David Miscavige

• 1. Introduction

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  David Miscavige was born on the 30th of April 1960, and he now leads the Church of Scientology. Inside the organization he answers to several names. Members call him “DM,” “COB,” and “captain of the Sea Org.” His formal title is chairman of the board of the Religious Technology Center, a corporation that controls the trademarks and copyrights of Dianetics and Scientology. Official church biographies describe him as “the ecclesiastical leader of the Scientology religion.” He is only the second person to hold the top post. His predecessor was the founder, L. Ron Hubbard. How does someone who served the founder as a teenager end up running the whole organization? What did he do during the years when the founder was out of sight? And why do former colleagues, relatives and journalists describe his leadership in terms of abuse, while the church and Miscavige deny most of it?

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• 2. Teenage Recruit

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  Bristol, Pennsylvania, is where David Miscavige was born, to Ronald Thomas “Ron” Miscavige Sr. and Loretta Gidaro. Both parents were Catholics of Polish-Italian heritage. David and his twin sister, Denise, grew up mostly in Willingboro Township, New Jersey. As a boy he played baseball and football, but he also suffered from asthma and severe allergies.

  His father, a trumpet player, became interested in Scientology and sent the boy to see a Scientologist. Father and son both say that a single 45-minute Dianetics session cured his ailments.

  In 1971 the Miscavige family joined the Church of Scientology. They eventually moved to Saint Hill Manor in West Sussex, England, which was then the organization's world headquarters. Saint Hill became his training ground as an auditor. The church remembers him as a “12-year-old prodigy” and as its youngest professional auditor. Within a few years the family returned to Philadelphia, where he attended Marple Newtown High School.

  On his sixteenth birthday in 1976, he left high school with his father's permission. He moved to Clearwater, Florida, to join the Sea Org. Hubbard had established that group in 1968 as a management body for Scientology. Miscavige's earliest jobs there were modest. He delivered telexes, did groundskeeping, worked in food service and took photographs for Scientology brochures.

  Soon he was appointed to the Commodore's Messenger Organization, known as the CMO. Hubbard created this elite group of young Scientologists to run his personal errands and carry his executive directives to Scientology management. As the Messengers grew into adolescence, their power and influence inside the Sea Org grew with them. By 1977 Miscavige was living in La Quinta, California. He worked directly under Hubbard as a cameraman for Scientology training films at CMO Cine Org.

  The next stage of his career would unfold while Hubbard himself was out of sight.

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• 3. Hubbard's Gatekeeper

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  Eleven leaders of the Guardian's Office, including Hubbard's wife Mary Sue, were criminally convicted in the late 1970s. The convictions were a public relations disaster for Scientology. Hubbard had formally resigned from church management in 1966, so he now had to keep his distance. He pulled further away from the Guardian's Office, from his wife, and from the CMO. The name CMO stood for Commodore Messengers Org, after the title Hubbard held as leader of the Sea Org.

  In April 1979 a Watchdog Committee was formed from the senior executives of CMO International, and Miscavige took a prominent part in it. When Hubbard went into hiding with Pat and Annie Broeker in 1980, Miscavige became the only link between Hubbard and church leaders. He secretly relayed Hubbard's orders as they came from the Broekers.

  Early in 1981 he set up the All Clear Unit. It was allegedly designed to work toward a situation in which Hubbard could come back on lines, meaning that it would be “All Clear” for him to emerge from hiding. By the end of 1981 Miscavige was in charge of the Watchdog Committee, the All Clear Unit and Author Services Inc., a for-profit entity founded that year to manage Hubbard's literary and financial affairs. As head of the CMO, he also sent teams out to investigate problem areas within Scientology.

  Next he went after the Guardian's Office, which was larger and more powerful than his own group. The St. Petersburg Times later reported that “During two heated encounters, Miscavige persuaded Mary Sue Hubbard to resign.” The paper added that the two composed a letter to Scientologists confirming her decision, without ever speaking to her husband. She later changed her mind, believing she had been tricked. Miscavige says they remained friends. He also removed several other Guardian's Office officials. He purged more through Comm Evs, including David Gaiman, Duke Snider, Mo Budlong and Henning Heldt.

  In 1982 he built a new structure meant to insulate Hubbard from personal liability and to hold his wealth in a corporate entity outside the Scientology network. The Religious Technology Center would license Scientology's intellectual property, and Author Services Inc. would manage the proceeds. Miscavige has been chairman of the board of the RTC since its founding. The Church of Spiritual Technology was created at the same time, with an option to repurchase all of the RTC's intellectual property rights.

  That same year, a probate case put the arrangement under scrutiny. Ronald DeWolf, Hubbard's estranged son, accused Miscavige of embezzling from his father and manipulating him. Hubbard answered in a written statement. He said Author Services Inc. was managing his business affairs well, and he called Miscavige a “trusted associate” and “good friend.” A judge ruled the statement authentic, and the case was dismissed on the 27th of June 1983.

  In October 1982 Miscavige required Scientology Missions to sign new trademark usage contracts with stricter rules on the use of Scientology materials. Over the next two years, he and his team replaced most of the upper and middle management. Some of those ousted tried to start breakaway groups. One was the Advanced Ability Center, led by David Mayo, a former RTC board member who had been Hubbard's personal auditor. It closed in 1984, two years after it opened.

  The structure Miscavige had built would soon face its biggest test.

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• 4. After Hubbard

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  At the Hollywood Palladium in 1986, Miscavige stood before Scientologists and announced that Hubbard had died. Shortly before the death, an apparent order from Hubbard had circulated in the Sea Org. It promoted Pat Broeker and his wife to a new rank, Loyal Officer, which would have made them the highest-ranking members. Miscavige asserted that the order was forged. He took over as head of the church and became the highest-ranking member of the Sea Org.

  The press attention that followed was rarely friendly. A 1991 Time magazine cover story, “The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power,” named Miscavige as the “ringleader” of a “hugely profitable global racket that survives by intimidating members and critics in a Mafia-like manner.” In a 1992 interview on Nightline, his only live televised interview to date, Miscavige offered another explanation. He said the article came about because of a request from Eli Lilly, over “the damage we had caused to their killer drug Prozac.”

  Scientology then sued Eli Lilly, J. Walter Thompson, Hill & Knowlton and the WPP Group. It agreed to settle shortly before the case reached trial. The organization also filed a libel suit against Time Warner and the article's author, Richard Behar, seeking $416 million. The court dismissed every count, and the dismissal was upheld on appeal. Similar suits in Switzerland, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Germany were dismissed as groundless.

  A BBC Panorama program in 1987 had already carried a harsher account. It featured Don Larson, a former member who had served as the church's “finance ethics officer” for $25 a week. Larson described about fifteen staff renting three limousines and driving to an organization in San Francisco. He said Miscavige grabbed the local commanding officer by the tie and bashed him into the filing cabinets.

  In a 1995 interview for ITV, Stacy Young, Miscavige's former secretary, said he tormented staff emotionally on a regular basis. “His viciousness and his cruelty to staff was unlike anything that I had ever experienced in my life,” she said.

  Miscavige has rarely answered questions himself. Besides the Nightline appearance, the exceptions were a 1994 print interview with the Austrian weekly Profil, a 1998 interview with the St. Petersburg Times, and a 1998 episode of A&E Investigative Reports called “Inside Scientology.”

  After the September 11 attacks, Miscavige published a message to all Scientologists called “Wake Up Call.” He urged them to redouble their efforts to use Scientology. He asserted that the Second World War, Hitler, Pearl Harbor, the Cold War and the 9/11 attacks could be traced to a lack of real technology of the mind. In his telling, reliance on false mental therapies of psychiatry and psychology was to blame. He declared that “we have the technology and organization to overcome any obstacle facing this planet today.”

  Years earlier, he had carried a very different message to Washington.

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• 5. The IRS Settlement

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  In 1991 Miscavige and Marty Rathbun went to Internal Revenue Service headquarters in Washington, D.C., to arrange a meeting with Commissioner Fred T. Goldberg, Jr. For more than two decades the IRS had refused to recognize Scientology as a nonprofit charitable organization. Before that meeting, Scientology had filed more than fifty lawsuits against the agency.

  The New York Times later described how the fight had been waged. Scientology's lawyers hired private investigators to dig into the private lives of IRS officials and run surveillance operations to find vulnerabilities. They took documents from an IRS conference and sent them to church officials. They created a phony news bureau in Washington to gather information on church critics. The church also financed an organization of IRS whistle-blowers that attacked the agency in public.

  At the meeting with Goldberg, Miscavige offered to stop the lawsuits in exchange for tax exemptions. A two-year negotiation followed. During it, IRS tax analysts were ordered to ignore the substantive issues, because those had been resolved before their review began. In 1992 Scientology won recognition as a nonprofit organization in the United States. That created a tax exemption for the Church of Scientology International and its subsidiaries, and tax deductions for those who contribute to their programs.

  Scientology officials and the IRS later issued a statement saying the ruling rested on a two-year inquiry and voluminous documents. In their account, the documents showed that the organization qualified for the exemptions.

  To announce the settlement, Miscavige gathered a reported 10,000 Scientologists in the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena. He gave a two-and-a-half-hour address and proclaimed, “The war is over!” The crowd answered with an ovation that lasted more than ten minutes.

  With the tax fight behind it, the church's buildings, more than its lawsuits, would become the visible mark of his leadership.

