Danny Jones Podcast - #49 - The #1 Threat to Scientology | Mike Rinder

Episode Date: August 10, 2020

Mike Rinder is a former senior executive of the Church of Scientology International (CSI) and the Sea Organization based in the United States.  From 1982 to 2007 Mike served on the board of directors of CSI and also held the post of executive director of its Office of Special Affairs, overseeing the corporate, legal and public relations matters of Scientology at the international level. Rinder left Scientology in 2007. From 2016 to 2019, he co-hosted the A&E documentary series Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, world. Our guest today is Mike Rinder. Mike is a former senior executive of the Church of Scientology and also a former member of the C-S-E-A organization. From 1982 to 2007, Mike served on the board of directors of the Church of Scientology and held the post of executive director of its Office of Special Affairs, overseeing the corporate, legal, and public relations matters of Scientology at the international level. He left Scientology in 2007 and from 2017. until 2019, he co-hosted the A&E documentary series with Leah Remini called Scientology and the Aftermath. In this podcast, we talk about how he sailed through the Mediterranean with L. Ron Hubbard, what it was like working for David Miscavage and why he finally decided to leave the church.

Please enjoy this conversation with Mike Rinder. Mike Rinder, thank you for doing this. I appreciate you coming in and doing this podcast. You're very welcome. You're from the area, Clearwater, right? Well, I'm originally from Australia. Oh, yeah. I'm originally Australian, but I live here in Palm Harbor now, which is just for people not in this area.

It's just north of Clearwater. Okay. And when I first came to the United States in 1975, when Scientology first moved into Clearwater, obviously I lived here. Okay. And then I spent a lot of time in Los Angeles. Okay. So you were, just for people out there who may not know your story, you were. You were one of the top senior executives at the Church of Scientology, number two to David Miscavage, I believe.

You were pretty high up there, really close to him for a long time. And why don't you just go ahead and give us like a brief background of how you got started in all this? Well, I got started through my parents. I was introduced to Scientology when I was six years old by my parents in Australia. and I was really raised as a Scientologist. And when I graduated high school, I joined the C organization, which is Scientology's inner core of most dedicated elite members.

It's sort of like the Vatican, I guess, or some very, very hardcore, you sign a billion, year contract and dedicate yourself to achieving the aims of Scientology. And I went initially to join El Run Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, on his boat in the Mediterranean, which was called the Apollo. And Hubbard had left England and was being pursued by various government agencies, and he decided in 1966, 67, that he was going to sort of escape government oversight, and he bought three ships.

And the largest of them was called the Apollo, and he hung out on the Apollo and sailed around in the Mediterranean, and then ultimately into the Caribbean. And that was the people from the Apollo in the Caribbean, who then moved ashore his. to Clearwater in late 1974, early 1975. And I was with Hubbard throughout that time period. And then when we came to Clearwater,

or when we came ashore from the Apollo, I was actually one of the very first people that came to the Fort Harrison. I was there when it was still the Jacktar Hotel before Scientology had taken possession of it. Wow. I sort of rose. in the ranks of Scientology ultimately to become the international spokesperson for Scientology

on the board of directors of the Church of Scientology International, which is the mother church of Scientology, and the head of what's known as the Office of Special Affairs. And the Office of Special Affairs is a very euphemistic sounding, or very euphemistic name for the Department of Scientology that deals with external matters, which includes external threats, which means taking care of the enemies of Scientology. Right. And that history, when Elrun Hubbard died in 1986, there was a sort of a vacuum created.

He didn't leave any specific, clear instructions about what was to happen after he croaked. and David Mascavitch, the current leader of Scientology, ultimately prevailed in a sort of power struggle and took over and has followed in the footsteps of Hubbard since then. So initially I worked for Hubbard, but then I started working for Muscovich when he took over. And I was, along with another guy called Marty Rathman, sort of the two people who did. dealt with all external matters for Scientology, the IRS exemption, dealing with governments, dealing with legal cases, with the media, with anything that had to do with Scientology's relationship to the world and the difficulties that may be having PR-wise or legal-wise. Wow. So what was it like being around Elron Hubbard? And how old were you at that time?

I was 18 when I first arrived. I just turned 18 when I first arrived on the Apollo with Hubbard. He was a very larger than life character. He was a large man just physically. But he was also had this sort of commanding presence of, you know, you knew when he walked in a room, even if you didn't see him. He was just a big, narcissistic, but somewhat humorous, but crazy, but super smart. But like this, the enigmas surrounding Elron Hubbard are kind of hard to describe. There is a very, very brilliant book written by an English author called Russell Miller that is an unauthorized biography of El Ron Hubbard. And that book, Barefaced Messiah, is the best insight into the life of Hubbard.

Hubbard was a, at heart, he was a bullshitter. He was a storyteller. He made his living, writing fiction works, science fiction, and other sorts of pulp fiction. And he basically took his skill as a writer of fiction and turned it into a money-making proposition as the author of Scientology. And, you know, there are things in Scientology that are, that most people would agree with. It's not all nuts. Right.

Like, there's enough of it that is sort of makes sense and does help some people and is pretty benign. And interesting, what's sort of interesting about it is how cleverly it is constructed. to have a sort of a face to the world and a presentation to new people that makes it kind of attractive and interesting. And only once you've immersed yourself in it more, do you start to see the darker side? Right. Yeah, it seems like at least for face value, it seems like a very productive, get shit done, you know, get rid of the negative influences in your life. And it's a very positive way to, you know, be a better version of yourself in all aspects, at least for face value.

Well, that's what it promotes. Right. And there is, and like I said, there is, there are aspects to it that are presented to the world that make it appear that way. The unfortunate truth is that there is a very dark underbelly to Scientology. And, you know, that's what we really covered in the aftermath. series that Leah Remini and I did. And now we are covering on the podcast that we are doing, which is called Scientology Fair Game.

And Fair Game is the real meat of the nasty business of Scientology, because Fair Game is the policy and practices that were laid out by El Ron Hubbard to destroy enemies. and Danny, you wouldn't believe the detail that he went into on how you go about doing that. And this is all written in documents that are available. You know, they're not readily available. They're much more available. Now, WikiLeaks has got a bunch of them. I've put a bunch of them on my blog.

They've sort of leaked out over the years. But these are documents that say basically. to harass, intimidate, trick, lie, destroy enemies. And enemies is, I put in quotation marks, because in the Scientology or the Hubbard definition of enemy is anybody who disagrees with, questions, opposes, or criticizes Scientology in any way. It's not, you know, you don't have to be an out-and-out criminal to be designated an enemy of Scientology.

Right. You know, you can just be a person who speaks on TV or does an interview or writes a story. I mean, Tom Tobin and Joe Childs are enemies of Scientology. You know, the reporters from the Tampa Bay Times, in fact, back in the early day, of Scientology in Clearwater, there was a reporter for the Tampa, for the then St. Beat Times,

Betty Orsini, who had exposed the fact that Scientology had purchased the Fort Harrison because when that was done, it was done under the guise of being a front group

called the United Churches of Florida. Right. And the Southern Land Development and Leasing Corporation. And it was like she exposed that and she became an enemy and there was a bunch of things that were done by Scientology to try and destroy her career and her life

get her fired from the St. Pete Times, get her husband to divorce her. I mean, it was like an out-and-out campaign. And there have been campaigns, the mayor of Clearwater at that time, Gabe Cazaris, who was also very upset about the fact that nobody, but he had been up front when we first came to Clearwater,

became the target of monumental efforts to destroy him. He was set up in a fake hit-and-run accident at a conference in Washington, D.C. They planted documents in files saying that he was bigomously married to a woman in Mexico. They got students, quote, students who were young women, to claim that he was having affairs with them. And this was all documented after the FBI raided Scientology in 1977 in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles, and discovered all the documents that laid out these plans to destroy people. Wow.

And so it's not just, you know, anybody who is considered to be a nuisance to Scientology, they don't just sort of lie down and take it, they go out and actively work to destroy that person and shut them down. And in fact, that was my job as the head of the Office of Special Affairs. My responsibility and what I was judged on in that job was the number of dismissed attackers. That was what you counted, the number of dismissed attackers. That was what you counted the number of dismissed attacks. attackers and a dismissed attacker is another euphemistic term for someone that's been shut the fuck up.

Okay. Whether by intimidation, whether by threats, whether by legal action of suing, whether by getting a settlement, whatever it was, if that person was no longer now speaking about what they considered to be the abuses or problems in Scientology that counted as a plus. They've been neutralized. Yeah. Right. So you were the head of this specific operation of neutralizing people that were outside of Scientology trying to discredit Scientology. So going back when you first came back to Clearwater on Apollo the boat, when you first started working in the Fort Harrison flag building.

What were you doing there? At the time, I was the TELX operator. Okay. Scientology still used TELX's. And that's because back in the 1960s, telex was the sort of communication method of choice. And strangely in Scientology, there is this sort of thing where if Elrond Hubbard said it, then it can't be changed.

