Jason Beghe, the television and film actor starring in a blunt video about his Scientology days, has begun a media campaign to spread what he knows about the cult, and his latest salvo is a Village Voice interview in which he calls the Church of Scientology a "gossip factory" and says that it tapes all of its auditing sessions using secret cameras. "He's been cheating on his wife," he was told of one actor he wanted to cast in a recruiting video. He also has some dirt on Tom Cruise:

Beghe claimst that the religion's top star, Tom Cruise, was actually mostly separated from the church for several years. Other celebrities, he points out, go through similar periods of no longer auditing or moving up the Bridge, but are still considered members. Bringing Cruise back into a more active role, Beghe says, was a major Miscavige project.



"He was out for like ten years. There are people who just aren't doing anything Some are out but don't talk about it. Why? The church is scary. These are bad motherfuckers."



Once his disappointment was so great he began talking about leaving altogether, Beghe says the church sent people to talk him out of it.

Beghe said he worked constantly to ascend the Scientology hierarchy over the course of his first year, bypassing longtime member and fellow actor John Travolta. Celebrities were coveted - Scientologists can clear their record of misdeeds by recruiting one - and Beghe came to regard many as "dilettantes" who enjoyed special privileges but did not work hard.

But all were subject to vicious internal gossip.

"Not one auditing session-which are supposed to be private-is not recorded on film," he says, and claims that secret cameras are used at every session at the Celebrity Centre in Los Angeles, recording sessions that for Scientologists are supposed to be something like confessionals in the Catholic church.



"Will Smith is supposedly dabbling in Scientology. Let Will Smith know that his shit was fucking recorded. And tell him to look them in the eye and see if he believes it when they deny it."



Even worse, he says, is that behind the backs of celebrities, Scientology officials gossip about what transpires in those supposedly private sessions. "Everything's supposed to be confidential. But all they do is chat about it," he says.



At a church center in Hemet, California where the church has movie studios, Beghe helped make videos. "I did movies for them. I remember asking, who do we cast in this thing? How about this dude?" referring to another scientologist actor. "No, he's been cheating on his wife," Beghe says he was told.



"It's just a gossip factory. And I'm not talking about auditors. All over the place. The celebrities don't know that their private troubles are gossiped about by Scientology employees."

Beghe's campaign seems unlikely to end with the Voice interview. The video interview with him posted to YouTube represented a small slice of the video recorded, which in turn "barely scratched the surface" of Beghe's Scientology experience, he said. Also, he is now fielding calls from TV talk shows.

(The Voice story is, for some reason, dated April 8 but was actually posted on April 15.)

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In case you missed it the first time, here's Beghe's video interview with two Scientology critics, including the operator of Xenu.net: