To the Editor:

Your inclusion of James Von Brunn, the 89-year-old white supremacist who went on a shooting rampage at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, killing a security guard, in a list of the nation's most influential people over 80 years of age is simply unconscionable ("80 Over 80," Oct. 20).

While he may qualify as a "notorious newsmaker," it is offensive in the extreme to place this anti-Semite, Holocaust denier and cold-blooded killer in the same proximity of such elder statesman and cultural icons as Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Elliott Carter.