Scientology

And, of course, like any other moneymaking American enterprise, it has good friends in Washington.

As far as I know, the only Scientologist to ever actually serve in Congress was the late Sonny Bono. His widow, Mary Bono Mack, who inherited his seat, attended courses, but never took to the religion.

Former Rep. Ben Gilman, R-N.Y., received thousands from the church, and, in return, as chairman of the International Relations Committee, he complained on several occasions that European nations were discriminating against Scientology. Or, put another way: "[On] the same day (July 2, 1998), ten prominent Scientologists donated a total of $7,400 to Congressman Benjamin A. Gilman's coffer -- three months before he signed on as a co-sponsor to Matt Salmon's House of Representatives bill that was critical of Germany's protection of religious freedom ..." He was also thanked with this glowing profile in the church's Freedom magazine.

Brad Sherman, D-Calif., and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., are two of the church's best friends currently serving in Congress. They were both honored at a 2004 Celebrity Centre gala. (Here's Ros-Lehtinen with John Travolta and Kelly Preston, and here's Brad Sherman praising the church publicly.)

The church avoids "official" political donations (it is, after all, a tax-exempt religious organization), but prominent members still support politicians and politicians return the favor. Florida's Mark Foley was a Scientology ally. (It was rumored that he checked into a church-affiliated recovery center after his resignation from Congress.) As a state legislator, Nevada's Sharron Angle supported a Scientology-affiliated drug treatment therapy program for prisoners.

Craig Jensen, founder of the software company Diskeeper, and his wife, Sally Jensen, are major Scientologists, and their donations help identify which politicians are friendliest to the church. Former congressman James E. Rogan, now a Bush-appointed judge on the Superior Court of California, received thousands of dollars from prominent Scientologists throughout the 1990s. Even Ron Paul gets Scientology love, because he supports its tax-exempt status and opposes mental health screening for children.

And, of course, Sarah Palin is personal friends with prominent Scientologists Greta Van Susteren and her husband, attorney John Coale. Coale helped Palin start her PAC -- and he once proposed starting a Scientology PAC, in the 1980s. At the time, the idea fizzled out.

But Scientology actually had a semi-open PAC for a few years, called "Citizens for Social Reform." The church hasn't donated anything in the last two cycles, but before that, it gave to the following pols:

• Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind.
• Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif.
• Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif.
• Rep. Diane Watson, D-Calif.
• Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill. (also a friend of the Reverend Moon)
• Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan.
• Rep. John Sweeney, R-N.Y.
• Rep. Dylan Glenn, R-Ga.

The church has had, throughout its history, plenty of friends on both sides of the aisle. Or, at least, plenty of people willing to cash its checks. Few prominent politicians, that I know of, have said much about the things we've learned about the church more recently.

[Correction: Judge James Rogan serves on the Superior Court of California. He was nominated for the seat by then-California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006, and won election to the seat in 2008. He was nominated by President Bush for a seat on the U.S. District Court, but his nomination stalled in the Senate. I apologize for the error.]

Maybe the speculation was based on the blink-and-you-missed-it failure of her last Sundance outing, "The Romantics." Or perhaps it was the mixed reviews for her 2008 Broadway debut in "All My Sons," a performance that prompted Ben Brantley to observe that Holmes delivered her lines "with meaningful asperity, italicizing every word." Or maybe it's her freaky husband.

Long ago, the former "Dawson's Creek" star was just another so-so television actress with a string of middling to decent movies under her belt -- Neve Campbell without the girl-on-girl scenes.  But her public image changed forever the day she met actor and couch jumper Tom Cruise in 2005.  Within two months, she was engaged, and within a year she was married and toting around a baby daughter. By then, the actress, who once drew raves for "Pieces Of April" -- Elvis Mitchell praising that "Each actor shines, even Ms. Holmes" -- appeared to have been assimilated by the borg. The former Catholic had embraced her husband's Scientology to the extent that she acquired a new "best friend" -- who doubled as her "Scientologist chaperone." And soon, like many new mothers, she had put her career on the back burner to raise her daughter, the world's most obsessed-over little fashionista, Suri Cruise.

More than five years later, Holmes still seems better known for her shopping trips and hair color commercials than her work. Increasingly, she's a woman who appears less and less to have a there there, one so placid, she's repeated in several interviews that she lets her 5-year-old tell her what to wear. 

So when her latest project -- starring as Jackie in an eight-, count 'em, eight-hour miniseries on the pahk yuh cah Kennedys -- was dumped by the History Channel, you could almost hear the schadenfreude. It hasn't slowed down a bit now that the miniseries has been picked up by the fledgling Reelz network, thanks in part to the trailer's revelation of Holmes' apparent typecasting as the breathy, unblinking first lady.

Sure, a big part of the umbrage -- and the bottomless tabloid fascination -- concerns Holmes' seemingly Svengali-like mate. For years, rumors have swirled that Cruise, learning nothing from Japanese horror movies, "auditioned" several comely starlets for the role of his offscreen leading lady before connecting with Holmes. But it's not so much Cruise himself as the notion of a woman who would at best so easily surrender her religious convictions and personal ambitions that makes Holmes such an easy target for shudders. She may possess the Little Miss Perfect vibe that Gwyneth Paltrow practically invented, but she lacks Paltrow's air of steely achievement. And she certainly inspires considerably more vitriol than her Oscar-winning predecessor, Nicole Kidman.

