Re: Spreading pure innuendo, Dec. 11, 1997 When reading the letter from Scientology spokesman Mike Rinder, it is important to keep a crucial fact in mind. Rinder's department, the Office of Special Affairs (OSA), is part public relations machine and part covert intelligence agency. OSA is the successor to Scientology's Guardian's Office (GO), which was supposedly "disbanded" after its leaders were convicted of conspiracy against the U.S. government for executing "Operation Snow White". The GO also ran a number of operations, ...

Letters to the Editor: Dear Editor: Sara Catania's sarcastic piece about L. Ron Hubbard's study technology ["The Learning Cure'" November 14-20] was a disgrace. As international spokesperson for Applied Scholastics, I have firsthand experience with the work that volunteers all over the world are doing utilizing Hubbard's discoveries. These individuals devote hundreds of hours of time and heartfelt effort to help both young people and adults improve their study skills. Their work daily changes lives. As a parent, I also have ...

Regarding "Reassessing U.S.-German Friendship" (Special Report, Dec. 9) by John Dornberg: Mr. Dornberg writes that claims of discrimination against Scientologists in Germany are "ludicrous." As human rights counsel for the Church of Scientology of Germany, I must inform you that Mr. Dornberg's statement is flatly incorrect. I have personally documented hundreds of cases of Scientologists who have been seriously discriminated against in Germany. In some cases they have been forced to leave their country and seek asylum abroad. Scientologists in Germany ...

As if your article of pure innuendo (For some Scientologists, pilgrimage has been fatal) weren't enough, you've also continued to use discredited sources as "authoritative consultants" to forward your bigoted agenda. I won't detail how a similar article could be written about any religion. Indeed, I'd bet money that no newspaper in the United States has ever started isolating the death of the members of a religion. If you were to do it with the local Catholics, I am sure it ...

On Dec. 2, the IHT ran an article concerning the tragic death of the Scientologist Lisa Mc-Pherson ("Police Studying a Life and Death in Scientology") that had appeared on the front page of The New York Times the day before. The article was a biased distortion of the facts that used the tragedy of Ms. McPherson's death to present a misleading picture of the activities of the church and its members in the city of Clearwater, Florida. The church and its ...

Rena Weinberg's column ("Education Is the Real Issue," Aug. 3) about L. Ron Hubbard's textbooks had a serious error. The materials which Weinberg refers to were reviewed in July 1996 and did not pass legal compliance. Therefore the books should not be in use in any California public school. During the past year, Bridge Publications has submitted proposed revisions to address the legal compliance concerns. However, until completely corrected versions of the books are reviewed, there is no final consideration ...

The problems facing schools are too great to ignore the methods of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. RENA WEINBERG, Rena Weinberg is president of the Assn. for Better Living and Education (ABLE), an organization formed to coordinate the use of L. Ron Hubbard's social betterment methods in society The proposal by a teacher to open a charter school in the Sunland-Tujunga area, one which will include among its textbooks some written by L. Ron Hubbard, has become something of a controversy—which ...

* Robert A. Jones' column, "Saved by a Rumor" (July 27) was filled with generalities, slurs (including one that equates the religion of Scientology with colonics) and inferences that the Church of Scientology somehow attempted to sneakily get some "gambit" past the Board of Education in an attempt to "catechize its students." It was also inaccurate in the extreme. The fact of the matter is that L. Ron Hubbard wrote prodigiously in numerous fields. His books on the subject of ...

The Church of Scientology responds to the article "Cult of Personality" which appeared in the last issue of Woroni The anonymous author of the article on Scientology in the last Woroni of March 20, 1997, at least got a few things right: the description and definition of Scientology, the aims of Scientology, that it is a religion and a Church. However, journalistic accountability having been thrown to the wind, there followed a mixture of opinion and fiction. Objectivity died with ...

The truth is, there is no "humane" way to destroy the developing child in the womb. Other than the "partial-birth" abortion, the current methods are: ripping the body apart with a powerful suction machine (sometimes requiring that the child's body be sliced up by a sharp curette before suctioning, depending on the child's size); poisoning the child with a caustic salt solution, causing the child to writhe in pain for a number of hours prior to being violently expelled; or chemical ...

The truth in the McPherson case Re: Five doctors agree with examiner in Scientology death, March 9. A great deal of false information has been circulated by the media concerning the Lisa McPherson case, the most recent of which appeared in the Times with quotes from medical experts purportedly in support of the allegations made by the Pinellas/Pasco medical examiner, Dr. Joan Wood. But as with much else in this case, the truth was not made known, and a false picture ...

To the Editor: Contrary to Scientology's Puzzling Journey From Tax Rebel to Tax Exempt (front page, March 9), the Internal Revenue Service made its decision to issue exemption rulings to the Church of Scientology in 1993 on the merits following the most in-depth examination in the history of the I.R.S. The role of the I.R.S. committee that was formed to address issues involving the church was not to negotiate a deal but independently and objectively to review the church's qualification for ...

The most worrying aspect of the abusive response of the German Government to concerns about discrimination against Scientologists (Victims or Villains? Focus, 1-2/2) is that the actual violations and offences against Scientologists are hardly even entering into consideration, either by the German politicians themselves or media writers (such as Washington correspondent Peter Wilson) who report on them. The treatment of Scientologists has been disturbing for several years, with no just circumstantial but massive instances of their basic rights being violated. There ...

Regarding "An Open Letter to Helmut Kohl" (Advertisement, Jan. 9) and letters (Jan. 16) critical of the advertisement: As the author of the open letter to Chancellor Kohl, I feel entitled to a brief reply to some of the letters you received on that subject. First, our letter never compared modern Germany, as a whole, to the Nazi regime, and we certainly never compared the treatment of Scientologists to the treatment of Jews during the Holocaust. What we compared was the ...