Julian Dorey Podcast - [VIDEO] - Scientology's Sinister Underground Prison & Tom Cruise's Replacement EXPOSED | Tony Ortega • 210

Episode Date: June 4, 2024

(***TIMESTAMPS in description below) ~Anthony "Tony" Ortega is an American journalist and editor who is best known for his coverage of the Church of Scientology and his blog The Underground Bunker. He was executive editor of Raw Story from 2013 until 2015. - BUY Guest’s Books & Films IN MY AMAZON STORE: https://amzn.to/3RPu952 EPISODE LINKS: - Julian Dorey PODCAST MERCH: https://juliandorey.myshopify.com/ - Support our Show on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/JulianDorey - Join our DISCORD: https://discord.gg/Ajqn5sN6 - BBC Mike Rinder vs John Sweeney Video: https://vimeo.com/70762158 TONY ORTEGA’’S LINKS: - TONY’S SUBSTACK: https://tonyortega.substack.com/ - TONY’S TWITTER: https://twitter.com/TonyOrtega94 JULIAN YT CHANNELS: - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Clips YT: https://www.youtube.com/@juliandoreyclips - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Daily YT: https://www.youtube.com/@JulianDoreyDaily - SUBSCRIBE to Best of JDP: https://www.youtube.com/@bestofJDP ***TIMESTAMPS*** 00:00 - Danny Masterson, Studying Scientology over 29 Years 😳 12:20 - Disaster of Danny Masterson Court Case, Accused Victims Testimonies 💸 19:03 - 2022 Trial Reflections, Danny Masterson Prison Sentence Suprise, Danny’s Role in Scientology, L Ron Hubbard’s Vision 🤯 28:03 - Scientology Audit Sessions, David Miscavige True Height, Removing Invisible Thetans, Highest Level OT8 👽 38:37 - E Meter & Graduating Levels, David Miscavige’s Family & Paranoia, L Ron Hubbard’s Successor 🤣 46:27 - Ron Miscavige & Wife Escape, The Hole 🕳️ 55:15 - Headley Families Wild Escape, Brainwashing Power, Enemy of Church Ploy, David Lubow PI 🥸 01:06:23 - L. Ron Hubbar’s Famous Health Claims, 4 Big Scientology Events, Tom Cruise Left Scientology Rumor ❗️ 01:12:11 - Tom Cruise’s Successor, Elizabeth Mosses Father’s Death 🕴️ 01:20:56 - Media Representation on Scientology, Beating IRS, Courts, and Government 😵 01:30:40 - Mike Rinder’s Story, FBI’s Cancelled Sting Operation 🫢 01:45:40 - John Sweeney BBC Altercation w/ Mike Rinder, Leah Remini Leaving Scientology 🥷 01:54:25 - Scientologist Belief in “Clearing” Planet, L. Ron Hubbard’s Supposed “Breakthrough” 🌎 02:04:35 - Shelly Miscavige Disappearance, Underground Scientology Vault, David Miscavige’s Mistress 🔥 2:21:14 - David Miscavige’s ONLY Interview (Ted Koppel) 🎙️ 02:31:37 - Lisa Marie Presley Scientologist Tying Michale Jackson, Ron Miscavige’s Tragic Fallout w/ Son 😱 02:44:01 - Scientologist Private Investigators Caught, Ron’s Life Post Scientology 😤 02:52:11 - Mike Rinder’s Kids & Previous Family Attacks Him, 2015 Going Clear Documentary 😵 03:03:37 - Scientology in Culture Today, Becoming Emotionless (1st Thing in Scientology), Future of Scientology 🤮 03:12:19 - Find Tony 👇 CREDITS: - Hosted & Produced by Julian D. Dorey - Intro & Episode Edited by Alessi Allaman: https://www.instagram.com/alessiallaman/ ~ Get $150 Off The Eight Sleep Pod Pro Mattress / Mattress Cover (USI... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Scientology has four big days on its calendar. New Year's Eve, they have a big party. March 13th is the birthday of L. Ron Hubbard. They do something on their cruise ship in the summer. And then in the fall, they have a big event at this UK headquarters in East Grinston, England. But the pandemic put all that, you know, everything got stopped for a couple years. And so just this last fall, David Miscavige decided to finally restore those events to their original locations. And he began with this England St. Hill event, which is the Scientology membership organization. And up to that point, there have been some, you know, the tabs that all decided, based on some flimsy evidence, that Tom Cruise had left Scientology.

That was all the talk last summer. So at this November 3rd gathering, return of David Miscavige to St. Hill. Tom Cruise flew in on his helicopter. Made a big, big showing. Very clear statement. Tom Cruise is still as dedicated as ever. And I really think that is the case. Then in March, they were returning their birthday event to its original venue, the Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater, Florida. They put out a press release about it.

I'm always curious to see which celebrities are showing up because they just don't have some of the big names they used to have. So which younger celebrities are stepping up for David Miscavige? I got into their press release. It turns out they themselves posted some really interesting pictures showing that in the front row of the March 16th L. Ron Hubbard birthday event at Ruth Eckert Hall in the very center of the front row standing and giving David Miscavige for John Travolta and... What's up guys? If you're not subscribed, please subscribe. Also, please smash that like button on the video and enjoy the show. Tony, thanks so much for being here, man. Your reporting on Scientology is 30 years long and it's pretty incredible. Almost, almost 29 years,

Julian. Don't give me too much credit. How did you originally even get interested in this story? You were, you were a journalist covering other things is my understanding and then something came up. You know, I'm from Los Angeles. I think if you grew up in LA, you, you end up hearing about Scientology one way or the other. So I was aware of it. And I had actually moved to Phoenix of all places and was starting to do some work for a weekly newspaper there and was just looking for fun stories. I mean, one of the things that was our mandate was to find stories that the daily newspaper had either missed or done badly. And one day I was looking through the Arizona Republic and I noticed this letter to the editor from somebody

who was saying, yeah, you covered my lawsuit, but you completely missed the whole point. It was the Church of Scientology that recruited the plaintiff against me. And I thought, that sounds juicy. So I contacted this guy. His name was Rick Ross. Today he's a very well-known... I know you're thinking of the rapper.

But no, this was a very famous – Tupac. This is a very famous cult deprogrammer named Rick Ross. And I got to write the first real full profile of him. Cult deprogrammer? Yeah. So what he was doing, people were hiring him to get their kids out of Scientology and more Bible-based cults. Yeah.

And I thought that was fascinating. And so I interviewed him and did, it was my first cover story for that publication. In fact, it got me my permanent job with the Phoenix New Times back in 1995. And Scientology was part of it. I was fascinated. It was really interesting to see how much it was trying to harass him and destroy him. I got to see that close up. So that just made me interested in other stories about Scientology. So over the years, although I covered a lot of other things, I would come back to Scientology stories every once in a while. And the company moved me around.

And by 2007, they had given me the job of editor-in-chief of the Village Voice here in New York. Wow. And so I was not doing Scientology then for a little while. I had my hands full. What we were trying to do at that time was take a legendary paper that had a good website and get everyone to think, no, we're a digital news enterprise that happens to put out a weekly paper.

It was a different mentality. And so what I do as a manager is I try to set an example. I wanted to find something that I could put on the website every day. And at first what I was doing was going through Village Voice archives. At that point in 2007, 2008, most of the original Village Voice stories going back to the 50s and the 60s were not online. And so I was just digging through them. I was having so much fun. I found the first time they ever mentioned this young musician named Bobby Dylan. The first time they ever wrote a story about this young comic named Walter, aka Woody Allen. So I thought they were great, right?

And I'm putting them online for the first time. But the problem was people weren't reading it. They didn't care, right? And then every once in a while, I'd put a story about Scientology on there because I still had my old sources and everything. And it just went crazy. So I could see the writing on the wall. I said, look, if I'm going to put something on the website of the Village Voice every day, it's going to be about Scientology. And in April 2011, I started doing that every day, putting some – It won't take long to tell you Neutral's ingredients. Vodka. S soda, natural flavors.

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that over-deliver. Something about Scientology, and I was fortunate that I had sources all over the world that would send me stuff. And I've been doing it ever since then, Julian. I've been writing about Scientology. I'm the only journalist in the world that covers Scientology as a daily beat. And that's what I've been doing since 2011. I left The Village Voice in 2012 and wrote a book and started my own website. And so now I'm on Substack, TonyOrtaga.Substack.com.

Link in description. And that's where every day, 7 a.m. Eastern, I've got something new about Scientology, great audience, great community of people who comment. And over the years, I've gotten to break some big stories. Every day at 7 a.m., you don't run out of things to write about with Scientology. Well, look, some days are more important than others. It's true. Some days there's a big breaking story. Other days it's, you know, we're having some fun with archives or, you know, interviewing people. But it's been, you know, it kind of comes in waves when it's really big stories. But for example, I, you know, 2017, I got to break the

story that Danny Masterson was being investigated by the LAPD. Yeah. I really want to litigate this case today and go through this because I was watching this like in the background for a while. It got like retried and stuff. And I was in court for both trials every day. I was just 15 feet away from Bijou and the rest of the family. Yeah. And I got to see him led away in handcuffs when he was convicted after the second trial. How did you break the story? What happened there?

I found out that multiple women had complained about him. But what really made it a fascinating story was that the LAPD was having problems with the investigation. So if you look at the very first story I wrote in March 2017, it's all there. I've got copies of the police reports. I've got excerpts from a letter one of the Jane Does had written, the chief of police complaining. What year? This was March 2017. Yeah, but what year had she written approximately?

Oh, the letter was only maybe a couple weeks old that I excerpted. Oh, wow. Yeah. So right then. I mean it was a crisis moment. They had come to – these incidents happened way back in 2002 and 2003. But they had reopened this whole thing when the women went to them in 2016. And by early 2017, I was hearing about this and that they were really panicked because the LAPD was doing some very strange things with this investigation, things that came out later in a trial, some really strange missteps that the LAPD was doing.

And these women thought, you know, Scientology is messing this all up or the LAPD is. Cut them in the pocket. And so that's what my initial story was, is that, you know, is the LAPD, you know, messing up this investigation? So that was a big story because then the LAPD did admit that they were looking into Danny Madison. All the press covered it. But then I covered it, you know, that story virtually every day from 2017 until he was convicted last May. So it's been a big part of my life. And what I always tell people is the real story is what these women have been through. They have been through so much harassment and so much, you know, again, the LAPD was

messing it up at some points. I know it looked like the prosecutors were kind of holding back, you know. The prosecutors were holding back? Well, you know, it took so long. That story came out in March 2017. The prosecutors did not charge Danny Madison until June 2020. So for three years, these women were waiting for some kind of a case to emerge. Do you think some of that had to do with – I'm just playing a little devil's advocate here. It had to do with the fact that the cases were like 14, 15 years old when they were first reported? Look, it's always going to be a tough case.

When time has passed, when you've got a celebrity involved, all these things made it a difficult case. That's right. But you put the Scientology element in it, and that's what really makes it difficult. Why for this? Well, these prosecutors knew that it was going to be, you know, what they wanted to convince the jury of was that the reason these women had not come forward earlier was they were worried about retaliation from Scientology. So you have to explain to the jury why that is, the fact that Danny's a protected celebrity. And that's why I was there, Julian, honestly, is that I wanted to see how much Scientology was a part of this case. And it was a very big part of it.

Like as in obvious to the idea even that you see dudes sitting in the courtroom who are maybe hired thugs of Scientology? Not just people in the gallery. The attorneys on Danny's side were doing bizarre things that only made sense if they were taking directions directly from David Miscavige, the leader of Scientology. Okay. So before there was a trial, there was something called a preliminary hearing. In a preliminary hearing, you have the – just the victims testify. You don't have all the

witnesses testify, but you just have the women. This is the first time they testified on the witness stand. And they're Jane Doe's, right? The three Jane Doe's. And this first time they got to testify was in this preliminary hearing. At that point, Danny Madison's attorney was Tom Mesereau. If you remember Tom Mesereau. Yes, yes. Who defended Michael Jackson. Big time guy. Yeah, and he's the one with the famous hairdo. Great hair.

Yes. He does have great hair. And I was sitting just right behind him in the courtroom. This was like kind of during the pandemic so that like there weren't very many seats. You had to sit far apart. I was sitting right behind him. And they had questioned, I can't remember, Jane Doe 3 was on the stand. And the attorney for Scientology leaned over the, you know how there's a little barrier there between the gallery seats and where the attorneys sit?

Yeah. Right. She leans over it. And she's saying to him, it's not in there. It's not in there. And see, I'm not trying to hear them, but I can't help it. They're like three feet from me. What she's pointing at is this Scientology book. So then Mesereau gets up and he goes up to Jane Doe and he says, you know, you keep saying that you weren't allowed to report Danny Mastin and that's why it took you so long.

And you keep saying that it's in Scientology's rules that you can't go to the police. I have the ethics book here. I'm going to ask you to look through a chapter, and you tell me if you can find anything in there about not going to the police. Was this like something written by like L. Ron Hubbard? Yes. Oh my God. This is in the preliminary hearing. Okay. So we take a break. We come back. And he says, okay, so did you look through the book? Yes, I did. Did you find anything in that chapter about not, you know, that you can't go to the police? And she says, no, I couldn't.

Thank you, Your Honor. Right? Like the big Perry Mason moment. He's strutting off. Got him. And it's very clear to me that he did that because David Miscavige had told the attorney to tell him to do that. Okay. So then the prosecutor comes up.

It's his turn. He says, Mr. Mesereau, can I borrow that book, please? And so he takes the book and he shows her a different chapter. And it's right there in black and white. Scientologists cannot report to civil authorities. Isn't that what that says there? Yes, it is. They think they wouldn't find that?

Right. And so this is the best moment. He walks over. Again, I'm sitting right there. He's like two, three feet from me. The prosecutor walks over, hands the book to Mesro and says, thank you. That was very helpful. That's incredible.

And that was the moment I wrote about this. This was 2021. I was like, I just witnessed David Miscavige and Scientology completely screw up Danny Masterson's defense live in front of me. That's how involved Scientology was in this. There was a huge blunder and it kept costing them because anytime after that, when Mesereau or his successor, this guy, Philip Cohen, would argue to the judge to keep stuff out of Scientology out, she would always remind them, you know, you guys brought Scientology into this case to begin with. That blunder cost them over and over and over again. And that was, the one you're mentioning is from 2021. So that's

the first trial, right? That was the preliminary hearing. Oh, that's right. So that was the women, the three women testified and the judge then decided there is enough evidence to have a trial. That's the point of the preliminary hearing. Now... These women ended up testifying three separate the point of the preliminary hearing. Now, these women ended up testifying three separate times in the preliminary hearing, the trial that had a hung jury, and then the trial that convicted him. So that's amazing that they did this and put themselves through that ordeal. They went through so much torture. That's what I want people to understand, how much an ordeal these women went through over so many years. I'm always careful about this because I don't

have the articles in front of me. I don't want to mess anything up because obviously you saw them and were part of this case. But without revealing who they might have been or something like that, was there a similar story with all of them as far as their background and how they came into contact with Danny and how he behaved around them to get to that point where he committed this act? All three of them were Scientologists at the time of the attacks. Oh, boy. Jane Doe 3 had been his girlfriend and they'd been living together.

Jane Doe 1 was just part of their social group and saw him at parties. And Jane Doe, too, was a Scientologist actress that had gotten to know Danny and he asked her over to his house one time. But also, two other women testified. The actress Trisha Vesey,

a well-known actress of independent film, she testified that she was attacked by Masterson way back in 96. Oh, so she testified on the record? She testified in the first trial. And a woman named Kathleen Jenkins testified in the second trial that she was attacked in Toronto at a party when he was there. There's also another woman who is part of the civil suit, Babette Riales, who alleges that she was attacked by Danny, but she was not part of the criminal trial. So that's six, but there have been references to other victims in the court papers. Right. So the three Jane Does are the ones that were the actual charges. They were the charge. But these other people provided corroborating.

Exactly. Got it. Whoa. confusing. But you could not in California and most other places bring a charge of forcible rape against a person 20 years after the incident. But in California, there's this law where you can bring multiple charges. It's called the one strike law. And under that, if he gets two or more convictions, they carry potential life sentences. And that's why the prosecutor was very clear about this in the preliminary hearings and stuff. He was saying when there's a potential life sentence involved, there's no statute of limitations. Scientology – well, I shouldn't say Scientology.

His defense attorneys fought this over and over and over again. But they kept losing because under that law. So we knew going in – when we finally found out that they had a verdict, I remember we were standing in the hallway. I was like three feet from Danny. And they all seemed buoyant. They thought it was going to be a hung jury. I thought it was going to be a hung jury too. In 2023.

May 2023, the second trial. You know, we heard there was a verdict. And we were all standing in the hallway after lunch break. It was just really crowded. I'm right there by Danny, by Bijou, by Danny's mom, his brothers, right there. Did you ever talk with them? The brothers a little bit, but I didn't – I was conscious of not wanting to get kicked out of there. I knew if I said anything to them, they would probably ask the judge to kick me out because they really didn't like me.

So I would get some funny looks from Bijou, but I never really spoke to him. They didn't like you? They didn't really spoke to him. No way. Yeah. So we went in there, and I think most of us knew that if he gets two convictions, he's going to prison. One conviction is not enough because under the law they were, you see, under the law they were- It's after the fact too.

It's the law, under the law they were charging him with, it was the word multiple. Now, three would mean even more time, but you need two. And so the clerk read out the first guilty and then read out, as soon as the clerk read out the second guilty, we heard this otherworldly wail. I can't do it. It's just like this horrendous sound because Bijou knew when it was two, he's going to prison. And right after the second one was announced, she just wailed. And the judge said, listen, you're going to have to compose yourself or you're going to have to leave.

And she was crying. She was being more quiet at that point. But see, she knew. We all knew. You needed two. And they had the two. So in the second trial, he was convicted on two. Hung on the third.

