Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing,
Speaker 1: My chance to talk with artists, policymakers, and performers, to
Speaker 1: hear their stories. What inspires their creations, what decisions change
Speaker 1: their careers, what relationships influenced their work. My guest today,
Speaker 1: author Lawrence Wright thinks a lot about religion. He wants
Speaker 1: to know why people choose one faith over another, especially
Speaker 1: when what they choose seems quote absurd or dangerous to
Speaker 1: an outsider. This question has led Right to investigate some
Speaker 1: of the world's most complicated and secretive organizations, from the
Speaker 1: People's Temple in Jonestown to the Church of Scientology. His
Speaker 1: book on Al Qaeda won the Pulitzer Prize in two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven. Lawrence Wright has a unique firsthand experience
Speaker 1: as to the power of belief.
Speaker 2: I grew up in Dallas in the Methodist Church, and
Speaker 2: it was despite the fact that Methodism doesn't have a
Speaker 2: reputation as being kind of a you know, hell fire
Speaker 2: and Brimstone, the first of the churches that we went
Speaker 2: to in Dallas really was that, and then we graduated
Speaker 2: to the Methodist Church downtown. My dad taught Sunday school
Speaker 2: for many, many years. You know, Dallas back at that
Speaker 2: time was the most pious city in America. We had
Speaker 2: the largest Methodist, Baptist I think, the largest Episcopal church,
Speaker 2: and one of the largest Catholic churches in the entire country.
Speaker 2: And at the same time we had the highest murder
Speaker 2: rate and the highest divorce rate, you know, all the
Speaker 2: things that go along with excess piety. Yeah, so it was,
Speaker 2: and I was very pious as a teenager. I was
Speaker 2: in a group called Young Life.
Speaker 1: And genuinely or you were responding to pressure.
Speaker 2: No, I was, well, there was part of those things.
Speaker 2: It was you know, I had moved around a lot,
Speaker 2: as my dad was a banker and we moved quite
Speaker 2: a lot, and it was hard for me to establish roots.
Speaker 2: So when I got to Dallas and this, you know,
Speaker 2: Young Life came up. It was a social club for me.
Speaker 2: But also it was the first time I understood the
Speaker 2: you can binge yourself into the shape of the organization
Speaker 2: the way it wants you to be. And also the
Speaker 2: more pious you are, sort of the higher you climb,
Speaker 2: the more important. So I got to be a part
Speaker 2: of it. Yeah, well you say those things, and it's
Speaker 2: and you want to believe them. I was not consciously
Speaker 2: trying to deceive anyone. At the same time, you know
Speaker 2: what to say, your.
Speaker 1: Heart felt and you're genuine, but at the same time
Speaker 1: you realize that there's a there's an approval system here. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I think that that experience was formative in some
Speaker 2: ways for me to be so interested in religious matters
Speaker 2: and why you know, I people are always, you know, reporters,
Speaker 2: especially fascinated by politics. But you can have strong political
Speaker 2: views and it doesn't affect your life at all, But
Speaker 2: if you have strong religious views, they probably dictate much
Speaker 2: of your behavior. It's puzzling to me why with most
Speaker 2: journalists it's just embarrassing to ask about what people believe
Speaker 2: because it's not supposed to matter.
Speaker 1: Did you leave the area to go to college, did you? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I went to Tulane in New Orleans, which was a
Speaker 2: city least like Dallas that I could find, and you
Speaker 2: could buy beer and woolworst and you could drink at eighteen,
Speaker 2: and you know, a lot of things.
Speaker 1: Not very pious. The well in arts school.
Speaker 2: By that time, I kind of shed that, but I
Speaker 2: was actively looking for a way to live a more
Speaker 2: bohemian life. I felt very constricted in Dallas.
Speaker 1: Was writing something that was on your mind even at
Speaker 1: an early age?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah. In college I took a creative writing class.
Speaker 2: You know, I was not a.
Speaker 1: Distant school paper. No.
Speaker 2: I used to like doing that stuff though. And then
Speaker 2: after I graduated, you know, the Vietnam War was going on,
Speaker 2: and I became a conscientious objector and spent two years
Speaker 2: of alternative service teaching in Cairo, and that's where I
Speaker 2: became involved for the first time with the Arab world.
Speaker 1: And when the boy from Dallas becomes a conscientious objector,
Speaker 1: how did that go off back home?
Speaker 2: You know, I my dad was a war hero, and
Speaker 2: I wanted to be like him. I was in rotc.
Speaker 2: I expected, you know, to follow in his footsteps. But
Speaker 2: you know, there was this parallel problem going on, which
Speaker 2: was the Vietnam War, which was despicable, different war, and
Speaker 2: it was a bad war. And you know, for a person,
Speaker 2: a young man like me who wanted to serve his
Speaker 2: country but did not want to kill people for the
Speaker 2: wrong reason or risk my life for something I didn't
Speaker 2: believe in, it just was a terrible My father and
Speaker 2: I I had horrible, horrible fights about Vietnam.
Speaker 1: Do you have any brothers.
Speaker 2: No, I had two younger sisters.
Speaker 1: So you were it. You were the yeah scion. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Did you ever make peace with them about that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I wrote a memoir about growing up in Dallas during
Speaker 2: the Kennedy assassination in America during the Vietnam Era. In
Speaker 2: the process of doing that, I talked to my parents
Speaker 2: a lot, and I let them read the manuscript and
Speaker 2: it was a very healing experience for all of us.
Speaker 1: I think, when does writing become a career decision for you?
Speaker 2: When I came back from Egypt in nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 2: I decided that I was going to write an article
Speaker 2: for it. I decided I was going to write an
Speaker 2: article for the New Yorker. I hadn't contacted them, and they, no,
Speaker 2: they had no idea. My folks had a little lake
Speaker 2: cabin up in Equipment, Texas, in East Texas, and so
Speaker 2: my wife and I moved out there for six months
Speaker 2: while I wrote letter from Cairo, and there.