Right. So Scientology continues to use telexes to this day, even though they may not use telex machines per se anymore. You know, the clackety, clackety, clackety clack. And they transmit over, you know, fiber optics with a computer terminal. They still call them telexes. because that's what El Ron Hubbard said is the method that you're supposed to communicate. So I digress always, Danny, into all sorts of strange oddball facts about these things. But I was in charge of sending and receiving communications from Scientology organizations all over the world into Clearwater.

Okay. That's what I did. and how old were you again? By that time I was 22. 22. And at that point you were already working with David Miscavage, who is the leader in that? Like, you guys were... No, David Miscavich hadn't even come into the Seagog by then.

Oh, really? No. At what point did you finally meet him? I think in 1976. Well, actually, back up. Okay. Truth be told, I met him and his father and his mother and his brother and his twin sister and his younger sister back in 1969. When I traveled to England with my parents to go to the home of El Ron Hubbard, which is St. Hill Manor in East Grinstead, Sussex, David Mischavich's parents were also there, had traveled to England to go to the home of El Ron Hubbard, which is St.

Hill Manor in East Grinstead, Sussex. David Miskavich's parents were also there, had traveled to England to go to the home of El Ron Hubbard and study Scientology, and I met Dave, his sister, Denise, his twin sister, Denise, his younger sister, Laurie, and his older sister, Ron, and his mother and father then. Ron Jr. joined the Sea Organization like a year before Dave did. And I was friends with Ron Jr. in the Seahog. And then Dave came, and I think it was 1976. And he came to Clearwater.

He was 16. He had not finished high school. And he came to Clearwater to join the Seagg. And then ultimately to go work with El Ron Hubbard. who had by this time moved to California. Okay. Now what was he doing? What was his day-to-day job?

Well, there's many, but when he got pretty quickly, he went to California, and he was an assistant cameraman. Elron Hubbard at that time fancied himself as a movie director and producer and was doing movies to promote Scientology,

and to train what's called auditors in Scientology, which is Scientology counselors. Right, okay. And he had set up this sort of makeshift movie studio on a property near La Quinta in California, which is just outside of Palm Springs. And David Miscavich was brought there, and he was the assistant cameraman on those shoots.

Okay. There was pictures of Miskavich standing there with Elrond Hubbard. Really? with a, you know, old, old style, I guess it's a 35, it's probably not even a 35 millimeter camera, whatever, with an old, old style movie camera,

yeah. Yeah. And then from there, Ms. Kavich graduated to becoming the person, and I'll try and avoid too much of the terminology, but a person who, a person who was charged with sending Seorg members from where Elron Hubbard was out into different Scientology organizations around the world to deal with problems. His title was actually the action chief.

The action chief. The action chief. It seems like a good name, a good title for somebody like him. I mean, watching those videos of him walking into those big giant seminars. where he like literally marches out to that podium. He's like Vince McMahon. Exactly. His body language is just like Vince McMahon.

Exactly. Vince McMahon or Tony Robbins. Oh Tony Robbins. Yeah. Yeah. That he has that sort of swagger and, you know, he has a very interesting sort of public persona that he generates. and he's all, you know, hell, fellow, well met, you know, shaking hands. Right.

Yeah, da, da, da, la, yeah. The real David Muscovich is a total sociopath. He is a very, he has all the traits of a sociopath. You know, I read a fascinating book when I first left. that was recommended to me by someone called the sociopath next door, written by a Harvard professor called Martha Stout. And I read that book and I went, oh, my God, this is exactly, she wrote this book about David Muscovich.

My God, it's like, it's exactly him. And only then did I come to realize that this is a, you know, a personality disorder. It's not, it's not limited to Muscovich. it's not something that that is unknown in the world outside. But that sort of struck me because I believe that he was the only person on planet Earth that could be as nuts as he is. Right. You know, like to me, nobody else could be quite like that.

Nobody else could sink into the levels of depravity that he sank to. but I came to realize that that actually isn't the case. Well, you knew him for a very long time. How long did it take before, you know, once Elron Hubbard died and Ms. Scavage became known as this leader. And how did you become like his right-hand man or like the head of that special affairs or part of the company or part of the organization? Well, it's sort of a long story, but the beginning of it is that I was chosen by Miskavich

to participate in what was a series of actions to dismantle what was called the Guardian's office. And the Guardian's office was the precursor to the Office of Special Affairs. Okay, and that Guardian's office was set up by Hubbard? By Hubbard and his wife, Mary Sue Hubbard, was the head of the Guardian's office. And I told you earlier about this raid that the FBI did in 1977 and all those documents. The result of that was the federal government prosecuted Mary Sue Hubbard and 10 other leaders of the Guardian's office. They ultimately pled guilty and all went to federal prison.

for infiltrating the government, for stealing documents from the government, for bugging the offices of the IRS and the DOJ. And, I mean, it was a massive, massive operation, the largest infiltration and spying operation ever against the United States government. And the ultimate outcome of that was that Hubbard decreed that. that the Guardian's office, including his wife, had been traitors. And that they had, you know, messed up so badly that they had to all be gotten rid of. And so it was put in, you know, on the plate of Muscovich to do that. And where was Hubbard during all this? He was hiding.

Hiding. Literally. He disappeared in the middle of the night. He drove off in a car with two people from La Quinta. Originally, he went to Reno, Nevada and lived in a motel. And then when things seemed to be safe, he sort of came back and lived in Hammett, which is near the Golden Era Productions property, which became the international sort of headquarters of Scientology in Riverside County, California.

but then when things heated up there and he thought that he was going to be subpoenaed or someone was going to catch him, he went first to Newport Beach and he drove around in a Bluebird Bus Motor Home for a whole bunch of time traveling around incognito and then bought a ranch near Creston, California, which is north. of Santa Barbara. Okay. And lived under an assumed name with a long beard and long hair there for until he died. Wow. Moscavich, meanwhile, had, you know, we had gone and disbanded the Guardian's office, but as I said, replaced it with the Office of Special Affairs.

And that was in 1981. and because of my participation in that, I ended up sort of moving into the Office of Special Affairs and then rising in the ranks of the Office of Special Affairs until I became the head of it. Okay. So this is so crazy. How does it feel to you now?

I mean, you were once ahead of Special Affairs, which was in charge of dealing with people like who you are right now. Mm-hmm. So you're considered right now, you are considered one of the biggest threats to Scientology. Is that right? Absolutely. Yeah, they devote a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of private investigators, a lot of websites, a lot of smear campaigns to me and Leah Remedy. We're like number one and two on the hit parade of Scientology.

And so how does, I mean, knowing what you know, because you were the head of that. And you obviously saw everything that went on in like the top tier of the organization as far as handling people like yourself. How does that make you feel now being one of the number one people who are outspoken about this? Well, honestly, I feel like I have a responsibility to do it. I feel like I have a responsibility to all the people who have been abused by someone. Scientology and will continue to be abused by Scientology. I feel like, you know, there probably isn't anybody else in the world who has the insight and the knowledge that I have to be able to dissect what happens and expose the truth about

what really is going on. You know, that is coupled with the... the, you know, how the hell did I not, how the hell did I not get this? Why did it take so long? Right. Like, I'm not, um, I'm not stupid, but I was for a very long time.

And this is what is so, um, so sinister about Scientology is, ultimately, if you walk down to the spiritual headquarters of Scientology and Clearwater there and spoke to those Scientologists, you would find generally that they are nice people. Right. They're not wackos. They're not like, you know, spouting crazy, standing on a street corner, the world is ending with holding signs. they're like normal people that live sort of apparently normal lives.

But if you poke around into how they view the world, they have a very distorted view of the world. And they will do things that one wouldn't imagine that you could get someone like that to do with the idea that it is helping or protecting Scientology. And if you can convince someone that Scientology is the answer to man's problems and the only hope for mankind and the only path to spiritual freedom, people would do things that you wouldn't expect that they would be willing to do in order to protect that. And Scientologists, you know, that's why Larry Wright, his brilliant book going clear, is subtitled Scientology, the Prison of Belief. Because it's a mind prison.

You get sucked in with the good ideas and what are apparently the good intentions of Scientology and gradually start to believe this twisted worldview. that there is an evil conspiracy of psychiatry and medical doctors and big farmer and governments who are seeking to control and enslave mankind. And that the only hope for mankind is Scientology. And if you ask any one of those normal looking people walking down the street in Clearwater, Yeah. Whether what they, just say the word to them. Listen, tell me about psychiatry.

You will get a blithering idiot rant from them about psychiatry or the enemies of mankind. They're destroying people. They're electric shocking them. They're doing prefrontal lobotomies. They're sticking ice picks in their eyeballs. They're doing this. They're doing that. Like, this is the us versus them mentality that is.

absolutely hammered in to every Scientologist in the world. And people like me or reporters for the St. Pete Times, you know, now Tracy McManus, we're all, if not just as evil, we are the tools of the evil. We have become the, you know, Satan's, Satan's, bagmen who are doing the work of psychiatry and Big Pharma to seek to eradicate Scientology, because Scientology is the only effective foil against their evil. And if you, Danny, if you go look, you will see Scientology has said that I'm being paid by Big Pharma, I'm a spokesperson for the psychiatry, for psychiatry, Leah Remini, and like anybody is this.

