Mike Rinder: I was in Scientology’s prison with Emily Armstrong’s mom

[Mike Rinder and Gail Armstrong]

As the Emily Armstrong story has caught fire with the news media, we have seen the question raised repeatedly: How much of a Scientologist is she?

The Dead Sara singer has joined Linkin Park’s lineup after the band made a return seven years after the death of Chester Bennington, and that announcement was met with an immediate backlash: Not only did Armstrong have a history as a Scientologist, but in 2020 she showed up to support Scientology celebrity Danny Masterson at his criminal arraignment, three years before Masterson was convicted and sentenced to 30 years to life in prison. On Friday, Armstrong put out a statement saying she regretted showing up to support Masterson that day, and that she never spoke to him again.

But that statement didn’t contain the word “Scientology.” What wasn’t she saying?

One of our readers pointed out that back in 2012, at the Village Voice we had assembled a list of Scientologists that Mike Rinder identified as prisoners in “The Hole,” the notorious prison that church leader David Miscavige had created to punish his own top lieutenants at Scientology’s secretive Int Base headquarters beginning in 2004, and one of the names on that list was Gail Armstrong.

As in Emily Armstrong’s mother.

Mike Rinder was a prisoner in The Hole a couple of different times in 2006 and 2007, and he tells us he included her on the list we compiled because Gail Armstrong was definitely a prisoner while he was confined there as well.

“Yes, Gail was in The Hole,” Mike says today.

“She had been a PR in OSA Int for many years. She was the PR Aide OSA Int for most of that time,” he adds. Translating the Scientology jargon, what he’s saying is that Gail Armstrong was in Scientology’s Sea Organization, the inner corps who all sign billion-year contracts and promise to come back, lifetime after lifetime. The Sea Org is a very hierarchical, paramilitary group with many internal divisions. One of these is the Office of Special Affairs: OSA is Scientology’s secret police and spy wing, and it’s also in charge of external affairs, including public relations. Gail, Mike is saying, was assigned to PR for OSA International, working on Scientology’s reputation.

“She was then brought to Int to work in the Int Management PR Office writing speeches for the International Events, with Karen Hollander and Diana Hubbard,” Mike adds.

“Int,” the international management base near Hemet, California, also known as Gold Base, was the pinnacle of Sea Org achievement, where Miscavige himself lived and worked in those days. Emily Armstrong’s mother, in other words, was brought to Scientology’s secret international compound in order to work directly with its ultimate leader, Miscavige, writing speeches for his big international events.

“Almost anyone who was in OSA International PR at one time or another were brought to Int to work on speechwriting. It was a revolving door of people in and out of favor depending on if Miscavige liked or didn’t like their most recent effort,” he says. “Eventually, as with anyone in Miscavige’s orbit, Gail fell out of favor and was confined to The Hole.”

Miscavige first created his bizarre office-prison in January 2004, having a couple dozen of his highest-ranking advisers locked up, accusing them of plotting against him. As their ranks swelled to more than a hundred, they were moved to a set of double-wide trailers on the compound. John Brousseau, who worked there at the time, told us that Miscavige had him put bars on the windows and doors to emphasize that the inhabitants were prisoners.

Essentially, they were locked in a business office and simply couldn’t leave. They had to sleep on floors or desks, they were fed slop from a bucket, and they were only let out for a brief time each morning to be marched to another area where they could take showers. To pass the time, they were forced to engage in “seances,” trying to wring confessions out of each other about what secret grudges they had against Miscavige.

This went on literally for years. Rinder was fortunate he was only in for a year or two, until Miscavige needed him to deal with a BBC documentary and its journalist, John Sweeney. In the documentary, you can see that Rinder is gaunt, having just been pulled out of the Hole where he was surviving on the slop they were being fed.

By the time the existence of The Hole finally became public knowledge in a 2009 investigative series by the Tampa Bay Times, some of the executives had been held as prisoners for five years.

During the time he spent in The Hole, Mike says, Gail Armstrong was also a prisoner.

“She was still there when I left. No idea of her fate after that,” he says.

Well, we can fill in some of that, at least.

Mike Rinder left Scientology in 2007, and in 2015, he appeared in Alex Gibney’s HBO documentary Going Clear with a number of other high-ranking Scientologists who had defected.

David Miscavige responded by attacking the documentary with full-page newspaper advertisements, slick websites accusing the former Scientologists of unethical behavior, and also posting videos featuring Sea Org executives denouncing Rinder as a lazy employee who often slept on the job.

One of the Scientology employees who appeared in those 2015 videos attacking Mike Rinder was his former fellow inmate, Gail Armstrong.

The videos are still posted at Scientology-owned websites that nearly ten years later preserve those attacks on Gibney, writer Lawrence Wright, Rinder, and the other participants in the movie.

Gail makes two statements about Rinder in the videos.

“He just kept getting demoted, demoted, because he didn't do anything. But he would still walk around as if he was somebody. But it was just an error, and that was just Mike.”

and

“He had perfected this technique of sitting in a corner and, you know, with his back to the rest of the room and he would look like he was just in the corner reading something, and you'd go around and he would be asleep.”

If you’ve read Mike’s book, A Billion Years: My Escape From a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology, you know that he grew up in Scientology and spent decades moving up the ranks to becoming one of the highest ranking individuals in the entire organization. So watching the church attack him after his escape as being lazy or sleeping on the job is just bizarre.

The Bunker: So Emily Armstrong is not only the daughter of Sea Org Scientologists, but her mother Gail was working directly with David Miscavige and even writing speeches for him?

Mike: Yes.

The Bunker: Wouldn’t that tend to explain why Emily is such a longtime and dedicated Scientologist, and why she would never betray Scientology or speak out against it?

Mike: More than likely. I suspect she does not want to get into Scientology as a subject for fear of alienating her family. She issued an apology of sorts about supporting Masterson, but won’t touch the Scientology aspect of things.

The Bunker: Someone said you had at one time described Gail as a “punching bag” for Dave. Can you explain that?

Mike: Everyone who worked on events for Miscavige was at one time or another (or all the time) a “punching bag” for Miscavige. They would be the target of his disdain or wrath depending on the latest speech submission. If he liked it, you would be held up as the example of a good Sea Org member, if he didn’t — and his like or dislike was completely whimsical — you suddenly became the scum of the earth that everyone should be piling onto as a “criminal” or “suppressive.”

The Bunker: What do you think the likelihood is that Emily herself knows that her mother spent time in The Hole?

Mike: Very unlikely, It was not something spoken about with anyone outside of those at the Int Base.

Well, that may be, and Emily Armstrong may not be aware that her mother spent literally years locked up in Miscavige’s bizarre hoosegow. (As the child of Sea Org parents, Emily would have been accustomed to not hearing from her mother or father for years at a time anyway.)

But even if she isn’t aware of her mother’s time as a concentration camp prisoner, there’s no excuse for Emily Armstrong not to know that her own mother was used in a harassment campaign against Mike Rinder: The videos are still up at Scientology’s websites.

Scientology’s celebrities are trained not to discuss what goes on in the church, and never to acknowledge the church’s well documented history of abusing its own members, and retaliating against people who have left.

But in this case, it’s Emily Armstrong’s own mother who is directly involved in that kind of activity. Is that really something she can refuse to discuss, or that Linkin Park can ignore?

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