#442 - “SICK People!” - Ex-Scientologists EXPOSE Tom Cruise, Blackmail & Spy Wing | The Headleys

Summary

Julian Dorey Podcast #442 – "SICK People!"
Ex-Scientologists EXPOSE Tom Cruise, Blackmail & Spy Wing | The Headleys
Guests: Claire & Marc Headley
Date: June 30, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this riveting episode, Julian Dorey sits down with Claire and Marc Headley, two former high-ranking members of Scientology's inner elite, to peel back the iron curtain of the Church and reveal first-hand accounts of blackmail, psychological manipulation, forced labor, celebrity influence (notably Tom Cruise), and the relentless tactics employed to control members and silence defectors. With a focus on current legal battles, cultural implications, and their personal harrowing journeys from indoctrination to escape, the Headleys give an unflinching look at the world of Scientology from the inside.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Life After Escaping Scientology

• Reintegration and Culture Shock
  • The Headleys describe a "black hole of media" during their time in Scientology—no TV, films, or cultural references (00:54). Marc explains, "I had a blackout from 1990 to 2005 where I never watched a single TV show in that entire 15 years because we weren't allowed to watch TV" (01:53).
  • Upon leaving, they binge-watched media, catching up "early days of Netflix, when they would literally send you DVDs of movies in the mail" (02:30).
• Adjusting to Normal Work Life
  • After grueling years working 16-24 hour days, normal 9-to-5 jobs seemed easy. Marc jokes, "People complain about nine-to-fives, you're like, what are you, a pussy?" (03:31).
  • Claire adds: "That also helped with the adjustment because when you work easily 16 to 24 hours a day for 15 years, when you get out into the real world and you're at a nine to five job, you're like, what do we do with the rest of the day?" (03:02).

Indoctrination from Birth and Disconnection

• Early Childhood and Doctrine
  • Claire recounts her first years: "I was born in England...My mom and dad were both staff at Manchester Org...By the time I was three, they divorced. That was my first experience with Scientology's practice of disconnection" (05:27).
  • At only three years old, she underwent a "reality factor" session: "They gave me a reality factor, and explained to me that my dad is an evil person and it's not my fault. But he's gone now" (06:19).
• Impact of Language and Thought Control
  • Claire explains: "The language of Scientology is a huge piece of the way they control and leverage you...if you have a critical thought, you're trained to believe that's because you've done something bad" (08:04).
  • Marc details the system of "overts" and "withholds"—thought or behavioral crimes—and the concept of "missed withholds": "If you don't play the game, they have no control over you. They give you the deck of cards, you build the house" (10:38).

The "Gaming" and Hierarchies Inside Scientology

• Levels of Control
  • Marc compares org ranks to video game levels: "If you become a staff member, that's like level two, and the final boss is the Sea Org...those are the guys that sign the billion year contracts" (11:51).
  • Command structure and tradition derived directly from the military, including uniforms and terminology (12:24).

Surveillance and Totalitarian Tactics

• Clearwater, FL: Scientology Dystopia
  • Julian describes downtown Clearwater: "You feel like you're in the middle of dystopia...The cameras everywhere. We did a tour...and everywhere there's cameras. They were trained on us, following us everywhere. It is dystopian" (17:43).
  • The Aftermath Foundation, started after the Leah Remini show, now operates as a "kind of Underground Railroad," helping people escape Scientology (18:07).
• Children in the Sea Org
  • Marc: "They had kids as young as 12 in the Sea Organization. So you have 12-year-olds working from 8am till midnight every day, seven days a week" (19:59).
  • Claire stresses: "These are kids that were born into Scientology, so their parents are fully in support of it...that is also a huge piece of how they get away with it" (21:08).

Legal Shielding and Blackmail

• Why They Get Away With It
  • "They have this religious cloaking...because they're a religion, that's part of their doctrine" (20:26).
  • Going to authorities is a "high crime" in Scientology (22:26), leading to disconnection and financial penalties ("freeloader bills"): "The only way we'd ever be able to speak to our family again is if we did 'A to E steps'...which included paying our freeloader bills, which cumulative between the two of us was $150,000" (24:19).
  • Any training or counseling, received "for free" as Sea Org, is retroactively billed at astronomical rates if you leave (25:28).
• Information Silos and Leaked Truths
  • Marc: "Because Hubbard wrote all this in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, there was no Internet. So now...you can come on a podcast or put up something on Facebook. And Scientology has little or no control over how that information is disseminated" (26:17).

Hollywood, Influence, and Tom Cruise

• Celebrity Leverage and Media Manipulation
  • Marc details Tom Cruise's status and influence: "Tom Cruise thinks David Miscavige is the bee's knees. He wants to be like David Miscavige and Miscavige wants Tom Cruise to be like Miscavige" (69:27).
  • Scientology controls media access: "They do the same thing with CBS and NBC and Fox, and so they play this little game because, you know, Tom Cruise is going to have a movie coming out...and if you want that, then you gotta not do this over here" (36:12).
• Cult of Tom Cruise
  • The infamous "black turtleneck" video of Tom Cruise was meant for internal viewing only: "When that video was played [to members], you were like, OK, he really 100 is a Scientologist" (71:42).
  • Miscavige micromanaged video production: "He edited this thing down to every frame...he recorded the voice-over that that guy's reading and told him, 'listen to me in your ears so you can make it the way I want it'" (86:24).
  • The manufactured image: "The only person who can tell us how awesome Tom Cruise is is Tom Cruise" (79:19).
• Spy Wing – The Office of Special Affairs
  • "We got a treasure trove of Scientology's spy wing files...The Office of Special Affairs used to be called the Guardian's Office and was responsible for the largest infiltration in the US government in history" (33:05, 33:24).
• Tom Cruise's Relationships and Internal Surveillance
  • When Tom Cruise was married to Nicole Kidman, both of their personal assistants "were reporting on Tom and Nicole to Scientology, literally weekly" (73:41).
  • Attempts to recruit Penelope Cruz failed due to "mixing practices"—forbidden spiritual or meditative practices like yoga or Buddhism. (94:53)

Abuse, The Law, and Fighting Back

• Violent Culture and Leadership
  • Marc on leader David Miscavige: "He's the head of this cult, international cult, and he's also the piss mat guy" (16:36).
  • "He would beat the shit out of people in meetings, punch them, kick them, shove them up against a wall, throw shit at them" (110:30).
  • The threat of the Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF): "It's...a prison reprogramming camp...hard labor most of the day...you're not allowed to communicate with anyone outside" (115:31).
• Legal Tactics and Intimidation
  • Scientology manipulates courts with arbitration clauses in contracts—victims must return to their abuser for resolution (40:18).
  • "The judge will say, 'no, you need to go back to your abuser and go through their arbitration process.' Like, Valerie Haney was sent back...She literally had to escape in the trunk of a car." (40:18)
  • Threatening ex-members with family disconnection and "freeloader bills" as financial blackmail (24:19).
  • Lawsuits meant to exhaust rather than win—"They know if they get in front of a jury, they're toast. I don't think they have ever...won a jury trial. Never" (133:48).

The Power of the Internet and Modern Leaks

• The Headleys estimate "right now, it's not really more than 20 or 30,000 Scientologists in the world that are practicing, giving money," and about half want to leave but are trapped by social or economic factors (59:35).
• The internet allows members and ex-members under the radar to learn about abuses, resulting in a growing "whisper web" and covert dissent (55:58, 57:06).

The Masterson Trial – Testifying Against Abuse

• Claire served as an expert witness in the rape trial of actor (and Scientologist) Danny Masterson, explaining to the jury how Scientology policies actively discourage reporting crimes to authorities and require internal handling (163:27).
• Marc describes the dark irony: "We shot a film with Danny when he was a little kid...he played a doll that gets drunk all the time and abuses the other dolls...and later, that paralleled the real-life accusations" (166:34-168:41).
• Claire: "[The DA] said, 'Scientology named someone to counter your expert witness testimony...That's your stepdad.'...They never ended up calling him, but it's just the psychological level" (178:37).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Marc on Life After Scientology:
  "I had a blackout from 1990 to 2005 where I never watched a single TV show...when we left, we probably consumed six hours of media every single night." (01:51)
• Claire on Indoctrination:
  "I was learning the language of Scientology before I even understood the English language." (08:04)
• Marc on Exposing the Cult:
  "If you don't play the game, they have no control over you. They give you the deck of cards, you build the house." (10:38)
• Julian on Clearwater:
  "Every time you're walking, you feel like you're in the middle of dystopia." (17:25)
• Claire on Financial Blackmail:
  "The only way we'd ever be able to speak to our family...is if we did A to E steps...which included paying our freeloader bills, which cumulative between us was $150,000." (24:19)
• Marc on Cult Leadership:
  "He's the head of this cult...and he's also the piss mat guy." (16:36)
• Marc on Tom Cruise:
  "Tom Cruise thinks David Miscavige is the bee's knees. He wants to be like David Miscavige and Miscavige wants Tom Cruise to be like Miscavige." (69:27)
• Marc on Surveillance:
  "We have Scientology has multiple hate websites about us. Most of our family members have done hate videos. We've had private investigators following us. They had our phones tapped." (181:04)
• Claire on Family Loss:
  "My mom joined the Sea Organization as a single mom when I was four...She escaped when I was eight and left me behind." (159:54)
• Claire on The Law:
  "Scientology tries to use and abuse the legal system to destroy anyone that would try to come after them or expose them." (134:10)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:00–03:59 – Life and cultural reintegration after Scientology
• 04:00–12:50 – Early indoctrination, family disconnection, and cult language
• 13:00–18:00 – Clearwater’s dystopian surveillance state, Aftermath Foundation
• 19:00–27:00 – Child labor, legal shielding, and 'donating' kids
• 33:00–38:00 – The Guardian’s Office, infiltration, and media games
• 47:55–50:27 – Leaked OT levels, the South Park effect, and recognizing the lie
• 69:27–86:32 – Tom Cruise, celebrity worship, and producing propaganda videos
• 94:53–98:30 – Attempts to recruit celebrity spouses (Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman)
• 110:30–115:31 – Miscavige's violence, forced labor camps (RPF)
• 163:27–179:00 – Testifying in the Danny Masterson trial
• 181:04–183:33 – PI harassment and ongoing tactics against defectors

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Final Thoughts & Tone

The episode is a candid, conversational, and at many points darkly humorous deep-dive into the realities of life under—and after—Scientology’s rigid control. Both Headleys reveal with clarity, insight, and biting wit how indoctrination, financial and psychological blackmail, enforced isolation, and even violent abuse are central to Scientology's system, while also highlighting the particular power of celebrity, legal maneuvering, and persistent fear-based tactics. They do not shy from, as Julian puts it, "the expose," drawing direct lines between personal trauma and organizational doctrine.

At every turn, Julian keeps the discussion rooted in the mechanics of control and what it means for both insiders and outsiders trying to understand—or escape—the reach of this secretive organization.

Transcript

[Mark Bunker]

Foreign.

[Julian]

We're finally here. Thanks for so much for coming, guys.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah, sorry I couldn't get here any earlier. I just. I've been all over the United States for the last six months.

[Julian]

What have you been doing?

[Mark Bunker]

We built a space camp in Alabama.

[Julian]

A space camp?

[Mark Bunker]

Like an astronaut camp? I build astronaut camps all over the United States and also museums and visitor centers. So we just finished Red Rocks. Wow. Pikes Peak space camps. We're doing this Bruce Springsteen museum in Monmouth. So Mark does all the fun stuff that keeps me. Where did you learn to do this? At the crazy place.

[Julian]

Really? You learned all about space at Scientology? Don't be giving advertisements.

[Claire Headley]

Hell no.

[Mark Bunker]

Av. I probably spent $10 million of their money on doing audio visual systems all over the. I was in charge of all their audio visual systems worldwide. I gotcha. So. And they didn't teach him. They didn't teach me. I learned. I just happened to be a young kind of electronics person there. And I was like, we. We were using 16. They were using 16 millimeter projectors in all of their organizations in. In the 2000s.

[Julian]

In the 2000s.

[Mark Bunker]

16 millimeter projectile.

[Julian]

That's a real throwback. You know, it's so strange whenever I. I get to talk with some of you guys who were able to leave, and now, like, you're out in the normal world doing your thing, and you've adjusted and are doing well with it, because I can't even imagine. And we're going to get through your whole story today, obviously, but I can't even imagine being literally, like. It's almost in between when TV was in gray and when it was in color.

[Mark Bunker]

Oh, 100.

[Julian]

You just go from one side to the other.

[Mark Bunker]

People will ask us. They'll say, oh, you remember on Seinfeld? Be like, I've never seen it. I go, like, what about friends? You're like, no. I go, I had a blackout from 1990 to 2005 where I never watched a single TV show in that entire 15 years because we weren't allowed to watch TV. So it's sort of like so many missing.

[Claire Headley]

Like, it's like a black hole of media. Cultural references, media, films.

[Mark Bunker]

People go, what about Simpsons? No, never seen it. South Park? Never seen it. You know, Then once we got out, we probably watched. We probably consumed six hours of media every single night.

[Julian]

Good for you.

[Claire Headley]

After we left, Right. In the early days of Netflix, when they would. They would literally send you DVDs of

[Julian]

movies in the mail those days.

[Claire Headley]

Yes, yes.

[Mark Bunker]

We had nine. We had a nine DVD account. So we were all. We had three movies on top at all times just to catch up, because you would see. If you were driving around, you'd see the billboard for the movie.

[Julian]

Oh, yeah. Hey, guys, if you're not following me on Spotify, please hit that follow button and leave a five star review. They're both a huge, huge help. Thank you.

[Mark Bunker]

But you're like, well, we don't get

[Claire Headley]

to go to the movies. So that also helped with the adjustment because when you work like easily 16 to 24 hours a day for 15 years, when you get out into the real world and you're, you know, nine to five job, you're like, what do we do with the rest of the.

[Mark Bunker]

What do I do with myself after? Yeah, after dinner?

[Julian]

They teach a great discipline over there.

[Mark Bunker]

Oh, yeah, I'll give you that. There's no. No lack of work ethic.

[Julian]

You're coming out. You see, these people complain about nine to fives. You're like, what are you, a pussy?

[Mark Bunker]

Like, come on, people. When I was working, I was working at a post production studio and I was managing a whole bunch of visual effects artists, and they had to get one or two shots done a day. And all these guys, they're on Amazon, they're on Facebook, you know, and I'm like, if you would just work during the day, you'd be a rock star.

[Julian]

There's people out there right now like, man, maybe I need Scientology.

[Claire Headley]

My favorite though was when he was at that post production company he got. His boss was like, hey, man, so how do you handle stress? Yeah, we're like, oh, yeah, we're good.

[Mark Bunker]

I'm pretty good. I can. He's like, we might have some executives from some of the channels coming in here to over overseas stuff and kind of looking over your shoulder.

[Julian]

I'll be like, no problem.

[Mark Bunker]

I'm good, dude. I had a crazy short 413 guy yelling at me while I was working, so I'll be fine with this.

[Julian]

Now, both of you grew up in Scientology, right? Is that fair to say?

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah, yeah, she was born into it. And I. My mom got into it when I was six.

[Julian]

Okay, so let's start there, if you don't mind. Claire, you were born into it, so you're both your parents were in Scientology. What was the setup?

[Claire Headley]

Yes, So I was born in England. Manchester, England. My mom got pregnant with me when she was seven. She was raised Roman Catholic, and so hippie 70s rebelled against her Roman Catholic upbringing, and her older brother got her into Scientology. And so my mom and dad Were both in Scientology when I was born. I tell people this because it's just a. Whatever. I was named after the state of clear. You can't make that shit up.

[Julian]

Wait, they actually named you after the state of clear?

[Claire Headley]

Clear.

[Julian]

They just changed the A.

[Claire Headley]

Well, Claire being French for clear. That's how my mom explained it to me. I was like, great, thanks anyhow.

[Julian]

Claire does sound better.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah, yeah. Thank God. Thank God they didn't call me clear. Literally, like. Anyway, so my mom and dad were both staff at Manchester. Org when I was born. By the time I was 2, my dad decided he wanted nothing more to do with Scientology. And so by the time I was three, they divorced. And that was my first experience with Scientology's practice of disconnection. At three years old, my dad was just, poof, gone.

[Julian]

Do you remember that at all?

[Claire Headley]

Oh, 100%. It's one of my earliest life memories, is remembering that departure and thinking it was my fault.

[Julian]

You thought it was your fault? What did your mom say to you about, like, how was it explained to you? Because you don't, I would imagine, and correct me if I'm wrong here. When you're three years old, you still don't understand, like the definition of the religion we're in at all.

[Claire Headley]

Completely. No. Yeah, I mean, that's. That's the shitty part about being born into something like this is there's no before. You know, if you. In cult recovery books and all that, it. There's always reference to the pre cult personality. The problem being when you're born into it, you don't know anything else. You have no other frame of reference. So yeah, I was three and I definitely remember, like I said, thinking it was my fault, but the way my mom explained it to me, I just shut down, stopped talking. So of course, what does she do? She takes me into the Scientology organization so that they can give me a R factor, reality factor, and explain to me that my dad is an evil person and it's not my fault. But he's gone now

[Mark Bunker]

to a three

[Julian]

year old in our factor.

[Claire Headley]

Yep.

[Julian]

And it sounds like you remember that pretty well too. Yeah, I, you know, it is so hard to put myself. I was really lucky. Like, I did great childhood. I wasn't born into Scientology or anything like that. No offense.

[Claire Headley]

None taken.

[Julian]

Believe me, both of my parents were together and all that, and like, you just kind of got to do the regular kid thing. But the idea of having like you're almost made this vessel from the second you can have any memory of anything and they imprint your brain with this software and they say, this is how the world is. And you don't ever get a chance to see an environment like I might have seen or like Thief might have seen. And your earliest memories are like, oh, well, this must be normal. My dad's evil because he left. And they're gonna brainwash. You're not thinking it that way, but they're going to program me to make sure I don't do that.

[Claire Headley]

Exactly. Yeah. And if you. And also too, to me, the semantics. The language of Scientology is a huge piece of the. The way they control and leverage you. So if you consider that as a three year old, I was learning the language of Scientology before I even understood the English language,

[Julian]

would you mind explaining that a little bit?

[Claire Headley]

Yeah, of course. So in Scientology, the language does a lot of the work of keeping you in. So, for example, if you have a critical thought, you're. You're trained to believe that that's because you've done something bad. The only reason somebody ever leaves Scientology is because they're. They've committed crimes, transgressions. So. And there's just layer, layer upon layer upon layer of language that is unique to Scientology.

[Mark Bunker]

Understood.

[Claire Headley]

So as. As a. Starting at 3, I'm learning the language of Scientology before I even understand the English language.

[Julian]

Right. So you. Now I get it. You're saying like something like a transgression, you understand what that means without understanding what that might mean in the context of the English language. If you're using it for another.

[Mark Bunker]

Totally. They have. They call those overts.

[Julian]

Overts.

[Mark Bunker]

Overts and withholds. So an overt is something that you did to somebody, and a withhold is something that you did that nobody knows about.

[Claire Headley]

You've.

[Mark Bunker]

You've withheld it.

[Julian]

A thought crime.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah. Yes.

[Claire Headley]

And then there's a missed withhold, too. So like, if I.

[Mark Bunker]

If I steal. Steal your coffee, and then you come by and you go, hey, have you seen my coffee?

[Claire Headley]

And I go, that's a missed withhold.

[Mark Bunker]

I haven't seen it. So you almost found out that I took your coffee. But you didn't. So that's. But they have. Didn't find out, but they have thousands. They have thousands and thousands of things like this that when you're a kid, you go to a Scientology school, you're going to do. Going to the Scientology center at night to do courses after school. So you're always learning about all these things. One of the things that's kind of wild is you would never think that you would have had a missed withhold. But if, but if I explain to you what a missed withhold is, and, and L. Ron Hubbard says, when you have a missed withhold, you display these kind of physical characteristics or these, the way you talk and the way you do things, you do it a certain way if somebody's missed your withhold. So then, because you now know this, when that happens, you do it.

[Julian]

Oh, my God.

[Mark Bunker]

So it's a crazy thing that if you didn't know that that's what happens, you wouldn't do anything. But because you know, oh, I did this. So now this is going to happen. So now I have to commit more overts against this person. And it's like, it's a, it's a wild thing that they train you how to be a Scientologist. And because you do that, it's easier to manage you and, and kind of manipulate you into thinking or doing certain things because you now are kind of playing the game. As long as if you don't play the game, they have no control over you. They give you the deck of cards, you build the house.

[Julian]

That's kind of when you were. It's funny you use the word playing the game, because while you're talking there I was thinking like, they're. It's gamification of everything you do.

