1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack

In 1984, 751 people suffered food poisoning in The Dalles, Oregon, United States, due to the deliberate contamination of salad bars at ten local restaurants with Salmonella. A group of prominent followers of Rajneesh (also known as Osho) led by Ma Anand Sheela had hoped to incapacitate the voting population of the city so that their own candidates would win the 1984 Wasco County elections. The incident was the first and largest bioterrorist attack in U.S. history.

Rajneesh's followers had previously gained political control of Antelope, Oregon, as they were based in the nearby intentional community of Rajneeshpuram, and they now sought election to two of the three seats on the Wasco County Circuit Court that were up for election in November 1984. Some Rajneeshpuram officials feared that they would not get enough votes, so they decided to incapacitate voters in The Dalles, the largest population center in Wasco County. The chosen biological agent was Salmonella enterica Typhimurium, which was first delivered through glasses of water to two county commissioners and then at salad bars and in salad dressing.

As a result of the attack, 751 people contracted salmonellosis, 45 of whom were hospitalized, but none died. An initial investigation by the Oregon Health Authority and the Centers for Disease Control did not rule out deliberate contamination, and the agents and contamination were confirmed a year later, on February 28, 1985. Congressman James H. Weaver gave a speech in the U.S. House of Representatives in which he "accused the Rajneeshees of sprinkling Salmonella culture on salad bar ingredients in eight restaurants".

At a press conference in September 1985, Rajneesh accused several of his followers of participation in this and other crimes, including an aborted plan in 1985 to assassinate a United States Attorney, and he asked state and federal authorities to investigate. Oregon Attorney General David B. Frohnmayer set up an inter-agency task force composed of Oregon State Police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and executed search warrants in Rajneeshpuram. A sample of bacteria was found in a Rajneeshpuram medical laboratory which matched the contaminant that had sickened the town residents. Two leading Rajneeshpuram officials were convicted on charges of attempted murder and served 29 months of 20-year sentences in a minimum-security federal prison.

Planning

In 1981, several thousand of Rajneesh's followers had moved onto the "Big Muddy Ranch" in rural Wasco County, Oregon, where they later incorporated as an intentional community called "Rajneeshpuram". They had taken political control of the small nearby town of Antelope, Oregon (population 75), the name of which they changed to "Rajneesh". The group had started on friendly terms with the local population, but relations soon degraded because of land-use conflicts and the commune's dramatic expansion.

After being denied building permits for Rajneeshpuram, the commune leadership sought to gain political control over the rest of the county by influencing the November 1984 county election. Their goal was to win two of three seats on the Wasco county commission, as well as the sheriff's office. Their attempts to influence the election included the "Share-a-Home" program, in which they transported thousands of homeless people to Rajneeshpuram and attempted to register them to vote to inflate the constituency of voters for the group's candidates. The Wasco County clerk countered this attempt at voter-suppression by enforcing a regulation that required all new voters to submit their qualifications when registering to vote.

The commune leadership planned to sicken and incapacitate voters in The Dalles, where most of the county's voters resided, to sway the election. Approximately twelve people were involved in the plots to employ biological agents, and at least eleven were involved in planning them. No more than four appear to have been involved in development at the Rajneeshpuram medical laboratory; not all of those were necessarily aware of the objectives of their work. At least eight individuals helped spread the bacteria.

The main planners of the attack included Sheela Silverman (Ma Anand Sheela), Rajneesh's chief lieutenant, and Diane Yvonne Onang (Ma Anand Puja), a nurse practitioner and secretary-treasurer of the Rajneesh Medical Corporation. They purchased Salmonella bacteria from a medical supply company in Seattle, Washington, and staff cultured it in labs within the commune. They contaminated the produce at the salad bars as a "trial run". The group also tried to introduce pathogens into The Dalles' water system. If successful, they planned to use the same techniques closer to Election Day. They did not carry out the second part of the plan. The commune decided to boycott the election when it became clear that those brought in through the "Share-a-Home" program would not be allowed to vote.

