Scientology's Seduction of Tom Cruise, Role in Nicole Kidman Split Detailed

[In 2004 Miscavige assigned a team to help Cruise in his search for a girlfriend. The search came up with an aspiring actress Nazanin Boniadi, a 25-year-old Iranian born, London-raised woman whose mother was also a Scientologist. She was given intensive auditing and security checks by the Church and flown to New York and Telluride in late 2007 for elaborate dates with Cruise.]

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But the relationship ended when Miscavige addressed comments to her and she couldn't quite understand what he said. She had to ask him to repeat himself more than once.

The next day both Davis and Cruise dressed her down for disrespecting the Church leader. Naz had embarrassed Miscavige because he wasn't able to get his message across. With his characteristic intensity, Cruise himself later explained the seriousness of the situation:(²³)

"You don't get it, it goes like this," Cruise said. He raised his hand over his head. "First there's LRH." He moved his hand down a few inches. "Then there is COB." Bringing his hand down to his own eye level, he said, "Then there's me." (Cruise's attorney denies that this exchange took place or that the Church set him up.)(²⁴)

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A few months later, in April 2005, Cruise met Katie Holmes. The two were married in November 2006. Miscavige was Cruise's best man. [Though she was often seen with Scientology officials, it has never been revealed how much, if any, Scientology training Holmes engaged in before she and Cruise divorced in 2012.]

Cruise poured millions of dollars into the Church -- $3 million in 2004. He was not simply a figurehead; he was an activist with an international following. He could take the Church to places it had never been before. Whenever Cruise traveled abroad to promote his movies, he used the opportunity to lobby foreign leaders and American ambassadors to promote Scientology.(²⁵)

Cruise repeatedly consulted with President Clinton, lobbying him to get Prime Minister Tony Blair's help in getting the Church of Scientology declared a tax-deductible charitable organization in the U.K. Rathbun was present for one telephone call in which Clinton advised Cruise he would be better served by contacting Blair's wife, Cherie, rather than the prime minister because she was a lawyer and "would understand the details." Later, Cruise went to London, where he met with a couple of Blair's representatives, though nothing came of those efforts.(²⁶ )

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In 2003, he met with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Scooter Libby, to express the Church's concerns over its treatment in Germany. Cruise had access to practically anyone in the world.(²⁷)

That same year, Cruise and Davis lobbied Rod Paige, the secretary of education during the first term of President George W. Bush, to endorse Hubbard's "study tech" educational methods. Paige had been impressed. For months, Cruise kept in contact with Paige's office, urging that Scientology techniques be folded into the president's No Child Left Behind program.(²⁸)

23rd footnote: Maureen Orth, "What Katie Didn't Know," Vanity Fair, Oct. 2012.

24th footnote: Interview with Mark “Marty” Rathbun. Rathbun, The Scientology Reformation, p. 86.

25th footnote: Reitman, Inside Scientology, p. 286. 

26th footnote: Mike Rinder interview.

27th footnote:Reitman, Inside Scientology, p. 286.

28th footnote: Reitman, Inside Scientology, p. 286.