that cover story that time magazine did yes now a lot of people have been upset by stories in the press about them certainly a cover story has more impact than just any old story in a magazine and time is a big magazine but one might argue that your response to it your reaction to it was huge i think pharma said you spent three million dollars in usa today alone with some of those full-page ads double truck ads that you ran uh didn't you also run some tv ads some radio ads no nothing on time and by the way when you say the three million dollars that there was an advertising campaign you have to understand the first three weeks of it were about the time magazine and correcting the falsehoods on it right that was a campaign that ran for 12 weeks the rest of it was attempting to inform the public of what scientology was no i i told you we've got to take a break in exactly one minute so i i may have to cut you short if you if you go longer on this but why were you so what was it about the time magazine story that so upset you because it wasn't reporting on anything it was an attempt to cause something richard bihar is a hater behar he had done an article on scientology three years earlier in conjunction with the internal revenue service the man was on record on two occasions attempting to get scientologists kidnapped that is an illegal act when you get somebody like that doing an article you're not too interested let's let's leave that hanging in the air and i promise we'll come back to it uh i think both you and mr behar deserve uh more on that subject i'll be back in a moment this abc news nightline exclusive has been brought to you by ford and your ford dealer [Music] a conversation with david miscavige now continues here again ted koppel as you can see our hour is up but uh a the opportunity to talk to mr miscavige is such a rare one and b we really do have some issues that have been left hanging that we're going to go a few minutes over our allotted time you made the charge a moment ago uh mr behar of time magazine the reporter who wrote the cover story for time uh that he had what conspired with someone to try to get something no no he's scientology he had written an original article and some people had called him up and he was telling them to kidnap scientologists you know he was telling them to kidnap someone yes and get them forcibly deprogrammed which according to ted patrick who was the father of deprogramming right uh it always includes kidnapping usually assault and battery and certainly with the intent to commit a felony right now kidnapping as you well know is a federal crime in this well let me tell you something there was one person who uh he used in that article that was that was at the behest of him that infiltrated our church in new jersey uh he didn't quote this in his article i didn't find out until actually about a month ago and the person has just been arrested as a matter of fact four people from this same group i mentioned at the beginning of the show have just been put under arrest last week for forcible kidnapping a person's from another faith you have to understand something ted these people that that he aligns with this cult awareness network which every one of these people are a part of although i i told you during a break that my producer told me in in my earpiece right after it i was going to leave it alone that all of those people maintain they are not in that culture no they don't because i'll tell you right now uh i spoke to uh well that's just not the case but in any event uh can can we stay on mr behar for a moment because because you have made what is really a very serious charge and that is that he admits to it that he was involved in i'm sure he does not no he admits to wanting to get a scientologist kidnapped involved in kidnapping that would be a very serious adventure absolutely admits to wanting to get a scientologist in your washington post so why didn't you bring charges against him he didn't succeed he didn't succeed our point is as i said you're missing there is such a thing as attempted rape attempted murder attempted kidnapping it's also a crime but they didn't make it they didn't make it i mean it doesn't matter it's still a crime okay the person would have to bring charges i think you're really missing the issue ted because my point is this that man represents himself as an objective reporter here he is on record a full three years before he wrote this article stating that he felt scientology should be kidnapped to change their religion second of all let's look at this article and let's not fool ourselves it wasn't an objective piece it was done at the behest of eli lilly they were upset because of the damage we had caused to their killer drug prozac they set up that article they use their advertising dollar to force it to run and that's the fact all right now if if that is the fact uh you're a careful man i'm sure that you have evidence of that well here's what i do have of that i do have a man here in washington dc named duffy wall another one named walter moore these are lobbyists for eli lilly we have burst and marsteller the pr firm for eli lilly the reason i'm saying this you have to understand this isn't my charge i'm telling you what they say after that article came out they were around town here saying we caused that article on scientology on behalf of eli lilly you have about them you have a name you have affidavits from them of course not you think they'd admit it well i mean but they're the ones who said it you're saying you're saying this i go one step further i then later found out and you didn't know this that eli lilly ordered a reprint of 750 000 