The Wittenburg Door Interview with Tory Bezazian

by Bob Gersztyn
July/August 2002

We don't have to tell YOU about L.Ron Hubbard, his book Dianetics, and the religion it spawned—Scientology. In fact, until just recently, most media outlets WOULDN'T tell you about it given Scientology's well-deserved reputation for litigation. Instead, let us tell you about Tory Bezazian.
   In 1969 Tory hitchhiked from Chicago to L.A. to become a disciple of Dianetics. She invested untold tens of thousands of hours and dollars in it (the annual price tag for a membership in the International Association of Scientologists is a cool $1 million at the Gold Patron Meritorious level). In time, she rose to the level of OT VII, Scientology's second highest rank. But she couldn't cross "The Bridge" to OT VIII and become "clear" because Scientology's all-powerful "auditors" said the evil alien thetas still clung to her body. Oh yeah, and she had epilepsy.
   Still, Tory joined the Scientology Parishioners League (sort of a Scientology Anti-Defamation League) where she spearheaded ferocious attacks against any imagined media slight of L. Ron or Dianetics. She became the indefatigable "Magoo," nemesis of the Internet newsgroups alt.religion.scientology and www.xenu.net.
   Eventually, Tory was an ordained "minister" and worked as a trainer of new Scientology initiates, like John Travolta.
   Today Ms. Bezazian spends her time informing as many people as possible that the abuses of Scientology can destroy lives and that it is built on lies told solely for the purpose of enriching a small elite group who run the organization.
   This seemed like a radical change that merited further investigation. Convinced that this would lead to a chance to photograph John Travolta or Tom Cruise, Bob Gersztyn, The Door Magazine's staff photographer and Interviewer of Choice for things related to the Left Coast, agreed to engage Tory Bezazian in a phone interview.

THE DOOR MAGAZINE: Exactly what is Scientology?
TORY BEZAZIAN: Well, there's the Scientology answer, and then there's my own personal answer. What Scientology says it is, is a study of knowing how to know. They say they're a religion and they're there to basically help people get free.
DOOR: Free of what?
BEZAZIAN: L. Ron Hubbard wrote a book called Dianetics. And from Dianetics, you can erase painful moments or moments of loss. That's what he says.
DOOR: And so he built a religion based on eliminating painful moments.
BEZAZIAN: Originally, that's what Dianetics was and then he came up with a state of mind called "CLEAR." Which was supposedly where you had a perfect memory and a perfect I.Q. However, the truth is, through his own definition, there isn't a CLEAR.
DOOR: So he realized that he was wrong and recanted and gave everyone back their money?
BEZAZIAN: No, he found out it'll make money and as he says in his words, in order to make money you've got to start a religion. So that's what he did. He started Scientology.
DOOR: Did you ever meet L. Ron Hubbard?
BEZAZIAN: I didn't know him personally, although many of my friends did. From knowing him via his tapes, and from my friends, my best description is "a fabulous intern of P.T. Barnum's." He knew how to entertain an audience and gain their trust. From there, he used them for many things. Some laughed, some cried, some died... including him. He forgot it was just a show.
DOOR: When you originally got involved in Scientology what drew you to it?
BEZAZIAN: I was really looking for a higher state of consciousness and a way of helping people. And I read Dianetics and I felt "WOW this is it!" You know, "I can help people go CLEAR." And I literally hitchhiked from Chicago to Los Angeles to study Scientology.

	LOSER: Who Needs the Truth When You've got The L. Ron Hubbard Study Bible and Apologetics Handbook! By Skippy R. July/August 2002 We were surprised but flattered the other day when a phone call reached our office from L. Ron Hubbard, the secretive and rarely seen founder of Scientology who reportedly died in 1986.    He had a problem he felt only we could solve. You see, he said in recent years things had been looking up for the group. The Clinton administration had given the church back its non-profit tax exempt status (which it lost in the 1970s when a group of the church's leaders were convicted of burglarizing the IRS headquarters). And it had taken over its former enemy, the Cult Awareness Network, a few years ago. But now the tide was turning against them. One of the church's chief critics, attorney Graham E. Berry, had petitioned U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft to bring a racketeering charge against the church as a terrorist group. And the church's copyrighted secret scriptures, which adherents were required to pay $400,000 to study, had been entered as evidence in a lawsuit and were now published for all to see on the Internet.    And sadly, in its international quest for legitimacy as a church, Scientology was meeting with skepticism and resistance at every turn, he said. The governments of Germany, Belgium and Spain consider the church a dangerous cult. Despite constant lawsuits brought against its critics, publicity from celebrities like Tom Cruise and John Travolta and millions of copies of Hubbard's book Dianetics filling used book stores around the country, Scientology had still failed to persuade the public to accept the existence of a religion that resembles bad science fiction and is based on an electronic appliance, the E-Meter.    We immediately put our heads together—which in itself produced a whopping crackle of static electricity—and came up with a solution. Scientology needs an outward symbol, we all agreed, a religious talisman denoting the power and truth of its claims.    