Great article by the Village Voice on Debbie Cook. It talks about the message she sent out and her long and distinguished history in Scientology.

Most of the press reporting on Debbie Cook so far has focused on her past as a high-ranking executive in the Church of Scientology and hersudden transformation this week into a whistleblower trying to rally her fellow church members against the management of Scientology leader David Miscavige.

There is also a write up on “The Hole”. A freaky punishment facility for people who upset David Miscavige.

“When Miscavige had gotten rid of everyone around him who were his trusted lieutenants — they all ended up in The Hole — he then hand-selected Debbie to be his go-to person. He brought her to Int base, and he told her that she had to now reform the international Scientology structure,” Rinder says, referring to an episode in recent Scientology history that has been documented in detail in books like Janet Reitman’s Inside Scientology and Marc Headley’s Blown for Good, and at the St. Petersburg Times. By 2006, so many of Scientology’s high-level executives had been sent by Miscavige to “The Hole” at Int base — a double-wide trailer at the secretive desert base that had become a kind of gulag for executives out of favor — there was almost no one left to run things at the highest levels.

That’s the environment Cook found herself in late that year as she carried out a direction from Miscavige. She directed the various members of the The Hole to march down to the lake on the compound on a chilly October or November day.

One person who did that march was Mike Rinder. He remembers very well jumping into the cold water on Cook’s order.

“I was in The Hole for two years,” Rinder says.

Please read the rest of the article at the Village Voice.

Be Sociable, Share!

•