copies of time magazine before it came out reported in the washington post but most importantly here's what i do have i put in a call to the people the advertising firms who set this up i called up jwt j walter thompson in new york i spoke to the ceo he said he would look into it and get back to me he never did i called up a man over in england who owns all these advertising and pr conglomerates for eli lilly a man named martin sorrell ted i asked him 10 times on the phone to deny that he had set this up on their behalf he wouldn't do it all right we put in a call to eli lilly their response was we can either confirm their deny this is a pretty heavy allegation i'm making i'm only making it because what i heard from their people and they won't deny it so for you to challenge me on it you have to understand they're not challenging me on it and furthermore our story that came out in usa today covers this entire matter they haven't called in once to correct any fact in it when you say your story you mean your advertisement well there was actually an insert in there that laid out the entire way that that came about let us let us get back during the few minutes we have left in this podcast to discussing scientology a little and i i made a suggestion at the beginning of this program or near the beginning of the program uh that in order to progress within your church it costs money right if i'm poor how far can i progress pretty far how far well i'll tell you this by the time you start getting anywhere near the top i guarantee you you wouldn't be poor anymore because generally people in scientology do better if they honestly make it but let us assume there are some kids out there who are just poor they don't have money they don't have any friends or relatives who have money uh is is this the right religion for them oh absolutely this is the right religion for anybody in scientology uh you're dealing with yourself you see here we have this in common with all religions of earth all religions of earth try to help man to be better and uh to cause them spiritual improvement now most uh in the judeo-christian society they say if you have faith and you live your life that you'll you'll achieve spiritual salvation in the afterlife uh we believe in spiritual salvation but in the here and now oh i think and that's and that's what we deal with i think both judaism and christianity or the proponents of those two religions would argue with you that they certainly set forth uh quite a number of rules and recommendations all i'm saying is that they have their way what's different in scientology is how we approach it uh there there are higher levels of awareness as a spiritual being and that's what we're dealing with in scientology now for me to talk to you about this and for you to have a reality on it i don't think i'm going to get that and i'll tell you why you don't have a reality on it you see scientology is a very personal thing you ask why somebody would do it i'm not making the claims for the church ted millions of scientologists around the world are making that claim you ask them they are happier they do feel they're more able they do do better in life they know it has helped them they say it you can't take that away and just like i wouldn't take that away from any other religion when somebody then comes about and says that scientology doesn't do that are they telling me i don't have my own feelings no i'm just asking you and it it strikes me as a reasonable question but if you can't answer it you can't answer it that there must be a way of explaining without going into any of the innermost secrets of the church of scientology and and i understand your church has some secrets uh there has to be a way of explaining what it is you do that's different what is that we do that's not very difficult at all we approach it on a one-on-one basis there is absolutely a technology of scientology there's a philosophy which covers the subject of life i started talking about communication earlier on well of course it covers interpersonal relationships a million subjects i don't have enough time all night to go into them but separately there is a technology that's applied to you as an individual actual one-on-one counseling where you you look well number one you have to understand the first premise you are a spiritual being you look you find out more about yourself who you are where you are where you have been a man who can look back and do that is a very courageous individual a lot of that includes looking back on your own past and areas where you went astray that's similar to other religions it's also similar to psychiatry listen i'm not similar to psychiatry at all i brought one piece of paper here because i knew this was going to come up this is psychology which covers the subject of religion it's called religiosity and pre-edible fixation let me stop you one second i just want to tell any any members of our audience who may just have joined us and not have been with us my guest is is david miscavige uh you are now the head of the church of scientology yes sir right okay please this is what they say about religion they say abstract religion this is uh out of the journal of genetic psychology this is march 1985 and i want you to understand why i don't like being compared to these people because i'm in a completely separate realm religious belief and observance derived from pre-editable oral and anal drives according to psychoanalytic theory specifically belief in deity and such concepts as the afterlife are consonant with oral needs for nurturance from an omnipotent benefactor coupled with the denial of death observance of ritual and particularly