What Scientology lacks is what every Christian denomination has—its own study Bible. With an L. Ron Hubbard Study Bible and Apologetics Handbook, supporters will get the hermenuetical upper hand on their critics, maintain a firm grasp on their sacred writings and bring badly needed clarity to their belief system.    (So you can gauge the extent of the difficulty—Scientologists believe that most human problems can be traced to lingering spirits of an extraterrestrial people massacred by their ruler, Xenu, over 75 million years ago. These spirits attach themselves by "clusters" to individuals in the contemporary world, causing spiritual harm and negatively influencing the lives of their hosts).    With words like "volt" and "ohm" defined in its glossary of religious terms, Scientology believers need lots of help making that big leap of faith.    In the spirit of Scientology's pricing structure, we suggest the church charge its followers $250,000 for this manual. But we offer our suggestions, free and clear, to Door readers. SACRED OBJECTS SCRIPTURE PASSAGE:    "In itself, the E-Meter does nothing." —A disclaimer printed in many Scientology publications. COMMENTARY:    L. Ron Hubbard stood on the shoulders of giants—from Ben Franklin to Thomas Edison—in his discovery of the true purpose of electricity. The E-Meter may look like a simple voltage meter, but its measurement of tonal disfunction and engram identification can, in the hands of a licensed practitioner, be the key to spiritual freedom for troubled seekers. And, it can power your tabletop model racecar track or double as a nifty candy dispenser when not in service to the higher good. CHURCH & STATE SCRIPTURE PASSAGE:    "Taxes exist only to destroy business. Be impudent. Get rich and to hell with them. Governments are just a reactive bank we have to live with for a while." —Hubbard Communications Office Policy Letter, Jan. 28, 1965 COMMENTARY:    As a prolegomena to the healthy church-state relations that Hubbard promoted all through his ministry, these words recall the saying of Jesus, "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God's." Money, indeed, becomes the root of all evil... if it's taken away from you. Besides, in December of 2000, in a letter of "warm greetings," former President Bill Clinton thanked Scientologists for "all your efforts to promote [religious freedom] and to build just communities united in understanding, compassion and mutual respect." That's got to count for something, right? THE EARLY YEARS SCRIPTURE PASSAGE:    "Better than 90 percent of what my father has written about himself is untrue... My father used to mix phenobarbital with bubble gum and give it to me and my sister—I remember the darn stuff was very bitter. Then he would tell us stories, great stories, but I could never remember him finishing a lot of them. He would feed us bubble gum, and then try to put us in hypnotic trances in order to create what he called a 'moonchild.'    "He had one of those insane things, especially during the '30s, of trying to invoke the devil for power and practices. My mother told me about him trying out all kinds of various incantations, drugs and hypnosis...His initials for it were PDH—pain, drugs, hypnosis. The use of PDH, coupled with black magic, was an effective for brainwashing or mind control. You'll see throughout early Scientology literature, 'PDH.'    The book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health supposedly documents the results of intensive research on roughly 280 case histories. But "all were subcreated by Dad. None of them were case histories."    "Remember this basic thing—it's a money-and-power game, period. It's who's got all the money, who can step on whom to climb up higher, who can control the most number of people ... ." —From an interview with L. Ron Hubbard Jr., (Hubbard's son, who has changed his last name to DeWolfe) by Dennis Wheeler in the Santa Rosa, Calif., News-Herald, July 7-13, 1982. COMMENTARY:    Obviously garbled in translation, these passages seem to suggest the dynamic tension between father and son that leads to creativity. We shouldn't be surprised that the elder Hubbard created stories, fiction ... call them lies or what have you. This after all was the genius that produced Battlefield Earth and other novels of fiction. Besides, do you believe some guy who would disguise his identity with an ALIAS? FAMILY VALUES SCRIPTURE PASSAGE:    "It doesn't give me displeasure to hear of a virgin being raped. The lot of women is to be fornicated." —From Hubbard's personal archive of reflections and writings, read into the record in Scientology v. Armstrong, Los Angeles Superior Court, Case No. C 420153 in 1984.    "Children are expensive inconveniences who interfere with production." —L. Ron Hubbard, date unknown.    "Clearing one member of a family of aberrees is seldom enough to resolve the problems of that family. If the husband has been aberrated, he will have aberrated or restimulated his wife and children in one way or another, even when he used no physical violence upon them. The parents implant their mutual aberrations in the children and the children, being potentially self-determined units, revolt back to stir up the aberrations of the parents. In that so many of these aberrations, by contagion, have become mutual and held in common with the whole family, the happiness of the family is severely undermined." —Dianetics 200-201 COMMENTARY:    Scientologist families at the national organization headquarters live in clean, affordable housing, their spouses oftentimes live nearby, their children are housed in "cadet" apartments in close proximity, and they all get to visit each other on weekends. What