It was close on the third. Was that the girlfriend? Yeah. I mean, it's always tougher with that one. Yeah, exactly. And look, she did great on the stand. Was that the girlfriend? Yeah. I mean, it's always tougher with that one. Yeah, exactly. And look, she did great on the stand, both trials. So you really can't blame her. It's just – and we don't know what the jury –

Yeah, yeah. I don't blame – it's a tough thing to convince a jury of 12. I was living with a guy and like – that's difficult. But why do you think they were in the 2021 trial? What do you mean? 2022, the one before it. Why do you think they came back hung on all three? You know, I think that the prosecution could have done a better job.

Philip Cohen, the defense attorney, did a really good job in that first trial, confusing things and raising some issues. And so the second time around, they were ready for it a little bit better. And I think one big decision they made that paid off huge was that the prosecutors were two deputy district attorneys named Reinhold Mueller and Ariel Anson. And Mueller handled virtually everything

in the first trial. When they came back for the second trial, Ariel Anson was much more involved in the opening statements, in the interviews of the witnesses. But then the closing arguments, she was incredible. She was just absolutely amazing. What did she say? The first thing she said was, it all started with a drink. And as soon as she said that, like she was telling us a story, she had everybody in the room in the palm of her hand.

Guys, if you're still watching this video and you haven't yet hit that subscribe button, please take two seconds and go hit it right now. Thank you. And what both she and Reinhold Mueller did so much better in the closing of that second trial was they told a better story. And they said, look, think about it. In all three, he was accused that these women had something to drink. They felt unusually intoxicated. And then he was taking advantage of them. And it was very violent. And the point they were making the second time was he had to think this out ahead of time. He had to get them the drink. He had to make sure they were in a certain place where it could happen. There was planning involved. What was the story? And it may get a

little graphic, so trigger warning to people listening to this, but what was, it sounds like he would do some form of slight, I say slight because maybe it wasn't GHB, but some form of like getting them tipsy, so date rape kind of thing. Well, both Jane Doe 1 and 2 testified that they had one drink and were like just so intoxicated afterwards, so unusually intoxicated. And the prosecutors, they just flat out said it, that he drugged them. He drugged them and then raped them. And so Jane Doe 1, it involved a jacuzzi and then taking her up to a bathroom and putting her in a shower. And then Jane Doe 2, it involved inviting her over and giving her a big glass of wine. And that also involved a jacuzzi.

And it was – they just both testified at how violent it was. And they were like sort of in and out of consciousness and saying, no, stop, stop. And he was just like not – it was just very violent. It was graphic and they – and I can tell you, I heard their testimony three separate times, preliminary hearing and two trials. These women were absolutely consistent. I would say that they learned from being cross-examined by Tom Mesereau and then Philip Cohen twice how to answer them a little better and anticipate what was going to be asked of him a little better, but the story wasn't changing. They were absolutely consistent. They did a great job. And you're sitting in there because Danny was on bail, so he comes in there

on his own recognizance and everything. It's got to be so strange, especially after maybe you've heard all this twice and you're at the third trial. He's still on bail, like walking in there every day with a coffee with his wife. It's like this dude, unless we are really missing something here, is a serial rapist and he's walking in the same door I am. You know, it was funny because it was up on the ninth floor, which is the most secure floor in that building at the criminal courts building in LA. And you have to go through security to get in the building. And then you have to go through a separate security just to get on that floor. And most days, not every day, but most days, the first three people on that floor were me and Danny and Bijou.

And I would sit on one side of the hallway and they would sit on the other side of the hallway. And it was just – yeah, he would always be there with a big giant Starbucks iced coffee and mom would show up and then his attorneys would show up. And it was a little surreal, I will tell you that. Yeah, and they know you're the guy who like broke this and kind of started the whole thing, which is very cool, by the way, that you were able to do that. But, you know, for people out there, obviously we've been talking about Danny Masterson now for the last 10, 15 minutes. And a lot of people know he's this really well-recognized actor.

He was in that 70s show. That was kind of the original thing to put him all the way on the map. But do we know his backstory of when he joined Scientology or any of the thought process as to why and what types of roles he had in the organization? Well, he was brought up in it. You know, his mom and his dad and then his stepdad were all in it. Are they still in it? Oh, yeah. Well, his mother still his dad and then his stepdad were all in it are they still in it oh yeah well well his mother his mother still is definitely his stepdad is not joe reish is a great guy and he's been one of my best sources about you know danny's early life and

what they've been through um but yeah he was very much brought up in it and his mom was his manager and he was doing commercials when he was very, very young. And they were kind of part of – there was a particular larger clan of the Mastersons that Rabisi's, you know, Jason Lee. Like Giovanni Rabisi? Giovanni Rabisi. Giovanni grew up in it and his sister grew up in it. Another amazing actor. Really?

And, yeah, they were all kind of part of this young Hollywood thing. And I remember when Going Clear came out, I was fortunate enough to be part of that HBO film that Alex Gibney made, Lawrence Wright. Great documentary. And we went to Sundance for the opening of that in Utah. And I remember, um, Danny had gone to, to that Sundance to give like an interview trashing, you know, uh, what we were doing. Danny was one of the, the, the celebrities that was willing to give interviews and, and bad mouth the critics of Scientology. Very few would do that, but he grew up in it. He was kind of a fiery defender of scientology

he really believed in it well you know uh based on what came out in court he knew he'd been protected by scientology for a long time with and gotten away with a lot of things that's the that's the thing i think you know we're going to talk today about different ways people get brainwashed over time you've obviously covered this for a long time from the outside to try to evaluate it from like a psychological standpoint but when it comes to the really powerful ones that they put on a pedestal in there someone like a Danny Masterson best example obviously being a Tom Cruise it does feel to me looking at it that the air of invincibility that they feel meaning the actors that the famous people on with the organization operating on their behalf seems to completely blind them to the methods with which that invincibility is born right i look people me, what's the appeal? Why do – and also I want to always point out they have a few celebrities.

It drives me crazy whenever I see a reporter say, Hollywood's got so many Scientology celebrities. No, they don't have so many. It's a few, right? And they've lost some. They've lost some, right? But what's the appeal? I mean what is Scientology? Scientology is this thing that this science fiction writer named L. Ron Hubbard came up with in the 50s. And he had this idea that there's this whole galactic drama going on that you're a part of that you've forgotten you were ever part of.

Right. And if you can just remember who you were 100,000, million, billion, trillion years ago, you will remember how you have taken part in this galactic-wide narrative for years and years. Now pay $35 to take this test. Thank you. Now pay $800 or $900 an hour to go through that counseling. And it takes years. I mean, it takes a million dollars, $2 million to get up to that level where the top celebrities are.

But that's the idea is that you, you know, and it's very attractive to some people who are unhappy with their life or they're frustrated with things to be told, no, no, no, this person you are now is just a manifestation of this much more important thing, you know, Satan it's called. You're actually trillions of years old. You've been through incredible adventures. You just don't remember them. We're going to help you remember them. I mean, I laugh, but like they get some people.

They get some people who, objectively speaking, sometimes have a pretty good brain on them too. But what I'm getting to is that, okay, so like I talked to a guy once who went through that. He was saying, well, listen, Tony, so I remember one session. I remember that I was running, literally running a planet. I was running a prison planet somewhere. A prison planet. And I was killing people by the tens of thousands. And then the session was over and I'm back to being Joe Blow me, you know, nobody.

And he said, I was walking on air. I was like, I'm really somebody hugely important in the galaxy, just that nobody around me knows it. That's where that arrogance comes from. What do you mean he was, he was, he was running a prison, like he was like hallucinating? This is, this is what auditing is. They want you to remember these things that happened to you before. So he thought he was remembering that he had run this prison planter.

Yeah. And he thought that was a good thing. And they convinced themselves that, well, look, you're a big important person, right? I mean, Adolf Hitler was a big important person, but I wouldn't be bragging about that. You know what I mean? Like, that sounds like something he would do. I know. I know.

I know. It's crazy. But no, they convinced themselves that what they're remembering – I'm sorry. You're good. I called you by a different name. You need to go back and please change. You did? Yeah. I missed it, so we're good. I called you by a different name. You need to go back and please change. You did? Yeah.

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Sorry about that. I get Jordan. Like, I get something across the board. So it's all good. Sorry about that. You're fine. Anyway. No, what I'm trying to explain is I think maybe this is where that arrogance comes from that you're talking about. Is that they are pumped up with the idea that they're incredibly important people and that other people don't get it. But that, you know, they really start to look down at the rest of us that don't understand what's really going on. Yes.

And there's a superiority about Scientologists. Well, Miscavige still looks up, but... Just saying. Yeah, you want to get into that? I can get into that. What do you mean? Well, people often point out that he's not a tall man. And I decided to find out.

This is my job. I'm a reporter. How tall is David Miscavige? Oh, no. So, I found his former personal tailor. A man in Italy who had literally made his clothes for like 15 years. How did you find that guy?

I actually visited him in Italy. Oh my God. Yeah, on a vacation. And I asked him, I said, listen, if there's anybody in the world who knows how actually tall David Miscavige is, it's you. How tall is he? And he told me 155 max. Now that's metric. Centimeters?

It's centimeters. I had to convert it. It's five foot one. Is that with heels on too? One. Is that with like nice leather shoes on? I know if you Google it, Google says he's five foot three. I don't know where google gets their data

i got it from the man himself okay the man who made the guy's clothes he is a 155 even in italy that's short my god whoa so i mean i always i joke about that but that does seem but it's i mean the reason why it's important is simply that this guy has – wields ultimate total control over Scientology. He has since 1986, 87. You know, hey, you got to give the guy credit that he's able to run something like that and he's not a tall man, whatever. But he – David Miscavige has now run the Scientology movement longer than L. Ron Hubbard did.

That's wild. Who founded it? That's wild. But he's also, you know, he holds on to power through paranoia and domination. And, you know, they're a mafia-like clan, but your friend Mark Bunker was in here and did an amazing job laying out some of the things they do. There was a really tragic death at the Fort Harrison Hotel back in 1995. Lisa McPherson was a woman who was a devout Scientologist for many, many years. She was having a mental breakdown, and she got involved in a little fender bender accident right outside the Fort Harrison Hotel. and when the paramedics

arrived on the scene she had taken off all of her clothes and was walking down the street naked and this female paramedic comes up and says why are you doing this and she said i need somebody to pay attention to me i need help right with the backing of you know being their own kind of mafia but some of the business maneuvers even if they kind of cheat to do it, it's pretty smart. I mean, he buys up real estate. He, he obviously has a very big, he has built a very big balance sheet for a fake religion that doesn't have, you know, more than maybe 40, 50,000 people in it. You know, there's something about that. I don't want to like give him a compliment, but it's like impressive I guess that he's been able to, as you said, hold on to it this long and grow it as he has when the ideology behind it is so blatantly, absurdly hilarious.

That's why they can never talk about it. I mean I would have more respect for them if they did. I mean if they really opened up and said, whoa, Scientology? We're helping you recover million-year-old memories of how you're part of the galaxy's history. If they said that, I'd have more respect for them. But of course they can't because then nobody would join. Right. So they have to sell it as what we call a mystery sandwich.

It's like if you watch their Super Bowl ads, it's like reach your potential. That sounds good. I'd like to reach my potential. I like potential. Right. So they make it seem like it's more of like a self-help organization. Yes. And they don't tell you that you're going to be spending years, spending hundreds of dollars an hour removing invisible alien entities from your body. Because see, you're Thetan.

You're Thetan and you're 76 trillion years old. However, along the way, other thetans have attached themselves to you. You just can't see them. Other thetans. Yeah, they're called body thetans. And so, you go through this progression called the total freedom and you go through the grades and you go clear and then you go into the OT levels, they're called operating Thetan levels. Once you get past OT3, from OT3 to OT7, this will take you years and years. Through those levels, you're simply trying to find, locate, and remove body Thetans, these invisible beings.

They're just making it up as they go. Well, they don't think they're making it up. They're trying to locate them with that e-meter and they think they found them and then they tell them to go away. I mean... Be gone! They just left. I know you think this is funny,

but this is what they spend so much money on. Show me on the barrel where the Phaeton touched you. Exactly. So who's the highest level ot level you've ever spoken with who left well uh i've talked to i've spoken to ot8s absolutely ot8s the highest and i've spoken to several and um they um helped me plot out what all those levels are. And we've published them. I've published the OT8 level.

What do they have to say about being in that long and putting that much into it and then realizing it's all a lie? You know, they're hurt. They just, you know, it can be embarrassing to come forward and say that they have wasted so much money. Maybe their family's been ripped apart. Yeah. And it can be very difficult.

That's why I think there's a small independent movement of former Scientologists, former church members who still hold on to, quote, the technology and still want to believe that that stuff is true. But most people move out of it entirely and realize, oh, no, the whole thing was just a figment of L. Ron Hubbard's imagination. But, yeah, I've spoken to people who were OT8, and it's hard for them to talk about what they went through. Because the cruel – OT3 to OT7 are different ways of removing body Thetans. So I love OT4. I just think it's so great. You're literally dealing with the drug problems of your body things. Oh, they're drug addicts too.

But they've been using like space coke from 20 million years ago that's better than anything you can get on earth. How do we get that? Exactly. Let's get it right here. I mean, it's crazy. It's crazy stuff. And so 3, 4, 5, 6, OT7, finally OT7, which can take years and years and years. You finally removed the last of your body things.

And you can only do those top couple, like OT6 and 7, at the flag land base in Clearwater, Florida. That's why they make so much money there. All these Scientologists from around the world go there. That's the only place they can get that. Then when you're finally ready for OT8, the only place you can get OT8 is on the cruise ship in the Caribbean, the freelance. Oh, yeah. That is the only place you can do OT8. And what's so cruel about OT8 is that you've been spending all this time, all these years, removing body thetans and trying to understand who you were millions and billions of years ago. And an OT8, they tell you, okay, all those memories you thought you recovered,

they were their memories of the body Thetans. All those memories are who you are not. And now that you know who you are not, now you can begin from the beginning and learn who you are. It's the biggest, like, prank L. Ron Hubbard ever played. And you can only get there after a million or two million. So this is why people don't like to talk about it is because they've been pranked so badly. It's very – yeah, you're right. Just from a pride standpoint, it's so hard to admit that.

But I can't even imagine because you're pointing out like it's so many years and years in between ot levels like if you're talking to an ot8 you're talking to someone who's been in there for at least two decades yeah i mean i've talked to i've talked to somebody that it took them 20 years to do ot7 ot7 is legendary as the toughest. What do they have to do specifically? It's so bad, Julian. It's so bad. Tell me how bad it is, Tony. It's solo auditing. You're at home auditing yourself,

trying to find your body thetans on your own. Are you using like a laser pointer? Like, how's this going on? No, the e-meter. You're using the e-meter with yourself. Oh, they send you one at home. You have it at home. You're using it on yourself.

You're trying to find these body things and get rid of them. Is this like Ben Stiller in Dodgeball where he has the electrical sockets on his nipples? Well, let me tell you. Come on, E-meter. Let's go. Listen, let me tell you that John Brousseau told me. John Brousseau was David Miscavige's brother-in-law and worked very close with Tom Cruise. John Brousseau said the closest anybody has ever come

to doing an impression of David Miscavige is accurate. It was the Ben Stiller character in Dodgeball. That is not a compliment in any way. You made me bleed my own blood. I didn't know that.

If you want to know what David Miscavige is like, watch Dodgeball and watch Ben Stiller's character. Oh my god. If anyone ever said that about me, I would hide off myself. There's no coming back from that. And that's coming from his former brother-in-law. Yeah. Now he

also had a big falling out with his father, who I think just passed away a couple years ago. Right. It was Ron Miscavige, right? Right. So Ron Miscavige Sr. had four children, Ron Miscavige Jr., twins, David and Denise Miscavige, and then another daughter, Lori. Okay. So David Miscavige is the leader of Scientology and Ron became a Sea Org member on the base.

He was a trumpet player and ran the band. Did he originally get his son into it? Yes. So in 1979, I think. Let's see. Let's see. Let's see. Dave was 16. 76.

So when Dave, no, no, even earlier than that. Anyway, when Dave was in school, he had asthma problems. And Ron thought maybe Dianetics could help. And that's why he got them into it initially. And they ended up going to England and they were learning to become auditors. And Dave was like this – the phenom, right? He was like the 14-year-old hot shit auditor that was going to be like the next big thing. He eventually ended up in 1978 in the California desert where Ron Hubbard was making movies.

And David had become what's called a messenger, which is one of these young aides to Hubbard. And there's photos where Ron is directing a scene and little David Miscavige is running a camera. He became like the second or third cameraman under Ron. And that proximity to him is how he curried favor and was eventually in the 80s when Ron was in hiding and nobody knew who he was, Ron Miscavige, I'm sorry, yes, Ron Hubbard had an aide named Pat Broker with him. When he was in hiding.

When he was in hiding. David Miscavige was at the base with everybody. Broker and David Miscavige would meet to pass messages between each other in order to keep Hubbard still running Scientology. So because Pat Broker and David Miscavige were the bottleneck and nobody knew where Hubbard was, that's why they amassed power. Everyone had to go through those two guys. So when Ron Hubbard died, the big question then was which of those two guys is going to take over, Pat Broker or David Miscavige? And supposedly Hubbard favored Pat Broker, but Dave muscled him out of the way. How did he do that?

I mean, he's not very big. I mean, people have talked about how he, yeah, people had talked about how, you know, once you can get the power in there and you can make people get punishments, he just one after another deposed people that, you know that were in a position of power until he was the last one. So now he's in charge of the – he's got the attorneys on his side. He's got all the materials. What became of that other guy?

That was a great question. Pat Broker. So Pat and Annie Broker were actually with L. Ron Hubbard in his last years in hiding. Sorry to hear that. And as Ron was deteriorating and kind of going, you know, losing his mind. Could you imagine that guy losing his mind? Like he just spent a lifetime losing his mind,

losing it as he's dying. Oh my God. Yeah, it was, I think it was rough. And so I don't think, I just don't think Pat Broker had the kind of ruthless mentality you would need to take over at that point. And Dave pushed him out of the way. But then Dave was very concerned about him.

So he hired two former cops to follow Pat Broker for the next 22 years. He paid them about half a million dollars a year. And wherever Pat Broker went, these two guys went. And I interviewed them because they eventually were kicked out and sued Scientology. And they talked to us reporters for like a day. I got to talk to them for half a day. And then the Tampa Bay Times guys got to talk to them for half a day. And they were saying that, yes, we're all used to the idea that Scientology will do what's called a noisy investigation on people.