And this is the crazy mindset that lies just beneath the social veneer of the normal-looking Scientology people. Yeah, I mean, like, for one thing, if you Google your name, the first thing you see is all these random weird little blogs that are like hit pieces on you and who you are. You're a womanizer. You're this terrible person. You abandon your family. Right. And all this stuff. So these are all websites created by these people.

Right. And they pay. And they pay for them to be at the top of searches on my name. Like they spend tax exempt dollars on that shit and on hiring private investigators to go through my trash or set up cameras outside my house or put GPS tracking devices on my cars or. or show up. Like, I have been all over the world since I left Scientology. Like, I went to England a couple of times because I was interviewed by the BBC. There would be Scientology protesters there.

I went to Australia to be interviewed by Brian Seymour at Channel 7. They sent private investigators on the plane with me who followed me around in Australia with cameras. I went to Ireland. They have protesters at the end. airport when I landed in Ireland. This, the amount of money that gets spent on this is insane. And it is actually being subsidized by taxpayers because Scientology has tax exempt status.

So that money is not only tax free, it's not, there's no accounting for it. There is no oversight of what Scientology spends its money. on. Right. There's absolutely zero regulation on them. Nope. And there is no way for the IRS even to go in and do an audit or require them to report. Nothing. There is a law in the United States called the Church Audits Procedures Act, which basically prevents the IRS from doing anything with a religious organization. Now, explain that. What was that like?

that whole, the whole fight to get the tax, to get Scientology to be tax exempt. Because I know there was, there was two stages of it, right? Obviously the first stage which led to the FBI raids and all that stuff early on, where they found out what Scientology was trying to do. But then, again, there was the thing with all the lawsuits that were filed. What was, how did that whole war against the IRS come about? And what was it like being in your position doing that? Okay.

That war against the IRS came about partly because of the dictates of Elron Hubbard, who... If you want water, you get the water for you. Thanks. Who said that, you know, the IRS is an enemy and taxation is bad and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, because they had denied Scientology tax exempt status early. Originally, they granted it and then done. denied it, saying that money was being funneled to Hubbard, and that was what's called

ennewment, which is a violation. You can't have a person benefiting from something that is tax-exempt, like personally. You can be paid. You know, the head of National Geographic gets paid, even though it's a tax-exempt organization. But if the head of National Geographic was getting huge royalties from the sale of National Geographic stuff, that would not, that would eliminate their qualification for tax exemption. When Elr Un Hubbard died, he had a will. And his will said that the money that he had accumulated and the rights to his writings, which were both fiction and the Scientology writings, which are all copyrighted. Every single word that he ever wrote is copyrighted and royalties are paid on by every

church of Scientology and every sale of every book. That all of that money and that revenue stream were to go to an organization that was dedicated to preserving his technology. And technology is a term that Hubbard used to describe. his writings and the scripture of Scientology. And he used technology because he always tried to present Scientology as very scientific. This isn't belief. This is where religion meets science.

You may have seen some of the ads that Scientology does. They do one of you usually at the Super Bowl and one of the lines they run. Do they really? Yeah. I don't think I've ever seen a Scientology Super Bowl ad. Oh, yeah. Really? Yes.

Yeah. Okay. I wish we could pull. I wish I had one I could see. Oh, you can find them online. Yeah. Just Google Scientology Super Bowl ad. They're like every year.

That's unbelievable. And you'll see that they often say this is where science meets religion. You know, this is the culmination of Eastern philosophy and Western material. I mean, all this stuff. Anyway, Hobbit called this stuff technology. Okay. And he decreed in his will. that his money that he had accumulated, you know, a few hundred million dollars, I guess,

and the revenue streams from future, because those royalties continue to be paid, were to vest in an organization which is called the Church of Spiritual Technology. and the Church's spiritual technology was an organization that was established to preserve the writings and recorded lectures of El Ron Hubbard on stainless steel, etched into stainless steel, stored in titanium pods in nuclear-proof vaults dug into the side of mountains. I know that sounds really bizarre, but that is Hubbard's legacy. He wanted his materials to survive what he said was the coming nuclear holocaust on planet Earth so that future civilizations it would still be available to them. They could dig this shit up out of the vaults and there it would be all preserved wonderfully. and this has been hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent putting, you know,

here's millions and millions of words and thousands of lectures onto indestructible form and buried in vaults in New Mexico and in California. Okay. That's like I said, I digress a lot because there's so much to these things. the requirement for that to happen was that the Church's spiritual technology had to have tax-exempt status because he didn't want his estate to be paying taxes on the transfer of the money to the organization. Okay, okay. The IRS refused to grant tax-exempt status to the Church of Spiritual Technology.

and Scientology sued and lost. And at that point, David Miskavich, who was now responsible for conducting the affairs of Scientology and carrying out the wishes of El Ron Hubbard in his will, had a problem. There was this estate sitting there with hundreds of millions of dollars with orders to preserve the technology. and he didn't have a way of getting that done. And Scientologists believe that when you die, you come back again in another body. And Muscovich was worried that Hubbard was coming back

and would be like, what the fuck, dude? How come you haven't gotten this done? He thought that his spirit, or what they call, Thayton. Yes, Thayton spirit would somehow, after he died, they said that it left his body and he went to do research as just a spirit and that he truly believed he would come back into a human meat sack and... Yes.

And Hubbard had written, here is how you will know who I am. This is how I will be identifiable. Really? Yes. And how is that? I have no idea. I don't know. I don't care.

Yeah, but that then started what was seriously the war on the IRS. If we can't get the IRS to agree to granting tax exempt status to the Church of Spiritual Technology and we can't get the courts to agree, we are going to force the IRS to agree. And this is where fair game comes in. Because what happened was a very, very intense campaign was conducted against the IRS and against individual agents in the IRS and in the hierarchy of the IRS that were responsible for tax exempt or religious tax exempt organizations. Okay. And there were like you talk about these smear sites back in the day that it was sort of pre. internet, but there were magazines that Scientolity published called Freedom Magazine. And these people were put on the cover of Freedom Magazine.

Private investigators were sent into IRS conventions and documented IRS agents getting drunk at conventions. They sent women in, like everything that you can, and filed a thousand lawsuits against the, well, let me back up, part of the strategy was to request freedom of information, make freedom of information requests to all IRS offices around the country. And to, because what happens when you get a document release under freedom of information, you'll see they blacked out. But the same document may be in five different offices and you'll get different blackouts from different offices.

Okay. And if you've got enough people, which Scientology has plenty of people and plenty of money, you can sit and compare all these and start noticing, okay, here's the, this line was blacked out on this document that we got from San Antonio, but the same line is not blacked out on the document we got from Sacramento. So now we know that, and now we also know that this was a bullshit it blackout. What was, why were they, what were they blacking out?

They black out, uh, names of people or things that they think of protecting confidential informants or like there's all sorts of things that are justified in blacking out in a, in a, in a Freedom of Information Act document. Okay. So what happened was Scientology filed lawsuits where they refused to provide documents or

where they provided documents that, were differently vetted. Okay. And ultimately ended up with about a thousand. And filed lawsuits on behalf of individual Scientology parishioners who had had their deductions to Scientology denied. They paid money to Scientology and claimed it as a deduction.

Got it. Yep. They were denied. So they filed individual lawsuits. And who told them to do this? The Office of Special Affairs. You? Yeah. Okay.

Well, not me personally, but people that work for me. And this was all part of the campaign that was directed by David Mischavich to force the IRS into what's called a more amenable frame of mind. And that is one of Hubbard's writings where he takes a thing from this, from either Sun Tzu or Klausowitz, out of war, on war. these books that he studied that he then laid out these directives for Scientology to follow and said, the aim of war is to get your enemy into a more amenable frame of mind. And that was the objective with the IRS, get them into a more amenable frame of mind. And it was very, very effective. because ultimately what happened is David Mascavich walked into the IRS headquarters in Washington, D.C.,

and said, I want to meet the commissioner. I want to see the commissioner. And this was right after you guys filed thousands of lawsuits, people, they were just getting beat up by us. All these freedom magazines. We were taking out full-page ads in USA Today about the IRS, full-page ads in the New York Times. like it was so just like in other ways of putting it just unloading all kinds of artillery on them to where they were just like beat up correct and moscavitch um and marty rathman walked into the irs headquarters and said they walked up to the reception desk and said i we want to see the commissioner

do you have an appointment no just tell them david moscavitch is here from the church of sientology and they didn't meet with him that day, but three days later they did. And Fred Goldberg, who was the IRS commissioner at the time, said, look, can you guys, can you turn off the faucet? Can you, can we just be done? And Muscovich said, of course we can't. Just give us exemption. Fred Goldberg then formed a special committee. inside the IRS to review Scientology tax exempt status.