more can a family ask? THE PROBLEM OF EVIL SCRIPTURE PASSAGE:    "I believed in Satanism. There was no other religion in the house! Scientology and black magic. What a lot of people don't realize is that Scientology is black magic that is just spread out over a long time period. To perform black magic generally takes a few hours or, at most, a few weeks. But in Scientology it's stretched out over a lifetime, and so you don't see it. Black magic is the inner core of Scientology, and it is probably the only part of Scientology that really works. Also, you've got to realize that my father did not worship Satan. He thought he was Satan. He was one with Satan. He had a direct pipeline of communication and power with him. My father wouldn't have worshiped anything. I mean, when you think you're the most powerful being in the universe, you have no respect for anything, let alone worship." —Penthouse interview with L. Ron Hubbard Jr. (now L. Ron DeWolfe), June 1983. COMMENTARY:    When evaluating statements by Hubbard's son, reflect for a minute on evangelist William Murray, son of the late atheist leader Madalyn Murray O'Hair; or Franklin Graham, the motorcycle-riding son of evangelist Billy Graham; or even Ron Reagan, the ballet-dancing offspring of Ronald Reagan. Youthful rebellion knows no limits. But it's generally just a phase. And I don't know about you, but I don't read Penthouse for the articles. INTERFAITH DIALOGUE SCRIPTURE PASSAGE:    "The man on the cross ... there was no Christ. The man on the cross is known as everyman." —From a recorded address, PDC Lecture 35 The DEI Scale 11 Dec. 1952 by L. Ron Hubbard, posted at http://www.lermanet.com/cos/nochrist.wav.    "......and the Christ legend is an implant in pcs a million years ago." [EDITOR'S NOTE: An implant is a electronically assisted brainwashing that Hubbard said happens to people before this life at various times. And "pcs" is short for "pre-clears," what Scientology calls those who are receiving "auditing" with an E-Meter but have not yet attained the state of "Clear"] —L. Ron Hubbard, Professional Auditor's Bulletin #31, PABS Book 2, on Page 26.    "During this False Data Stripping and religious deprogramming, Plaintiff asked Defendant Lieutenant Rathbun repeatedly if he could be misunderstanding Hubbard's and RTC's intent as Plaintiff stated that he could not believe that, in order to be able to continue in Scientology, he would have to renounce his 'other' Christian religious faith. Defendant was told that he had not misunderstood and that anyone practicing any kind of 'other' religious faith would be shunned and ineligible to continue in Scientology as it was considered an 'illegal other practices' under RTC policies. Plaintiff asked Lieutenant Rathbun if Plaintiff's Jewish friends would also have to give up their Jewish faith and was told that they were not permitted to practice Judaism and only permitted to describe themselves as Jewish as part of the Scientology enterprise's religious front." —From a 1998 complaint, Michael Pattison v. Church of Scientology in California District Court, Central District. COMMENTARY:    These statements should in no way keep Christians from exploring the benefits of Scientology's Bridge to Total Freedom through auditing. Although Scientology is not a "turn-the-other-cheek" religion, we love the J-man's chutzpa. We're not sure how he cast out the cluster of body Thetans into that herd of swine without an E-Meter, but it was a neat trick. And with all he went through, he's probably Clear. OK? ETHICS SCRIPTURE PASSAGES:    " ... in any command of mine, you can wear horns and grow a tail if you do your job. If you don't do your job, you can't even think sideways without getting disciplined, transferred or demoted." —Flag Order 4, Aug. 13, 1967, by L. Ron Hubbard.    "In short, a staff member can get away with murder so long as his statistic is up, and can't sneeze without a chop if it's down. To do otherwise is to permit some suppressive person to simply Ethics chit every producer in the org out of existence." —HCOPL, Sept. 1, 1965, Ethics Protection, by L. Ron Hubbard. COMMENTARY:    As you can see, Hubbard had a deep sense of ethics. It was just different from everyone else's on the planet. And isn't that the kind of moral entrepreneurship that allows a person of genius to make his mark on history? We think it's as plain as the smile on Tom Cruise's face. LOVING THY NEIGHBOR SCRIPTURE PASSAGES:    "The DEFENSE of anything is UNTENABLE. The only way to defend anything is to attack ... it is an entirely moral duty to be punitive against strangers and outsiders who would stop the progress of this [Scientology] civilization." —mid-March 1955, L. Ron Hubbard.    "People attack Scientology: I never forget it, always even the score... Overt investigation of someone or something attacking us by an outside detective agency should be done more often and hang the expense... Hire them and damn the costs when you need to... There are men dead because they attacked us." —Manual of Justice, L. Ron Hubbard.    "The purpose of the suit is to harass and discourage rather than to win. The law can be used very easily to harass, and enough harassment on somebody who is simply on the thin edge anyway, well knowing that he is not authorized, would generally be sufficient to cause his professional decease. If possible, of course, ruin utterly." —The Scientologist, a Manual of Dissemination of Material, 1955. COMMENTARY:    The genuine love for humankind expressed by L. Ron Hubbard shouldn't be obfuscated by misunderstanding the tenor of these remarks. There's nothing different here than what the Christian Church has considered its role in defending the faith against heretics or infidels through the ages. It's in the best interests of the Clears to round up and lock away any aberrent persons who refuse to submit to our cure. No Operating Thetan worth his salt could do any differently. [EDITOR'S NOTE: The light-hearted humor article above in no way represents disbelief in Scientology's fine humanitarian work, its status as a bona fide religion or its potency as a litigation machine. It's just a little comedy piece we found in our mailbox. Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha. ... . Ha.] —Jim Wallis, Editor, The Door Magazine, 4372 Walsh St., Indianapolis, Mo. 75287.     12 LEAST-KNOWN TEACHINGS OF SCIENTOLOGY By Becky Garrison July/August 2002 Scientologist doctors recommend that all thetans who want to be clear and disease free undergo a regimen of proper auditing and constant expulsion of liquid assets of at least $300,000 in order to drain completely their minds (and bank accounts). A Tribble is a thetan that seeks to obtain OT III level status by foregoing shaving. Notable tribbles who have donned beards include Nancy Cartwright (voice of Bart Simpson), Tom Cruise and John Travolta. Xenu is the name given for the cruel galactic ruler who banished thetans to earth some 75 million years ago. His anger was fueled in part because his parents favored his younger brother Zima's clear behavior. L. Ron Hubbard wrote Dianetics during prolonged periods of isolation when Mother Hubbard forced him to sleep in a bare cupboard. Despite what the National Mental Health Association says, Scientologists were NOT distributing booklets at Ground Zero. They were passing out pamphlets. Are we all clear now? Scientologists can only watch porn videos if they contain multiple money shots. The origin of the WWJD phenomenon was the Scientology acronym WWRD or "Who Would Ron Destroy?" Scientologist leaders deploy this acronym whenever they need to tap into their late leader's discernment powers so they can assess the most appropriate method of attacking a traitor or critic of the movement. Christ was a myth fabricated by space aliens to deceive Man from realizing his true nature. In reality, he was a cabbie in Nazareth (Operating Thetan VIII). Despite the claims of the U.S. Government, L. Ron Hubbard was not an embarrassment to the U.S. Navy. He never dropped anti-submarine torpedoes on an empty piece of ocean, and did not conduct target practice on a stretch of land that turned out to be Mexico. Scientology is the No. 1 religion in the world, as it holds the current world record for filing more lawsuits in one single day than many churches have filed in their entire histories. Not even constant auditing can guarantee the resurrection of Kirstie Alley, Juliette Lewis, and Mimi Rogers's acting careers. Scientology receives "only" the same tax-exempt status as any other religion. The IRS granted this exemption after church leaders agreed to contribute unlimited auditing services.

DOOR: But this state of CLEAR is touted as being where you achieve almost superhuman ability.
BEZAZIAN: Supposedly. In the early '50s, Hubbard did a big event at the shrine auditorium, in L.A.. They actually tried to demonstrate CLEAR and people in the audience got up and asked various questions. And the lady couldn't even remember the color of Hubbard's tie that he was wearing. It was sort of a farce and it still is, really.
DOOR: So you've never met an actual 100% CLEAR?
BEZAZIAN: Oh sure. I know they say they're CLEAR by one further definition Hubbard gives, but in reality no, I haven't. Not one that has perfect memory and a super high I.Q. and, you know, absolutely no illnesses, absolutely no pain. You know, no upsets. No, I haven't.
DOOR: How did the ones that claimed they were CLEAR achieve that level.
BEZAZIAN: There's a whole thing Hubbard designed called "The bridge to total freedom." And you basically do these different steps. They start you out on a little teeny gradient. Just like something you'd like to improve. There's a chance Scientology can fix that. So you know, then you're on the train. Now you've done that, here's the next thing. And even if you don't want to do it, you're surrounded by so many people who're saying, "Yeah, do the next thing." So it's impossible to say I don't want to, or almost possible.
DOOR: The website www.xenu.net calls Scientology " ... the most expensive religion on earth." Why?
BEZAZIAN: Because Hubbard was trying to make money and the execs in it basically live very well.
DOOR: But how would that be any different than some televangelist who is bilking people out of their welfare and Social Security checks?
BEZAZIAN: There's definitely a similarity. The difference in those religions and Scientology is (that) you have a choice. In Roman Catholicism, for example, you don't have to donate to go to church. You're welcome in their church at any point.
DOOR: We take it this isn't the case with Scientology?
BEZAZIAN: In Scientology, you cannot do most of their stuff without paying a definite price. It's already pre-planned. It's very much like a business.
DOOR: So everything has a set price on it?
BEZAZIAN: It's a set price. There's no negotiation. They call it a donation. It's basically a service they're selling. They call it a religion so they don't have to pay taxes.
DOOR: So how much is the total sum a person must pay to achieve CLEAR?
BEZAZIAN: You know I'm really bad at this, 'cause I did that so long ago. It's in the tens of thousands. Probably would be $100,000 at this point.
DOOR: So then you were CLEAR?
BEZAZIAN: I attested to CLEAR, but they ended up invalidating it while I was on OT VII.
DOOR: CLEAR has levels?
BEZAZIAN: Yes there's CLEAR and there's OT.
DOOR: So it's CLEAR, OT I, OT II, OT III, OT VI, OT V, OT VI, & OT VII?