[Mark Bunker]

100.

[Julian]

It's almost like, okay, in order for me to get to the next video game level, I'm going to need to make sure I have three lives, and therefore I need to have these five thoughts that equal seven. It's like, what are we doing?

[Mark Bunker]

It's exactly like that. And it, and, and it sort of progress that, that level of gamemanship. If you're just a member and you're just doing training on Scientology courses or you're learning how to do the counseling, what they call auditing.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

If you're just doing that as a paying member, that's. That's level one. Then if you become a staff member, an employee of an organization, that's like level two, and then the final boss is the Sea Org. And if you're in the Sea Org, that's. Those are the guys that sign the billion year contracts. Depending on where you are in the Sea Org, that's sort of the beginning. So like, if you were here in New York, they have a continental liaison office here in New York City, right near Times Square.

[Julian]

I love the names.

[Mark Bunker]

Oh, yeah. Abbreviations and everything. Hubbard stole a lot, I would say 90% of the organizational structure from the military because he used to be in the military. So he borrowed a lot of those things. But if you were here in New York or stole. Yeah, yeah.

[Claire Headley]

The uniforms, language. Yeah, yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

We call now the lead guy's name is Dave. So we call it Davey's Fake Navy. Hi Dave.

[Julian]

Over the years, a lot of my friends who use nicotine products have reported having a harder time in the gym and not getting the results they were looking for. Whether it's not getting a great pump, worse recovery time, crashing during their workouts, or even catching their heart racing out of nowhere. I've heard about the same consistent issues like this for years. A lot of people use nicotine as a pre workout, thinking it's going to make their pump better. The reality is actually the complete opposite.

[Claire Headley]

Though.

[Julian]

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[Mark Bunker]

But if you're in the Continental Liaison office in New York, that's sort of the outskirts of the Sea org bases. And then if you go to Florida or if you go to Los Angeles, that's where they start to have higher level management seaorg Organizations, and then as the. As high as you can go is where we worked. And that's the international base or the in base or the gold base in Gilman Hot Springs, California.

[Julian]

So you're like a 33rd Street Mason.

[Mark Bunker]

It's. It's that level. When you get there, you have to get interrogations, and some. Sometimes these interrogations could take a year to make sure that you are in no way possible a security risk or a threat to Scientology. And then that's how you get to work at the headquarters. And if you work at the headquarters, that's behind the curtain, you see Oz and everything that goes on when you're at that property. So. So there's a lot of people that get out, like Chris Shelton or different people that were in the C organization, and then they speak about their experiences. Well, they have those experiences, but at one of these local or the Los Angeles management or a Clearwater. And when you get to the international headquarters, David Miscavige, who's the current final boss of Scientology, right. He.

[Julian]

All four. Eleven of them.

[Claire Headley]

He.

[Mark Bunker]

413.

[Julian]

He's 413.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah. I like that better than five. One. He micromanaged every single possible thing that got done at that property down to in the dining hall, at the urinals. He was pissed that there was piss on the tiles under the urinals, and so he ordered the. The cleaning guy, hey, can you get some black mats to put under there? So when the piss hits the mat, we don't have to see it. It just blends into the mat.

[Julian]

That's cleanliness.

[Mark Bunker]

But that down to that level. This is the head of this cult, international cult, and he's also the piss mat guy, so he'd hate me in the middle of the night.

[Julian]

I don't know where it's going. God damn. Yeah. It's funny. I was just down visiting deep, and I were both down visiting my buddy Danny Jones, who's grew up in Clearwater, not in Scientology at all. But he. When. When we were, like, walking around downtown Clearwater, near where Studio was just going to the store and stuff, every time we're walking, it's almost, like, sinister. You can see, like, we have Freedom Tower here. It's cool. Yeah, there it is. I'm in Lodi. I can see Freedom Tower. I'm in Bayonne. I can see Freedom Tower. I'm out in Nut. I could see Freedom Tower. I'm in New York. I see Freedom Tower in Clearwater. It's like, whoa, there it is. Like, you see right on the line there a little shy of the bay.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah.

[Julian]

The big old Scientology building that looks like a weird kind of up castle from a B list or D list movie. And then it's got like the little cross on the top left. And every time you're walking, you feel like you're in the. It's hard to explain, but you're like. You feel like you're. You're in the middle of dystopia.

[Mark Bunker]

You really do.

[Claire Headley]

Oh, completely. And the cameras everywhere. We did a tour through there for, like, a fundraiser for the Aftermath foundation and went through each, you know, building, and it was like 50 people, but everywhere there's cameras. You could see them. They were trained on us. They're following us everywhere. It is dystopian.

[Julian]

Yeah. The Aftermath is that Leo Reminis.

[Mark Bunker]

So there was a show, Scientology. Leo Remini, Scientology in the Aftermath.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

After that show became very popular, people started reaching out, like, hey, what? I want to help you guys. What can we do? And so we created the Aftermath foundation, and we help people who are trying to escape from the Sea Organization or Scientology. And that's been running now for.

[Claire Headley]

It was started in December 2017, so it's been around a while now, and it's grown to where we have now education grants, online support group, you know, help with emergency housing expenses when people are just getting out. We have a crisis line. We have billboards up in LA that say, need help Leaving Scientology all around the buildings there.

[Julian]

So you guys are like the underground railroad.

[Mark Bunker]

We really. We really are. When we left in 2005, I would say almost immediately, we started running into people or people started reaching out to us, like, hey, I'm here. I don't know what to do. I don't know how to. And it's like, okay, do this. Let's get you a job here. And so we were doing it from, I'd say, 2006 on. We were sort of helping people who either worked where we worked or worked at one of the other Sea Organization bases. Mainly it was Sea Org members at first because, like, in my case, I got into it when I was 6. I went to Scientology schools until I was 14, and then I joined the Sea Org. Like, I think right before my 15th birthday or right around my 15th birthday, I signed up early. They have people. They. They. At that time, they were. They had kids as young as 12 in the SEA organization. So you have 12 year olds working from 8 o' clock in the morning till midnight every day, seven days a week. You get on Sundays, you get three hours off maybe in the morning to do your laundry and you know, shower and shave and then that's it. That you're, you're, you work full time. There's no, there's no like vacations in the sea organization for 12 year olds. For anybody.

[Julian]

For anybody.

[Mark Bunker]

But yeah, as low as that.

[Julian]

This is, this is where I always ask this question when something like this that is overtly crazy is brought up.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah.

[Julian]

How is this legal?

[Mark Bunker]

Because shouldn't be. Well, because they have this religious cloaking. So because they are a religion, that's part of their doctrine or that's part of the teachings that you do, that you work as much as you can. And there's the Sea Organization. The Sea Organization is like the Fraternal Order in Scientology. So these are the people who have dedicated their lives to Scientology. So they, they don't need possessions, they don't need any. They don't need a car or house or all this other stuff. And so you're Every, every part of you is dedicated to expanding Scientology.

[Claire Headley]

But, but another piece to answer that, the question on why is why are they getting away with this? These are kids that were born into Scientology, so their parents are fully in support of it and even sometimes force them to do it or, you know, push them to do it. Like that's the best thing they could possibly do to a parent in Scientology. And that's. That is also a huge piece of how they get away with it.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah. If you want to raise up the status levels in Scientology, you either need to become a highly trained counselor in Scientology, do a lot of the counseling yourself. So that's where you go through these operating thetan levels or you donate a lot of money if you don't have those things. There's one other thing you can donate, and that's your kids.

[Claire Headley]

So.

[Mark Bunker]

So there are people that will use the fact that both of their children or all of their children or their only child is in the Sea Organization as a badge of honor in the, in the social structure of Scientology. Because that basically shows. Yeah, you, you're. You're a committed. Because you just gave your kid to there.

[Julian]

Here's what I don't understand, though. If I, if I'm a Catholic and I make my kid be an altar boy and Father Tom starts messing around with my kid, the prosecutors come after Father Tom, as they should.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah, but, but who, but who's going to tell on Pastor Tom? So if you're in Scientology, this is another wild thing. In Scientology, they have, they have different Levels of. Of have what they call ethics and justice in Scientology. So they have misdemeanors, and then they have cr. What is considered crimes, and then they have what are considered high crimes, and then some of those things, but not all of them, are also then categorized as suppressive acts. If you go to the authorities in Scientology, it's written in their ethics and justice manual that that is a crime, at least a crime. And depending on how. How much you expose Scientology to the government or local officials or the police or whatever, it could be, be classified as a high crime or a suppressive act. If you commit a suppressive act in Scientology and become a declared suppressive person, which we both.

[Claire Headley]

We are.

[Mark Bunker]

As we both are. Congratulations.

[Claire Headley]

Yes, I know.

[Mark Bunker]

We wear it as. We wear that as a badge of honor.

[Julian]

I'm gonna get a shirt that says that.

[Mark Bunker]

Suppressive.

[Claire Headley]

Yes.

[Mark Bunker]

If you are a suppressive person, you are not allowed to speak with any of your family that are in Scientology or friends or business associates. So if you're a child and you escape. So when we left the Sea Organization, before we could even talk to our family that was still in Scientology, or she could contact her brothers and sisters or her parents in Scientology, they already issued a suppressive person declare on us, forbidding any of our families to ever speak to us again.

[Claire Headley]

And then they gave us freeloader bills. So factor in, for 15 years, we were making $46 a week, if we were paid at all. And so then we escape and start our lives over, and the only way we'd ever be able to speak to our family ever again is if we did A to E steps. That's what it's called, and basically went back into Scientology. But those steps have included having to pay our freeloader bills, which cumulative between the two of us was $150,000.

[Mark Bunker]

So any courses or any counseling that you got when you were in the Sea Org. So that's another thing. If you're a staff member in Scientology or if you're just a paying member, then when you do courses, you pay. If you want to do the purification rundown, sit in the sauna and sweat all day, that's $5,000. And then if you want to do this operating thetan level, that could be up to. To get up to OT3, could be a few hundred thousand dollars. If you're in the Sea Org, that you don't pay anything. But then the catch 22 is you're working, you know, more than.

[Julian]

Right.

[Mark Bunker]

I would say 16 hours a day is sort of like the minimum amount you'd work in the C organization. If you're working six here, you're not doing Scientology courses and auditing and stuff. But they do have mandatory courses that Sea Org members have to do. And so the mandatory on the job training that we had to do, they billed us for that when we left, saying, hey, you got all that for free. If you want to talk to your mom and dad again, the first step is you got to say, yeah, I'm a criminal, and here's 150K I owe you. And then at that point, they may or may not let you speak to your family again when you finish all those steps to get back into Scientology.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah, another. Another one of those steps is you have to redo all the training you ever did in Scientology, which you also have to pay for. Again,

[Mark Bunker]

it's basically siloed. So that any. And this is kind of. This is maybe the most villainous thing about Scientology, but it's also the thing that they're. They're getting screwed on right now is that when someone finds out, oh, they're doing this or they're doing that, this is crazy. I don't want to have any part of this. And you leave Scientology and say, okay, you can never speak to any of your family that are in Scient because they don't want those guys to find out what's going on at the international headquarters. But then, because Hubbard wrote all this in the 50s and the 60s and the 70s, there was no Internet. So now that the Internet exists, when someone leaves, they can come on a podcast, right? They could put up something on Facebook. They could do whatever they want. And Scientology has little or no control over how that information is disseminated and who it gets to. And so we have a small YouTube channel, and I would say likely 50% of the views that we get on our channel are from Scientologists that are still in Scientology because they. That's the other thing. There's. You're not allowed to speak with another Scientologist derogatorily about Scientology, but you can

[Julian]

watch a YouTube video.

[Mark Bunker]

You can watch a YouTube video and not subscribe. Thank you very much.

[Claire Headley]

Because.

[Mark Bunker]

Because they think Scientology is going to

[Julian]

figure out, well, I don't want them getting caught. So, yeah, yeah, that's the first time in the history of YouTube, I'll say,

[Mark Bunker]

you know, don't subscribe. Well, so what happens is we've had people that have reached out to us that they would have, like, a burner iPad to watch videos on because if they use their regular YouTube or whatever, if they start watching those things, their algorithm, it's going to serve up these things. So if they're in the living room and their. Their wife or their husband or their daughter or the son goes on there, it's like, hey, there's frickin suppressive people on your. In your feed.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah, well, funnily enough, in 2023, the Danny Masterson trial was ongoing. And during that time, Scientology was. Was paying for ads on YouTube. So, you know, like, trying to quash exposes of their true nature. But that also had the effect of actually promoting our videos to Scientologists.

[Mark Bunker]

They basically were paying so much in Google Ads that they hijacked the algorithm and our stuff were going to people more because they're paying for it. So even our. Our content had Scientology ads in it.

[Claire Headley]

It.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah, because of that. Because of. They were just like, we got to get. Everybody wants to know what's going on with Scientology, because there was a lot of people going to the web going, danny Masterson, Scientology.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah. So back. Back to your point, though, about the. The Catholic comparison. The. What Mark was explaining on how their policies work was a huge piece of my testimony as an expert witness in the Danny Masterson trial was to explain how Scientology controls its members and prevents them from contacting authorities. Reporting to police. Any. Any outside involvement is strictly forbidden by the policies of the organization.

[Julian]

Well, do you mind if we dig into that for a second? Take a little tangent on that?

[Mark Bunker]

Totally. I was just going to say there is another level to that, in that instance, where if you have somebody in LA and they. Something happens at the Scientology center, or Danny Masterson does something that's untoward towards that person when they go to the police, Scientology has somebody there, and that person goes, hey, we got one of your people over here. You might want to come over.

[Julian]

My dad's always valued his structure, routine, and accountability consistently throughout my life. He works out, and his diet's pretty good. But no matter what, father time always catches up with you. And as you get older, it gets harder and harder to stay in good shape. Specifically, when my dad hit his 50s, he noticed that his energy was dropping, his recovery was taking longer, and his workouts just didn't hit like they used to. This went on for some years. It's like he was doing everything right, but his body just wasn't working. But thanks to my friends over at Mars Men, my dad's energy and workouts have improved remarkably. As you get older, your body is still producing the testosterone it needs but you're just not able to use as much of it. That's because there's this protein called SHBG that locks up your testosterone and production of SHGB increases with age. So even if your T levels look fine on paper, a lot of it is bound up and isn't actually doing anything for you. Mars Marsman uses clinically dosed ingredients like Tongat, Ali and boron to help free up that locked up testosterone. So instead of forcing hormones into your body, Mars Men allows you to use what your body is already producing. Product is also made in the USA and third party tested and it comes with a 90 day money back guarantee so there's no risk. Worst case, you don't absolutely love it and you get your money back. But over 91% of users report higher energy levels. Thousands of guys are feeling the incredible results. Just check out the reviews on their website to see for yourself. For a limited time, our listeners are going to get 50% off off the life plus free shipping and three free gifts@ MengotoMars.com that link is in my description below. That's MengotoMars.com for 50 off and three free gifts at checkout. After you purchase, they're gonna ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them I sent you.

[Mark Bunker]

And so then that's a not an uncommon thing in Hollywood because you've got studios and you've got these big conglomerates. They're trying to keep their actors and talent under control. And I think there was something that even came up with the exact same division of the LA PD in regards to the guy that was running cb, Les Moonves. So when nonsense would get up, they had somebody like, oh hey, we got to get a call in to sort this out. So they play, they play the game in Hollywood big time in terms of how people are getting. Yeah, there you go. Captain Corey Palka. Yeah.

[Julian]

Corey Palka, la former LAPD captain allegedly leaked confidential 2017 sexual assault investigation details to former CBS CEO Les Moonves. To help cover up accusations Polka, who worked Moonves's Grammy security detail, tipped off CBS about the complaint leading to a 30.5 million dollar settlement and a fine for Moonves.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah. So Captain Hollywood Corey Polka. There's documents, we have a you on our YouTube channel. We, we got a treasure trove of Scientology's spy wings files.

[Julian]

Spy wings?

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah, spy wing. But the Office of Special affairs. And this is their sort of like their dirty tricks. The Office of Special Affairs. This is crazy. The Office of Special affairs used to be called the Guardian's office, and Elrond Hubbard was the Guardian, and the Guardian come up with it.

[Julian]

So it changed from what he came up with.

[Mark Bunker]

Well, I'll tell you why. So the Guardian's office is responsible for the largest infiltration in the United States government in its history. They had Scientology agents in all levels of the United States government, and their purpose was to cull all the government files, to remove anything bad about Scientology and replace it with pro Scientology documentation.

[Julian]

How did he get these people in there? And how did he get these people who obviously have some intelligence to be able to do. No pun intended, to be able to do the things they're doing, to be like, you know, this guy who's written fucking 400 shit books, he's definitely. He's onto something.

[Mark Bunker]

Well, in that time period, there was. There was basically, there was this we could die any moment type of thing. With all of the wars that are going on. This is 1950s. When Scientology. When Hubbard came up with Dianetics and kind of. It morphed into Scientology during the early 1950s, the nuclear crisis, and. Yeah, so it was always like, hey, the atomic bomb could be dropped any day. If we don't do something and we don't figure this out, we're doners, we're goners. So he sort of kind of used that as a. This is a new way we could do things. And then Hubbard was a trained hypnotist. He was into black magic and the occult. He made like, a potpourri of fucking culty shit to be able.

[Claire Headley]

He poached from so many people on literally all the best ways to control and manipulate people and concocted it into the nightmare that is Scientology.

[Mark Bunker]

And he. And that's the other thing. He spent 40. Well, when did he. 86. So he spent 36 years perfecting that. Yeah, and tweaking it. And, okay, when people leave, we got to declare them a suppressive person, because then they. They kind of poison the rest of that area. So we got to cut them off. We got to do this. We got to do that. But in those files from the Office of Special affairs, there's details of all of the stuff that's going on in Hollywood. Tom Cruise not doing interviews with certain networks that are running anti Scientology programs or exposes. So they had a thing with Anderson Cooper at cnn. Hey, if you want. Want David Miscavige to come on and you. And you to be able to interview him or Tom Cruise, which both of them would be a huge get for Anderson Cooper, if you run this story that's being worked on, that talks about Scientology, that's done, you're not getting that interview. And they did the same thing with.

[Claire Headley]

And the story, by the way, was Scientology, History of violence. That was the Anderson Cooper show.

[Mark Bunker]

He. Anderson Cooper did end up doing the show, regardless of whatever threats and.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

And. But either way, they do the same thing with CBS and NBC and Fox. And so they play this little game because, you know, Tom Cruise is going to come. Is going to have a movie coming out this year or next year or whatever, and you're going to get eyes on your channel if you. He's on the. The this show or the that show. And so it's like, if you want that, then you got to not do this over here. And they play. They'll. They're the. They play the long game on that one. They'll string somebody along for 10 years. And then finally, I think what happened with Anderson Cooper, he's like, you know, screw these guys. They're never. This is never going to happen. They're just holding it over us so that we don't do this. This other nonsense. But there's talk, there's things in there about. Larry King's best friend was also Tom Cruise's lawyer. And so it was a gentleman named Burt Fields. So Burt Fields is kind of of playing the game with Larry, like, hey, I talked to Tom, and he might be willing to come on your show, or da, da, da, da, da. But you guys got to not do this thing that you were going to do on Scientology. So it's. It's. I mean, even in our. We had a lawsuit where we filed against Scientology for, like, not being paid

[Claire Headley]

human labor, law violations, human trafficking, forced abortion. Yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

And in that case, the lawyer for David Miscavige's organization, which is called Religious Technology center, that's the. They manage everything in Scientology. The lawyer, their chief lawyer. After the case was done and we lost on appeal, and all these different things happened. Scientology's lawyer became a California Supreme Court judge. Mark Marmoro. He became a California.

[Julian]

Pull this guy up.

[Claire Headley]

He's the guy that did our depositions in that case.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah. And so you just. It's. It's. It's wild that they've got people in all these different places where they need them. And that was sort of the. The guardian's office.

[Julian]

Mark.

[Mark Bunker]

There you go.

[Claire Headley]

There you go. That's him. Yeah. And by the way, on the lawsuit at the time, there was an FBI investigation going on that. Mark, and I were both literally, confidential informants for. And so our lawyers decided to whittle down our causes of action and put basically focus on human trafficking charges. And in the end, the. During the appeal and everything else, they said, well, you can't prove human trafficking because we were. Even though we were in Scientology as teenagers, we consented, allegedly. But the judge said in the final ruling that had we pursued other causes of action, such as assault and battery, false imprisonment, things like that, we may have fared differently.