They want you to know you're being followed. They want to freak you out. They want your family members to know that they're being watched. They were on a different kind of thing. Their mandate was you're going to follow Pat Broker 24 hours a day forever, but he can't know it. So, for example, this was like in the late 80s. They rented the house next to Broker's without him knowing it. But one of them had enlisted his dad to befriend Pat Broker and they would meet in a bar, get to know him.

And had the dad give Pat Broker for one Christmas in the late 80s a cordless phone. And back then, the very first cordless phone- The Gordon Gekko thing? The signal between the handheld and the base unit was a radio signal. And so they had rented the house next door so they could intercept the signal and they could listen in to all of Pat Broker's calls. That's nuts. For years, Pat Broker was followed by these two cops and never's calls. That's nuts. For years, Pat Broker was followed by these two cops and never knew it.

Never knew it. And eventually he went to the Czech Republic for a while. They followed him there. They followed him there, came back to the United States. And what became clear over time was Pat Broker had no interest in taking over Scientology or having anything to do with Scientology anymore. He was like a college English teacher somewhere. So he had officially left the church? He had nothing to do with it anymore.

But Miscavige is so paranoid that he would come back and try to make some sort of return that he has him watch it 24 hours a day. He has a very – he has the type of paranoia you hear about when you read the history books about the biggest despots. And we can all name them. He's an absolute ruler. He's an absolute ruler. He runs the entire organization. Nothing happens without his say so. And then so you would ask about his father. So his father, his father rama

scavenge was on the base with him and eventually he just couldn't take it anymore he just was sick and tired of it and he was married uh to a younger woman and they decided to make an escape an escape yeah to escape the base in in southern california and one of my favorite details i talked i talked about this it was it's just crazy. They didn't just want to leave everything. They wanted some of their possessions. And so they came up with this idea that they were going to mail birthday presents to, I think, her mom. And, oh, she's going to be 75. We're going to send her 75 gifts. It's a fun thing to do. And they were actually mailing out their own possessions

to her so they would have some things. What is the base? I'm sorry. Including... I'll get to that. Including L. Ron Hubbard books. Oh, because they wanted to smuggle it out. So, in other words, Ron Miscavige wanted to escape from the base and get out from under his son's, you know, rulership.

But he was still a Scientologist. He still believed in Elrond. Oh, no. You see what I'm saying? Okay, I did not think that. So they were smuggling out Elrond Hubbard books because they couldn't imagine living without them. They wanted to escape the base.

Anyway, it's just so sad. What is the base like? Okay, so you know about the Big Blue, former hospital in downtown Los Angeles. That's called PAC Base, Pacific Area Command. 90 miles east of that in San Jacinto, California, they had taken over this resort called Gilman Hot Springs in 1979, I think. With the idea that it would be where Hubbard could live in some seclusion. But then he took off and never ended up living there. So that became their international management base.

It's got like 400 or 500 acres. It's got all these buildings to it. That's where the Headleys were for many, many years. Mike Rinder spent a lot of time out there. And eventually – We'll come back to the Headleys. In 2004, Miscavige was so paranoid about his own people, he created a prison for them called the Hole. The Hole started at the Int Base or Gold Base in January 2004. There's still some version

of it today. I mean, there's still top executives that have been basically disappeared that will never leave that base, that David for some reason decided that they were a liability. But, you know, Mike Rinder spent a couple years in the hole there. I had asked Mark about this, and it was hard for even him to answer. He's been covering this forever because it's so strange. But how do they have a private prison and that itself is not grounds for the feds to come in and say this is false imprisonment, completely illegal. And what Mark was saying is that, well, people can technically leave if they want to. And I'm like, can they though? No, it's the problem is the risk for law enforcement is that there's no question,

especially in that period. And the FBI did consider it. There was an investigation. This is what Lawrence writes, one of the things he revealed when he came out with a story about Paul Haggis in The New Yorker in 2011. Another great director. He revealed that there was an FBI investigation. In fact, in October 2010, the FBI was getting very close to raiding that base to the point where Mark Headley told me that they had asked him – they figured Miscavige would run for Burbank to where Tom Cruise has his planes. And so they literally recorded the tail numbers on Tom Cruise's planes so they would have that. I talked to another ex-Scientologist, Matt Pesch,

who told me that they had asked him, will you come in the vans with us when we drive on so that there's somebody with us that knows where everything is? And Matt said, I'm ready to go. That's how close they were to raiding that base in October 2010. They did not do so. Here's the risk, Julian. The risk is they go on there, they open the door.

There's all these people in there that have been prisoners for years. Come on out, you're free. The risk is they say, oh no, we're not prisoners. We're fine where we are. And then you're screwed if you're law enforcement. You are screwed. And so that's why they ultimately have a hard time doing it, is that as Mike Render will tell you, the bars were inside the head. It wasn't the locked door

that was keeping them in. And it was locked. Yeah. Oh, no. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. They have no freedom. They had no freedom, the people that were in the hole. I think they have a little more freedom today. I think that that whole base has been de-emphasized because it became so close to being raided. Miscavige moved the studios out to a new studio in LA on Sunset Boulevard. He's moved much more stuff to Florida now. That base is much less important today than it used to be. And I think it's because he knew he was vulnerable there to an FBI raid. What made that guy, you mentioned Matt Pesch, who was the Scientologist who told you about them checking the planes and knowing what was going on. What eventually made him leave Scientology? Well, Mark Headley was the one who told me about the plane numbers. Matt Pesch was the one who

told me that they had asked him if he would go on the van with them if they raided the base. And he said, yes. Matt is married to Amy Scobie, and she's also a fascinating figure that they met in Scientology. Amy was at the very top. She wrote a book called At the Top or something. Great story about what she saw in Scientology. All these people have incredible stories where they were in the Sea Organization. They were treated so badly over so many years that something finally woke them up. Each one of them has a different story about what it was where they finally like, what am I, why am I wasting my life here? And then they have to get out and getting out is not easy.

And every single one from Mike Rinder to, to Matt Pash, to Amy Scobie, to Mark Headley, to Claire Headley, they all have a fascinating story of what finally woke them up. And then how did they, how do you get out when Scientology – they literally have something they call the blow drill. Mark's great at telling this story where if somebody left the base, they had this protocol that they would follow to get that person back. And they could –

They'd blow them? No, that's – Sorry. I know. I know. And that's the play on words. I know. I know. And that's the play on words. I know. No, they've blown the base.

And now they go into the blow drill to find that person, track them down, bring them back. I talked to one guy. He had escaped five separate times. And each time they would find him, they'd come back and they'd intimidate the hell out of him and say, you can't leave this way. You need to come back and route out properly, it's called. Route out. Route out. And they would talk him into it.

And he'd come back and then he'd be like, what am I doing? Finally, the fifth time, he's like, no. And he realized there was nothing they could do. It's just, like I said, the mental influence is so strong for these people. But is it also because like these people trying to leave they've been inside so i would imagine many of them have seen fellow scientologists when they tried or did leave and the pressure that was put on them vis-a-vis things like you know being watched on their street private investigators who are armed up and what like are they worried about that more than like

oh these guys are going to shoot me right here right they don't you know scientology doesn't kill people out right they they ruin lives they ruin lives i mean uh l ron hubbard jr once said of his dad that my dad isn't going to kill you what he wants is to see you out of a job out of your house in a gutter crying somewhere that you need that's what he wants he wants to see you what he wants is to see you out of a job out of your house in a gutter crying somewhere that you need that's what he wants he wants to see you in that pitiful state and that that was he said that in the 70s and that's still with the program Scientology follows today they would like to destroy people yeah they don't just shoot people god that's God, that's – like there's – there are the sick people in this world who don't get off on feeling good. They get off on inflicting pain.

And that's exactly to a T who L. Ron Hubbard obviously was. Well, especially David Miscavige. I mean that's – the people who know him know that he really – the first thing he wants to know when he gets up in the morning is, okay, who blew? Who's gone today? And now we got to go get them. That's the first thing he wanted to know every morning is who's left. Yeah.

What a sick guy. Yeah. Now, what's the story with the Headleys? We've mentioned them a couple times. I mean, they're wonderful people. They both got in very young. They both grew up in it. They ended up at Int Base.

At where? Gold Base, Int Base, this base I've been talking about. Oh, right, right, where the hole is. Where the hole is. Yeah. They were there and they met. They got married very young. But in the Sea Org, you're not supposed to have kids.

And no, you cannot have children. They don't want them reproducing little baby Scientologists? No, I know. They recruit the new ones from the publics, they're called, the people that are not working for the church. Really? But the people who are working in the Sea Org cannot have children. That's strange.

And they both had interesting positions. They were both in positions of real authority. And eventually they, you know, they too saw the abuses and they wandered out. And they have a wonderful story about how Mark was the first to leave and he knew he couldn't tell her about it because they're so good at interrogating people. And he knew that the best thing he could do for her is that she was just going to have to escape on her own. I mean, it's an incredible love story because she then had to escape and hope that he still wanted to be with her. And so he escaped first, then she escaped. They each had ways of getting out that were – How did he escape?

He grabbed a motorcycle, I think, and just drove and got pulled over. She had to use the ploy of needing to go to a dentist or a doctor and then ran away when she was at the appointment. I mean, they each had to come up with these different ways of getting out. Mark has written a wonderful book called Blown for Good. And I remember I got to write about it when I was at the Village Voice. But it's a great – and he's such a good storyteller. Wonderful book about their escape. And they're still doing incredible things today. They were on Leah's show and they do amazing work today. They've got this thing called the Aftermath Foundation where they help people leave Scientology.

It's like the underground railroad. Sort of like the underground railroad. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So people can like, I'm just guessing how this goes. People can like reach out to them anonymously and say, I want to leave. What do we do? And they like say, here's where you're going to get shelter and shit like that.

No, that's exactly how it works. Wow. Yeah. And they have helped people and people come forward and, cause it's all confidential, but some people have come forward and says, I want people to know that the Aftermath Foundation helped me. And yeah, they do great work there. And it's not easy. That's – so you think about these things.

And it's not just Scientology. It's one example of it obviously, but crime often has such a psychological component to it that it happens right in front of our faces when we walk on the street and the people who are in the middle of it can't just walk up and say, hey, this is a crime. Can you please help me? You know, there's this thing. We hear about it with they've been so psychologically damaged. Like what some of the people you've obviously mentioned some throughout the day today and told some stories, but some of the ex Scientologists who maybe are sources for you now or that you've had to talk with, like, how long does it take? Like, were they aware of that once they decided to leave or, like, it started to fill in for them later how psychologically damaged?

The mental conditioning is so deep and so damaging. It's incredibly difficult to leave. First of all, it's very difficult for them to understand what's happening to them and to understand they're being victimized. But once they finally start to realize that, then it's incredibly difficult just to get out. They know that Scientology will retaliate by having their family members cut off from them and friends and they'll lose their job. But then even if they're able to get through all of that and get out, the mental thing is still there. I mean, people have told me that it will take 10 or 12 years before they finally can get rid of that Scientology way of thinking about other people. 10, 12 years.

Yeah. Yeah. It's so hard. And that's why somebody like Chris Shelton is kind of amazing because most of these people will just go away for years and then they start to come back and they're curious about how things are going and then eventually they become activists. Chris Shelton left Scientology and like a month later he's on YouTube talking about it. I've always been amazed at how well. Who's he? He's a YouTuber. He's a really good YouTuber about talking about Scientology.

He was a Sea Org member. He and I do a little thing every week where we go over the Scientology news together. Great guy. And I was just always amazed at how quickly he went from a Sea Org member to somebody exposing Scientology. But most people have to go through a much longer period. Why do you think his was so fast? You know, I don't know. I don't know. I give him a lot of credit that he was able to do that. He's been out now. He's been

speaking out now for 10 years. And I'm still amazed that, like, for example, now another new person who's come out recently is named Alex Barnes-Ross. He's in England, and he's really waking people up to Scientology's problems in England. Hey, guys, if you have a second, please be sure to share this episode around on social media and with your friends, whether it's Reddit, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, doesn't matter. It's all a huge help.

It gets new eyeballs on the show and it allows us to grow and survive. So thank you to all of you who have already been doing that and thank you to all of you who are going to do so now. But he had to go away for like 10 years before he could start talking about for like 10 years before he, you know,

before he could start talking about it. Do you have any, I want to bookmark England for one second. I just want to make sure I ask this. When some of these people come out, obviously, you've been reporting on this for 29 years, so you're an enemy of the church, I would imagine. Have you had guys give you intel on things Scientology may be plotting against you to make your life uncomfortable? Yeah, no. They try to make things tough on me, and they've run various operations against me. Probably the most elaborate is that I'm married to somebody who has a great job, and they have tried to run multiple operations against her to get her bosses freaked out to get her fired. Whoa.

And in one of those operations, they actually hired an out-of-work New York Daily News reporter to pretend he was working on her and that she was involved in some scandal or something. And, you know, fortunately, the people my wife works for are very intelligent people and they could see that it was kind of a scam and they didn't fall for it. But, I mean, you know, I've had people very, you know, close to me, people I care about, tell me that they'd been harassed by a Scientology PI on other continents. I mean, they have spent so much money. They never just call me up and say, we don't like that story. We want a correction or here we have a statement. I'd love to put their statements in my stories, Julian.

Do you call them and ask for statements? I ask for statements. I send them requests for statements. That's journalistic integrity. Exactly. And they never get back to me. Instead, they go and harass my mom. They've sent a private investigator twice to intimidate my mother in California.

How so, if you don't mind saying? Well, I mean, knocking on the door and kind of getting her all flustered and trying to ask her questions about me. And it's just disgusting. And these private investigators, correct me if I'm wrong, usually they're not members of Scientology themselves. That one is. That one is. That one. He's kind of notorious.

I think he's finally done now. But yeah. Oh, even he left. No, I think what happened was he got exposed. Mike Rinder and I wrote some stories about him. And David Miscavige doesn't like it when a private investigator like that gets so exposed. And I think he stops using him as much. And so the guy left the church?

I think he's still in the church. I haven't heard much about him in the last couple of years, though, Julian. I'll admit I don't know exactly what he's up to. But this guy, the guy I'm talking about is named Dave LeBeau. And for years he was – first there was a guy named Eugene Ingram. He was notorious but uh then then uh dave laboe became kind of the chief dirty tricks uh pi for scientology and they used him against me they used him against a bunch of different people and um uh that's not him how do you spell his name David Lebow, L-E-B-O-W. L-E-B-O-W.

Let's see a picture of him. There's Paul Hannes. I wrote about him a number of times. Is that him? Yeah, that's him. Yeah. He would get in Mike Rinder's face. He got in my mother's face. What a scumbag.

But like I said, we wrote about him a number of different times and I think Dave Miscavige decided to use other people. They've run numerous operations against me and they've tried to Oh, there he is with Mike. Yep, there we go. Mike was really used to him.

They've tried a lot of different things against me. And the things they do, most of what they do is just online smearing. They mischaracterize the things I've done in the past and just smear me all day and night on Twitter and stuff. It's just, you know, I just ignore it. Are you ever, do you ever sleep with one eye open a little afraid? No. I mean, the best thing to do, they want you to be afraid. The whole point of what Dave LeBeau was doing, what Eugene Ingram was doing, what some other people they've got now, they want you to be afraid.

They want you to feel like, oh, they're, you know, what are they going to do to my family? And then they want you to be so afraid you stop. But if you just think, they're not really, there's only so much they can do. But believe me, the reason why they do it is it works. There are many people that are not talking today because they've gotten that intimidation from Scientology and they've've decided it's not worth it, and they stopped talking. No question. But I won't shut up, so too stupid to stop, I guess. Well, I'm glad you're not, because it does take brave reporting. I said the same thing to Mark Bunker, to be able to get these stories, and maybe if there's ways to reach them, because they live among us, also continue to reach people who are inside the church and come across this stuff and, I don't know, get woken up from it. But, I mean, the scope of Scientology, despite maybe the lack of numbers,

is always so shocking to me. Obviously, they have the home base in Clearwater. You mentioned they're doing more and more in Florida now, but they've been all over and at least continue to be in some ways in California. But they're also global. Like, we keep mentioning England, and this is not something I got into with Mark at all in episode 203, but like, what's Scientology set up in, is it in London? Or like, what's the story over there?

When L. Ron Hubbard started things, he wrote Dianetics when he was living in New Jersey, actually. All right. Can we run that back? I like this state. Okay. Yeah, I did know. He wrote it in like Edison or something.

He was in Elizabeth. That's dangerously close. Yeah. I don't know where the house was exactly. Anyway. Let's not find out. The first foundation was in Elizabeth. But L.A. became a very important central – L.A. became basically the world headquarters for a long time.

But yeah, he spread it. But then, see, that was in the early 50s, 54, 55. But then what happened was – and then he created a church in D.C. called – they called the Founding Church, but it really wasn't the first. But it was an important one in D.C. as well. But what – the problem he ran into in those early years was he was making a lot of health claims. If you did Dianetics, you did Scientology, it would heal anything, including cancer. That got him in trouble with the government. And so, I mean, like I always, like I like to say, back then, if you made those kind of claims, you got in trouble with the FDA.

Today, if you make those claims, they give you a TV series. It's very true. I know it's true. But back then- I lived it. It got you in trouble. And so, that's why he went to England in 1959 was that he was uncomfortable with how the American government was getting up in his business. So he went to England in 1959.

He bought this estate in Sussex called St. Hill. And he had gotten it from some Maharaja of India that had owned it or something. I don't know the exact name. I never know the stuff on the top of my head. I always have to look it up. St. Hill. But it's an estate called St. Hill in Sussex, and that became the English headquarters for Scientology. Now, there are facilities in London.

There's what they call an ideal org in London. There's what they call an Ideal Org in London. But to this day, the most important location, probably in all of Europe, is in St. Hill in Sussex. There also is a European headquarters in Copenhagen. And those are probably the two most important locations in Europe.

But yeah, to this day... Where's that on a map, Alessi, if you don't mind? I think it's southeast of London. If you get a map out of where – Hit the map. It's east Grinstead. Back out, you'll see – Let's zoom out where we are.