church attendance is a function of the anal need for regular activity and the anal compulsive need for regularity and repetitiveness this is an offense to any religion i'm not like these people we deal with the spirit they say man's a body we separate right there we're instant bringing persons to a higher plane they deal with the neurotics they want to bring them up and tell him how to solve his problems in scientology ted we want to bring the individual up to a higher level ability so that he's more intelligent he has better reaction time he's more able and intelligent so that he can handle his life better now you've handled something explain to me and again going back to the pieces that we saw before and and by necessity even though we ended up doing 15 minutes on these pieces uh you end up compressing things and and i don't want to lead people astray talk to me for a moment about the e-meters those are those handles that you see people holding in the pictures uh and they they are dealing now with an auditor an auditor is the person who this is the one to one well here's what happens yeah it could be me and you singing across from each other okay let's say let's say i'm holding the e-meter what are you doing and what is that e-meter doing what is it capable of doing okay what it is capable of doing is registering what's bothering you it is a guide it doesn't tell you anything it doesn't yell out well it's a meter there and it sends a little electrical flow through your body you're holding something there very tiny you cannot feel it uh it shows a reaction what does that reaction mean their reaction just says there's a reaction you thought something about it or something that has some form of mental energy reactions you're saying words and it's almost like uh no no free association or i mean what am i what am i reacting to stop comparing it to psychotherapy because it isn't i'm just asking and by the way okay there are a million things you can do but you take up an individual subject of a person's life i'll bring up the subject of communication if that isn't you fine people do have problems with this subject very specific questions are asked the person answers them he looks answers the question answers it to handle areas of upset that are upsetting him he knows when they are no longer upsetting him he finds out finally for himself why they were upsetting him and they no longer do that is what's happening what i'm still a little bit lost on is presumably you and i could do that oh absolutely right now right well you'd have to want to participate fine and but why do we need that piece of equipment oh because it's far more accurate i mean originally in in uh dianetics and scientology there was no meter and you would look at it because i'm looking at a needle sweeping across okay you would look at the person you would look at the person and hear something similar i can see your face flush or i can see you cry or i can see you smile you can you can observe people right well not many people have an ability to do that and plus that is pretty crude what this does is when there is an area of upset it registers that's all it does when the area of upset no longer exists it doesn't register that's all it does it is strictly a guide and what is the communication place between you and i you see we're in there together i'm asking something about you you're interested in finding out something about yourself i'm there to help you find that but i'll tell you here's where else we differ from psychotherapy psychology those people would tell you this is your problem that's a pretty arrogant position to take for that person to tell you what's going on considering every individual on this planet is different scientology we show you a way to find out for yourself and do you know who knows when you found out you do and if this still doesn't make sense to you that's because you haven't done it i can't be more clear first principle in scientology by the way ted you should understand is in studying the subject or practicing it never ever ever believe it just because we say it so only once you have experienced it yourself and you find this concept to be true should you then consider it to be true could you just on the most basic level i mean you say originally it was done without the e-meter anyway could you on the most basic level do it with me right now no absolutely not because we're not an environment here that is conducive to all the elements of auditing i mean i'm perfectly comfortable here well here's why because you're the interviewer here on the program right and you're the one who's in charge here on the program and you're interested in doing a program that instantly throws out the first three rudiments to doing this it's not something as a matter of fact i don't know i buy that that's right that's fair enough one of the other way if you're not going to use the e-meter though uh forrest also showed some of the people working with what plasticine oh yeah you know i mean there's a sort of misconception that comes out that's part of the study technology scientology there's a study technology developed by el ron hubbard he isolated the three barriers to study this this is a technology that helps you study any subject uh one of those is not having the mass in front of you i'll give you an example not having another one the mass of an object that you're studying in front of you a good example here we are in a studio we have cameras all over the place imagine you were going to school when you were 15 and you're studying up on cameras and you've never seen one okay you wouldn't really quite understand it too well it'd be better if you