

At over 30 pages in print (26 on the web) and 23,000+ words, Lawrence Wright’s massive investigation of The Church of Scientology, The Apostate: Paul Haggis vs. the Church of Scientology, is a long read. And a devastating expose.

Haggis, an academy award-winning screenwriter and director who was a member of the Church he now calls a “cult” for 34 years, rose through Scientology’s levels of study “All the way to the top.”

When a church of Scientology in San Diego sided with proponents of California’s Proposition 8 Haggis asked the church to formally renounce the affiliation. The church refused and Haggis began an investigation of his own that resulted in his leaving the church in a scathing letter.

An excerpt on Scientology and homosexuality:

[Tommy Davis, the chief spokesperson for the Church of Scientology International,] explained that the cornerstone of Scientology was the writings of L. Ron Hubbard. “Mr. Hubbard’s material must be and is applied precisely as written,” Davis said. “It’s never altered. It’s never changed. And there probably is no more heretical or more horrific transgression that you could have in the Scientology religion than to alter the technology.” But hadn’t certain derogatory references to homosexuality found in some editions of Hubbard’s books been changed after his death? Davis admitted that that was so, but he maintained that “the current editions are one-hundred-per-cent, absolutely fully verified as being according to what Mr. Hubbard wrote.” Davis said they were checked against Hubbard’s original dictation. “The extent to which the references to homosexuality have changed are because of mistaken dictation?” I asked.

“No, because of the insertion, I guess, of somebody who was a bigot,” Davis replied. “Somebody put the material in those—?” “I can only imagine. . . . It wasn’t Mr. Hubbard,” Davis said, cutting me off. “Who would’ve done it?” “I have no idea.” “Hmm.” “I don’t think it really matters,” Davis said. “The point is that neither Mr. Hubbard nor the church has any opinion on the subject of anyone’s sexual orientation. . . .” “Someone inserted words that were not his into literature that was propagated under his name, and that’s been corrected now?” I asked. “Yeah, I can only assume that’s what happened,” Davis said. After this exchange, I looked at some recent editions that the church had provided me with. On page 125 of “Dianetics,” a “sexual pervert” is defined as someone engaging in “homosexuality, lesbianism, sexual sadism, etc.” Apparently, the bigot’s handiwork was not fully excised.

Stranger than science-fiction:

That October, the litigants filed O.T. III materials in court. Fifteen hundred Scientologists crowded into the courthouse, trying to block access to the documents. The church, which considers it sacrilegious for the uninitiated to read its confidential scriptures, got a restraining order, but the Los Angeles Times obtained a copy of the material and printed a summary. Suddenly, the secrets that had stunned Paul Haggis in a locked room were public knowledge. “A major cause of mankind’s problems began 75 million years ago,” the Times wrote, when the planet Earth, then called Teegeeack, was part of a confederation of ninety planets under the leadership of a despotic ruler named Xenu. “Then, as now, the materials state, the chief problem was overpopulation.” Xenu decided “to take radical measures.” The documents explained that surplus beings were transported to volcanoes on Earth. “The documents state that H-bombs far more powerful than any in existence today were dropped on these volcanoes, destroying the people but freeing their spirits—called thetans—which attached themselves to one another in clusters.” Those spirits were “trapped in a compound of frozen alcohol and glycol,” then “implanted” with “the seed of aberrant behavior.” The Times account concluded, “When people die, these clusters attach to other humans and keep perpetuating themselves.”

If you’re unwilling or unable to read the full frankly, overlong article (it is free and available on the New Yorker’s site), maybe the NY Magazine What You Need to Know About The New Yorker’s Paul Haggis–Scientology Article will pique your interest. Salon has the skinny on the Church of Scientology’s friends in Washington.

One newsy tidbit, the FBI has an ongoing investigation into the church fur human trafficking. Boing Boing has a copy (& links to many others) of the “Billion Year Contract” that Scientologists sign committing themselves to the Sea Org (the part of the church alleged to practice indentured labor enforced by corporal punishment). From Wright’s piece:

If they try to leave, the church presents them with a “freeloader tab” for all the coursework and counselling they have received; the bill can amount to more than a hundred thousand dollars. Payment is required in order to leave in good standing. “Many of them actually pay it,” Haggis said. “They leave, they’re ashamed of what they’ve done, they’ve got no money, no job history, they’re lost, they just disappear.” In what seemed like a very unguarded comment, he said, “I would gladly take down the church for that one thing.” The church says that it adheres to “all child labor laws,” and that minors can’t sign up without parental consent; the freeloader tabs are an “ecclesiastical matter” and are not enforced through litigation.

The New Yorker assigned five fact-checkers and sent Scientologists 971 fact-checking queries. Here a Today Show report on the story and interview with Wright:



This 7-part St. Petersburg Times investigation into the church is cited several times in the Wright piece.

Image: SCIENTOLOGY, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from Thomas Hawk’s photostream