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• 6. Buildings and Broadcasts

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  In 2003 Miscavige launched a plan to build or remodel Scientology locations, called “Ideal Orgs,” in every major city worldwide. Since then, over seventy new or remodeled locations have opened. They include facilities in Washington, D.C., Madrid, New York City, London, Berlin, Mexico City, Rome, Tel Aviv, Atlanta, Miami and San Diego. According to Scientology, he also began a long-term project to issue unreleased and corrected editions of Hubbard's books and to restore Hubbard's lectures, with many works translated into other languages. Until the late 2010s he worked mainly from Gold Base, near Hemet, California.

  The Flag Building in Clearwater, Florida, is one of the largest projects of his career. It was first called the “Super Power Building,” and it is described as the spiritual headquarters of Scientology. At 377,000 square feet, it is the largest of the church's properties in Clearwater. It is reportedly outfitted with custom-built equipment for the “Super Power Rundown,” which is supposed to enhance the perception of high-level Scientologists.

  The building was scheduled for completion in 2003 but went through ten years of delays and redesigns. Meanwhile Scientology finished two other major construction and restoration projects in the same area ahead of it, the Fort Harrison Hotel and the Oak Cove Hotel. Miscavige inaugurated the Flag Building on the 17th of November 2013. He reportedly took up permanent residence there in the late 2010s.

  To reach Scientologists around the world, Miscavige relies on church publications and on professionally produced videos of gala events, where he acts as master of ceremonies. The church portrays him as “a servant of Hubbard's message, not an agent in his own right.” Official Scientology websites call him Hubbard's “trusted friend.” As chairman of the board of the RTC, his primary task, according to the organization, is to “preserve, maintain and protect” Scientology.

  In 2012 he opened Scientology's National Affairs Office in Washington, D.C. He called it “an office designed to give back to a United States government that steadfastly guaranteed our religious rights, the very freedom that allows us to do what we are doing today.” Scientology says the office oversees programs on human rights, drug addiction, literacy and disaster response.

  In May 2016 the church opened Scientology Media Productions in Los Angeles. At the opening, Miscavige called the planned channel “our uncorrupted communication line to the billions.” He added, “Because as the saying goes, if you don't write your own story, someone else will.” The Scientology Network, a DIRECTV broadcast and streaming service, launched on the 12th of March 2018. Miscavige introduced its first broadcast in a rare on-camera appearance.

  Someone else had already been writing his story for years.

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• 7. Accusations and Denials

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  In 2009 the St. Petersburg Times published a series called “The Truth Rundown.” It featured former Scientology executives who alleged that Miscavige had repeatedly humiliated and physically beaten his staff. They also alleged that he had confined Scientologists in degrading conditions in a Gold Base building known as “The Hole.” The series drew on interviews with Mike Rinder, a former Scientology spokesperson and director of its Office of Special Affairs, and with Rathbun, the former Inspector General of the RTC. Rinder has said Miscavige physically assaulted him on about fifty occasions. Lawrence Wright, author of Going Clear, interviewed twelve people who reported being attacked by Miscavige personally and twenty-one who say they witnessed such attacks. Scientology denies all of these reports.

  The series won journalistic honors, including the 2010 Gold Medal for Public Service from the Florida Society of News Editors. Later investigations cited it, among them a weeklong series on CNN hosted by Anderson Cooper. Jeff Hawkins, a former marketing guru for Scientology, said he attended a meeting where Miscavige jumped onto the conference room table and launched himself across it. Hawkins said Miscavige battered his face and shoved him to the floor. Amy Scobee, another former Scientologist, corroborated the account.

  Scientology representatives have consistently denied any abuse by Miscavige. They say the accusations come from apostates who are bitter or who are trying to extort money. When Hawkins repeated his claims in a documentary, the church called them “fabricated” and described him as “a discredited anti-Scientology media source.” Scientology executive David Bloomberg said it was Hawkins who attacked Miscavige. Miscavige himself sent the newspaper an open letter challenging the reporters' integrity and calling their sources “lying.” He said those people had been removed for “fundamental crimes against the Scientology religion.” Scientology also commissioned an independent review of the Times reporting, but it has not released the findings.

  In 2009 and 2010 the Federal Bureau of Investigation ran a wide-ranging investigation into Scientology, in which Miscavige was investigated over suspected human trafficking and slavery. It focused on criminal activities at Gold Base. The FBI had planned a raid there before the investigation was discontinued.

  Court cases followed. In 2019 a woman, unnamed at first, sued Miscavige and Scientology. She was raised as a Scientologist and joined the Sea Org at age 15 as Miscavige's steward. Her suit also alleged kidnapping, stalking, libel, slander, constructive invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress. In January 2020, church lawyers persuaded a judge to move the case into internal church arbitration. Miscavige is also named in a suit over rapes committed by Scientologist Danny Masterson and the church's later efforts to harass Masterson's victims. Lawyers for Scientology tried to force that case into arbitration too, but a three-judge ruling in January 2022 rejected the attempt.

