THE RAJNEESH CHRONICLES The True Story of the Cult That Unleashed the First Act of Bioterrorism on U.S. Soil Edited by WIN MCCORMACK Copyright © 1987 First edition published by New Oregon Publishers, 1987 Second edition published by Tin House Books, 2010 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatso- ever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, contact Tin House Books, 2617 NW Thurman St., Portland, OR 97210. Published by Tin House Books, Portland, Oregon, and New York, New York Distributed to the trade by Publishers Group West, 1700 Fourth St., Berkeley, CA 94710, www.pgw.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Rajneesh chronicles / edited by Win McCormack. -- 2nd ed. p. cm. ISBN 978-0-9825048-7-1 (hardcover edition) -- ISBN 978-0-9825691-9-1 (pbk. edition) 1. Osho, 1931-1990. 2. Rajneesh Foundation International--Controversial literature. 3. Rajneeshpuram (Or.)--History. I. McCormack, Win. BP605.R342R36 2010 299’.93--dc22 2010017031 PICTURE CREDITS: © Roger Ressmeyer / Corbis, pages 54, c-2 (above left); Max Gutierrez, © Oregon Historical Society, pages 62, 66-67, 74, 86, 108-109, 124, 132-133, 136-137, 142-143, 165, 204-205, 214-215, 234-235, 275, 286, c-4 (top), c-5, c-8, c-9 (above), c-12, c-13, c-14, c-15; © Max Gutierrez, pages 114 and 177; © Matthew Naythons / Getty Images, page 176; © John Maher, pages c-1, c-2 (bottom left), c-3, c-10; J.P. Laffont / Corbis, pages c-4-5 (across), c-7; © Brian Robb, pages c-6, c-11, © Curtis Compton / Corbis, page c-16; ©Western Mail / Perth, Australia, page c-9 (bottom). Printed in Canada Interior design by Ann-Marie Polozova www.tinhouse.com CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: “Moses Five” Revisited .........................................1 FOREWORD: The Biggest Criminal Conspiracy in the History of Oregon ...............................................7 Chronology of the Rajneesh Cult ....................................................... 10 n THE CHRONICLES Articles from Oregon Magazine, 1981–1985 Range War: The Disciples Come to Antelope ................................... 50 Sagebrush Gothic: Antelope’s Last Stand ......................................... 52 Zorba the Baker ................................................................................... 72 Sleeping with the Bhagwan ................................................................ 75 Painting Oregon Red ........................................................................... 76 Cultivating Cultists ............................................................................ 78 Raising a Red Flag ............................................................................... 80 Bhagwan Bucks .................................................................................... 83 Burnin’ Desire ..................................................................................... 87 Bhagwan’s Jewish Problem ............................................................... 89 Last Year at Rajneeshpuram? ............................................................ 92 Bhagwan’s Flight from India .............................................................. 95 Death of a Dream: Memoirs of an Ex-Sannyasin.............................. 98 Bhagwan’s Hypnotic Spell .................................................................113 A Mind’s Eye View of 1984 ................................................................117 Bhagwan’s Mind Control ................................................................. 120 Sex: Bhagwan’s Biggest Trick ......................................................... 123 Bhagwan’s Flock .............................................................................. 127 Bhagwan’s Devious Trap ................................................................. 130 Rajneesh’s Pseudo-Religion ............................................................135 Checkpoint Central Oregon: Rajneesh’s Police State ...................141 Valley of Death?—The Rajneesh Cult Turns to Arms .....................147 The Will of Bhagwan: Drugs and Prostitution ................................153 Ticking Time Bomb? .........................................................................158 Bhagwan’s Death Wish ......................................................................161 Rajneesh and Money: Bhagwan’s Bottom Line I ............................ 164 Rajneesh and Money: Bhagwan’s Bottom Line II .......................... 168 The Land-Use Issue: Bhagwan’s Law-Stretching I ........................171 The Land-Use Issue: Bhagwan’s Law-Stretching II .......................178 Bhagwan’s Strange Eugenics ........................................................... 