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1980 Pulitzer series #8
St. Petersburg Times topped 'enemies' list
-- by Charles Stafford
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"Poynter is a millionaire: Does he have a butler, maid, cook, shofer
(sic), gardener, etc. Put an FSM onto one of these things and get the low
down on he and his wife."
That cryptic note, with no addressee or signature, was among the
thousands of Church of Scientology documents recently released in
connection with the trial of nine Scientologists in a federal court in
Washington.
Poynter? Nelson Poynter, late chairman of the board of The St.
Petersburg Times. FSM? Church lingo for a secret agent, a spy.
Obviously that note was just one small paragraph in a huge ongoing
program of the Guardian Office of the Church of Scientology to "handle" The
St. Petersburg Times, the organization it placed at the top of its enemies
list in the Clearwater area in the early days of 1976.
Times reporter Bette Orsini discovered that January that the new owner
of the Fort Harrison Hotel in Clearwater was the Church of Scientology of
California, and that United Churches of Florida, which had moved into the
hotel in December, was a Scientology front. The Times was preparing to
print her story when, on Jan. 28, Scientology announced it was the new
owner.
The Times came quickly to the attention of the guardians of the
publicity-shy church because of Mrs. Orsini's stories on Scientology's
background and the stories of reporters Susan Denley and Ardith Hilliard on
the developing controversy between the church and the citizenry of
Clearwater.
But the church already knew a great deal about The Times.
Two months earlier, on Nov. 18, 1975, a "missionaire" names Sandy
provided church officials with a six-page rundown on the history of The
Times and the backgrounds of its owner, Nelson Poynter, and executives.
The Guardian Office struck quickly with its standard plan for silencing
-- or attempting to silence -- newspapers that write about it. On Feb. 4,
Clearwater attorney Jack F. White Jr., representing the Church of
Scientology of California, sent a letter to The Times and Mrs. Orsini.
"Gentlemen," it began, "This is your notice under Chapter 770.01,
Florida Statutes, that our clients intend to institute action against you
for libel, including disparagement of title to real property and possibly
for invasion of privacy, for the following publication, which we consider
libelous." It cited two paragraphs of a story by Mrs. Orsini in which she
described the workings of an E-meter, a device used by the church in
auditing.
The letter was a threat of suit; no suit was filed.
Documents released by the federal court in Washington show that on Feb.
11 -- one week after that threat was made -- Duke Snider, deputy deputy
guardian U.S., wrote Henning Heldt, deputy guardian U.S., that he had come
up with an excellent defence should anyone accuse the church of trying to
silence The Times.
"There are 3 papers here, the CW Sun, St. Pete Times, Tampa Tribune,"
he said. "The CW Sun and St. Pete Times printed the most stuff. Tampa ran
a lesser amount but still some entheta (translation: unfavorable
publicity).
"When we sent out the letters threatening libel we did not have time to
get around to the Tribune, they had printed less, but still some entheta
and we wanted to go over their articles more carefully."
Just that day, he said, his office was preparing to send a letter to
the Tribune threatening a suit, but then his plan came to mind.
"So with the Tribune (Tampa)," Snider said, "we do not threaten any
action but just let PR (public relations) handle. As a defence we then
point to them and say 'We didn't threaten them or try to shut them up, it's
just those who are completely unreasonable or unfair and despite all our
best efforts will not stop printing falsehoods that require us to take
recourse to legal action'."
On Feb. 12, The St. Petersburg Times and reporters Orsini, Denley and
Hilliard filed a lawsuit in Pinellas County Circuit Court charging that the
Church of Scientology of California, United Churches of Florida, L. Ron
Hubbard, founder of Scientology, and Sorel Allen, United Churches'
membership director, "have conspired ... to harass, intimidate, frighten,
prosecute, slander, defame" Times employees. It asked the court to enjoin
them from further harassment.
The suit did not faze the Guardian Office. It accelerated its plans for
The Times.
In his weekly report of Feb. 19, Joe, the acting guardian for
information at Flag -- the church headquarters in the Fort Harrison -- said
an agent of the church had applied for employment at The Times. (A month
later, a letter to Snider from Dick Weigand showed the priority the church
was placing in its operations against The Times. Weigand's letter said that
Snider "asked for a chart of enemy lines used up to this point for CW
attack after research of the files was done ... from this I see the areas
of priority to infiltrate are 1. SPT (translation: St. Petersburg Times),
2. Mayor, 3. Channel 13 TV, 4. Snyder (meaning radio broadcaster Robert
Snyder), 5. Florida Attorney General and 6. Florida State Attorney
(Russell).")
Joe also said he was trying to get information from the law firm
representing The Times.
"We have located a potential FSM (covert agent) who meets the
qualifications to be a legal secretary and we will be checking her out for
possible placement," he said.
There was fear that Hubbard would be served with a subpoena in The
Times' suit, but that had been handled, Joe said. "The defendant of the
suit is no longer in the area to get served along with Sorel Allen, who
left as well."