  In April 2022, three former Scientology workers sued Miscavige and the church for human trafficking and peonage of children as young as six. Their suit also alleges repeated sexual assault of children by senior Sea Org members. Their lawyers told the court that Miscavige had evaded service for months, despite at least fourteen attempts. They said he had ordered the security team at his house to keep the summons from being delivered. The court found the allegations credible enough to order that he be served through the Florida Secretary of State's office. In February 2023, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida ruled that this substituted service was proper.

  That ruling settled how he would be served, not whether the allegations are true. Miscavige and Scientology spokespersons deny most of them.

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• 8. Family and Friends

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  Shelly Miscavige has not been seen in public since August 2007, when she was spotted being escorted to her father's funeral. Michele Diane “Shelly” Miscavige is a fellow Sea Org member and David Miscavige's wife. Multiple sources allege she disappeared from Gold Base soon after she filled several job vacancies without her husband's permission. In July 2012, lawyers who said they represented her told two UK newspapers that “she is not missing and devotes her time to the work of the Church of Scientology.” In 2013 the Los Angeles Times reported that the LAPD had closed its inquiry into a missing persons report filed by former Scientologist and actress Leah Remini. The police said they had “located and spoken” to her, and they declined to answer further questions. Lawrence Wright reports that former Sea Org members believe she is being held against her will at a Church of Spiritual Technology compound near Running Springs in San Bernardino County.

  Ron Miscavige left the church in 2012, after he gained full Internet access through a Kindle and discovered new information. The Los Angeles Times reported that the church then put him under surveillance. Two private investigators were said to have watched him around the clock for 18 months, at $10,000 a week. According to the report, this was because David Miscavige feared his father would reveal too much. The investigators allegedly phoned David when they thought Ron was having a heart attack, and were told not to intervene. David Miscavige denied ordering the surveillance or speaking to an investigator. In 2016 Ron published a book titled Ruthless: Scientology, My Son David Miscavige, and Me. Reviewing it, Thomas Tobin of the Tampa Bay Times wrote that Ron “describes his son as a tyrant who has turned the organization into a destructive influence.”

  Seven years older than David, Ronald “Ronnie” Miscavige Jr. served in the CMO for a time and left Scientology in 2000. Ronnie's daughter, Jenna Miscavige Hill, stayed in the Sea Org until 2005. She became an outspoken critic and in 2013 published Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology And My Harrowing Escape. David's twin sister, Denise Licciardi, was hired by the major donor Bryan Zwan as a top executive at the Clearwater company Digital Lightwave, where she was linked to an accounting scandal.

  Shelly's mother, Mary Florence “Flo” Fike Barnett, was a long-time Scientologist who resigned and took with her copies of confidential upper-level materials. She joined David Mayo's independent group, which the church considered heterodox. Former church executive Vicki Aznaran testified that being linked to Barnett by family was “extremely repugnant” to David Miscavige and his wife. On the 8th of September 1985, Barnett was found dead at age 52 from a rifle shot to the head. The circumstances included multiple gunshot wounds and an unwieldy weapon, and were described as “very, very, very unusual.” Her death was nonetheless ruled consistent with suicide. In an affidavit, David Miscavige strongly denied any part in it and called it a “personal tragedy in my family's life.”

  His closest famous friend is the actor Tom Cruise, and Miscavige was best man at Cruise's wedding to Katie Holmes. Cruise was introduced to Scientology by his first wife, Mimi Rogers, in 1986. Around the time the relationship with Rogers began, Miscavige told a Scientology rally, “The most important recruit ever is in the process of being secured. His arrival will change the face of Scientology forever.” The tabloid Star leaked Cruise's involvement in 1990, and he admitted publicly to following Scientology in a 1992 interview with Barbara Walters.

  According to Janet Reitman's book Inside Scientology: The Story of America's Most Secretive Religion, church leaders promised Cruise seven years in that they would share Scientology's secrets, such as the story of the extraterrestrial ruler Xenu. Reitman writes that Cruise “freaked out” and stepped back. He left the church and worked on the film Eyes Wide Shut until 1999. Then Miscavige sent Rathbun to “retrieve” him and persuade him to continue his training.

  Lawrence Wright's 2013 book Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, and Alex Gibney's 2015 documentary of the same name, allege that the organization groomed romantic partners for Cruise. They also allege that Cruise used Sea Org and Rehabilitation Project Force workers as free labor. Cruise's ex-girlfriend Nazanin Boniadi later compared the auditioning of women to date him to “white slavery.” In the film, Rathbun claims Nicole Kidman was wiretapped at Cruise's suggestion. Cruise's lawyer denies it, and what the organization asked of its most famous member remains contested.

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