[Mark Bunker]

And there was another case that was going on at the same time where they did do that, and Scientology ended up writing those guys a check. So it's sort of. They. And now they've got this situation where anyone who sues Scientology, they have this system that says, well, listen, we're a religion, so the courts can't get involved with anything that we're doing. But what we do have is we have our own ethics and justice manuals, and we'll do. We can work out an arbitration. And so the courts are quick to say, oh, great, perfect. So here's this case. It's remanded to arbitration. With Scientology? Yeah, with Mark. So, no, but it's not.

[Claire Headley]

No, literally, they're the. They. The judge. This is an elaborate kangaroo court that Scientology has now set up in recent years after we escape an. After our lawsuit to where if someone brings a lawsuit to the judge, then the judge will say, no, no, you need to go back to your abuser and go through their arbitration process. Like, Valerie Haney is one of these people that's currently going through arbitration. She literally had to escape in the trunk of a car from the headquarters where we worked, and now she's been sent back to her abuser for arbitration. It's the biggest joke.

[Julian]

How do they get away with it?

[Mark Bunker]

Well, what they do is all of the early enrollment forms in Scientology. You're signing a contract to be in Scientology. Yeah, but if you're 12, how can you consent?

[Julian]

If you're 15, how can you consent?

[Mark Bunker]

Because it's your religion, and we can't. And as the court, we can't say that you can't. We. They're basically the way Scientology spins. It is. It's. It's your right to not have to be messed with by the outside world if you're in Scientology. And we can't violate your rights. So even if you're a victim, hey, that's. It's not illegal to do something really stupid. So there's no. We got nothing we can do for you. You signed up for it. And you signed. Every time you do a course or every time you start some training somewhere or some counseling somewhere, you're signing it something. And at the bottom that it says, if goes sideways, you're gonna. You agree to do arbitration. You're not suing us.

[Julian]

This is also the other problem, too, when it comes to the rest of society. And, you know, it's not like everyone sits and listens to a podcast where we talk about Scientology. And I learn about. I didn't ever known that much about Scientology if going clear hadn't come out, you know, and stuff like that. So when you see a Scientologist, an active Scientologist, I don't know, walk into a courtroom or something like that, that they look normal, they're wearing normal clothes, maybe from Joseph A Bank or somewhere else that looks like Joseph a Bank, whatever. And, you know, they look like regular Joe from society. Whereas if it was. This is an extreme example, but you think like, cult mindset and just like, pure. Where it is. Let's say you're like an uncontacted tribe somewhere. If they walk in, you're like, okay, well, you're from a different planet than we are, obviously. Point being, you get to. As a Scientologist, you get to blend in when they need you to blend in. But your entire life is what we talked about at the beginning, where you're on the gray side of TV and everyone else is out in color, but they. They almost, like, wire you up to be able to be like, all right, we're going to turn you on right now. Go out there, put on a show, come right back in two hours. And you do. And people do it.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah. And in Scientology, you sort of learn that you're better than everyone else.

[Julian]

Better.

[Mark Bunker]

Better. Everyone else around you are homo sapiens. You're homo novus. You're another level above everybody else.

[Claire Headley]

And people not in Scientology. Hubbard had a word for that. It's wog, which is actually, come to find out, a racial slur.

[Julian]

Yeah, we actually, by the way, we have to bleep that because it gets videos demonetized on YouTube. Oh, I swear to God, in.

[Mark Bunker]

And I think I want to say in England and Australia, that's like racial slurp. Yeah, that's like the advert.

[Claire Headley]

But Hubbard defines it as standing for wealthy oriental gentleman. And it just means somebody believe that, too.

[Mark Bunker]

I thought it was. I thought it was worldly Ori oriented.

[Claire Headley]

There's two different versions.

[Mark Bunker]

Not Oriental worldly oriented anyway, but. But they teach you that you Scientology are the only people who have the answers in the. In the universe, not on this planet, in the universe, to be able to do things so that we can succeed as a society.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah. And so Hubbard also call. Calls somebody just getting into Scientology raw meat, and they need to. You have to find their ruin, which is what Scientology recruit techniques are based on, is literally finding the person's ruin and then presenting like, oh, Scientology has the answers to that.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah. There, I like to say, like, if you have a problem with relationships and you end up doing a stress test in Times Square, or you read some kind of pamphlet on Scientology, and they say, you know, we can help you with relationships. So you go in there, and they go, yeah, yeah, we've got a course on that. It's a $50 course. You come in, you do it in a day or two, and you do that course. Well, when you're done with that course, you're thinking, I think I might be. I might be on the right track here with getting my relationship sorted out. But as soon as you do that, they go like, hey, you should do the purification rundown because you have drugs in your body and there's residues, and they can kind of kick in whenever. And you go, yeah, I'll do that. Oh, that's $2,000 or $5,000. And then 30 years later, you've given Scientology $5 million, and you just went through your third divorce, and you only showed up there to sort out the relationships. But when you. Every course you do in Scientology, you find 10 more problems you didn't even know you had, because they're. They're basically. They're laying out the path for you so that you're the one that's like, oh, I got to do the next thing, or I got to do this, or I still got to sort out my relationships. And until I get to the. They'll say, like, well, you know, you're. Some of these things are going to be addressed on the operating thetan levels. So now you've got this. Your eye on the prize. Okay. Now I got to get through all this lower stuff so that I can get to the higher levels of Scientology, and that you. They. The. The path in Scientology is charted out. It's called the Bridge to Total Freedom, and it has the counseling side of Scientology, and then it has the training on how to do the counseling in Scientology.

[Julian]

You just got to do slavery on the way.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah, well, you're supposed to basically work your way up both sides of this bridge to total freedom in Scientology, and what they have right now is. It says it goes up to operating. Yeah. Operating fate and level 15. But in fact, L. Ron Hubbard never wrote nine through 15. So Scientology are still saying this is coming, but it ain't. But even the people that get to OT level 8, which is the final level they have right now, they're getting to that level, and they're going, this is crazy. I'm still shitty at relationships. I'm. I made it all the way to the top, and I'm still a bag of. In the. In the. In the girlfriend department. And so they're. That they have this crisis. People have this crisis of faith when they go, they say, you're going to solve this on this level. And then they get to that level and they go. And that was nothing. That was crazy. I just learned about space aliens and on. On OT3. And it's like. And you're not allowed to talk to anybody about these upper levels, which is

[Claire Headley]

a critical piece, because you don't have. It's not like you'd ever have a conversation like, hey, can you believe what you just read on OT3? Like, what's up with that? That never happens. So Scientologists are forbidden, even from comparing notes with each other, Even if they're. They're. They've been. The OT levels. Yeah. Like, I. I did the OT levels. Never told Mark. In fact, after we got escaped and he was watching South Park, I remember it like it was yesterday. He's like, wait, is this for real? This is what's on OT3? And I was like, yeah, I found

[Mark Bunker]

about the space aliens in Scientology from South Park?

[Claire Headley]

Yes.

[Mark Bunker]

And when I was watching it.

[Julian]

And that was when you told him?

[Mark Bunker]

Well, no, I asked her, I said, is this really what it is? She had done those. And she goes, yeah, pretty much. And I was just like. And I was like, like, my mind is blown. You knew that there were body Satans and Lord Zenu and all this other stuff. And you were like, yep, checks out.

[Claire Headley]

No, I didn't say that. But the other. The other hilarious part about that was he was like, okay, I'm gonna do a test. Because in Scientology, they believe that if you are exposed to the upper levels before you're ready, then you could die from pneumonia.

[Mark Bunker]

So Mark's like, you will die from pneumonia.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah. So Mark's like, okay, I'm going to do a test. I'm going to read all the OT levels. So if I'm dead tomorrow morning, then, hey, maybe there's something to it.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah. That is another kind of Chink in their armor, which is you can log on to the Internet and you can pretty much read all of those confidential upper levels in Scientology. It's been. They've been leaked.

[Julian]

They didn't plan this in the 50s.

[Mark Bunker]

They didn't plan that.

[Claire Headley]

Nope.

[Mark Bunker]

So when I read that. That, I read all of them. I read from all the way to the bottom, all the way to ota. I read everything in one sitting.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

So I was like, if I'm gonna die, it's gonna be tomorrow. It's gonna happen now. Because I've gotten done all this stuff. And so when I woke up in the morning, went, not even a sniffle. And that. That literally is how I like, I think the. Between the south park and then that and then realizing that nothing happened, I did all of the things that they said, you cannot do this. You will die. And then I did it. And then I was like, oh, my God, it's all bullshit. The whole fucking thing is bullshit.

[Julian]

So many of my friends often talk to me about how they leave their doctor's office and they feel like they accomplish absolutely nothing. Doc tells them they're fine, maybe drink more water, and they end up feeling the same the next year when they go to see him. No real data, no game plan, just a pat on the back and please, my office. And this is exactly why I tell my friends they need Superpower. Superpower sends a licensed professional to your home, or you can visit a nearby lab. It's one simple blood draw with over 100 biomarkers, which is way more than what you usually get, and it actually unlocks a real understanding of your body. Their app includes detailed information on your heart, liver, thyroid, hormones, metabolism, vitamin and mineral levels, and even environmental toxins. If you know me and hear me talk about this stuff at all, I'm constantly trying to figure out what to optimize in my health. With Superpower, though, I can take actionable health plans based on my results. And on top of all of it, you can even get your true biological age that you can track over time. Superpower is not the app that gives you a one time snapshot. It tracks your results over your lifetime. Each test builds on the last, so you can actually see progress year after year, or if you're doing terribly, how soon you're going to die. So make this the year you stop guessing about your health with Superpower. For a limited time, our listeners get $20 off to unlock their new health intelligence. You just have to head over to superpower.com link in my description below and use code Julian for $20 off your membership. Again, that's superpower.com code Julian. After you sign up, Superpower is going to ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them I sent you. What's that like to finally actually realize that, though?

[Mark Bunker]

Well, in my case, I was 31 years old when that happened, so year it was a 2005.

[Julian]

Okay.

[Mark Bunker]

So I was sort of like, there's. It's a double edged sword because if I wasn't there, then I wouldn't have met Claire and I wouldn't have my three boys. And so it's like I kind of got to where I am now on this path, and I don't think I would have got here on this path if I didn't do it the way I did. Who knows? Woulda, coulda, shoulda. But at the same point I go, but I was exposed to enough crazy in there that I think I can undo this if I tell everybody all the stuff that I knew. And so that's why I ended up writing the book Blown for Good. Behind the Iron Curtain of Scientology.

[Julian]

It's a great name, by the way.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah, well, that place is like behind the Iron curtain. So that when I. When I got out and started learning about all these other things that were happening in the world and what had happened in the world, the. The only thing that I sort of was like, this is the most. Like this was the Iron Curtain. So I was like the, the defection, the spy kind of network, the. The. The tattletale culture. Like the. If. If I said I'm thinking of leaving 99%, she would write a report on me, me and file it and say, hey, my husband's thinking of doing this. That's. That's like Germany days 100. So like you can't.

[Julian]

But that's how you're wired.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah. Your children could rat you out, your spouse could rat. Parents could rat you out. So you have all these people, if you act the fool or do anything bad about Scientology and anybody in Scientology is around, the penalty in Scientology for not reporting, that is you are charged with. With the same crime of the person that you didn't report. So if somebody's leaking confidential materials on the Internet and they get declared a suppressive person and then they find out that you knew he was doing that, you also get declared a suppressor just for not reporting it. Even if you didn't do anything. You just saw that he had something on his computer.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

So I don't Regret. Bet that I was there because I. What, There's a choice. Yeah. But also, there's nothing I can do.

[Julian]

Right.

[Mark Bunker]

So to even think about, oh, what if I did this? Or what, it's sort of. It's pointless and unproductive. But if I say, well, there's not. The. The. The. The other thing that Scientology don't really account for is if you saw something that was illegal or that something. Something was bad, and you. They make you sign NDAs and they make you do all this, but it's not. It's not illegal to tell somebody about something illegal. You can't. An NDA can't protect from that.

[Claire Headley]

Right.

[Mark Bunker]

So if I say, well, he killed this guy. You say, oh, you signed an NDA? You said you wouldn't say anything. It happened. They'd be like, yeah, but that's a crime.

[Julian]

So.

[Mark Bunker]

Not in our church. Yeah, so. But. Yeah, not in our church, but. So I think. I think for a lot of people that are in Scientology, they want to leave, and they know that it's. They know that there's bad.

[Julian]

A lot of people in there.

[Mark Bunker]

A lot of people in Scientology know they themselves have been wronged. They've seen one of their family's members be wronged or their friends or their business got screwed over by Scientology, and. And they want to leave.

[Julian]

Quick question. I'm sorry to cut you off. I just got to ask this. Do you think the percentage of people now that wants to leave is way higher than it was in, say, the 90s because of the Internet alone?

[Mark Bunker]

100. Absolutely, 100. Because. Because they're getting their. They're hearing. When you're in Scientologies, there's a pretty proliferant whisper web. People like, oh, do you hear what happened to Billy Bob? You know? And you go like, I don't know. Well, then you go on the Internet, and there's some fucking Billy Bob telling this goddamn story. So then you go like, well, I'm pretty much sure I know what happened to Billy Bob. So. But they know that happened. They saw that, what he said, and they said, that same thing happened to my sister's boyfriend.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

You know, the same crazy stuff. So. But if their family are still in there, you can't really go to your family and say, hey, this is not for me. I gotta go. Yeah, Then you're never gonna talk to your family again. So there's this kind of thing where I don't want to go. And they have a term in Scientology called under the radar. So if you're one of these people that doesn't believe anymore, and you're not giving them money. You're not going to their events. You're not doing anything. You're just flying under the radar. So.

[Claire Headley]

And there are so many.

[Mark Bunker]

You don't say anything bad. You talk to all your family and you. And you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Awesome. Good job on whatever you're doing in Scientology. But it's like, play along to stay along.

[Julian]

Is this more the people, though, who, like, aren't in the Sea Org. They're the people that live out in regular society?

[Mark Bunker]

Yes.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

If you're in the Sea Org, one

[Claire Headley]

of those people that was under the radar is somebody that. I don't actually even know the person's name, but they knew me when I was a teenager, and they know my family, and they're like, they cannot. They're so mad that my family disconnected from me, from us, and have never met my sons and. And all this. But this person paid for, like, 200 copies of Mark's book and had us send them to, like, every single politician in California. The. The law enforcement, like, literally just sent it to everybody.

[Julian]

Wow.

[Mark Bunker]

The other thing is that when you are in there and you want to leave if. If you, like, do anything suspicious or you. So you really have to. Because they've taught you that if about the missed withhold and the. Well, you talking to people online about how bad Scientology is, that's, like, forbidden in Scientology. So. But if you start acting weird around your Scientology family members, then they're going

[Julian]

to be like, get them out, Ms.

[Mark Bunker]

Withhold. This guy's doing something crazy over there. We had a family. We had a. I think it was the dad who wrote in to us on YouTube or on our website or something, and he said, I want to thank you for your book, because I bought it and read it. My wife and my two kids are all in Scientology, and I wanted to sit down with them and just tell them, listen, this book. This guy used to work at the headquarters of Scientology, and I think they're doing bad stuff over there. When he sat down with the family and told it, his wife had already read the book on her Kindle, and the kids had already been looking all over the Internet. So when he went there to, basically, he's going to lose his family maybe by making this confession. And they're all like, hey, me too.

[Julian]

Yeah, me too.

[Mark Bunker]

We're all in the same boat. The whole family was already under the radio, the radar, but none of the other family members.

[Julian]

Right.

[Mark Bunker]

Knew that because they're not allowed to talk about it. So that I would say. I would say that there's. Right now, it's not really more than 20 or 30, 000 Scientologists in the world that are practicing giving money to Scientology. I would say even of those people, there's probably 50% of them that have had thoughts about leaving or want to leave, but they can't because they work for a Scientology company or. Yeah, yeah. It's just your whole life is this Web of Scientology nonsense.

[Julian]

How many of them would you say live in Clearwater? Half of them, or.

[Mark Bunker]

I say probably like 20, 30% live in Clearwater. 20, 30% live in Los Angeles. And then everybody else is just all over spreckled.

[Julian]

So you. You guys said you're big movie people when you came out out. You watch the Departed.

[Mark Bunker]

Oh, 100.

[Claire Headley]

All right.

[Julian]

So you remember the scene where he's like, you think he's a cop?

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah.

[Julian]

Like, that was me and Deef in Clearwater last week, standing in the parking lot like, you think that's a Scientologist? Steve's like, nah. Ten bucks says nah.

[Mark Bunker]

Well, in Clearwater for a long time, because they have. They have hundreds of properties in downtown Clearwater. Hundreds.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah.

[Julian]

That's why everything's so goddamn cheap.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah. And also the streets are empty.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

Nobody walking around. Yeah.

[Julian]

It's.

[Claire Headley]

It.

[Julian]

It felt like a True Detective episode.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

In some places, it's kind of wild that there's all this. And there's thousands of people in those buildings.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

But you never see them. They would bus people from building to building so that the Sea Org members, they don't get caught, like, out on their own, and they don't get Encounter somebody. Because in the. I want to say in the late 90s, early 2000s, there was a lot of. Of activists and protesters that are holding signs saying like, free Zenu. You know, let your body Satan out or whatever, and.

[Claire Headley]

Or your family misses you.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah.

[Julian]

It's like drawing a picture of Muhammad effectively.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah. So they don't want one of these random Sea Org members to see that and then go, what are body things? What's Lord? Who's Lord Zenu? So they would bus them from location to location. So. And I think for the most part, they still do that between where they live and where they work. But every once in a while, you'll catch a. We. I mean, we were there last year sometime. We were there and we had gone to. There's a huge park right on the bay, and there's a. They built this outdoor pavilion.

[Claire Headley]

Coachman Memorial Park.

[Julian]

Yeah, the park.

[Claire Headley]

We were.

[Julian]

At first, I was like, wait a minute.

[Mark Bunker]

But when we were at that park park, we saw a few Sea Org members walking in between their buildings. They cut through the park to go.

[Julian]

Did they look at you?

[Claire Headley]

They did.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah. But they didn't know.

[Claire Headley]

They did a double.

[Mark Bunker]

They don't know who we are.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah. No.

[Mark Bunker]

Maybe if there was somebody that used to be at the headquarters that was now in Clearwater.

[Julian]

They don't know who you are.

[Claire Headley]

No, no.

[Mark Bunker]

Only we see, that's it.

[Claire Headley]

I mean, we've been out for, what, 21 years?

[Julian]

No, but, like, so high profile.

[Mark Bunker]

No, because they're not allowed to look at any of that. The Sea Org members. There's.

[Claire Headley]

No.

[Mark Bunker]

They're not. They don't have, really, Internet access or t. Or we even had it when we were at the base, the international headquarters. When you get mail, it's opened before you get it. They open your mail. So if your mom's writing to you saying, hey, I think you need to get the hell out of there. Shit's gonna hit the fan. They just shred that.

[Claire Headley]

And then they make a note for outgoing mail, too. By the way, you want to write to your mom, even if your mom's a Scientologist. It has to be read and checked

[Mark Bunker]

before you give them the letter. In an open envelope. They read it, and then they seal it.

[Claire Headley]

This is.

[Julian]

This is what was killing me when I was talking with Jenna Miscavige.

[Claire Headley]

She was here.

[Julian]

I was telling you before. She was here. July 2024. We put out a couple months later for episode 235. But she. She grew up in that. And, you know, we got into a really good flow. So impressed with her and, like, how somehow she's able to have somewhat of a normal life now, which is like, I can't even fathom that based on her whole family background, everything. But I'm sitting here, and I'm like, all right, you're talking like a normal person. You're out in the normal world now, but you spent 21 years completely behind a wall. Like, actually totally behind a wall, pre Internet, a lot of it. Did you know who the President was? Like, when you were in there, what kind of music did. Did you think existed? Do you know what. What a baseline sound sounded like? I would start asking her these questions, and she'd be like, oh, no, that's really interesting. Like, yeah, I knew there was this guy at some point, like, Bill Clinton, but I'm like, what was he to you?

[Claire Headley]

Yeah.

[Julian]

And she's like, he was just this thing in this other world.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah. It's funny you say that. So I think it was in the late 90s. There was. There was a situation where David Miscavige went around to people at the base, Sea Org members, and said, who's the president? And they literally did not know. He did not know the answer to

[Mark Bunker]

it because there was such a media blackout, and we weren't getting any form of anything. There is no way to know who the president is.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah. So at that time, David Miscavige's handling was to literally make every single staff member of that base learn who's the president of the US who's the governor of California, who's the prime minister, who's the prime minister. Yeah. Literally, that was the corner that David Miscavige gave was. Everybody at this property needs to be told who the President of the United States is.

[Mark Bunker]

Another crazy thing.

[Julian]

What about, like, in sync, you got to know who they.