had the camera there that you could that you could do it with uh taking something more crude than that we're not talking about electronics in any given area of study the ability to demonstrate in clay a concept in the paragraph allows you to gain a greater understanding of that subject is something that he asked me about in the intro there was there was a piece on it but generally what people do is they'll be studying materials and then they will see if they really understand it by demonstrating it in this clay and if they can make a three-dimensional figure of it it often serves to clarify that concept and also show whether they understand it or not and it's part of a study program it's not it's not a process of scientology we're not looking to make people better with this it's strictly a way of studying why is it necessary in order to progress i mean some of the sons that are charged and i literally don't have them it's it's it's not something i've tucked away in my memory but we're talking about in some instances to move from one level to the next level seven thousand dollars ten thousand dollars fifteen thousand dollar huge sum that's why yeah well okay number one we certainly do have a different donation system than than other churches although not all other churches donation yeah you you call it a donation oh absolutely because there's people there donating to the church period i understand but are there people there who are making that progress i mean what again to get back to the person who doesn't have any money what does he or she do he trains in the subject of scientology and then audit somebody else and he can be audited by that person and that's free you see people like to pull out the sexy part i'd like to point out that the people that are complaining about in your intro the one girl there that was complaining about it a girl named vicki azaren which by the way this is a girl who was kicked out for trying to bring criminals into the church i think we're talking about a grown woman right a grown woman excuse me i mean and a lady and you and she were at one point at one point rivals for the leadership absolutely not absolutely not i have no idea where forest got that from absolutely not she violated the mores and codes of the group she was removed for it i was a trustee of that corporation she knows it the word she said to me is i have no future in scientology she wanted to bring bad boys into scientology her words no now what what you have just done is one of two things and i'm not in a position to judge which it is either you have made an accurate charge against someone or what a number of your critics and a number of the pieces that have been written about the church of scientology suggest is that when you have a critic before you you destroy those people yeah well let me tell you that's easy to say for the person that's easy for the person to say but she's the one on that program smearing me and let me tell you something else this subject had come out before force did have it i showed her deficit deposition testimony she admitted in there that that is what she was trying to do she admitted that's why she was pulled out the fact that forrest didn't put that in there is extremely disingenuous i'm not making any new charge against her and let's not also forget the fact that she is trying to get 70 million dollars out of the church and i think that explains 70 million reasons why she would make up something like that i'm trying to get nothing from her she sued the church absolutely 470 million for 70 million where does okay stand right now case has dragged on for years it's just been dragging on and on still in the court system absolutely absolutely but on the subject here i mean they bring that up ted it's simple for people to say that except i'm not out there leveling charges out of the blue against people in fact you've got to look at it this way you've seen the amount of attacks leveled against my church i haven't even bothered to come out to defend myself until this point and i'm not even here to defend myself but if somebody makes a move like that and they say something and they have an ulterior motive i think it should be explained it's that simple you put another example on there a roxanne friend this is a horrifying story this girl uh was ill i feel for her another woman another woman on there excuse me excuse me i don't mean this in a demeaning way i'm sorry uh she has a horrifying story of having uh an illness of cancer and and the word in there is that we didn't send her to a church to a doctor to a doctor excuse me in fact she's been to a doctor 220 times while she was in scientology in fact when we sent her out of the church we asked her to please go to a medical doctor and see if something was wrong the charge as i as i recall mr miscavige is that with with many of these people who've done it now let me finish this one let me finish this one because it's important not just in just a second the charge is that you inevitably i don't mean you personally i mean the church sin people who complain of some illness to a doctor but a doctor who is also a scientologist no way you got it it's invented never heard in my life source maybe so if someone were first time i heard it it's not the first time because you've read the la times series and it was in the other language it was in the time stream i didn't read that believe me i don't read a report on scientology from the la times to find out what it is so i did not read that no no but i mean you've got to understand what you're criticizing that's just not so not so at all just absolutely not so any scientologist who wants to go to an outside doctor