Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath

It's not an easy thing to just walk away

from something you've known your whole life.

Thank you.

At 2000 hours,

Friday, the 24th of January, A.D. 36...

L. Ron Hubbard discarded the body

he had used in this lifetime for 74 years,

10 months and 11 days.

The body he had used to facilitate his existence

in this messed universe

had ceased to be useful

and in fact had become an impediment to the work

he now must do outside of its confines.

After the death of L. Ron Hubbard,

Miscavige set about consolidating his power

as the undisputed heir to Hubbard.

My guest is David Miscavige.

You are now the head of the Church of Scientology.

- Yes. - Okay.

The one girl there that was complaining about it,

a girl named Vicki Aznaran,

this is a girl who was kicked out

for trying to bring criminals into the church.

That's something she didn't mention.

I mean, you say a girl.

I think we're talking about a grown woman, right?

A grown woman, excuse me. A lady, Vicki Aznaran.

And you and she were, at one point,

rivals for the leadership of the...

Absolutely not.

He started removing from their positions

anybody who was in the hierarchy

and was a recognized figure in Scientology,

starting with Mary Sue Hubbard.

He subsequently got rid of

Dede and Gale Reisdorf, Pat and Annie Broeker,

and everybody connected to them

and everybody that might've been allied to them.

David Miscavige has two personas...

one that's, you know, the public persona,

which is, you know, hand shaking and kissing babies,

and, you know, Scientologists are electrified

meeting David Miscavige because he's the leader of the church,

and oh, he's so charming,

he's so powerful, he's so charismatic.

And then behind the scenes, he's hurting people.

I am the writer of the textbooks of Scientology.

The aim and goal is to put man in a mental condition,

uh, where he him... can solve his own problems.

Without any Scientology organization

things are not gonna change on this planet.

After years of slowly questioning Scientology...

Leah Remini and her very public break

with Scientology...

Stop lying to people

that they hold their eternity in their hands.

Stop telling parents that it doesn't matter

what you do this lifetime other than Scientology.

If your religion is so amazing

and doing all these amazing things for the world,

then it should stand up to some questioning.

I would repeat this line, "I want to die. I want to die".

That was my first idea of...

I want to end my own life.

You gave me up

at 13 years old.

How could you think that this was okay for me?

These people are doing extreme things,

and they need to be held accountable.

For us to do more of this,

we wanted to do something that could help these people.

We need to do more than simply document stuff.

You got this.

People will continue to speak.

People will continue to fight.

- Hello. - Hey.

- JB. - How are you?

- I'm good. Hi, Mike. - Hey, man.

- Thanks for coming. - Yeah, no problem.

- Good to see you. - Thank you for having me.

Oh, my God, our pleasure.

I'm John Brousseau,

and I was a member of the Sea Organization,

and I reported directly to David Miscavige.

I was, like, 20 years old when I got introduced to Scientology.

I sort of heard about it peripherally,

and, you know, I didn't really know what it was.

The whole subject of Scientology was very electric.

The concept of you live beyond just this one life

and all this humanitarian drive to help people.

It was just all right up my alley.

It was awesome, and I just jumped in, both feet.

There was a position available

to be taking care of LRH's personal vehicles,

so I moved into that, and then that

later on turned into actually being his driver.

What was he like?

He was an interesting person.

What I saw was somebody

who really believed in what he did,

and to this day, I think he heartfelt was convinced

that what he was doing wasn't a sham.

It was something he was doing to try and solve

his own problems in life,

and then he tried to avail it to other people.

That's what I saw,

and I'm grateful that I got to meet him, you know.

I was kind of close to David Miscavige.

I was, at one point, for 16 years,

I was married to Miscavige's wife's sister,

so we were brothers-in-law,

and I observed him dismantling

and putting himself gradually into the position

where he was the senior most person, aside from LRH,

and I saw Miscavige becoming more and more authoritative

and more and more able to remove people,

regardless of position.

Miscavige basically

first started to assert himself,

which was even before L. Ron Hubbard died.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

There was a pretty infamous meeting that happened

between Miscavige and Mary Sue.

Were you around for that?

I was around for that in a very peculiar way.

I put a wireless microphone on Miscavige,

and they went into a hotel in L.A.

to meet with Mary Sue

and whatever entourage was with her.

And I was sitting in the van

with these giant reel-to-reel recorders,

recording everything through these two microphones...

- unbeknownst to Mary Sue. - For what?

So that he could record this meeting with Mary Sue

that was to argue her into submission,

and basically, D.M. would take charge,

and she would resign and step down.

And did she put up a fight or...

I heard some pretty vociferous objections

coming out of her mouth.

I can't really tell you what she was saying,

but it was obviously directed at him.

- David Miscavige. - And some disagreement

and name-calling happening, yeah.

- What happened to Mary Sue? - Well, she went to prison,

right, ultimately.

And she just sort of ended up being put in a position

of having really no say or power

and quietly lived off her life

until she died.

It was the first step in D.M.'s taking over

and being the one,

and then I remember the takedown,

the Dede and Gale days.

Dede and Gale Reisdorf,

they were at one point in charge of the CMO.

They were the commanding officer

and the deputy commanding officer, respectively.

Hubbard called himself the Commodore

and was waited upon by a hand-picked team

of teenage girls known as the Commodore's Messengers.

Dede Reisdorf became their commanding officer.

And one day, Gale came out

and was telling me

about how David Miscavige was threatening,

and that she needed to go talk to Pat Broeker.

She knew that I was this guy

who knew how to take Miscavige

and go meet with Broeker,

and we had all these secret codes.

I had ways of getting a hold of Broeker's driver,

and he could probably relay to Broeker,

and a meeting could be arranged.

So she hopped in the car.

So yeah, I drove off the base with her.

And I went to the pay phone in San Bernardino,

and I made my phone call

and sent the page to Broeker's driver,

and I was sitting there, waiting for a call.

And maybe 20, 30 minutes went by,

and this van pulls up with Miscavige

and a bunch of other people.

They all pile out, and they just come heading my way,

and they open the doors,

and someone jumped out with a tire iron,

and he went to the phone, and he proceeded to,

the best of his ability, destroy the phone,

and he finally succeeded in ripping the handset cable

out of the phone unit,

so that no phone call could be received there.

They basically severed the ability for Broeker

to find out what's happening.

Miscavige was gonna deal with this himself.

And basically, they're in there with Gale,

and it's Miscavige and Gale one on one.

And he basically talks her into submission,

and then Miscavige would ultimately take out Pat Broeker.

When LRH left in 1980 to do his researches,

he took with him his two most

trusted friends and companions.