Yeah. All the way. Yeah, south of London, not southeast. South of London, right. An hour, hour and a half south. Yeah, yeah. And to this day, very important site for them. And so I was telling you before the show started, Scientology has four big days on its calendar.

New Year's Eve, they have a big party. March 13th is the birthday of L. Ron Hubbard. They do something on their cruise ship in the summer. And then in the fall, they have a big event at this, you know, UK headquarters in East Grinstead, England. This podcast was born on L. Ron Hubbard's birthday? Wow, really? God damn it.

All right. So four big days we got. And then, but the pandemic put all that, you know, everything got stopped for a couple of years. And so just this last fall, David Miscavige decided to finally restore those events to their original locations. And he began with this England, the St. Hill event. It's called IAS for the International Association of Scientologists, which is the Scientology membership organization. And it's really their slush fund.

It's their defense fund. You pay a lot of money in Scientology for services, that auditing we talked about with finding the invisible body Thetans. But they also just want you to give straight donations. Just give money so that Dave can do things like build Ideal Orgs, fight lawsuits, that kind of thing. That's called the IAS. And so they have their big annual gathering at St. Hill.

This year, it's usually in October. This year they held it the first weekend of November. And up to that point, there have been some, you know, the tabs that all decided based on some flimsy evidence that Tom Cruise had left Scientology. That was all the talk last summer. The tabloids? Yeah, all the press, the tabloid press were all claiming that based on some very flimsy evidence that Tom Cruise had left Scientology.

So I think Scientology IIS to St. Hill, the return of David Miscavige to St. Hill, Tom Cruise flew in on his helicopter, made a big, big showing. And then the second night, which is called the Patron's Ball when they celebrate the big donors, not only was Tom there in black tie, but he was glad-handing all the folks that were at the party. They were all shaking his hand, taking selfies with him, and then they posted the selfies to social media, which normally Scientology's not cool with. I think Scientology allowed it this time because they wanted to counter those tabloid rumors. And so it was a big thing for them. They had returned their event to its home in England. Tom Cruise had shown up and then pictures of Tom Cruise with the Scientologists were out on social media.

Very clear statement. Tom Cruise is still as dedicated as ever. And I really think that is the case. Then in December, late December, they filmed their New Year's Eve party that they then let everybody see on New Year's Eve at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. They had a big showing there. And then in March, they were returning their birthday event to its original venue, the Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater, Florida. They put out a press release about it. I'm always curious to see which celebrities are showing up because, you know, they've lost some, Julian.

They've lost Kirstie Alley. They lost Kelly Preston. She died, yeah. Kelly Preston, Kirstie Alley, Chick Corea, all three died of cancer. Laura Prepon announced in People Magazine that she had left. Beck Hansen told an Australian newspaper that he had left. Danny Masterson's in prison. And Leah Remini left.

Lisa Marie Presley had left, and then she had died. They just don't have some of the big names they used to have. So which younger celebrities are stepping up for David Miscavige? Well, the big ones are Cruise and Travolta, right? Right. The big ones are Cruise and Travolta, right the big ones are Cruz and Travolta and Cruz definitely showed up to that um St. Hill celebration right so I was curious to see who's showing up at the L. Ron Hubbard birthday and I got into their press release and um it turns out they posted

they themselves posted some really interesting pictures showing that in the front row of the March 16th L. Ron Hubbard birthday event at Ruth Eckerd Hall, in the very center of the front row standing and giving David Miscavige were John Travolta and Elizabeth Moss. No. A very pregnant Elizabeth Moss giving a standing ovation to David Miscavige. Why do they always get the good ones? She's so good. And the reason this is so significant, and it's interesting because a lot of reporters follow my sub stack, and none of them said anything about this.

I thought that was really odd. But the reason why this is important is that we've never seen her at one of these events before. Her dad had died in January and we know that he had kind of been in David Miscavige's doghouse for a long time. Oh, her dad was in it. When I asked Mike Rinder what he thought about this picture, about Elizabeth Moss being in the front row with John Travolta, he said it really reminded him what they did with Tom Cruise 20 years ago. When Tom Cruise was just sort of on the edges and they brought him in and really got him gung-ho to the point where he was willing to go on TV and talk about Scientology with Matt Lauer and all that stuff. You're being glib, Matt. Yes.

So glib. Mike Rinder really believes that they may be doing that with Elizabeth Moss and John Travolta is there sort of as the older guiding hand helping her out. I mean, this took some effort. She's very pregnant, you know, standing in the front row. Yeah, she's about to pop. Yeah. So really kind of an amazing moment.

And I think maybe they are getting her more involved and getting her more visible. Now, they didn't put this out in a way that the public could easily see it. I don't know that they really wanted us to know that she was there. But I found it. How did you find it? Let's just say I took a very close look at their press release. Okay. We'll talk about that one off air.

And then I also looked and then once I found that for this year's L. Ron Hubbard event, I decided to go back a couple years and see who else had showed up and it turns out that last year's 2023 L. Ron Hubbard birthday event,

I found a photo showing that Michael Pena had been at that event. And I have never... Another one. I knew Michael Pena was a Scientologist, but I had never seen Michael Pena show up to one of these events before. I think that's significant. Again, I...

Kiki, what are you doing? I think these younger Scientologist celebrities are being expected to step up a little bit now that some of the older ones are gone. If he starts getting like so many leading man roles now too, we're going to know. It's Scientology. God damn it. So that's – but that's what they rely on. They rely on being able to market four or five huge names to say, look at us. We're normal. Right.

Because even important famous people not only want to be a part of this but are like excited and are towards the top of it. So if you join, you could be like them. Right. And they have been told. They have been conditioned. Say what they can say. Oh, get a book. It helped my life. It'll help your life. And you can go back, and it's always very programmatic. They always say the

same thing. Yeah, it really helped my life. You should get a book and read it. Yeah, that's what Grant Cardone says. And I talked to Jason Begay about this. Jason was one of the few celebrities, other than Liam Remini, who left and spoke out. And he said, yeah, we're trained that way. What, you think we're going to say to a reporter, oh, yeah, it's great to remove your invisible body things at only $700 an hour. It's a gas, you know? Oh, my God.

But we got off it for a second. Elizabeth Moss's father, you mentioned, was in the doghouse. Elizabeth Moss's father, Ron Moss, was a musician and a manager, and he managed Chick Corea. And the way that Mike Rinder and Claire and Mark Headley explained this to me was that back around the year 2000, 2001, Chick Corea suddenly found himself in a serious financial problem. And that could be potentially very embarrassing for Scientology because he's

OT8. An OT8 Scientologist should not be having financial problems. And so first of all, they bailed him out. David Miscavige bought the Mad Hatter studio from Chick, which got him money and helped him out. But as Mike explained, they needed somebody to blame. So they blamed his manager, Ron Moss. And so for the next

20 years, Ron was kind of on the outs. He couldn't talk. When Chick Corea died a couple years ago, Ron Moss went on a music podcast and said, I didn't speak to him the last 20 years. And he admitted it. He said that. He hadn't spoken to him. It's because Scientology wouldn't allow him to. He had basically gotten demoted, but they couldn't really kick him out or retaliate him against him because his daughter was doing so well, right? So now that he has died, he died in January. Was she in it from childhood? Yes, she's always been in it. She's defended it to the press. But I think now that her dad has died and he was kind of on the outs with Miscavige, just two months later after Ron Moss died, Elizabeth Moss is in the front row giving David Miscavige a standing ovation at the L. Ron Hubbard birthday.

I think that's very significant. I think it shows he's banking on her to increase her involvement and become the next great – perhaps the next great ambassador of scientology after tom cruz now she's but she's been in it like she grew up in it because these other guys though well we'll get to leah like she grew up in it but michael pain is one of the few who joined as an adult yeah so why do they have so much trouble i mean to me it should be obvious but like why do they have so much trouble recruiting you know the new young actor who might have a shot or something like that? I mean the word is out that it's weird. The word is out that it's abusive.

I think it's tougher for them to recruit. I'm amazed that they got Michael Pena, aren't you? I mean in 2001, people knew that Scientology was problematic. But apparently he was interested. He has said in interviews that he had some – he was on the edge of a drinking problem. He wasn't like major drinking problem, but he was on the edge of a drinking problem and he wanted some way to get a control of it. And he believes he found that in Scientology. The Thetans.

There you go. Yeah. It was the Thetans doing it to him. Sorry. It's kind of funny. The Thetans. There you go. Yeah. It was the Thetans doing it too. So. Sorry. That's kind of funny. But like Giovanni Ribisi, was that another one who grew up in it? Absolutely. And, you know, so you still see people writing stories.

I just saw one in In Touch Weekly and then a bunch of others have all followed up now that, well, we haven't seen Tom Cruise in L.A. recently. Maybe he's leaving Scientology. What is it? They always want to write that story. And they didn't – how does a reporter like that not at least acknowledge that just five months ago Tom made such a huge showing in England for Scientology, David Miscavige? It's clicks. david miscavige clicks so you know it's just uh i i do what i can to try to show what's actually happening with these uh with these celebrities and right now tom cruise john travolta elizabeth moss michael pena they are solid for david miscavige do you think that

the coverage of scientology in general is weird. And let me clarify what I mean there. It seems like it's used for the clicks of like the regular gossip page six stories, like when someone might leave or not, but it is allowed by the press to operate without much coverage. When you have some of these famous people in the middle of it. You have the cult angle. You have the, you know, dead cult leader angle. You have the 4'10 guy running this and telling everyone to get lost. Or 155 centimeter, let's give them everyone that counts.

4'13, please. Whatever it is. Like, there is so much here. There is so much juice here, and yet it seems to be just kind of the only thing they report it is like there is so much here there's so much juice here and yet it seems to be just kind of the only thing they report on is like well are they leaving or aren't they i i will say that the press coverage has actually improved i i really do think it's gotten better um there was famously uh an amazing time magazine cover story that came out in May 1991, which called Scientology the global cult of greed or something. And Scientology sued for $400 million against Time Magazine.

Time eventually won that lawsuit, but they spent millions fighting it. That created a chilling effect throughout the 90s that made it really difficult for people to do stories. People still did stories. I still did stories. Washington Post did great stories. But it definitely produced a chilling effect. Tom Cruise's antics, though, in 2005 really changed things and started to get open things up again. But even then, the coverage was, like you said, it's kind of goofy. It started to get open things up again. But even then, the coverage was like you

said, it's kind of goofy. It's focused on celebrities. I would say though, that the last 10 years, the coverage has gotten much better thanks to people like Leah Remini, for example, who's really focusing on the things that matter. Alex Gibney and his movie, which I was very fortunate to be in, Going Clear. I think publications are more interested in the story about the actual abuses that are going on, what people go through that go in and come out. So I would say that the coverage is better. But we still do get these very silly stories about the celebrities, about Xenu and that kind of thing.

And I understand why people write about that kind of stuff. But I do think that the more important subject does get covered. I just can't believe that the probable criminal elements within it are not covered in bombshell stories that lead to arrests. I mean, you saw it with the Miami Heralds, the reason that like Epstein got arrested because they did a story on it. They went through and dug it. I don't know why that hasn't happened yet here. It's very, you know, it's, we get asked that a lot. What, where's the FBI? Where's the Department of Justice? And what law enforcement will often say is that, remember we were talking earlier about these Scientologists, they come out, it takes them 10 years just to

recover. And so by the time they speak up and say, you know what? I was extorted. I was ripped off. I was abused. It's too late for law enforcement to do something. So it's been difficult to get that information. Also, I think the fact that there's only 20,000 active Scientologists in the world has something to do with it. It's like law enforcement, unfortunately, may feel that it's just not as big of a problem as they want to do. Obviously, the thing that I think everyone would like to see is the IRS to revisit this idea that it is a legitimate religious organization that deserves tax exemption. When is the IRS going to take another look at that?

And Mike Rinder once explained something to me. I think it makes a lot of sense. He says, yeah, of course, there's lots of evidence that Scientology is in violation of its agreements and that if the IRS reviewed this, that there would be lots of reasons to take that tax exempt status away. The problem is you're that mid-level manager in whatever agency you're in and you're going to recommend to your boss that we do this. We open the investigation. We do what we need to do. You have to make a decision. Are you ready for that to be the rest of your career? Because Scientology's money and its attorneys are going to fight you every step of the way. And it's not that there's not evidence of wrongdoing. It's not that law enforcement

isn't interested, because I've talked to people, they are very interested. It's that they know Scientology's reputation for fighting every step of the way and i think it's what keeps governments from doing what they should do yeah but they're they're like a whatever it is i forget the number mark had maybe it's like two billion might have been less than that but two billion dollar organization that's obviously a lot of money to you and me but when has it ever stopped the government from using taxpayer money to fucking spend on shit like okay so they're gonna spend like 500 million to have every agency involved like all right go ahead i'm as a taxpayer i'm like knock yourself the fuck out boys i know i know you're right you're absolutely right and they

they should and they could um but i think as and look let's look at history. With the IRS, they had tax exempt status in the 60s. They lost it in 1967 because the IRS decided that too much money was going to L. Ron Hubbard. They didn't have tax exempt status for the next 25 years, but Scientology still didn't pay a penny in taxes. That bill was – to the point Morty Rathbun once said, they had a billion-dollar tax bill that they were never going to be able to pay. The only option for them was to attack the IRS until the IRS cried uncle. Now, what other organization in the world would think that that's a smart – that that's the way to go?

To literally – I mean, everyone thinks the IRS is a bully. Scientology out-bullied them. That's crazy. Scientology just like investigated individual IRS people, sued them with countless lawsuits until finally in 1991, IRS said, cried uncle. And they did a two-year process, a formal process, and gave them taxing status in October 1993. And it's very clear. The only reason the IRS did that was they wanted Scientology to stop all the harassment. Now who in the IRS today is ready to go through that again?

You know, that's the problem. I don't know. Maybe one of the 86,000 agents, armed agents they hired like someone in there. I get it. Like they're, they're torturing these people in their

personalized i i i understand that sucks but like all you you're the government i know knock the like take the head off the snake they won't be doing shit to you i know like if they if they came up with criminal cases against the top 10 15 people at scientology it's over there. There's no – they wouldn't even know how to harass you. I mean in my opinion from the outside. Tell me if I'm wrong. But like they wouldn't even know how to harass you at that point. All the people who told them what to do forever are gone. I absolutely agree.

And it's just – it's so frustrating that the government hasn't done something. And I mean look at what's going on in the courts now. People can't even sue them. Various ex-Scientologists have brought lawsuits against Scientology in the last 15 years. And Scientology has this incredible strategy that is working for them. Whenever you do anything in Scientology, whether you go to work for them, whether you get some auditing, whether you go through their detox thing, you have to sign a waiver. And in that waiver, there's some language that says you promise never to sue us. And if you do have a problem, you will go through our internal justice system.

Oh, they have an internal system. Called – which they call religious arbitration. And so people sign, oh, yeah, whatever. Let me get in the sauna. Oh, yeah, I'll sign that. Whatever. Give me the e-meter. So years later, they realize they've been abused.

They come out and they say, I'm going to sue Scientology. And the first thing Scientology does, they go into court and say, no, no, no, no, you signed this agreement. And you have to understand, the way arbitration is supposed to work is let's say that the guy who made your roof did a bad job or the guy that worked on your teeth did a bad job. And you decide to sue them. They may bring out a thing saying, no, no, you signed an arbitration thing. Okay, fine. So you go to independent arbitration, which means some retired judge gets brought in, both sides get heard, and you're maybe just as likely to win there as you would in a lawsuit. The reason why the company wants it to be arbitration, though, is that it's done out of the public eye. Okay. Well, that's not what

Scientology is doing. Scientology has it completely rigged, where the people who are on the arbitrating panel have to be Scientologists in good standing. You're never going to get a fair hearing. Exactly. And yet these judges keep signing off on it. Judges keep kicking these lawsuits out of court saying, you signed a contract. Contract's a contract. So not only is it frustrating that the government, through its law enforcement agencies agencies isn't doing something about Scientology's abuses, these ex-Scientologists are having the hardest time suing Scientology over it. I just don't think American courts, American government are set up to deal with an organization that deals in nothing but bad faith. It's difficult, though though when the organizations, and again, you have a point and I hear it.

I just come back to it. Like it's difficult to take that when the organization is as small in numbers as it is. Like if you're talking about like the Vatican, all right, yeah, yeah, you got it. You're not going to stop that. But like we're talking about, you know. going to stop that. But we're talking about... I have wondered if the government is basically waiting for it to shrink to a certain level and then move in, and then move in because then it'll be a little easier to knock over.

I've thought about that. I've wondered about that. Well, if they wait long enough, someone taller than Miscavige will be there. It'll be harder to knock over. Really tough. But we keep talking about Rinder, Mike Rinder, who I know is a friend of yours. someone taller than miscavige will be there it'll be harder to knock over you know really tough but we keep we keep talking about rinder yeah mike rinder who i know is a friend of yours mike really good guy when i've talked with him he was on my friend danny jones's podcast a few years ago and he was supposed to come on here i hope we can do that again in the future we weren't able to get

that done but i talked about him a bit with Mark Bunker, but for people who haven't heard that podcast, can you just give the brief background on Mike Rinder's role in Scientology and how he came up through it? Yeah. In 2009, between 2007 and 2009, there was a little mini exodus of high-level Scientology executives that all got together and talked to the Tampa Bay Times for this incredible series that should have won a Pulitzer in 2009 called The Truth Rundown. And Mike was one of those. It was an amazing moment. And I think that's part of what changed this press approach that I've talked about, where the press is starting to take these abuses more seriously, thanks to Mike Rinder and Mark and Claire Headley, Jefferson Hawkins, Amy Scobie,

these people that all came out at one time. Mike is particularly interesting among those because he was not only second or third highest ranking Scientologist in the whole thing, but he was specifically in charge of that spy wing, the Office of Special Affairs. Yes. And so he knows exactly how David Miscavige deals with enemies and that kind of thing. He wrote an amazing book. It's called A Billion Years. And it came out a year and a half ago, I think.