Speaker 1: Was a report from Yeah.
Speaker 2: So there it was an RFD, you know mail, and
Speaker 2: there was we had a little you know box out
Speaker 2: on the road where you raise the red flag and
Speaker 2: the mailman stops and I sent my manuscript into the
Speaker 2: New Yorker. I'm sure this isn't true, but it seemed
Speaker 2: that it came back the next day from equipment Texas
Speaker 2: to mister Shawn's desk to back the equipment with a
Speaker 2: you know, a little rejection card in there. And that was,
Speaker 2: you know, my first attempt at becoming a writer. It
Speaker 2: would it would be many, many years later that I
Speaker 2: actually got a chance to write for The New Yorker.
Speaker 1: You're in Cairo, you're married.
Speaker 2: You know, this is an odd story because you know,
Speaker 2: I went in to I had to get a job
Speaker 2: that was fifty miles from my home, and that wasn't
Speaker 2: a problem I wanted. I was so sick of America
Speaker 2: at that time, and the argument over the war was
Speaker 2: so devastating, and I just wanted to get as far
Speaker 2: away as I could. And it had to pay very little,
Speaker 2: and it had to be nominally in the service of
Speaker 2: the United States, so I uh, and the bedpen jobs
Speaker 2: were all taken, which normally is what a conscientious objector does,
Speaker 2: but this was during the Nixon recession, and those were
Speaker 2: all taken. So I thought I would go to the
Speaker 2: un and you know, get a job and they send
Speaker 2: me far far away. And I went to the UNN
Speaker 2: and they said, no, we don't do that. But here's
Speaker 2: a list of American institutions abroad. Okay, I mean one
Speaker 2: of them. American University in Cairo had an office across
Speaker 2: the street at eight sixty six un Plaza. And do
Speaker 2: you remember Huntington Hartford and Show magazine here? I thought
Speaker 2: you might. Well, you know, he had a famous office,
Speaker 2: and I realized they was in the same building. And
Speaker 2: I thought, I'll go over and peek into Huntington Hartford's
Speaker 2: office and then I'll go upstairs and ask for a job.
Speaker 2: So I did that, and you know, I walked in
Speaker 2: and I didn't I knew that there had been a
Speaker 2: war in the Middle East, but I wasn't, you know,
Speaker 2: it wasn't the war that I was focused on, you know,
Speaker 2: And and I didn't know that we didn't have any
Speaker 2: diplomatic relations with Egypt at the time. I'm not even
Speaker 2: sure what language they spoke, but I walked in and
Speaker 2: thirty minutes later they said can you leave tonight? And
Speaker 2: I said, well, no, my girlfriend's back in Boston and
Speaker 2: I haven't told my parents what I'm doing, and can
Speaker 2: you leave tomorrow. Well, yeah, I can go tomorrow, so let.
Speaker 1: Me make a couple of phone calls. There.
Speaker 2: I went back and I told my girlfriend, now my wife,
Speaker 2: I'm going to Egypt tomorrow and I don't know where
Speaker 2: that leaves us, and I'll be gone for two years.
Speaker 2: And then and I called my parents from JFK the
Speaker 2: next morning and told him I was going to Cairo.
Speaker 2: And I flew to Cairo and landed, you know, late
Speaker 2: at night, and the next morning, at nine o'clock, I
Speaker 2: taught my first class. After a couple of weeks, I
Speaker 2: was really missing Roberta. Back then, you didn't make telephone
Speaker 2: calls or you know, international calls and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Letters were passing, and at some point I said, you
Speaker 2: know the terms under which we left were. You know,
Speaker 2: you can't go. You just couldn't live together in Egypt.
Speaker 2: You know, it was a very conservative society. And if
Speaker 2: I invite you to come, that means we'll get married.
Speaker 2: So and you know, our letters crossed in the mail.
Speaker 2: I asked her to come, and she said she was
Speaker 2: coming anyway. And then did you name your first child Huntington? No,
Speaker 2: but that would have been some Then the question became
Speaker 2: where to get married, because there was this idea that
Speaker 2: was swhere in the back of my mind that if
Speaker 2: I got married in Egypt under Islamic law, I could
Speaker 2: have the additional three wives, which was an option. I
Speaker 2: wasn't sure that I wanted to exercise, but you know,
Speaker 2: it could be. You know, it's a contingency. I don't
Speaker 2: think I have the management skills. Yeah, over there, they
Speaker 2: insist you be married. You can be married as many
Speaker 2: times as you want, you know, or they dis insisted
Speaker 2: that you'll be married. So you're there for two usually
Speaker 2: come back, yeah, and then what happens? Then I talked
Speaker 2: the start the long road of trying to start a
Speaker 2: career as a writer, and you moved to where. The
Speaker 2: first job I got was in Nashville for the race
Speaker 2: relations reporter. I was the only writer for a long time.
Speaker 2: But we would go into situations where, you know, there
Speaker 2: was racial conflict and oftentimes the local press was biased
Speaker 2: or not paying attention to it, and so it might
Speaker 2: be about you know, the civil rights movement in the South,
Speaker 2: or Indians. You know, the Indian movement was underway at
Speaker 2: the time. School desegregation was very active, all those things.
Speaker 2: I got a chance to write about it taught me
Speaker 2: quite a lot about how you know, to actually write
Speaker 2: an article is a matter of being plunged into it.
Speaker 1: Was there a mentor you had then.
Speaker 2: A very crazy editor named Jim Leeson in Nashville.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Him. It was a strange man, and he the whole
Speaker 2: culture was a little strange, to be honest. I Jim
Speaker 2: when I went to apply for the job, I was
Speaker 2: a pretty good tennis player, and he asked about that,
Speaker 2: and so he asked if we could play tennis the
Speaker 2: next day. So I show up in my tennis duds
Speaker 2: and he goes out and plays me in his street shoes,
Speaker 2: and of course I beat him pretty soundly. But still
Speaker 2: the notion that he would play tennis and street shoes
Speaker 2: was and he wound up firing me when I wrote
Speaker 2: a memo suggesting that we reorganized the I was probably
Speaker 2: I deserve to be fired, imagine. So, but it was
Speaker 2: a it was another test to be plunged into the
Speaker 2: freelance market.
