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about to die down, a video was posted on the Internet. It was a taped interview with the
star that preceded his acceptance of the Freedom Medal of Valor four years earlier.
Wearing a black turtleneck, with the theme music from Mission: Impossible playing in the
background, Cruise spoke to Scientologists in language they understood. “Being a
Scientologist, you can look at someone and know absolutely that you can help them,”
Cruise said. “So for me it really is KSW, and it’s something that I don’t mince words with
that—with anything!—but that policy with me has really gone—phist!” He made a
vigorous gesture. “Boy! There’s a time I went through when I said, you know what,
when I read it I just went pooh! That’s it! That’s exactly it!”
The video was placed on YouTube and viewed by millions who had no idea what he
was talking about. Cruise’s urgency came o as the ravings of a wild-eyed fanatic, but
to Scientologists it was a sermon they had heard many times. “KSW” refers to a policy
letter that Hubbard wrote in 1965 titled “Keeping Scientology Working.” In the letter
Hubbard reprimanded his followers for straying from the narrow path he had laid out
for them. “When somebody enrols [sic], consider he or she has joined up for the duration
of the universe—never permit an ‘open-minded’ approach,” Hubbard writes. “If they’re
aboard, they’re here on the same terms as the rest of us—win or die in the attempt.”
Hubbard concludes: “The whole agonized future of this planet, every Man, Woman and
Child on it, and your own destiny for the next endless trillions of years depend on what
you do here and now with and in Scientology.”
The church instantly began taking down the video from the Internet, threatening
lawsuits because of copyright violations. A loose coalition of Internet hackers who called
themselves Anonymous seized on the issue. “We were a bunch of kids who didn’t care
about anything,” Gregg Housh, a computer-repair technician in Boston who acts as an
unocial spokesperson for the group, recalled. Until then, they had never protested
anything, but they considered the Internet their turf and were oended that the church
would attempt to control what they watched. In truth, they knew little about
Scientology, but the more they learned, the more aroused they became.
“We shall proceed to expel you from the Internet and systematically dismantle the
Church of Scientology in its present form,” Anonymous declared in a creepy video of its
own. “We are anonymous. We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect
us.” Some members of the Anonymous coalition waged denial-of-service attacks on
church computers, shutting down their websites for an extended period. On February 10,
2008, Anonymous organized protests in front of Scientology churches and missions in a
hundred cities across the world. Many of the demonstrators were wearing what has now
become the signature of the Anonymous movement—the Guy Fawkes mask, taken from
the film V for Vendetta.
At the center of the controversy was the beleaguered Tom Cruise. An unattering,
unauthorized biography by the British writer Andrew Morton was published days after
the YouTube video of Cruise appeared, creating a new round of headlines—“Cruise Out
of Control,” “Explosive Claims on Cruise Baby,” “German Historian Likens Cruise Speech
to Goebbels”—that were intensely personal and insulting. Questions of his religion, his
sexual orientation, his relationship with his wife, even the paternity of his daughter