Incredible book. Because he was in all the places that things were happening over the last 30 years. And it's just incredible. I encourage you to get that. Really well told. I can't believe how much Scientology history he got into that one book. And it's a very personal book. He opens it by talking about the fact that he's lost his adult children, that he'll never get back because they stayed in Scientology. Oh, they stayed. They stayed and they denounced him and Scientology uses them and videos against him.

It's really disgusting. And he started a new family now. He's got a wonderful new family and he's had health problems. We're all rooting for him. He's got cancer and he's been doing really, really well with it. That's public? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's talked about that.

And we're all really concerned about him. But he looks great. He's doing great. He and I actually both fought cancer at the same time. I had a much, much less serious thing that he did. But it was kind of funny that we were both going through it at the same time. But he's an amazing guy. And he has really become one of Dave Miscavige's biggest nightmares.

And he's worked very closely with law enforcement. He's told the FBI everything he knows. I just think – Like they came to him or he went to them? He went to them and, you know, turned over documents and told them everything. And, you know, like I said, at one point in 2010, Scientology was, I mean, FBI was very close to raiding the base.

They decided not to. Later, I managed, another journalist actually got up and shared it with me, a very friendly jester, shared with me the actual FBI report. And Mike Rinder's interview is in there along with Amy's and Mark and Claire. I mean, you can read now what they were all told the FBI. And why again did they not do that? I think you mentioned that earlier.

Well, no, I haven't. That's a really complex question. I think what, you know, Scientology, they have people in power. They have people who will go to the Department of Justice and complain personally. What happened was there's this character named Tommy Davis. He was the spokesman for the Church of Scientology, and he's the son of Ann Archer, the actress. God, how does this all go down? So at one point when John Brousseau left Scientology, Tommy Davis in a deposition, isn't it true that you guys will go follow people?

Oh, no, no. We never do that. Now, that thing he had done in Texas was in a police report, but it was private because it was part of an ongoing investigation. The FBI agent, who was the chief agent in the Scientology investigation where they were thinking about raiding the base, knew that this document of Tommy Davis showing up in Texas would help impeach him in Mark Headley's lawsuit where he had said that he doesn't do that kind of thing. And so the FBI agent gave that police report to Mark and Claire's attorney to use in their case.

And when they went into court and said, look, we got proof, we've got documented proof that Tommy Davis is lying about not taking part in these blow drills. He just took part in one in Texas. The Scientology attorneys freaked out and said, where do you have that document? You shouldn't have that document. See, they knew about the document. They didn't think the Headleys could get it. You shouldn't have that.

They put two and two together, went to the Department of Justice and said, listen, your FBI agent did something improper. Your FBI agent helped out a private lawsuit and busted her and the whole investigation went down the tubes. Oh, my God. No. I'm the only one that wrote that story. So can they ever use any of that or that's just – Well, I mean the fbi uh investigations all on the record i published like i said i published that whole investigation in a future

investigation that they were able to build can they even cite anything they did there because it's not tainted they can cite it but i mean it's old now you know so i don uh, an FBI agent realizing that Mark and Claire Headley were being, uh, that their judge was being lied to by Scientology and, and just felt personally, I can do something and did something to help ended up torpedoing the whole investigation. Yeah.

And you wrote about that back then? Yeah. No, I wrote about it let's see that I want to say 2014, something like that. Okay, so a few years after. Yeah. So they weren't able to go. Now, this is after the 07-09

Tampa series that Rinder and other guys were being in. So that group of people came out between 2007-2009. They went to the Tampa that group of people came out between 2007 and 2009. They went to the Tampa Bay Times. That came out in 2009, Truth Rundown. That helped produce, and then Anderson Cooper on CNN then did his series based on that Tampa Bay series.

Oh. And then that's what prompted the FBI then to get serious about their investigation in 2010, but then it got torpedoed. Okay, so Mike had left Scientology before he was given those interviews. Right. In like 07?

Mike escaped on a London street in 2007. What went down? What do you mean on a London street? He was, you have to read his book. He was, you know, he'd been – he knew he was going to be punished. He was in big trouble again. You get into trouble for no reason. He knew he was going to be in trouble again.

He was in London doing something for them and he just said, screw it, and just like went for the train. Got on a train, got the heck out. Was he with Scientology people and he just like – I think he was on his own and he just took off. But he knew that he was – it was like you got to go all the way. You can't just like do it. You know what I'm saying? And he just took off with what he had with him.

It's so strange that like that's the story. It's just a regular middle-aged man walking in the middle of a London street. He's got no one with him except like the dude eating at a cafe right there and someone else getting their dry cleaning done. It's broad daylight and he's like, I'm going to get on this 1112 train that departs for the next stop and that's going to be my getaway. There's no – it's like a ghost is chasing you. It's like this ghost in your – it's not like in the – like in – no, actually pun intended. In a Tom Cruise movie where he's jumping on a plane as there's guns coming at him and it's just like right i gotta get out of this mental bubble and i'm gonna do it by physically walking onto that train right there and sitting down and yet maybe he could get two

stops away and then change his mind and come back and no one knows anything happens so then he's got to like mentally sit in that train wherever the fuck it goes maybe up to scotland i don't know right and like convince himself to get to a spot and when he's at the next spot it's like okay well now what it's so strange like for guys like you and me to think about this it's so strange it's crazy but they but they know the retaliation mechanism they know how much you know they're going to be people are going to be coming after them. And so, yeah. And they all have different stories about how they got out. It's incredible.

What did he do after that? So the train stopped somewhere. What did he do? Well, he went to the airport, flew to the US. I think he ended up in Denver. Didn't know anybody. He just had to – I think he knew one person. Ex-Scientologist? Just got himself a job selling cars.

And he was just like – nobody knew he was there. Nobody knew who he was. He was just selling cars. Oh, so he had just disappeared and somewhere Miscavige is like where the fuck did Mike go? Oh, they've tracked him down. Well, no, I know. But see, he knew enough that they weren't going to be able to talk him into coming back because he knew how it was. Oh, so they had tracked him down to Denver right away.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. But he had been in the hole for a couple years. When was that uh so the hole started in january 2004 and it was started with maybe you know i don't know 30 or 40 executives in a double wide trailer there and they were locked in um they were only let out once a day to go across the street to a place to take showers and then they were fed slop from a bucket. Slop from a bucket. Yeah. Mike was in, I think, 2006, 2007.

And then he was pulled out because Miscavige needed him to deal with John Sweeney, the BBC reporter who was doing a special about Scientology then. And what's really amazing, if you watch that first John Sweeney documentary, he did a couple. But if you look at the first one, you look at Rinder in that, he's skeletal, okay? Because he's been in the hole for a year, eating almost nothing. It's – oh, man. So wait, he's in the documentary? So Miscavige wanted him to be one of the guys to respond on the record?

Because Sweeney was serious. I mean, he's a BBC guy. He needs his big guns. documentary so so miscavige wanted him to be one of the guys to respond on the record because sweeney was serious i mean there's a bbc guy we got it he needs big he needs his big guns so he pulled can we find that alessi john sweeney and mike rinder i've got that picture on my website somewhere but uh yeah put up put up john sweeney mike rinder and and search images and i'll point it out to you so um uh mike had been in the hole and they found out that Sweeney was going to be doing a special. So Miscavige was like, I need you. And he said that happened to a number of people. They'd come into the hole until for some reason Miscavige needs them and then pull them out.

Now, would Miscavige come in himself or he send someone to get him? No, he sends somebody. Yeah, I was going to say. No, none of those. Scroll down. I think it's black and white actually. There it is. See the – yeah.

That's – yeah, yeah. Compare that to his normal size of his face. That's where he's been in the hole for a year, okay? So they put him back in after this? No. They pulled him out to deal with Sweeney, and I don't think he went – he may have gone in and out a couple times oh because he went to London

and that's where he ended up escaping then he ended up in London escaping so that's like in 2005 I think or 2006 is when he's dealing with Sweeney do we have

can we see if there's something on YouTube of like Rinder addressing Sweeney I'd love to see this that's a picture but try to see if we can pull up a YouTube video so this was a

part of like a series he was doing on bbc special yeah so sweeney did a special in uh 2007 i want to say maybe maybe it was 2005 called um i can't remember what the first one was called and then after mike escaped then they got together to make a second one called Secrets of Scientology, I think. I don't know if the first one is even online anymore. I've never seen it on the Netflix.

But anyway, so he made those two. They're great. They're really great. Alright, I don't know if we're going to be able to find it, but I'd love to see that. So, this is... He ends up leaving, I guess, after doing this and goes and gives these stories, I guess, while he's in Denver to the Tampa Bay Times people. So then in Denver, they tracked him down and this woman, Monique Yingling, who's a top attorney for the church, kind of threatened him. He was really unhappy with that. So then he got together with these other former top executives and they talked to the Tampa Bay Times in 2009.

And like I said, that really changed a lot of things. And it's really kind of been – there we go. I'm just going to say this. If this is picking up at the end of us watching it, it's because there's Eminem music on it, and that's copyrighted. But if not, let's let this play. Real fast. Yeah. I didn't realize it was this guy.

Yeah. John Sweeney was on Danny's show maybe three, four years ago. About Ukraine? No. He did an unbelievable series on Ghislaine Maxwell. Oh, okay. It was a podcast series. And the investigation was incredible. I didn't realize he did this, too. That was a podcast series. The investigation was incredible.

I didn't realize he did this too. That was fucking awesome. Wow. If people were seeing that on the screen, again, if it skipped and you didn't see a video, we'll put that link in description. I'm just live editing in my head right now because we may get a copyright thing

with the Eminem music that they had there. Holy shit. You're not kidding. He looks like a skeleton. Yeah. Rinder. Truck month is on at Chevrolet. Get 0% financing for up to 72 months on a 2025 Silverado 1500 custom blackout

or custom trail boss. With custom trail bosses available, class exclusive Duramax 3-liter diesel engine and Z71 off-road package with a 2-inch factory suspension lift, you get both on-road confidence and off-road capability. Dirt road ahead? Let's go! Truck month is awesome! Ask your Chevrolet dealer for details. That's what's fun to know is that that's right. He had been in the hole. He'd been a prisoner. They pulled him out. And then he's arguing with john sweeney like you know defending miscavige the guy that's kept him in prison for months it's just that that's how

the the mental conditioning is crazy oh my god so then then he got out or whatever but this is all before leah got out right le? Leah defected in 2013. I got to break that news, actually. In July 2013, I broke the news that Leah Remini had left. How did you break it? Let me just say that it had been a process for a while. She was a very dedicated Scientologist. She'd been in Celebrity Center for a long time. And then when

Tom and Katie got married in November 2006, it was at a castle in Italy. And Leah was invited, and she went with Jennifer Lopez, her very, very good friend. And when she got there, she was concerned

because David Miscavige was there without his wife, Shelley. And not only was Dave there without Shelley, Dave was playing a little bit of grab ass with his personal communicator by the name of Lou, Lou Stuckenbrock. Like a guy? No, a woman. Yeah. Oh.

Yeah. Okay. yeah oh yeah okay so uh he was he was he was a little too friendly with his female uh communicator it's called and so you know uh leah's like what's going on and so she started asking where is shelly why is dave here without him and tommy davis the guy you saw in that video said to her you don't have the fucking rank to ask that question. Leah was really upset about it. She went back to her hotel room and she wrote up a report. She basically turned in the Pope of Scientology to Scientology.

And they didn't like that. So they then ordered her to Florida to do three months of conditioning and charged her $300,000 for it. Now, what did that comprise of? That was 2006, okay? What did that comprise of? It's called the truth rundown. It's basically they do this auditing to you and mess with your head to the point where you will finally agree that you didn't see what you saw.

And she went through all that. And then between then, 2006 and 2013, she was having doubts. She was on her way out. Then finally, I found out that she was out completely July 8th, 2013. I broke that news. How did you find that out? I had a source. Okay. Okay.

Gotcha. And my story had that story I wrote in 2013, had it all laid out, the whole Tom Cruise wedding, all the stuff that she had been through, all of which ended up she wrote her own version of in her own book later called Troublemaker. Great book. Quick question. Yeah. A little aside here because I've been thinking this throughout the day today. Obviously you have a lot of great sources. Do you have people

who are actively still appearing to be in Scientology but have mentally left and they're leaking stories to guys like you? Sure, of course. I've always had that. They gotta act. I've always had that. They got to act. I've always had that.

And it's dicey, and that's why you only hear a fraction of what I learn. Only the stuff I can confirm and that I can confirm with people that I can go public with. So they know it's crazy. They hate it. They're trying to help stop it, but they have to remain in it. They have different motives. Some of the people who leak to me are just really unhappy about Miscavige, but they still feel that Scientology is a good thing. And they don't like the direction Miscavige is taking it in.

Others don't like what it's done to their families. The family's been ripped apart. People have different motivations and sometimes I can get some very sensitive information. It depends. But yeah, so I found out about Leah, broke that news in 2013. She's been out since then. So it took her another six years after 06. Yes, yeah. And they pulled her there for three months? Did she have to film for King of Queens while that was going on? That's a great question.

I've never asked her that. I guess she wasn't filming something then, 2013. That's well after King of Queens. Because, like, Tom, and I think it's actually, I think it's her I've heard talk about this. If I'm misremembering who talked about it, I'm sorry. It's someone else mentioned in the comments. But Tom, when he goes to set, like his assistant is a Scientologist, the person who helps the assistant is a Scientologist,

some of the people on set are sure to be Scientologists, and they make him feel in charge, but he's babysat on every set. Was it similar for her? She has said, and it's in her book, I believe, that when they were filming King of Queens, that's a pretty grueling schedule. Oh, yeah. Right? Five days a week, whatever.

She was going to the Celebrity Center every night. Yeah, I heard her say that. That they were filming. That's how dedicated she was. And where was the Celebrity Center? Well, the Hollywood Celebrity Center on Franklin in LA. Yeah. So she was very dedicated.

And you can tell. She really doesn't like how she got treated. And she fells betrayed by David Miscavige and Scientology. She's very fortunate that her mother came out with her. And they were not able to split them apart like so many other families. Is her dad still in it? No. Her biological father I don't think ever was involved. Her stepfather came out with them. Got it.

Okay. Yeah. But she grew up in it because they joined it, right? The mom and the stepfather? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. God, yeah. God, that's so hard.

I mean, like, that's the thing. Especially when, obviously, she's a star now. Because Sonya Tove already helped her. But, like, you know, when you see kids get sucked into this, it's hard to judge them as an adult. Because it's like they don't know anything else. Yeah. No, I know. It can be bewildering to leave Scientology and try to adapt to a world that they don't really know very well.

It can be very difficult for some of them. And some of them thrive. Like Mark and Claire Headley are amazing. They came out and created businesses and they're just – they couldn't have children in the Sea Org, so they made up for it afterwards and had four boys. Three or four. I hope I got them right. Anyway, and they have businesses.

They're doing so great. But I know other people that left the Sea Org that have not thrived. It's been very difficult for them, and it can be difficult to adapt to the modern world and things. Wait, why adapt to the modern world and things. Wait, why adapt to the modern world? There are people that come out of Scientology without driver's licenses, without any idea of what insurance is. But it's not like they live – most of them don't live on the cruise ship. Some of them don't have birth certificates. What?

Yeah. How is that possible? Because they were born into it? Yeah. And they have like a Scientology doctor on deck they're fucking i mean i talked to i talked to a guy that signed his first c-org contract with a crayon when he was five years old oh my god yeah that's criminal it is that's child. It is. That's child labor. I know. Now, they're a little more careful about that now because of all the exposés and people who've come out.

I think they're a little more careful about that now, but they're still abusing people, no question. See, that's so, oh, my God. I don't know why they don't just kick down the doors. So literally, though, to go back to that point, they'll have like an OBGYN who's a Scientologist deliver a baby and not – I just know that I've talked to Scientologists that have come out and said it's so hard because they don't have copies of anything. If there is a birth certificate, they can't – they don't know how to get it. They don't have a driver's license.

They've never had a bank account in their lives. No bank account. No. Why would you have a bank account if you're a Sea Org member? Scientology takes – they put you up in housing. You never leave the base. You have a little cash on you. You buy a few things.

Is this the base in Clearwater you're saying? The base in Clearwater, the base in California. Yeah. So you don't – but there are a lot of people in Scientology who live out in the regular world. Yeah. Oh, no. There's plenty of public Scientologists that are online like the rest of us. They're on Facebook like the rest of us.

They have regular jobs. No question. But those people talk with the Sea Org people when they're doing their little Scientology thing, and those Sea Org people never say, well, wait, I want a Facebook. No, because you got to understand the mentality. They literally think they're saving the planet. What? Yeah. They think they're saving. They think that this is a prison planet, that we're unaware of it, and that only Scientologists can solve it. I mean, once you buy into the idea that Scientology is the only real thing that happens, then you disregard what's going on in the rest of the world. And they're clearing the planet, which is basically making the world safe for Scientology. But they do talk about planetary salvation. They use that phrase all the time.

And how did our good friend L. Ron Hubbard, who you're such a big fan of, how did he would describe it is he would say that once you have a certain critical mass of Scientologists, you'll literally be able to write the laws and take over. I mean, they are talking about planetary takeover. I mean, it's pitiful because they only have 20,000 people. It's not going to happen. But they do – that's their aim is to literally take over. Have they ever looked at like taking over a small country in need of cash? Yeah. In fact, in 1966, Hubbard wanted to take over Rhodesia.

Oh, my God. Okay. What happened there? They kicked him out. Can we pull up Rhodesia? I don't know. Well, it's called Zimbabwe now. Yeah, but the original map before it was Zimbabwe.

I want to see because does it have a different it was it smaller back then or is it the same I think it's the same size it just changed name yeah so he tried to take this sounds like uh Matt Cox's very short billionaire uh in the 50s what's it called schizophrenic friend what's his name Frank Amadeo I'm gonna take over this country. Yeah. See, that's not that small. No, it's not. In the 50s, he was in America. In the 60s, he was in England. But then even that got hot for him. So in 66, he went to Rhodesia.

And he wanted to take it over. He wanted to become prime minister. He got kicked out. So then what's left for him, right? He takes to sea. And so from 1967 to 1975, he ran Scientology from a ship in the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, and the Caribbean. It was called the Apollo. And were they able to get away with like international sea laws for some things with that? Well, absolutely.