Instead, despite her fame and opulent wealth and weird religion, she hits a nerve because she is that familiar, one-in-every-crowd mom -- the woman whose worshipful marital devotion can be summed up with, "We do collaborate on everything at home. But I mean, he’s Tom Cruise!" She's that lady, the one who dabbles in fashion design even though her company's website has zero images of its wares.  She's the woman who seems, but for one or two different life choices, the sort who'd totally be dominating on "Toddlers and Tiaras." She's the one with the husband everybody really hopes doesn't tag along on the play date, the one who, on the day after you've missed your child's bedtime because you're working overtime to pay for orthodontia, swans onto the playground to complain she's thinking of firing her maid. It doesn’t matter if it's true. What matters is how wholeheartedly audiences swallow it. Katie Holmes may be a well-rounded woman who happens to truly adore her beautiful daughter and movie star husband. But while she is no great actress, when she does her dead-behind-the eyes Stepford shtick, she's chillingly convincing.

The Kennedys | Barry Pepper | Greg Kinnear | Katie Holmes | Tom Wilkinson | Movie Trailer | Review

The reason Angle is unable to answer questions is because she is an Outsider. Also, she only has two full-time staffers. She needs a couple weeks with the campaign pros behind Scott Brown's victory before she's qualified to say what she believes to reporters. Once she owns a truck, you can ask all the question you want, lame stream media.

Texas Republican John Cornyn explained:

And Cornyn acknowledged that Angle is not yet prepared for what he considers to be a coming onslaught of attention. "I don't think anybody would be prepared for a race. where 20 or 30 million dollars is going to be spent in negative advertising," he said. "It's going to take a few weeks, I would think, but, you know, it's really up to her."

But as I said, Angle did make time for the National Review.

Angle apparently referred to herself as an "accidental politician," though once you've been in politics for a dozen years, you should probably just own up to being a professional accidental politician.

Her statement on Social Security is a series of completely incompatible buzz-phrases borrowed from both parties. She admires Tom Coburn, Jim DeMint, and Michele Bachmann. She seems to tell a verifiable untruth about removing the "issues" page from her website. (It is now back.) She also defends her advocacy for a Church of Scientology-developed quack drug therapy program by claiming Scientologists are the victims of religious persecution.

What we’re seeing here is a very slippery slope. Whenever religion becomes the focal point — we saw this during John F. Kennedy’s race and also, to some degree, in Mitt Romney’s race — whenever this becomes the focus, we Americans should be very, very concerned. We have a First Amendment that guarantees us all the right to worship as we please. We as Americans should, even if we don’t agree, should defend their right to have that right. It shouldn’t come into play in any political arena.”

God, if a real journalist manages to get anything out of her before the consultants do their work, she'll be a goldmine of nuttiness.

The accounts in the story come from several women who became pregnant while they were Sea Org members during the 1990s. Sea Org provides its 6,000 members with housing, food and medical care, and in exchange they perform jobs ranging from cleaning to communications to "auditing,” or serving as spiritual counselors. Scientologists who join Sea Org sign billion-year contracts indicating their intention to serve the church throughout this and future lifetimes (commitment-phobes need not apply).

Laura Dieckman joined Sea Org at age 12. Her parents let her join and move to Los Angeles from Albuquerque, N.M., because the recruiter promised a free education. Once Dieckman got there, she alleges, she was put to work every day. There was no time for school. She married a fellow member a few years later, and in 1996 she became pregnant. She was 17. 

Dieckman wanted the baby, but her husband was hesitant. According to a Sea Org policy enacted the year she became pregnant, members are not permitted to have children. If they do, they are transferred out of the organization and into community churches, where they must support themselves on a portion of the church's income and outside work. Dieckman turned to her boss -- but, even though she wanted to continue with her pregnancy, the woman pushed her to think about what would benefit the most people. She said that an abortion wasn't a big deal, and that not having a baby would serve the greater good. Dieckman's husband, who was afraid of leaving the organization and all that it provided, agreed. With no education or real work experience, no money, and potentially no husband, Dieckman began to feel like having a baby was not an option. A few days later, she had an abortion.

Gary Morehead, former security chief at the Scientology base near Los Angeles, says that special councils formulated strategies to convince women to abort. Manual labor, isolation and interrogation were used to break them down mentally. Sunny Pareira, a woman who sat on one of the councils, describes making arrangements for certain members to "handle" different pregnant women, beginning with casual conversation and gradually getting more aggressive.

Church spokesman Tommy Davis says that the no-children policy was created because babies were "viewed as interfering with the productivity of Sea Org members," and "the long and demanding working hours required of Sea Org members ... were obstacles to parents properly raising their children." He denied the Times' allegations and provided sworn accounts from 10 former and one current Sea Org member stating that the church was supportive and helpful during their pregnancies, but Dieckman and about a dozen other women say otherwise.

If these accounts are true, though, and women who had babies did face the loss of their jobs, housing, husbands and communication with family after suffering through manual labor and interrogations, it sounds like the church had a policy of coercion, not choice.

Below, watch interviews with some of the women featured in the story.