Two visiting Wasco County commissioners were infected via glasses of water containing Salmonella bacteria during a visit to Rajneeshpuram on August 29, 1984. Both men fell ill and one was hospitalized. Afterward, members of Sheela's team spread Salmonella on produce in grocery stores and on doorknobs and urinal handles in the county courthouse, but these actions did not produce the desired effects. In September and October 1984, they contaminated the salad bars of ten local restaurants with Salmonella, infecting 751 people. Forty-five people received hospital treatment; all survived.

The primary delivery tactic involved one member concealing a plastic bag containing a light-brown liquid with the Salmonella bacteria (referred to by the perpetrators as "salsa"), and either spreading it over the food at a salad bar, or pouring it into salad dressing. By September 24, 1984, more than 150 people were violently ill. By the end of September, 751 cases of acute gastroenteritis were documented; lab testing determined that all of the victims were infected with Salmonella enterica Typhimurium. Symptoms included diarrhea, fever, chills, nausea, vomiting, headaches, abdominal pain, and bloody stools. Victims ranged in age from an infant, born two days after his mother's infection and initially given a five percent chance of survival, to an 87-year-old.

Local residents suspected that Rajneesh's followers were behind the poisonings. They turned out in droves on Election Day to prevent the cult from winning any county positions, thus rendering the plot unsuccessful. The Rajneeshees eventually withdrew their candidate from the November 1984 ballot. Only 239 of the commune's 7,000 residents voted; most were not U.S. citizens and could not vote. The outbreak cost local restaurants hundreds of thousands of dollars and health officials shut down the salad bars of the affected establishments. Some residents feared further attacks and stayed at home. One resident said: "People were so horrified and scared. People wouldn't go out, they wouldn't go out alone. People were becoming prisoners."

Investigation

Officials and investigators from a number of different state and federal agencies investigated the outbreak. Michael Skeels, director of the Oregon State Public Health Laboratory at the time, said that the incident provoked such a large public health investigation because "it was the largest food-related outbreak in the U.S. in 1984". The investigation identified the bacteria as Salmonella enterica Typhimurium and initially concluded that the outbreak had been due to food handlers' poor personal hygiene. Workers preparing food at the affected restaurants had fallen ill before most patrons had.

Oregon Democratic Congressman James H. Weaver continued to investigate because he believed that the officials' conclusion did not adequately explain the facts. He contacted physicians at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other agencies and urged them to investigate Rajneeshpuram. According to Lewis F. Carter's book Charisma and Control in Rajneeshpuram, "many treated his concern" as paranoid or as an example of "Rajneeshee bashing". On February 28, 1985, Weaver gave a speech at the U.S. House of Representatives in which he accused the Rajneeshees of contaminating salad bar ingredients in eight restaurants. As events later showed, Weaver had presented a well-reasoned, if only circumstantial, case; these circumstantial elements were confirmed by evidence found after investigators gained access to Rajneeshpuram several months later.

Months later, starting on September 16, 1985, Rajneesh, who had recently emerged from a four-year period of public silence and self-imposed isolation (although he had continued to meet with his assistant) at the commune, convened press conferences: he stated that Sheela and nineteen other commune leaders, including Puja, had left Rajneeshpuram over the weekend and gone to Europe. He said that he had received information from commune residents that Sheela and her team had committed a number of serious crimes. Calling them a "gang of fascists", he said they had tried to poison his doctor and Rajneesh's female companion, as well as the Jefferson County district attorney and the water system in The Dalles. Rajneesh voiced suspicions that they had poisoned a county commissioner and Judge William Hulse, and that they may have been responsible for the salmonellosis outbreak in The Dalles. He invited state and federal law enforcement officials to Rajneeshpuram to investigate. His allegations were initially greeted with skepticism by outside observers.