Because, I mean, that was the point. And they kept running out of ports because once a country got smart about what they were really all about, they'd kick them out. So they were getting fewer and fewer ports they could go to. But they were really hot with Greece for a while. They were in Morocco for a while. They finally ended up in the Caribbean. And by that time, Hubbard was tired of running Scientology from a ship. And so they went back to land in Florida in 1975.

And that's when they began their secret takeover of Clearwater. Aptly named town. Yeah, exactly. And can you define the whole concept of going clear for people out there? Well, I mean, initially, if you read Dianetics, the book that started it all, and it's very important that the full title is Dianetics, the Modern Science of Mental Health. Initially, Hubbard pitched this as a science, not as a religion.

And his idea was that he was the first one he claimed to discover the true nature of the human mind, which is that it had two halves. The one thing is called the analytical mind, which is our waking mind. And it's really an incredibly powerful tool, except that it's held back by the other half, which is called our reactive mind, which takes over when we're unconscious and stores all of our traumatic memories. So if through his, what he called Dianetics, which was this talking cure, if you could talk about your traumas, you would erase the reactive mind. And then you become this perfect, very improved person with higher IQ and perfect recall. That was always the goal. And he called that state clear.

So if you went – and when he initially pitched this with Dianetics in 1950, he was talking about maybe 20 or 100 hours of this Dianetic counseling and you could go clear. And it was a very popular idea. It was very popular for a first year or so. He went broke then and had to start over again. He had lost the use of the word Dianetics, and so he came up with the word Scientology. And the difference was in Scientology, you weren't just – in Dianetics, you were going back to the womb. What was it like when you were born and before to try to remember the traumatic incidents that were stored in your reactive mind? And so it was very

popular to try to go back and remember what you were like as a fetus. Well, Terrence Howard can do it apparently. But then Scientology goes back farther. And the idea is you're going back to previous lives, what it was like hundreds, thousands, millions of billions of years ago. So what all Scientologists do then is they go through these various training routines to still their mind basically and be able to do these exercises. And then they go through what's called the grades. And what they don't realize that's going on is it's all confessional. You're always being asked to talk about the things you did as a kid, terrible things you've

done in your life. They're writing it all down. They're building a file on you. And then finally you go clear. Originally, that was the whole goal. Just let's go clear, become almost superhuman. But then after, in the 60s,

he started adding things beyond clear, the OT levels, the operating thing levels. So today, clear is just an intermediate goal. It's still very important to Scientologists, but it's only an intermediate goal. And that was – effectively though, he was making it up completely as he went along. And so when, once the book had kind of served its purpose and now he invents the term Scientology, was there, were there other, like, did he consult with anyone, like senior leadership, if you will, in his organization, who some of whom would have then

been like, wait a second, this guy's just fucking making it up? That's a great question. Initially, he was, to a certain extent, willing to listen to some of the early, early people as far as maybe there were some, oh, so-and-so in Johannesburg figured out a really cool way to do this. But over time, it became, it's just Hubbard. Everything has to come from Hubbard. Hubbard defines every single part of the entire bridge. And he would send out these bulletins after bulletins after bulletins all over the world. You have to do it this way. To this day, they talk about delivering standard tech standardly. That the only, and it's called keeping Scientology working. It's one of their most important policies that the only way that you can do Scientology is to do it the way Ron described it and codified it. You cannot do it any other way. So there was a little bit of collaboration early on, but it got stamped out, and it's just all wrong now.

So the idea is 100 years from now, they're going to be using a soapbox with an electrical current on it and saying it's new technology. Well, that's why Scientology was so late to the internet. That's why Scientology was so late to so many other technologies is that they are still stuck in the 50s in a lot of ways. Yeah, their promo videos are too. They're hilarious. Oh, their promo videos are too. They're hilarious. Oh, my God. Those things. They're so, like, they look like a South Park episode.

Like, that's probably the least amount of work Trey Parker and Matt Stone ever had to do when they sit in a room and go, okay, how can we make this thing ridiculous? There's no work to be done. It's just like, all right, let's just present it and make it a cartoon. We're good. We got it. I mean, it's just, it and make it a cartoon. We're good. We got it. I mean, it's just – again, it's hard to wrap my head around it.

But Leia was not – she never met Hubbard, right? He would have – No, I don't think Leia Remini ever met Hubbard. He was very scarce after 78 and – after 75, he was very scarce after 78 and after 75, he was very scarce. And he was in complete hiding after 1980. After 1980, there were basically only two or three people in the world that knew where he was and were spending time with him. But when he was still alive, she was a kid in Scientology, right?

At some point? Let's see. I got to do the math. Can we pull up when she's born? She's 53 now and so she was born in... 71 maybe? 71 and

she got into it when she was about 6 years old. So we figure she got into it when she was about 77. So yeah, he was still around, but I don't think she would have seen him. But does she remember how he was spoken about at that point? Because he's still alive, right? So he's like a living god or something.

I've never asked her about that. I mean, all Scientologists will tell you that he's not a god. We just hold him in very high esteem. But they worship the guy. They definitely worship the guy. Okay. Now, she took seven years, give or take, six, seven years after that three-month period in 06, where they made her come in and spend $300,000 for the right to be brain tortured.

Why did it – what was her process that took that much longer for her to leave? She was concerned about what had happened to Shelly. She hadn't heard anything about Shelly. She kept asking Dave about that. She wasn't getting good answers. She was starting to threaten to go to the FBI against – to Dave. All still in. And there was just – I think she just reached a point where she's like, I'm out of here.

And then she told a very few people and then it got to me. And then I reported that she was out. So that was July 2013. What was it like for her when she left though? Because she's a public figure. They obviously know she left. Like what did they do? I think she was very nervous about it.

I think she wasn't sure how much they were going to retaliate, but I think she was angry because a month later, in August 2013, is when she filed a missing person report on Shelly with the LAPD. This was huge. I mean – Yeah, can you explain? Because she was later found, but recently. Like, they found her in the last year, right? No, they didn't find her. Oh, they didn't?

No. I mean, look. All right, fill me in. So Dave and Shelly were both messengers, they didn't? No. I mean, look. All right, fill me in. So Dave and Shelly were both messengers, those young helpers of L. Ron Hubbard. And they got married in, I think, 81, something like that. And they were around Hubbard. And so when Dave took over after Hubbard's death, he eventually adopted the title COB, which stands for Chairman of the Board. So everybody in Scientology, they don't call him Miscavige.

They call him COB. Shelley's title was literally COB Assistant. Okay. So the two of them ran Scientology. Mostly they were at that int base east of Los Angeles that we were looking at before. They had some nice quarters there. But after about 2002, 2003, when they started to get Tom Cruise really spun up again, and Dave was spending a lot of time with Tom Cruise, the relationship

with Shelly started to get strained. And at some point in, I believe, late August, well that, so then in 2005, what happened in 2005 was that Tom Cruise had his disastrous interview with Matt Lauer. He had his weird appearance on Oprah. Oh, the couch. At about the same time in early 2005, Dave left the base to go to LA to work on this new project. They were going to republish all of L. Ron Hubbard's books. Mike Winder was working on it in LA.

Dave came out to work on it. And the people that were there told me it was very unusual that Dave went to LA and Shelly stayed behind. They normally went everywhere together. That was the first sign that something was going on. Then Mike came back to the base on his own, Shelly cornered him. And he said, she cornered him on a particular balcony on a particular building. And he said that was important because he knew it was one of the very few places on that entire base that wasn't on a cam. Okay? So he knew she was cornering him somewhere where they would really have some privacy. And Mike said that she said to him,

oh, you were with Dave in LA. Let me ask you, which color ring was he wearing? Now, they had bought these elaborate wedding rings that were like multiply colored, like there was rose gold and gold and silver, whatever. And so she was asking him, did you happen to notice which of his rings he was wearing? Mike says to me, I know what she was really asking. She was really asking, was he wearing his wedding ring? And that's when Mike told me that's when I knew there was something really going on, some problem. So Dave was on his own in L.A, and Shelly was wondering about his wedding ring. So just a few weeks after that, in late August or early September 2005, I've never gotten the exact date.

I've talked to people that were there, though. This is when Mike's in the hole now, right? No, Mike's not in the hole yet. Mike's not in the hole until the next year. Okay. The hole is there, but Mike wasn't in it yet. He wasn't in it. Dave comes now while Dave's gone

one of the things he was notorious for was there were certain things that never got done because you had to get his permission and he would send it back a million times and so there was like what we call an org board and it's basically a jobs board who goes into what position and they could never get it filled out

so while Dave was in LA, Shelly filled it out here Here, you work there, you work there, done. Everyone was so happy, right? The other thing that they did was they wanted to renovate the building that they were staying in. And so Shelly oversaw the crating up of all their possessions, get everything out of the way so they can work on know, work on the house. Dave comes back. He sees that the org board's been filled in without his permission. He sees that his belongings are all in boxes and he blows his top. I've got multiple witnesses of this. He just has the mother of all tamper tantrums. A week later, Shelly disappeared and has not been seen in 19 years.

I thought they did find her. I must have missed that. So she's never been seen since then. There have been sightings. There have been sightings, but I really do- What do you mean a sighting? Because that would be seen. Well, sightings meaning unconfirmed.

Sightings, okay, she's been seen. Like a UFO. She's been seen. Well, sightings meaning unconfirmed. Okay, she's been seen. Well, let me explain what I think happened, okay? That base we're talking about, Int Base or Gold Base, where the hole is, 500-acre massive complex in San Jacinto, east of Los Angeles. There's a smaller base up in the mountains above there called CST, Church of Spiritual Technology. That's the most secret subsidiary of Scientology. CST is the very secretive group that operates the vaults. Do you know about the vaults? No. They have vaults. They have four vaults. One, they're in the CST headquarters near Lake

Arrowhead. There's one farther up in Northern California in the gold country. There's a mine. And then way extreme Northern California, a place called Petrolia, and a fourth vault in New Mexico. And it's basically an underground vault

where they can store L. Ron Hubbard's writings and lectures so that when their civilization collapse, Scientology can get things going again. Oh, that's what we'll find? Yes. Oh, my God. Pray for that civilization. So there's one organization that's their whole job, CST, archiving L. Ron Hubbard's things. I believe Dave, for whatever reason, was dumb with her and had her shipped up to the CST headquarters near Lake Arrowhead, and she's been there ever since. Because a prisoner.

Basically, as a prisoner. Not dead. No, I don't think she's dead. I think we'd find out if she was dead. Well, how would we find out if there's no body, no crime? No, but there would be records. And I think about— Why would there be records if she's never been recovered?

There are public records putting her there. Okay. And when she – if she dies, it will become public eventually. It may take a little while. Parallel, they had a woman, Pat – well, remember Pat Broker? We talked about him. His wife was Annie Broker. Her name was Annie Tidman.

She eventually was kind of put away and died. And it took – Put away? They hid her away in an apartment while she was dying of cancer. Oh. She died. And then it took a while before her family heard about it. Her family then told me.

And then I was able to write a story about it. It was about six months between the time she died and the time I was able to write a story about it. I think something like that would happen with Shelly. I think we would hear something if she had died. But anyway, you may have seen the news that recently there was a record of her getting a new driver's license and voting record up at the Petrolia location in Northern California. I think she was there for a short time and had her driver's license renewed,

but I think most likely she's still where she's been the whole time, which is the CST headquarters near Lake Arrowhead. It's the most secure place for them to be able to put her. She actually has work that she can do there. And I think he's going to keep her there until she dies. All right. Let's read this. So the article here is, what's the story with that place, the underground Scientology vault near Petrolia? There's a picture on the screen. Can you zoom in on that for one second,

Les, just for people out there? That's the vault near Petrolia I'm talking about. And that's the one where a recently, a driver's light, a voter's record showed up for Shelly. I do believe she was there for a short time. I doubt that she's still there. Tony, what am I looking at there? So that's the vault entrance. So behind, so that strangely looking triangular pentagonal building is actually the entrance to the vault. The vault goes back underneath

the ground there. Probably doesn't go too far. A couple hundred feet. And it's basically what they do is they get a big giant corrugated metal pipe and bury it and then build inside of it. Like rooms, like holes, if you will? All it is is a storage room for L. Ron Hubbard's bullshit. And fucking Shelly's just back there in the storage room.

No, there's other buildings around there. She would be staying in a house nearby. She would not be in the vault. Not in the vault. Well, how nice of them. They let her see some daylight. Okay. So this is like...

Up the road a little ways or a mile or so, there's a very nice house. She was probably staying there for a while. Like I said, I doubt that she's still there because there's only two people up there. What is that? What's that Venn diagram? Right. So that's the symbol for CST, that particular subsidiary that runs those vaults. There's only one person who ever worked for CST that came out and spoke about it.

His name is Dylan Gill. I interviewed him 12 years ago, and I've interviewed him since then. I asked him about that, and it's interesting. He initially said to me, they do that so that when L. Ron Hubbard returns to Earth, he'll be able to see that. I printed that, and then he was like, Tony, that's not true. I didn't say that. I was like, I don't know what to tell you, Dylan. I think you did. So I don't know. But that's definitely the logo of the organization that runs those vaults. All right, go up, Alessi. I just want to read the beginning of this. Just pause that for a sec. Go up.

All right, so if you were driving along the Lost Coast a few miles northwest of Petrolia, you might notice an old farm road leading east up a ravine. If you were somehow able to get past the locked cattle gate and follow that farm road through the cow pastures, then up a private road that traces the hill spine, you'd soon come to a massive symbol carved into the earth. You probably wouldn't even notice its ridges and depressions from ground level. They've eroded quite a bit since a local contractor carved them nearly 30 years ago. But from directly above the perspective of a drone on a Google satellite, you can still see the design. Two interlocking circles, each more than 500 feet in diameter, with diamonds in the middle. And then that's the picture we were just showing you how it looked.

This is the logo for the Church of Spiritual Technology, an arm of Scientology, that's CST like you were saying, created in the early 1980s after the IRS revoked the group's taxes and status. It took an all-out war with the IRS for Scientology to regain taxes and status, which it finally did in 1993. The CST, an especially secretive branch of the notoriously insular organization was founded to preserve the life's work of scientology founder l ron hubbard just east of the thousand foot logo there's a helipad and beyond that an 8 000 square foot residence called the lrh house yep built in 1991 which were shelly maybe as a place for hubbard to grow up after being reborn in a new body. Scientists believe that Hubbard didn't, Scientologists believe, not scientists,

that Hubbard didn't die of a stroke in 1986 at the age of 74, but rather... Voluntarily left his body, that's right. Yeah. Voluntarily discarded his body so he could continue his spiritual research outside of this conference. Yeah, yeah. I can't. I can't do it. I know. It's amazing.

So there have been some sightings. A man named Mitch Brisker definitely saw Shelly. And let's see, that would have been, I think, 2008, he thinks it was. So a few years after she first disappeared, she was with some people. I have spoken to a woman near that CST base in Lake Arrowhead who believes she saw Shelly in a store with a couple of handlers in 2015, 2016. But other than that, nothing confirmed. But now we get this tantalizing clue of the voter record up at Petrolia. And so there's no question she was there at some point, but I think she's probably back at CST near Lake Arrowhead. But whenever Scientology's put on, basically what's going on is Dave became

paranoid about his own wife and decided to just put her away and banish her until she dies. And when you ask Scientology about it, they say, oh, she's on a special work project. A special work project. Yeah.

That sounds like. And she doesn't want to, she doesn't want to speak publicly. But why can't she see her own family? You know, I mean, it's just, it's terrible.

Is there like a right to privacy and free speech thing? Seriously, would that where like the feds can't go and say, show us where your wife is because she has a right to privacy, I guess, right? The police can go in for a welfare check, but they have been so cowed by Scientology. At one point, when Leah Remini filed her missing person report in 2013, we found out later, thanks to the reporting of Yashara Lee, that the LAPD did meet with Shelley because of Leah's report. They met down the mountain in a coffee shop in Covina, and she was with Dave's attorney. And then there was a strange problem with their fingerprints. Their fingerprints turned out not to be a match. Some people say that they obviously brought a different woman. No,

I think they did bring Shelly. Did they have a criminal record of her for her fingerprints? No, she has no criminal record, but they- So how would they even know? They had it from a driver's license. California, you gotta you have to give a oh you do yeah interesting but i i just think it was they they they were too hasty on taking the fingerprint it's just a bad fingerprint but i i think it was her but it was just uh you know surprising new information that came out about a year, year and a half ago. But I'm still, I still really believe that she's alive and she's at CST, probably at the headquarters in Lake Arrowhead. She definitely was up at the one at Petrolia.

But, yeah, you know, this is amazing that the leader of this multinational, multibillionaire, multibillion organization can get away with just banishing his own wife. Well, you had mentioned that Leah said at the wedding she saw Dave playing footsie with his assistant or whatever. But is there, you know, that's a long time ago now. Is there evidence in the meantime that over the last decade and a half he's been fucking like a porn star or anything like that the only thing i have is that in 2017 um mitch brisker says that mitch brisker was like the the film director for scientology he made all their movies for a while i'm sorry

to hear that i'd never admit that out loud yeah okay and uh he he came out recently he told some very interesting stories he came out with a book i wrote about his book very good and he says that in 2017, they were going to fly over to England for that event. I've been talking about the IAS. And he was invited, do you want to go on the plane with us? Private plane would be a lot more convenient. He said, okay. So he got on a private plane and they flew from LA over to England. And he said that Dave and Lou, his communicator, were in the private cabin with the door closed overnight.

So, you know, and he has pointed out that's a violation of Sea Org rules for David Miscavige to be in a private room overnight with a woman that's not his wife. Oh, so they do have rules on that? I'm not saying anything. I'm not trying to be the moral police here, but Mitch Brisker is saying that is a violation of Sea Org rules. So they have like some similar adultery type social rules.

But this idea that Dave and Lou are an item certainly is bolstered by this 2017 event that Mitch Brisker saw and that's 12 years after Shelly's disappearance. Now it's seven years ago. I don't know if it's still the case now, but I mean, that does suggest that part of the reason that he got rid of Shelley was he wanted to be with somebody else. Have you ever talked in any way or had any form of communication with David Miscavige at any point in your time reporting? Have you ever been in a room with him? No, no. He's only given four interviews ever since 1986.

