going-clear-scientology-hollywood-and-the-prison-of-belief-by-lawrence-wright-2

These were maxims that Rathbun took as his guidelines.
T h e Time article capsized Miscavige’s attempts to break free of the negative
associations so many people had with Scientology. But there was an even larger battle
under way, one in which the church’s very existence was at stake: its ght with the IRS
to regain its tax-exempt status as a bona fide religion, which it had lost in 1967.
The government’s stance was that the Church of Scientology was in fact a commercial
enterprise, with “virtually incomprehensible nancial procedures” and a “scripturally
based hostility to taxation.” The IRS had ruled that the church was largely operated to
benet its founder. Miscavige inherited some of that liability when he took over after
Hubbard’s death. A tax exemption would not only put the imprimatur of the American
government on the church as a certied religion, rather than a corrupt, prot-making
concern, but it would also provide a substantial amount of immunity from civil suits and
the persistent federal criminal investigations. A decision against the tax exemption, on
the other hand, would destroy the entire enterprise, because Hubbard had decided in
1973 that the church should not pay its back taxes. Twenty years later, the church was
$1 billion in arrears, with only $125 million in reserves. The founder had placed
Scientology’s head on the executioner’s block.
The war between the church and the IRS had already gone on for more than two
decades, with both sides waging a campaign of intimidation and espionage. Miscavige
accused the Criminal Investigation Division of the IRS of engaging in surveillance of
church leaders, wiretaps, and illegal opening of the church’s mail. Now the church upped
the ante by besieging the IRS with 200 lawsuits on the part of the church and more than
2,300 suits on behalf of individual parishioners in every jurisdiction in the country,
overwhelming government lawyers, running up fantastic expenses, and causing an
immense amount of havoc inside the IRS. Miscavige boasted that the entire legal budget
of the federal agency was exhausted: “They didn’t even have money to attend the
annual American Bar Association conference of lawyers—which they were supposed to
speak at!” The church ran ads against the agency, using the images of beloved
celebrities (who were not Scientologists) such as John Wayne and Willie Nelson, who
had been audited by the IRS. “All of America Loved Lucy,” one ad said, over an iconic
photo of Lucille Ball, “except the IRS.” A ten-thousand-dollar reward was oered to
potential whistle-blowers to expose IRS abuses. Private investigators dug into the
private lives of IRS ocials, going so far as to attend seminars and pose as IRS workers,
to see who had a drinking problem or might be cheating on a spouse. Stories based on
these investigations were promoted by a phony news bureau the church established, and
also published in the church’s Freedom magazine, which Scientologists passed out for
free on the steps of the IRS headquarters in Washington. The hatred on both sides for the
other was intense. It seemed bizarre that a rather small organization could overmatch
the US government, but the harassment campaign was having an eect. Some
government workers were getting anonymous calls in the middle of the night, or nding
that their pets had disappeared. Whether or not these events were part of the
Scientology onslaught, they added to the paranoia many in the agency were feeling.
Both the church and the IRS faced the challenge of addressing the question of what,