_Journalist Janet Reitman’s Inside Scientology: The Story of America’s Most Secretive Religion, out this month, is a serious, painstaking investigation of the organization’s unique structure and bare-knuckled business acumen. It’s also packed with all manner of wacktastic nuggets: Tom Cruise’s gun phobia! High-ranking pooches! _GQ’s SciTi info junkie, Emily Poenisch, tore through all 464 pages and plucked out seven choice details. Oh, and dear deep-pocketed Scientologists: All of these are according to Reitman. So if you must, please sue her, not us.

Scientology’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard, a hypnotist bigamist who once lived with an occultist, joked that his book Dianetics would be so powerful, readers would be able to "rape women without their knowing it."

In a 1972 policy letter, Hubbard summed up his philosophy as "MAKE MORE MONEY. MAKE MORE MONEY. MAKE OTHERS PRODUCE SO AS TO MAKE MORE MONEY."

"Fuck those people," said Elvis Presley following a meeting with Scientologists. "All they want is my money."

When Tom Cruise reached the level of Operating Thetan 3—"the vaunted Wall of Fire" where "hidden truths" [a.k.a. the alien stuff] are revealed—he "freaked out," a church insider told Reitman, "and was like, ’What the fuck is this science fiction shit?’ "

Cruise was cured of his fear of guns when Scientology’s leader, David Miscavige, took him for a fortifying round of skeet shooting.

Miscavige liked to parade around with his five dogs, two of whom, the prized Jelly and Safi, wore tiny blue sweaters with commander’s bars and held "ranks" higher than many human Scientologists.