He was live on Nightline with Ted Koppel in 1992. He gave a more canned interview with NBC a couple years later. Some of that showed up in Going Clear. He gave a print interview. We just found this. We just learned this a couple weeks ago. He gave a print interview to an Austrian News Weekly in 1994. And then he gave a print interview to the Tampa Bay Times in 1998. And that's it.

He doesn't let reporters anywhere near him. And I send requests for comment to the one media person who's ever responded to me, ever, but hasn't in years, I always send requests for comment there and I get nothing back. Aless, can we pull up that Ted Koppel one? You said the second one was the one where he was more canned. Right. The first one was live with Ted Koppel on Nightline. It was kind of a disaster for him. So he's never done that again.

Ted Koppel. David Miscavige. Okay. All right. Yeah, yeah. Let's pull this up again. Ted Koppel. David Miscavige. Okay. All right. Yeah, yeah. Let's pull this up for a second. Play it. All right.

Here we go. See, they did some canned pieces about what Scientology is. The script tells the evaluators to sell hard. The more resistive, meaning resistant, or argumentative he is, the... In fact, when we come back, we'll be bringing you part two of Forrest Sawyer's report

and the first... Here we go. What exactly does the Church of Scientology believe and what can happen to those who criticize those beliefs? Once again,

here's Nightline correspondent Forrest Sawyer. Yeah, he was really upset about these canned pieces. Here's L. Ron Hubbard. Scientology's founder was a man with an imagination l ron hubbard wrote pulp science fiction for a penny a word and critics claim manufactured his own life history as well he called himself an explorer and a war hero the man who discovered the keys to the universe and used them to heal his own war injuries critics say Hubbard's claims were so fanciful

that one California Superior Court judge declared Hubbard to be, quote, virtually a pathological liar. These are a bunch of people who never caused anything in their lives to begin with. This is a guy that has spent like a dozen years in the hole. He's going to die at the base soon. Oh, he's still in. In 1950, Hubbard turned away from pulp novels with a new book that would change everything.

I thought I saw David Miscavige coming on. Do we know where that is? Yeah, just scroll forward. Yeah, scroll forward a little. Get past the packages and you'll get to. Well, use your scroll on the actual video. No, no, on the video. Just move it forward.

Yeah, let's see where this is. No, no, like use your scroller. Yeah, there you go. Perfect. All right, keep looking. Well, I'm going to say look at the chapters. I'm going to go to the chapters here. All right, do we see them?

Get it forward. Yeah, grab... There we go. Joining us live tonight is David Muscavige, whose formal title is Chairman of the Board of the Religious Technology Center, Grab El... He is 32 here. That's such a creep. L. Ron 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, you know, I guess the first thing I would like to take up is the fact of the intro piece. 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. In this instance, we did agree that we would have your correspondence committed. 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. Yeah, see, he goes after the, yeah, exactly. He goes after, this is what Hubbard instructed them to do, is to go after the messenger rather than the message.

...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 not only that, that is the source of where they received these people to talk to. They didn't find them randomly. 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 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 this show that has many detractors. Same ones. So they're not really frightened. That's a good story. It was a collection of articles that has been written about you. 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 hold water because I'll tell you from my perspective, the person getting harassed is myself and the church.

Let me give you an example. And they always say that. We didn't make access possible for Forrest. 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 this show. But I, in fact, had the highest contributors of Scientology gathered up so that Forrest 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, 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 2 000 parishioners are there any given time from all over the world in other words he would get a cross selection people from germany england california florida spain italy you name it didn't want to go. Didn't have time. So to represent also that this is what the church puts forth is, and so here's what I find wrong, and here's what I find a common mistake the media makes. I can get you 100,000 Scientologists who will say unbelievably positive things about their church to every one 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 controversy. I understand that. And if you really looked at the big picture of what's happening in Scientology, it isn't really controversial, certainly to a Scientologist. We're going to have to take a break. Very good.

Okay. All right. Let's pause it right there. It's interesting to see the psychology of him and how he rolls. But also, that's why Koppel is a genius. He really kind of let him show his own ass there but it you know when you use numbers like that right away on a church that we know isn't more than 20 40 000 people and you're like every 100 000 there's only one that's going to complain and yet constantly even under fear there's people who are coming out that would complain even back then right and and

to totally deny that there's any sort of repercussions when people could see that there's repercussions for people leaving the balls it takes to like sit there and and and do that is immense and also is he like a heavy smoker oh yeah they all are that's part one of the things about being in the sea or because you you got to smoke a lot really yeah that's like a heavy smoker? Oh, yeah. They all are. That's one of the things about being in the Sea Org is you got to smoke a lot. Really? Yeah. That's like a thing? See, they're all trying to emulate Hubbard.

They're all trying to be swaggering naval officers smoking like chimneys and, yeah, screaming at each other. And, yeah, there's a whole Hubbard. They all try to become Hubbard, basically. So smoking is a big part of it. Tom Cruise don't smoke though. He's not Sea Org. But he's Tom Cruise.

Well, yeah. I mean he's a very important – he's a very important ornament for Scientology. He doesn't run things. That's the other thing. I often see people saying that they're grooming him to be like take over. No, he's not. The only people who can run Scientology is the captain of the Sea Org. Right now, David Miscavige is the captain of the Sea Org.

And they will only replace him with somebody that's in the Sea Org. Tom Cruise is not in the Sea Org. He's never going to be in the Sea Org. And the Sea Org isn't, again, it's not like sitting on the ship, on like the Hubbard ship. No, they still call it the Sea Organization. They still wear naval uniforms, but they're no longer at sea you wear naval uniforms oh my god when he uses terms like parishioners and shit too it's just yeah it's it's so so funny but you also you had done a whole story with lisa marie presley who's now passed on. Right. And what was, I want you to explain the whole background there in a second,

but what was very interesting to me and telling was that when you found out from her when she was a child and her mother joined, they treated the mother well and they didn't really care about her until they realized she was friends with Michael Jackson, and they wanted to try to get to Michael Jackson. Right, right. Yeah, that's what she told me. I had lengthy conversations with her in 2015. I had spotted in some music she put out in 2012 that it seemed to have some lyrics that were directed at the Church of Scientology. And I thought, wow, maybe Lisa Marie is on her way out because this album has multiple songs that seem to suggest that.

And then in 2015, I actually got to talk to her and she said, yes, you were right about that. I was on my way out. But in October 2014, she had tried to have this big showdown with David Miscavige because she really didn't like the way Dave was treating his own dad, Ron Sr., who had left and was not being allowed to see his daughters. And so Lisa Marie wanted to talk to David Miscavige about that. She went down to the Flagland base in October, 2014. He refused to see her. He sent his sisters in to yell at her. She described the whole thing to me. It sounded awful. And so she went back to the hotel and she said, Tony, I told everybody

in the family I'm out. And when we were speaking in 2015, Lisa made it real clear that she had taken Priscilla and Riley out with her. She said, you guys got to come out with me. And so at that point, that was the situation. Mike Rinder also spoke to Lisa in this period. After the attempted showdown, Lisa and Riley went to this house in Nashville they were renting and called Mike. And Mike has described that phone call to me. He said, yeah, I was talking to Lisa about the same thing she talked to you about, this showdown she tried to have with Miscavige. And then at some point, she put Riley on the phone. And Mike said, I'd never talked to Riley Keough in my life.

And Lisa puts her on the phone. And he said, Mike said, Riley Keough said to him, you need to take these motherfuckers down. Whoa. So there's no question, at least at that time, 2014, 2015, Lisa was out, Riley was out, and she said Priscilla was out as well. Now, since then, I never heard from Lisa Marie again after a second phone call in 2015, and Ron Miscavige stopped hearing from her. She went through that terrible battle with Michael Lockwood over their kids. There were reports that she might have gone back to substance abuse.

It was a really rough time she was having. We weren't sure what was going on with her. And then in 2021, I reported that Riley showed up on Instagram with some photos with some Scientologist friends. So that made us wonder. And then Priscilla has really seemed to, especially in the recent months, I think in February, she visited with Gottfried Helmwein, the famous Austrian artist.

You know his stuff. He did the album covers for Rammstein. Was he in Scientology? Yeah, he's been in Scientology since the 70s. Okay. Big time Scientologist. And she was hanging out with him at his show at a museum in Vienna. And then, you know, they did that movie about her last fall, Priscilla, that was directed by Sofia Coppola.

Really? Yeah. And Sofia and Priscilla sat down and did an interview, talked about the movie, a little footage to help promote the movie. And if you look closely at that footage, she's wearing what appears to be a Scientology cross. And this is just a few months ago. Can we find this? I put it on my story.

So I've been Sophia Coppola and Priscilla Presley interview. Let's see what that does. So I forgot. So that suggests that maybe Priscilla is back in at this point. And anyway, yeah, Lisa tragically died in January 2023. I had never gotten to talk to her again. But I did have my notes from those interviews. And so I wrote the story about she told me about her involvement in Scientology.

She told me about how much she loved Michael Jackson and that it was Scientology that forced her to divorce him. So they – because he wouldn't, got it. Yeah. And just a lot of really interesting things. No, that's not it. Is that it? No. It's a lot of plastic.

No. It's Priscilla and Sophia. Oh. Yeah, I think it was pulling up some of the other it's just the two of them it's Priscilla and that's no that's not it that's not the one though that one's

a Hollywood reporter there's footage they did together the two of them ah shoot I guess Scientology couldn't save her from a bad plastic surgery play that one and see that doesn't look familiar but

I don't think that's the one yeah I don't know if you can see a cross there there's another one that they did enter something it's on YouTube might not be that's fine but either way so you spotted this and yeah yeah and it looks like scientology cross she's wearing that's just a couple months ago or

the last year so uh anyway uh but yeah this i was very fortunate that lisa told me as much she did about um david miscavige uh about mich Jackson, about Scientology, really interesting stuff. And that's at my sub stack if you want to take a look at that. Okay. And we had gotten off it earlier. We went, I think we went down the rabbit hole with David Miscavige when we started talking about his father, Ron, and how he left in 2012. And Ron just recently passed away in the last couple of years. when when his father left ron went on a public crusade to out scientology and obviously like they had no more relationship what was you know did you have an opportunity to talk with ron a bunch yeah what was what do you think

you said i think you said earlier like he just couldn't take it anymore and he left but like what what was going through his mind knowing that his son still ran it? It is his son. Yeah. No, it was tough for him. It was tough for him. I first learned that Ron Miscavige Sr. had escaped from Scientology the same week the news broke that Tom and Katie had split up. That was some crazy week, man. That was 2012.

And then I started to hear from Ron personally, privately, about a year after that, we started talking, but he didn't want to say anything publicly until his book came out. And then his book came out, and then he went on a media tour and everything. And then we could talk openly about things. But one of the most fascinating things that happened, of course, when Ron Miscavige escapes. How did he escape? That was – remember I said he was sending out – he and his wife were sending out birthday presents? Oh, that's right. That was them.

Yes. They mailed birthday presents and then they just – they drove out. He knew that the guards would assume he was on some mission for Scientology, and they just got in the car and drove away. But then he was subjected to surveillance, and this is a really great story, is that – remember I told you about those guys that their job was to follow Pat Broker and never – so that Pat Broker never knew it. Well, David Miscavige did the same thing with his dad. He put this father-son private investigator duo on his own dad, and their mission was to follow Ron Miscavige, report on everything he was doing to Dave, but don't let Ron know he's being followed. Like I said, they do have investigations they call noisy investigations where they want let Ron know he's being followed. Like I said, they do have investigations.

They call noisy investigations where they want you to know he's being followed. But their instructions were strict. Do not let Ron know he's being followed. So they attached a homing device on his car so they could just trail him wherever he drove. That's illegal, right? Well, I don't know. It depends on the state. It was in Wisconsin.

He was living in Wisconsin at the time. When he went to – he would go to a local restaurant. They'd sit a few booths over and try to eavesdrop on him. And they were keeping tabs on him. And then one day, Ron was coming out, I think, of Walmart. And he was walking across the parking lot. At that point, I think he was 77, around there. And these guys are watching from a distance with binoculars and stuff. And all of a sudden,

Ron's doing this. He's grabbing his chest, right? They think he's having a heart attack right there in the middle of the parking lot. Well, he was trying to find his phone, right? So they feel like they have a dilemma. They're not supposed to let anybody know what they're doing, but he's dying. So they call their handler in Florida and say, we need to talk to Miscavige. What do we do? And so they patched him through to David Miscavige and asked him, sir, what do we do? And they claim David Miskavage's exact words were if he dies he dies now the reason we know all this was that it's a little while later um they were hanging out in the neighborhood to watch ron and they looked suspicious these two guys in their suv or

whatever and so some neighbor called a cop and a cop came over to check them out. What are you guys doing? Looked in the car, an arsenal of weapons. Okay. And now look, this is the United States of America. It's not that unusual in Wisconsin for guys to have some guns in their car. But when they looked at it a little more carefully, they realized they had a homemade silencer for a rifle.

Oh. That's a federal offense. That's 10 years in prison, right? 10 years in prison. Exactly. Really? That's what he was facing. Yeah.

Oh, shit. So now they're in big trouble. And that's why Dwayne and Daniel Powell spilled their guts to a cop. It's all on tape. It's all been – I'm talking about how – Do we have that tape? We do, and I'm going to tell you how in a minute. So Dwayne and Daniel Powell

spill their guts about, oh yeah, we're being paid $10,000 a week. We have to follow Ron Miscavige. We have to report to David Miscavige. He's a leader of Scientology. This is his father. He wants him followed. I mean, they just lay it all out, right? And Dwayne Powell's facing 10 years in prison for having that

silencer. So that's all sitting in a police report. I don't know, six months later, it's on the front page of the LA Times. Who do you think made that happen? Lisa Marie Presley. Oh shit, that was her? Yes.

How did she make it happen? She heard about it from Ron because Ron was told about it. She called Rinder. Rinder gave her advice. She hired an attorney to get the police material, get the police report, and got it sent to the LA Times. The LA Times wrote their story.

I later got the actual tapes and published the actual tapes. So you can hear the Powells spilling their guts on my website. And it's all thanks to Lisa Marie Presley. She was going – there we go. There we go. Audio. Right.

All right. Let's play this real quick. We just had – okay. There's a video right here. I hope the audio is still there. There we go. Yeah. They're on YouTube.

I put them on YouTube. Play the first one. I put them on YouTube. No, no. Not that one. The one above it. Yeah. still there. There we go. Yeah, they're on YouTube. I put them on YouTube. Play the first one. I put them on YouTube. No, no, not that one. The one above it. Yeah. That one. You can see the cop there holding the silencer.

All right. Let's turn this on and see what it is. Do you know where we should play this in there? No, it's basically here. I've been talking to your father. Basically, he's working. There's a cliche that he's working this case you guys are working on and in doing so

yeah he's doing it ended up prowling look at the size of that he gets arrested we've been talking he's laid out a lot of details to us about what he's doing why for who he's not laying any details out about anything he's doing for who or why confidentiality agreement he breaks

that confidentiality agreement we get sued i'm not gonna give you any details that's the son he's like, well, Dad just did. First of all, slow yourself down. You're not calling shit here. Well, here's the thing. You're not just going to walk in here and get information and walk away happy. That's not how it works. This is Wisconsin. Yes, we know what your dad is working on.

Who's he working for? Church of Scientology through another private investigation firm who was retained by an attorney who was retained by David. Okay, well, why can't I talk to him? I've been worried about my dad all day. That's why I'm so upset. We're in the midst of explaining that to you, okay? But your dad's got a bunch of

crap in his car that should have been in his car as well. Okay? And I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. What? Well, these are things that we're going to talk about. Anyway. All right, let's pause that.

Yeah, so this is, we'll put that link in the description. This is 54 minutes right there. They're very, very nervous. They're in a very bad position. And so they end up spilling their guts. And like I said, they tell the whole thing. Yeah, we're getting paid $10,000 a week to follow Ron Scabbage, paid by his dad. $10,000 a week? I might take this job. I don't know.

It was such a major hit and it was such a clean... See, what I loved about Lisa Marie's genius was I think she knew that the LA Times at one time had been the best paper for covering Scientology. In the 90s, they were the best. They were uncovering incredible stuff. But by this time, by 2013, the LA Times seemed less interested and they weren't doing too much. And so to give it to them, to break that major story, genius, genius.

Lisa Marie Presley was such a nightmare for David Miscavige at that point. But I think that, I'm sorry, this arrest happened in 2013. I think it came out, the story came out in 2015. So why, isn't there some sort of conspiracy type charge there, given that David hired private investigators carrying illegal weapons to track his father within range with the connotation that perhaps they would at some point be shooting to kill? Dude, there was a laptop they seized that would have had all of Scientology's secret undercover private investigator operations on it.

I tried to get that disc that they – it's such a – Wait, they seized it off these guys? Yeah. So they have that? They had that. And they downloaded all the data from it. And it's been a few years. It's hard for me to explain exactly what happened. But Scientology was so devious in the way they made sure that none of that information got out public. It was so infuriating.

They had a cop – they had an attorney lying to a judge and they managed to get it all hidden. But this was an incredible moment where a small Wisconsin police department had Scientology by the short hair. And somehow they got away. And they got away. That's mysterious. No, I wrote a whole story about that somewhere else. I had to review that story.

It's been so long, but I remember it was so infuriating. And it definitely involved an attorney lying to a court and risking being disbarred by the way he lied to the court in order to get that material buried. And there was still a small chance we might be able to get that material, but it just didn't work out. And I tried to get Ron to help me. And I think Ron, by that time, was kind of tired of all the stuff he'd been through. It was really difficult. But yeah, amazing, amazing moment. And I just wanted people to know that we only know about that case. We only know about, hear that audio.