Speaker 1: I first became familiar with you and you're writing in
Speaker 1: the Olympia Washington story. The piece was entitled Remembering Satan,
Speaker 1: which you wrote as a book as well. These were
Speaker 1: excerpts in the book. There was a two part lengthy
Speaker 1: excerpt in the edition of The New Yorker, and I
Speaker 1: first became familiar with you, And I mean I was
Speaker 1: just supposed, you know, like knocked out by this piece.
Speaker 1: I thought, how on earth is this possible? Was this
Speaker 1: the first such piece you wrote, the Olympia piece.
Speaker 2: No, I think I had written about you know, a
Speaker 2: lot of different even wrote about Satanists, and you know,
Speaker 2: people of all sorts of I mean, if you're a
Speaker 2: reporter and you have a passport to write about anybody,
Speaker 2: and I took full advantage of that. But that remembering
Speaker 2: satan is kind of a stereotypical type of article that
Speaker 2: I like to write about, which is, for one thing,
Speaker 2: it's a discreet world, you know. In this case, it was,
Speaker 2: you know, this world inside Olympia, Washington that had been
Speaker 2: infected by these hysterical memories of Satanic ritual abuse which
Speaker 2: never occurred. But a man was convicted of these crimes.
Speaker 2: He confessed to them because he remembered them, and there
Speaker 2: was other than his memory. There was no evidence of it.
Speaker 1: If I remember correctly. No one else was sentenced to prison.
Speaker 2: Only Paul went to prison.
Speaker 1: What's his relationship with his family now or do you
Speaker 1: even know it's very broken as far as I haven't
Speaker 1: talked to Paul in a couple of years.
Speaker 2: But you know he's married again. You know, he started
Speaker 2: another life. But you know, it's an example of how
Speaker 2: the mind can be so persuaded of, you know, a
Speaker 2: false reality that.
Speaker 1: Everybody is capable of.
Speaker 2: That I don't know if I would say that.
Speaker 1: To whatever degree, not capable of that, but creating a
Speaker 1: false reality.
Speaker 2: One of the things that has been an education to
Speaker 2: me as a reporter when I'm out interviewing people that
Speaker 2: have been for instance, in out Kaida or you know,
Speaker 2: people that have come out of you know, I interviewed
Speaker 2: the children of Jim Jones, and you know, I talked
Speaker 2: to people who went into scientology. They're not crazy people,
Speaker 2: then they're not stupid, and you know they're they're often
Speaker 2: you know, if there's a commonality, there's idealism of you know,
Speaker 2: there a longing to make, you know, change history, make
Speaker 2: something of yourself, and that's you know, maybe that's one
Speaker 2: of the most dangerous elements of our human nature, is
Speaker 2: that we it's the better parts of our nature that
Speaker 2: sometimes lead us into real dangerous areas.
Speaker 1: We were the better parts of the natures of Jones's children.
Speaker 2: Well you know they were. They were essentially captive to him.
Speaker 2: So but and they survived, thank god. They were all
Speaker 2: playing basketball in a tournament in Georgetown, Guyana, So they
Speaker 2: weren't killings when when the killings went down. But the
Speaker 2: it's always to me, it is always underscored the danger
Speaker 2: of these kinds of fanatical belief systems. There were these
Speaker 2: three boys, two adopted. Stephen was a natural son and
Speaker 2: he looked very much like his father, Jim Jones, with
Speaker 2: the kind of Cherokee cheek bones, and he's very tall
Speaker 2: and striking, handsome man. And then there was Jim Jones Junior,
Speaker 2: who was black and adopted adopted. And then the third
Speaker 2: adopted son was Tim, who is this big red headed guy. Tim.
Speaker 2: These boys when I talked to him, Waco was going
Speaker 2: on at that time, the Branch Davidian episode, and Tina
Speaker 2: Brown was the editor of the New Yorker, and she
Speaker 2: wanted me to go to Waco. And I said, they're
Speaker 2: more reporters in Waco than there are Branch Davidians. I
Speaker 2: just but I was. I was convinced that this must.
Speaker 2: You know, I'd seen the children, some of the children
Speaker 2: that were sent out. I thought that this must have
Speaker 2: happened before. And I found these three boys who had
Speaker 2: never then grown men, never told their story before. And
Speaker 2: I don't know why they were willing to talk to me.
Speaker 2: But Tim, when I got to him, he demanded that
Speaker 2: we stood in a restaurant, in a public place, because
Speaker 2: he didn't want to cry, and he had never told
Speaker 2: his wife, his current wife, what had happened. Man, He
Speaker 2: wanted to say this story one time. Now, bear in mind,
Speaker 2: Tim Jones is a massive fellow. He can press one
Speaker 2: hundred pounds with either arm. You know, he has an
Speaker 2: immense physical presence. And we went to the restaurant and
Speaker 2: within a few minutes he was pounding the table and sobbing.
Speaker 2: Because Tim is the one who had to go into
Speaker 2: the jungle and identify nine hundred people, his real parents,
Speaker 2: his adoptive parents, his wife at the time, and his children,
Speaker 2: everybody lying on the ground. And it makes an impression.
Speaker 1: Did he ever confide to you or even just discussed
Speaker 1: to you what he thought was going on there? What
Speaker 1: he thought.
Speaker 2: They all knew that their dad was crazy and that
Speaker 2: this was what was he doing there. You know, he
Speaker 2: was giving these suicide drills regularly. You know, they break out.
Speaker 1: The what was the purpose of Jonestown.
Speaker 2: Well, they stated purpose was to they were Jones was
Speaker 2: intensely paranoid. He had the feeling that the government was
Speaker 2: persecuting him, which was not really true at all. But
Speaker 2: one night the entire church disappeared. You know, they all
Speaker 2: went secretly to this little South American country with it,
Speaker 2: you know, in the in the middle of the jungle.
Speaker 2: They've been preparing it. The boys are religious Utopia, the yeah,
Speaker 2: and it was just a you know, it was like
Speaker 2: a you know, a little summer camp type of thing.
Speaker 2: They've built quantcet huts and so on, and they were
Speaker 2: living near a river and they built an airstrip.
Speaker 1: I remember reading on this thing online where they said
Speaker 1: that Jonestown was this training ground where they were breeding
Speaker 1: MK ultra operatives who were capable of committing murder on
Speaker 1: behalf of the government and then they'd have no memory
Speaker 1: of it. Well, you know, I'm not saying that that's true,
Speaker 1: but I remember reading that once.
Speaker 2: I was fast when I was writing about remembering Satan,
Speaker 2: when I was doing the you know, multiple personalities were
Speaker 2: supposed to be the product of satanic ritual abuse, and
Speaker 2: there was a big rise in multiple personality disorder. And
Speaker 2: one of the theories was that the multiples had been
Speaker 2: created by the CIA in order that one personality could
Speaker 2: become a spy and you know, deliver messages that other
Speaker 2: personalities inside the same human being wouldn't know about.
Speaker 1: Lawrence Wright's New Yorker article, The Orphans of Jonestown, came
Speaker 1: out for the fifteenth anniversary of the nineteen seventy eight
Speaker 1: massacre that killed over nine hundred people. Listen to more
Speaker 1: conversations with writers who take on complicated issues, like David Simon,
Speaker 1: who wrote the TV show The Wire but started out
Speaker 1: as the beat reporter for the Baltimore Sun.
Speaker 2: I think I was very fair as a reporter. You know,
Speaker 2: some of poverty is about personal responsibility, and some of
Speaker 2: it is not.
Speaker 1: Some of it is systemic and a result of societal
Speaker 1: forces that are profound. Take a listen in our archives
Speaker 1: at Here's the Thing dot org. This is Alec Baldwin.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Here's the Thing. My guest, Lawrence Wright
Speaker 1: prefers taking notes on index cards over using a computer.
Speaker 1: You can only imagine the number of cards, right you
Speaker 1: For his book Going Clear, Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison
Speaker 1: of Belief. After it was published in twenty thirteen, documentary
Speaker 1: filmmaker Alex Gibney asked right if he'd consider an adaptation.
Speaker 2: We'd worked together before. You know, I had done this
Speaker 2: book about al Qaeda called The Looming Tower, and I
Speaker 2: had my little acting venture. I didn't want to travel
Speaker 2: with it, you know, I just hate touring, you know,
Speaker 2: doing the book tour thing. I had seen Anna Deavere
Speaker 2: Smith do Fires in the Mirror at the Public Theater
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety two and was the first time I
Speaker 2: could see that journalism and theater could be married. And
Speaker 2: I fascinated by that. So I did a one man
Speaker 2: show called My Trip to al Qaeda, and I did
Speaker 2: it off Broadway for about six weeks and in a
Speaker 2: few other cities, and Alex saw me do it in Washington.
Speaker 2: We decided to make it into a documentary, which we
Speaker 2: did for hb OH. We hit it off. Alex is
Speaker 2: his nickname from childhood is Tiger, and his well chosen name,
Speaker 2: and he's this very skillful storyteller, and it takes those
Speaker 2: qualities to take something as complicated about an organizations vindictive
Speaker 2: and litigious as the Church of Scientology. It takes somebody
Speaker 2: like Alex to put together a movie like he's just done.
Speaker 1: One of the things I thought when I saw the film,
Speaker 1: and I mean, all my friends and people who know
Speaker 1: me personally, it wasn't lost on them that within about
Speaker 1: a week of returning from Park City for the festival,
Speaker 1: I went there to have a vacation with my family.
Speaker 1: We just tacked on an extra weekend to see some
Speaker 1: movies because I'm a big fan of the festival, and
Speaker 1: it wasn't lost to my friends with it. About a
Speaker 1: week after that, I was back on a plane to
Speaker 1: London to go shoot a film with Tom Cruise. And
Speaker 1: Tom is a friend of mine, you know, and I
Speaker 1: mean I consider him a friend in the business sense,
Speaker 1: but we don't get to see each other that often.
Speaker 1: But he's always very kind and as people who know
Speaker 1: Tom know, he's a great person to be in the
Speaker 1: trenches of movie making with. He's very hard working and
Speaker 1: very very passionate about the work. But when I saw
Speaker 1: the film, one thing I didn't get and maybe it's there,
Speaker 1: maybe it was in the book, and maybe it's in
Speaker 1: the film, but it was I mean I watched this
Speaker 1: film with intense scrutiny. There wasn't any sense to me
Speaker 1: of what are the people who are in scientology and
Speaker 1: remain in scientology and who are dedicated to this, what
Speaker 1: do they perceive they're getting out of it? Because I
Speaker 1: have some opinions about that. What people have told me, Well,
Speaker 1: what does it do for them? Why are they there?
Speaker 2: Especially when people go into scientology, they don't you know,
Speaker 2: they don't go into it because it's a cult. They
Speaker 2: go into it oftentimes because they're looking for something such
Speaker 2: as well, you know, sometimes they're spiritual seekers or they
Speaker 2: you know, you might be one of those people that
Speaker 2: goes down on the subway and someone says, would you
Speaker 2: like to take our personality tests? You know, and sure,
Speaker 2: Oxford capacity analysis. It sounds like, you know, might be
Speaker 2: and you know, well, if we see that you have
Speaker 2: a little trouble of communicating with people that's true, well
Speaker 2: we you know, we can help, we can help you
Speaker 2: with that. Or in the case of Paul Hagis, you know,
Speaker 2: he had a girlfriend that he was having trouble with
Speaker 2: and say, we have a course that can help you
Speaker 2: in your relationships and PA and the truth is, oftentimes
Speaker 2: they can help. It's like going into therapy. People do
Speaker 2: benefit from it. So this initial exposure to scientology is
Speaker 2: often very positive to people.