[Mark Bunker]

No, we did. We did have music. We did have music. You could go to Walmart on the weekend and buy a CD if you. If you were. If you were balling. If you had some cash on, you

[Julian]

still left your Britney Spears cd, and you're like, oh, okay, all right. Yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

When Bill Clinton was actually very cozy with Scientology, and when they.

[Julian]

That's a strange word to use.

[Mark Bunker]

Okay, well, I'll say. I'll say. When? In. When they got their tax exemption. Was it in. Yeah, it was in 1993, when Scientology got. Received tax exemption from the IRS, where they had a huge event at the LA Sports Arena. And the war is over. We're good to go.

[Claire Headley]

We're. We're.

[Mark Bunker]

We're legit now.

[Claire Headley]

The.

[Mark Bunker]

The accountants said we're a religion.

[Claire Headley]

And that was the. Literally the line David Miscavige used. The war is over.

[Mark Bunker]

They put up a huge graphic on all the screens in the sports arena, and it was a. Congratulations. This is. This is many years in the making. Da, da, da, da. Bill Clinton to Scientologists. Scientologists were like, yeah, well, now, this is the. This is another great. I got to tell this one last Bill Clinton story, because it is.

[Claire Headley]

Is.

[Mark Bunker]

I love Clinton. It is. It is. This is a good one. Encapsulates the essence of David Miscavige. So Oprah was throwing a party for. I think it was Missy Elliott and John Travolta's there and Oprah. All the muckety mucks that Oprah knows are all at this Party for Missy Elliott. And David Miscavige gets to go. He goes to this thing through John or through Tom or whoever. Tom Cruise. And. And he goes to the party. Da da da da da. And it was kind of all around the International quarter headquarters, like, oh, there was a big party. All the celebrities and all the Scientology celebrities were there, but also regular celebrities. And David Miscavige was there rubbing elbows with everybody. And we think we heard that he met Bill Clinton. Anyway, so then Bill, David Miscavige is in the elevator in Los Angeles at one of their big buildings down there, and a Sea Org member goes, sir, is it true you met Bill Clinton? David Miscavige goes, no, he met me. That's david miscavige, baby.

[Julian]

That's. Oh, my buddy. My buddy Matt Cox, who I was also visiting when I was down there and Tampa area. You ever hear him?

[Mark Bunker]

No.

[Julian]

He's got a big show online. Reformed. Totally reformed. But he was like the world's greatest mortgage fraudster for about a six year period. Got sentenced to 26, did 13, a lot of rat and happened to make that happen.

[Mark Bunker]

But he just got out recently, like seven years ago. Oh, okay.

[Julian]

Yeah, he's. He's big on YouTube now. Like I said, very reformed. But, you know, Matt's really short. He's like five, three. And he always said he's like, never trust us. I'm like, what do you mean, trust us? And he goes, short. People like me want to run the world.

[Claire Headley]

Oh.

[Julian]

And I was like, listen, I got a lot of short king friends out there. I ain't calling anybody out or anything. But there is something to it when a guy is literally like that.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah. Historically. Right? Napoleon, blah, blah.

[Julian]

He's got that many examples.

[Claire Headley]

Right?

[Mark Bunker]

And he was always like. Like, I'm. He is the. The cap. It's Captain David Miscavige.

[Julian]

Captain, that's right.

[Mark Bunker]

He is the head of the Sea Organization. And so when we were at the international headquarters, we all wore uniforms, but he didn't. He didn't wear a uniform. But then on the weekends, we would dress in civilian clothes. And on the weekends, when everyone there dressed in civilian clothes, he dressed in his uniform. And he. And somebody said something or did something, and then he says, do you know why when you guys wear your uniforms, I'm not wearing a uniform. And when you're wearing civilian clothes, I'm wearing my uniform because I'm not you. I'm not like you.

[Julian]

There it is.

[Mark Bunker]

I'm. I'm up here.

[Julian]

Yep.

[Mark Bunker]

And even Tom Cruise does this thing where he goes, it's. It's Tom Cruise, David Miscavige, L. Ron Hubbard. That's the hierarchy of the world. He says that to people 100%. Tom Cruise thinks David Miscavige is the bee's knees. He wants to be like Tom Cruise and David Miscavige. No, Tom Cruise wants to be like David Miscavige, and David Miscavige wants Tom Cruise to be like David Miscavige. So they.

[Claire Headley]

Have you seen that. That video of Tom Cruise in the black turtleneck?

[Julian]

In the black.

[Mark Bunker]

He's. He's saying only Scientology can help. If there's an accident, please find this.

[Claire Headley]

Oh, my gosh. Where he says, if there's an accident, Scientologists are the only ones who can help.

[Julian]

Wait, is this the leak from the film set?

[Mark Bunker]

No, this is.

[Julian]

No, because that's audio only.

[Claire Headley]

This is from.

[Mark Bunker]

Oh, yeah, no, that. That's recent.

[Claire Headley]

It was a video that was played at a Scientology event in 2004. Yep.

[Julian]

Okay. Yeah. I was thinking the. The old Matt Lauer stop being clip.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah, yeah.

[Julian]

This is actually cooked a little bit on that one.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah,

[Julian]

yeah, let's. We'll give it. If you don't see the video, that means it was copyrighted. So we took it out. We'll react to it afterwards. But let's take a look at this. So this is. This from a while ago.

[Mark Bunker]

We'll see which one this is.

[Julian]

Oh, so Scientology might copyright us.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

Oh, yeah.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah, this is it.

[Mark Bunker]

Scientologist.

[Claire Headley]

The reviews for his latest screen appearance have been awful.

[Mark Bunker]

I think It's a privilege. Yes. 100.

[Claire Headley]

This is Tom Cruise in a film leaked to the Internet in praise of Scientology. What it has done for him and

[Mark Bunker]

what it can do for you.

[Julian]

We are the authorities on getting people off drugs.

[Mark Bunker]

We are the authorities on the mind. We are the assault authorities on improving conditions. Criminal weekend. This is a seared member doing. Doing this riff based off of the Limp Bizkit version. Unite cultures proud boasts indeed.

[Claire Headley]

But then the Mission Impossible star has

[Mark Bunker]

long been vocal about. Yeah, now this is just all gossip. Religion regarded anyway. But.

[Julian]

Oh, yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

So when that video. That video was played in October of 2004 for Scientologists. So that video was never supposed to leave the Scientology bubble, but when you're a Scientologist and Tom Cruise is talking in Scientologies to you, then you're like, oh, he really 100 is a Scientologist? Yeah. For many years in the 90s and even the early 2000s, it was like this Guy never talks about Scientology to anybody. And when he divorced Nicole, it went hardcore. Scientology, Scientology, Scientology.

[Julian]

That's also what's so strange too, because very famously, as everyone seems to know now, movie that's gotten attention more than it did when it came out is Eyes Wide Shut, which they did together in 1999. Which, you know, it's not Scientology, but it's a, you know, giant elite sex cult. And you wonder how someone like that could participate in doing a film that serious and that viscerally, I might say, with his own wife, by the way, for whatever it was a six month shoot and all that, and all the build up to it and then not be able to be like, huh, you know what? There's some patterns there.

[Mark Bunker]

It's funny that you say that, because during that time period, period in Within Scientology, David Miscavige had two people in their camp. Nicole's personal assistant was a Scientologist reporting to David Miscavige, and Tom Cruise's personal assistant was a Scientology Scientologist reporting to David Miscavige. And they were married. These, both of the assistants were married. It was Andrea Dovin and Michael Dov and Michael Dov. And they worked and they have credits on all the films that Tom Cruiser, Nicole McKibben did that time.

[Claire Headley]

And Michael and Andrea were reporting on Tom and Nicole to Scientology literally weekly, Weekly.

[Mark Bunker]

And during that time, they knew that, that Tom was pulling away from Scientology. And somehow, some way, I like to joke about this because it's just, it's kind of crazy, but when, when Nicole, Nicole did a movie called Moulin rouge with Ewan McGregor and between the info that Scientology was getting from the assistance, it appeared that there may be something happening there on the Moulin Rouge thing. And Tom's pulling away, Nicole's off doing whatever she's doing with. At the international headquarters, we were told by David Miscavige that Tom Cruise cannot have children, period. That's why they adopted two kids. Okay?

[Claire Headley]

So whether that's true or not, whether that's true or not, that's what David Miscavige told the staff at the time.

[Mark Bunker]

And that was also something that was maybe along the lines of Tom Cruise ruin that he can't have kids, so they adopt some kids. Him and Nicole adopt two kids. And then this thing happens on Moulin Rouge and it's sort of like there's something happening there. But they then Scientology finds out that Nicole had a miscarriage. So they basically saw an opportunity to say, hey, listen, the reason all the craziness is happening in your life, and everything is because you're connected to a suppressive person. And that's Nicole. And so.

[Julian]

Because she had a miscarry.

[Mark Bunker]

Well, no, no. Just because they weren't in Scientology anymore really doing Scientology. And then whatever's happening in his life has happened in his life. And they basically say. And then. And he knows about. Or he's made aware of the. The. The miscarriage. And so then they get. Immediately get a divorce. And she never says anything. It's all wrapped up with the lawyers. It's all good. There's nothing to with do.

[Claire Headley]

Do. So

[Mark Bunker]

whether or not that that is what happened, that's what Scientology gleaned and then kind of worked him over with. And then as soon as they split, he became 100 back in Scientology.

[Julian]

So that is the psychology that's fascinating to me when you look at a bonafide global superstar like. Like Tom Cruise. So it's huge for Scientology to be able to have him and say he's one of our own, because the marketing obviously is like, oh, Tom Cruise is Scientologist. But it's also. He's just like everyone else out there. He has his insecurities. He has a big ego. Not necessarily like everyone else, but he has that going for him. And so you catch him after a divorce with something like this to where you really pull him into the inner sanctum when he's vulnerable. Vulnerable. And he's probably feeling insecure. And you make this guy who, even though we all look at him, even back then he was already very much a bonafide global superstar. You make him realize that he's still a. At the mercy of people deciding whether or not he gets to be in a movie or not. So you play. I'm just guessing here, you play on that insecurity to be like, yo, in Scientology time, just do what we tell you to do at the top.

[Claire Headley]

But.

[Julian]

But you're gonna be the guy. You get to be the star. You get to be the person that all the lights and cameras are on. You don't have to try out for roles or whatever. And it makes him feel like. This is a bad way to put it, but like a dwarf among midgets in that kind of place right there. To the point that he actually believes he's a giant.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah. And also him and Dave were hanging out a lot after the divorce, and even to the point where, I mean, this story came out out in Vanity Fair years and years ago, but when we were still at the property in 2004, I worked for the production arm, the media production arm of Scientology. So making videos, these. Putting on these events where you see Tom Cruise talking, shooting that video, which. That has a crazy story. That video that got shot. Wait, did you shoot that? No. Well, Golden Era Productions shot that video. Yeah, the. Where I worked. I didn't shoot it personally, but that. We were both there when that video was made. Three times.

[Julian]

Oh, you were there in the room?

[Mark Bunker]

Well, no, yeah, we were in the editing bays and yeah, I worked on

[Claire Headley]

all the video editing in the video editing bay while that was being put together.

[Mark Bunker]

Video. That whole video that plays. David Miscavige spent days massaging every second and when the cut. When the music comes in and all that for that video. Video. But there was two videos before that that. When they, when they first. When Golden Era Productions set out to shoot, they said basically every year at the International association of Scientologists event in England in October, they give out these awards that are called the Freedom Medal Awards. And it's basically hot shot Scientologists that are moving and shaking and getting done. So they give these guys what's called an IAS Freedom Medal. And they. It's just a gold medal like this and it looks like an Olympic medal, I think.

[Julian]

I wasn't Tom Cruise wearing one of those.

[Mark Bunker]

He got like a flava flav one that was like a giant one.

[Claire Headley]

Everyone at normal people got the Freedom. Freedom Medal. He got the Freedom Medal of Valor.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah.

[Julian]

Which.

[Mark Bunker]

Which I don't think anyone else has ever been awarded.

[Julian]

No, he does do all his own stunts.

[Mark Bunker]

He does, yeah. So.

[Julian]

And that is really. Listen, I like I. With Tom Cruise movies, you know, so when he's not the man.

[Mark Bunker]

When that. When that. When we were basically told, hey, Tom Cruise is going to get a Freedom medal this year and we would normally have three winners. They ho. They basically said, those guys can get their award next year. The only person who's getting an award is Tom. And we're going to do this big long video. We're going to do the whole. We're going to really, really spruce it up for him. And so they went and Golden Hour Productions arranged through, I guess some of Tom's people that he worked with or whatever to interview Steven Spielberg, Will Smith, whoever had worked with Tom in the industry to find out what he's like. And so all these interviews were being shot and then David Miscavige caught wind of it. He was like, what are you doing? Who cares what celebrities think about Tom Cruise? This is a Scientology event and we want this to be all about Scientology. Not that he does his own stunts, not that he has a. A trailer that's 20ft long. And he shows up to the set, you know, so. So then a second video was started, and that was Jenna Elfman, Bodhi Elfman, Erica Christensen. Erica, all the Scientology celebrities. He's talking about Real Time Cruise. And then Dave Miscavige again. He's like, who gives a about these guys? They don't do all in Scientology. They're useless to us as a celebrity. They're not. They're doing Tide commercials. Come on. They're not the level. They're not Tom Cruise level celebrities. So then he said, and you can kind of, if you watch the video, if you watch the video again, David Miscavige basically gives the essence of the video going. We want to know about who Tom Cruise is as a Scientologist. And the only person who can tell us how awesome Tom Cruise is is Tom Cruise. So then that video. Because the video was born, that video, it became shooting these 30 people. These 30 people to just. No, we just need to shoot this one dude right here that the video is about. And so that's how that video came. It was this very small crew. Cameraman, sound guy, makeup girl, maybe a director. That's it. Four people with Tom in a chair. That's it. And a turtleneck, a nice black turtleneck.

[Julian]

Have you ever seen the guy? I don't know his name. Maybe you'll know it. Thief. The dude on Instagram who takes really bad viral videos. Like when people say do really stupid and like, they play the video and then it cuts to him with the film crew back there.

[Claire Headley]

Like.

[Mark Bunker]

Like they're like.

[Julian]

They're like taking it off. Like, what is going. I need him. Like, I need blood in my veins to do that Tom Cruise video.

[Mark Bunker]

It would be amazing.

[Julian]

Scientology shirt, please. If you see this guy that does those videos, do do that one.

[Mark Bunker]

My favorite was when. When that video came out, there was a bunch of parody videos that were also coming out. There was a movie they made. Like, it was called like the Fly or something like that. And it had a. A Tom Cruise lookalike. And he goes, oh, no, I can eat planets. You know, he's wearing a black turtleneck in the same thing. He's like, yeah, it's like K inside in the video. He says, it's like, KSW keeping Scientology working. And this guy's like, it's like, kfc. You gotta get that buck that, you know. And then I think Jerry o' Connell a. A spoof of that video. So we had a lot of fun when. When that came out, it was like, oh, yeah, this is what we want to do. We want to basically show, like, Tom Cruise when he's on the movie set, he talking Scientology, anything. But when he gets in the room with the Scientologists, he pours it on.

[Julian]

Right?

[Mark Bunker]

And. And the whole reason for that, that event, the International association of Scientology. Event. Event, is it's a fundraising event. So Tom Cruise is going, hey, I'm doing this. I'm giving this money. I'm doing this. I'm talking about Scientology everywhere, and I'm getting people into Scientology. What are you doing as a Scientologist? And he's like, basically, at the end of the video. At the end of the video where the interview. He goes up on stage, and David Miscavige gives him the. The medal of the Freedom, Medal of Val medal, and then they shake hands, and then they salute L. Ron Hubbard on the stage. And Tom Cruise, in that acceptance speech, just blows smoke up Dave's ass about how awesome he is. Like, literally. Thank you, sir. I've met the leaders of leaders, and you are among the top of the. You know, And. And so.

[Claire Headley]

And meanwhile, by the way, David Miscavige was beating up the top executives of Scientology at the headquarters. And not only he was saying, Tom Cruise offered to come down here and kick your asses and kick your guys asses to get your ethics in.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah. So Dave was basically telling Tom. This is Dave's version. We don't actually know if he did that or if Tom Cruise actually. Because this is coming from Dave. But he goes, yeah, I told Tom about all the bullshit I'm dealing with with you guys. And he said, if.

[Julian]

If.

[Claire Headley]

If.

[Mark Bunker]

If we wanted it, he'd come up here and kick your asses for. And. And seaorg member. Okay. You've been in the sea org maybe 20, 30 years.

[Julian]

Kick my ass, Tom Cruz.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah, exactly. You're.

[Julian]

Come on, Seeu.

[Mark Bunker]

But you've been in this. And that's when David Miscavige said that thing. He says, it's Tom Cruise. It's me and LH. Oh, my God.

[Claire Headley]

And.

[Mark Bunker]

But. But you're been a SEG member for 20, 30 years. And you're like, David Miscavige said, tom Cruise is the most dedicated Scientologist I've ever met. And you're like, I gave you 15 years so far. How can this guy be the guy now? He just. He just showed up. Yeah, but. Yeah, so that. That but again, when Tom Cruise does something stupid or silly like that, then it's not good for him to be a Scientologist. Right, so they're the ones that directed the video, though.

[Claire Headley]

Exactly.

[Mark Bunker]

So it goes both ways.

[Claire Headley]

The video was not the problem. It was that it was leaked to the Internet.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah.

[Claire Headley]

In David Miscavige's eyes, that's the perfect video.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Claire Headley]

Because he made it.

[Julian]

And then. And then the savageness of the crowds can see it, and it's like, oh, exactly. Your Limp, Limp biscuit wasn't very good.

[Mark Bunker]

And also, people were like, who edited this thing? You're like, david Miscavige edited this thing down to every frame. It was like.

[Julian]

It wasn't you.

[Mark Bunker]

No, no, I didn't edit it.

[Claire Headley]

No. David Miscavige even recorded the voiceover for

[Mark Bunker]

the guy to match.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

So he recorded the voiceover that that guy's reading and then told that guy, listen to me in your ears when you read this so you can make it the way I want it to be. But this is.

[Julian]

Hey, listen, he has a vision. He's got a vision.

[Mark Bunker]

Well, give him that. I'll tell you one other thing that David Miscavige made that he made that he thought was awesome that didn't turn out that way. Little old film called Battlefield Earth.

[Julian]

Oh, yes, we talked. Did we talk about this with Mark Bunker? I think so.

[Mark Bunker]

When that film was being made, David Miscavige was like the ghost producer of that movie. So he saw the costumes. He saw. Oh, who we hired for a special.

[Claire Headley]

He was watching the footage.

[Mark Bunker]

He was seeing the dailies from.

[Julian]

This is the one with Travolta.

[Mark Bunker]

Yes.

[Claire Headley]

That's based on the book Battlefield Earth by Elron How Cupboard.

[Mark Bunker]

And so when that movie was done, and he would tell us all the time, oh, I'm getting. We're seeing this. We're doing this. And we got One of the guys that worked on Star wars is doing the effects on this, and they did Independence Day, and, you know, whatever it was. And it's like, this is his baby. This is Dave Miscavige's baby. When that movie is done, he tells us, this movie is the best movie movie ever made. And we all. We all had to go see this movie. If you were a Sea Org member at the base, they gave us money and they drove. They bussed us to the movie to the nearest AMC movie theater. And we had to watch it three times because they wanted to get the ticket sales. They wanted to get the ticket sales.

[Julian]

What's that? Meme where they're holding the guys open.

[Mark Bunker]

Clockwork Orange.

[Claire Headley]

Yes, 100%.

[Mark Bunker]

I snuck out on the second.

[Claire Headley]

I had. I. I couldn't sneak out, but I slept through all three showings of it.

[Julian]

I don't. If I remember correctly, if it was Mark Bunker that brought it up, I'm pretty sure when it got brought up on the podcast, if I'm. If this is coming back to me. Right. I had never seen any of this before. And then afterward, like, we watched, like, a scene of it. Then afterwards, I went and watched the scene. I'm like, I can't believe this is really real.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah.

[Julian]

Like, if SNL did this, you'd be like, all right, guys. Yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah, it's a little too much. So then when that came out, panned by everybody as one, I think. I think it won the raspberry for, like, the worst. Worst film ever. And John Travolta won as worst actor ever.

[Julian]

Had Forest Whitaker in it, too.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah. And Barry Pepper. Yeah. So the director of that was Roger Christian.

[Julian]

Barry Pepper's a Scientologist, right?

[Claire Headley]

No, no, they were trying to get him.

[Mark Bunker]

They were trying to get him. Okay.

