Karen#1
Well-known member
TONY ORTEGA
Excerpt:
[Jenna Elfman at the 2003 Hollywood Celebrity Centre gala. And who’s that behind her?]
One of the things we most appreciated about first getting to know Mike Rinder in 2011 is that he helped us understand exactly what it was like to be a prisoner in David Miscavige’s notorious gulag for his own executives, “The Hole.”
First exposed by the Tampa Bay Times in its monumental 2009 series, “The Truth Rundown,” descriptions of The Hole clued the public into just how sadistic Scientology’s ruthless leader is. In early 2004 Miscavige created the prison by locking a couple of dozen of his trusted aides in a double-wide trailer on the Int Base in San Jacinto, California that had previously served as some offices.
In his increasing paranoia, Miscavige simply locked up some of his loyal lieutenants in an office and kept them there. For years.
Rinder was sent there to be a prisoner in 2006, and over a few different stays ended up spending about two years in the Hole, he told us. And thanks to his eventually getting out of Scientology entirely, he was able to help us, with Amy Scobee’s help, put together a comprehensive list of all the prisoners in the Hole, which we published at the Village Voice in 2012.
After the Tampa Bay Times exposed The Hole’s existence in 2009, Miscavige made changes so that, if the FBI came knocking (and it just about did that year), his prison wouldn’t be such an obvious concentration camp.
When Valerie Haney left the base in 2016, The Hole still existed, she told us, but in a different form. The prisoners were still segregated from the general population at Int Base, but they could at least go home to an apartment to spend the night.
So, although the severe depravations of the Hole may have been attenuated, we still haven’t heard a word, nearly 20 years later now, about some of the people that Miscavige turned into prisoners.
And, the US government, except for that FBI interest in 2009-2010, just hasn’t seemed to care.
So it came as a surprise that someone, at least, is making a very concerted effort to find out what Scientology is doing with one of its original Hole inhabitants.
Some journalists in Austria in the spring began sending repeated requests for information to Scientology officials and to Austrian government agencies, asking why they couldn’t get some word, any word at all, about what had happened to an Austrian-born Scientology executive named Kurt Weiland.
At one time, Weiland was a very big figure in Scientology. You can still find descriptions of his rise to prominence on some of Scientology’s own outdated, defunct websites.
READ MORE
tonyortega.substack.com
Excerpt:
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One of the things we most appreciated about first getting to know Mike Rinder in 2011 is that he helped us understand exactly what it was like to be a prisoner in David Miscavige’s notorious gulag for his own executives, “The Hole.”
First exposed by the Tampa Bay Times in its monumental 2009 series, “The Truth Rundown,” descriptions of The Hole clued the public into just how sadistic Scientology’s ruthless leader is. In early 2004 Miscavige created the prison by locking a couple of dozen of his trusted aides in a double-wide trailer on the Int Base in San Jacinto, California that had previously served as some offices.
In his increasing paranoia, Miscavige simply locked up some of his loyal lieutenants in an office and kept them there. For years.
Rinder was sent there to be a prisoner in 2006, and over a few different stays ended up spending about two years in the Hole, he told us. And thanks to his eventually getting out of Scientology entirely, he was able to help us, with Amy Scobee’s help, put together a comprehensive list of all the prisoners in the Hole, which we published at the Village Voice in 2012.
After the Tampa Bay Times exposed The Hole’s existence in 2009, Miscavige made changes so that, if the FBI came knocking (and it just about did that year), his prison wouldn’t be such an obvious concentration camp.
When Valerie Haney left the base in 2016, The Hole still existed, she told us, but in a different form. The prisoners were still segregated from the general population at Int Base, but they could at least go home to an apartment to spend the night.
So, although the severe depravations of the Hole may have been attenuated, we still haven’t heard a word, nearly 20 years later now, about some of the people that Miscavige turned into prisoners.
And, the US government, except for that FBI interest in 2009-2010, just hasn’t seemed to care.
So it came as a surprise that someone, at least, is making a very concerted effort to find out what Scientology is doing with one of its original Hole inhabitants.
Some journalists in Austria in the spring began sending repeated requests for information to Scientology officials and to Austrian government agencies, asking why they couldn’t get some word, any word at all, about what had happened to an Austrian-born Scientology executive named Kurt Weiland.
At one time, Weiland was a very big figure in Scientology. You can still find descriptions of his rise to prominence on some of Scientology’s own outdated, defunct websites.
READ MORE
Former top Scientology executive who vanished in 2004 subject of new international search
One of the things we most appreciated about first getting to know Mike Rinder in 2011 is that he helped us understand exactly what it was like to be a prisoner in David Miscavige’s notorious gulag for his own executives, “The Hole.”
tonyortega.substack.com