Speaker 1: What about the people like Travolta, people who seem to
Speaker 1: have the world on a silver platter and everything is
Speaker 1: going their way.
Speaker 2: Well, that wasn't true. When he got in. He was
Speaker 2: a you know, troubled young man who was in his
Speaker 2: first movie in Mexico. He confided to an actress who
Speaker 2: was on the set. You know, he's having these difficulties,
Speaker 2: and she was a scientologist, and she gave him some auditing,
Speaker 2: which is what scientology calls his therapy, and gave him
Speaker 2: a copy of Diynetics and so on. He had an
Speaker 2: experience which happens to a lot of scientologists when they're
Speaker 2: being audited. He went exterior. In other words, he had
Speaker 2: an out of body experience. He had the sense that
Speaker 2: he had left his corporal being and could look around
Speaker 2: the room and you know, see things behind him and
Speaker 2: so on. At the time he was taking a course,
Speaker 2: when he'd tried out for this Welcome Back Cotter, the
Speaker 2: teacher had everybody in the class turned their direction. I
Speaker 2: think it was CBS Studios, you know, but telepathically send
Speaker 2: the message to the executives that John Travolta is right
Speaker 2: for the role, and he got the part. And so
Speaker 2: he always credited Scientology was putting him in the big time,
Speaker 2: as he said, So you know, in that sense, he
Speaker 2: really did feel that it had changed his life. But
Speaker 2: it's one thing to get into it, and it's another
Speaker 2: thing to get out of it. If you are a star,
Speaker 2: like Travolta was at one time the biggest star in
Speaker 2: the world, the biggest and you have put your name
Speaker 2: down again and again and again. As a Scientologist, you're
Speaker 2: identified with it.
Speaker 1: And they have tapes of you, yes, discussing your darkest moments.
Speaker 2: Right like if you and I were sitting in a
Speaker 2: Scientology auditing session right now, and you're my auditor, and
Speaker 2: you know, and I'm holding the cans which are attached
Speaker 2: to the E meter, and you're probing and asking me
Speaker 2: very impersonal questions about my life and things that I
Speaker 2: would not want to disclose to anyone else except in
Speaker 2: this very confidential confessional atmosphereiatingly yeah, material that is actually
Speaker 2: secretly recorded, sometimes videoed, and then it becomes apparent to
Speaker 2: you that if you decide to leave, the church may
Speaker 2: use some of that against you. And I talked that.
Speaker 2: I talked to a guy whose assignment was to go
Speaker 2: through all those old auditing sessions on John Travolta and
Speaker 2: find stuff they could use against him because they were
Speaker 2: worried that he was.
Speaker 1: Going he was going to go over the wall. In
Speaker 1: the piece in the film, the one thing I found
Speaker 1: that was disturbing was that there are celebrities and wealthy
Speaker 1: public figures who tie a certain amount of their money
Speaker 1: millions of dollars to this organization, a second tier, if
Speaker 1: you will, and this is my description the second tier,
Speaker 1: if you will, are you know, middle Americans, middle income
Speaker 1: who often go into debt, often go into dangerous amounts
Speaker 1: of debt and unwise amounts of debt in order to
Speaker 1: pay for these orditing courses so for them to give
Speaker 1: money to the church. And then there's people who are poor,
Speaker 1: who have nothing, who wind up trading in kind services.
Speaker 1: They become, you know, they become like a labor force
Speaker 1: for them, and then they get forty cents an hour
Speaker 1: according to the film, and they're doing a lot of
Speaker 1: work that benefits other people. In the film, they're saying
Speaker 1: that these people are maintaining in the hangar of cruises airplanes.
Speaker 2: Well, not only maintained it, what they did was refurbish it.
Speaker 2: They built all the furniture, they painted it, They you know,
Speaker 2: they essentially took an empty hangar and made it into
Speaker 2: an office and a place for his planes and all
Speaker 2: these elaborate If you ever been in his hangar Burbank,
Speaker 2: well he's got you know these you know, big decals
Speaker 2: and stuff like that, you know, banners hanging down. It's
Speaker 2: a pretty swank environment. And they handcrafted a limousine for him,
Speaker 2: and oversaw the reconstruction of his tour bus, and they,
Speaker 2: you know, refurbished his house. And these are people who
Speaker 2: are paid fifty dollars a week. Many of them joined
Speaker 2: as children, so you know, they're impoverished and.
Speaker 1: They have no place to go.
Speaker 2: They have, you know, and if we if they do,
Speaker 2: they don't know it. They Yeah, then of course may
Speaker 2: be the case that their families and all are in
Speaker 2: the church and if they left, none of those people
Speaker 2: would ever speak to them again.
Speaker 1: Do you think the people who were the beneficiaries of
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff, do they know what's happening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's no question that Tom Cruise knows what's going
Speaker 2: on inside the Sea Org. And I hold Tom to account.
Speaker 2: I single him out in particular. And because there are
Speaker 2: only two ways that the abuses that we chronicle in
Speaker 2: the movie and in my book, they are only two
Speaker 2: ways that they can be addressed, and one is that
Speaker 2: the IRS decides, well, maybe we should re examine that
Speaker 2: tax exemption that we were bludgeoned and to given them
Speaker 2: in nineteen nine.
Speaker 1: Expect I'm explained for people who don't look this is
Speaker 1: a fascinating part of the film. It was during the
Speaker 1: time that Hubbard was alive, or was the settlement reached
Speaker 1: after Hubbard dies After he died, and apparently he had
Speaker 1: a brigade and raising a lot of money, and he
Speaker 1: had a lot of cash at his disposal and was
Speaker 1: just shelling the Irs and litigation to maintain their status.
