RAJNEESH REVISITED.

Byline: Jim Weaver For The Register-Guard

Twenty-five years ago, over the course of several weeks in September 1984, Ma Anand Sheela and a dozen of her Rajneesh followers made trips from their huge ranch in Central Oregon to the little town of The Dalles on the Columbia River. There they entered eight restaurants and surreptitiously sprinkled droplets from little vials hidden in their red robes on various items on the salad bars. The salmonella bacillus in the vials had been cultured in the Rajneeshpuram medical laboratory. Seven hundred and fifty people were stricken with salmonella poisoning, many so severely they were hospitalized.

It was one of the largest outbreaks of salmonella in the history of the United States - astounding, really, in a town of 10,000 people. The epidemic went unreported outside Oregon. Months later I asked the Congressional Research Service to do a press search of stories mentioning the poisoning. CRS could find only one: a paragraph in The New York Times.

Even stranger, the health authorities of Oregon and investigators from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta blamed this massive attack on food handlers in the eight restaurants. The CDC conducted a superb investigation, tracing back all food items in each restaurant to their source, and checking where and what each person with salmonella had eaten just prior to their succumbing.

I received daily printouts from the CDC investigation that made it only too clear that it was virtually impossible for the food handlers to be the source. For example, in one restaurant, the same food handlers set up salad bars in a private banquet room and in the main public dining room. Dozens of salmonella cases issued from the salad bar in the public dining room; none from the salad bar in the private banquet room. Yet the health authorities remained unanimous in blaming food handlers.

Salmonella erupted after a banquet at a convention in a hotel in Portland. In Cottage Grove, a salmonella outbreak occurred in a senior domicile. In Ashland, an outbreak of a strange malaise similar to but not salmonella occurred among - of all people - a convention of medical doctors. I felt strongly it was time to alert the people of Oregon that something very bad was going on.

It hadn't seemed that way in 1981, when the Indian mystic Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and his red-clad followers bought the Big Muddy Ranch in Wasco County. Oregonians reacted with a tolerant mixture of curiosity and puzzlement as the Rajneeshees spent $60 million to develop their commune, which grew to a population of 4,000. The bhagwan's adoring followers would line the streets of Rajneeshpuram to cast rose petals before him as he drove past in one of his dozens of Rolls Royces.

But conflicts soon followed. Eventually, the Rajneeshees were implicated in arson, attempted murder and wiretapping. The bhagwan's top lieutenant, Ma Anand Sheela, who had become notorious for her combination of arrogance and paranoia, was arrested in Germany on a variety of charges. The bhagwan was fined and deported to India, where he died in 1990.

One of the first to see the Rajneeshees for what they were was Bill Bowerman, legendary track coach of the University of Oregon and one of the founders of the Nike sporting goods company. Bowerman came into my Eugene office in 1983. His family ranch happened to be located just across the John Day River from the Rajneesh commune. Armed guards patrolled the riverbank across from his farm home; huge Rajneesh spotlights were aimed across the river into his bedroom windows at night. The Rajneesh were threatening the neighboring ranchers with violence if any steps were taken against them; they had already taken over the city council of the tiny village of Antelope.

These people are evil, Bowerman told me.

In the year since Bowerman's visit, I had gone from thinking the Rajneeshees were a harmless cult to accepting the same conclusion. It seemed obvious that they had poisoned the people of The Dalles, and were perhaps sponsors of the other disease outbreaks.

On Feb. 28, 1985, armed with all the facts from CDC and a tightly reasoned scenario of what had taken place, I gave a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives accusing the Rajneesh of food sabotage.

"Mr. Speaker," I began, "I have a strange and terrifying tale to tell the House. It is about a town that was poisoned."

I proceeded to describe the scope of the salmonella outbreak, its highly improbable epidemiology, and the strong circumstantial evidence that the poisoning was deliberate.

"Who would want to do such a terrifying thing?" I asked. "Who would poison a whole town, or at least 750 of its inhabitants? Whoever did could not have known how many people they would poison, or whether someone might die from the poisoning. But the massive assault on The Dalles was that: a massive assault, almost a war on the town. Who would want to do it? And who would have the capability to do it?"

I then described the Rajneeshees' history of arrogance, intimidation and conflict since their arrival in Central Oregon in 1981. While I could offer no concrete proof of their involvement in the poisoning, I called for an intensive police investigation.

The consequences were, for me, staggering: Nobody believed it. The press throughout Oregon gave my accusation no credence. The health authorities once again declared the food handlers to be the culprits.

I had read the book "The Course of Salmonella Through a Community" by a University of Washington professor, considered the best expert on salmonella in the West. I called him. He had not heard of the outbreak in The Dalles, which was the first inkling I got that the media outside Oregon were not covering the story. I told him the facts of the The Dalles outbreak.

"You've got a madman down there," he exclaimed. I asked him to make that statement publicly. To my amazement, he refused. Nor could I get any other authority, medical or scientific, to say my accusation was credible.

But the Rajneeshees certainly took note of my interest. I received a letter from Ma Shanti Bhadra, who ran the Rajneesh medical laboratory, saying that "every appropriate county, state and federal agency" had investigated and found no evidence of sabotage. She wrote, "You have disgraced the office you hold. You are a coward. If you had any courage, any integrity, you would write to us with an apology and make that apology public. But we know that this apology will never come. An apology would only serve to alienate those bigots you managed to sell your insane ideas to."

Bhadra was right: I would never apologize. She had addressed the letter to "Beloved Mr. Weaver," with the salutation "Love." She ended it with "His Blessings." The letter is the most treasured artifact from my congressional career.

A year later Ma Anand Sheela confessed in a federal court to the poisoning of The Dalles.

Eleven years later, the head of the CDC investigation of the The Dalles outbreak opened the locked drawer where he had kept his confidential report of the investigation and gave it to reporters. The catalyst for his action had been the subway nerve gas spraying in Tokyo by a Japanese religious cult. He said it was perhaps time to alert the public to the possibility of biological sabotage. He implied he had been afraid of panic if the truth of The Dalles poisoning had been known.

I have been asked many times to explain why there had been no press coverage outside Oregon on the outbreak in The Dalles. It seems a mystery. My only response has been to say that, perhaps, reporters and editors felt uncomfortable portraying a religious sect as potentially evil. That does not appear to be the case today.