If you wonder how the creepy Church of Scientology keeps tabs on its superstar converts (and — perhaps — digs up a little dirt?), Tony Ortega, editor-in-chief of our sister paper, Village Voice, might have found out.

His mega-scoop today:

Between 1991 and 2005, Cruise's personal assistant, Michael Doven, was also …

… a church spy.

That's right. He reported directly to church leader David Miscavige (via Miscavige's wife), too. Why did they need to be all up in Cruise's bidness?

Turns out that he was estranged from the church from 1991 to 2001, according to the report:

Doven was there the entire time, reporting to Miscavige everything that Tom was doing,” [former church No. 2 Marty] Rathbun told me. When I asked Rathbun how he knew that, he answered in Scientology jargon: “How do I know that? Because I was on that line.”

“Doven was personally reporting to you what Tom was doing?” I asked him, for clarification.

“Absolutely,” Rathbun answered. “He'd be telling me what was happening with Nic [Nicole Kidman], what was happening in the household, what was happening between Tom and Steven Spielberg. He had been reporting to us from the early 1990s.”

Other awesome tidbits:

-Nicole Kidman's parents reportedly did not like the Cruise-Kidman family's involvement with the church, an issue that turned up during their divorce, apparently.

-The church reportedly wanted to pressure Cruise's agent to do something about an embarrassing 2005 South Park episode called “Tom Cruise Won't Come Out of The Closet.”

-Cruise didn't know he was being spied on, and “treated Doven like shit in front of me,” said Rathbun.

Read all about it here.

[@dennisjromero / djromero@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews]

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