Speaker 1: And finally the IRS just caved and said.
Speaker 2: Well, here's the situation that described what had David Misscavage
Speaker 2: found himself in. After Hubbard died, he wrestled control of
Speaker 2: this organization and Hubbard had decided not to pay the taxes,
Speaker 2: and so by nineteen ninety three, the Church of Scientology
Speaker 2: was a billion dollars in arrears and it didn't have
Speaker 2: a billion dollars, and so this was an existential moment
Speaker 2: for the church. They had to get a tax exemption.
Speaker 2: And moreover, the IRS hated them because, you know, in
Speaker 2: the eighties, Hubbard had infiltrated all these you know, the
Speaker 2: Justice Department, the IRS, Food and Drug Administration had all
Speaker 2: these Scientology spies inside the government until the FBI broke
Speaker 2: it open and what was called Operation snow White, and
Speaker 2: twelve people went to prey and including Hubbard's wife. So
Speaker 2: the IRS, among other government agencies did not look kindly
Speaker 2: on the Church of Scientology. So how do you just
Speaker 2: imagine how you would go about getting a tax exempsion
Speaker 2: from the IRS. Well, the Scientology way was to launch
Speaker 2: twenty four hundred lawsuits against the IRS and individual agents,
Speaker 2: to hire private investigators to follow agents around to go
Speaker 2: to conventions where they might be drinking too much or
Speaker 2: fooling around.
Speaker 1: I don't have a billion dollars to pay the taxes,
Speaker 1: but I've got fifty million, two lobs some grenades at ye.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, and so and they they they won, and
Speaker 2: they wanted such a they one my personal feeling is twofold.
Speaker 2: One is I think that the IRS just did cave
Speaker 2: because the deal that the deal on the table was,
Speaker 2: will give you the exemption and all those lawsuits will
Speaker 2: go away. And they did.
Speaker 1: And so do they say, well, we'll give you the
Speaker 1: exemption and take away those losses. Would you have to
Speaker 1: pay us some amount of this money in twelve million
Speaker 1: dollars and that's all see the IRS that's acquired.
Speaker 2: And moreover, it was such an overwhelming exemption. The church
Speaker 2: has manifold different entities, you know, but even Hubbard's novels
Speaker 2: are considered to be scripture and taxes and in the
Speaker 2: church now has the authority to determine which parts of
Speaker 2: itself should be tax exempt.
Speaker 1: Who was it in the film? If I remember correctly,
Speaker 1: there's someone, I think there's an individual use site who
Speaker 1: says to Hubbard early in his career, the only way
Speaker 1: you're going to get riches if you started religions.
Speaker 2: Oh, there were about ten people he said that too.
Speaker 2: And you know, I think that Hubbard really, I think
Speaker 2: he really did believe that. But let me get back
Speaker 2: to that question of you know, just to touch back
Speaker 2: on Tom Cruise before we finish that if the if
Speaker 2: the I R S re examined after the licking it
Speaker 2: took from from Scientology, if it decided to go back
Speaker 2: and re examined, that that might force change inside the church.
Speaker 2: But I haven't seen any evidence that the IRS has
Speaker 2: the appetite to do this, although.
Speaker 1: The Senator on the West Coast, Senator.
Speaker 2: Ron Wyden, is looking into this, and so you know,
Speaker 2: that's a possible. But the other way that change and
Speaker 2: reform could come in Scientology is that some of the
Speaker 2: celebrity megaphones turn around in the other direction and demand change.
Speaker 2: And nobody has benefited more from Scientology than Tom Cruise.
Speaker 2: Nobody is more identified in the public with the Church
Speaker 2: of Scientology than Tom Cruise. Nobody has brought lured more
Speaker 2: people into the church than Tom Cruise. If you ask
Speaker 2: people name one member of the Church of Scientology, that's
Speaker 2: the one ever. And moreover, it's a powerful I mean,
Speaker 2: if you look at you know, he was the number
Speaker 2: one box office star, so he had Travolta than Tom Cruise.
Speaker 2: And you know, and also Will Smith, who started a
Speaker 2: Scientology school. Although he says he's not a scientologist, he
Speaker 2: was one of the time he was number one. So
Speaker 2: you have one, two, three, the most powerful actors in
Speaker 2: the most power. And if you're a young actor standing
Speaker 2: out in central casting waiting to get maybe.
Speaker 1: He's not a bad idea. If I stopped by this center.
Speaker 2: Well, when you're standing in line, they'll be passing out
Speaker 2: brochures saying how to get an agent, how to get
Speaker 2: ahead and the business. Come to the celebrity.
Speaker 1: Center where they make that direct link.
Speaker 2: Yes, and he also back in the old days, the
Speaker 2: acting schools like the Beverly Hills Playhouse was run by Yes,
Speaker 2: who was my teacher. He was apparently a wonderful.
Speaker 1: Teacher, and he was a scientologist.
Speaker 2: And did he ever try to recruit you? Uh?
Speaker 1: I think I wasn't there long enough. I was there
Speaker 1: for under a year. I went briefly and could sell
Speaker 1: Us was quite a character.
Speaker 2: He would tell me about it, and I'm fascinated by him.
Speaker 1: Well, could sell Us He said something that, although it
Speaker 1: was very arch and very kind of you might think
Speaker 1: this was ego maniacal. He was nonetheless right. There was
Speaker 1: a guy up on stage doing a scene. I was
Speaker 1: in this class. My then girlfriend got me into the class.
Speaker 1: This guy's up there doing a scene I'll never forget.
Speaker 1: And Cadsellis is giving his notes on the scene and
Speaker 1: the guy starts to debate him. He says, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's really and Kdsellis says, I beg
Speaker 1: your pardon and he says, well I don't. He goes, well,
Speaker 1: I think it's this, and he goes what it is is?
Speaker 1: And Godselli is now insisting and being a little more
Speaker 1: because he was a very powerful guy rhetorically, and he
Speaker 1: goes and says it again, and the guy debates him again,
Speaker 1: and Kadzelis he said, we're not here for you to
Speaker 1: debate what I tell you. He said, you come here
Speaker 1: and you pay me for me to give you my opinion.
Speaker 1: He said, I'm not interested in your opinion. I give
Speaker 1: you my opinion, and you listen. He turns to the classics.
Speaker 1: And that's it. We don't discuss what I'm saying. This
Speaker 1: isn't a debate. I say what I say, you listen,
Speaker 1: you write it down perhaps and we're done. And Scientology
Speaker 1: I have found and this is I mean, I I
Speaker 1: find it odd, but at the same time I find
Speaker 1: it kind of fascinating. And nonetheless, where Scientology says to you,
Speaker 1: this is what you were put on this earth to do,
Speaker 1: and it gives you that license and that freedom. You
Speaker 1: tell your parents, your wives, your children, everyone in your
Speaker 1: life that nothing must get in the way of this thing.
Speaker 1: This is the goose that lays the golden egg. Movie stardom.
Speaker 1: Are you are different? There's an exceptionalistic nature to who
Speaker 1: you are as a person. And the only way you're
Speaker 1: going to first survive, I mean to stay in that
Speaker 1: orbit out there, in that spaceship living that way. That's
Speaker 1: a very difficult thing to do.
Speaker 2: And I think when so many of these young people
Speaker 2: when they come, you know, it is a young person's
Speaker 2: game when they get into it. So many of the
Speaker 2: people that went in scientology, and this is true of
Speaker 2: anybody that tries to become an actor. Many people who
Speaker 2: try to become actors, they leave high school. They don't
Speaker 2: go to college. You have to go right away.
Speaker 1: Nearly everyone we're talking about is uneducated.
Speaker 2: Yes, and so you're in your vulnerable intellectually vulnerable. And
Speaker 2: also you are risking everything. Your friends are going off,
Speaker 2: they're going to get law degrees and stuff like that,
Speaker 2: and you are out in you know, Hollywood, eating dog food,
Speaker 2: hoping to be a movie star. There's a sense of
Speaker 2: inadequacy that you haven't filled in the great blanks that
Speaker 2: all your friends are doing. And so you along come scientologists,
Speaker 2: which says.
Speaker 1: Why bother, none of that matters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we can, you can supersede all that, because well
Speaker 2: we will get all you will. You will learn the
Speaker 2: secrets of the universe, and you'll acquire superhuman powers. And
Speaker 2: that's and also just being noticed at all at that
Speaker 2: level is you know, very powerful, because you know, I'm
Speaker 2: sure you've done this a million times. But I remember
Speaker 2: once when I was out in La and I was
Speaker 2: at Norman Lear's company, and I walked into a room
Speaker 2: in the lobby and there were about forty guys who
Speaker 2: were blonde and six foot two and extremely handsome, and
Speaker 2: I felt small and brown, and you know, but there
Speaker 2: was a sign saying no actors passed this point. And
Speaker 2: I was able to walk past this point, and all
Speaker 2: those blue eyes turned in my direction, and I thought,
Speaker 2: one of those guys, one of those guys is going
Speaker 2: to have his life change, and everybody else is going
Speaker 2: to go home and some of them become lawnmowers or
Speaker 2: something like that. But that's the risk to have the
Speaker 2: Church of Scientology come along, maybe in that same room
Speaker 2: and passing out brochure is saying that we can help you.
Speaker 2: And by the way, on the brochure that might have
Speaker 2: a picture of Tom Cruise or somebody like that is
Speaker 2: a very powerful lure.
Speaker 1: And here's people who say to you, you are different,
Speaker 1: Just be different, Just accept it, don't fight. Where you're
Speaker 1: going to go right now is extremely unusual for the
Speaker 1: average person's going to be very rarefied atmosphere. Stay calm
Speaker 1: in the pocket, and you're going to throw the football
Speaker 1: one hundred yards down the field. You're going to score
Speaker 1: the winning touchdown. Don't get in the way of your
Speaker 1: own success. And I have seen many of the people
Speaker 1: I know who are really prominent in scientology, they just
Speaker 1: that's what it did for them. What clarity was for
Speaker 1: them was this is who I am in a macho
Speaker 1: and anybody that tried to make you think what you
Speaker 1: were doing was less valid or less substantial, or less meaningful,
Speaker 1: or it was silly or whatever.
Speaker 2: These guys look and what you're saying, what do they
Speaker 2: get out of it? There is you know, this is
Speaker 2: you know a sense of solidity of your identity, belonging.
Speaker 2: And what's so confounding about scientology in many ways is that,
Speaker 2: you know, it promises you that you will become more
Speaker 2: yourself and that you will achieve all this freedom of thought,
Speaker 2: and that you you know, you'll become saner and healthier
Speaker 2: and so.
Speaker 1: On, but shed your past.
Speaker 2: What happened so often is the very opposite. You know,
Speaker 2: you be kind of you become kind of enslaved to
Speaker 2: the mentality and you're not allowed to think freely. You know.
Speaker 2: One of the things that was so striking to me
Speaker 2: about Paul Haggis, who is a very skeptical, imaginative, curious person.
Speaker 2: But he was in the church for thirty five years
Speaker 2: and for thirty four of those years he never heard
Speaker 2: a disparaging word about scientology, never looked on the internet,
Speaker 2: he never read any of those stories because he was
Speaker 2: told not to, and he didn't. He was just as
Speaker 2: obedient as all those other people because he was told.
Speaker 1: It was for his intellectual curiosity. Go regarding that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: what is the thing you're working on now?
Speaker 2: Well, I'm doing you know. I did another book about
Speaker 2: Camp David the Carter begins the Dot Thing, which had
Speaker 2: a play and I'm now going to do it as
Speaker 2: a movie for HBO, and I'm doing a pilot for
Speaker 2: HBO on Texas politics right and I'm working with Bob
Speaker 2: Balaban on a play about the making of the movie Cleopatra,
Speaker 2: which is the thing that I have been having the
Speaker 2: most fun with and I'm going to write about isis.
