This story came out earlier in the week and I sat on it for a few reasons. It’s full of Scientology jargon and concepts that are hard to make sense of, and I’ve been reading about the cult for years. As a non-Scientologist, I sort-of understand what Scientology defector and former second-in-command Marty Rathbun is talking about, but I’m sure I don’t fully grasp it on the level of someone who practices. There is some real dirt in here about how Tom Cruise’s best buddy, cult head David Miscavige, personally oversaw Katie Holmes indoctrination in the form of her “auditing” sessions. There’s also some half-confirmation of the rumors we’ve heard that Miscavige inserted Scientology staff into the Holmes-Cruise home so that he could know everything that went on behind closed doors – at least it’s implied.

More than that, and something that may only be very relevant to Scientologists, is that fact that current leader Miscavige gave Katie Holmes some warped, personal version of the Scientology “tech.” That is to say, Miscavige wanted to re-work the Scientology practices as established by L. Ron Hubbard, and made Katie’s indoctrination follow his own view of how it should proceed, which was counter to long-established cult methodology. To us that shit doesn’t matter, I mean I don’t care about that, but to the people who practice Scientology that’s a huge deal and is something that violates their religion.

I think the real takeaway here is that Tom Cruise’s best friend Miscavige was so arrogant that his way was the right way, that he re-interpreted the way their “scripture” was delivered for one of their most high profile new parishioners. (If you’re going to treat it as a legitimate religion that is.) Here’s more, and keep in mind some of this may not make sense on first glance.

David Miscavige has no doubt by now convinced Tom Cruise that yours truly ought to be the target of his ire for Katie Holmes’ splendidly executed split and consequent historic media coverage. After all, he’s already got Cruise’s attorney, the august Bert Fields, alerting the media far and wide claiming to be victim of me.

And just as certainly, as per usual, the real target is David Miscavige himself.

I have learned from very credible sources that David Miscavige quite in addition to infiltrating the household of Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise and interjecting his insanity directly into Katie’s life through his undue and unnatural influence over Tom, Miscavige also directly and intentionally saw to it that Katie received squirrel, reverse Scientology as explicitly covered in my book What Is Wrong With Scientology?

Katie’s introduction to Scientology was the Golden Age of Tech II (GAT II) pilot project run directly by Miscavige’s organization (Religious Technology Center – RTC) at the Celebrity Center in Los Angeles. Katie was put at the top of the project’s line up as one of its first unwitting guinea pigs. GAT II’s mission with respect to Tom Cruise’s wife? Put her through Miscavige’s latest brand of Quickie Grades (for a complete explanation of what that entails, see chapter 6 Grades of my book What Is Wrong With Scientology?)

Miscavige’s only two tech trained staff (Anne Joasem – once Rathbun – and Elsie Tucker) personally oversaw every session of it and answered and reported directly to Miscavige, every step of the way. Anne and Elsie cherry picked the processes to run from the huge body of tech for each grade, and Miscavige approved every individual one to be run on Katie.

So, there too is your Golden Age of Tech II news. Apparently, based on his spectacular results with Katie, Miscavige announced recently he was going to unleash his suppression on the planet at large.

In a way, Miscavige did Katie a big favor. Had she been delivered standard grades she might have been more able to withstand the entheta Miscavige brought into her marriage and household. She might also have attributed her wins to the Miscavige administration. The net result would have been that she hang around longer and be effectively spiritually fattened up for a gruesome kill.

This is the conundrum of corporate Scientology and the reason why the ‘church’ of Scientology is dead. You are damned if you and you are damned if you don’t in Scientology Inc.

The bottom line is four-fold:

a) David Miscavige is a squirrel (someone who alters Scientology to the detriment of the people to whom it is applied).

b) Religious Technology Center (RTC) is a squirrel group.

c) Religious Technology Center is a suppressive (sociopathic) group.

d) David Miscavige is a suppressive person.

[From Mark Rathbun’s blog]

That was obviously written for Scientologists, but you get the gist. Miscavige went against their teachings to do his own thing with Katie Holmes, and the traditionalist Scientologists believe it was to her detriment. As an outsider, I don’t see what they believe in or how Scientology goes about practicing their beliefs to be an issue. It doesn’t matter to me if one guy mixes it up. It may seem strange to us, but to each their own. To me the issue is the lack of transparency in Scientology, the human rights violations and the use of intimidation and litigation to suppress enemies and defectors. I don’t care about their religion – that’s their business, I care about how they violate the law and abuse practitioners and their families.

Rathbun addresses this in a new blog entry in which he says that the recent PR crisis for Scientology, and Miscavige’s attacking, lying response, is bringing down the entire religion, not just the organization. To people like him, who still see value in Scientology as a practice, it’s not fair because no one makes a differentiation between the religion and the criminal way it’s managed. Is there really a way to differentiate, though? It’s not like you can walk in and out of a Scientology “church,” or casually take a class on it. It’s never been set up that way. From what people have said who have had even minor brushes with Scientology, they will harass you for years. I doubt there’s any way to take whatever’s good and useful about their spiritual practices and separate it from the “bad.” L. Ron was a shyster and he’s the one who came up with their “Fair Game” concept and their war on psychiatry. Their cult-ness and mistrust of others is embedded in their origins. But maybe they’ll be able to separate from that at some point, thanks to people like Rathbun who are going public.

Here’s Katie outside spinning on 7-18 and with Suri on 7-15. Credit: Fame