BEZAZIAN: OT VII is the highest level. And I was on OT VII for seven years.
DOOR: And they took it away?
BEZAZIAN: Which was totally "Out Tech" for what they do. But they did it anyway.
   Out Tech is their slang term. Technology is tech. (If) it was out tech, they did something wrong, which invalidates someone's state of anything. It's very wrong in their group.
DOOR: So you were invalidated for the position that you had attained even after all your years of working on it?
BEZAZIAN: Yeah. I'd been on VII for seven years and then an auditor said: "Well, you're not really CLEAR."
DOOR: And here I thought "Once saved, always saved" was a neat dogma. What was the reason they gave you for doing it?
BEZAZIAN: They didn't. They just said: "You couldn't of gone CLEAR then, so when did you CLEAR?" I was just in the middle of VII and an Auditor was doing a very weird thing that shouldn't have been done. That's one thing.
   The other thing was, I was on OT VII for seven years and then David Miscavige, who runs the church, had a huge event. And basically the truth of the matter—and I really think this—that their beginning levels are empty and they can't get a lot of new people because they read the Internet and find out what's going on. So I think they ran out of money and decided, " Well, we'll just make all the OT VII's redo OT VII. And all the auditors redo their training.
   So David had a huge event and said: "Oh, we found out everybody's not doing well. They haven't drilled you enough. So for everybody they have to restart from the beginning and do it all over again. It's like doing college over again. I was ready to graduate from college and it's like "Whoops. You didn't really drill it right. We want you to go back to the beginning and pay $25,000 and redo it."
   I thought, "Wait a minute! I've been doing this for seven years. I've been writing you saying something's wrong. I've been telling you it's not going well. And then to charge $25,000 to pay to redo it again? I don't think so."
DOOR: So was that when you first began to see holes in their philosophy?
BEZAZIAN: No. No. Really the beginning of the holes was getting on OT VII, because I really thought it was going to be this real neat level. And it was just more of what they call OT III—which has to do with these alien beings that you're supposedly surrounded by called BTs and Clusters. BTs (Body Thetans) is a whole different thing.
   Basically they say: Seventy-five million years ago, this real evil dude called Xenu decided to handle the galactic overpopulation problem that existed by putting these excess people into volcanoes and blowing them up with hydrogen bombs, and their spirits were stuck on these electronic strips. I think that somehow he put the strips in these DC 8s, which is really weird.
DOOR: Wait a minute. You mean the DC 8 the old airplane? They had DC 8s 75 million years ago? Does the Smithsonian know about this?
BEZAZIAN: No. Of course not. So that's really weird. Plus he (Hubbard) lists the actual sites of different volcanoes and many of them geographically weren't even in existence at the time. Then they went under these electronic strips and then they flew them in the DC 8s over to these theatres and implanted them with all these pictures about religion, and Christ, and God, and everything else. And then... I forget what they did then, but they end up being glued on to all of us. So that's the cause of all of your problems in your life.
DOOR: Wow! At least Ron had the decency to invent his own religion from scratch. How did these strips get glued onto us when we were born?
BEZAZIAN: I can't remember the whole thing, but it's called OT III and they can read it on the Internet, they have the whole story posted. Hubbard was a science fiction writer, and it is very science fiction. When you read it you're like, "Come on!" However, part of Scientology is that you are not allowed to say a word about these OT levels to another person. OT stands for "Operating Thetan." So it's the highest of highest crimes to ever say anything.
   Just to give you an idea, one time I was in an apartment with another woman who was OT III and I just said "BT" and she immediately wrote it up. I got in huge trouble for it. They said, "If you ever do this again, you'll never do anything in Scientology again." So it's pretty heavy. So of course you might read it and go, "This is a bunch of you know what," but because you can't say it to anybody else around, instead, you're saying "Wow! Isn't this cool?"
   To Hubbard, Theta equals spirit, so you were originally Thetan and he's moving you closer to the state of Theta with what he calls auditing or counseling. Entheta is the opposite of Theta. It's all the bad things.
DOOR: For example?
BEZAZIAN: Anything critical of Scientology was considered and is considered Entheta. Nobody wants to hear the bad side of things, but they go to such an extreme that they literally start cutting people's critical thinking. Where you'll see something that's really bad, it's almost like, "I didn't hear that. I know Scientology's so right, they would only do what's the right thing."
DOOR: During the 30 years you were in, Scientology must've done some good things for you, or you wouldn't have stayed with it.
BEZAZIAN: There's a lot of nifty people in it. And that's probably more than anything what I stayed in it for. And there's a huge hope factor. And once you get to OT, you will be able to do X,Y and Z. And a lot of people stay for that very reason.
DOOR: One of the most famous cases linking a name to Scientology negatively was the death of Lisa McPherson.
