going-clear-scientology-hollywood-and-the-prison-of-belief-by-lawrence-wright-2

David Miscavige speaking at the inauguration of the Church of Scientology in Madrid, 2004
Miscavige was also well schooled in intrigue. Although he was still quite a young man,
he had been running operations for Hubbard for several years, with brutal eciency. In
order to eliminate Hubbard’s designated successors, however, Miscavige needed a
lieutenant with similar qualities of remorselessness and total commitment.
MARK RATHBUN CAME FROM a distinguished but deeply troubled family. His father was a
graduate of the US Naval Academy. His artistic mother was the daughter of Haddon
Sundblom, the illustrator who created some of the most enduring images in American
commercial history—Aunt Jemima, the Quaker Oats man, and the famous Santa Claus
drinking a Coca-Cola beside the Christmas tree. The Rathbun family lived in Marin
County, a Bohemian enclave just north of San Francisco. When Mark was a young child,
his mother had a series of nervous breakdowns. On ve or six occasions she received
what was the standard treatment of the day, electroshock therapy. In September 1962,
when Mark was five, his mother’s body was found floating in San Francisco Bay. Her car
was parked on the Golden Gate Bridge.
Mark turned into a restless young man. He went to college to study creative writing
but dropped out in order to experience the real world. In 1976 he was living in a camp
of migrant workers, hoping to become the next Jack London, when he learned that his