And it was headed by the deputy commissioner of the IRS for exempt organizations at the time, a guy called John Burke. And John Burke was a really nice guy. But he was retiring. He had absolutely nothing to lose. He was at the end of his career. And so he and a bunch of other IRS officials formed this committee, and they asked hundreds of questions and wanted millions of documents.

And I literally commuted between L.A. and D.C. with Miskavich and Marty Rathbun and a few other people for almost two years, having meetings with the IRS routinely and providing them with documents and answers to their questions. And in the end, they basically said, okay, we give. What they were really looking for was enough justification to be able to grant the exemption. Because they had been mandated by the IRS commissioner originally. We need to shut this shit down. Yeah. Review this.

So really their mandate was to review it to figure out how they could do it. Because they had a problem, a big problem. there was a United States Supreme Court case called Hernandez v. Commissioner, where one of those people that I told you who had had their deductions denied took the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Jesus. And two years before this whole thing with the IRS, the U.S. Supreme Court said that donations or payments to Scientology were not tax deductible. because they are a quid pro quo transaction. Now quid pro quo has become a big, everybody knows what it is now.

It's hot term lately. Back then, it was like tax people knew about it, and that was all. And there also, the case of the Church's spiritual technology had been lost and appealed to the federal appeals court and had been lost in the federal appeals court. So there were these decisions. decisions that they had to somehow circumvent.

And honestly, to this day, I've talked to various tax professors and professionals, and they don't really understand how the IRS got away with this. And at the time when the settlement of granting Scientology exemption was announced, and it was secret for quite a while. Yeah. And the the actual document laying out the settlement was secret. The Wall Street Journal in the New York Times were like up in arms about this is outrageous and how this happened and blah, blah, blah. And Scientology just kind of, we just kind of went, you know, sour grapes, stuff, you know, whatever.

And that became in the eyes of Scientologists, Mischavich's claim to. fame in October of 1993 when the IRS granted this exemption he held a huge event in the at the call it the LA Sports Arena

and there were about Staples Center no it was it's before it's where the clippers used to play oh where the clip okay yeah yeah I know you're talking about and uh there were about 10,000 people from all over Scientologists from all over the world that were gathered for this event and he announced this victory. And it was, you know, fireworks.

And he was on this huge stage that looks like a Nuremberg rally with sconces and flames. And the announcement was ultimately after a long winded explanation about how rotten the IRS is and they did this and they did that and we did this and we did this and we blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, the war is. That was what the final announcement was. The war is over. We won. And this cemented in the mind of Scientologists, including me, that Mascavich had pulled off and accomplished something

that Elron Hubbard hadn't been able to. And that he had applied the exact policies of Hubbard on fair game and how you destroy enemies and how you go off to people, always attack, never defend, et cetera, et cetera. And it worked. And the credibility that this gave Muscovich lost to this day. Moscavich can do no wrong in the eyes of Scientologists, partly because of that. And when there is massive hits on Scientology PR-wise, like when going clear ad on HBO or when the aftermath was showing, he would routinely order that all Scientologists were to re-watch that event.

It's in every Scientology church and mission around the world, and people are ordered to come in and re-watch the – it's called the – it's called. now the turning point event. And it is two hours of David Muscovich patting himself on the back and then announcing that he's done what nobody else could do and got an exemption from the IRS. Now what happens with documentaries like HBO's going clear? Do they, in Scientology, do they confront that? Like do they like say, hey, watch this documentary. Here's where it's wrong. No, no, no. It is forbidden to watch what's called n theta.

N theta is a Scientology term, which means interbulated theta. With theta, like you said, is the term for the spirit or spiritual things, and interbulation is upset. And n theta is bad news. That's sort of short. It's the Scientology word for what we would say bad news. And so Scientologists are not allowed to watch going clear or the aftermath or read the St. Pete Times. When the Truth Rundown series came out in the St. Pete Times in 2009. Yeah.

The three-part series. Yeah. Yeah. Scientology went around and bought all the newspapers, emptied all the newsstands in Clearwater, so that no Scientologists would be able to get that paper. And that has happened routinely. And it is thought in Scientology that if you are exposed to that sort of negative information, that it will cause you to be what's called in Scientology a potential trouble source,

you will become sick. you will start having accidents. Bad things will start happening to you, and you will have to undergo a course of action that will fix you up. In fact, Leah and I wrote an article about this on my blog this morning called Scientology Deaths and Suicides,

where we go through how Scientology views, sickness, this came about because of Kelly Preston's tragic death from breast cancer and Lisa Marie Presley's son's suicide. And people keep asking us, how does this come, you know, what does Scientology have to do with this? And we try to lay out. And a big part of this is this concept that you only become ill and you only start having accidents and become accident prone or depressed or whatever. when you are connected to a source of what's called suppression in Scientology. Right. Or anybody who questions anything.

Correct. And this can be a person or it can be a book. Larry writes going clear book. That could be the source of why you now suddenly became ill, that you read that book. and it is a connection to a source of suppression. And I mean, the title of that book, the prison of beliefs, it really encapsulates everything that you're saying. It's a prison because you can't question anything. No, you cannot. It's a complete close-mindedness.

Absolutely. Questioning in Scientology is anathema to Scientology. Right. There's no such thing. The word of El Ron Hubbard is. is the word of God. It is not to be questioned. It is not to be interpreted. It is not to be taken in and refed out. It is just to be read exactly and applied exactly as it is read. And Scientology is a very, very literal organization or literal study. It is read what he says.

If he says this, he means that. And that's it. And it's really bad form in Scientology to question anything or anybody, and most particularly to question El Ron Hubbard, although nowadays it's pretty close to questioning El Ron Hubbard to question David Moscavich. Yeah. Like he, what he says is the law and that's it. Where's David Muscovich today?

Does he live around here? Or does he live in one of the big buildings? I mean, there's huge amounts of real estate that's owned by Scientology. When he travels around, but when he's in Clearwater, he lives at the Hacienda Gardens. That apartment complex that is out there on Keene, just north of Drew. Okay. And he comes into the big. Superpower building, the big building across from the Fort Harrison.

And he... The bridge that goes over the road. Yes, exactly. And he has a private entrance that goes in, the garage door goes up, and it drives into the basement. And he gets out in the basement, and he goes up to his office that's in one of the corner turrets of that building. Yeah. And that's where he works. That's so, that's so crazy.

He seems like this mysterious character now. Like you never see any... anything about him in public. You never see any sort of interview with him by anybody. He's just in the in the shadows. Well, he doesn't want to be served with a subpoena. He is terrified of being served with a subpoena. Really? Yes. Yes, because he has a lot to answer for that he could not ever answer up about. That's another, uh, brings up another topic is a lot of people question you about David Miscarvage in regards to the fact that you've come out about so much and you were so close to him, how come you haven't been able to give up enough information

to lead to like an arrest of him or to send him to prison? Like people... Well, I would love to know the answer to that too. I have talked to every law enforcement agency that I can possibly think of and given them everything and every document and every, everything that I have and I continue to do so. Like, it's not from from lack of trying, believe me. It is not from lack of trying. And the difficulty always with any sort of prosecution or even a legal case against Scientology is two-fault, three-fault.

One, Scientology will turn it into a nuclear war. And just like, you know, there is a bunch of writings by El Ron Hubbard about making litigation punitive and punishing your opponent through litigation. Making everything difficult, like noticing depositions, appealing every hearing, appealing every order, filing crazy. filing crazy stuff to disqualify the lawyers, to disqualify judges, like anything and everything to make it as expensive and painful as possible for anybody to pursue a legal case against Scientology. It's a scorched earth litigation strategy that has proven very, very effective. Secondly, Scientology has, because,

of what I was saying to you before, this idea that saving Scientology or preserving Scientology is the most important thing for all of mankind, Scientologists will lie. If they believe

that saying something would be harmful to Scientology, they won't say it. Let me give you an example. When we did the the truth rundown series with Joe Childs and Tom Tovin at the St. Pete Times.

