CHURCH STATEMENT: In 1982, Klein had police protection provided to a number of individuals who came to Clearwater for an anti-Scientology rally intended to raise money in support of litigation against the Church, and even aided in the fundraising.

     DOCUMENTED FACTS:

City records revealed a memo from Chief Klein which “concerns tentative arrangements regarding the Scientology Victims’ Defense Fund Rally scheduled for ... May 22nd.” The “defense” fund he referenced was, in actual fact, well-known as a slush fund for bringing or supporting civil litigation against the Church.

     “The Program will start with an Invocation, followed by ... certain anti-Scientology speakers...”

     “25-30 people with clipboards... will actually go into the grandstands and do the solicitation of funds. ... We will need to be concerned with the security of the counting of the money and then to follow the transporter of the funds back to the bank.”

     Further records show that Calzone Pizza funds again supported the effort.

     CHURCH STATEMENT: Certain German officials have received aid from Clearwater police in their efforts to harass Scientologists.

     DOCUMENTED FACTS:

E-mail from Chief Klein shows him seeking to postpone the December 6 opening of the Pinellas Trail so that a half-dozen out-of-town anti-Scientologists could hold a “demonstration.” In that E-mail, he mentions that the New York Times had an article planned concerning “Germany and Clearwater.”

There are also the very revealing records of a September 1996 telephone conversations between Clearwater police intelligence officer and Klein loyal Tom Miller, and staff of the local Medical Examiner’s office. Those records show a police detective—and member of the “Calzone Pizza” operation—seeking information on an 11-year-old accidental death. Why? Because it involved a Scientologist and “the press in Germany” had telephoned the officer to advise that “this case may be a homicide.” The Medical Examiner’s office pulled the file and dismissed the suggestion as ludicrous.

In March 1997, Chief Klein went out of his way to aid a German government camera crew which was in town to “document” unspecified matters for a contemplated television show attacking Scientology. On the first day of filming in Clearwater, the television crew had a long meeting with senior police officials. When the German crew planned to visit Los Angeles, Chief Klein contacted his counterpart in the Los Angeles Police Department in an attempt to secure similar preferred treatment for them. The LAPD rebuffed that request, along with another subsequent request for “cooperation” made directly from the German station.

     REPEATING HISTORY

     In the space of a single year, the Times has wielded its pens and presses to generate more than 50 articles critical of the Church. At the same time, Klein and a handful of his lieutenants have made their ongoing intentions toward the Church and its parishioners brutally clear. Times executives and Sid Klein have never learned from their history and thus seem to have consigned themselves to a repetition of it.

     If this all comes as news to some readers, it is only because Church officials held our tongues in the hopes that a fair and straightforward investigation could be concluded undisrupted. Even in the face of incredible threats and corruption, we kept our peace.

     Not content with merely withholding and distorting the facts, the Times manufactured something else: the lie that the Church represented a “public attack” on Clearwater police officers generally. That “public attack” is one of the Times’ own manufacture. The Church has repeatedly stated that we get along with most officers of their Department, and we have made it well-known, in Freedom and elsewhere, when police officers have taken commendable action. The Church’s complaints are limited to Sid Klein, police PR flack George Wayne Shelor and a handful of intelligence slugs who have spent millions in taxpayer dollars dreaming up ways to harass and check the Church of Scientology and Scientologists.

     Throughout the 1980s, the St. Petersburg Times leaned on the Clearwater City Commission to pass “laws” against Scientology. The Church sued in Federal Court for civil rights violations. In 1993 the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, as upheld by the United States Supreme Court, issued a landmark opinion that found this campaign of “politically motivated... sectarian fervor” driven by the local presses was “patently offensive to the First Amendment.”

     Toward the end of that litigation, the Church sought to settle with the City for a nominal amount. The Times loudly opposed such and tried to bully the Commissioners into refusing to settle. That move wound up costing the City hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional legal fees, as well as an order to pay the Church’s litigation costs totalling over $600,000.

     Again, you needn’t take our word for any of what is said here. The documentation exists; it is voluminous; and it is in the possession of both the Times and Chief Klein. What’s more, when one speaks of officially sanctioned discrimination on the part of Clearwater officials, one is addressing an issue where the Church has already met its burden of proof and prevailed, as the lawbooks show. “Patently offensive” were the words chosen by the Court of Appeals in 1993... and they are unfortunately just as fitting today.

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