Inside Scientology - Janet Reitman [74]
Within weeks, more Scientology officials had been removed, including Hubbard's longtime public relations adviser, Laurel Sullivan, who was accused of "spying" on the Commodore's Messenger Organization for the Guardian's Office. Both Sullivan and Voegeding had been close to Mary Sue, whom Miscavige and Pat Broeker had mutually declared a "criminal."
Now, with the Controller out of the way and some of her key supporters sidelined, David Miscavige and his allies in the All Clear Unit embarked on a brutal purge of most the Guardian's Office, stripping hundreds of people of their positions with no warning. Also removed were many other Sea Org executives who'd had nothing to do with intelligence activities but who, like Sullivan and Voegeding, had simply been close to L. Ron Hubbard or his wife. Over the next year, Miscavige, on orders from Hubbard, accused hundreds of Scientology officials of crimes ranging from stealing church funds, to disobeying Hubbard's instructions, to being on the payroll of "external influences" such as the CIA.
The "crims," as Miscavige and his associates called these officials, were summoned to Gilman Hot Springs, where the Messengers, led by Miscavige, ordered them to scrub floors, eat table scraps out of buckets, and sleep on the floor, watched over by armed guards. They were also made to endure hours of interrogation, sometimes performed by up to six Messengers at once. These were known as "gang bang" security checks.
Here is how Homer Schomer, once a chief financial officer for the Church of Scientology, described one of several gang-bang security checks he was given in the early 1980s: "It lasted from about ten o'clock in the evening to eight o'clock in the morning ... During this time I was just bombarded with these questions asking who I was working for. Was I working for the CIA? Was I a plant? Was I working for the FBI? Where was all the money I stole? Where were all the jewels I stole?"
Those officials who didn't answer the Messengers' questions were slapped, shoved, punched, and sometimes locked in a room for hours. Often, the person being grilled would answer, the reply would be belittled, and the abuse would continue. "It was horrible what went on," recalled Larry Brennan, who was asked to participate in a gang-bang "sec check" and refused. "They wanted me to scream at some poor guy they said owed money to Hubbard. I said no and walked out. I always refused to do the abuses, but I saw it happen. They knew that if they screamed in your face loud enough and intimidated you enough, you would come out with some crime. I'd never heard of anything like that [in Scientology] before."
Many Scientology executives, broken by this treatment, admitted to a wide range of criminal acts, if only to make the interrogation stop. A good number were then assigned to do menial labor while awaiting judgment before a Scientology tribunal called a Committee of Evidence, which was often assembled by Miscavige. A Commodore's Messenger named Mark Fisher, then the head of Miscavige's household unit and his administrative chief, was chosen as a juror on several of these tribunals, in which the E-meter, now serving as a true "lie detector," proved to be a remarkably efficient, if biased, judge. Almost everyone who went in front of one of these tribunals, said Fisher, was found guilty and denounced as a traitor.
"It was completely surreal and just appalling," said Fisher, a heavy-set, good-tempered man. Just a single negative thought—about L. Ron Hubbard, David Miscavige, or anything else that might be viewed as critical of Scientology—would be discovered by the E-meter and "boom, you were denounced and out of there." (Fisher, who'd joined the Sea Org in Clearwater the same year as Miscavige, was