no problem anybody he wants it's just an outrageous charge i have no idea where it came from the the uh what do you call the folks who are up at the up at the higher level of your church um the ones in the uniforms what are the staff members search members of the church sea org what does that stand for sea organization originally sca yes from the sea sea yeah sure absolutely what is that in the ocean well originally this group of people were based on ships at sea and that's where the term sea organization came from that was at a time when all kinds of folks were going after elronda hubbard and he moved his operation out to sea not because all kinds of folks were going after i mean uh irs was going after him weren't they at that time well let me tell you i mean you know i went through these earlier you want to talk about them it had not there was no cause and effect relationship to ellen hubbard being at sea and these people going after him and therefore he was leaving but you want to bring out all sorts of folks ted let's let's be accurate here there have been attacks leveled against scientology they uniformly get reported by the media the net result doesn't let me just go through them i mentioned the food and drug administration they tried this case for six years they lost it was headline press when it came out they lost the case full religious recognition of the church they passed their information to australia there was a full inquiry down there in 1982 the court ruled in our favor and issued an apology stating that this was an embarrassing chapter in the history of that country you talk about the attacks here the real story is this ted a new organization there are new ideas in scientology these get attacked it's not the first time in the history of the world that this has happened this has happened to many other groups this happened to christianity bring it up forward to another religion mormonism it happened to them it happened to us the attacks on us though i will say in the last 40 years are unprecedented and unrelenting not even rivaled by any other group during that time period and yet the church of scientology has survived throughout that entire time period and grown and continued to grow to grow that is the real story of scientology and the only way that can occur is if you have something beneficial to offer people and scientology does you can talk about all this i can debate with you about that you can go speak to a scientologist which were made available to nightline and ask them what it is done for them and they do applaud it the people who are detractors anybody has critics that's fine and i don't know i have to tell you i don't mind somebody criticizing a valid fact in scientology ted i'll be the first one to deal with it people within the church there's various complaints here and there little ones i always investigate them wait but what if that's me can you what upsets me is when one of these critics brings this up and your reporter doesn't mention the fact that they are suing or the fact that they were removed and i've shown deposition testimony you see it's out of the realm of what i'm saying the fact that another man wanted to kidnap scientologist and i showed the documents to your reporter and he doesn't put them in my complaint isn't that the people said them my complaint is that the reporter didn't give the motive and he should have he had it available to him and to not show it makes it seem like these people are objective you want to go around and check out the controversy it's created in the media because ted like i said the beginning of the show there are a hundred thousand scientologists for every one detractor and when you just show those people well they've picked up the lines they're coordinated they find all the little buttons to press and they all say the same ones they're frightened they're on the show i spoke to roxanne friend over christmas i feel sorry for her but do you know what she said to me ted she asked me at the end of our conversation dave please tell me is it ever possible for me to come back to scientology that's the real story because that isn't on there for every minute that we spent in the report at the beginning we have spent roughly five minutes now with you and me talking i mean you are after all we've done we've done almost an hour very well and i appreciate it that's right um aren't you capable of responding i mean you keep saying why don't you go talk to the scientologist you're the hypocrite but you have to understand this if you want to understand what benefits people in scientology i can give you my own personal thing but what i am not going to do here is tell you i am not going to make claims for other people what i'm telling you is the best evidence is the successes of scientology do you want to hear about mine sure i came to scientology i was a young man i had an acute case of asthma i had been to doctor after doctor nothing could cure it my father heard of dianetics and scientology took me to an individual i was with him for an hour i used exactly what anybody can read and diagnose the modern science of mental health that asthma disappeared for three years i say three years because i'm not going to tell you it went away forever after that it came up again and i dealt with it and i don't have it now i do five miles a day i'm just i just don't have that is that the greatest thing it's done for me no but at that point i certainly knew i certainly knew it was something beneficial i knew it it's a personal story what it has done for me since then is just fabulous but that is my own personal story that is what the story is of scientology the successes are