Washington concedes difference between Osho's work and Sheela's Rajneeshee Cult.

A Letter of reply to Dr.Hartmut Kroll from Mr James Kirkhope, Vice President for Research, Development, and Planning, Terrorist Research Centre, Washington.

(Background: Dr Kroll has been for some months trying to get th TRC to declassify the organisation around Osho's work as a terrorist organisation. This letter of reply goes some way to making a distinctrion between the historical "Rajneeshee Cult" led by Sheela, and the rest of Osho's work. So a small victory here. However it refuses to declassify the historical references to a Rajneeshee Cult. As we understand it at "Sannyasnews" Dr Kroll will continue the fight. )

Dear Dr. Kroll,

Please be advised that the Osho organization/movement/philosophy has NOT been termed a terrorist organization by the Terrorism Research Centre. As you correctly assumed and noted in your September 19, 2005 email to my colleague Jennifer Hardwick,we take Ma Anand Sheela as a terrorist, who tried to poison the people of Antelope/OR in 1984/85 with salmonella which at the end of the day led to the dissolution of Rajneeshpuram.

Perhaps you will be relieved to learn that this particular terror attack - especially notable in the United States for being the first known biological terrorist attack - is in fact the only attack linked to the Rajneeshee Cult and, by association, its founder and leader, Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh, aka, Osho.

It is deeply regrettable that a man of such wisdom is linked to that attack, but he is also linked to immigration fraud and was deported from the United States for such violations.

You also note in your September 19, 2005 email, "But this is history." Indeed it is. As an internationally respected research company, we would be extraordinarily negligent if we did not include that remarkable attack in our database. Our scholars have a professional obligation to trace the origins, philosophies, psychologies, and histories of all significant attacks for the benefit of our paying customers.

The fact that no other such violent act has been linked to Osho-ism speaks volumes and ought to assuage your concerns. You must realize that our database also includes historical terrorist attacks attributed to Yassir Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization and Nelson Mandela's African National Congress, yet no one would claim the TRC, the United States Government, or even the United Nations which all include records of those attacks currently believe those organizations are terrorist groups. The listing of those groups in historical databases does not detract from the greater Palestinian cause *not* represented by the PLO nor from the anti-apartheid movement conducted by Africans and ethnicities in South Africa *not* represented by the ANC.

As such, we cannot honour your email, phone, or any other requests to remove "Rajneeshee Cult" from our database.

Sincerely,

James Kirkhope

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