Terry Smiljanich | |
|---|---|
 Terry Smiljanich in 2008 | |
| Counsel to the United States Senate | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | March 1, 1947 Tampa, Florida |
| Spouse | Dorothy Weik |
| Profession | Lawyer, writer |
Terry Alan Smiljanich (born March 1, 1947) is a retired American lawyer who acted as counsel to the United States Senate during the congressional hearings on the Iran-Contra affair. In 1983 Smiljanich co-founded the law firm Blasingame, Forizs & Smiljanich.
Smiljanich was born in Tampa, Florida in 1947 to Peter and Olga Smiljanich. [1] His father was in the Air Force and the family traveled extensively, with stays in Japan, Mississippi, Florida and Texas. [2] He attended Alamo Heights High School, Randolph High School on Randolph Air Force Base in Texas, and graduated in 1965 from Thomas Jefferson High School in Tampa, Florida.
Smiljanich attended the University of Florida, where he met his wife Dorothy Weik in 1967 (they married in 1969). He graduated in 1969 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English, and attended the University of Florida College of Law, serving as editor of the University of Florida Law Review [3] and graduating in 1972. [4]
Smiljanich served as a law clerk to United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida Judge Ben Krentzman [5] in Tampa from 1972 to 1974. He was Assistant United States Attorney for the Middle District of Florida from 1974 [6] to 1977. [7] While serving as a federal prosecutor, he handled organized crime cases, kidnappings, bank robberies, and environmental crimes, among other prosecutions. He won convictions of several organized crime figures. [4] Smiljanich served in the United States Army Reserve from 1972 to 1981, and became a captain. [2]
Smiljanich acted as counsel to the United States Senate during the congressional hearings on the Iran-Contra affair. [8] His responsibilities included investigations of State Department and White House personnel involved in the political scandal. [9] He conducted the public interrogation of former United States Secretary of the Treasury and Chief of Staff Donald Regan during the televised hearings. [10] [11]
In 1983 Smiljanich co-founded the law firm Blasingame, Forizs & Smiljanich. [12] He was a partner there until 1997 when the firm merged with James, Hoyer & Newcomer [12] [13] the firm became James, Hoyer, Newcomer & Smiljanich, P.A. where he was a senior partner. [14] [15] [16] As a lawyer he has been critical of mortgage banks [17] and the practices in the private mortgage insurance business estimating that over one million homeowners in the U.S. were victims of the industry's failure to warn them about credit report issues that could raise premiums to over $700 a month on a $200,000 loan. [18] [19] He is the founder and managing editor of the Consumer Warning Network writing extensively for that organization. [20] [21] In his capacity at the Network he has been interviewed on local and national news programs and appeared in videos produced by the organization on a variety of topics including the foreclosure crisis, consumer scams and homeopathy. [22]
With Charles Wachter he authored a book for lawyers on class action suits in Florida. [23]
I say before you believe in something, you should require some credible evidence.
— Terry Smiljanich
He was a founding member and from 1989 to 2015 served as Chairman [24] (now "Chairman Emeritus") [25] of the Tampa Bay Skeptics, [26] [27] a scientific skeptic non-profit organization (affiliated with the Center for Inquiry) that Smiljanich says is "devoted to critical examination of paranormal and fringe-science claims". [28] He described the goals of the organization "to counteract some of the kooks out there" and "attempt to impose some rationality in the world." [29]
In a 1990 letter to the editor he chided the St. Petersburg Times for a credulous review of a book on UFOs saying such content may boost circulation, "but do little to encourage proper skepticism in a country quickly slipping into scientific illiteracy." [30] In another letter to the editor of the paper, in 1993, he called astrology and creationism pseudosciences whose claims should be subject to scientific analysis, going on to say, "The fact that they have failed miserably in that regard allows scientists to throw them into the garbage heap along with flat earths, mind reading, and fortune telling." [31] In a 2008 St. Petersburg Times article on a guardian angel seminar Matt Albucher quotes Smiljanich, "I say before you believe in something, you should require some credible evidence. In this case, there is none." [32]
Since 1989 the Tampa Bay Skeptics has offered a $1,000 challenge to anyone able to prove the existence of paranormal powers [28] under mutually agreed testing protocols, [33] similar to the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge offered by the James Randi Educational Foundation. [34] [35] There have been ten attempts, including two that were televised, and no successes. [33]
From 1988 to 2013 the Tampa Bay Skeptics published a quarterly newsletter, The Tampa Bay Skeptics Report for which Smiljanich was a regular contributor. [36] He has written for the Skeptical Inquirer , a national magazine published by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry [37] and The Tampa Tribune . [38] In 2010 he spoke at a meeting of the Humanist Society of the Suncoast in Florida. [39]
Smiljanich is a member of the Major Gifts Committee for the University of Florida College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and bequeathed $1 million to the school. [3] He is also a board member of the Advisory Council for the Department of Astronomy at the University.
A member and officer of the Alachua Astronomy Club, Smiljanich is an amateur astronomer. [40]
St. Petersburg is a city in Pinellas County, Florida, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 258,308, making it the fifth-most populous city in Florida and the second-largest city in the Tampa Bay Area, after Tampa. It is the largest city in the state that is not a county seat. Along with Clearwater, these cities are part of the Tampa–St. Petersburg–Clearwater Metropolitan Statistical Area, the second-largest in Florida with a population of around 2.8 million. St. Petersburg is on the Pinellas peninsula between Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, and is connected to mainland Florida to the north.