[Claire Headley]

They were also trying to get far.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah, they're trying to.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah, they've tried to get a lot of people.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah. But when that came out, and then it was like, this is the worst movie ever. Tom Cruise called Dave Miscavige, and he was like, what the. With this battlefield Earth. And Dave goes, I know. John, that sea sucker. He threw it. He threw John right under the bus, like he had nothing to do with it. So that's how David Miscavige. That's how it's like, nothing is ever his fault when it goes bad. Nope. It's this or that guy or everybody else.

[Claire Headley]

Yep.

[Julian]

But.

[Mark Bunker]

But, yeah, there's all kinds of craziness that goes on, even in that sort of celebrity. At the. In Hollywood, they have a giant castle on Franklin, Franklin and Bronson called the Scientology Celebrity Center. It's right next to the 101 freeway.

[Julian]

This isn't the blue building.

[Mark Bunker]

No, no, that's called. That's called the complex, or big blue. And that's where there's a whole bunch of different Scientology organs. It used to be Cedar Sinai Hospital. Hospital. And. And Scientology bought it in the 70s when they were building a whole new hospital. And then they made all of those buildings. Scientology organizations.

[Julian]

That's some One Flew over is the cuckoo's nest right there.

[Mark Bunker]

When we were kids in the early 80s, we would run a run around in the Basements where the morgues used to be down there. And there was like burnout bulbs down there. And it was like. It was the best scary place to go if you were a kid. Like, oh, we're gonna go down to the morgues today. Yeah, this is normal anyway. But. But at the Celebrity center, that's where you have your Elizabeth Mosses and Michael Pena and kind of like the. The Scientology celebrity, Erica Christensen. Some of these guys that have been around for a while that are. If you're doing a commercial, if you're doing a Thai commercial, you get to go to the Celebrity Center. Anything from that up. And they have. And they have. They have musicians and they have poets, and it's sort of like. Like where the Scientology artists go to do Scientology or just rich Scientologists that want to hang out with celebrities.

[Claire Headley]

Incidentally, that's also where we got married in August 1992.

[Julian]

Oh, we're going to come to your guys story. That's in the back of my head.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah, no, it's.

[Julian]

I'm just loving all the expose here.

[Mark Bunker]

It's. Well, I'm trying to think of. I'm trying to think of things that people might find, like how is it connected to the current zeitgeist, you know, what's going on? And all these different things. So. But the. The celebrities, even after Tom Cruise gets the Freedom Medal of Valor and all this other stuff or around that time period, and Dave Miscavige told us that this happened, he said, tom Cruise. I didn't tell him to do this. He rounded up all of those Scientology celebrities that we mentioned, the Elfmans and Michael, all whoever was like a celebrity that could do something thing. Tom Cruise got all those guys together and he brought them to this Scientology museum on Sunset Boulevard called the Psychiatry, the industry of Death Scientology, they hate they psychiatry is like, they. They're like, those guys are messing with people, not us. These guys are doing crazy stuff. Electroshock therapy and all these barbaric prefrontal lobotomies and all this stuff hit your meter. Yeah. And he and Tom Cruise took all those guys through it. And then at the end, he basically said, you guys aren't doing anything. You're not promoting Scientology. You're not getting people into Scientology. He's like, you best be getting to doing that, because I can make it so that you don't ever work in this town again.

[Claire Headley]

Whoa.

[Mark Bunker]

And so right after that, Jenna Elfman opens a Scientology facility in San Francisco, and some of these guys kind of. Kind of get to it. And say, okay, we'll do some stuff. And they do a little bit. Danny Masterson was one of the people who started doing more Scientology stuff at that time.

[Julian]

Oh, so he. He got it talking too.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah, every. All those sign. All the Scientology celebrities that are notable were part of that little meeting. And then David Miscavige told us, he said he did this and he's. He's putting in ethics on his group. Group of celebrities. And that's. And I think that segued into the he'll come up and kick some asses if I want up here too kind of thing. So Dave Miscavige portrays Tom Cruise as like his right hand man and another trusted individual who knows the burden that David Miscavige has to carry of trying to, you know, get Scientology to succeed and all this other stuff.

[Julian]

Small shoulders to carry that.

[Mark Bunker]

Well, yeah.

[Claire Headley]

Shortly after that is also when Shelley Miscavige started the project to find Tom Cruise a wife.

[Julian]

Wait, what? Refresh me on that, please.

[Claire Headley]

So Shelley Miscavige is the one who was running the project to find Tom Cruise a wife. Because by this point now we're. In late 2004, he had been in a relationship with Penelope Cruz. They had tried and failed to get her into Scientology and they broke up.

[Julian]

Do you know anything about the efforts to get her in? And what. Oh, 100. Okay, can we talk about that? Like. Because good for her for staying away from. But what happened there?

[Claire Headley]

She. So she was. And again, I should say, this is what we were told. Okay, okay. But they had Jessica Feshbeck, who later became the handler of. Katie Holmes is a member of the Sea Organization. And she at this time was working at Celebrity Center. She was doing counseling with Penelope Cruz. They got her onto the purification rundown. But Penelope, as we were told, was either into yoga or Buddhism or some other practices that were. Or forbidden if you're going to become a Scientologist. So that's kind of where she. That the progress hit a brick wall.

[Julian]

You can't do yoga and Scientology.

[Mark Bunker]

They call it other practices called mixing practices or other practices. So.

[Claire Headley]

But Scientology accepts people of all religions, quote, unquote.

[Mark Bunker]

They do. So they can make you not part of those religions.

[Julian]

I know, but for. I know yoga obviously has some ancient traditions as well, but, you know, do they let you bench press and squat? Sure you can.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah, you can go work out. But if you're doing some yoga nonsense, they'll be like, hey, hey, we don't do that here.

[Julian]

So no downward bending dog?

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah, yeah. None of that. Yeah. You can bench press, you can do push ups, you can do pull ups, but don't get no doggy position.

[Julian]

That's right. Okay, so she was into something that was unacceptable.

[Claire Headley]

Right. And that was big. That was a. At least as. Again, as it was told to us was. Had gotten to the point where it's a big problem for Tom Cruise that she wasn't going further and further, like, you know, taking it. So.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah. How did they get.

[Julian]

Do you know? Because obviously it's secondhand here, like you said. But do you know what that conversation is like, beyond Tom saying to her, hey, I want to take you over to my church or whatever? Like what the conversation is like once she gets there and who talks to her and how they approach the idea of like, hey, hey, we're trying to pull you into the big thing. Right.

[Mark Bunker]

Well, they don't really do it like that. I can give you personal experience because at the international headquarters, when Nicole. So he was married to Mimi Rogers in the early 90s and late 80s, and when Nicole and Mimi Rogers, by

[Claire Headley]

the way, was born into Scientology.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah, she was a scientist. She's the one who got Tom Cruise into Scientology. His first wife is the one who got him in. Oh, I.

[Julian]

You know what?

[Claire Headley]

I think.

[Julian]

I think Mark told me that.

[Mark Bunker]

But when he was doing the movie Days of Thunder with Nicole, they started forming a relationship, and then Mimi was out, and then Nicole showed up right after he shot Days of Thunder. He was working at the international headquarters, training and doing counseling on. In Scientology at the headquarters.

[Julian]

Tom Cruise and Nicole Cruz was training people?

[Mark Bunker]

No, he.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah, well, he was learning how to do Scientology auditing.

[Julian]

Okay.

[Mark Bunker]

So that when you do Scientology training, that means you're the one being trained. So he was learning how to become a counselor in Scientology so that he could counsel somebody else. But when you are very first starting out in Scientology, you have to counsel someone who's never had any Scientology counseling. You have to get somebody who's raw meat. They're fresh, clean sleep slate. Well, I was so young at that time, and I hadn't done a lot of Scientology stuff, so I became his Scientology guinea pig that he would practice on. And I did that for every day. I would go and I would sit down and go on the E meter and Tom Cruise would do counseling.

[Claire Headley]

Tom Cruise was his auditor.

[Mark Bunker]

And so then. But Nicole, it was in a room probably twice, three times. This.

[Julian]

We're going to come back to that, but please keep going. And in the room.

[Mark Bunker]

Room, we're sitting at a desk and he's doing the counseling. There's a table on the other side of the room. Nicole Kidman's there, Kirsty Alley's there, and they're also doing Scientology courses. So one of the first courses you do in Scientology, especially if you're a celebrity, is a course called the PTS SP course.

[Claire Headley]

And you learn about trouble source, suppressive person.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah. So if you are. If you are what if you have accidents or you get sick sick, or anything in your life goes sideways, you are a potential trouble source in Scientology. And the only way that you can be a potential trouble source is if you're connected to a suppressive person. So Scientology celebrities do that as one of their first things, because if there's anybody in their friend group who's like, oh, no, you don't. You shouldn't do Scientology. The people that say you shouldn't do Scientology have crimes against humanity, and they're worried that if Scientology succeeds, their crimes will be revealed. So they don't want you to do that because they don't want them. They don't. Those people that say, don't do Scientology, you immediately go, oh, he's done some. And don't listen to that person. So Nicole was doing that course when Tom Cruise was counseling me. So.

[Julian]

So how old are you again when this is happening?

[Mark Bunker]

I'm at that time. It was 92, I think, when that happened. 91.

[Claire Headley]

92. It was 1990. 1997.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah. 17.

[Julian]

What, 27, 28. Something like that.

[Mark Bunker]

Something like that. I remember specifically that he had longer hair than I'd ever seen him have in any Top Gun or whatever movies. And when he came, he had the daeza cold trickle hair. Hair, which was kind of like just longish hair. Not, you know, combable. Not Top Gun.

[Julian]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

Anyway, but so you're sitting across from. I'm sitting across. And even. Even I was told by the. The Sea Org members and Religious Technology center, you're not allowed to tell anybody about this. No one's to ever know that this happened. This is like.

[Claire Headley]

It's like that he was even there at the headquarters, let alone that. That Tom Cruise was auditing. Mark.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah. So when I. When I went to go get the counseling, every day, I would go up, get the counseling, and then everybody on the property is supposed to do two and a half hours of studying of L. Ron Hubbard's works every day. And most people do that from like 7:30 to 10:00 clock at night. That's when their study time. Time is where they study. Out on Hubbers Works. So during my time when I would go off to study, I just wouldn't go to study. I would go to the other side of the property and go get counseled by Tom Cruise. And so when I came back, I was just like, oh, I was. I was on study with everybody else. I wasn't. I didn't go do that. But then one of the days when you go and get counseling in Scientology, you have to have slept a certain amount of hours, you have to have been well fed, and you basically have to be present there in the counseling. You can't just fall asleep, which I did do one of the times I fell asleep while he was counseling.

[Julian]

Fall asleep on Tom Cruise?

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah, I fell asleep. Well, because he's in Scientology counseling. They. They ask you. It's repetitive questions that you answer just over and over. You could. They could ask you the same question 50 times.

[Julian]

What might that be?

[Mark Bunker]

Happy. Like, think of a place where you could communicate to that.

[Claire Headley]

From where could you communicate to a. A man.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah.

[Claire Headley]

From where could you communicate. To an ashtray. Whatever. Random.

[Mark Bunker]

To an ashtray and to anything. To any objects. Like, do you, like, try to do,

[Julian]

like, Ben and Spoon or.

[Mark Bunker]

That comes later, anyway.

[Julian]

Really?

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah. You move a book in a bottle of your intention.

[Claire Headley]

It's called. Called Opera by dupe. And you have a book on one side of the room and a bottle on the other side of the room. And so you're standing. You're ambulatory according to how this process goes. And so Tom Cruise would say to Mark, look at that book. Walk over to it, Pick it up. What is its color?

[Mark Bunker]

What is its.

[Claire Headley]

What is its temperature? Put it back down. Turn around, look at that bottle.

[Mark Bunker]

And you just do that over, over

[Claire Headley]

and over and over and over and over again.

[Julian]

Anyway.

[Mark Bunker]

Anyway.

[Claire Headley]

For hundreds of hours.

[Mark Bunker]

And then sometimes you do it on the E meter. So there's some walking around processing that you do.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

And then there's some. Where you're sitting there just answering questions or whatever. Yeah, well, when he was doing that, I basically, you know, just faded and was just out.

[Julian]

You're just falling asleep.

[Mark Bunker]

And if you are a counselor, what they call an auditor, Scientology auditor, if you're doing that and somebody falls asleep.

[Julian]

Sleep.

[Mark Bunker]

You are in huge trouble. You up.

[Julian]

So Tom Cruise is in trouble.

[Mark Bunker]

Yes. That's like the worst sin that your person. You're supposed to be helping them spiritually, and they're. They're so bored with you that they fall asleep. That's a huge thing. But if you're Tom Cruise. And that happens. Guess who gets in trouble? I got in trouble. So I had to switch my schedule and I had to do all this other stuff. But one of the times before you go into session, you have to be properly fed, properly, properly slept and all that. And there's a test that they do on the E meter where you take in a deep breath and then you let it out through your mouth. And the needle on the E meter is supposed to go boosh all the way over to the other side of

[Claire Headley]

the diet or at least 1 to 2 inches for you to pass the test.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah. And if you don't pass that test, you're not well fed or you're not well rested or something's wrong.

[Julian]

What is the science? Big air quotes there of like the E meter even working.

[Mark Bunker]

It.

[Claire Headley]

It's.

[Julian]

It's. It's total.

[Mark Bunker]

It's total 100%.

[Julian]

So someone.

[Mark Bunker]

It me. It measures resistance in your body, essentially. That's what it does. And.

[Julian]

But it, it, it moves, supposedly.

[Mark Bunker]

Well, when you do a physical reaction like that. It does move.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

But if it doesn't move a lot, then you can't start the counseling.

[Julian]

Yeah. And so my buddy Danny I was telling you about, he had one.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah, yeah.

[Julian]

On his.

[Mark Bunker]

There you go. That's a mark.

[Julian]

That's called Studio video.

[Mark Bunker]

That's called a mark. Super seven Quantum.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah. They do a pinch test.

[Julian]

Is it on there?

[Claire Headley]

They do a pinch test to convince.

[Mark Bunker]

Calibrate it.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah. Or no, to. To convince people that it is reading your thoughts. The pinch test. So you literally pinch somebody. This is how the Scientologists convince a person that this actually works and can read your thoughts and everything. You hold the camera hands, they pinch you, and then the. The person administering the test says, recall the moment of the pinch. And then you'll see the needle react

[Julian]

when they think about someone below the table moving.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah, exactly.

[Julian]

Scavenges down there, ripping into lawn dark. Moving it.

[Mark Bunker]

But so I failed that test when I. One of the days I went. It's called a metabolism test. I failed the test. And Tom. Tom Cruise's like, you ever take bee pollen?

[Julian]

Oh, my God.

[Mark Bunker]

And I'm like, bee pollen? Like, I'm like, you literally harvest the pollen from bees and it's like, oh, no, you just. They're like little, like little candies. You can just get them. He goes, I. I've heard that be pollen will help you pass a metabolism test. So here I'm told no one can know that Tom Cruise is doing your counsel Wrestling. You're going to study like everybody else. You're not going over to this other place. It's top, top secret. And he's like, they have bee pollen on the other side of the property in the canteen. We had, like, a little store next to the dining area where you could buy, like, sodas and candy bars and like that. And supposedly they had bee pollen up in that. I didn't know anything about it. And so he's like, let's go down. We'll go down and we'll get some bee pollen. And I'm like, okay. I'm like, I don't know how we're gonna get there without anybody saying, seeing. No, just jump on a motorcycle. I'm riding on the back of his

[Julian]

bike on Tom Cruise's motorcycle.

[Mark Bunker]

We drive down there. There's people coming and going from the dining hall. It's during a meal break. So there's people everywhere. And I'm like, yeah, pretty sure the secret's gonna get out now. And this ain't. And I'm not the one who did it. It's him. He. He said we should go here.

[Julian]

Oh, you're blaming.

[Mark Bunker]

You're Tom's fault. Yeah, Tommy. This is all on Tommy boy.

[Julian]

Okay?

[Mark Bunker]

Mr. Risky Business came up with this plan. Anyway, so I take the bee pollen. I don't remember if it worked or not or whatever it might have. But then every day, he was like, are you taking vitamins? Or. I'm like, dude, I'm in the sea work. I don't. I don't have vitamin money. Okay, we're getting 40.

[Julian]

We're getting.

[Mark Bunker]

We're getting 40. We're getting 40 clams a week. I spending it on vitamins, dude.

[Julian]

Oh, my God. Was your personality like this, though, back then? Like, were you affable and light like this?

[Mark Bunker]

Pretty much. Pretty much. I grew up. I grew up in Hollywood, on the streets, like, on Hollywood Boulevard, really, when I was little. And then as. As I kind of got older, I started going to the Scientology schools, but I was kind of a rebel at the. Even at the Scientology schools and getting in trouble. Trouble there. And I had a few years where I went to school in Venice beach, and I was like, one of a couple of white kids in the entire school. And so I got a lot of pavement meetings against. With my face. And so when I went then from that back to a Scientology school, and someone says, hey, your mother's this. Or whatever, you just beat the. Out of them.

[Julian]

Oh, it's Scientology school. You did.

[Mark Bunker]

I did yeah, there. You're not supposed to do that in the Scientology school. But I been at this other place that. Where that's how, that's how the rules

[Julian]

were and bring that into the.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah. And so here I'm with all these White Lily kids and they're like, they're like, hey, you're my.

[Julian]

You know.

[Mark Bunker]

And then it's like, hey, whoa, whoa, we don't do that here. I'd be like, well then stop talking about my mom and dad.

[Julian]

So you were never, you never felt compelled to do that to Tom Cruise with anything he said?

[Mark Bunker]

Not Tom Cruise, David Miscavige. I did have dust up with him one time and he would. When we would have meetings, so we would go into a meeting with him like after lunch, like 1, 2 o'.

[Claire Headley]

Clock.

[Mark Bunker]

And then we would literally be in that meeting the whole afternoon through the dinner break and maybe in 8 o' clock or 9 o' clock that night, in one meeting.

[Julian]

Talking about what?

[Mark Bunker]

Talking about all the plans that he has that we're not working on, we're not getting done.

[Claire Headley]

How everyone's a schmucko.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah. And for schmucko for a while. My, my. I used to be in the manufacturing division, then I was in the cinematography division. Then I was in the pre production, I was in many parts of Golden Era Productions. And at a certain point I was the producer. So I was over all the production areas for Golden Era Productions. And from that post, any plan that David Miscavige had for any area, somehow I was connected to it either. If it's courses we're supposed to produce, videos we're supposed to produce, lectures we're supposed to produce. So I could end up in meetings with him, two or three meetings a day. Because he's gonna meet on the event that we're having, this IAS event that's coming up in October. Okay, good. And then after lunch we're gonna meet on what's happening on scripts for films. And so I was in meetings with him many days, all day. And he would beat the out of people in meetings, punch them, them, kick them, shove them up against a wall, throw. Throw at them.

[Julian]

Do people naturally react to it or.

[Mark Bunker]

No, Everybody is just like, just like, please stop me. Please not me. Please not me. Please not me. You. If you're going to a meeting with Dave and he's already a little randy, someone's gonna get a file folder with a bunch of VHS H tips in their face. Just. He literally would get. He would have. We'd take these Legal manila folders. And we put VHS tapes in it for him to approve an offline edit or an online edit or a music mix or a final mix down or whatever, and he would take one of those with maybe three of these hard shells with the tapes in it, and he would fucking hit you in the face with the goddamn thing.

[Claire Headley]

Have you seen the. You've seen Elf movie?

[Mark Bunker]

He's an angry elf.

[Claire Headley]

He's an angry. He's a South Pole elf.

[Mark Bunker]

That is literally the best representation. And he. And he has climbed across a table like Peter Dinkling and throttled somebody.

[Julian]

Oh, that's so good.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah. So one. I hope he watches these.

