In 1984, a cult preaching free love and meditation carried out a bioterrorism attack. The history
of the Rajneesh Movement is as fascinating as it is terrifying. Here's the story behind
the largest bioterrorist attack in U.S. history.
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, also known as Osho, was born Chandra Mohan Jain in Kuchwada, India
on December 11th, 1931. After taking time off from school for soul searching and meditation,
Osho returned, claiming to have found enlightenment. "I was asleep, now I am awake. You are asleep
and you can be awake also." While teaching philosophy at the University
of Jabalpur, Osho traveled around India spreading his teachings about spirituality and free
love. By the mid-1960s, he was leading meditation camps, and soon he'd resigned from teaching
to focus on being a guru full time. It was around this time that he got the nickname
"the sex guru." Osho would later become known as "the Rolls Royce guru" as well, due to
the 74 Rolls Royces he collected. Osho preached "dynamic meditation" to all
who came to his six-acre ashram, and many ended up staying for extended periods of time.
Then the ashram became too crowded and the local government made it difficult to find
a new place to relocate to, which is part of what led Osho and his followers to the
United States.
Founded by Osho, the Rajneesh movement, also known as sannyasin, was a cult that combined
aspects of Eastern and Western spirituality into a belief system that focused on indulgence.
Their ideology was based around an idea of self-fulfillment without rules or a narrow
view of morality. At one point, his followers were also known as "the Orange People," though
later they also started dressing in red. Although Osho preached enlightenment and living
in harmony with their surroundings, he enforced a mentality that led to an isolated community
that kept tight control over its members. The cult would also extract donations from
its members, sometimes telling them to call their parents to ask for upwards of $20,000.
While the Rajneeshee were in India, Osho often found himself at odds with Indian officials,
who responded in kind by blocking expansion plans for his ashram, denying visas to Westerners,
and opening criminal investigations. As a result, in 1981, he decided to move his cult
to the United States.
After purchasing land in southern Wasco County and Jefferson County, the Rajneeshees started
creating a planned community. Initially called Rancho Rajneesh, Rajneeshpuram claims to have
hosted 15,000 followers at its height, although other sources place the number closer to 2,000.
"I'm here in one of the largest ranches in the northwest. One hundred square miles of
Oregon. Used to be known as the Big Muddy Ranch. Today, it's Rajneeshpuram."
The cult purchased over 60,000 acres and created their own town, which included an airstrip,
restaurants, and a fire department. By 1982, they applied to become the City of Rajneeshpuram,
and Wasco County approved their incorporation.
Ma Anand Sheela was born in 1950 in Baroda, India. Sheela was introduced to Osho when
she was 16-years-old and was instantly devoted to him. Although she soon left India to go
attend university in the United States, where she studied architecture, in 1972 Sheela returned
to India and began working closely with Osho. Sheela became Osho's personal secretary and
was soon working on marketing the guru as a global brand. She figured out their move
to the United States and was instrumental in creating the mini-city of Rajneeshpuram.
Sheela was the mastermind behind several other campaigns as well. After moving the cult to
Oregon, Sheela reportedly came up with the plan to artificially increase voters claiming
to live in Rajneeshpuram to win political battles. And when that plan failed, she was
part of the group that concocted the bioterror attack.
Sheela always felt that Osho had a dream, and she was the only one who could put it
into practice. That and when Osho was in isolation, Sheela was his only contact with the outside
world.
Despite preaching love and harmony, the Rajneeshees were responsible for many cases of abuse.
The cult claimed to maintain free love as a tenant, but there are reports of "sessions"
at Osho's ashram in India in which participants were beaten and encouraged to act out their
most violent fantasies. All of this to cleanse themselves of aggression.
And although "free" love was supposedly encouraged, any children that might result out of such
love were not. If a woman got pregnant at the Pune ashram in India or Rajneeshpuram
in Oregon, she was given a choice. She could agree to have an abortion or leave the property.
There were no children born in Oregon to Rajneesh cult members during the height of its influence.
Sterilization was also encouraged for women, and was considered mandatory for Osho's "top
women officials."
Before long, the Rajneeshees had encroached upon the neighboring town of Antelope. And
by February 1983, they had won control of the Antelope City Council. Soon after, they
changed the name of the town to Rajneesh and raised property taxes to drive the remaining
residents out. In the summer of 1984, the cult realized that
the only way to get the building permits that they wanted was to take over Wasco County.
They would have to replace at least two out of the three sitting commissioners, which
would prove difficult considering that the Rajneeshees accounted for less than 10 percent
of the county's population. So they came up with a two-step plan. They
would increase the population of their cities, and they would incapacitate and suppress turnout
among those who might vote against them. Initially, the cult encouraged non-resident sannyasins
and sympathizers to move to the city and register to vote in Wasco County. When they realized
that their population numbers were still too low, the Rajneeshees came up with the Share-a-Home
program, where they targeted homeless people and bussed them into Rajneeshpuram.
In the summer of 1984, homeless people were bussed into Rajneeshpuram by the hundreds
as part of the Share-a-Home program. It's estimated that upwards of 3,000 homeless people
were brought to Rajneeshpuram. The Rajneesh public relations person claimed that the purpose
of the program was: "To share with some people who have been less
fortunate than we have." However, there was an incredibly deliberate
motive behind the Rajneeshees' actions. Everyone who was brought into Rajneeshpuram was expected
to register to vote and then vote for the cult's favored candidate. However, the cult
hadn't considered the fact that many of the homeless people that they'd brought to Rajneeshpuram
also suffered from untreated mental illnesses. Fights often broke out, and to regain control,
they injected the tranquilizer Haldol into beer kegs and served the tainted alcohol to
the homeless. The cult also discovered, through bugged public
payphones, that Felton Walker, one of the homeless people brought to the commune, was
planning to kidnap Osho. He was injected with sodium pentothal and interrogated for hours.
