Times executive editor Paul Tash refused to accept this letter in any form, even as a paid advertisement. Click here to read this letter

     Roger Nind:

     In this instance you weave suspicious circumstances out of whole cloth by quoting a relative halfway around the world as saying, “I was suspicious about the accident,” and, “it’s odd that he would have stepped out in front of a car.”

     What the Times did not report is that an energetic and competent detective of the Clearwater Police department asked himself the same question five years ago contemporaneously with the accident and established the answer.

     The police report indicated Nind was struck by an 80-year-old man with poor eyesight who was looking directly into the sun and was completely blinded; and forensic evidence showed he never saw the pedestrian. As for Mr. Nind stepping out in front of a car, the Clearwater Police Officer took three witness accounts that Nind had looked the wrong way before stepping off the curb. The Officer astutely observed that the “wrong way” was in fact the “right way” in Mr. Nind’s native Australia, where the traffic travels in the opposite direction.

     To add insult to injury, the Times also reports that “Nind’s wallet, passport and about $1,000 in cash was never returned to the family.” What the Times fails to report is that there was contemporaneous correspondence from the Church evidencing that the Church immediately sent all of Nind’s possessions including his wallet, passport and cash to the hospital at which he was being treated.

     I could virtually go down the entire list of “suspicious” deaths that the Times used to assault the Church of Scientology in its front page article and similarly show the suspicion is created.

     It is macabre that Clearwater PD intelligence officers have been quoted in your pre-planned article to claim that they now will look more thoroughly into the deaths of Scientologists. After all, objective Clearwater police detectives have already investigated them and resolved them as outlined above. Apparently, Sid Klein is adopting even more Draconian policy with respect to Scientologists. It has gone beyond simply “harass them” to “harass them to the grave and beyond.”

     We have documents from a Clearwater PD intelligence division covert operation—code name “Calzone Pizza”—which indicate their tight coordination with the press, manipulating when stories will and will not appear. Indeed, their Public Relations Officer, George Wayne Shelor, was once a reporter at the Clearwater Sun and was the contact point for Sid Klein to control media stories. Undoubtedly, the same is occurring today and you won’t possibly deny it as you know it’s so. Sid Klein and his intelligence officers knew exactly when your article was going to appear and you timed it precisely to coordinate with their presentation to the State Attorney’s Office in the McPherson case. And not coincidentally, Shelor has been seen about town telling media representatives that the State Attorney’s Office needs to be more aggressive with Scientology. Beneath the dignity of Mr. Shelor? Hardly. Take a look at the 3 January, 1983 edition of the Beach Bee. Shelor is pictured in front of the Church of Scientology passing out anti-Scientology leaflets and is quoted, “We have to get the State’s Attorney off his duff.”

     In the more than 50 articles on the Lisa McPherson matter the Times has printed you have failed to mention that the case had been closed in mid-1996 by the actual investigating officer after spending months reviewing all matters and having free rein to interview whomever he wanted from the Church. And that it was only re-opened after German press started making phone calls to the Clearwater police alleging there were “mysterious” circumstances concerning the deaths of Scientologists. And a member of the “Calzone Pizza” operation started searching through the county morgue trying to find anything he could to smear the Church with. And yet, the records at the coroner’s office clearly showed that the staff of that office looked into these matters that the Times covered in its 7 December article and told the police in no uncertain terms that the deaths were accidental and did not even possibly involve foul play.

The Facts the St. Petersburg Times Propaganda Suppressed continued...

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