Your transparent attempt to intimidate the State Attorney is probably evident to one and all who read your editorial. However, they should know the above information to realize just how disingenuous your efforts are.On the same day your demand-for-lynching editorial ran, you ran yet another baseless claim that the statements the Church has made about Sid Klein are “unfounded.” Yet your reporter was in possession of an actual document that supported the very claims we were making proving Chief Klein’s animus and discrimination against Scientologists. You did not print that document. And you cannot explain you did not have it. We only received the document through the public records act after it had been provided to the St. Petersburg Times by the Clearwater PD years ago.
The pattern that is being repeated is not one of the Church intimidating the city—it is of the city intimidating the Church based on illegal and unconstitutional motives of a bigoted few within the Clearwater Police department. The readers of the St. Petersburg Times are not being told by you that all of the hate you spread throughout the early 1980s concerning the efforts of the Clearwater city officials to pass an Ordinance to check and destroy Scientology was ruled to be integral to an activist that was unconstitutional, patently offensive to the First Amendment, and evidencing animus against the religion of Scientology.
Yet you continue that pattern unabated. You repeat, constantly, the false and outrageous allegation that Lisa McPherson was not given food or water or was in a coma. All of those are lies. You repeat them continuously.
How about tagging every article with the ruling from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals that found the bad media, most notably the Times, fueled the flames of a “fervor” of prejudice in Clearwater? You haven’t done so because you supported that illegal Ordinance all the way to the Supreme Court, urging the City Commission to keep fighting and costing taxpayers’ funds. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals did not even find it to be a close call—the actions you supported were illegal.
If you couldn’t see straight on unconstitutional actions being taken against the church that were offensive to the First Amendment, it is highly unlikely you can yourself see how tainted the actions taken today are.
When one then considers the intelligence files of the Clearwater PD, the launching of funds to attack Scientology through a “Calzone Pizza” account, the support and protection of anyone attempting to destroy the Church, be they wife beaters, child molesters or an individual whose stated intentions include slicing up his daughter-in-law and throwing the pieces to the coyotes in the desert, it just could be that you are yourselves culpable.
While we respect and agree with freedom of speech, it is highly unlikely that that applies to a corporate board conspiring to illegally destroy a recognized religion. The repetitive vile coverage in the St. Petersburg Times evidences animus and if that animus is the policy of the St. Petersburg Times, then it is highly unlikely that it is not in violation of law and is far from freedom of the press. One may not use a non-profit corporate position to forward his own agenda, especially when it is politically motivated. When the St. Petersburg Times is owned by a non-profit organization, yet having intermingled board of directors and chairmen, the matter is of serious significance. This, we understand, has already been the subject of IRS investigations and aside from violation of laws concerning non-profit tax exempt organizations, may actually be obstruction of justice especially if based on an internal executive policy which your continuing coverage obviously is. There is no evidence independent reporters are picking up leads and proposing stories. After all, you brought a reporter all the way from Tallahassee to do this latest bidding of the Clearwater Police Intelligence division.
You are on notice. Please print the above to mitigate the harm you have caused. If you do not have the humility or objectivity to do so, please inform me of the cost of printing time as an advertorial in your paper.
Yours truly,
Brian Anderson
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