Me, Marty Rathbun, Tom DeVoc, Jeff Hawkins, a bunch of people spoke to them and said, look, here are the things that have happened. And, you know, part of this is we have witnessed and experienced ourselves on numerous occasions, David Miscarvich being physically violent with members of the C organization. Those claims were put to Scientology. Like, how do you respond to the fact that this person, this person, this person, this person, this person, they all swear that they have seen this happen? I mean, you even claimed in the HBO documentary that Miscarvage physically

assaulted you numerous on numerous occasions, right? Yeah. And it's, yeah, I've said it over and over. And it absolutely happened. And there's been tons of people that have witnessed it. And I've witnessed it with tons of other people. And he seems like a little guy. How could he, I mean, I don't think he can do the heck. How much damage could he do? Well, did you defend yourself? No, because if you defend yourself, you're attacking him. Okay. Oh, so if you defend yourself, you're attacking Scientology. And trying to attack. David Muscovich, who is Scientology. He is Scientology. Right. But at the time, a bunch of the people, like, because Joe and Tom, you know, they're good reporters. They were, like, very diligent. And they would say, well, tell me who you saw David Muscovich physically assault. And so I would say, well, I saw him assault Mark Yeager and Mark Ingber and Wendell Reynolds and Ray Minoff and Norman Stocky. And I would go through the list. And then, in independently, they would go to Marty Rethman and say,

who did you see David Miskavitch strike? Oh, I saw him strike, Mark Yeager, without me present. And then they would go to Tom DeVacht, and he would say exactly the same thing. So they verified that this, like there's no way that you can have people just randomly coming up with these same stories. Right. So they wrote, as they always did, to Scientology and said,

how do you respond to the fact that we have numerous witnesses that say David Miscavich has struck Mark Yeager, struck Ray Mirov, struck blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Comes back the answer. This is outrageous. These people are all paid liars. They're this, they're that. And here are 50 affidavits signed by those very people all saying they have never been struck by David Miscavitch.

and these things are completely manufactured lies. Just fabricated. Totally fabricated. But in their mind, this is saving and protecting Scientology. And this is a problem when prosecuting Scientology or filing a lawsuit is, and particularly in a criminal case, the standard in a criminal case is guilty. beyond reasonable doubt. If you can create reasonable doubt, you have to be found not guilty.

And reasonable doubt in the mind of a prosecutor, and they're not used to this, five people come in and say, this happened, and then Scientology gets wind of it for whatever reason, and they will have 50 or 100 people give signed under penalty of perjury affidavit saying it never happened. And they go, how do we prosecute a case like this?

And it's sort of the hard thing which for prosecutors to understand to be able to put together a case when they always have to, you know, make decisions. about where are they going to invest their resources? What are they going to put their time and effort into? Are they going to be able to get an actual guilty verdict? And so this is why now after, you know, the exposés in the Tampa Bay Times and going clear and then subsequently in the aftermath, David Miskavitch doesn't appear anywhere anymore. Right.

Because his weakness is that if he has to testify under oath, he may get people to lie with him, but particularly in a civil case, that may not be good enough. And he can't answer up for certain things. And there are things that he doesn't want to have to answer up to. And so he stays out of sight. And, you know, it's some comfort to me that he now has to live the life of a hermit. Right. You know, I may be being harassed and they may say shitty things about me all the time and follow me and do whatever. But I just live my life.

Are you still being harassed to this day? Absolutely. Well, you just said it yourself. Look up my name. Google my name and you'll see a bunch of ads from Scientology about how I'm a wife beater. My daughter is out, has a website and is, and she's a Seorg member, by the way. Yeah, how fucked up is that situation? Your whole family. It's crazy. My, my son, my daughter, my ex-wife, my brother, my sister, all of these people are out there saying, you know,

what a horrible person I am that I'm a, um, a wife. beater, that I shake babies, that I'm a womanizer, that I'm a this, that I'm a that, like, whatever. And again, this is pursuant to the Scientology idea that I'm a bagman for Satan and that destroying me is good for the world. And that Hubbard says that anybody who is a critic of Scientology, and he wrote a thing about this that's on my blog has crimes. They have felonies in the background, and this has been proven over and over. And even if you don't know what the felony is, you can be absolutely safe accusing them of committing felonies because whether you got the right one or not doesn't matter.

So this is how Scientology goes about things. They do disconnect. right? Yeah, that's disconnection. That's like, and that's back to the theory of the bad things happen to you when you're connected to sources of suppression. And sources of suppression is someone like me. So my children, my mother, my brother, my sister, all the rest of my family, because if they want to remain Scientologists, they must disconnect from me. And because my daughter, my daughter, daughter and son are both in the C organization. They must carry out whatever they are told to do in order to try and get me dismissed as an attacker. Have you tried reaching out to them? Yeah, absolutely. I went one time.

My son at one point after I had left the C organization had cancer. and I was unaware of it because nobody communicated to me. And in fact, Joe Childs called me up, the reporter from the St. Pete Times, and said, I just got off the phone with a lawyer for Scientology. And they said, you're such a shitty person that you didn't even try and see your son when he had cancer. He said, he has cancer? He said, yeah, I was afraid of that. You didn't even know.

And I said, no, I had no idea. So I drove to the Fort Harrison. I was living in Palm Harbor. I drove to the Fort Harrison. I went to the front door. I said, I want to see my son. I understand he has cancer. I want to see him.

They called the police and issued a trespass warning on me and sent a P.I. out to spittle, burst down. Get off the property. Get off the property. And I was basically escorted from the premises. And that was the second last time. And the last time I had any interaction with my daughter and ex-wife was when they followed me to a doctor's office that's just off Gulf to Bay, where my wife was seeing the doctor and I was standing in the parking lot waiting for her.

In fact, talking on the phone at the time with a reporter from the BBC. and my brother from Australia, my ex-wife from L.A., my daughter from L.A., four senior officials of Scientology, and two private investigators showed up and started screaming at me. Jesus Christ. It's such a fascinating story because I'm on the phone with the BBC, and I said, John, you'll never guess who just showed up here. Guilla serve, Dave Bloomberg, my daughter, Jenny Linson, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then you hear the screaming start. You fucker, you fucker, you piece of shit, you fucking asshole, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And ultimately, this resulted in, like, I tried to leave. I tried to walk, I'd been walking around talking to him on the phone. I tried to get back to my car, and they sought to prevent me from leaving. and then took the keys out of my car and threw them away. And it was like this whole sort of insane thing that's all recorded on audio. And in the course of that, my ex-wife got a graze on her arm when she was trying to prevent me from closing the car door. And then when they threw away the card keys, I tried to get back out of the car to go to the doctor's office to call the sheriffs. and ultimately the sheriffs came

and when the sheriffs came they did this report and they called the paramedics because of the blood on her arm and the sheriffs came and the conclusion of their report was that it was incidental contact that happened when I was trying to leave that they had followed me there and that I was trying to get away you know it was no incident

and the paramedics report was she had a graze on her arm and she refused further treatment and put the pain at a two on a scale of one to ten. That is the basis now for Scientology claiming that I have beaten up my ex-wife. Right. I remember seeing a video of that, yeah. I caused her permanent physical damage. Now the story is the bones, my daughter could hear the bones breaking in her shoulder,

that she has had to have operations, that she has had permanent neurological damage that she'll never recover from. She can't sleep because she's in such pain. And this is now the campaign of Justice for Mum, which is the website that ostensibly is the website of my daughter. And this is put up by the Office of Special Affairs and is tried to tack on to the Me Too movement. and my daughter got sent out and, you know, got a picture taken with Gretchen Carlson and with Jackie Lacey, the district attorney in Los Angeles, and the mayor of L.A., in all these women's Me Too movement events.

Yeah. With the justice for mom, and that's still going on. That's still, that website still exists. She still does posts on it. And in their video, they even had like an legitimate orthopedic surgeon in California. I don't know that he was a legitimate orthopedic surgeon, but he... I googled him. He had a website.

I don't know if he's legit. Now, are those... He might be a Scientologist. Right. Yeah. I wouldn't doubt it. Is, uh, those reports, the, like the paramedics report and the police report from that incident, is that available publicly?

Yeah. I've got it on my blog. It's on various other blogs. It's been put, like a lot of people have taken this up and gone, wait a minute. What's going on here? deep enough you can find out. Yeah. You don't have to look very far. You can just look on my blog. I think I have a post on this

that's called Mike Rinda Lady Killer or something where I just went through and laid all this out. And in fact, in one of the upcoming episodes of the new podcast with Leah, we talked about this. It hasn't aired yet. And I'll have all the documents because I created a little website to go with the podcast that just has the documents that we talk about on the podcast.

Okay. So they can watch it while you're talking about. That website got hacked before it was even live. Holy shit. These people are relentless. Totally. Totally. Now, did you ever worry, like, fear for your own physical safety?

Or is it just kind of like cyber-stalking, people, you know, following you around? I mean, I know it can get weird, but has it ever come to, like, any sort of physical threat? Well, the physical, the only physical thing was this incident in the doctor's parking lot. Okay. That was, that was physical. But no, this is mind games. Okay. You know, it's the prison of belief and it's the mind fuck of,

I'm going to make you believe that bad things are going to happen to you. and unless you stop. And I'm going to make it uncomfortable and unpleasant and make you worry about your family and et cetera, et cetera. But I have never thought that any physical damage would happen. I mean, a few times some of their PIs have gotten sort of out of control. One of them ran into the back of me one time. they've, you know, done crazy, like driving down Gulf to Bay and literally, no, US 19 and literally trying to keep up with me driving through over the center median on US 19 in order to not get left behind at a light.

And, you know, that sort of stuff. But as for, you know, standing around thugs with baseball bats, no, I don't, I'm never worried about that. Going back, I meant to ask you this earlier, how could you possibly get into a scenario where you're somewhere with David Miscavage, who is like the supreme leader of Scientology, and he is beating you up? How does that situation come about? And what is the point of it? Well, how does that situation come about? It just happens that's sort of on a routine daily basis of anybody that's working around or with him. Like what is he?

