While De Vocht was working on Building 50, he was forced to attend a séance with five hundred other Sea Org members on Gold Base. People were called out by name and asked, “What crimes have you committed against David Miscavige?” One after another, people approached the microphone and confessed to ways in which they were suppressing the dissemination of Scientology or thinking taboo thoughts. De Vocht was disgusted by the orgy of self-abasement. One night, he simply took over the meeting and brought some semblance of order to it. That night, Shelly Miscavige asked him to be the Commanding Officer of the Commodore’s Messengers Org, which essentially put him in charge of the entire base. “It’s out of control,” she pleaded, saying that her husband counted on him and had no one else to turn to.
In 2004, De Vocht finished reconstructing the 45,000-square-foot Building 50, which wound up costing $70 million. “You’re the biggest spender in the history of Scientology,” Miscavige told him. “You should be shot.”
EVEN THOUGH MEMBERSHIP in the church has been declining for years, according to polls and census figures, money continues to pour into Scientology coffers in fantastic sums. Donors are accorded higher status depending on the size of their gifts to the International Association of Scientologists—Patron Maximus for a $25 million pledge, for instance. Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson, became a Patron Laureate for her $10 million gift to the association in 2007. The IAS now holds more than $1 billion, mostly in offshore accounts, according to former executives of the church. Scientology coursework alone can be very pricey—as much as $400,000 to reach the level of OT VIII. That doesn’t count the books and materials or the latest-model E-Meter, which is priced at $4,650. Then there is the auditing, which ranges in price from $5,000 to $8,000 for a twelve-hour “intensive,” depending on the location and the level of the auditor. Services sold in Clearwater alone amount to $100 million a year.
Despite the frequent cost overruns on construction, Scientology undertook a worldwide building campaign, kicked off by Miscavige’s decision to use the occasion of 9/11 to issue a call for a massive expansion of the church. “Bluntly, we are the only people of Earth who can reverse the decline,” he announced. “The way to do better is to get big.”
In some cases, the building projects have become significant moneymakers for the church. Across the street from Scientology’s Fort Harrison Hotel in Clearwater is the Super Power Building, intended to be a training facility to enhance the perceptions of upper-level thetans. The fund-raising kicked off with a $1 million gift from the Feshbach brothers. Despite years-long construction delays and fines imposed by the City of Clearwater, the 380,000-square-foot Super Power Building has proven to be a bonanza for the church, which has taken in at least $145 million in donations to complete the project—$120 million more than it was projected to cost when first proposed, in 1993. The church explains that the plan has been enlarged from its original goals, which has created delays and additional expenses. Tom De Vocht, who worked on the construction for years, said that the building remained unfinished for so long because no one knew what super power was.
Under Miscavige’s leadership, the church has aggressively launched a program called Ideal Orgs, which aim to replicate the grandeur of Hubbard’s Saint Hill Manor. A number of the Ideal Orgs have been shuttered—including Seattle, Boston, and New Haven—because the local Scientology communities were unable to support them. Other notable churches and missions are now boarded up or unloaded—including one in Santa Monica that Paul and Deborah Haggis raised money to establish.
THE INTENSITY OF the pressure on Sea Org members to raise money for the church—while working for next to nothing—can be understood in part through the account of Daniel Montalvo. His parents joined the Sea Org when he was five, and the very next year he signed his own billion-year contract. He says that he began working full-time in the organization when he was eleven and recalls that, along with other Sea Org members, including children, his days stretched from eight in the morning until eleven thirty at night. Part of his work was shoveling up asbestos that had been removed during the renovation of the Fort Harrison Hotel. He says no protective gear was provided, not even a mask. He rarely saw his parents. While he was at Flag Base in 2005, when he was fourteen, he guarded the door while Tom Cruise was in session. The sight of children working at a Sea Org facility would not have been unusual. They were separated from their parents and out of school. According to Florida child labor laws, minors who are fourteen and fifteen years old are prohibited from working during school hours, and may work only up to fifteen hours a week. Daniel said that he was allowed schooling only one day a week, on Saturday.