The Underground Bunker has learned that the initial episode of ‘Scientology Black Ops,’ a special 7NEWS Australia investigation that was cancelled by the network in July, has been leaked to the Internet.
We had time to watch the episode and prepare a transcript of it, and we’re posting the video as an embed for you to see here.
Ten episodes were scheduled to be published to the 7NEWS website on July 14 when the network changed its mind, cancelled the program, and also pulled down a trailer it had made for the series.
The network put out a cryptic statement about why it had pulled the show, and we reported that two of the participants in the program, Leah Remini and Mike Rinder, believed the show had been axed as the result of pressure from two of the people portrayed in it, Scientology actor Tom Cruise and former Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis.
Remini and Rinder surmised that Cruise and Davis had used the influence of their friend billionaire Australian businessman James Packer, who has a close relationship with Kerry Stokes, chairman of Seven West Media, which owns the network.
(We were interviewed for the series by 7NEWS reporter Bryan Seymour in December, but we do not appear in the episode we found online and embedded below.)
This episode focuses on Paul Haggis, the Oscar-winning writer and director as well as Scientology defector and chief subject of the 2015 HBO movie Going Clear, who has not given a public interview in a couple of years. In that time, he’s faced allegations of rape by publicist Haleigh Breest, who says that Haggis sexually assaulted her in 2013 at his Soho apartment after a film screening. Haggis says that the 2013 encounter was consensual.
In the episode Seymour reminds us that when Haggis was featured in a 2011 New Yorker article about leaving Scientology, he predicted that within a couple of years he would be the subject of a scandal that would appear to have no connection to Scientology. Breest, the law firm representing her, and three additional women who came forward to accuse Haggis after Breest’s lawsuit became public have all denied having any connection to the church.
Seymour goes through Haggis’s rise in Hollywood and his defection from Scientology, and ends the episode with Haggis saying that once a person gets on Scientology’s enemies list, they never leave it. Leah Remini then makes a brief appearance to set up a second installment of the program.
Here’s the video, and then a transcript of the show.
[UPDATE: After a request from attorneys representing Seven News, we have removed the embed links to the leaked ‘Scientology Black Ops’ episodes. See our reasons why in this story.]
Bryan Seymour: Heading to Sydney Airport to jump on a plane to go to the United States to do another story on Scientology. I never imagined I’d be doing stories on this group 13 years after the first one. But then I never imagined what I’d discover about this group, and just the lives they’ve destroyed. And that they’re still destroying today — that’s why I’m doing this. Someone said to me, when are you going to stop obsessing or doing stories on Scientology and I said, ‘You know what? I’ll stop when they stop abusing people.’ I hope this is, if not the last story I do on them, the one that triggers the end of this group.
[Intro graphics. Tom Cruise can be heard at the 2004 IAS event saying, ‘I think you know that I am there for you. So what do you say, are we going to clean this place up?’]
Episode title: ‘Leaving’
Paul Haggis: I’m Paul Haggis. I’m a writer-director. I was in the Church of Scientology for over 30 years. I wanted to be a filmmaker. I had no chance of becoming one. So I was writing and directing really bad plays, locally. Around the same time, someone told me, a friend, said, yeah there’s this cult in New York, they said. And if you give them all your money, they will make anything possible in your life. And I went, ‘Take me there.’ And I said, I’m in love with this woman and we can’t seem to get along. And they said, we can help you with that. I said, really? Yes. And so I ran home and got her, brought her back, and we started a course, the Communication Course, for fifty dollars each. And, it worked. It was great. We got along better, I ended up marrying her. It was terrific. So, that’s how they get you in. It works, you know? At least in the beginnings.
Seymour: Haggis worked on ‘Scooby Doo’ cartoons, sold a TV pilot to Canadian television, and eventually worked on hit shows like ‘The Facts of Life’ and ‘Due South.’ As the new milennium arrived his film career took off. He wrote ‘Million Dollar Baby,’ which won Oscars for Best Picture, director Clint Eastwood, and best actor nods for Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman.
Jack Nicholson: And the Oscar goes to… ‘Crash.’
eymour: Then he reached the pinnacle. Awarded Oscars for best film and best screenplay for his movie examining racism, ‘Crash.’ [To Haggis] Was that like a boyhood dream?
Haggis: Well I think any kid who wants to be in films, you know, thinks they’d like to get an Oscar, but it was really, it was beyond my dream. I just really wanted to make movies.
Seymour: Haggis won a new legion of fans in 2006 when he took on the task of script doctor for the reboot of cinema’s most famous hero, James Bond, in ‘Casino Royale.’ He also wrote the next Bond film, ‘Quantum of Solace,’ and a host of others, including ‘Flags of Our Fathers’ and the Russell Crowe feature, ‘The Next Three Days,’ which he also directed.
Haggis: [At Writers Guild Awards] I am so grateful for this and thankful for your support, thank you very much.
Seymour: While his professional life was on the march, Haggis was falling out of step with Scientology. He was working then for Tom Cruise, writing for his production company.
Haggis: I was developing ‘The Ranger’s Apprentice,’ which I thought was good, and I really liked Tom, I thought he was a really wonderful actor. Still do. And so we met, and he seemed to be interested in playing the lead in it. And how do I turn down Tom Cruise? He’s my boss. He’s a movie star. And I think he’s great for the role. Except the movie is set in medieval England and I went, Tom Cruise is an icon. He puts on an accent, I’ll bet he can do it really well, I bet he can do a great English accent. He does, and people are going to go, why is Tom Cruise talking so funny? So I’m not going to offer it to him because I think it’s a mistake for his career and a mistake for the film. So, that was the beginning of the end, I think. And then, right about that time, was when I started asking serious questions. That’s when Prop 8 was in California…
Seymour: Proposition 8 opposed same-sex marriage in California. Scientology supported the homophobic law, so Haggis complained to the public face of Scientology, Tommy Davis.
See full transcript at link above