Does he punch you in the face? Sometimes slap, kick, comes up behind you and grabs you around the neck and a headlock or wrestles you to the ground. Just random. He's like an angry little man. Right. And, you know, he grew up as a wrestler. That was what he did. and he sort of takes out his aggression and frustrations physically.

I mean, he's also very abusive verbally too. I mean, he's like incredibly verbally abusive as well. But this happens routinely. Anybody that worked with him, and, you know, I don't know that he hasn't stopped doing the physical stuff when it's now that it's become so exposed, uh, at least limited the,

the scope of it to only the very, very inner circle. But for a while, it was, you know, very routine. And in, you get into a frame of mind that is so insane that you believe that, and this is a sort of a fundamental belief of Scientology, that whatever happens to you is your own fault,

that you have done something that has caused that to happen to you. So when David Miskavitch wails on you, your inclination is to go, what have I done that has caused the leader of Scientology to be so upset that he has lost his fucking mind? Yeah. And that is hammered in and ham it in and ham it in. And you start to wonder whether it's you that is the problem.

And honestly, the people that remain there who used to be the senior echelon of Scientology, those people all believe that it's them, that they're nuts, that they're evil and that they have failed to, adequately support David Muscovich in his campaign to save the world. I mean, I know how nuts this sounds Danny, and I know

that a lot of people go, how could you not see this? How could you, and there is a lot of reasons for it. And, you know, I saw it maybe two years before I ultimately left. But the consequences

of leaving are so terrible in your mind that you don't want to take that step. I knew that I would lose the woman I'd been married to for more than 30 years. I would lose my kids. I would lose my mother and brother and sister. I believed at the time that I would lose my spiritual eternity. And that I would walk out into the world, you know, 50 years old with no money, no No college degree, no, I mean, a resume of I was the spokesperson for Scientology isn't much of a resume. And I had nowhere to go.

So that is what kept me there for the last number of years until ultimately I was in England dealing with the BBC and Muscovich started sending things saying, never coming back to the United States, you're a piece of shit, you never blah, blah, blah, blah. And I went personally sent you these things? Yeah. What were they? Like emails, letters? Just, yeah, letters, like a letter. And I then went, well, okay, I don't have much left to lose. And eventually I sort of reached the point of, well, nothing can be worse than this. And I literally walked out of the Scientology building in London into the street with a briefcase, two Blackberry phones, my passport, and 100 pounds. That's it. I didn't have any clothes.

I didn't have anything. I didn't have anywhere to go. I got on the tube and I went to Leicester Square and I sat and then I wandered around in London for a couple of days. and then I eventually called Tom DeVoct, who was one of the other people that is in the Truth Rundown series, and who I had known since he was a child, and he had left the Seag previous to me, and he was in Orlando, and I got a plane and flew to Orlando and stayed with him for a while. And then I went from there, very shortly thereafter, and stayed with running. and Biddy Moscavich.

David Miskavich's older brother who had also left the Seahorg previously. Really? Yes. What was it like hanging out with them and being around them? Well, they were very, very old friends. I mean, they were my closest friends in the Seahog. I had known Biddy since I had arrived,

her name is Elizabeth, since I had arrived on the Apollo. And as I said, Ron Jr., from when he had first arrived in the Seahog and we had been very close. Our kids had grown up together. Jenna Muscovich, who ultimately wrote a book after she left about her. Uncle was really raised with my son, Benjamin, together.

They were like brother and sister. And it was very, very helpful to me because Ronnie and Biddy had left a couple of years before me. And it takes a while to. unravel your thoughts and how you see things and what you think about things and figure out whether you're looking at something because that's what Scientology taught you or you're looking at something because that's what it really is. And it's a real, a real process to come out of that cocoon of that prison of belief. And it was very helpful having them being such close dear friends who had already gone a long way down that path.

And Biddy was the one that said to me when I first arrived there, you've got to, you've got to write immediately and demand that Kathy, my ex-wife, come and see us because she was Kathy's best friend. And so I wrote to the Office of Special Affairs. I knew exactly you were to write to, and I wrote to him, and I said, I want to see Kathy. And she answered back, I got a handwritten note back from her saying, dear Mike, fuck you, I filed the divorce papers.

Wow. So it was great having been. their support and their help and their perspective. Right. And because of who they were, they were sort of in a no-fly zone as far as their officer's special affairs went. They were left pretty much alone. David Miskavich didn't want any of them coming out publicly. They hadn't said anything. They were sort of getting on with their life. And so that was a great, great environment for me. And, you know, I'm eternally thankful to them. Is there any sort of like silver bullet or thought process that you can look

back on that started off your thought process of your kind of like self-reflective thought process that helped you escape that prison of belief. Was there any sort of thing in particular you can look back at that kind of kicked that off? Yeah. The physical violence. I, you know, I would look at that and go, this is not what I got in Scientology for. This is not what I, this is not my perception of what Scientology really is. And though it's rationalized, and explained a way as being, you know, various things, you know, your own fault, or, you know, we shouldn't be causing David Miskavich lose his temper or whatever.

It was just, it was so foreign to what I believed were the fundamental principles of Scientology. And then what really said it off. was when John Sweeney was doing his reporting for Panorama on the BBC, he had spoken to a lot of people and they had told him about Muscovich physically abusing people. And John Sweeney asked me on camera, is this true? And I denied it. And Muscovich was talking to me on the phone every day.

day and telling me, you know, they better not come out with any of this. This is bullshit. This is better not air. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And ultimately, I went, you know, what am I doing? Why am I lying about this? Because John Sweeney is saying to me, I've got credible witnesses who each one of them have said that they have seen David Miskavich physically assaulting you. I'm thinking, why am I lying to protect that? Like I had gone on TV and I had lied about various things, like about OT3 in particular. This is one of these things in Scientology,

the crazy story of Zinu and the intergalactic Confederacy, Confederacy, et cetera, et cetera. And Scientologists believe that that is harmful and can cause great spiritual harm to anybody who has not risen to that level in Scientology. And I firmly believed that at the time. So I was being interviewed by Katie Couric on the Today Show, and she's like, well, tell me about Zinu and, you know, this and then.

I'm like, oh, no such thing. And I knew that that was not the case, but I believed that this was a matter of religious conviction that I shouldn't talk about that because it would be hurting people to do so. It would hurt the public perception. No, it would actually hurt people that you could die. Hubbard says that if you're exposed to those materials

before you are ready for them and have advanced through the Scientology steps proceeding, that it can cause you to actually physically die. That you can, it's a long-winded explanation, but... Your spirit's not ready for that kind of enlightenment. Exactly. And that it will cause you to spin into an uncontrolled, he calls it freewheeling of flu and disease and illness

and death, body death. And I believe that I was, like, at the time, I thought that was a justifiable thing to do, that to not acknowledge that was a good thing. In other words, lying about that was good. I'm getting to this point of, with John Sweeney, and I go, why am I lying about this? This just is like, yes, it's happening.

If it really is happening and this is an actual part of Scientology, like, and, you know, we're a tough outfit and we're getting the job done and whatever, you know, all the other sort of things that go along with it, why not just say that? Why not just admit it? Like, yeah, I'm a tough son of a bitch, but I'm getting my job done. I got IRS exemption. I'm like, so there didn't seem to be a good,

a good, you know, rationalization for that. And that was what really, like, this gnawed at me and gnawed at me and gnawed at me and gnawed at me. And that's why eventually I left in London, you know?

Mm-hmm. That was sort of the, this last couple of weeks of my, 35 year career in the C organization. Yeah. Were very intertwined with John Sweeney, BBC Panorama, and what David Miscavitch was saying to me. Yeah. Obviously, you talked earlier about how you, you kind of feared the backlash from it, and you

understood as being the head of special affairs, what would be the result of you leaving and all of the negative attention and the stalking and the harassment and all that. is that the reason people like Tom Cruise and John Travolta haven't come out and talked about Scientology and exposed it to the level that you have or at all? Because I remember the lady in the documentary who said she was close to Tom, or not Tom, John Travolta. Spanky. Spanky, yeah, she worked with him forever and she was pregnant, right?

Is this the same woman? Yes, absolutely. She was pregnant. They took her baby for her baby. from her when she was born because in the opf having a baby was too much of a burden and it would it would distract you from your your goals in scientology so they took the baby to like a a cadet ward or something i believe it was called exactly and she found her baby there malnourished like her eye couldn't even open her eyes exactly that that fucking was a brutal story so

and then i can't imagine someone like john travolta seeing this happen to a close friend and just completely... Well, John Travolta, I mean, the short answer to that question is, if they're not out and exposing Scientology, it means they're still true believers. And John Travolta, in particular, has always responded to questions about that

or other abuses that people have asked him about, you know, witnessing. and saying, look, I don't know about any of that. I just know Scientology has helped me, so I'm for Scientology. And he's gotten away with that for a long time and, you know, gotten away with it. I mean, that's his prerogative to say that if he wishes, that nobody follows up and goes, yeah, okay, but, you know, isn't that pretty irresponsible of you? Like, don't you think that maybe you should be concerned about what's happened with

these other people who, you know, David Moscavich isn't punching you in the face, John. Right. But what about the other people who he is? They're not like forcing you into bankruptcy, John, but what about the people who are? But, you know, generally the press goes pretty easy on Cruz and Travolta when it comes to Scientology.