We only know that Ron Miscavige was being followed by these guys thanks to Lisa Marie Presley. Do we, again, like David is still Ron's son. Was there, you know, in the 10 years or so before he died that he was out and trying to do something about this did he have empathy for the idea that like he got his son into it when he was young and so he doesn't know any better he talked about that all the time he talked about how bad he felt that he got dave into scientology and and that he really he really felt that Dave was a good boy and it was sad to see him turn out so bad, but that he had no question that now he was this ruthless leader

that was kind of soulless. And to a certain extent, Ron blamed himself. It was kind of sad. Yeah. It's like a real American tragedy right there to see that get sucked into a cult you pull the family in a year old when you finally realize that you know how much time left and then fuck your son's like the head of it oh and and and when ron got out david miscavige made sure that the retaliation against him was some of the worst I've ever seen. I mean, they just threw everything at him.

They made all these terrible accusations about him. Like what? You know, that there was this – okay, for example, for Halloween, he put on some kind of a stupid Nazi guard uniform or something. So they made sure, you know, put that out and everything. I mean, just stupid stuff. And there was an accusation that there was a woman that – well, first of all, that he had beat his wife, right? Which Ron talked about in the book, said, look, it was a, that he had beat his wife, right? Which Ron talked about in

the book, said, look, it was a different time in the 50s, and I got rough with my wife, and I shouldn't have, and it's a shortcoming of mine. That's a bad start. So, you know. But I'm just saying that they just went after him so hard all the time. All right, so they had some legit stuff, though Okay, alright. I still think no matter what, and he died while his son's still in charge and probably never going to get out. That is certainly

very tragic and I guess he was in young, but it just it's wild to me how many, obviously that's like the head of the whole thing, but it's wild to me how many stories there are. And Mark Bunker outlined a lot of them when he was here where it is the family's in and they get ripped apart when one decides to leave and the others don't. I think you mentioned it with Mike Rinder.

His four kids are still in there. His two adult children are still in there. Right. No, he has four new – But he has two – he has a new family. Right. And have you ever talked with his two adult children are still in there. Right, now he has four new... But he has two... He has a new family. Right. And have you ever talked with his two adult children?

No, no, no. They would never talk to you, right? No, no, no. But that's... So their dad... Did they know their dad was in the hole for a long time? Oh, that's a good question. Did Taryn and Benjamin know that Mike was in the hole?

I doubt it. Because, you know, you just, look, they were all lifers. You know, you just, you don't see your other, you know, your parent or your sibling, and you just figure they're on an assignment somewhere, you know. I don't think they would have been told he was in the hole. Mike might say differently, but I don't think his kids knew that he was in the hole mike mike mike mike mike might say differently but i i don't think his kids knew that he was in the hole at the time but they know now because he wrote about well i mean now there's still the information they're given is so shielded i don't know how much they know are they in the c-org uh i'm pretty sure benjamin is i'm i'm pretty sure Benjamin is. I'm not sure if Taryn is.

So if he's not, though, he lives among us like a normal person, he can type into Google, right? I mean, they use those two kids to attack him. And she's made lots of videos and she's appeared at places. I mean, she's clearly on a program to try to destroy him so do we have videos of her talking about her father probably if you type in tarryn render tarryn render t-e-u-t-s-c-h is her last name oh so she married somebody i guess okay so So Taryn talking about Mike Rinder. So is this like through official Scientology videos or like out in media?

No, official Scientology videos. All right. Are we finding anything? POW videos, I call them. POW videos? Yeah. Oh, that's good. I'm going to start calling them that too.

Yeah. So they don't... That's so but could you imagine your dad has cancer and you're like no I don't talk to him anymore you know like there's some things in life where it's like

T-A-R-Y-N T-E-U-T-S-C-H would it be on YouTube? maybe cause that other one was on Vimeo. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like, while Alessi's trying to pull that up, like, there's some things in life that are just simply

bigger, you know, and you would think you're, like, going to forgive certain things. Yeah, there you go. Alright, here we go. Let's play it. I firstly wanted to thank my hundreds of supporters who have written in, responding to my Facebook and my blog and my videos because I really appreciate the support

because it's the people that are going to make a difference and all of us actually making Disney listen up and do the right thing and Fire Mike Rinder is going to make, you know, your support really helps me. So thank you very much. I do appreciate it. Wow. Wait, Disney needed to Fire Mike Rinder? Well, because the Leah Remini series was on A&E, which was owned by Disney or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm sure that convinced them right there. I'm sure they were out right when you heard that. So you were in the Alex Gibney Going Clear documentary, though. Yeah, yeah. What made Alex want to cover that story so badly? He did an amazing job he's a great documentarian but what what alex gibney and lawrence wright had already done something previously uh lawrence wright um had an incredible book kind of explaining the um background to uh

osama bin laden in looming tower looming tower and. And Lawrence Wright and Alex Gibney had collaborated on something about that. Yes. Alex is one of the best documentary makers in the world. And so when he came out, when the book Going Clear came out in 2013, they decided to do something together on that too. And I don't know.

I'm so lucky. They asked me to come on and interview me about some of the things. And they allowed me to – I got to tell about two things mainly. The IRS thing about getting tax exempt status and Tom Cruise. They used me to kind of introduce Tom Cruise. They used me to kind of introduce Tom Cruise. And, you know, they told us they were filming it in like April or May 2014. And then they were telling us, it's going to come out at Sundance. I was like, oh, I'd like to go to Sundance. They said, well, you know, if you can get yourself there, you get to go.

I said, oh, okay. So I paid for my flight, you know. That's all right. That's all right. And went to Sundance

and they had to put it in the biggest venue because there was so much demand. People wanted to be at the premiere. And there were, you know, people like, Alec Baldwin was there

and they were, they were so. Anti-Scientologist Alec Baldwin was there and there were some anti-Scientologist Alec Baldwin let's go alright anyway big crowd and I didn't know what to expect

they asked me to give a few interviews on the red carpet and stuff I figured I'm in there for 30 seconds and then I was in a lot more than I expected. I was surprised.

I was, it was, wow, it was kind of thrilling, but, uh, really, you know,

it's really more about the Scientologists that had come forward, Jason Begay and Spanky Taylor. And of course, Mike Rinder. Spanky Taylor was the assistant for. Travolta. Right. Okay.

And, uh, so it was, it was an emotional night. It was, it was something else to see that film. And Alex had done such a great job with it. So, yeah, I was thrilled to be a part of it.

And I just like the fact that I got to introduce Tom Cruise. Yeah, that's pretty cool. And, like, obviously you've covered that for a while. And when we had Mark in here, Mark was the guy who leaked those videos back in what, like 2008? Yeah. Yeah. Which are just incredible. Incredible videos.

To watch. But is there – I've always kind of wondered this. I think our mind goes here with a lot of these things. It doesn't mean it's what it is. But whenever I look at cults and you've seen so many of them that kind of go this way, is there like any weird sexual innuendo to, to Scientology itself? Like, is there any form of like sex cult within it? You know, that's, what's interesting is that, look, it's based in California and Florida. It's kind of out of the sixties and seventies. And so I think a lot of people sort of automatically assume it's some kind of a hippie free love kind of out of the 60s and 70s and so i think a lot of people sort of automatically assume it's

some kind of a hippie free love kind of thing julian it's a business cult they are their fetish is business rules they're obsessed with business administration it's the most i i don't understand how people die don't die of boredom inology. I mean you're reading all this crap. You're doing these exercises that are mindless and they're obsessed with the absolute best way to run a business. There's very – and they're very uptight. Now, you talk to some Scientologists, they'll say, yeah, definitely in the 70s there were a lot of people hooking up and it was part of the counterculture. But today, no, no, no, no. It's very conservative. It's a fundamentalist religion. It's a fundamentalist group. They, you know, they... You're giving them too much credit. Keep going though.

No, but they, you know, and people get married very young in the Sea Org because one of the reasons is that, okay, people – they supposedly are not bringing in 12, 13, 14-year-olds anymore. Now it's – That's who was around Hubbard, right? Now it's 18-year-olds. Well, I've seen some 16, 17-year-olds. But it's still – but they're pretty young. And you go into the Sea Org and you're a guy. You're assigned a room that's got sets of bunk beds, and you've got

like six guys in a room with one bathroom, right? Yeah, imagine. And that's day after day after day after day after day. There's no privacy. It's just awful. They get married at 18 because then at least a married couple gets their own room. They might have to share. It might be an apartment with four other couples. You're still sharing, but at least you get a private room with your wife. So that's why they get married very, very young because the alternative is just awful. That's like a strange reason, like the way they set that up.

But they want them married. And they don't want them having kids. But not having kids. So they're handing out condoms at the door and birth control pills. Well, it's, you know, don't you dare. If you get her pregnant, you guys are both being shipped off to Siberia. They're like that about it. Yeah.

They'll put you in the hole with your kid. Well, they've been forcing women to have abortions for decades. What? Yeah. No, this has been established, well-established. Women are coerced into having abortions. And multiple women have come forward. Claire Headley was forced to have two of them.

Oh, my God. Yeah. And they've talked about this publicly. Not only are there no kids, but when the women get pregnant, they are under incredible pressure to have abortions. I know. But when the women get pregnant, they are under incredible pressure to have abortions. I've never heard – like actually, let's speak their language and say from a business perspective. This makes no sense. Like don't you want – and hey, I'm happy they're not bringing – I'm not happy to hear they're forcing abortions and all.

That's horrible. But like I guess the next generation, they're not crazy about bringing into it. I guess that's a win for people. But like that's how you don't survive. You're right. You're exactly right. But they've got this mentality in the Sea Org that they're racing to save the planet. And the way they're racing to save the planet is by bringing these people in to do their bridge, to do their auditing, to get to follow all these rules Hubbard set down.

And it's an 18-hour-a-day job. They barely have time to do any sleep. You wouldn't have time to raise kids. That's the idea. You just don't have time. 18-hour-a-day job. Oh, yeah. They work day and night.

They got almost no sleep. To do what? I know. That's what people always ask. What do they do in Sea Org? Well, they have people doing auditing and cramming and, you know, testing and it's just all mindless

garbage. It's nothing. But when you're in it, it all feels like it's the most important thing in the world and it's all last second and you got to do it now, now, now, now, now. And it gives them some sense of like they feel like they're in control for some reason. Even though they're completely controlled. They feel like they have the only secrets to the universe and they are the only ones that's going to save this planet.

And if they aren't working at 80 miles an hour day and night every day, then the planet is going to collapse. What about Scientologists who marry non-Scientologists? It can be really tough. It happens and they can work it out, but it can be very tough. They really want you to marry fellow Scientologists. Not. They really want you to marry fellow Scientologists. Not only do they want you to marry fellow Scientologists, they want you, especially if you're an employee, like in the staff or in the Sea Org, to marry somebody in your particular strata. So that was one of the pressures. Slim pickings.

That was one of the pressures that was on Mark and Claire was that Claire had been promoted to this one area and Mark wasn't. And so there's a lot of pressure to get divorced. So they go through a lot of divorces and marriages in Scientology. Oh, so they pressure them to divorce if they change status. Yes, they're in different areas, right. And the divorce, obviously it's all done legally through like the US or something in that case. Well, yeah. I mean, it's not that hard to get a divorce in the United States. That's true. That's true. There was one recently, and I have not done my own homework on it or anything, but there was something a little while back with a woman who went viral on TikTok as a single mom where she was making her own birthday cake and crying or something. He denies that he's a Scientologist. She said that he was a Scientologist. He has now denied that.

Okay. And when you say that, we're talking about her ex-husband who then responded and tried to paint her as crazy. Elizabeth Tekkenbrock, and she made that video, 30 seconds long, 45 million views on TikTok. He then responded and said, she's not who you think she is. She's been arrested. She's lost custody of her kids. She faked cancer, et cetera, et cetera. She then came back and said, yeah, he's been saying these things about me for years because that's what Scientologists do.

People were like, whoa, Scientologists. And her proof was that on a website about her, there was a link to a Scientology website. I went and checked it out. She's right. There is a link on that website. He denies that he put up the website and he denies he's a Scientologist. I cannot find yet any independent corroboration that he's a Scientologist. He lives in Hillsborough County though, right? Well, he was working in Clearwater, right there. Not looking good for a buddy. So, well, and she was married to him and when she

says he was a scientologist so i at this point i'm still reserving judgment i'm not sure that that he was scientologist or not however you know if you look back you go back over the things he's posted he's not looking too good either and i mean you know it's just a shame that these two people are having this awful fight in public like this yeah that's terrible i i'll reserve some judgment too i guess because like i said i i haven't looked into it enough but some of the some of the shit doesn't look great but i said the woman's name i should also say the man's name his name is andrew cormier he's a optometrist okay got it so do you think that people who exist in a brainwash cult like this removing the fact that some of them are forced to marry or incentivized to marry people that

they probably don't even like just because like they're there in the same room with them or some shit like that removing that and looking at maybe the people who aren't in the c-org who live out among people and really date and stuff like that. Do you think that people who are consumed by a business fundamentalist-oriented cult like this have any capacity for love? Do they know what that is? You know, it's often been pointed out. Hubbard came up with something he called the tone scale. He believed that there was a way to reduce human emotions to a numeral, and that hate was a certain number and envy was a certain number. And the Scientologist could then

use that to help them communicate with people so that if somebody was at a certain number on the tone scale, if you address them at that tone yourself, yeah, exactly. It's just all nonsense. But multiple people have pointed out that on that whole tone scale of emotion, from high levels of emotion to low level, the word love never appears. And so who knows? But I mean, Hubbard, this is also something the Church of Scientology never talks about. You cannot find anything about it on their website. He had three different wives.

He had seven different children. Yeah. It's all erased from scientology's websites and it's that's what i'm it seems like you're not in a position to be able to and i feel such empathy for this for for the people in it like you're not in a position to be able to feel real human emotion you're kind of they they put you in a place where quite literally you're operating outside your body i think the visual of trying to find the thetans on you like i'm going to take that a step farther and say it's almost like you have to look at yourself

and look at where the thetans are almost takes your soul out of like you understand what i'm saying that is a fundamental concept in scientology. It's called exteriorization. The goal of going through these exercises is so that you can exteriorize. Because remember, you're a thetan. You're not this body. And ultimately, you want to be able to experience the world as a thetan, pure spirit form outside of this thing we're walking around in. So you're right. Exteriorization is a major concept in Scientology

and a major goal. Takes you away from your spirit. The other thing I was going to say is that all Scientologists will tell you that if you're doing Scientology properly, all your emotions will go away. You will become an emotionless human being. Oh, and that's a goal. That's what they want. That's what makes life good. And that's what, when people cut out of Scientology, they'll tell you, they start to feel their emotions coming back. And that's, that's crazy though, because that, emotions are what make life great. And that includes all of them. Including the negative ones. You know what the first thing you do in Scientology?

The very first thing? It's called TR0. You sit down, they have you sit down in a chair, you and me like this, except we'd be closer. Our knees would almost be touching. And then we just stare at each other. And we just stare and stare. I think at first, very first with your eyes closed, and then with your eyes open, and you just try to stare as long as you can without blinking. And then after that, they move on to something called bull baiting, where you would try to hold as still as possible, staring staring at me and I would hurl insults at you and try to make you flinch.

And if you could just hold perfectly still, you would succeed. Now, at the end of doing that for hours and hours and days and days, what do you end up with? You end up with the person that can just do this incredible emotionless robot stare. Rockwall. Yeah. Controllable. And that's when you're dealing with a scientologist wow that makes a lot of sense for like said like you'll see some of the confrontations that happen and these people seem in wow that's i can't imagine that i i i the fact that that's a goal to be to be emotionless it's like when people say oh i want a world with just all winning listen we all want a world without wars and shit like that i'm with you but like it is the fact that

life can go either way in cruel ways and great ways that makes ironically life worth living and when you remove that for this utopian thing it's not, the human function is not meant for that environment. Yeah, yeah. So what do you think the future of Scientology is with an organization size as small as it is in the social media era where people can share some of these things in an era where Leah Romany has left and gone all out. Guys like Gibney have made documentaries. People like you exist writing about this every day. Where do you see Scientology

20 years from now? I mean, I think there's no question in the time that I've been watching them, there's been a lot of change in the way the press has covered it, the way that the public seems to be much more up on it, much more than before. It's become more and more tough for Scientology to do any kind of recruiting because the word is out. On the other hand, they are so determined and resilient, and they just will never give up. And they have a lot of money, and they still today are able to have influence on law enforcement agencies, politicians, businesses. And, you know, we talked about it earlier.

Where's the government? I mean, it's so obvious these abuses have been going on. Nothing's been done. So on the one hand, I see more and more people saying, oh, Scientology's days are numbered. It's in big trouble. On the other hand, I keep seeing them win in court in ways that are kind of shocking. And so I don't know. David Miscavige, as long as David Miscavige has a big pile of money and a bunch of attorneys that will do anything he wants, I think they're going to be around. Are there any candidates that you know of behind him if he died or moved out of the way that you think could be as ruthless?

Or is this unknown? You know, there were several people that he had around him as lieutenants. And then he put them all in the hole. So it's been a few years. But one of the more recent defectors I asked him that question. And he was saying, Tony, you know, they've gotten rid of just about anybody. At this point, the only person I think that is, we could even be thought of as a number two is a woman in Los Angeles named Carrie Ellis. I said, who? And he said, yeah, exactly. Nobody's heard of her. But that, I mean, they're down to like, there's just nobody. And then,

you know, if David Miscavige was the subject of an investigation or was somehow removed, I think Scientology would have a really hard time doing again what they did before. Listen, when L. Ron Hubbard died, there was a good chance that it was over for Scientology. But they managed to survive that. David Miscavige, you got to give him credit. He not only managed to get them past that, they happened to bring in Tom Cruise right at that time. And then they managed to get tax exempt status. So that kept them going, and now it's 30 years later. If there was another crisis, would they do as well?

Maybe not this time. Well, it's all extremely fascinating to cover. I will say that. Your sub stack has some amazing stories. Thank you. You're right at the, you're at the middle of pretty much all of it. You look at any big story over the past, especially decade and a half,

like you've been right there. So we will have the link to your sub stack down below, along with any other socials you want on there, but we're gonna have to do this again at some point. There's always new stories, but thanks so much for coming in, Tony. Right on.

Thanks, Julian. All right, everybody else, you know what it is. Give it a thought. Get back to me. Peace.

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