What led Crash director Paul Haggis to leave the church after 35 years? Kim Masters reports on how Scientology aided his career—and then tried to milk his success. Maybe Church of Scientology leader David Miscavige had a premonition. Or maybe he’s not much of a talent spotter. But a few years back, Miscavige apparently wasn’t keen on using writer-director Paul Haggis for a series of films based on treatments by the late Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. This was before Haggis, ...

Marty Rathbun said he participated in a criminal act to protect the church against a possible security breach. Longtime executive Terri Gamboa and her husband, Fernando, abandoned their posts in January 1990, setting off what Rathbun called a "seven-alert fire.'' Terri Gamboa was executive director of Author Services Inc., the independent corporation set up by founder L. Ron Hubbard to control rights to his intellectual properties. David Miscavige, the leader of the church, wanted to know if she had access to ...

Pat Broeker could say what no one else in Scientology could: He outranked David Miscavige. But he left the church in 1989 and started a new life in Colorado. Still, Miscavige worried about him. "He (Miscavige) came directly to me," Marty Rathbun recalled. "He said, 'Marty, you get on this guy. I want to know every move he makes.' " Broeker and his wife, Annie, assisted Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard in the months before he died in 1986. Hubbard bestowed ...

Robert S. Minton seemed to surface out of nowhere in late 1997. • A retired investment banker and millionaire from New England, he began to show up at anti-Scientology demonstrations in Boston and Clearwater. He gave millions to groups critical of the church. • He became the money man behind a wrongful death lawsuit by the family of Lisa McPherson, whose unexplained death at Scientology's Clearwater mecca threw the church into crisis. • Minton quickly became the Church of Scientology's No. ...

The church said its leader, David Miscavige, and other church officials did not hire private investigators, church attorneys did. The church directs that its attorneys and their agents follow all laws and regulations and adhere to the highest ethical standards. "If Rathbun and Rinder used PIs to 'abuse poor innocent people,' they are the only ones to blame," spokesman Tommy Davis said. The Times submitted written questions to the church about David Lubow and Ferris Khan's involvement with former church staff ...

They squeezed into a two bedroom apartment, all they could afford. Two couples and a single guy had left the Church of Scientology and joined up in Las Vegas, starting a mortgage business near the Palace Station Casino. They were faces in the crowd. Except that the two wives were important in Scientology history, sisters Terri and Janis Gillham. They were two of the original four "messengers" for L. Ron Hubbard. The founder ran his church from his ship, the Apollo, ...

Five years after Tom Cruise called Nicolas Sarkozy a “wonderful guy,” a French court convicted his church of fraud. Eric Pape on Scientology’s latest crisis. Scientology isn’t a religion, it’s a dangerous sect overseen by convicted criminals—at least as far as France is concerned. There is no doubt that the last week has brought a flurry of bad news for Scientology. There was the vocal defection of respected film director Paul Haggis, as well as fresh indications that John Travolta, one ...

Sixteen years later, Betsy Perkins is sobbing as she talks about the day she ran away from Scientology. "I thought I was handing in my ticket to eternity," she says. Now 56, a graphic artist in Dallas, she says she is going public to offer her own "first-hand account of what happened to a person who was in there." She spent 17 years in Scientology's work force, the Sea Org, moved by the church's mantra that Scientologists held the future of ...

The Church of Scientology is going through a difficult season. Over the course of two days last week, a French court convicted the church of fraud and Oscar-winning filmmaker Paul Haggis' resignation from the church over a litany of concerns was aired publicly. On one hand, it was just another bad press week for the embattled institution founded in 1953 by the late science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. But for former Scientologists and scholars of the movement, the setbacks pose ...

[Picture / Caption: Responding to written questions, church spokesman Tommy Davis sent a binder addressing issues with individual sources.] The church said the Times is relying on sources who, before they left Scientology, admitted in sworn declarations, affidavits and confessions that all responsibility was theirs and they held the church blameless. For every person but one (Sinar Parman), Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis provided documents from church files, including confessions, ethics orders and Suppressive Person declarations. SINAR PARMAN AND JACKIE WOLFF ====FROM ...

[Picture / Caption: The green volumes: L. Ron Hubbard’s writings on administration of the church are in books referred to as the green volumes. He detailed Scientology religious practices in the red volumes.] LEAVING AND LEAVES In the mid 1970s, L. Ron Hubbard ran his church from aboard his ship, the Apollo, sailing from port to port. He handwrote his notes, in red ink for a bulletin, in green ink for a policy letter. He said two things about those who ...