Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief(126)

Copies of Haggis’s e-mail resignation letter were forwarded to various members of the church, although few outside of church circles knew about it. By October, the letter had found its way to Marty Rathbun. He had become an informal spokesperson for Scientology defectors who, like him, believed that the church had broken away from Hubbard’s original teachings. He called Haggis, who was shooting in Pittsburgh, and asked if he could publish the letter on his blog. “You’re a journalist, you don’t need my permission,” Haggis said, although he did ask him to excise the portion of the letter that dealt with his dinner with John Travolta and Kelly Preston and the part about his daughter Katy’s homosexuality.

Haggis didn’t think about the consequences of his decision. He thought it would show up on a couple of websites. He was a writer, not a movie star. But Rathbun got fifty-five thousand hits on his blog that afternoon.

The next morning, the story was in newspapers around the world. Haggis got a call from Tommy Davis. “Paul, what the hell!”





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1 Four years before, the church had actively campaigned against Proposition 63, the Mental Health Services Act, which raised taxes to provide for increased care for the mentally ill; the proposition passed.

2 Mary Benjamin says they were never parties to the suit.

3 Now called the Tampa Bay Times.

4 Cruise’s attorney, Bertram Fields, denies this took place: “Mr. Cruise has never asked Mr. Haggis or anyone else to denounce media attacks on Mr. Cruise on the Larry King show or anywhere else or to do anything like that.”

5 The church characterizes this as an attempt at extortion.

6 The church forwarded a letter to me from Katy Haggis’s friend in which she denies losing a job because of their friendship and asserting that the church is welcoming to everyone, regardless of their sexual orientation. The friend, whose parents are both employed by the church, did not respond to a request to talk further.

7 Tommy Davis gave me an affidavit, signed by Scobee, in which she admits to having liaisons. Scobee told me there were only two incidents, both of which involved a kiss and nothing more. She says she did not write the affidavit; she says she only signed it in the hope of leaving the church on good terms so that she could stay in touch with relatives. The church maintains that it does not use confidential information derived from auditing sessions.

8 The church denies that blow drills exist.

9 According to Tommy Davis, “Mr. Miscavige has never physically assaulted Marc Headley or anyone else.”

10 Davis later said that he had never followed a Sea Org member who had blown and had only gone to see Brousseau because he was “a very good friend of mine” (Deposition of Thomas Davis, Marc Headley vs. Church of Scientology International, and Claire Headley vs. Church of Scientology International, US District Court, Central District of California, July 2, 2010).

11 Valerie Venegas told one of her sources that higher-up officials had spiked it; later, she blamed me, because I had uncovered the probe and had called to verify it with the agents (Tony Ortega, “FBI Investigation of Scientology: Already Over before We Even Heard of It,” Village Voice Blogs, Mar. 19, 2012).

12 Tommy Davis says that Martin Luther King, Jr.’s name never came up.





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Tommy


When I first contacted Davis in April 2010, asking for his cooperation on a profile I was writing about Haggis for The New Yorker, he expressed a reluctance to talk, saying that he had already spent a month responding to similar queries. “It made little difference,” he said. “The last thing I’m interested in is dredging all this up again.” He kept putting me off, saying that he was too busy to get together, although he promised that we would meet when he was more available. “I want our time to be undistracted,” he explained in an e-mail. “We should plan on spending at least a full day together as there is a lot I would want to show you.” We finally arranged to meet on Memorial Day weekend.

I flew to Los Angeles and spent much of that weekend waiting for him to call. On Sunday at three o’clock, Davis appeared at my hotel, with Jessica Feshbach. We sat at a table on the patio. Davis has his mother’s sleepy eyes. His thick black hair was combed forward, with a lock falling boyishly onto his forehead. He wore a wheat-colored suit with a blue shirt that opened onto a chest that seemed, among the sun-worshippers at the pool, strikingly pallid. Feshbach, a slender, attractive woman, anxiously twirled her hair.

Davis now told me that he was “not willing to participate in, or contribute to, an article about Scientology through the lens of Paul Haggis.” I had come to Los Angeles specifically to talk to him, at a time he had chosen. I wondered aloud if he had been told not to talk to me. He said no.

“Maybe Paul shouldn’t have posted the letter on the Internet,” Feshbach interjected. “There are all sorts of shoulda woulda coulda.” She said that she had just spoken to Mark Isham, the composer, whom I had interviewed. “He talked to you about what are supposed to be our confidential scriptures.” That I would ask about the church’s secret doctrines was offensive, she said. “It’s a two-way street happening,” she concluded.1

“Everything I have to say about Paul, I’ve already said,” Davis declared. He agreed to respond to fact-checking queries, however.