BEZAZIAN: I wasn't there, but from what I've read and understand, she wanted to get out of Scientology. She had an accident, got out of the car and took off her clothes in an attempt to look insane and get to a mental institution so she could say, "I don't want to go back to Scientology." Instead, they took her to the hospital, and the Scientologists zoomed over there, and said, We'll take care of her." They did what they call a "Type 3 handling." Which means, "You're so flipped out, no one's going to talk to you." That's what they do. They just keep you in a room. Very quiet. Nobody'll talk to you. And force vitamins down you. You can go on the Internet and look at her autopsy pictures and story and make up your mind on it yourself. She died of dehydration.
DOOR: Why didn't she go to the authorities or to the people at the hospital and say that she didn't want to go with them?
BEZAZIAN: I wasn't there, man. I don't know. Read the story. Go read it yourself. I'm not going to say I'm the expert on Lisa McPherson. And this isn't an interview about her.
DOOR: Um, yeah. Thanks for reminding us. You worked for Scientology's Office of Special Affairs. What exactly did you do for them?
BEZAZIAN: Mostly public relations stuff. They asked me to be in charge of the Scientology Parishioners League, which handles "Black PR" in the media. Black PR is anything critical of Scientology.
   I was a volunteer for them for 20 years, but I was only in Scientology Parishioners League for four months. Shortly after that, I left. I mainly organized it and we had a few different projects. They had an A & E special on cults and we asked them take us out of that, saying "Scientology isn't a cult."
DOOR: Were you involved with the South Park episode where Cartman soils his drawers and uses a Scientology personality test to clean himself?
BEZAZIAN: Yes, but they were going to have it be Dianetics. I thought we got it changed to the personality test, but now I'm not sure how that was, 'cause that's what OSA told me. I don't know if it's true or not.
DOOR: Didn't you also work on negative publicity in Florida, to help defeat an anti-Scientology politician?
BEZAZIAN: Yes. Richard Tenning. What I worked on there was not to get him to lose the election, although that was the intention of Scientology, but mainly to raise the awareness of the people of Clearwater. I guess it was to get rid of him. He was trying to prevent Scientology from setting up its headquarters in Clearwater and they didn't want that happening. Obviously.
DOOR: You quit Scientology and you were going to Florida to meet with Stacy and Bob Minton who could help you out, then Scientology operatives followed you, or met you at different airports to convince you to go with them.
BEZAZIAN: How did they know I was going to the airport at that time? I had told three friends that I was leaving the church, but I didn't say I was going to Clearwater and I certainly didn't say what time. So how did they know I was going there? When I got there, the vice president was there and she wouldn't leave me alone. She was there with piles of information about how bad Stacy and Bob Minton were and how I shouldn't go. She followed me for an hour until finally I called Bob Minton. He said: "Look, I'll just get you a first class ticket. You can go into a private lounge and she can't go in there." And that's how I got rid of her. Then I went to Chicago and there were more people there. We finally had the police get me out of Tampa at 1:45 in the morning. That's pretty weird. I was really amazed.
DOOR: By how bad they wanted to keep you?
BEZAZIAN: I really thought it was my religion. I was leaving, but I really thought these were good people. And I just can't believe how they turned on me. How they ratted on me. They've broken in my house. They've done some unbelievable stuff. One year ago I was a part of them.
DOOR: You left the church July 18, 2000. And you have no regrets about leaving?
BEZAZIAN: None. Are you kidding me? When people do that kind of *** to you?
DOOR: After you invest 30 years of your life in something, isn't it hard to do a 180 degree turn in your attitude towards it?
BEZAZIAN: First of all, I don't believe in regrets. I really don't. I think it's a waste of time and energy. And I've always felt that way in my life. I just believe you're kind of on a path, and you're doing what you're doing, and that's the right thing to do. I really do believe in higher powers and higher spirits, and they're helping me.
   I had been watching Oprah Winfrey and she kept saying: "All I did was give my life up to God." So I thought, "Here's this woman who's so successful and she says it over and over. I gave my life up to God." My life is a rut. It's a total mess and I don't even have God in my life.
   On the New Years Eve of the new millennium, I was in the Shrine Auditorium, they were having a big event, and I thought, "All right. I'm gonna do it. I give my life up to God. Do whatever you want with my life. I'm willing to totally 100% transform my life. This year it's gonna change. I don't know how."
   I thought it was going to be all with Scientology, but then I got on the Internet and yadda. You know, this is just too incredible. It was an amazing transformation.
   It wasn't a huge turning point. The huge turning point was getting on OT VII and seeing that it didn't work, it was a bunch of ***. That was a huge turning point for my entire life. The thing with
   Oprah was just a very small thing that just happened in a long sequence of events of things that have occurred.
DOOR: So, where are you at today as far a religion or anything of that nature goes?
BEZAZIAN: I believe very much in religion, I believe in faith, and I believe in people believing in whatever they believe in that makes their lives better. Whatever that is. I don't have any particular group that I'm a part of. If that's what you mean, no. I do believe in higher spirits, yes.
DOOR: How many people are there in Scientology worldwide, at this point?
BEZAZIAN: Here's the truth of it: They count every single person who even buys books. But actual fact is that there's a few thousand that are active. I don't know exactly how many there are. It's in thousands. I'm not saying two thousand. I'm saying there may be many thousands. But there are not millions and millions that are active. There are thousands that are active. But not millions. What they say is that there's eight million.
