The email from Debbie Cook added a lot of fuel to that fire.

Voice editor-in-chief Tony Ortega has annotated the text of Cook's lengthy missive, explaining how she tried to appeal to fellow believers in the organization's teachings even as she condemned the focus on raising funds aggressively from members, and the construction of lavish new buildings around the country, apparently to please Miscavige, the group's leader, who is portrayed as a malevolent, physically abusive, and mercurial presence by critics and pieces like Wright's.

The church leaders have built up $1 billion in cash reserves, Cook says, and have not paid that back out to members, as seemingly dictated by the writings of Hubbard. That figure has been "one of the most-talked about things in her e-mail," Ortega writes. "Can Scientology really have so much at its disposal?"

Just a little more than a month ago, the St. Petersburg Times (now Tampa Bay Times) published its latest blockbuster expose of the church, focusing on how much Scientology has become about fundraising. Journalists Joe Childs and Tom Tobin provided these eye-opening numbers: "Scientology rings up astonishing sums: $100 million a year just from services sold in Clearwater, a minimum of $250 million since 2006 for the International Association of Scientologists, tens of millions for new church buildings called Ideal Orgs, and untold millions more from selling new volumes of church scripture." Our own sources suggest that the St. Pete Times may actually have been conservative in its estimates. Revenue for services at Flag over the last six years has averaged $138 million a year, we're told, and The Basics -- a republication of key Hubbard books which was launched in 2007 -- has brought in hundreds of millions more.

The email also contains an ironic reference to Cook's own time in one of the detention centers used for executives who have angered Miscavige. (The church, in response to Haggis' piece and others, dismissed the reports of Scientology defectors about beatings and verbal abuse in those detention centers as fabrications.)

From Cook's email, in which she refers to other church officials who have seemingly disappeared:

Well, after that I got to spend some quality time with Heber, Ray Mithoff, Norman Starkey, Guillaume, as well as the entirety of International Management at the time, who were all off post and doing very long and harsh ethics programs. These have gone on for years and to the only result of that they are still off post. There is no denying that these top executives have all gradually disappeared from the scene. You don't see them at the big events anymore or on the ship at Maiden Voyage.

Cook is being "extremely cheeky," Ortega writes. The Voice reported this week that Cook was sent to "The Hole" in 2007, and underwent a grueling hazing process in which she was ordered to confess to "homosexual tendencies" and slapped across the face.