BONN, June 6 — The German authorities decided today to place the Scientology movement under nationwide surveillance for one year, their sharpest action yet in a long battle against a group they say is bent on undermining their democratic society. The decision, which critics called authoritarian and impractical, means that Scientologists' mail may be intercepted, their phones tapped and their offices infiltrated by undercover agents posing as adherents. The organization said it would contest the decision in court. By making public ...

German Chancellor Helmut Kohl ignored protesters wearing Nazi SS uniforms as he boarded a boat for a Sydney Harbour cruise yesterday afternoon. A group of 30 Church of Scientology members, some wearing Nazi SS uniforms and carrying placards reading "Hands Off Our Religion" and "Is Germany Really A Free Country?", heckled Dr Kohl before his cruise. Protester Liz Reeve said the German Government was orchestrating a campaign against Scientologists, even taking their children from schools. "That shouldn't be happening to children ...

SYDNEY, May 6 AAP — German Chancellor Helmut Kohl ignored protesters wearing Nazi SS uniforms as he boarded a boat for a Sydney Harbour cruise this afternoon. A group of 30 noisy demonstrators, members of the Australian branch of the US-based Church of Scientology, some wearing Nazi SS uniforms and carrying placards reading 'Hands Off Our Religion' and 'Is Germany Really A Free Country?', heckled Dr Kohl before his cruise. One protester, Liz Reeve, said the German government was orchestrating a ...

WASHINGTON— Helmut Kohl is seeking an unprecedented fifth term. America's most important ally seems headed for prolonged stability. So Germany promises to remain boring? Wrong. Chancellor Kohl governs a nation undergoing tremendous change. And Germany's political class is obsessed with youth. This is a story that many Americans miss because their media are hung up on the Holocaust and cover little but old and new Nazis, real or perceived. Essentially, American consumers of news get two stories on Germany: those about ...

As no doubt befits a society founded by Pilgrims, America has a long tradition of controversial movements maturing to success, whether Mormons or Christian Scientists or Jehovah's Witnesses. Today, the latest cult forcing itself to our attention is the Church of Scientology. Scientology was founded in the early 1950s by L. Ron Hubbard, a science fiction writer. He fashioned a creation myth around Xenu, who froze and transported thetan souls to volcanoes in Teegeeack, now earth. The creed holds that humans ...

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 ...

Can anyone stand up to the Church of Scientology? Such was the plaintive question asked by The St. Petersburg Times in an editorial last week, and with good reason. The great American religious saga of the 1990's may be the rise to power of a church that has successfully brought the Internal Revenue Service, the State Department and much of the American press to heel even as it did an end-run around the courts. As Douglas Frantz reported in The New ...

On Oct. 8, 1993, 10,000 cheering Scientologists thronged the Los Angeles Sports Arena to celebrate the most important milestone in the church's recent history: victory in its all-out war against the Internal Revenue Service. For 25 years, I.R.S. agents had branded Scientology a commercial enterprise and refused to give it the tax exemption granted to churches. The refusals had been upheld in every court. But that night the crowd learned of an astonishing turnaround. The I.R.S. had granted tax exemptions to ...

A web of intrigue surrounds the high-stakes legal brawl between FACTnet and the Church of Scientology. Strange things happen around Lawrence Wollersheim. His businesses collapse. His Boulder apartment gets raided by federal marshals, his computers seized. When college students offer to help him rebuild his computer bulletin-board system, they receive threatening phone calls–anonymous voices urging them to stay away from Larry. A California judge who presided over a lawsuit in which Wollersheim was the plaintiff told reporters he'd encountered a lot ...

BERLIN — “Historically inaccurate and totally distasteful." Strong words from Madeleine Albright, who had good reason to apply them. America's new secretary of State was referring to the widely publicized statement by Oliver Stone, Dustin Hoffman and other Hollywood celebrities equating Germany's current treatment of the Church of Scientology with the Holocaust. When she met with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl last week, Albright was committed to bringing up U.S. "concerns" about Germany's treatment of Scientologists. At the same time, she clearly ...

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 ...

WASHINGTON — The State Department's annual survey of human rights conditions around the world will contain expanded, toughened language criticizing Germany for restrictions on the Church of Scientology and its members, administration officials say. The report, to be issued Wednesday, will chastise Germany for what a senior administration official called "a campaign of harassment and intimidation" against the controversial church. He said the United States, seeking to protect religious freedom, has urged Germany through diplomatic channels "not to prosecute people for ...

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 ...