By Jim Weaver    

Bill Bowerman came into my congressional office in the Federal Building one day in the early 1980s. A gruff, outspoken man, he was someone I liked a lot.  Bill told me of a religious band called the Rajneesh, that he considered evil.

I was shocked, thinking the Rajneesh were a harmless cult that could be left to go its own way. They had bought a huge ranch called the Big Muddy in Central Oregon, across the John Day River from Bill's old homestead.  They had built a city populated with their young, saffron-robed acolytes.  The Big Muddy was a checkerboard of land sections owned by the Bureau of Land Management and the Rajneesh.

Now the BLM was proposing a land swap with the Rajneesh, and Bowerman said they had to be stopped.

At Bowerman's instigation, I began paying close attention to the doings of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and his followers - namely Ma Anand Sheela, a gun-toting, swaggering dervish.  When 700 citizens of The Dalles suddenly came down with salmonella poisoning, I concluded that the Rajneesh had sprinkled salmonella culture onto salad bars in restaurants in The Dalles.

In a speech on the House floor on Feb. 28, 1985, I gave a detailed presentation of how I thought the Rajneeshees had terrorized The Dalles.  The Oregon press was merciless, scourging me as a bigot. Health authorities - including the federal Centers for Disease Control - were unanimous in blaming restaurant food handlers for spreading the illness.

But the evidence of Rajneesh culpability was so strong - it is still a mystery how the health authorities remained blind to it - that I stuck to my guns. Two years later, Ma Anand Sheela confessed in federal court in Portland to perpetrating the terror in just the way I had outlined in my speech.

But at the time of the poisoning, the BLM was still determined to proceed with the land swap.  I had been chairman of a subcommittee that had oversight of such land swaps and had seen some highly questionable proposals.  I had kept the Big Muddy land swap on hold for a year, but in 1985, the regional director of the BLM told me the agency was going ahead with it.

The Prineville BLM chiefs took me on a helicopter ride over the Big Muddy, then on a jeep tour of the land.  One thing struck me with force: the two BLM officials were fervently for the land swap, arguing all the way for the benefits the land swap would hold for the BLM.  Why were they so enthusiastic?  Had they made personal arrangements with the Rajneesh?

I sat in Bowerman's house across from the Big Muddy for a week, poring over the maps and looking at the banks of the John Day.  With one of Bowerman's sons, John, who operated a ranch to the south, we rowed a boat along the river, and even swam to the shore of the Big Muddy to see guards armed with AK-47s patrolling their perimeter.  A great thunderstorm rolled across the prairie one night, one of the most spectacular sights I have ever seen.  And the next morning, as if the storm had wiped away blinders from my eyes, a revelation occurred to me.

The Rajneeshees wanted to build a large resort and housing development along the John Day, and I saw how they were stymied by a promontory that went right into the river, blocking access to the area where the resort would be located.  I saw how the land swap would give them a road route from their ranch land to the resort location.  The value of the land would increase enormously, enriching the leaders of the Rajneesh.

I drove swiftly to Eugene, for it was only days before the BLM and the Rajneesh were to sign the papers for the land swap.  I called the regional director. ``Bill,'' I said to him, ``kill the land swap.''

``I don't think I can do that, congressman,'' he replied.

``Bill, you kill that land swap, or I will raise so much hell you'll wish you never heard of the Rajneeshees.''

He said he would look into it. Apparently, what he found did not smell so sweet, for the next day he called me and said the swap was terminated.

Two days later, the Bhagwan and Ma Anand Sheela absconded from the Big Muddy, attempting to flee the country, and leaving their acolytes high and dry.  On the same day, the two Prineville BLM chiefs announced their resignations.

A few years later, I went through the abandoned city of Rajneeshpuram and saw things that were almost unbelievable.  Ma Anand Sheela's headquarters, a group of mobile homes pieced together, was a hive of secret doors and hidden tunnels, her private room a command post with electronic listening gear tapped into every room in the development.  The Bhagwan's parquet-paneled quarters had nitrogen oxide spigots by his bedside, and was surrounded by huge bathrooms with multiple showers.

One of the most prized mementos of my congressional career is a handwritten note from Bill Bowerman, received a few days after the Rajneesh debouched, saying, ``Thanks, Jim.''

Jim Weaver represented Oregon's 4th District in Congress from 1975 to 1987.