Gulfport is a city in Pinellas County, Florida, United States, bordering St. Petersburg, South Pasadena, and Boca Ciega Bay. The population of Gulfport was 11,783 at the 2020 census. Gulfport is part of the Tampa–St. Petersburg–Clearwater metropolitan statistical area.
Raymond James Stadium is a multi-purpose stadium in Tampa, Florida, that opened in 1998 and is home to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the National Football League (NFL) and the University of South Florida (USF) Bulls college football program. The seating capacity for most sporting events is 69,218, though it can be expanded to about 75,000 for special events with the addition of temporary seating. Raymond James Stadium was built at public expense as a replacement for Tampa Stadium and is known for the replica pirate ship located behind the seating area in the north end zone. Raymond James Financial, a financial service firm headquartered in the Tampa Bay area, has held the naming rights for the stadium for the stadium's entire existence.
The Tampa Bay Times, called the St. Petersburg Times until 2011, is an American newspaper published in St. Petersburg, Florida, United States. It is published by the Times Publishing Company, which is owned by The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a nonprofit journalism school directly adjacent to the University of South Florida St. Petersburg campus.
WEDU is a PBS member television station licensed to Tampa, Florida, United States, serving the Tampa Bay area. It is owned by Florida West Coast Public Broadcasting alongside WEDQ. The two stations share studios on North Boulevard in Tampa and transmitter facilities in Riverview, Florida.
WFTS-TV, branded as ABC Action News, is a television station licensed to Tampa, Florida, United States, serving the Tampa Bay area as an affiliate of ABC. It is owned by the E. W. Scripps Company alongside Bradenton-licensed Ion Television station WXPX-TV. WFTS-TV's studios are located on North Himes Avenue on Tampa's northwest side, and its transmitter is located in Riverview, Florida.
Al Lang Stadium is a 7,500-seat sports stadium along the waterfront of downtown St. Petersburg, Florida, United States which was used almost exclusively as a baseball park for over 60 years. Since 2011, it has been the home pitch of the Tampa Bay Rowdies of the USL Championship soccer league.
George M. Steinbrenner Field, formerly known as Legends Field, is a baseball stadium located in Tampa, Florida, across the Dale Mabry Highway from Raymond James Stadium, the home of the National Football League's Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The ballpark was built in 1996 and seats 11,026 people, with an addition in right field built in 2007. It is the largest spring training ballpark in Florida.
Albert Whitted Airport is a public airport in St. Petersburg, Pinellas County, Florida, United States. It is on the west edge of Tampa Bay, just southeast of downtown St. Petersburg and east of the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.
Oba Chandler was an American serial killer and mass murderer who was convicted and executed for the June 1989 murders of Joan Rogers and her two daughters, whose bodies were found floating in Tampa Bay, Florida, with their hands and feet bound. Autopsies showed the victims had been thrown into the water while still alive, with ropes tied to a concrete block around their necks. The case became high-profile in 1992 when local police posted billboards bearing enlarged images of the suspect's handwriting recovered from a pamphlet in the victims' car. Chandler was identified as the killer when his neighbor recognized the handwriting.
Matthew Bevan "Matt" Cox is an American former mortgage broker and admitted mortgage fraudster. Cox, also a true crime author, wrote an unpublished manuscript entitled The Associates in which the main character traveled the country to perpetrate a mortgage fraud scheme similar to the one Cox ran.
The St. Petersburg Pier, officially known as the St. Pete Pier, is a landmark pleasure pier extending into Tampa Bay from downtown St. Petersburg, Florida, United States.
Richard David Kriseman is an American politician who served as the 53rd Mayor of St. Petersburg from 2014 to 2022. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as a member of the Florida House of Representatives, representing the 53rd district from 2006 to 2012.
Rays Ballpark was the name used in project documents for a ballpark in the current location of Al Lang Stadium on the Tampa Bay waterfront in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida, proposed by the Tampa Bay Rays as a replacement for Tropicana Field.
The Gasparilla Bowl is an annual NCAA-sanctioned post-season college football bowl game played in the Tampa Bay area. It was first played in 2008 as the St. Petersburg Bowl at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida. The game was renamed the Gasparilla Bowl in 2017 as a nod to the legend of José Gaspar, a mythical pirate who supposedly operated in the Tampa Bay area and who is the inspiration for Tampa's Gasparilla Pirate Festival. In May 2018, the owners announced the bowl would be relocated to Raymond James Stadium in Tampa.
James Hoyer, P.A. is a Tampa, Florida-based law firm that focuses on whistleblower cases as well as consumer class action lawsuits. In 2015, the firm was named Whistleblower Lawyers of the Year by the Taxpayers Against Fraud Education Fund.
Lucy Ware Morgan was an American long-time reporter and editorialist at the Tampa Bay Times.
Michael Alan Steinberg is an American lawyer and politician. He has been an unsuccessful candidate in several Florida state legislature elections, and a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 2016 election. He was also the Reform Party's nominee for Vice President of the United States in the 2016 election.
Bill Edwards is an American businessman. He owns numerous properties in St. Petersburg, Florida.
The 2021 St. Petersburg, Florida, mayoral election was held on August 24, 2021, with a runoff on November 2 because no candidate received more than 50% of the vote in the first round. It elected the mayor of St. Petersburg, Florida. Incumbent Democratic mayor Rick Kriseman was term-limited and could not seek a third term in office. Municipal elections in St. Petersburg are officially nonpartisan. Former Pinellas County commissioner Ken Welch easily defeated city councilor Robert Blackmon in the runoff. Candidates eliminated in the first round included city councilor Darden Rice, former state representative Wengay Newton, and restaurateur Pete Boland. Welch took office in January 2022, becoming the first black mayor of St. Petersburg.