[Julian]

I really do.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah. Well, the Office of Special for Affairs 100 watches us, transcribes it, and puts it into our file. Great. But we were having a meeting like that, and. Or he was having a meeting like that. And he came to the area where I was working, which at this time I was over manufacturing of CDs, cassettes, DVDs, and basically the. The videos and audio that come out of Scientology. And. And I had been demoted from the producer post to that post over manufacturing, because I had suggested that in order to produce all these lectures and everything that David Miscavige wanted to produce by a certain time, I needed about $10 million worth of equipment to be able to build out the printing lines and the. All of the production lines and the packaging to be able to produce hundreds of thousands of these CDs that he. Of L. Ron Hubbard's lecture lectures. They're doing lectures in English, Spanish, German, French, Spanish, Castilian, you know, every, like, 14 different languages. They're doing VO talent record, re. Recording L. Ron Hubbard's lectures. Anyway, and then I got. Because I said it, we needed all this money. He. I got removed from my position, and I got put in the area directly running the area that I was proposing, needed all this money. And he was walking through crew about six months later after spending $15 million on equipment for that area. And he said, now this is set up right? And under. I'm walking through everything with him now that it's all built and all set up. And he goes, yeah, this is the right way to set this up. That nobody else could have done this. And I'm standing right there, and I lost my job, my high position, because I wanted to spend 10, 10. And so under my breath, I was like, well, yeah, if you have extra 5 million, you could probably do whatever you want. He heard it, and he was like, what the. And he just Come from one of these meeting. Angry elf meetings. And so he was already wound up and he just started punching me. I used to have glasses. He's punching me. The glasses fell off. I got like shoved up against like a desk. Desk kind of cabinet system, wall mounted cabinets. And I'm just like, what the. Anyway, I pick up my glasses and I. And I'm like, you know, let's go. And two guys grabbed me from either side and carried me out of the building. And as they were carrying me out, he goes, did you see that? He was gonna punch me. And I was like, yeah, damn straight, skippy. You're. It's another enough. And I left about three months. I escaped about three months after that. Because if the pope of your cult gives you the beat down. Yeah, no, it's not a lot of opportunities opening up for you after that. So. But. But that's. That's a Tuesday.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

He could literally come into your area, you say something sets him up off or choke a little throttle around the neck or you. Or. And the other thing is they have a. A, Like a. A reprogramming camp in Scientology called the religion programming. Yeah. The Rehabilitation Project Force. And that's a. It's like a. Basically a little prison reprogramming camp within the Sea Org. Only within the Sea Organization Z. Only one that has this. And you wear all black. You work, do hard labor most of the day. Could include scrubbing dumpsters with a toothbrush, cleaning floors, construction, Construction landscape.

[Claire Headley]

You have to run everywhere. And you're not allowed. If you're in the Rehabilitation Project Force, you're not allowed to communicate with anyone outside of that.

[Mark Bunker]

You only spoke in if spoken to.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah. And then five hours a day you're interrogated for your evil purposes.

[Julian]

For your evil purposes.

[Mark Bunker]

That's what they call it against David Miscavige, L. Ron Hubbard, or Scientology.

[Julian]

And who interrogates you? Someone who does that.

[Mark Bunker]

Another person that's assigned to the Rehabilitation Project.

[Claire Headley]

Like, you do it to each other.

[Mark Bunker]

You learn how to do the prisoners dilemmas, and then you interrogate each other. It's the most efficient system.

[Julian]

Yeah. Wow.

[Mark Bunker]

So there's always the threat that if you say the wrong thing or you do the wrong thing, there's a suppressive person avenue where you get kicked out. Now you can't talk to your family. There's the RPF version where you have to go to the prison camp and you could be. I. I think one of the longest stints that somebody had on that was like 13, 14 years of the program. And you can keep getting interrogated until there's no evil purposes that read on the E meter, as long as they think they're used. They use the E meter as like an evil thought dividing rod.

[Julian]

An evil thought dividing.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah, they use the E meter. Like, if I ask you a question, I say, is there anything you did today that I shouldn't know about? And then it goes. I go, oh, yeah, that right there. What did you just think?

[Claire Headley]

Think of?

[Mark Bunker]

What did you just think of? And you go, well, and you're like,

[Claire Headley]

no, no is not the answer. If it reacted on the E meter, we're going to keep talking about it until you answer the question.

[Mark Bunker]

And then when you're done telling me what you did, the needle is supposed to float. It's supposed to be very free and flowing. And if it's like that, we're good, we're done. We don't need. We don't need to talk about that anymore. But until it gets to that thing, thing we say, was there an earlier similar overt that you did? And you keep going until the needle is smooth and flowing. That means your don't stink. You're clean as a whistle.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah. Rhythmic sweep of the dial back and forth. That's how it's described.

[Mark Bunker]

So you can go to the rpf, you can get declared, or you can get a kicking from David Miscavige. Which do you pick?

[Julian]

I didn't realize he was like that violin all the time.

[Mark Bunker]

100% for, I would say, starting in the early 90s, all the way up until I left in 2005, he was given beat downs on a regular basis.

[Julian]

Now he was. He was born into Scientology. Right.

[Claire Headley]

He got in as a young kid.

[Mark Bunker]

He got in as a child. His father got into science, his parents got into Scientology, and then he started doing the counseling and stuff. Stuff when he was young. Like, he was a certified counselor when he was like 14 or 15. So he had done all the training and graduated whatever they needed to do to be able to do counseling on other people very young. And then shortly thereafter, he joined the Sea Organization, and then he ended up in. He was in Clearwater. That's where he kind of started. And then he got. Went up to the headquarters in Los Angeles and then Oscar at the property in Gilman Hot Springs. And then he worked for Hubbard in various roles, including being on the shoot team that did the videos, did the film that shot everything on either 16 millimeter or then 35 millimeter film for

[Julian]

all the Scientology gerbils learning under Hitler kind of deal.

[Mark Bunker]

Exactly.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

And so that's another crazy thing, is because he was. He wasn't well liked by Hubbard. Hubbard talked mad about him and certain.

[Julian]

About Miscavige in certain writings.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah, 100%.

[Claire Headley]

Shelly Miscavige was way closer to Hubard than David Miscavige ever was.

[Mark Bunker]

Shelly Miscavige grew up on a ship that Hubard was operating in the sea. At Sea. And that's where the Sea Organization started. And she was working directly for L. Ron Hub.

[Julian]

How young?

[Mark Bunker]

When she was 11, when she joined the COR.

[Julian]

I mean, you know what I got to ask. Was he a beautiful. Using her?

[Claire Headley]

I don't know.

[Mark Bunker]

We've talked to many of the girls, mostly girls that. Young girls that were his. They called the Messengers. It's called the Commodore's Messenger Organization. And so you have young females that are working directly for Hubbard. And when they go to anywhere in Scientology, whether it's an organization or just another Sea Org member, whatever they say is as if L. Ron Hubber was saying it. Anything that they do or say is basically coming from him.

[Julian]

Right.

[Mark Bunker]

So we. We. I. We probably know what 5 or 6 of the people over the years that used to work directly for Hubard in this position that were Messengers on the same ship with Shelly Miscavige. And two of one, none of them that we've talked to say that he. He had any sexual abuse with them.

[Claire Headley]

But there were many things that were incredibly creepy.

[Mark Bunker]

Like what?

[Claire Headley]

Like, you know, that he would have them wear halter tops and carry around his ashtray and bathe him and, you know, bathe him.

[Mark Bunker]

And yeah, there's definitely, like, the creep

[Claire Headley]

factor was out the roof.

[Mark Bunker]

And also, he was very verbally abused, abusive to all of them. Would say, well, yeah, he. He never touched me, but he did everything before up until that point.

[Julian]

So he got tight with Shelly, though, because she was one of these originally.

[Mark Bunker]

Well, yeah. So when. When the Sea Organization was moved to land, it moved to land in Clearwater. Well, Daytona beach for a little bit, and then they moved to Clearwater. When they bought that big hotel, hell, they were like, we got it. We got our. We got our beachhead there. And actually, the pro. I want to say the project to infiltrate Clearwater and set up the headquarters of Scientology there was called Project Normandy maybe. I'm pretty sure it was called Project Normandy anyway, but either way. So Shelley and Dave met there in Clearwater water, and then they became a thing. But in the. In the history of it all, David Mat was it Project Normandy. Yeah. Damn.

[Julian]

I'm gone. Was a top secret Church of Scientology operation wherein the Church planned to take over the city of Clearwater, Florida, by infiltrating government offices and media centers. Gabe Kazaris, who was the mayor of Clearwater at the time, used the term the occupation of Clearwater, and later characterized it as a paramilitary operation by a terrorist barbarist group.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah, they were.

[Julian]

I was honest about it.

[Mark Bunker]

Well, in that time, that was when the Guardian's office was in full swing. And they. I think they actually framed. They framed a bunch of these people, and specifically Gabe Casarus. They. They. They accused him of doing all kinds of horrible sexual things. And they also, I think. Is he the one? There was one of some of the people that were kind of messing with Scientology and Clearwater Water. They arranged for a Guardian's office member who was also a lawyer to represent somebody that was trying to sue Scientology. So they had their guy representing the guy that was doing them so that that person got screwed. You know, Bert. You know Bert Kreischer, of course. Bert Kreischer's dad was a lawyer in Florida, and he won one of the very few cases in those days that. Where Scientology got lit up and Hubbard had to pay.

[Julian]

And it was Kreischer's dad.

[Mark Bunker]

Kreischer's dad.

[Julian]

That apple fell far from the tree.

[Mark Bunker]

But now let. No, no, this is the best part. As soon as he won that case, L. Ron Hubbard hired him. No. And he never did anything, but they hired him because he's one of the Lord lawyers that could win against them. So. And around. I think Bert's talked about it on different podcasts here and there, but it was just known as the Church around the House because they put him through college.

[Julian]

It was a legendary college career.

[Mark Bunker]

Right.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

Anyway, so they created the machine. Oh, my God, Scientology? What is that? They co opted the machine. They. They sponsored the machine.

[Julian]

I feel like it was against Scientology standards, though.

[Mark Bunker]

Well, yeah, no, they. They just locked up his dad because his dad won a case against Hubbard. So Hubbard was like, we need that. That guy needs to be on our paper, not on the other side.

[Julian]

That's the Tony Soprano method. When you're getting divorced from your wife, just consult with every single good divorce lawyer in the area, and then they can't fight.

[Mark Bunker]

That's right. Now she's up a creek.

[Claire Headley]

Conflict of interest.

[Mark Bunker]

Anyway, so at the base, there was a. At the base, there was a lot of people there that either worked on the ship with Hubbard or they. They were in Clearwater in the early days. And so a lot of these people knew what Hubbard would do in certain situations. And they would say, dave ain't doing what Hubbard would have done. And Hubbard said, you don't have conventions because they. Everybody stops doing Scientology. Now they're working on setting up an event, and you don't do that. Dave Miscavige has seven, eight conversations, conventions a year to get money from Scientologists.

[Julian]

If he was so made fun of by El Ron Hubbard, though, how did he finagle his way into the position to be the guy?

[Mark Bunker]

Well, he was before he was what he's now called. He's called Chairman of the Board Religious Technology Center. Before that, he was Chairman of the Board, Author Services Incorporated. Incorporated. And Author Services is. It's essentially a publishing firm or a management firm just for L. Ron Hubbard. They have one artist, literary, for all his science fiction and all that, but anything that he wrote, they get a royalty. Okay, so when you do a course in Scientology, Elwyn Hubbard gets paid because you're using hit the materials that are based on his writings in this course. And so there's a huge amount of money that goes to that. Well, when Hubbard was still alive, he was very suspicious that they were stealing his money, and he demanded them to bring him a banker's box of cash. About a million bucks in a banker's box would get secretly delivered to him when he was out in the desert in California. And every week, they bring him a box, and maybe a few weeks, they bring him two. Two boxes. And then he'd get half a box, and he'd be like, what's going on here? And so David Miscavige. David Miscavige supposedly lost about $30 million of cupboards of money. Like, he. He invested in things that were, like, fake oil wells in Oklahoma. And there's a book called. It's called the Deep Blue Sea, and it talks about these scientists and these, like, ocean scientists that figured out where. How the tides moved and how things moved over the years. And based on that, they would take records or any writings of. Of treasure ships that had sunk with treasure and figure out where they'd be now and then go there and dig. Those people went to Scientology and said, hey, we got. We got a sure thing going here. And David Miscavige just got burned by all the fake oil wells. He's like, no, I ain't doing. Doing it. And then they'd find it all, and they find billions and billions of dollars worth of gold. And in this book the deep blue sea. They talk about how they were. They went to Scientology to get money from them to invest. It didn't work out, but so Dave Miscavige started doing this thing where they would sell limited edition books and artwork from Hubbard's books. Frank Frazetta, very famous painter artist, did a bunch of paintings based on the Battlefield Earth books and the Mission Earth science fiction series. And then Scientology would sell these as collectors Items for like $15,000 a print. And so the reason they started doing that. Yeah, there you go. Deep has it quick on the draw here.

[Julian]

Deep is the fastest in the game anyway.

[Mark Bunker]

So, yeah, so they would sell these limited edition prints to Scientologists mostly. And that's how Dave filled that $30

[Julian]

million hole, by selling this shit.

[Mark Bunker]

Oh, and books, Hubbard books, leather bound editions there. I'm you telling, telling you there's. There's about 30 or 40 of these paintings, limited edition, like 1 through 500. They're selling them for 15, 20, $30,000.

[Julian]

He wasn't around. He didn't get on the NFT crate.

[Mark Bunker]

Oh my goodness. I mean, some board body thetans he would have been.

[Julian]

They would have been swimming in 20, 21.

[Mark Bunker]

So, so, so somehow Dave filled that hole. And so it never came to light that he had lost the money because he made it up with all this other money.

[Julian]

But L. Ron Hubbard didn't like him,

[Mark Bunker]

but, well, he suspected he was up to no good.

[Julian]

Right.

[Mark Bunker]

And so during that time, though, there was a project that David Miscavige was in charge of, which was called the All Clear, where they basically needed to make it so Hubbard wasn't being hunted by law enforcement and the FBI and all the. These different agencies because he was up. They were. Scientology was up to no good. And they had just.

[Claire Headley]

There were pending lawsuits.

[Mark Bunker]

They just got convicted in the Guardian's office thing. They. 11, I think I want to say it's 10 or 11 of Scientology's top officials, including L. Ron Hubbard's own wife. 12 went to jail for the infiltration of the United States government.

[Julian]

His own wife went to jail?

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah, she, Mary Sue Hubbard, went to jail for the, this operation that the Guardian's office was raised running.

[Claire Headley]

And after she got out of jail, she was banished and literally written out of Scientology's history until she passed. Very similar to Shelley Miscavige.

[Julian]

Right, yeah, we'll come back to that

[Mark Bunker]

because that questions anyway.

[Julian]

Yeah, quick question though, on this real fast because you keep talking about all these different cases, whether it's things that would be civil or Criminal or whatever. And of course, it rings through that. It seems to me whenever the courts are. Courts outside of Scientology are going to be useful to Scientology, they're like, oh, yeah, yeah, see the court. We can do that in court, and it works. But whenever it's going to be unuseful, they're like, yeah, no, that. They don't mean anything.

[Mark Bunker]

100. Scientology threatens to sue people all the time. Yeah. They never do.

[Julian]

They don't.

[Mark Bunker]

They do not. They threaten to sue people. They don't sue people.

[Claire Headley]

The last person I think that they sued was Debbie Cook. It was a case in Texas, and she was one of the top executives. She ran the Clearwater location for decades. And then she was taken to the headquarters, and David Miscavige abused her physically and, like, made her stand in a trash can and have people throw water at her and stuck a obscene label around her. Made her wear a. Anyway, absolutely awful. And she had spoken out. Oh, she sent a letter to.

[Mark Bunker]

She sent an email.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah. She sent an email to thousands of Scientologists saying the ones that were the

[Mark Bunker]

top level OT7 and OT8. She sent an email to all of those.

[Claire Headley]

Yes. Exposing what her experiences were. And they sued her and lost. Lost.

[Mark Bunker]

And they ended up.

[Julian]

Right.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah, they ended up right. Well, they didn't lose. They ended up writing a check. They settled.

[Julian]

Yeah, they settled, but because usually when or whether it's Scientology or anyone, obviously the court strategy is, all right, we're suing one person. We'll just keep creating hearings so that they have legal bills and it goes away kind of deal.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah.

[Claire Headley]

Imagine her testimony was so damning that that's why they were like. They shut it down. Settle.

[Mark Bunker]

After one day of testing testimony, they wrote her a check.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

Because she basically told. She. She told many of the things that. That Miscavige was up to at the headquarters that people like us had already been telling people all over the place. And now here's a brand new person that just left that's saying that that's still going on. One thing Dave does is he's beating people. He's choking people. He's being. And like, it's basically like being in a college fraternity full time.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

You're just being hazed full time.

[Julian]

Exactly.

[Mark Bunker]

And so then somebody high up, one of his lieutenants escapes, and then they go, no, that was He. That's the guy that was doing it. And so every time one of those people would leave, they would. Scientology be like, David Miscavige wasn't doing that. That was this guy, and he. We kicked him out. And so here, after all these people have been kicked out that they were throwing under the bus, now this woman comes out. There's no more lieutenants left. It's just Dave left. And she's saying, oh, no, Dave's the one who's running this whole show. He's the one doing all this stuff. And so since that time, I don't think Scientology has sued one single person. They get sued, and then they get in to dis. When they abuse the discovery. Discovery process. Now that we're in together, they'll say they'll literally take the biggest vacuum in the world and try to suck up every document that's ever been created in your life.

[Julian]

Right.

[Mark Bunker]

But they don't. They know if they get in front of a jury, they're toast. That's their worst nightmare. They. I don't think they have ever in their history won a jury trial. Never.

[Julian]

Never.

[Mark Bunker]

It always goes against. Against them. So they want to. They want to suit. If they're. If they're in a lawsuit with somebody, they want that thing to be prolonged for as many decades as possible until the. The person just says, I'm. I'm out. I can't keep. I'm. I've spent $8 million trying to get 4 million out of you guys. What the hell we doing?

[Claire Headley]

Yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

So they. And if it does go, if it's going to go to trial, usually they're giving the person a check on the courthouse steps.

[Claire Headley]

Yes. Scientology tries to use and abuse the legal system to destroy anyone that would try to come after them or expose them. Like during the. Our lawsuit, when we eventually lost, our attorneys went to Scientology and said, hey, our clients, we're. Oh. So the judge had awarded them $43,000 in legal fees that we were required. Required to pay. We were ordered to pay because we lost.

[Mark Bunker]

We lost the suit. And so. And the legal fees. The only reason they were even $43,000 is because Scientology is paying for as many things as they can.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah, they were.

[Mark Bunker]

So that they can cost.

[Claire Headley]

But here's what happened. So our attorneys, unbeknownst to us, turned to Scientology and said, hey, our clients will sign something that will, you know, they won't sue you again in the future. Do you agree to waive that bill? Which our attorneys didn't even tell us they were doing this Scientology, completely unethical. Well, so apparently sort of standard practice, like it's. It is apparently standard practice, at least according to our attorneys, to say, hey, we'll agree to not, you know, we waive future rights for a lawsuit if you agree to let this bill go.

[Mark Bunker]

But we would have to sign them, right?

[Julian]

You have to sign intelligent on that.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah, we should have been.

[Julian]

This is where it's above my pay grade.

[Claire Headley]

Okay, but. So Scientology turned around to that and said, no, no, no. We will only waive the bill if your client meets the following requirements. Agrees to never speak publicly about Scientology ever again, turns over the rights to Mark's book, blown for good behind the iron curtain of Scientology, rats out any media they've ever spoken to, rats out any former members they've ever spoken to to. If they meet those requirements, we'll waive the bill. So of course we were like, we, we.

[Mark Bunker]

And I wrote him a check for 43k and that was the end of it. So, but what was.

[Julian]

Real quick, I just, because you had said this earlier and, and I, I, I didn't ask you, but what was the story with them, your lawyers? I don't remember if you said unbeknownst to us or, or how you put it. It was a couple hours ago. But like your lawyer had all these other charges against Scientology and they just reduced it down to human trafficking. Why did they reduce the other things? What was the logic there?

[Mark Bunker]

Because there was a, an ongoing FBI investigation into Scientology for human trafficking.

[Julian]

Right, but why did.

[Claire Headley]

The broad answer to that is that Scientology obviously has by now billions of dollars and they hired the best law firms and we were just, just us with one guy and they were burying him in paperwork and this and that and the other thing. So basically they were, you know, using their high powered attorneys to, to whittle down our, our causes of action. And given that the FBI investigation was ongoing, it seemed like, okay, maybe this is a, a reasonable strategy. It wasn't. We lost. But hey, we wouldn't be to able here speaking to you today if we'd won, so.

[Julian]

Right, but that also, that's the, that was where I was a bit confused because you mentioned you guys at the time. And we can come back to that.

[Claire Headley]

Were.

[Julian]

Were informants for an FBI investigation. Your lawyer's job. I understand. Like, he's getting inundated with paperwork and everything, but his job is still to do best fiduciary responsibility to the client. His responsibility is not to cooperate with the FBI.

[Mark Bunker]

I understand. And he wasn't involved with the FBI side of this thing.

[Julian]

Right.