DOOR: So they use somebody like John Travolta or Tom Cruise as kind of a marketing tool to draw new converts. Do you know how either of them got interested in Scientology?
BEZAZIAN: No, I don't, but I helped train John Travolta.
DOOR: Really? Then you must know something about his involvement.
BEZAZIAN: People generally talk to other people. And they say: "Wow, this thing's really cool and I think it could help you out." The truth of the matter is that in Los Angeles, artists are not very cared for until they're big. Like you're nothing until you're big. And then you're everything. And a lady named Yvonne Jentszhe started a group called Celebrity Center. The intention is to get them into Scientology, just like Travolta. Travolta wasn't much when he first came to the Celebrity Center. He was their first big star, because he got "Welcome Back, Kotter."
DOOR: What did you train him for?
BEZAZIAN: He was on what was called the HQS course. The Hubbard Qualified Scientologist. It's just their second course after the communication course.
DOOR: Is a trainer like a minister?
BEZAZIAN: Not necessarily. They just call them Supervisors. I later became a Minister of Scientology, but at the time I was not. Many of the supervisors are not. They're just trained in how to run a course room.
DOOR: How do you go about becoming a minister? Are you ordained and able to perform marriages and other legal services?
BEZAZIAN: Yes. They sort of did a group thing. What happened is they realized they had to become a religion. And they had to get certified for the IRS so they didn't have to pay taxes. So they did this massive thing overnight. This is real typical of Scientology, where they just—BOOMF!—overnight something will happen. So BOOMF! "We need to be ministers. Okay everybody's on this minister's course." This mass group of people and "Okay, you're all ministers." We did one week long course and then BOOMF! now you're a minister. And that's typical of Scientology. I believe the IRS was their big reasoning on it.
DOOR: BOOMF?
BEZAZIAN: They had the Guardians Office. Did you ever hear about the Guardians Office?
DOOR: That was the one that broke into the IRS, wasn't it?
BEZAZIAN: They broke into somewhere. Did illegal things and eight or nine people went to jail for it. Including Mary Sue Hubbard. And because of that, it may have been after that, they were worried about them getting their folders. So they BOOMFED and made everybody ministers. Then they really had to become an official religion where we stamped all the folders, Priest Penitents, Privilege, and everything like that.
DOOR: What year was that?
BEZAZIAN: July 8, 1977, was when the raid happened.
DOOR: You said that you first become suspicious that everything wasn't what it seemed to be when you hit OT VII. Didn't any of this make you suspicious earlier?
BEZAZIAN: The first clue was 1972. I got in in '69. In '72 I joined the Sea Org. After a few months of being in the Sea Org—which is the highest you can be, as far as working with them. That was Hubbard's big elite team. They said, "You've got to get off this medicine." I take medication for gran mal seizures. "We're anti-medicine. You can't be on medication and be a part of this OT group."
   So I started trying to get off this medication and I was having seizures all around town. It was a nightmare. It was a living hell for me. I was losing my memory. Really bad things were happening to me, and my mom was begging me daily saying, "Tory, take your medication, this is not right."
   And I'd say, "No, no, Dianetics will handle it." And she'd say, "No, no it isn't! This is a medical situation. You need to take your medicine."
   I finally did have to look at whether or not they are 100% right. Finally, I realized they're not 100% right. That was the very beginning of me looking at it, I realized that I can't do their 100% path. I can't because I need to take this medication. I'm going to have seizures, and they want me off it.
DOOR: Then after you hit OT VII, that was pretty much when things really started to fall into place for you. Then I would imagine you went into denial.
BEZAZIAN: Scientology is built on denial. It isn't like you go into denial then. It's built on denial from day one. You read a thing called Keeping Scientology Working. And Hubbard basically says you have to stay on this path. And if you get off of it, you could not only lose your freedom, but you could lose your freedom for eternity. Life after life after life. That's a lot if you buy into that. That's a big denial right there. That's a bunch of ***. Once you buy that, and it's in the very first course that you read that. And every course after that, they have Keeping Scientology Working and this whole six-page paper about how you have to stay on the path. If you see anybody off the path, you have to write them up. And they can pull them in and correct them. Get them back on the path.
DOOR: And the path is agreeing with Scientology's point of view?
BEZAZIAN: And believing what they say and debating it and not listening to anything that disagrees with it. They never want you to get on the Internet. Have you ever heard of the Net Nanny?
DOOR: Like an anti-pornography program for computers?
BEZAZIAN: They covertly put something on your computer so you cannot get to a critical site. I don't know another group that does that.
DOOR: That is a little extreme.
BEZAZIAN: A little? No wait. Let's get something straight here, man.
DOOR: Calm down, I didn't mean...
BEZAZIAN: A LITTLE TOO EXTREME? They're hounding people. They took TIME magazine to court for 15 years. That's a little more than a little extreme. By the way, TIME magazine just won. We're not talking about a little bit of hounding here. We're talking about a group that will do whatever Hubbard says. You can lie, you can cheat, you can do whatever Hubbard says. You can do whatever you have to do to put these people out of business. WHATEVER! And they do.
