Inside Scientology - Janet Reitman [83]
At Newberry Springs, Broeker had a small staff of aides who came and went. Annie Broeker had a retinue as well, including the Sea Org officials Vicki Aznaran and Jesse Prince, her deputies at the RTC. With Pat Broeker issuing orders from this remote location, and Annie declining to say much of anything, David Miscavige, notably unmentioned in the "Sea Org and the Future," faced little competition for center stage.
Hubbard's daughters Diana and Suzette, once looked upon as Scientology royalty, were given low-ranking jobs at Int: Diana became a film editor, and Suzette served as a laundress, assigned to wash David Miscavige's shirts. Anyone at Int or at Scientology's base in Los Angeles who seemed sympathetic to Pat Broeker was also demoted, while those who remained loyal to Miscavige were elevated within Author Services. One who fell into the latter camp was ASI's legal executive, Mark "Marty" Rathbun.
A tall, reserved, steely-eyed man, Rathbun was known within the Sea Org as Miscavige's "enforcer." He'd joined Scientology as a twenty-year-old, in 1977, having become interested in Hubbard's ideas, he'd later say, out of concern for his brother, who was at the time a psychiatric patient at Dammasch State Hospital in Wilsonville, Oregon, suffering from schizophrenia. "I was kind of afraid he was going to wind up living the rest of his life in the back ward, so I was seeking some tools and some answers on how I might be able to [help] him," Rathbun told the St. Petersburg Times in 2009. A Scientology recruiter he'd met on the street recommended he read Dianetics, and Rathbun signed up to take Scientology's basic communication course. By January 1978, he had signed a billion-year Sea Org contract, and by the end of that year he was dispatched to the Winter Headquarters ranch at La Quinta.
Hubbard was just leaving the ranch for his apartment in Hemet when Rathbun arrived; the two were never personally acquainted. But Rathbun soon got to know David Miscavige. Though he was quieter and more intellectual than the hotheaded "Action Chief," Rathbun, who'd played a few years of college basketball, bonded with the younger man over sports. In January 1981, the two drove from Los Angeles to New Orleans to see Miscavige's beloved Philadelphia Eagles play in the Super Bowl. The Eagles lost, but Rathbun and Miscavige, then twenty-four and twenty-one, formed a lasting friendship.
A talented strategist, Rathbun soon became a key member of Miscavige's All Clear Unit. In 1983 he'd helped dismantle the Guardian's Office, replacing it with a new legal and investigative body known as the Office of Special Affairs. Mike Rinder, another Commodore's Messenger, would ultimately become head of OSA, but Rathbun, who also had a gift for subversive tactics, would direct legal and investigative strategy as Miscavige's point man and, crucially, became the executive to whom Miscavige turned when he wanted an enemy investigated or an associate "de-powered," as some Scientology executives referred to it.
It had already dawned on Miscavige that Pat Broeker was anointed in name only. As the emissary to L. Ron Hubbard, he had never been a part of Scientology's official management structure and remained off its organizational chart. He had been removed from the day-to-day operations of Scientology for seven years. Half of the staff at Int and at the base in Los Angeles had never met him or heard of him.
Now Miscavige's loyalists launched a whisper campaign that asserted that Broeker, far from a "loyal officer," was actually a thief and an alcoholic, unfit to command. And indeed, life at