[Mark Bunker]

It was just that it was happening. The lawyers are like, if the FBI think they have a case, then this is how we should go, because they're not. The FBI are not opening an investigation and actively interviewing and looking for informants if they don't have something that they think is a real deal. They got.

[Claire Headley]

What year is this?

[Mark Bunker]

This is in 2010. 10.

[Claire Headley]

10.

[Mark Bunker]

9. 10. In that kind of period.

[Claire Headley]

Our lawsuit was 2009 until 2012. And by the way, you know, I. I will say going into it, I had no. I just. I just didn't realize how aggressively Scientology would have gagged us even if. If we had one. So in the overall scheme of things, we. We played the best possible outcome.

[Mark Bunker]

And. And to be fair, a lot of. Of this information about David Miscavige, his abuse, and a lot of these things made it in to the public because it was filed in the court case and they had to. It was public record at this point. And there were different things that came out of it that ended up being, in the end, a good thing. But the other thing I was going to say just to kind of, you know, not throw the lawyer under the bus, but I mean, I was giving him gas money to drive from Northern California down to our house. I.

[Claire Headley]

We.

[Julian]

Claire was.

[Claire Headley]

I. I had to walk. I had to.

[Julian]

We had a Goodman.

[Claire Headley]

We had a six month old. Our second son was six months old at the time. I literally carried his car seat into the federal chambers to deliver filings in our lawsuit.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah, it was. We were doing this on a shoestring budget.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

Trying to sue.

[Claire Headley]

It was a literal David and Goliath.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah. Notorious litigant. And it was like the lawyer we had was the one lawyer who would sue Scientology. It wasn't like there were 20 of them and we had a pick. You could go to any law firm in the world and say, hey, we want to sue Scientology. Like out that. Dude, those guys go decades on a case. We don't have that kind of change to. To do that. So it's one of those things where you get what you pay for.

[Julian]

But you're also. I. The reason I was asking, asking like specifically when it was because if it starts in 09, you guys are now three, four years out.

[Claire Headley]

Right.

[Julian]

Which is not that. Like, it's not that long a time.

[Claire Headley]

No.

[Julian]

You're still adjusting to the world and how things really work and what real court systems. Like, so it's not like, you know, oh, here's the hundred best law firms in New York and here's why they're the best. Here's what. You have no idea about anything.

[Mark Bunker]

The how ended up with the lawyer that we had was that my Friend, my good friend, who also left Scientology around the time we did. He was an actor, and he shot a bunch of Scientology films at the property when I was over the film team. And it's a guy by the name of Jason Begay. He's on a TV show called Chicago PD now. He's like, jason Begay?

[Julian]

Yeah, I know that name.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah, he's the main cop on Chicago pd. Pd, The TV show on NBC. Anyway, he was like, I think I should sue these guys. I give them millions of dollars, and they gave me nothing. And they messed me up, if anything. And so I was trying to help him find a lawyer to sue Scientology. And so we met with these guys, and we met this lawyer, and he was listening to Jason, and Jason's telling him all the things that happened, and the lawyer's like, I don't think you have a case. And Jason's like, well, she.

[Claire Headley]

It.

[Mark Bunker]

You know, and he goes, but. But you. I want to know your story, because I think you do have a case, and that's me. And so then we.

[Julian]

So then we.

[Claire Headley]

Right around this time, Jason did an interview with Mark Bunker that is still

[Mark Bunker]

on YouTube to this probably his most viewed video. Wow, Is this Jason Begay interview?

[Claire Headley]

Yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

And. And. And Jason's a character.

[Claire Headley]

He is.

[Mark Bunker]

And he's lots of fun, but he.

[Claire Headley]

My favorite line from that video is, show me a clear.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah, yeah. He was literally like, they. They talk about clear all the time. Show me a clear. I a seen one.

[Julian]

Yes, clear.

[Claire Headley]

It's the best.

[Mark Bunker]

Anyway. But. But regardless, like I said, we didn't have the pick of the litter of the Scientology capable lawyers that would. That would go up against them. And, but. And. And the. And the crazy thing is, is there was like three or four cases that all got started at the same time by this lawyer. Another law firm out of Long Beach, California, ended up picking up those cases. And when that happened is when they kind of said, okay, we're going to do this on this case. We're going to do this on this case Case. Like, the cases were similar but different enough where they could have different causes of actions. And our case ended up getting dismissed or lost on appeal. And then another case ended up just. They just went kaput. They. It didn't go anywhere. And I think one other case, the people got converted by Scientology and they went back, and so the case was dead. They let those. It was a couple. Couple, and they let the couple talk to their Scientology family again. They said, if you. If you cancel this, you're good. You're done. You're back in the fold. You, we're not, we're not going to declare you suppressive. You can do whatever you want. And they were like, they were a young couple and so they jumped right back into the fray.

[Julian]

It's so strange because when I hear the experiences of individuals like you guys who used to be in it, it the only way that I can really visualize it and the suppression and the constant like staring at each other like. You going to say it? Are you going to say it? I'm going report you if you do. But I'm not going to tell you out loud if you do. It's like everyone in there is in the Truman Show.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah.

[Julian]

You're all tr.

[Mark Bunker]

Completely 100%. And there are. That's funny that you say that. There's a lot of people that have likened it to the Truman show because it's a whole world of yes. And the guy, the only ones who know know that it's bullshit is David Miscavige. And everybody else is there to save the planet. They're earnestly trying to help people because they've been told that this is the answer.

[Julian]

Now that's my question. Do you think you're not in his head? So it's impossible to know. But do you think that someone like David Miscavige, who bought into this for probably power purposes at a young age, really true blue believer, the whole bit, even though he's at the top and knows now, do you think he's so personally self brainwashed that he might actually believe that some of it's true?

[Mark Bunker]

I don't think he does.

[Claire Headley]

I don't think so either. I mean, and there are a few factors. First of all, David Miscavige, while we were there, had not gotten any counseling, auditing, study done, any of that since 1993. So.

[Mark Bunker]

So he does.

[Claire Headley]

If you're going to measure someone's belief by their active participation in and expectations that everyone else is required to meet, then you should judge that person by their actions and by his actions. Hell no.

[Mark Bunker]

He's selling the supplement, but he ain't taking it.

[Julian]

Yeah, he's not doing the product.

[Claire Headley]

As the saying goes, absolute power corrupts absolutely. That's my opinion of David Miscavige.

[Mark Bunker]

And the other thing that I think kind of leans into that is when he did that thing where he lost the money for Hubbard and then he got it back. And during that time he was in charge of this thing to make it so no one was trying to hunt down or arrest L. Ron Hubbard. It was called Project All Clear, where Hubbard can just walk around like a normal person, not worried about getting bagged up and taken to jail. So Hubbard is saying, hey, I want you to set. He's in seclusion. He's in hiding. Nobody knows where he is even in Scientology. Nobody knew where he was. It was a very top secret wherever Hubbard's location was. But David Miscavige was talking to the guy that was the conduit between the two of them.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

And when David is trying to do all this stuff legally to make it so Hubbard can be just cool again, he's the one hiring the lawyers. He's the one reworking, retooling, the corporate structure. Structure. He's the one. He's the only one in Scientology who knew how it was all going to work so that Hubbard couldn't get lit up again. When he figured all that out, he was like, oh, I know. I know more than anybody. Everything is siloed. He's like, I know more than even L. Ron Hubbard knows on how this is going to work. And then Hubbard dies, and Hubbard put the guy that was the conduit between the two with him. He told that guy, or so the story goes. He told that guy, you and your wife are going to be in charge, not David Miscavige. But David Miscavige was like, oh, no, I got this. I've already set this all up. You have no power. You don't exist. And that guy, he had to get

[Julian]

support to do that.

[Mark Bunker]

Well, that guy was a. What they call in Scientology, an opinion leader. If he says something, Scientologists will listen to what he has to say. Say, but that guy was also the guy that was bringing those banker boxes to Hubbard. And so David Miscavige is like, dude, I got you bringing millions of dollars across state lines. You want to. You want to mess with me? You're done. So the story goes that that dude had a pickup truck. His name was Pat Broker.

[Julian]

Pat Broker.

[Mark Bunker]

Pat Broker had a pickup truck, and he filled it with a whole bunch of banker boxes. Boxes. And he drove off into the sunset. And David Miscavige. And David Miscavige, that's when he takes over Scientology in 1986. In January of 1986 is when Hubbard died. And that's essentially when David Miscavige's total reign started. He was. He was kind of ahead, honcho down here working for Hubbard. But as soon as Hubbard was gone on, it was like, this is all mine now.

[Claire Headley]

And then after that, he systematically took out anyone who would have been competition. But by the way, before I forget, speaking of true believers, Shelley Miscavige. Yes, different story. Completely, 100%, full on, firm, solid believer in Scientology and Hubbard and everything else. And frankly, I. I'm sure that's a huge piece of why. Why David Miscavige got rid of her and, you know, put her into banishment.

[Julian]

They do now. Like she was. It's like, where is Shelly Miscavige? For years. But they. They do now know where she is. Right. Well, is that fair to say?

[Mark Bunker]

It's not the.

[Claire Headley]

The whole. To me, the. The point is not the question, where is Shelly Miscavige? Still stands, because Shelly Miscavige is not free to leave. She hasn't been seen publicly so since 2006. I want to say 2005, shortly after we escaped, she was moved to one of their most secure, least known properties in Running Springs, California. You know, if you factor in, like, from our perspective, Shelly Miscavige was like the first lady of Scientology. She was always at David Miscavige's side. She was his assistant. She was with them in every meeting, copied on all the correspondence. She was involved in everything, and then all of a sudden, poof, she's just gone. That's. That's the significant. Like, from a Scientologist perspective or for anyone at working at that property, that when she was gotten rid of and removed and vanished, it was a huge shock to the system.

[Mark Bunker]

It's basically like. Like, she was the. She was the governor. On David Miscavage being crazy. Like, without her there, he would go really crazy.

[Julian]

Do you think there was real love there?

[Claire Headley]

I. I never saw it.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah, we were there. I was there for 15 years. I never saw them hug once. I never saw them kiss once. I never saw them hold hands. And I was in meetings with him some days, all day for weeks and weeks and weeks. We'd be in meetings with him, and she'd be right there. They. No PDA in Scientology.

[Claire Headley]

And in fact, on the contrary, in a conversation I had with Shelly Miscavage, she indicated. She didn't outright say, but she heavily implied that she was getting the same abusive treatment that other executives were.

[Julian]

Physically.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah. So. So how did.

[Julian]

How did they end up getting married? What was the story there? Again, we started to talk about that and got off.

[Mark Bunker]

Well, they met in Clearwater.

[Claire Headley]

It was. They got married, I want to say in the early 80s. But they were both messengers. They had, you know, both been in the Sea Organization for years. And by that point. And I want to. I have it in my notes somewhere, but I think they were like 19 and 20 when they got married young.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah, yeah, we got married. I was 19 and she was 17. So we've been married 34 years now.

[Claire Headley]

Almost.

[Mark Bunker]

Almost 34 years. 34 years in August.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah. Got married in Vegas.

[Julian]

Oh, you got married in Vegas.

[Mark Bunker]

In California, if you're underage and you go to get a marriage certificate, you have to go see a psychologist or a psychiatrist. They have to have that sign off on it. And so Scientology is like, if you want to get married and you're in the c. Organization, you got to go to Vegas. Because you can get married at 2 o' clock in the morning with Vegas. You go, the county Clerk is open 24 hours in Vegas, so you can get married anytime you want. And it's like, $28. You don't need to do anything.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah. Because you're not allowed to have sex in the organization. Because you're not allowed to have sex if you're not married in the organization. The tendency is. Is for people to get married really young. And so most people. Most Sea Org members, you don't get

[Mark Bunker]

a test drive either. You gotta. You gotta find the model you want and commit. Yeah.

[Claire Headley]

So most SeaOrg members.

[Julian]

I'm holding in so many jokes, give myself credit for that.

[Mark Bunker]

So Sea Org members are there. It was enough Sea Org members that are underage, that are getting married that they knew the exact way. What's the most efficient way to do. Do it.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

You get one of your family members in Scientology to drive you to Vegas. You get married because we didn't have

[Claire Headley]

a car, of course.

[Mark Bunker]

And then you come back and you're.

[Claire Headley]

Anyway, the point being, there are a lot of young marriages that happen in Vegas.

[Julian]

Right. And this. And this is actually interesting, not to be, like, a little awkward about it, but because you guys were also in a separate world. But I just had Chris Hansen in here. You know who that is?

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah, yeah.

[Julian]

So obviously, like, he's the expert on, you know, the legality of. Of child abuse and all that. And I said to him, I said, you know, let's say I'm a junior in high school, and I meet my high school sweetheart, and she's a freshman in high school, and we then commence a sexual relationship. And then I turn 18, and she's 16. Like, is that statutory rape?

[Mark Bunker]

And.

[Julian]

And he had a full legal explanation. He's like, well, no, here's how it would work. All that. But he goes. Once it gets to like, four years, you're. Or something like that. Like that. So when you guys are going to get married at 19 and 17, technically, you're underage, you're of age.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah.

[Julian]

So there was a league. There was a legal loophole, as you were just explaining to be able to do it in Vegas.

[Mark Bunker]

But also, I think I want to say her parents had to sign a document that we could get married or.

[Claire Headley]

No, they didn't. They don't. They. So my parents signed over guardianship of me when I was. Was 16. Not to him. No. That would have been really weird.

[Mark Bunker]

I got a few tricks up my sleeve.

[Claire Headley]

I can see the look on your

[Julian]

blink twice if you're a hostage.

[Mark Bunker]

I got you. It's been 34 years. She's not turning on me now.

[Julian]

Okay, good.

[Claire Headley]

No, but that's why I don't think they had.

[Mark Bunker]

I can't remember what it was. Was then I thought, oh, maybe I just had to ask him. Maybe we just asked him or we said you were going to do it. They were like. They were not pro. The idea at first, and. And then I went and visited them for a day, and they warmed up to me. Without her. Without her.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah. I couldn't get off work.

[Mark Bunker]

She wasn't allowed to leave the property.

[Julian]

You were alone with.

[Mark Bunker]

With her parents, and her sister met

[Claire Headley]

my parents without me.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah.

[Claire Headley]

I couldn't believe. Right. Yeah.

[Julian]

How do you schmooze a Scientology couple? Like, what's. You're not bringing over red wine?

[Mark Bunker]

No, no, no. I didn't bring to that. I walked in with probably $8 in my pocket. You talk the language.

[Claire Headley]

That's how they.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah, that's how they accept you. But also because I was a Sea Org member, because they're. They're not. Her mom was a seaorg member, but then it left.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

So her mom was in status. Her mom and her stepfather were lower status than I was.

[Claire Headley]

Oh.

[Mark Bunker]

Because I'm at the headquarters of all of Scientology as a SeaOrg member working for Golden Air Productions and working in production and all this stuff. So when I come there, I'm not like a big head honcho show, make me a sandwich. But I'm well, oh, my gosh, dude. Her mom is English, and she doesn't sit down to eat until the dad's done. She's making him everything, doing this, doing that. So when I showed up there, it was like, here's. Here's your that. And I was like. I was like, damn, we got hope to Hope the young one rolls like this as well. I like this. This is. I never been treated like this by my own mom, but. But no. So when I went and saw them, I would, I, I was basically. She has two younger sisters and a, and a younger brother and, and I do good with kids. And I was hanging with the kids and I was talking to the mom and dad and I was basically just vibing with them for a day. And then I got back to the property at the end of the night and I was like, we're good, good. I got those guys. She couldn't even believe that I went. When we, when she didn't get.

[Claire Headley]

I was trying to go too, but then I was disapproved to leave. And he said, well, I'm going. And I was like, I, I could not believe it.

[Mark Bunker]

I was like, you're going to go

[Claire Headley]

meet my family without me?

[Mark Bunker]

Without me? I'm like, yeah, what do I need you for? I can, I can, I can lock this down.

[Claire Headley]

It was nerve wracking.

[Julian]

What's the mogging term for, for that? It's not, it's obviously not frame mogging, but it's something. We gotta invent something for that. Parents mogging.

[Mark Bunker]

Parental mogging. Yeah. So no, but. And the, and the crazy thing about that is we probably saw them a handful of times from when we got married in 92 to when we escaped in 2005. We maybe saw them a handful of times.

[Julian]

Your parents?

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah, they lived in Los Angeles and we were about two and a half hours out of la.

[Claire Headley]

But they were not allowed to know where we worked physically. It was confidential.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah. They're not. You're not. If you're a Scientologist, you're not allowed to know where the international headquarters are.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

Even though if you Google Int Base, it shows up on the Internet as that location.

[Claire Headley]

That fact that they were not allowed to know where I worked is the reason they were required to sign over guardianship of me when I worked was 16, so that I could go work there.

[Julian]

So who did they sign it over officially to?

[Claire Headley]

To a woman named Leonora Adam, who I had never even met. She worked at the property. They signed over guardianship of me to somebody that neither myself nor my mother had ever met.

[Julian]

Oh, man. Oh, it's so hard to process that you're so deep in. Like your own mom believes, like, oh, this, this will work out.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah. And. And that was another crazy thing is that her mom was in the SEA organization and left.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

And then got together with her, her stepdad she.

[Claire Headley]

She. My mom escaped when I was 8 and left me behind.

[Julian]

All right, wait, wait. All right, so I kind of misunderstood that then, because when you said you went to visit the parents and the mother and the stepfather, your mother and stepfather father, they were lower than you in Scientology, meaning they're still in Scientology, but she had escaped the sea work.

[Claire Headley]

Yes. So. But she ended up going back and staying in the fold, as they say. So she is still, as of right now today, a public Scientologist that lives in Clearwater, Florida.

[Julian]

Have you ever talked with her?

[Claire Headley]

The last time I talked to my mom was in June of 2011, so that was six years after I escaped. Escaped. My grandmother, who was never in Scientology, was in the hospital dying. And. And I went to go see my grandmother. My grandmother was the only good part part of my childhood. Everything else was complete. Excuse my language, but literally, you're okay. Yeah. The. The could. I was in.

[Mark Bunker]

My mom.

[Claire Headley]

My mom joined the sea organization, signed a billion year contract as a single mom when I was 4 years old. So I grew up in the cadet organization, which is Nazi youth meets Lord of the Flies meets orphanage. Those are the elements of the cadet organization, especially in the UK at this time. Stonelands was the place where I was raised by children in the uk.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah. If you type, how do you not

[Julian]

have a British accent?

[Claire Headley]

I worked really hard to lose it. Fun fact. An American dictionary will teach you an American accent. So there were words I couldn't pronounce right, especially as and Rs. Like my name. I'd say Claire and she'd say Mark.

[Mark Bunker]

Mark.

[Claire Headley]

And if you look at the pronunciation key in an American dictionary, it tells you how to say things. Right.

[Julian]

Wow.

[Mark Bunker]

Our way.

[Julian]

Our way.

[Claire Headley]

Your way.

[Mark Bunker]

Like, she still. She still says insulation, which drives me crazy. Instead of insulation, like 6.

[Claire Headley]

There. There are certain words that I. Yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

Whenever she. When we got married, she had an English accent. I did in 1990. Wanted her to lose it. I. Well, he teased me about it.

[Claire Headley]

Now he wishes I would have because she was. But the overriding.

[Mark Bunker]

That's kind of hot. I mean, I would say.

[Julian]

I would say.

[Claire Headley]

But here's the thing. I wanted an American accent. People always ask me why. And I say, well, you know, Americans think the UK accent is cool. Conversely, UK people, at least me, thought the American accent was cool. So I wanted an American accent. Also. Being born in a cult, I wanted to fit in. In. That was kind of my. My overriding chameleon approach to surviving life was to be able to fit in there.

[Julian]

It Was right there.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah, she.

[Julian]

Yeah, that slipped a little bit.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

Surviving. Yeah. So every.

[Julian]

But when.

[Mark Bunker]

When. When we first got married, it was so hard, her accent, that she would be like, oh, it's in the bin. And I would be like. And I would say, in the boot. It's in the.

[Claire Headley]

This.

[Mark Bunker]

I'd say, what's butter cutlery? Every single time she would mispronounce something, I would say, water butter cutlery. And so then over the years, mock became mark. And. And the best part is all my digital stuff. Grok. All that. All English accent women.

[Julian]

Oh, my God.

[Mark Bunker]

My.

[Julian]

My. My voice.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, get me back to where I was before. I won't ask, but.

[Julian]

Wow, that's so fascinating. So is that you said. What. What did you say that was called? Being a cadet.

[Claire Headley]

Cadet.

[Mark Bunker]

Oh, yes.

[Julian]

Cadet. Is that. I'm trying to remember, because it's been a while. Was that the same thing? Jenna was in?