The Guardians were successful in getting confidential information from
the files of Baynard, McLeod, Lang and Ballard, the law firm representing
The Times. It was never established whether the information was obtained by
a Scientologist employed by the firm or by burglary.
On March 7, Tom Ritchie, the collections officer for Flag, circulated
to other church offices a 13-page "raw data report" on the contents of The
Times' file at the law firm.
The report began: "William Ballard of Baynard, McLeod, Lang & Ballard,
the attorneys for the St. Pete Times, is working off the following data in
their case against us." The report cited articles about Scientology that
The Times had collected, memoranda of Times' reporters and editors,
memoranda on reporters' interviews, letters from Ballard to John M. Bray of
the Washington law firm representing The Times, and so on.
One citation was prophetic. It concerned an Orsini memorandum on an
interview with Paulette Cooper who wrote a book about Scientology and was
given full enemy treatment by the church. Among the portions of the Orsini
memorandum quoted in the "raw data report" was this: "She warned me that
the Scientologists send anonymous smear letters."
One day later, Ritchie was reporting on "Bette Orsini Notes to Bill
Ballard," a lengthy distillation of a series of memoranda from the reporter
to the attorney for use in connection with The Times lawsuit.
In Washington, Scientology agents ransacked The Times' file in the law
firm of Arent Fox Kinter Plotkin & Kahn. According to a government
document, "At least three burglaries were committed during the early months
of 1976" at the law office. "These burglaries and thefts of documents were
carried out pursuant to the orders of defendant Mitchell Hermann. In
February 1976 two entries were made into the office of Jack Bray and his
secretary at the above-mentioned law firm, the first one by Richard Kimmel,
the acting assistant guardian for information in the District of Columbia,
and the second one by Kimmel and Michael Meisner." On each occasion,
according to the document, papers relating to The Times lawsuit against the
Scientologists were taken.
The March 11 weekly report of the D.C. information office stated:
"Information was obtained from the DC law firm representing the Times
Publishing Company. This information included a 60-page timetrack of
activities by Bette Orsini, the entheta (translation: giving the church bad
publicity) writer with The Times; data indicating that the suit was quickly
filed at the behest of Nelson Poynter to 'gain the initiative'; information
about Orsini's sources including Paulette Cooper, the Liebermans (connected
with the psychological kidnapping scene), AMA, FDA, etc. ..."
The same report said that additional data collection on Nelson Poynter
had been carried out in D.C.
From their research, the guardians knew that Times President Gene
Patterson was second in command and would likely succeed Poynter as chief
executive officer of the firm. Guardian Randy Windment proposed to cause a
split in the top management of The Times by discrediting Patterson with
Poynter. He called his proposal Operation Fickle.
The complex plan called for a woman, posing as a relative gathering
information for a political science student, to call Mrs. Patterson and
tape an interview with her. The questions would be cleverly phrased so the
answers could be made to appear critical of Poynter's management of The
Times. The interview would be leaked to "an enemy paper."
"If the OP went down perfectly as planned," Windment said, "it would
cause both Patterson and Poynter to be the laughing stocks of the newspaper
world."
But Windment's superior, G.W., refused to approve it. "I'm not at all
certain this OP, even if done all the way through without bugs, would have
enough of an affect (sic) to make it worth the resources expended," he
said. "... Would anyone really be interested in such a story -- and if so
I think that media person would check directly with Mrs. Patterson to
discuss the 'controversy' at which point Mrs. Patterson would deny that she
meant such and such ..."
In the April edition of FREEDOM, the newspaper of Scientology, "A
Freedom Special Report" stated that Poynter "was allegedly an employee of
the Central Intelligence Agency." There were accompanying photographs of
security equipment at The Times and a caption that said "extensive security
measures suggest something more high-powered than routine newspaper
functions."
The August/September edition of FREEDOM said The Times was included on
a list of organizations connected with the CIA by "a West Coast
publication, the News Novel."
Patterson sent a copy of the FREEDOM article to George Bush, then
director of the CIA. Bush replied that the charge that Poynter worked for
his agency was false.
"I would be remiss if I didn't make one additional comment, which is
totally unrelated to Mr. Poynter," Bush said. "I think it is a sorry state
of affairs when a person can be 'smeared' by an allegation that he worked
for the CIA. I recognize the sensitivity between journalists and CIA, and
indeed we have taken steps here to make things better; but I still come
back to the fact that it is a shame when the climate is such that
cooperating with the CIA in some way leaves one open to a 'smear' attack."
During World War II Poynter served as a deputy to Gen. William "Wild
Bill" Donovan, head of the Office of Strategic Services. In this capacity
he helped to activate the U.S. information agency that founded the Voice of
America.
Early in 1977, The Times dropped its suit against the church. The
company announced it was doing so rather than present evidence that could
have harmed an innocent third party.
Paulette Cooper had been right in her warning to Bette Orsini. The
church had used an anonymous smear letter to hit reporter Orsini from the
blind side.
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