We already knew that Tom Cruise was a big ball of crazy. So crazy, in fact, that nothing you say about him is really all that surprising to people anymore. And that’s sort of a letdown, to be honest. “Tom Cruise eats the flesh of living baby birds” or “Tom Cruise has a tree in his backyard made from human skin that he uses in his ritual sacrifices” or “Tom Cruise said he was going to eat Suri’s placenta.” That last one is actually true, though he claimed after the fact that he was joking. One thing Tom can never be accused of joking about is Scientology. Xenu’s favorite son has been proselytizing for years, and it’s gotten to the point where he’s so rabid and crazy and drooling that we don’t pay any attention to him anymore.

But famous biographer Andrew Morton has decided to take a much deeper look into Tom Cruise’s psyche than any of the rest of us would ever be comfortable with. I imagine discovering the inner workings of Tom’s brain would kind of be like that movie “The Cell” – sort of like a Salvador Dali painting brought to life. You must just want to run away. But Morton – who is known as a very thorough researcher and has written the authoritative biography of Princess Diana – has managed to write a book about Cruise that is anticipated will expose a lot of the skeletons in Cruise’s closet.

Unfortunately (but not surprisingly) Morton is being hounded by Scientology thugs, likely dispatched at the behest of Cruise.

FORMER tabloid royal reporter Andrew Morton – author of revealing books on Princess Diana, Monica Lewinsky and Madonna – has run into serious trouble with his latest subject, Hollywood star Tom Cruise. Dewsbury-born Morton, 54, says he has been forced to sell his flat in London and go “underground” because of aggressive pressure to drop the bio­graphy from Cruise’s associates in the Church of Scientology. “I have received threats from the Scientologists and things have become pretty heavy – to the extent that it’s almost more than my lawyers can ­handle,” Morton tells me. “I’ve sold my flat and I’m not telling anyone where I’m moving to. I intend to disappear for a while.”

Cruise was said to be furious to learn that Morton was investigating his love life, the rumors about his sexuality and his involvement with Scientology. The cult was founded by sci-fi author L Ron Hubbard in 1954 and holds that humans are descended from an exiled race of aliens called Thetans. Similar attempts to reveal the extent of Cruise’s links with Scientology have been abandoned by American journalists after heavy-handed warnings from the cult, whose Hollywood members include John Travolta and Lisa Marie Presley.

Cruise has always been sensitive about criticism over his involvement with the movement, to which he gives considerable financial support. He also insisted actress Katie Holmes, join the religion before they married last year. Compared to Morton’s success with his first Diana book (from which he made millions thanks to the Princess’s collaboration) his project on Cruise is proving far more problematic. When Morton was in Toronto to meet sources who knew Cruise from when he filmed Cocktail in the city, he was overheard complaining that, compared with the Church of Scientology “reporting on the Royal Family was a walk in Hyde Park”.

[From the Daily Express]

I have to say – whatever the Scientologists are doing – if it’s too much for lawyers, they must be going really, really far. I’m assuming they’re drowning them in paperwork or something. But they must be doing a lot more to Morton personally if he’s selling his home and going into hiding. You generally don’t do that over lawsuits run amok.

As much as we joke about Scientology, it is a dangerous cult/religion/whatever you want to call it. There have been reports of Scientologists kidnapping members who tried to leave, and making them go to Scientology boot camps to be reprogrammed. There are too many claims to go into, but here’s a quick example of one case, which led to a lot of legal trouble.

Scientology killed Lisa McPherson in Clearwater, Florida, on December 5, 1995. She was held against her will for 17 days, denied medical care, and forcibly sedated. When her guards tried to force her to undergo the Introspection Rundown and she refused, she was kept in an isolation lock-down until she died from severe dehydration. Forensic entomologists later identified 110 cockroach feeding sites on her body, and three nationally prominent forensic pathologists opined that the manner of death was “homicide”. (The pathologists were Calvin Bandt, M.D. (affidavit), Werner Spitz, M.D. (affidavit), and John Coe, M.D.)

[From Carnegie Mellon]

If I were Morton, I’d be scared too. Freedom of the press is not a value the Scientologists hold highly. Though I’m sure if he gets his book out, it’ll get a lot of press, make him a lot of money, and be pretty interesting. He might find himself chained up in a basement at some point, but I’m sure Tom Cruise will have nothing to do with that.