Uncertainty Permeates Commune as Grand Jury Looks Into Intrigue

A mood of uncertainty hangs over this central Oregon city-commune as a grand jury begins this week to hear allegations of arson, theft, poisonings, wiretapping, murder plots and other intrigue that have engulfed this high-desert commune of Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.

More than 100 witnesses--including perhaps the guru--have been subpoenaed. And Oregon law enforcement officials are confidently predicting that criminal indictments against Rajneesh’s followers will result.

“Many are living here from moment to moment, not knowing what’s going to happen and whether they’ll be here or he’ll (Rajneesh) be here,” said Swami Anand Subhuti, 39, a reporter for the Rajneesh Times, the commune newspaper.

For the last three weeks, a 50-member multiagency task force has been here sifting evidence of the alleged crimes.

Sudden Departure

The allegations were made public by the 53-year-old bearded guru after more than a dozen of his top leaders suddenly departed the rural commune in mid-September. Some, including his tart-tongued former personal secretary, Ma Anand Sheela, 35, have left the country.

Rajneesh blamed his former aides for engaging in a power struggle that led to the alleged assassination plots, poisoning of rivals within the commune and wiretapping throughout the city.

The guru has also accused the departed commune members of attempting to murder several local government officials, plotting to divebomb the Wasco County Courthouse and blow up a government building and causing an outbreak of salmonella poisoning in The Dalles, a city about 80 miles north of the commune, that left 700 people ill a year ago. Health authorities have not been able to determine how the bacteria contaminated food there.

The religious movement, which at one time claimed 500,000 members worldwide, moved its headquarters here in 1981 from Poona, India, leaving behind a web of tax and legal entanglements. Spending more than $100 million to develop 64,000 acres of arid grazing land into a thriving farm community, the group has built a city that includes a shopping mall, an airport, a hotel and a modern city hall.

Since then, however, conflict with neighbors and government authorities and internal dissension have brought the 1,400-member commune to its present crisis.

Both the state’s governor and chief police officer predict that former disciples of Rajneesh will be charged with crimes in the unfolding scandal.

“There is a good likelihood of indictments,” Gov. Vic Atiyeh said at a press conference Thursday.

“There is plenty of evidence that some of those crimes actually occurred,” added Oregon Police Supt. John C. Williams.

Federal authorities say they have evidence of a sophisticated wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping operation at the commune, “the most massive wiretapping and bugging episode ever in Oregon history,” according to state Atty. Gen. Dave Frohnmayer.

As grand jury subpoenas were being served last week, Rajneeshee attorneys sought to obtain immunity from prosecution for key disciples who may have been involved in the alleged crimes.

The guru charged that Sheela; Krishna Deva, former mayor of Rajneeshpuram, and others had turned his commune into a “fascist concentration camp” and that Sheela had absconded with as much as $55 million of commune money.

An 11,000-word affidavit filed in Wasco County Circuit Court to support search warrants at the commune quotes a witness as saying that top Rajneeshees, including Deva, held meetings to plot murders of rivals in the commune and of outside authorities who were perceived to be hostile to the group’s goals.

Murder by Spider

One topic discussed, according to the affidavit, was whether Devaraj, Rajneesh’s personal doctor, should be killed “with poisonous spiders and snakes.”

The Wasco County Grand Jury in The Dalles is scheduled to begin hearing evidence Wednesday on alleged arson, poisoning, conspiracy, assault and racketeering. A federal grand jury will convene in Portland on Nov. 18 to take testimony on other alleged crimes, including wiretapping, bugging and the food poisoning outbreak.

Meanwhile, apparent earlier cooperation between law enforcement and Rajneeshee authorities broke down last week.

Press officers at the remote commune, where the bhagwan has been holding extended media interviews lately, said that Rajneesh and his attorney, Prem Niren, who is also mayor of Rajneeshpuram, believe that law officials are preparing to arrest the guru and shut down his religious commune.

“The governor is thinking to put martial law on the city,” Rajneesh told about 1,500 disciples attending his daily discourse the other day. “The National Guard is collecting so they can enter, bulldoze your houses and kill your people on any excuse.”