Several days later he was kicked off the ranch. Eventually, the cult abandoned their plan
and forced all the homeless people back off Rajneeshpuram. In the end, the newly registered
voters were required to attend a hearing due to suspicions of voter fraud, and many of
the new registrations were rejected.
The second part of the sannyasins' plan involved poisoning people with Salmonella Enterica,
a bacterium that causes salmonellosis in people. First, two county commissioners who visited
the commune were given water laced with Salmonella. Both became incredibly ill and one spent four
days in the hospital. However, the Rajneeshees were still unable to get the building permits
they wanted, so they decided to run a trial poisoning on a larger scale.
The Rajneeshees went to ten restaurants around September and October in 1984 and, when nobody
was looking, poured Salmonella-tainted liquid on items in the salad bar. Over 750 people
were affected, making it the largest bioterrorist attack in U.S. history. Fortunately, no one
died as a result of the attack, but before long emergency rooms were seeing waves of
infected people.
Although no one was certain, many residents of Wasco County believed that the Rajneeshees
were responsible for the poisoning. But initially, even the CDC felt that the food handlers were
the most likely source for the introduction of the bacteria into the salad bars. It took
a year for the CDC to finally attribute the attack to the Rajneeshees.
Residents of Wasco County maintained their suspicions, but without any hard evidence,
there was little to incriminate Osho's followers. However, this didn't stop people from speaking
out. Oregon Congressman Jim Weaver gave a speech to the U.S. House of Representatives
on February 28th, 1985, where he indirectly accused the Rajneeshees of causing the salmonella
outbreaks. Weaver even went on to accuse the cult of having a laboratory in Rajneeshpuram,
but his speech was written off as rambling and incoherent, which was delivered to a nearly
empty chamber. In the original plan, the Rajneeshees were
going to use Salmonella Typhi, which causes typhoid fever which would have certainly resulted
in many deaths. The salad-bar attacks were meant to be a trial run for a larger poisoning
right before the election, likely through the town's water supply. At one point the
leaders even considered flying a plane filled with bombs into the county courthouse.
Around the time that all of this was going on in the fall of 1984, Osho was coming out
of a self-imposed vow of silence that had lasted roughly three-and-a-half-years. However,
until the following summer, speaking in public meant speaking to a small group of disciples
he called "the Chosen Ones." In the summer of 1985, Osho set out to fix
the Rajneeshees' public image. In addition to holding interviews and a press conference,
the Rajneeshees sued Oregon state officials, accusing them of trying to push them out of
Oregon. But after Sheela and several other high-ranking sannyasins abruptly left the
cult on September 14th, 1985, Osho quickly changed his tune. Two days later, Osho held
a press conference and accused Sheela and other Rajneeshee officials of creating a salmonella
outbreak and conspiring to kill numerous people. At one point, Osho also claimed that Sheela
was trying to kill him as well. Osho invited officials to come to the ranch
to investigate his accusations, and on October 2nd, a state-federal task force raided the
commune.
Upon entering the commune, the FBI discovered a fully-fledged bioterrorism lab. In addition
to the laboratory, officials found an arsenal of guns, evidence of a wiretapping operation,
and a top-secret research project by the Rajneesh Medical Corporation to develop a live AIDS
virus. "We had no idea that we were going to run
into the largest poisoning case in the history of the United States."
The lab contained books including Deadly Substances, Handbook for Poisoning, The Perfect Crime
and How to Commit It, and Let Me Die Before I Wake. It also had numerous articles on assassinations,
explosives, and terrorism. The Rajneeshees' connection to the salmonella outbreak was
also confirmed when a state laboratory director noticed a vial containing a strain of the
bacteria that matched the outbreak strain. Despite having invited the authorities in,
Osho was soon complaining that investigators were simply out to destroy him. However, agents
weren't deterred, and by the end of October had issued an indictment against Osho.
Osho tried to flee by plane, but he was arrested in North Carolina after landing to refuel.
However, the only thing that Osho was charged with was violating immigration law. Meanwhile,
Sheela was already in West Germany, where she'd fled in September with Ma Anand Puja.
Fortunately, she and Puja were soon captured and extradited to the United States.
Puja and Sheela were charged with attempted murder, electronic eavesdropping, immigration
fraud, and engineering a salmonella outbreak that sickened more than 750 people. They both
pleaded no contest. After receiving multiple sentences ranging from 4 and a half to 20
years, they both ended up being released after 29 months. Sheela was also fined $469,000.
Several other Rajneeshee officials and members were also indicted and sentenced. After her
release, Sheela was deported to Switzerland. Osho ended up pleading guilty to the immigration
charges in 1985, and after being given a suspended sentence and a $400,000 fine, he was ordered
to leave the United States. He returned to India and continued to claim until his death
in 1990 that Sheela was behind it all.
After Osho left the country, Rajneeshpuram began to crumble as well. A US District Court
judge in Portland ruled that the incorporation of Rajneesh, Oregon violated the separation
of church and state, and it was ordered to disband by the end of 1985. Even though this
was later overturned, by this point many followers had left, and some had even sold Osho's Rolls
Royces to raise money to start their lives over.
Some members left the cult to rejoin their families or continued to travel as they searched
for purpose. Some found themselves lost or penniless. They had gone through an identity
crisis and didn’t know what to do after following Osho so closely. They had committed
to the cult so completely it had become their life’s purpose.
Others maintained their affiliation with the Rajneeshee and simply moved to another commune
elsewhere in the world. Osho's followers in India renamed his commune the Osho International
Meditation Resort, and today there are hundreds of Osho Meditation Centers in 80 countries.
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