DOOR: How does such a small number of people wield so much power, especially financial power?
BEZAZIAN: They had a lot of people at one point, and remember, they charged everyone massive amounts of money. So they've amassed a lot of money. And they've also amassed a lot of real estate. And they made people donate millions. I mean millions. A friend of mine had to donate a quarter million on just one visit. That's a lot of money to just donate, to write a check for. Is she in Scientology? No! Guess why not! Because they hounded her every time she came there, making her donate more and more money.
   She finally said: "You know what? Screw you!" And so did a ton of other people. Because they don't just deliver what they say. They hound people. They hurt people. They don't follow their own policies and they screw themselves. And they're going to screw themselves more and more. So now they have less and less people because they can't follow their own policies that are good. They have some good ones, but they are stuck in these harmful ones. They're putting themselves out of business. I told them that when I was in there. I told them just the things they did were so harmful (that) it was going to come up and hurt them. They wanted me and other people to go to people's houses, and picket them on their block, saying that they were a bunch of child molesters. And I said: "No, I'm not going to do this." They do that a lot. Like I just said, you can lie, you can cheat, you can do whatever you have to do.
DOOR: And that's openly taught?
BEZAZIAN: Well, no. It's not openly taught at all. No. It's a thing called "Fair Game" that Hubbard wrote. And they swear right now that's cancelled, but they Fair Gamed me for a year. So I can tell you from experience, it ain't cancelled, man! They tried to arrest me in Clearwater, Fla., for sitting in a red Santa's chair. Now, that's insane. They had over 100 cameras posted on people in a four-block area, trying to trap us—now that's an interesting religion. It's a Mafia. That's what it is. And it's a small Mafia within a large group of people that nobody knows about. Members don't know what's going on in there, and they're not allowed to read. And they're not allowed to see. So they think it's The Truman Show. It's great. "Everything's fine, everything's wonderful. We're following the plan and we're helping everyone."
DOOR: So there's an elite group within Scientology that calls all the shots? How big would you say this group is?
BEZAZIAN: Tiny, Very tiny.
DOOR: Less than a dozen?
BEZAZIAN: I don't really know, but I'd say, yeah probably.
DOOR: Have they invested all the money that they've amassed over the years, or have they squandered it all?
BEZAZIAN: I'm not one of their financial people so I can't really tell you. But I know they have money overseas. I know that they have money in buildings. I know they are milking people on a daily basis to get more to donate more money. And they also work very hard on getting businesses milked into it. Because they can't really get the average person any more because most people are computer literate. And they all type in "Scientology" and they read stuff from www.xenu.net. And they go, FORGET IT! The truth is out there and they can't really stamp that out.    For years, people couldn't get to the truth. So if you laughed, they declared you a "Suppressive Person." You're not allowed to talk to a Suppressive Person. So no one could ever hear what those bad people had to say. Which was actually factually a lot of truth, but because you're not allowed to talk to them, nobody heard what they were saying. Well, now they're on the Internet. They're posted on the Internet. Most people can get to 'em and even now most Scientologists have read about this Net Nanny and they don't really like it. So more and more people are reading the Internet and finding out the truth about it.
DOOR: The Internet is probably one of their biggest problems?
BEZAZIAN: Without the Internet, you can't ever get to the truth. They'll never tell you, so how could you ever find out anything? You can't. At times there's been information that would come out, but you can't read it, or you'd get in serious trouble. When I say trouble, I don't mean like Catholic Church trouble where you have to go to confession. In Scientology, you have to pay thousands of dollars if you get in trouble.
DOOR: They'll fine you for your sins?
BEZAZIAN: They have this thing called Security Checking. Which is why I really didn't like some of your questions, because they sound very much like a SEC (security) Check. It's like, "Wait a minute? Are you a Scientologist just SEC Checking me?" They very much want to know, and ask things like, "Why did you leave? What happened?" You know they're interested in it. They want both sides of it. Whereas the people that work for OSA (Office of Special Affairs) want to know why didn't Scientology work. What happened? What happened to you? How come you're not CLEAR? It's a different kind of question. It's a different thing they're interested in. That's why I thought you were OSA, because you're asking more of those other kind of questions. Which makes it sound like it. Now you've sort of gone into both of them, so you must be OK. I'm willing to talk to you.
DOOR: Does that mean we can turn on the tape recorder now?
BEZAZIAN: ???
DOOR: Please continue.
BEZAZIAN: It's just when it gets into this kind of Mafia stuff it's a little bit different. Maybe I'm wrong, but I just don't think other religions have this real Mafia kind of stuff. Scientology does, and the key thing that I really want to say to people is that they should look for themselves on the Internet and read these sites.
   There's tons of really good sites – www.lermanet.com, www.xenu.net, www.Lisatrust.net, www.mcpherson.org, www.entheta.net, and www.Warrior.offlines.org.
   Read Scientology and read the other stuff, then make up your own mind on it.