Why is that? Well, partly because they're afraid of being accused of being bigots. Because Scientology will turn around and you start having people going, well, you know, a reporter really going after them on that. And Scientology will go after the reporter and start saying, this guy's a bigot. He's, you know, he's doing, you know, would he ask Frank Sinatra about his Catholicism? would he tell, you know, would Richard Gere being, you know, be interrogated about his belief in Buddhism and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And there are all these lines. And so, you know, reporters, for the most part, are also somewhat intimidated by Scientology's reputation.

And, you know, there's a couple of them who have not been, John Sweeney and Brian Seymour in Australia have said, you know, I want to ask, and I will ask Tom Cruise these questions, so they get banned from any interviews. So Tom Cruise goes on a press junket for his next movie, Mission Impossible 27 or whatever it is that's coming. And Brian Seymour and John Sweeney are on the list of reporters who are forbidden to participate in the press junker. because they only want people that will ask them puffballs. So, I don't know, it's, you know, I'd love to have a sit-down with John or Tom. And Leah and I have offered that many, many times. Leah and I have tried to get any Scientologist to talk to us,

either on the aftermath, now on the podcast, anybody, come on. let's, you know, let's have a discussion. Yeah. You can, you can defend whatever it is and put forth your position, but they are definitely afraid to do that. They just won't put themselves in a position where they are having to answer difficult questions. So they don't even have any spokespeople anymore.

Do you think the reason that people like John Travolta and Tom Cruise don't come out or leave Scientology is because they're afraid they have too much dirt on them from the auditing sessions? I don't. I don't think that. Because I know that in the documentary again, I know there's a mention of hidden cameras in some of those because John didn't want cameras in his sessions. So they hated cameras, right? Well, they're hidden in every auditing room. But yeah. Yes, that's true. So you don't think there's an, I mean, could there be enough dirt to where there could be. Certainly there could be. You're asking me, do I think that's the case? I don't think that's the case. I mean, I think, you know, if I was the PR person for Tom Cruise or John Travolta,

I would tell them, look, the best PR you will ever get is to say, I'm no longer a Scientologist. Oh, for sure. And if Scientology then comes out and says, yeah, but your fucking dogs on the side, you just go, oh, that's just Scientology. I mean, it's easy to deal with these days. Like, those guys could just- Which one of them's fucking dogs? Those guys could just dismiss it.

Or, you know, well, John Travolta, you're a homosexual who solicits men to give him blowjobs in bathhouses. Right. And you just go, okay. So what? Yeah. And what if I did? So what? Like, you're not going to come to my movie?

movies, hey, I guarantee you there will be a lot more people that will not come to your movies because you're a Scientologist than people who will not come to your movies because you gave someone a blowjob in a bathhouse. So what do you got to lose? So I don't believe that that is why. I believe they're true believers. And I believe that they are still in that prison, mind prison of belief. Do you think they'll ever come out? God, I hope so. I mean, I hope everybody ultimately will.

Yeah. I hope everybody will ultimately see things more clearly than they can when they're sitting inside the bubble of Scientology. You know, including my own children. But it's hard. It's a hard thing to do. And ultimately, in my experience, what happens is there is some straw that breaks the camel's back. And some, it's not that someone comes along and tells you Scientology's bad or this is bad or that's bad. It's some personal experience that you go through and you go, wait a minute.

You can't convince one person can't convince another person. It has to happen from inside. Exactly. You can then, if they're questioning or they have doubts or they're wondering what's going on, you can then give them information and that often helps. Like that's what happened with Leah. I mean, Leo was like, I don't get with this and this doesn't make sense and blah, blah, blah. Now you're saying this stuff about these people that I know, me being one of them.

And she called me. Before she left Scientology, she called me and she said, I want to know what's true. Right. What was the straw that broke the camels back for her? The incident at the wedding of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, where she asked where's Shelly. Shelly is David Mascavich's wife who's been disappeared for more than a decade and nobody

has heard from her or seen her. Really? And she was at the wedding asking a bunch of people, hey, where she, I guess she was at the table. She was at the table and asked asked actually Tommy Davis who was the at that time he had taken over from me

as the international spokesperson of Scientology and he was like the the handler for Tom Cruz and she asked Tommy Davis and that's when he famously said you don't have the fucking rank to ask and that then resulted in her being

ordered to come to Clearwater and scrubbed toilets and undergo... That's what she was doing. Yeah. Undergo expensive sect checking, which is interrogation on the Scientology E-meter that she paid $300,000 for. And then she never got answers.

And nobody would ever answer her. And that just sort of... That's not a good thing to do with Leah. Jesus, dude. That is insane. When she gets onto something, she just does not stop. And so she ultimately just said, you know what? Fuck you people.

I'm out of here. I'm not dealing with this anymore. You won't tell me the truth. I'm not going to participate. And then... This is after she gave $300,000? Yep. She got that back.

Oh, really? Yep. How would you? Unusually. No. She went. David Miskavitch tried to handle her and part of his handling was saying, yeah, that was a little mistake.

That shouldn't have been done. The people that did that were all bad and his, you know, I'm going to give you your money back. Wow. That seems unlikely. It's very unlikely. It's very unusual. And it's only that sort of treatment is reserved for celebrities in Scientology. Scientology celebrities get very different treatments.

treatment than the run-of-the-mill suckers. Scientology, the celebrities get a discount, right? No. Sometimes they get shit for free, but they don't get a discount. They're expected to pay. I mean, paying is... How much did you pay? Nothing.

I was a Seahorg member, so I get everything. Oh, so Seahorg members don't pay, but people who participate in Scientology that aren't employees do pay. Customers. Yeah, the regular customers do pay. And, you know, it's a strongly held religious belief that you must pay for anything that you get in order to be in exchange. And that if you're not in exchange, you know, no benefit will accrue to you from that which you get for free. Okay. So.

So where do you think Susan is, Ms.cavage's wife? Shelly. Oh, Shelly. Her name was Shelly. Yeah. Michelle. Michelle, and that's Leah was questioning where she was. Yeah. Where do I think is where she might be? Yeah. She's at a property that is one of these secret church's spiritual technology locations that is up in the San Bernardino Mountains in Southern California. In fact, one of the episodes

of the aftermath, I went up there and this PI jumped out of the woods and started like filming me and going, what are you doing here? She's being held prisoner up there? Well, Prisoner of belief. Prisoner of belief. It's the same thing. You know, yes, there's bobwire fences and cameras and lights and motion sensors, et cetera, et cetera, around that property just like there is at gold. And that is a way of deterring people from trying to jump the fence or escape.

But that's not what really keeps. I mean, if you want to get out, you can't. And plenty of people have proven that. I mean, Valerie Haney escaped in the trunk of a car from gold, from that property. Because she wanted to. Who is Valerie? She appeared on the aftermath and she was one of David Miskavitch's assistants. Okay.

Or Shelly Mischavich's personal assistant, actually. Wow. And so Shelley is. there because she believes that she is somehow in the wrong or was in the wrong, or perhaps she believes that she is waiting for Elrond Hubbard to return still, and that when he comes back, then everything will be sorted out because she was with Elron Hubbard long before David Muscovich ever showed up. Was she? She was, when I arrived, on the Apollo,

Shelly was there and she was like 12 or 13, I guess and she and her sister, Clarice, worked directly for Elron Hubbard. They were his messengers.

They ran around the ship taking Hubbard would say, go tell the engineer to you know, turn the heat on the fans. And they'd run down

and tell the engineer. And so she was a long-term, very loyal Hubbard acolyte. Okay. And I assume remains that way to this day. Just like Hubbard's daughter, I mean, Hubbard's eldest daughter is still there. Diana, like all the rest of his kids, they're not in Scientology at all. They're all gone. What do you mean they're gone?

Well, they left. Are they still, they're still alive? Well, two of them are. Okay. No, three of them. But two of them were in the C-organization. You know, one of them was a very good friend of mine, Suzette, his second daughter, she was like the maid of honor at my wedding to Kathy. And she left the C.org, oh, I don't know, long 10 or 15 years ago, I guess.

and the youngest son Arthur left the Seorg a long time ago, and the eldest son of Hubbard and Mary Sue Quentin committed suicide because he was gay and being gay in Scientology is a big no-no. And Diana is still there and is, I guess, hoping that Hubbard will come back. God, I would freaking die to have a conversation with one of his kids. Oh, yeah. That would be great.

