Exclusive: ‘Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography’

Author Andrew Morton returns with yet another controversial celebrity biography — his past subjects have included Princess Diana, Monica Lewinsky and Madonna — this time aiming his tabloid-trained ink at actor Tom Cruise.

The book, “Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography,” explores the actor's love life, rumors about his sexuality, his connections to Scientology and his family. (Read an exclusive Q&A with Morton here.)

According to the New York Daily News, the Cruise camp and the Church of Scientology are considering a $100 million lawsuit over the publication of the book. Regardless, it is scheduled to be published in the U.S. on Tuesday, Jan. 15.

Here is an exclusive excerpt, taken from chapter 6:

As anxious as a teenager on his first date, David Miscavige, the young leader of Scientology, impatiently paced around the immaculately arranged cabana as he waited for his guest on a Saturday night in the late summer of 1989. While no expense or effort had been spared to impress his visitor, by the agreed arrival time of eight o’clock there was still no sign of Tom Cruise. Watches were nervously checked, and as minutes turned into hours, cult minions made frantic phone calls. David Miscavige was not a man who liked to be kept waiting.

But wait he did, becoming more and more furious as his carefully laid plans came to naught. By the time Tom, who had recently finished filming "Born on the Fourth of July", arrived at the Gold Base Scientology fortress, it was long past eleven o’clock, and the actor, tired by the journey from Beverly Hills, went straight to bed.

He had missed a greeting as elaborate as it was incongruous. In the heart of the desert scrub, he was to have been taken to a swimming pool next to a $565,000 life-size replica of a three-masted schooner. In the tropically themed cabana, complete with parrots and other exotic birds, Miscavige and other senior Scientologists would have formed a welcoming committee. Doubtless, as he was being shown the nautical artifacts, he was to have been told about the history of the landlocked ship, the Star of California, which had been built on the express instructions of cult founder L. Ron Hubbard. Even though he served with an utter lack of distinction in the U.S. Navy during World War II, Hubbard liked to think of himself as a military hero, dressing his most fanatical followers, known as the Sea Org, in the regalia and uniforms of a seafaring militia. This fraternal paramilitary organization was zealously dedicated to advancing their faith, signing “billion-year” contracts — pledging themselves to work for Scientology for the next billion years during future reincarnations — as a sign of their utter devotion. In their eyes they were fallen gods, immortal beings or “thetans,” who had lived for millions of years and would be reincarnated for billions of years to come. From their desert lair, a place so secret that new Sea Org recruits were brought there blindfolded so that they could not divulge the location to outsiders, they pursued their mission of world domination and the extermination of their enemies. As Hubbard once wrote, “All men shall be my slaves. All women shall succumb to my charms. All mankind shall grovel at my feet and not know why.” In preparation for the day when they could put the words of the man known as “Source” into practice, they read The Art of War by the Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu and On War by the Prussian general Karl von Clausewitz. No one and nothing from the inferior “wog world” — the term for nonbelievers — could be allowed to get in their way. Certainly not in this existence. Indeed, the outside world was an unwelcome distraction.

Matt Sayles / AP Tom Cruise's camp has bashed the new biography, saying that Morton never spoke to the actor's business partners, executives, friends or family.

Believers were banned from watching TV, listening to the radio, reading newspapers, using computers, making telephone calls, or receiving other communications from outsiders, including their families. Security staff even opened their Christmas presents to make sure they did not contain anything that would deflect them from the cause. (Nowadays newspapers are sold and TV played in the staff dining room.)

Most public Scientologists had never even heard of Gold Base, let alone visited the onetime holiday resort just outside Hemet, California.

The organization deliberately disguised its true purpose, listing the five-hundred-acre compound in the local telephone directory as the “Scottish Highlands Quietude Club.” It was a sign of Tom Cruise’s importance that he was invited to this inner sanctum.

Significantly, the invitation was extended only to Tom, even though his wife had been a Scientologist for most of her life. The reason had less to do with the fact that they now seemed to be leading separate lives than with Mimi’s own position inside the cult. When her father, Phil, left the faith during the cull of mission holders in the early 1980s, he was deemed an enemy, or, in Scientology-speak, a “suppressive person.” Worse, he joined those, dubbed “squirrels” by Hubbard, who offered Scientology-style services at cut prices.

Anyone associated with Mimi’s father was supposed to “disconnect” — sever all relations — with him if they wanted to stay inside Scientology. In short, Mimi was expected to choose between her father and the cult, a dilemma that has confronted thousands of Scientologists over the years, leading to hundreds of family breakups. “Tom was a big star, she was a nothing and tainted by association with her father,” says a former Scientologist who helped plan that first visit. “David Miscavige wasn’t bothered about Mimi. In any case, in his eyes, her father had done all these terrible things to Scientology.”

To emphasize how little value the Scientology leadership placed on Mimi, her husband was accompanied by his assistant, Andrea Morse, daughter of actor Robert Morse. Tom paid for her to take numerous Scientology courses, Andrea in turn recruiting her mother, Carole, and sister Hilary to the faith. It was the beginning of a carefully considered strategy that would ultimately see the actor surrounded by Scientologists both at home and in his office, Odin Productions, which in time came to be operated on strict Scientology principles, where crispness, clarity, and military efficiency are the watchwords. Both sides were keen that Tom’s first visit to the base be discreet and secret. In the darkness, as Tom was driven by the armed uniformed guards past the chain-link fence topped with razor wire, he could have been forgiven for thinking he was entering a military base rather than a friendly club where Scottish chaps danced around in kilts.

That impression would have been reinforced by the infrared cameras and arc lights and, if he had known about them, the concealed microphones and sensors that could spot a rabbit hopping thirty feet from the six-foot-high fence. It was a place that exuded paranoia.

Cameras noted the license plates of passing cars; there were secret plans to rig the perimeter with homemade explosives in case of attack; and high above the property was a man-made eyrie where eagle-eyed guards with high-powered rifles fitted with telescopic sights scanned the sunbaked California scrub for possible intruders.

In fact, his host for the weekend, David Miscavige, had been known to race out into the barren landscape, armed with an Uzi submachine gun, to hunt down possible enemies. He certainly had many weapons to choose from, amassing a personal collection of more than sixty guns. Besides an Israeli assault rifle, a 12-gauge double-barrel shotgun given to him by Hubbard, he had a Dirty Harry Magnum .44 and a Walther PPK of the type used by James Bond. Nor was he afraid to use them.

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