Speaker 1: So those well, okay, that's what I wanted to tell
Speaker 1: when you say I'm going to write about isis?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't talk about it too much, but I.
Speaker 1: Is this more about religious fanaticism for you?
Speaker 2: Well, in part it is. I'm fascinated by the fact
Speaker 2: that the entire fabric of civilization can simply be ripped away.
Speaker 2: And you know that barbarism is just under the sheets
Speaker 2: and in most grotesque fashion. You know, we look back
Speaker 2: in the twentieth century and you see Nazism and people,
Speaker 2: how did that happen? Well, you know now it's happening again.
Speaker 2: It's a mystery when these things occur, that human nature
Speaker 2: can encompass such savagery. But it's right there in front
Speaker 2: of you, and it's and it's also it's a fact
Speaker 2: of human nature that people are drawn to it. And
Speaker 2: that's whatses my curiosity.
Speaker 1: Do you think that when you look at isis do
Speaker 1: you think that people I just want to get your
Speaker 1: general comment about this. Do you think that people over
Speaker 1: there isis I should say? And whoever the next isis is?
Speaker 1: It seems to have another They seem to be opening
Speaker 1: up a new show over there every eighteen months or year.
Speaker 1: Do you think that they just hate our guts that
Speaker 1: the United States viewed as a hero of the United
Speaker 1: States viewed as an answer the United States viewed as
Speaker 1: a good guy? Is this just more of people wanted
Speaker 1: to send us some kind of message about US foreign power.
Speaker 2: I don't think it has as much to do with us,
Speaker 2: although I think Iraq our eventors in Iraq where it was,
Speaker 2: you know, that's what broke the egg, and I don't
Speaker 2: think we would be looking at what we're seeing now.
Speaker 2: But what the whole region what worries me about isis
Speaker 2: is that everything that holds the Middle East together is
Speaker 2: breaking apart. The states are failing. You know, I've been
Speaker 2: in Syria before and it was to me the least
Speaker 2: religious Arab country that I'd ever been in. So it's
Speaker 2: quite surprising to see, you know, this Islamist uh savagery
Speaker 2: going on right there. And yeah, I just I was
Speaker 2: I was taken aback by it. But you know, I
Speaker 2: spent a lot of time in Egypt and Saudi Arabia
Speaker 2: and places like that, and I know that they're not strong,
Speaker 2: resilient governments and they are very fractured societies. And in
Speaker 2: that environment, we saw what happened in Iraq. You know,
Speaker 2: just almost overnight, uh, this band of marauders uh takes
Speaker 2: over an area of the size of the United Kingdom. Well, Jesus,
Speaker 2: you know, how did that happen? And will it spread?
Speaker 2: Will these societies be able because we can't stop it.
Speaker 2: It's going to be up to uh Sunni societies in
Speaker 2: the Arab world to stop it themselves, and I don't
Speaker 2: have confidence that they can. That's what concerns me. The
Speaker 2: problem becomes when you identify yourself so much with your
Speaker 2: religion rather than your country or your family or so on.
Speaker 2: That becomes the sole basis of your identity. And it's
Speaker 2: a real problem in Europe right now for marginalized young
Speaker 2: men who don't feel like they are a part of
Speaker 2: French society.
Speaker 1: For instance.
Speaker 2: You know, there may be eight to ten percent of
Speaker 2: the population of France is Muslim. Sixty percent of the
Speaker 2: prisoners are So can you imagine a better example of
Speaker 2: how marginalized a group of people is in a country.
Speaker 2: And clearly France has done a horrible job of trying
Speaker 2: to integrate these people into their societies. And it's not
Speaker 2: just the fault of the French government. I'm holding you know,
Speaker 2: those Muslims responsible as well for not participating more fully
Speaker 2: in the countries that have adopted them. But this is
Speaker 2: a this is a profound problem, and it's going to
Speaker 2: last a long time, and I feel, you know, that
Speaker 2: we can't solve it ourselves, and if we try to
Speaker 2: solve it, it'll it'll rebound on us in a profound way.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying we should disengage entirely, but we should
Speaker 2: be honest about the limits of our ability to resolve
Speaker 2: a problem that is essentially a function of the societies
Speaker 2: that is.
Speaker 1: In I know you're not a writer in the Halveston
Speaker 1: tradition where you're going to inhabit some institution. But if
Speaker 1: I can be so bold to recommend the next fanatical
Speaker 1: reality that Lawrence Wright should inhabit and write a book about,
Speaker 1: I'd love to see your book about the Pentagon.
Speaker 2: Oh that's an interesting I see.
Speaker 1: You write a book about the Pentagon from top to bottom.
Speaker 1: You'll give me the rights to do it with HBO.
Speaker 1: I can play portray us or someone. We'll have a
Speaker 1: great time.
Speaker 2: Well, that'd be great.
Speaker 1: We'll we'll have a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: So you're attached.
Speaker 1: I'm attached. I'm such a fan of your writing. That's
Speaker 1: an easy yes. The answer is yes, I'm attached.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's good to know.
Speaker 1: If you also appreciate Lawrence Wright's work, there's a lot
Speaker 1: more to consume. Nine books, five plays, countless articles. The
Speaker 1: documentary film based on his book Going Clear, Scientology, Hollywood
Speaker 1: and the Prison of Belief is currently available on HBO
Speaker 1: on Demand and HBO Go. And if you're ever in Austin,
Speaker 1: you might be able to catch him playing keyboard in
Speaker 1: the Blues Collective Who Doo. Wright said of playing in
Speaker 1: a band quote, I decided a while ago that I
Speaker 1: would only do things that are really important or really fun.
Speaker 1: This is really fun. This is Alec Baldwin you're listening to.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing