Ruthless (16 page)

Finally, four hours after his scheduled arrival, Tom appeared but told Greg that he just wanted to settle in and get to bed and that he and Dave could meet the next morning. When Greg delivered the news to David, he hit the roof. However, things smoothed out the next day, and Dave and Tom hit it off.

Up on the hillside, behind a house that had been prepared for Hubbard to live in (but was never used), stood a crude rifle range. David had developed an interest in guns at one point, perhaps a delayed reaction from when I took him shooting when he was about eight. He and Tom used the range and had a great time. Several days before Tom's next visit, he made David a present of an automated skeet launcher to replace the manually operated one they had used on Tom's first trip.
David
immediately called for a complete renovation of the shooting range and had work crews up day and night for three days totally redoing it, including adding a bunker for the new skeet launcher. The purpose was solely to impress Tom Cruise.

I did not see them interact much, but I have been told that they developed a sort of brotherly competitive spirit, each trying to outdo the other. One time, they allegedly raced through Los Angeles in separate cars, running red lights, each trying to beat the other to their destination.

David's obsession with winning at all costs manifested in other ways too. He returned from a vacation to Pennsylvania one year and brought back the game Trivial Pursuit. It was all the rage at the time, but he found it nearly impossible because, while he was always bright, his general knowledge of geography, literature, the arts and so on was lacking because he never finished school. Other close associates of his were similarly ignorant, so when Dave played Trivial Pursuit, he always insisted that his team include a staff member who was up on popular culture and general knowledge to ensure that he always won.

Given all that, Dave's preoccupation with winning ties in with the analysis that follows. In 1953, Hubbard wrote an essay in which he detailed characteristics of a toxic personality type. He listed the following traits as indicative of such a personality (and here I am paraphrasing the original). Each point is followed by a father's analysis.

1. If something unfortunate happens to a person, the toxic personality thinks that the misfortune is either ridiculous, a mere trifle, or that the person deserves it.
   

I once contracted scabies from sleeping on an unclean mattress at Gold. Scabies is a contagious itch caused by a tiny mite that gets under the skin. It is horrible. The itching drives you nuts. I saw Dave while I was infected, and he shouted, “Don't get near me! Stay away from me!” He was afraid that I might infect him. He had no concern for me at all. It was all about him. The infection got so bad that I left the base and stayed with a Scientologist in LA, where I could lie out in the sun to help kill the mites.

1. If someone does something to the toxic personality, the toxic person always regards what happened as extremely important and egregiously bad and thinks the damage can never be overcome.
   

A common complaint of David's was how overloaded he was with work sent to him by staff from the various units on the base. His office building was called Building 50 (based on its designation on a property use plan), and it had a large open conference room on the ground floor. He regularly brought the musicians to that room and showed us the heavy cardboard boxes of submissions lined up around its perimeter. “Look at this,” he would bark. “Look at the crap I get from you guys. I have to check everything because nobody on the entire base can be trusted. Look what you are doing to me!”

That was a standard refrain: how overworked he was because he was the only one who could be counted on to get things done.

If David ever felt that someone had crossed him, that person would go into his black book forever. You could never mitigate the damage to David if you got on his bad side. No amends would ever be acceptable. One example was Marc Yager, a onetime friend of David's who served for years as the head of the CMO and worked with David in RTC as Inspector General for Administration. Marc was the poor sap who spent that whole year living in the swamp at Gold after he crossed David, although no one ever learned exactly what had happened. Some years later, when I needed to make up for something David regarded as damaging to him, Marc told me (in exactly these words): “I don't know how you are ever going to make up the damage to COB.”

Even those convicted of crimes in courts of law can pay their debt to society and go on with their lives. Not so with David. He will hold a grudge until the end of time.

1. Anything that another person can do is without real value, according to the toxic personality, or can be done better by someone else.
   

Because of my sales experience, I helped the salespeople in Los Angeles improve their skills at David's behest. I trained them by using simple Scientology principles such as having good communication, getting agreement bit by bit, and so on. Every person I trained wound up being able to sell.

Later, when I was no longer doing that training, sales began to flag in some areas. When Dave learned that the organizations were naming me as the person who had helped them, his comment was “Come on, man. I could fart more sales than you.”

This speaks to perhaps the worst thing that anybody in an executive position can do. A good organization will always be stronger and more effective than a single individual, no matter how capable that individual is. A manager can wreck an organization by destabilizing the line of
authority—by
reaching down to lower echelons and bypassing those who are supposed to have authority over the area. I observed David for nearly 27 years in the Sea Org, and this was his
stock-in
-trade
: jumping the chain of command.

He might be riding around the base on his motorcycle when he spotted one of the gardeners. He would go over and talk to her and verbally give her an order to do something that was completely off that day's
to-do
list. It might not even be her job, yet he would expect her to do it. Let's count the number of echelons jumped in this simple
one-minute
conversation: the gardener's direct supervisor, the head of the grounds department, the head of the Estates Division, that person's direct senior supervisor, the head of Golden Era Productions, the CMO unit assigned to oversee all of Gold and the executive in the
next-higher
CMO organization, which is called CMO International and tasked with overseeing Gold from an international perspective. One
30-minute
tour of the base per day might find David issuing several of these random uncoordinated orders. The havoc that his chronic bypassing caused would be hard to describe and impossible to catalog, since most of it was not written down but issued only verbally.

1. The toxic personality tends to be either sexually repressed or perverted.
   

A basic Scientology concept is that life in its many forms is a matter of simply trying to survive. Scientology divides this urge to survive into eight separate dynamics, as Hubbard called them, that mirror the activities of life and the universe:

• Survival for oneself
  
• Survival through sex and the family
  
• Survival through groups
  
• Survival as part of humankind
  
• Survival as part of all living
  things—plants
  and animals
  
• Survival as part of the physical universe
  
• Survival as spirits or universal thought
  
• Survival through infinity, the Supreme Being, God, the Creator
  

Hubbard often talked about the second dynamic in his writings and lectures, noting how most people had
hang-ups
about sex, but he more or less dismissed these as trifling compared to the deeper issues that he felt posed much greater blocks to spiritual advancement. Hubbard mostly viewed relationship or marital blowups as distractions from the important work Scientology has to do to “clear the planet,” Scientology's rallying cry to achieve its aims of a civilization free of crime, insanity and war. In the early days of the Sea Organization, Hubbard was loath to regulate Sea Org members' personal lives, but in the late 1970s, he finally approved an issue written by one of his messengers that put the kibosh on sexual relations among unmarried Sea Org members.

David got behind the new regulations, but over time he seemed to be dead set against the second dynamic in all its forms and manifestations. His attitude seemed to be that staff members, and by extension all people on planet Earth, were more concerned about sex and having kids than with helping him expand Scientology. He went to extremes to make his displeasure with “the 2D” felt.

The culture of the Sea Org with respect to sex and the family began to change. The group and its important work had always taken precedence over the family, but as David's influence as Scientology's new leader seeped down through the Sea Org hierarchy, the effects would be seen as shocking to the average person. What follows are a few examples of actions taken while he was at the helm.

Anyone in his org, RTC, who was married to someone working in a different unit on the base either had to divorce the spouse or leave RTC, to be posted to another unit. Some staff actually divorced their longtime spouses.

Husbands and wives often were split up when one was assigned to an outlying organization, sometimes for years at a time. One couple I know were separated for several years when the husband was sent to take an executive position in England while the wife remained at Gold. That was not the only instance, not by a long shot. With other restrictions, on travel and time off, for example, even people with a spouse working in Los Angeles might as well have been in Timbuktu given how infrequently they were able to see each other.

Women on the base were forbidden to have children, and I know that several former Sea Org members have claimed that they were pressured by colleagues or supervisors to have an abortion. I also know that if a couple wanted to keep a child, they were sent off the base to inferior postings. The church has denied that it has pressured anyone to have an abortion.

People who already had children when they came to the base were not allowed to live with their children. Instead, their kids were kept at another facility ten miles away. Some staff members who had children in Los Angeles were allowed to drive down on Saturdays to spend the day with them. “Family time,” it was called. Parents at the Los Angeles organizations initially had one hour each day to spend with their children. Then, under some pretext, family time was canceled, which created a great deal of stress for many parents and their children. After that, parents and their children had limited opportunities to see each other. My granddaughter Jenna Miscavige Hill wrote in her book that she had seen her parents only a few times over the course of several years and even then only briefly.

In the last decade I lived at the base, marriages were exceedingly rare. Except for one, I am not aware of any marriages between staff members, a restriction that, I am told, has only recently been relaxed.

Any memos or issues that needed to be written to enforce these rules were written by others so as to put a layer of plausible deniability between their originator and enforcement of the decrees, but I am positive that any such orders came from David.

The final example I'll mention comes under the heading of perversion. I know that former Scientology executive Tom DeVocht and others have claimed that David has read out loud the sexual activities of individuals as confessed in their auditing sessions. Friends of mine have also observed this. Scientology representatives have denied it, saying that David has always “rigorously upheld the sanctity and confidentiality of ministerial communications.”

1. The subject of food and eating is restricted by the toxic personality.
   

While David's own food allowance runs into many hundreds of dollars each week, the food allowance for staff members at the base was sometimes reduced to less than a dollar per person per meal. That is less than $20 to feed someone for an entire
week—while
that person is working upward of 100 hours.

The galley staff performed miracles with such paltry allowances, and somehow people remained fed. The usual punishment in regard to food was to restrict an offending staff member to plain rice and beans for every meal until that person reformed. This could sometimes go on for weeks or months.

One time, Becky was assigned to a diet of rice and beans. We were at a meal, and I lifted a piece of meat from my plate and moved it toward hers. Another person sitting at our table said that if I did that, he would report me. As I said earlier, people become trapped by their own agreement to certain rules. This person was agreeing to the rules of the group, though left to his own devices, he would not have cared less what Becky ate. Why would he have reported me? One rule was that if you observed someone breaking the rules and did not report that person, you would be considered as guilty as the offender, for something as trivial as sharing food. I have never lived in East Germany or North Korea, but I am guessing similar regulations were being enforced there too.

David, meanwhile, was dining on New Zealand lamb or Maine lobster, with a personal chef on call for him, his wife and closest circle. Two entrees were prepared for each meal, in case one was not to his liking. One of the facilities on the base had a refrigerator that was about six feet wide and stocked with foods
especially—and
only—for
David and his wife.

During my nearly 27 years in the Sea Org with my son David, I observed in him on numerous occasions each of the traits I have described. I wish I was not writing this, but it is the truth, and other people I know would say and have said the same.