endless ted you see we talk about these and that's why i was concerned about such an intro piece the story a hundred thousand people off drugs that's help that's good i can give you these statistics you were talking before about narconos right uh narconon operated in oklahoma correct state of oklahoma said illegitimate group tossed you out well there you go now we're going to bring up a new allegation the state of oklahoma no they didn't they didn't toss it out it's still there and that's in the court system in fact what happened ted is that various doctors came in to testify the leading drug rehabilitation experts in the country came in to testify well who was who let me finish who was opposed let me finish who's trying to get it out the psychiatrists the mental health board the leading doctors across the country forest tenant another gentleman whose name doesn't come to mind right now testified in behalf all the testimony on the efficacy of narconon program was all in favor of it studies have been done governmental studies in spain and sweden found narconon to be the most effective drug rehabilitation program in those countries one man came in a psychiatrist he made statements about the program the man was also on record as stating it's a man named doctor jolien west out of ucla he stated that living a drug free existence is an antiquated position in today's society the judge in that case ruled that having that man talk about our drug rehabilitation program is similar to asking saddam hussein to report on the treatment of the kuwaitis in kuwait so why is it still in the court system the mental health board is the one who ruled on it and we couldn't understand the findings because all the testimony was positive both health inspections they passed and then at the last minute these mental health piece people denied it hang on i gave you the story though you want to know sure just like the fda just like that we get a level playing field ted it always comes out you're bringing up narconon now but you know if i don't you brought it up i didn't bring up the oklahoma matter and you brought that up that is correct you know if you i could have been on here two years ago and you would have brought something up and it's over now there have been these cases but in the end we come out on top and i'm telling you ted there are a group of people on this planet who find us to be a threat to their existence and they will do everything in their power to stop us and that is the mental health field i didn't pick a war with them you can ask them if they feel this way and they will tell you that one one last quick area i want to go into explain to me what a clear is okay well the first book dianetics uh talks about the mind and the subject of the mind well you have a mind and i did this with you before but anybody can see what their mind is their mind is composed of pictures you can close your eyes look at a cat and you'll see a cat and those pictures you're seeing are your mind uh there's your ana they're parts of this mind your analytical mind which you do your thinking with which is very analytical a perfect computer is a good analogy and there is a reactive mind and this is the mind that kicks in during any moments of trauma stress unconsciousness it is recording a series of pictures of these incidents unknown to the individual at a later time these in these incidents that are traumatic can come back and affect the person affect his rationality affect his happiness this is where you find the cause of a person acting a way he doesn't want to clear is yeah the clear is eradicating that reactive mind so the person no longer has matters like that not affecting him clears don't get colds well i don't know that clears don't get cold hubbard said clears don't get cold uh back in 1951 elren hubbard uh i believe said in that book that postulating that a clear wouldn't get a cold so again you're taking the line out of context so clears do get calls i guess one could okay in the in the few seconds that we got left we got about 45 seconds left we we've heard a lot from you and i understand there's a lot more to be said but why is all of this a religion and you're speaking now to a great many people out there who have a different concept of religion yeah well unfortunately we've talked about a lot of allegations and it's tough to to to describe a subject when you're dealing when you get hit with a litany of accusations at the beginning you're trying to deal with them why scientology is a religion religion is about the spirit and scientology deals with the spirit we are in the tradition of the much older religions buddhism hinduism helping the person as a spiritual being improve himself that is what religion is about that is why this is a religion it doesn't fall into any other field and on that note david miscavige let me thank you i appreciate very much you're joining us okay thank you sunday on this week with david brinkley the new hampshire primary with democratic presidential contenders bill clinton and tom harkin and president bush's campaign chairman robert teeter that's our report for tonight i'm ted koppel in washington for all of us here at abc news good night if you wish a video cassette version of nightline the cost is 14.98 plus 3.95 shipping and handling is a presentation of abc news more americans get their news from abc news than from any other source

Channel: Scientology Direct From Alex

Views: 507,938

Keywords: Scientology (Religion), David Miscavige (Visual Artist), ABC News (Production Company), Nightline (Award-Winning Work), Religion (TV Genre)

Id: exzmE3vW_Tw

Length: 55min 51sec (3351 seconds)

Published: Sun May 03 2015