183 Bhagwan’s Child Rearing .................................................................187 Bhagwan’s Drug Runners I .............................................................. 192 Bhagwan’s Drug Runners II ..............................................................195 Bhagwan’s Power: The Human Potential Movement Gone Awry ... 199 Bhagwan’s Biggest Gamble: The Attempted Takeover of Wasco County .......................................................................................... 203 Bhagwan’s Medical Corporation I .................................................. 210 Bhagwan’s Medical Corporation II ................................................. 216 Ma Prem Hasya ................................................................................. 219 Is the End Near? ............................................................................... 221 Bhagwan’s Final Year ....................................................................... 226 Articles written after the implosion of the Rajneesh cult Bhagwan’s Sexism ............................................................................ 232 Bhagwan’s Rich Folk ....................................................................... 241 The Rajneesh Theft of the Church of Religious Science of Laguna Beach ................................................................................244 n AFTERWORD: How Close Was Disaster? .................................... 294 APPENDIX 1: The Anti-Semitism Letters ..................................... 304 APPENDIX 2: The Town That Was Poisoned ................................ 309 APPENDIX 3: The Rajneesh Cast of Characters .......................... 318 INDEX ................................................................................................ 338 Acknowledgments ............................................................................ 357 “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crisis preserve their neutrality.” —DANTE ALIGHIERI “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” —attributed to EDMUND BURKE This edition of The Rajneesh Chronicles is dedicated to former Mayor of Antelope, Oregon, Margaret Hill; former Oregon Attorney General Dave Frohnmayer; former Oregon Secretary of State Norma Paulus; former U.S. Attorney for Oregon Charles Turner; and former Oregon Congressman Jim Weaver—public officials who, in a time of moral crisis in their state, did something. 1 INTRODUCTION: “Moses Five” Revisited “Asahara . aggressively sought to bring about whatever he predicted. What made Asahara an action prophet was the inseparability of prophecy and action, of what he imagined and what he did.” —ROBERT JAY LIFTON, in Destroying the World to Save It, on the leader of the Aum Shinrikyo cult, which in 1995 released the deadly nerve gas sarin in five subway trains in Tokyo n his 1988 novel, S., in which he credits material included in The Rajneesh Chronicles as one of his sources, John Updike tells the story of a housewife in Massachusetts who abandons her husband and middle-class lifestyle to become a “sannyasin” at Ia religious commune in Arizona presided over by a guru from India. As described in a book-study guide on the Internet, “[l]ife at the com- mune turns out to be a charade of spiritual enlightenment, a comic rite of sexual initiation, and a wild mixture of jealousy, fraud, embez- zlement, and self-deception.” This description fits life at Rancho Rajneesh and the city of Rajneeshpuram in central Oregon during their occupation by Bhag- wan Shree Rajneesh and his cohort from 1981-85 pretty well—though Updike was, of course, creating fiction, as well as applying his char- acteristic irony to a social situation that, in real life, was not very amusing at all. In real life, the goings-on at this so-called commune were deadly serious, for it was there that the first act of bioterror- ism in U.S. history—salmonella poisoning of citizens and officials of Wasco County—was plotted and launched. It was there also that the same nurse who cultured the salmonella bacteria used in that attack endeavored—in a project with the secret code name “Moses Five”—to culture a live AIDS virus, which she must have hoped to use to ful- fill the Bhagwan’s prophecy that two-thirds of the world’s population would ultimately die of that disease. In his book To an Unknown God: Religious Freedom on Trial, legal scholar and former Washington Post reporter Garrett Epps (who also 2 THE RAJNEESH CHRONICLES credits material in the previous edition of this book as a source) correctly identifies the two stages in the Rajneeshees’ assault on their perceived enemies in the outside world. The first stage involved the poisoning with