Holy shit. To hear some of the stories growing up, having him as a dad? Yeah. God damn. So what is, like the grip here in Clearwater, especially downtown Clearwater with Scientology,

seems to be relentless. And it seems like Clearwater cannot escape this tight grip of Scientology. dead for so long. I know Scientology owns a lot of the real estate around there, but what is the deal with, and there's people walking up and down the street 24-7 who, I don't know what they're doing

and where they're going, but what is the deal with Scientology and downtown Clearwater staying the way it is? Well, that Clearwater is what Scientology calls its spiritual headquarters. Clearwater

is the the top of the Scientology spiritual organizational hierarchy it is not the international management

of Scientology around the world that happens in Los Angeles or in California Clearwater is the spiritual headquarters but what that means is it's where all the money

is made they make you know upwards of of two to three to four million dollars a week there. And it, because people come from all over the world, Scientologists come from all over the world. From auditing?

Yep. Okay. And ultimately, you have to come to Clearwater. If you're a Scientologist and you want to go to the top of the Scientology bridge. Okay. You have to come to Clearwater. Okay. And all of the whales of Scientology, that's their organization, the people that have unlimited funds, the Bob Duggins of the world who have, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars.

This is where they gravitate to. So real quick, I wouldn't interject. Sorry to interrupt. But there's this guy I wanted to mention from, I think South Florida. He's a real estate online, real estate guru. and he posted a video on his Instagram. His name's Grant Cardone. He's a complete lunatic.

Is he? He's a con man. Grant Cardone is a used car salesman. And in fact, when I was selling used cars, there were two guys that have videos and seminars for car salesmen. One of them is Grant Cardone. He is like the, he's like whatever. Grant Codone. Sales courses, right?

Yes. Yeah. and and investing other people's money in reits real estate and a bunch of people can invest in to commercial real estate and get the benefits of it yeah and anyway uh yeah people like him he this is clear water is where he comes and where he gives his money to and this is a massive uh source of revenue for it's the biggest source of revenue for scientology in the the world like this and everything else in Scientology doesn't add up to the revenue that is stream of Clearwater.

He posted this continuous Instagram story throughout like a 24 hour period of him flying on his jet to Clearwater, taking a limo from Clearwater to some pet house in Clearwater like in downtown Clearwater. And then he filmed going through that building on Fort Harrison. and it looks like like fucking Taj Mahal. It's like gold-plated everything. It's just so over the top. I never would expect it that the inside of that building

would have looked like that. Well, that's what happens when you've got unlimited money. I mean, Scientology has so much money they don't know what to spend it on, literally. And it's actually a problem for Scientology. Because they have exempt status, they are supposed to not accumulate too much

available cash. The theory of exemption is you're not going to pay taxes because you're providing a benefit to the public that the government would otherwise have to provide. That's the fundamental theory of tax exemption. That's why religious and educational organizations, etc., are tax exempt, because they are doing something that is for the public benefit and the public good. So do they have to spend this money on the money? certain things? They are supposed to. They're supposed to, but they're not technically regulated.

No, they're not regulated at all, but they're worried about being regulated. And that's why you see Scientology spends so much money on real estate. The only thing that Scientology spends its money on is real estate, because they can argue that this is necessary for the propagation of the religion. Even though the buildings are empty, you know, they've got this place over in Tampa that's empty. They've got one in Orlando that's empty. They've got one in Miami that's empty. Huge buildings that they spend tens, tens of millions of dollars to put together because

they have to spend their money on something. And so you see the inside of that building in Clearwater? It's because of that. They've got unlimited money. They've got $3 billion in cash and they have to figure out how to spend it. So it gets spent on real estate. And, you know, the issue with Clearwater is that because there is so much already invested in Clearwater by Scientology, and because it is the revenue stream that keeps the whole operation flush, it's going to be protected at all costs. and part of protecting it is to build a perimeter around it that is not occupied by Wags

and Wags is the derogatory Scientology term for non-Scientologists. They would like nothing more than all of Clearwater downtown to be Scientology surrounded by a moat of nothing. So there's no one that can be looking in on their buildings. There's no one that's pestering them. There's no one that's seeing Elisa McPherson, you know, freaking out in the window. There's no oversight,

no intrusion of the outside world into the world of Scientology. And that's why you see downtown Clearwater basically owned now by Scientology. And I don't know how Clearwater is ever going to deal with it. The only way that it could possibly happen would be for Scientology to lose its tax-exempt status. And then it wouldn't matter to downtown Clearwater. See, Scientology loves to claim, we're the largest taxpayers in downtown Clearwater.

Yeah, that's true. You pay like two minutes. million dollars in taxes a year. And if you were not exempt, you'd be paying $100 million in taxes a year. They pay taxes on hotels, like spaces that they use for hotels, not the religious buildings, but the hotels. So only the religious buildings are tax exempt. Yeah, but they claim most of them are religious buildings. Okay. So that's what I mean. It's like, you know, maybe one, they pay one tenth of what they would otherwise have to pay.

you know so but for some for one reason or another because of their size it still ends up being more than anybody else in clear water yeah i mean there isn't anything else in downtown clear water really other than government buildings there's a Starbucks down there yeah well that was brought there by me that's about it was it really me and tom de vaqt because david moscavich that's a long story oh god i walk into that Starbucks you know what happens if i walk into that Starbucks, Danny? What? All the customers leave.

Why? Because all the customers in there, virtually all them are Scientologists. Really? Yes. If I walk down the street in Clearwater, they're empty. What?

They all know who you are. If I go to Nature's Food Patch. Yeah. I love Nature's Food Patch. That's full of Scientologists. Really? Full of them. Even that work there or just the employees?

Mostly customers. Mostly customers. Yeah. Lots of Scientologist. wild, dude. Oh, my God. Can we do that? Danny, you know,

can we film you on the street? I went to the movie theater, the, the 21 theaters on Tampa Road and Kulhu, whatever that is out there. The Cobb one? No. Anyway, I went to the movie theater. I walked in there with my wife, and actually it was to see Paul Haggis' movie the three days or whatever it was. I walked in there and in the front row were six Seorg members. I walked in, I sat down, they got up and left.

They walked out of the movie because they didn't want to be in the same theater as me. That is so bizarre, man. That is so fucking bizarre. I have great power. You do have great power. You're a wizard. I have the power of the SP. The SP.

Oh, man. So where do you see this going in the future? I know we've got to wrap up soon. Where do you see the future of Scientology going in 20, 30, 40 years when David's miscavage is eventually he dies and moves on. Someone else is going to take over. What's the future of Scientology? Dim. It's going to continue to decline and erode with that much money and that much money and that much

property, it takes a long time for something like that to go away entirely. I don't think that the subject will ever totally go away because there'll always be books and people that are like, yeah, well, you know, well, we find this helpful and this and that. Yeah. But I think that within the next few years, there will be a revisiting of their tax exempt status. And when that happens, that will effectively be the end because the organization can't survive with any scrutiny of where it's spending its money. If Scientologists understood and knew how much of the money they give to Scientology get spent to pay high-priced lawyers, private investigators, smear sites on the Internet, and all the other shit that goes on, there was a lot of them that would just go,

I can't participate in that. When it's happening in the sort of abstract, they don't really know and they don't really have to look and nobody ever really tells them what's really going on, then they remain willfully ignorant. Right. But as soon as the IRS required Scientology to provide tax returns, and they would have to report on where they're spending their money and what they spend their money on, oh, all hell would break loose. Because they tell people that, you know, you have to give us money for Hurricane Blabler, or the tornadoes that just landed in Kansas City.

And they tell people all over the world that you have to give us money for this because we're going to go help. And they may collect $10 million. dollars and they will fly a film crew and 10 people there and put them in yellow shirts have them do a little work do a video of it and then send it out and say look here's the great work that all of our people did now you need to give us more money so that we can do more work if people actually saw how little of the money they have given to scientology got spent on the things that Scientology claims it is spent on, they would stop giving money altogether.

Wow. There's got to be a way that someone out there is soon going to be able to prove all this with like hard evidence. You would think it's going to happen sooner or later. Yeah. I can't believe it hasn't happened already. I keep saying, look, if you want to do it,

the smart way is how the FBI did it in 1977. Because Scientology keeps incredible rapid. They keep records of everything. And you want to prove the case. Go get the records. Yeah. Wow. Well, that was invigorating two hours.

Thank you so much for doing that. Tell the people listening and watching where they can watch and listen to your new podcast and look at your website. Oh, well, the, Danny, the podcast is called Scientology Fair Game. It's on IHart Podcasts, but it's available on Spotify and Apple. I mean, you can find it anywhere. Okay. My blog is called Mike Rinder's blog.org. And then I created a website called Fairgamepodcast.com, which contains documents and links to each episode of the Fairgame podcast.

Okay. So when they're listening to the audio version, they can go on the website and look at all the documents. that you're referencing. Correct. Awesome. Cool. Mike Rinder, thank you so much for your time. I hope to have you on again in the future.

You're very welcome.