going-clear-scientology-hollywood-and-the-prison-of-belief-by-lawrence-wright-2

written, listing the acts for which one could be declared a Suppressive Person. Haggis
had stepped over the line on four of them.
“Tommy, you are absolutely right, I did all those things,” Haggis responded. “If you
want to call me that, that’s what I am.”
“We can still put this genie back in the bottle,” Tommy assured him, but it would
mean that Haggis would withdraw the letter and then resign quietly.
Although Haggis listened, he didn’t change his mind. It seemed to him that the
Scientology ocials became more “livid and irrational” the longer they talked. For
instance, Davis and the other church ocials insisted that Miscavige had not beaten his
employees; his accusers, they said, had committed the violence. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,”
Haggis responded, “okay, let’s say that’s true, Miscavige never touched anyone. I’m
sorry, but if someone in my organization were going around beating people, I’d know
about it! You think I’d put up with it? And I’m not that good a person.” Haggis noted
that if the rumors about Miscavige’s violent temper were true, it just proved that even
the greatest leaders are fallible. “Look at Martin Luther King, Jr.,” he said, referring to
one of his heroes. “If you look at his personal life, it’s been said he has a few problems
in that area.”
“How dare you compare Dave Miscavige with Martin Luther King!” one of the
officials shouted.
Haggis was aghast. “They thought that comparing Miscavige to Martin Luther King
was debasing his character,” he said. “If they were trying to convince me that
Scientology was not a cult, they did a very poor job of it.” 12
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 fty-ve
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!”
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.