[Mark Bunker]

CEO, the Cadet Estates Org. So it's basically kids.

[Claire Headley]

I was in the Cadet. Org in the uk Jenna was in the Cadet. Org in California. California.

[Julian]

Okay.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah.

[Julian]

I'm gonna circle back to this in a minute. I want to close the loop, because I think we're going to be doing two episodes. I'm looking at the clock because we got to get to your story before we get to, like, both of your stories individually and how it happened kind of in a timeline. You had said earlier, Claire, that you testified in the Danny Masterson trial as an expert witness.

[Claire Headley]

Yes.

[Julian]

So a lot of people out there are familiar with this. Daniel Masterson from the. That 70s show, famous actor, was, I think, after multiple trials, eventually convicted on multiple counts of rape a couple years ago and is now in prison for 30 or 35 years or something like that. And it was controversial because he's involved with Scientology and all that. When did you get involved with the trial? Was it one of the original trials that was mistrials, or how did that all go?

[Claire Headley]

Yeah, so there were two trials. I was approached by the DA's office, office in California in, let's see, September 2022.

[Julian]

Okay.

[Claire Headley]

And. And interviewed and asked to testify as an expert witness. And of course, I was like, absolutely. I'll. My view is always that I will do whatever. Whatever I can in whatever capacity I can to expose the abusive practices of Scientology. However. So this was September of 2022. In the first trial, the judge ruled that there was to be no testimony regarding Scientology. So I didn't end up. Because of that ruling. I did not testify in that first

[Julian]

trial, why did he rule that?

[Mark Bunker]

Because they wanted to keep the judge. The judge wanted to keep the Scientology nonsense out of the case and just have it be about. About what happened. So, but during that. During that trial, the sec. The first trial, one of the lawyers for the defense for. For Danny's. On Danny's team, used a Scientology book and referenced it in such a way that it basically brought it back into the case. And so then once they did that, that when the second case happened, the judge was like, oh, Scientology's. It's all. Everything's off now. You can do talk about whatever you want. Scientology.

[Claire Headley]

But. And there was another element, though, because by my understanding, in the first case, they. The. The defense was not arguing that the events took place. They were simply. They were using different lines of defense to try to get Danny Masterson off. However, approaching the second trial, they indicated that they were going to argue that the events even ever happened, which is where the judge then changed her mind. Because there are written reports that are part of the case that indicate that, yes, Scientology knew what happened at the time that they happened. So when. When the defense changed their strategy, that's what opened. That was at least a part of what opened up. Having to include Scientology in the case because they knew about it and were involved.

[Mark Bunker]

Did.

[Julian]

Now I forget, did you know Danny Masterson from. In Scientology?

[Claire Headley]

I did, but peripherally, we shot a

[Mark Bunker]

film with Danny when he was young, when he was a little kid, and. And it's. I mean, irony. He plays in Scientology when you do the counseling you. Before you practice on a guinea pig like me, like Tom Cruise. Did you practice on a doll? Yeah. So, like you have a big giant raggedy and all there, and they put the cans in front of it and they ask all the questions to the doll so much.

[Claire Headley]

So please tell me your movie. Huh?

[Julian]

Do you have security footage of Tom Tom. Not Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise talking to a doll?

[Claire Headley]

No, but the movie that he's talking about that Danny Masterson is in is called Use of a Doll in Auditing and trs. That's the name of the movie.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah, and in that movie, Danny Masterson plays a doll that gets drunk all the time and. And abuses the other girl dolls by getting them all liquored up and having his way with them. This is when he was like 12 or 13 when we shot this movie, and he played a doll called Captain Jack, and he was in a. Like a. A silver lame space suit, and he was Captain Jack. And then the other doll was called Goldie and He would. And he would. As a. A doll. A. A beer bottle is like, this big to him, and he. We had all these oversized bottles, and he would get drunk by just sniffing the fumes in a beer.

[Claire Headley]

Because he's a doll.

[Mark Bunker]

Because he's a tiny little doll. And. And he would get the other girl all liquored up, too, and then get up to. Nonsense.

[Julian]

What's this called? Cosby?

[Mark Bunker]

No, it's called the use of a doll in Auditing. And TRS know. Anyway, but the craziest thing was. And I don't know, I was. I didn't see any of this, but the rumor was that something happened with him and her. Not in the movie. And then she might have been, like, Victim Zero.

[Julian]

Oh, my God.

[Mark Bunker]

So this was going on for. I mean, he was a. Like a young. Like a young la. Child actor.

[Julian]

Yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

He's also in Scientology. They also believe that overts are bad, but overts come from misunderstood words.

[Julian]

Misunderstood words?

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah. Like, if you don't understand a word, that's when you start getting up the naughtiness. And so there's dictionaries everywhere in Scientology.

[Julian]

Well, not the. Not the Merriam Webster.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah, no Merriam Webster. Webster Dictionary.

[Julian]

So they're using our own weapons against us.

[Mark Bunker]

Well, this is against you. This is the thing. When we. When we were there, and you're studying in the course room, they have approved versions of different. Of different dictionaries, and one of the ones that they used to. So you wouldn't. When you're looking up a word, the worst case scenario is that you're trying to find out what a word means, and then there's three or four other words in the definition that you don't know what they mean.

[Claire Headley]

You're not allowed to go past a word you don't understand.

[Mark Bunker]

So you. You could be. It's called a word chain. You could literally be looking up words for two weeks straight. Because every time you look up a word, you find two more words that you don't know, and you have to use them in sentences, and you have to look up every single definition. Version. Every single definition for one word. It could have 14 different meanings. You have to learn each one of them and use them in sentences until you fully understand it. And then when that's done in your

[Claire Headley]

own words, use it in sentences until you can fully. You can easily do so, and then go on to the next definition and the next definition and the next definition, and then you look up the derivation, and then you also do the same with any idiomatic usage of the word. Use the idiom in a sentence.

[Mark Bunker]

And you have to look. Do you say derivation? I said, you have to find it. You know what the derivation. Derivation is. So somebody. It's like, what is that word? You're like, oh, it means this. What's the derivation? It's old Greek.

[Julian]

It's basically like, who's on first language.

[Mark Bunker]

But that's a long story to tell you. Danny Masterson was on the. On the COVID of the approved Dictionary. Him and 4. It was a student dictionary. It was him and a bunch of other kids on the COVID And he was one of the kids. Not because he was in Scientology, because he was a child actor, model, whatever. He went to the freaking Webster student Dictionary editions photo shoot, and he's on the COVID So when we got. So. But that. But when we shot the movie with him, I mean, I was still. I think by that time, I was in my late teens when we. When. When we shot that movie. But I am an actor in the movie, and I come in as a sea Org messenger in the film, and I bust the real guy, who's a suppressive, and I get Danny Masterson out of trouble, and he's allowed to continue being a training doll after that because the real bad guy was the guy that was in Danny's. In Captain Jack's ear about getting up to all this nonsense.

[Julian]

You weren't thinking of the symbolism of this at the time. Time. Like, this is kind of a little up.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah. No, in retrospect. Oh, my God.

[Julian]

But at the time, there's not like a moment where you're like, wait a minute.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah, I didn't really know the story. I only knew my one part. And that I was. And that. That I was allowed to be in

[Julian]

the movie reads whatever's on the prompter.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah, I had. I literally had one page of dialogue. I don't know what else happened. But the crazy thing is, is that later after that is when I began working in As a quality control for the manufacturing, and I had to watch all those films over and over and over again, and I was in the goddamn films. I'm in a bunch of the Scientology training films that we did at the time. They've redone them all. Because also Jason Begay was in a ton of those. Those movies. And so when he started.

[Claire Headley]

And Larry Anderson and Larry.

[Mark Bunker]

There's a lot of celebrities, a lot of Scientology celebrities that were in all these films.

[Julian]

Oh, now they got it.

[Mark Bunker]

And when they leave, they have to reshoot them all, because you can't have. Show me a clear. In all the films that you're watching.

[Julian]

Smart.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah, yeah. Jason, he has, like, a little raspy voice. That's how he talks anyway. But when we. When we shot with Danny for that movie, he was like a. He was a young teenager. And. And I don't think. I'm Pretty sure he never did another film with us after that because he was on, you know, whatever the shows were. That seventies show or. And his brother, Chris Masterson. Is it Malcolm in the Middle. He plays. He's in another show where he was an actor. An actor, too, so. But that. Yeah, the Masterson kids and the. There's a whole bunch of these Hollywood. Erica Christensen, Elizabeth Moss, the Elfman. They're kind of all floating around. When you're talking about cognitive dissonance. What's the show that she did? Elizabeth Moss, Mad.

[Claire Headley]

Oh, Handmaid.

[Julian]

Oh, Handmaid.

[Mark Bunker]

Handmaid's Tale. Yeah, Same thing.

[Claire Headley]

I know.

[Mark Bunker]

Same thing. Like you do know. You're playing a. In a show about a cult that does a lot of crazy stuff. The cult that you're in also does. That's kind of wild.

[Claire Headley]

So much so I. I have a whole note about all the. The crazy parallels in the Handmaid's Tale that Just. Just to document how much of Hip. How hypocritical it is of Elizabeth Moss to. To be in that show and claiming that there are no parallels.

[Mark Bunker]

You know what other show is crazy when Scientology sees it, when Scientologists see it? Severance.

[Claire Headley]

Oh, my gosh.

[Julian]

I still haven't seen Severance. Why. Why is it. Why is it crazy?

[Mark Bunker]

Because when you. In the. In the show. So you basically have some kind of surgery or something. An implant.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah. So it's basically. Yeah. The. The premise of Severance is that you get a surgery in your brain, like a capsule inserted that when you're at work, you're one person. When you leave from work, you go back to your original personality, and you have no memory of anything that they don't.

[Mark Bunker]

Each one doesn't know about the other.

[Claire Headley]

Completely separate people.

[Julian]

Wow.

[Mark Bunker]

And in the Sea Org. In Scientology, you. They. Well, in the show, they have what's called the innie. That's the one inside the work. And then you have your Audi, and Audi is the one that's outside doing whatever. Not at the. Not at the workplace. In Scientology, you only get to be the innie.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

And very rarely do you get to be the Audi.

[Claire Headley]

In Severance is even an E meter, by the way.

[Julian]

They have it in the show.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah. It's. It is made to look a little different. But they're doing auditing, they're doing clay stuff with clay, which is right out of Scientology's playbook. There are so many parallels. And then the Innies try to escape.

[Mark Bunker]

And anyway, if you're. If you were in the Sea Organization in Scientology and you see this show, you're like, okay, I don't need to watch this. That was my life.

[Julian]

Right.

[Claire Headley]

They have the bust of the creepy guy in the lobby. They have that. They have interrogations. They have memorizing doctrine verbatim, literally. The parallels are endless.

[Julian]

Does that ever give you PTSD to watch some stuff like this?

[Mark Bunker]

Well, I. I watched the first season with her, and then I was like, I'm out. Yeah, because it's. It is that. It's a great point. Because I'm watching. I'm like, why do I need to see this? This is like, I. I don't want to be reminded. All this craziness and. And very similar to severance. They're all up to busy work that seems uselessly unproductive. And that's just how the Sea Org is. All these people are running around 18, 16 hours a day doing all this work. And it's not getting more people into Scientology.

[Julian]

It feels like, like, from the outside looking in, because, again, like, we were just down there. It's almost like when you're looking down at ant. Ants.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah.

[Julian]

Just gotta. They just keep moving. Then if someone steps on the ant farm over here, these ants don't even know about it.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah.

[Julian]

Like, we're just gonna keep moving this little leaf all together right to the spot on the mound and hope we don't get stepped on, because we don't even know there's a boot step on

[Mark Bunker]

the neck and on to the next leaf.

[Julian]

What was that like, though, being in. In court and facing Danny Masterson. And how long were you on the stand for?

[Claire Headley]

Two hours, I think.

[Mark Bunker]

Wow.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah. Two, three hours.

[Julian]

Did you ever make eye contact with them or what was it like?

[Claire Headley]

So, I mean, like I said, I was. I was absolutely committed to doing the right thing. You can ask Mark, though. I was falling apart. It was terrifying. Going back into. It felt like going back into the belly of the beast. Not only being. Going to la where they have a. A significant presence, but also knowing that, you know, they were. Would have done anything to make me fail. And. Oh, here's. Here's the crazy part. So in February of 2023 is when the DA. DA's office called me and said, okay, the judge has now ruled and you will testify. And then she said, but there's something you need to know. Scientology has called, has named someone to counter your expert witness testimony that they just disclosed today. And that's your stepdad.

[Julian]

I knew it was coming.

[Mark Bunker]

Oh my God. And then they never ended up calling him as a witness. But it's. So. It's just the psychological level they're trying

[Claire Headley]

to get in my head. So, yeah, it's. It was. Anyway, I put together a 30 page report of all the policies they have that make it against their rules and policies to report to authorities, to involve any law enforcement, on and on and on. There were very specific points that were outlined that those were what I was to testify on to explain the delay in reporting, to explain the policies and the terminology and language of Scientology. But yeah, I mean, it was a huge pressure because there are so many. The. The layering language policies of Scientology make it so complicated that it's really easy to get lost in the. In. In the weeds in language and understanding how things work. And like we. Mark and I could have a conversation right now and you would literally have not one idea of anything. We just said that.

[Julian]

I believe it.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah, you can. And also the abbreviation so you could be like, hey, I went over to Asho to get the bmo, TC and ip and I'm doing this and I'm going to. I'll see at the HDB later. Yeah, you're just like, like, wait, what?

[Claire Headley]

So. So the pressure of. Of having to just really keep things super straightforward and specific and on point to educate a jury of 12 people that have pro. That have no idea of what any of it means. It was. It was a lot.

[Julian]

Did you get any. Did you get any weird phone calls or reach outs or anything like that?

[Mark Bunker]

We have.

[Claire Headley]

It's been going on for so long

[Mark Bunker]

probably I want to say since 2005.

[Claire Headley]

Yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

When we. After we escaped as soon as they declared us a suppressive person.

[Claire Headley]

Which was the day after I escaped, by the way.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah. I left two weeks before she did. But when? The day after.

[Claire Headley]

Three weeks.

[Mark Bunker]

Three weeks. The day after she left. We both have the same date. Suppressive person declare issue. But we've have. We have. Scientology has multiple hate websites about us.

[Julian]

Oh yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

Who is Mark? All the dot com. The Stanley.

[Claire Headley]

All of. Most of our family members have done hate videos. Yeah. Against us. So my mom, my stepmother.

[Mark Bunker]

My email has been given to so many things that I get spam from.

[Julian]

We gotta get you a new email.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah, no, I Don't want to start over with a new one.

[Claire Headley]

We've had private investigators following us. In the. In the documents that Mark was talking about in the OSO spy files documents, it shows that they were. They had our phones tapped.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah.

[Claire Headley]

They were stealing our trash and going through our trash. They were setting up phones tapped.

[Julian]

The private investigators.

[Mark Bunker]

Well, the Scientology, they had a list of all of the calls that we

[Claire Headley]

had made, including what was discussed.

[Mark Bunker]

What was discussed, and. And who we spoke about, spoke to.

[Julian]

It's totally illegal if it's not a law enforcement.

[Mark Bunker]

Sure, sure. Like, there's nothing if you get caught.

[Claire Headley]

Yep.

[Mark Bunker]

And this is the crazy illegal. Here's the crazy thing. So when you talk about when they had this guardian's office and they had all these agents, there was hundreds and thousands of Scientologists all over that were. One was doing this little thing, and one was doing this little thing. Well, you have a Scientologist that works at Verizon. You find out about that, and now, hey, we got our guy at Verizon. So that means we got at&t. We got Sprint. We got Verizon. Yeah.

[Claire Headley]

The amount of times we've gotten letters saying, as you requested, we sent your phone records, and we're like, we didn't request that. It's gotten to the point now where we have. Not only do we, you know, change our passwords every 90 days, but we also add security codes. So, like, that's nothing related to any of our information, just random digits. That makes almost. Oh, I won't. I won't. Believe me. We.

[Julian]

1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 1, 1, 1, one.

[Claire Headley]

No. But while we were.

[Mark Bunker]

During 6969, it's gonna be my next one.

[Julian]

Did you know what that was in Scientology?

[Mark Bunker]

No.

[Claire Headley]

No.

[Mark Bunker]

You. It's.

[Julian]

Oh, you got to learn all that afterwards.

[Mark Bunker]

Well, that is a crazy thing, because in Scientology, where we worked, you notice how.

[Claire Headley]

How. How often we say, oh, here's where it gets crazy. We're like. Like. Like.

[Mark Bunker]

It's not all crazy.

[Julian]

What is this, 69?

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah. They want me to do what at that property? At that property, there's no Internet.

[Julian]

No.

[Mark Bunker]

So when the Internet. I want to say, like, in the late 90s, 90s, 1999, 2000, it was like, we're gonna let a few Sea or members get on the Internet for research purposes. And I was. I was over the pre production department. I was over the pre production department of the cinematography division. And it was. It was ridiculous that we were sending people to the library to go through books to Find things for the films and do research. And it was like. And I was pushing, like, hey, we have to get on the Internet. This is ridiculous. So they have a setup there where the Internet is. Goes through a filter. So if you type anything, body thetans, Lord Zenu, even the word Scientology or David Miscavige. David Miscavige. Anything that there's bad stuff on the Internet, pornhub.com. well, no, it's all. No, any. Any variation of any search that's bad about Scientology or that's X rated. You cannot get to from that property. So.

[Claire Headley]

And it will flag it.

[Mark Bunker]

And it'll flag it. If you type it in, you'll get. It'll show on your search history that you're getting access denied. And then. And there's two people that were over the Internet for that property. One guy was in rtc, Religious Technology center where Dave Miscavige works. And one guy was in Golden Air Productions. He was a security. Security guard at Golden Air Productions. And they were sort of the monitors of the filter. And it came out. And actually I. The only reason I even heard about it was in a meeting with David Miscavige, the guy in RTC, Warren McCabe.

[Claire Headley]

Warren McShane.

[Mark Bunker]

Warren McShane. Why did it say Warren McShavage? Warren McShane and this guy, the security guard, they were both seeing each other's access to and they were going on all the porn sites.

[Julian]

They weren't going to say they're walking

[Mark Bunker]

on beating off, but they were both. They both could see the access denieds for them. And when our little secret. And David Miscavige, in a meeting that Warren McShane was in, he said, oh, war's Warren. And. And it was like, oh, he's probably. He's probably looking at porn. And we were all like, like, we're all like the. Yeah, Warren's a porn monkey. He's gooning up an art. He's gooning up an rtc. That's some. He's supposed to be watching for that.

[Julian]

Oh, my God.

[Mark Bunker]

Yeah. So the people in charge of it are doing. But the craziest thing is that that property is filled with foreign nationals. So you get Swedes, Danes, Germans, people from Spain, Italy, everything. Well, the filter don't know what titties is in Italian. So these guys that had Internet access, they're just searching in their native language for this stuff. And the filters, like, I don't know anyway. But yeah, there's no way for someone there. I want to say in the early 2000s, when I. When I was able to get on the Internet and do research and do this sort of thing, thing, I was probably one of maybe 10 out of 800 people that were allowed to go on the Internet.

[Julian]

Wow. Yeah.

[Mark Bunker]

So they don't have. In the Sea Org. It's very limited. And then even in recent years, they've been giving. Sea Org members are not allowed to have iPhones, but they're allowed to have Android because you can't put a filter, like their filter that they use that not only blocks you from going to the site, but then also reports to somewhere that what site you're going to. Apple's like, we ain't. That ain't going to be in the App Store, but on the Android phones. Hey, baby, we got all the filters and all the crazy stuff you need.

[Julian]

CIA created Google.

[Mark Bunker]

Yes.

[Julian]

So means. Well, the CIA create Scientology.

[Mark Bunker]

There's a ton of people, people that think that the FBI and the CIA to this day control Scientology.

[Julian]

There's a lot of people that think that. And I gotta go to the bathroom. So we're going to talk about them afterwards, if that's cool.

[Mark Bunker]

So this is, for me, this is

[Julian]

the end of the first episode. We're gonna do a second episode right after. This has been awesome, guys. But in this one, we're gonna get into that and then we're gonna really get into your stories, like from the beginning and like childhood. And some of it we've covered a little bit, but I really want to get an idea of how it developed over time.

[Claire Headley]

Sounds good.

[Julian]

All right, subscribe if you haven't subscribed and we'll see you for the next episode.

[Mark Bunker]

Awesome.

[Julian]

Hey, guys, if you're not following me on Spotify, please hit that follow button and leave a five star review. They're both a huge, huge help.

[Claire Headley]

Thank you.