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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, April 18, 1980
Page 3
Jerry Pacht, Deputy Attorney General Lawrence Tapper, Hillel and Rafael
Chodos, and ex-judge Steven Weisman. As Mr. Helge recently expressed it,
those letters carried "great power and great persuasion." Those few
letters were all it took for that station to forfeit its otherwise dili
gently guarded First Amendment rights. Last week it ran a five-minute
retraction--not once, but a minimum of 12 times during as many days!
Usually a retraction gets a few lines, but this one turned out to be four
double spaced-typed pages.
The station said that it had "investigated" the events discussed in the
one-hour documentary, reviewed documents, met with attorneys and so forth.
However, they never contacted Church attorneys to request factual backup.
Church attorneys in fact heard from another source about their intention
to retract and contacted them asking what backup they wanted. The
attorneys then forwarded the material to them with an invitation to re
quest additional backup if that was deemed not sufficient. No additional
request was ever received. After obviously coming far short of an objec
tive investigation, the station commenced to retract the essence of our
documentary and even apologized to the assorted State officials and
lawyers involved in the case. In so doing the station perpetuated some
of the most glaring misrepresentations of the facts which this Church's
representatives and attorneys have had to battle in the media as well
as in the courts!
Last week Mr. Ralph Helge did a hotline tape in which he gave an overview
of the legal situation. Then he also spoke to the Pasadena P.M. congrega
tion, Sabbath, April 12th. Following is the hotline tape and then a
synopsis of his remarks before the Pasadena congregation in rebuttal to
the grossly distorted and unfounded statements made by Channel 13.
Mr. Helge's Hotline Tape, April 9, 1980
I have a few minutes here to summarize what is unquestionably one of the
greatest state and church constitutional law cases in the history of the
nation. So I'm going to give you just a brief rundown of where the case
is at this time.
In the Superior Court of California, the court has continued to bar the
discovery (that is, prevent the discovery by the defendants--by the
Church) of the wrongdoing conducted by the State of California. We are
prevented, therefore, from exposing the political and judicial corruption
that has occurred in this case. Indeed, we may well be prevented from
ever finding out and disclosing to the public what actually has happened,
because by this time I feel assured that the evidence has either been so
altered or so suppressed, we will never really find out the true facts of
what went on behind the scenes other than that which we know of to this
date.
Now, the Attorney General has also attempted to hold Mr. Armstrong, Mr.
Rader, myself, and others in contempt of court for failing to abide by
certain court orders. But their thrust was so erroneous and so unfounded
and ungrounded that the court refused to grant it. The court even told
them during the hearing, 'go back and research it and then come back to
the court and see if you have grounds.' The Attorney General did come
back and admitted in his pleadings that he had no grounds to hold us in
contempt of court. The court then instructed the Attorney General again