Scientology spies and other dirty laundry

Charlie Sheen is getting all the headlines, but it hasn't exactly been a great couple of weeks for the Church of Scientology, either.

First, if you have a couple hours to kill -- seriously, it's nearly 25,000 words long -- check out The New Yorker's profile on Hollywood screenwriter and Scientology defector Paul Haggis. Among the many accusations against the church in this article:

• Church officials ordered manual laborers to do several favors for Tom Cruise, including customizing his SUV, painting his luxury motorcycles and renovating his airport hangar. When one of these laborers escaped the church's California compound and fled to Texas, Scientology officials followed him.
• Current Scientology leader David Miscavige is prone to violent outbursts and has attacked church members on several occasions.
• Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard lied about his military service, and the church has forged documents to propagate his lies.

That's barely scraping the surface of what the article covers, but it's a good start. It's a fascinating portrayal of the organization's leadership.

And if that wasn't bad enough, today The New York Observer reports that the Church of Scientology may have used a Vanity Fair editor, John Connolly, to "infiltrate and gather intelligence on the cult's enemies in the media." This article says Connolly approached the author of a Tom Cruise biography, under the pretense of writing about his book for Vanity Fair, and then fed the author's info back to the church.

Connolly called the Scientology spy accusation "bullshit," but then he blamed the evidence behind it on either tapped phone lines or a forgery -- the same kind of implausible denials that church officials made throughout The New Yorker's story. Coincidence? Or toeing the party line?