Maj. Robert Moine, area commander for the Oregon State Police, emphatically denied any such plans. Wasco County Sheriff Art Labrousse said, however, that “about 50 or 60” National Guard troops, with helicopters, had assembled for several days about 25 miles from Rajneeshpuram, to “be prepared” for any trouble while subpoenas were being served and searches conducted.

“There always has to be an ‘enemy’ to focus on,” Labrousse added. “Niren may be refocusing . . . on the county court and the people in the community as threats to their existence. . . . I don’t think he (Niren) wants to give that up.”

Most commune residents seemed to be cheerfully working at their assigned jobs last week, but the recent leadership shake-up and criminal accusations appeared to have affected them. Some said they believe that they can now be more open about their feelings to their superiors as well as to outsiders.

According to Subhuti, The Rajneesh Times reporter, Rajneesh’s recent lectures to followers, which included directives to stop calling themselves Rajneeshees and to stop wearing clothing of red or orange tones and necklaces bearing his picture, have created both “openness” and “doubt.”

The former master-disciple program between Rajneesh and his followers, called sannyasins , “has now gone out the window,” Subhuti said. “There’s a lot of openness. You respond to whatever is happening with a total freshness. . . . It’s much more free (here) in terms of organizational, social and political structures. . . . It’s close to the state where you are the most aware, the most innocent--and, yes, also the most vulnerable.”

Most old-time area residents hope that the commune will unravel--the sooner the better. They would also like to see the guru deported. His application for permanent residence as a religious teacher is under review by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

No More Objectivity

“People here are no longer objective,” lamented an official in Madras, a farming community 53 miles from Rajneeshpuram. “You either hate the Rajneeshees or you love them; there’s no in between.”

“Cynicism and skepticism” is the way Wasco County Assistant Clerk Karen LeBreton described the mood of residents of The Dalles.

Despite a “good-will gesture” on the part of the bhagwan to change the name of the City of Rajneesh--a tiny hamlet controlled by Rajneeshees--back to its former name of Antelope, wary old-timers are unimpressed.

“I haven’t seen a good-will gesture yet,” fumed former Antelope Mayor Margaret Hill. One of only sixteen non-Rajneesh residents who still live in the town, she complained that Antelope’s tax rate is the highest in the state. The town, which appeared almost deserted last week, is officially inhabited by about 100 Rajneeshees, but local observers said fewer than 20 live there regularly.

“If they’d do something of substance--like remove the constant police surveillance of outsiders or drop the tax rate--then maybe we could believe them. But until then, it’s just hot air,” Hill said.

Constitutional Argument

Meanwhile, arguments swirl in the crisp fall air in this rural enclave about whether Rajneeshpuram, Oregon’s newest--and most endangered--city, violates the constitutional separation of church and state.

The bhagwan has asked Frohnmayer--whom Rajneesh calls the “idiot general”--to drop his lawsuit charging that Rajneeshpuram’s 1982 incorporation was illegal because its residents adopt prescribed religious principles and beliefs in order to live there.

Proclaiming that “Rajneeshism is dead,” the guru recently ordered that 4,000 copies of a little red book of his sayings compiled by Sheela be ceremonially burned in the commune’s crematory.

“This is a historical event,” Rajneesh said. “For the first time in the history of mankind, a religion has died. . . . That was not my book. I have never read it. . . . I am against all religions because they have done only harm to mankind.”

On ABC’s “Nightline,” Rajneesh explained that the changes in his movement mean that “there is no religion . . . no master, no disciples” and thus no grounds for Frohnmayer’s suit.

Frohnmayer is not buying that argument.

Egg or Sausage?

“A religion does not cease to be a religion because its leader says so,” Frohnmayer said. “It’s the acts and practices that are important. The bhagwan appears to be holding up an egg and calling it a sausage.”

A hearing on the suit is scheduled in U.S. District Court in Portland on the same November day that the federal grand jury is set to begin hearing witnesses in the criminal investigation.