Мирные силы Раджнишпурама/Архив 1

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In just four years, followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh have established a triumvirate of paramilitary forces to guard the guru’s Central Oregon empire.

With two police agencies and a private security force, the Rajneeshees in Rajneeshpuram and Rajneesh – formerly Antelope – are among the most heavily protected populations in the state.

Police and security forces have accumulated an armory of .357 Magnum revolvers, semiautomatic Uzi carbines and Galil assault rifles, along with a few more exotic items such as tear gas grenades and barricade-penetrating shells for police riot guns. The Uzis and Galils, made in Israel, were designed originally in fully automatic versions as Israeli Defense Force weapons.

The Rajneeshees also have bought hundreds of human silhouette targets for combat training and have tried several times to buy fully automatic weapons.

Sannyasins have approached at least 25 arms and ammunition dealers from California to Massachusetts. A few top disciples, using their given rather than sannyasin names, have gone on buying trips for the movements. The arms buildup was a direct response to threats of violence from outside, Rajneeshee officials said.

“Nobody is going to come in and destroy us, and we’re not going to be like the Jews, you know, and just get slaughtered,” said Anand Durga, 38, a Dutch sannyasin born in Amsterdam as Ineke Lya Groenteman. She heads Rajneesh Security, the ranch commune’s shadowy, 150-member private security force.

The guru’s top disciples created the Rajneeshee militia, starting with a decision to hire private, armed guards from Bend for the First Annual World Celebration in the summer of 1982.

Anand Sheela, 35, the guru’s Indian-born personal secretary and chief of staff, discussed the commune’s security needs with the guards, who were called “Centurions” because of their corporate name, Project Centurion. Sheela’s husband, Prem Jayananda, 44, an Orange, New Jersey, native also known as John Joseph Shelfer, coordinated their activities.

The idea of armed security didn’t fade after the 1982 festival, however. The Rajneeshpuram Peace Force was created October 1, 1982.

Minutes from a later meeting of ranch department heads, called coordinators, summed up the agency’s purpose. “Peace Force priority is to protect Bhagwan and commune – law can be stretched either way,” the minutes noted.

The Peace Force reins went to Deva Barkha, 36, also known as Hester Dall St. John, a Stamford, Connecticut, native and former administrator with the California Department of Education. She became Peace Force administrator October 1 and chief December 30, 1982.

Jayananda was appointed police commissioner on September 24, 1982 – a week before the Peace Force came into being – but the commissioner’s job was abolished after his resignation in November 1983.

At the time of his appointment, Jayananda also was an executive of the London-based Rajneesh Services International Ltd. and president of both Rajneesh Investment Corp. and Balance Corp., a wholesale company he donated to the commune in 1982. The latter company operated in Oregon as Neo-Balance Corp.

In the early months of its existence, the Peace Force included two non-sannyasins, Harry Dell Hawkins, 50, and Marvin “Pat” Pattenaude, 53, both of whom had been Jefferson County sheriff’s deputies. Hawkins is still a member, but Pattenaude quit after about 10 weeks. The first sannyasin policeman was Satsanga, 40, also known as Daniel Richard Brigham, a Los Angeles native.

Barkha said in a June 5, 1985, affidavit that four of the Peace Force’s 10 current members were certified by the state Board of Police Standards and Training and that two had completed the basic course at the Oregon Police Academy. The board requires certification within one year of hiring.

Barkha told reporters that the city created the Peace Force because of concern about sheriff’s department response times in Jefferson and Wasco counties, as well as “increasing hostility from neighboring ranchers about the commune’s existence, and threats coming by phone and letter.”

“It was established as a peace force because it was clear the community itself was peaceful. Uniquely peaceful,” Barkha said. “It was just out of the need to, first of all, have a presence, a deterrent. A law enforcement agency right here, mainly due to the remoteness and due to the dichotomy of the totally peaceful community, and yet these violent threats coming in – to murder of certain individuals in the community or kidnappings or assassinations.”

Her 1985 affidavit reinforced her concern about possible violence. “These threats of bombings, sabotage, assassinations and general bloodshed are not idle,” the affidavit said.

But if the community it served was “unique,” the agency itself exhibited a few quirks, such as the radio of police to residents. At the July 1984 census, the Peace Force boasted 15 full-time members for a city population of 1,440. Other Oregon cities average 1.7 policemen and policewomen per 1,000 population.

Rajneeshpuram’s ratio then was 10 per 1,000 – nearly six times the average for other Oregon cities. The five other cities with 15-member forces had populations ranging from 6,615 in Redmond to 12,380 in West Linn. The Peace Force roster of 30 reservists in 1984 ranked second only to Portland’s 74. Barkha’s affidavit said the number of reservists has since dropped to 21.

Equally unusual were the “loving reminders” that were issued as warning citations to disciples who stepped out of line.

Pattenaude, now back to work as a Jefferson County sheriff’s deputy, said he was told that the reminders would be passed on to the coordinators of errant sannyasins. The coordinators – not city officials – would then decide appropriate punishments, he said.

Not until May 1984, about 20 months after the Peace Force was created, did the city appoint a municipal judge. The job went to Prem Homa, 31, also known as Michele Therese Mannel, a former music teacher born in Camden, New Jersey.

City officials had already smudged the distinctions between the various Rajneeshee enterprises on the ranch by hawking the Peace Force’s services.

Starting in late 1982, the Peace Force provided security for Rajneesh’s daily drive-bys, Pattenaude said. However, no formal agreement for that protection existed between the city and the Rajneesh Trust – the organization responsible for meeting the guru’s personal needs – until a year later.

The city, under a contract signed October 1, 1983, agreed to provide around-the-clock protection for the guru at $1,500 per month that year and $2,000 per month the next. The commune also contracted for protection during four festival periods, a job worth $45,000 and $50,000, respectively, in 1983 and 1984. All told, such contracts earned $100,000 for the city in 1984.

The arming of the Peace Force continued apace after the first order January 18, 1983, for a .357 Magnum revolver from the Davis Co. of West Sacramento, California. In two years’ time, the inventory included at least 14 .357 Magnums; several other handguns; three riot guns; a Ruger Model 77 bolt-action, high-powered rifle with telescope sight; nine military-style semiautomatic weapons; and four tear gas grenades.

The Rajneeshees discussed buying fully automatic weapons as early as 1982, said Gary G. Goldman, 42, of Encino, California. Goldman, who was not a sannyasin, was one of the ranch Centurions and later went on a raid into Laos with a retired U.S. Army Special Forces officer, Lt. Col. James G. “Bo” Gritz, in search of U.S. prisoners from the Vietnam War. Goldman said he and his partners in Bend discussed the pros and cons of fully automatic weapons with Jayananda and other Rajneeshee leaders.

“My position with them was that automatic weapons are a lot more romantic than they are practical,” Goldman said. “You need a wheelbarrow to carry your ammunition if you don’t know what you’re dong.”

Within two years, however, the Rajneeshees saw a need for automatic weapons, making at least three attempts to buy them.

Under federal law, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms cannot permit dealers to sell imported automatic weapons to any customers except law enforcement agencies. Private individuals or companies may buy domestically made automatic weapons if they pass background checks with local law enforcement authorities and pay a $200 federal transfer tax on each weapon bought.

The bureau reportedly quashed one Rajneeshee order, placed March 6, 1984, for an Israeli Uzi 9mm mini-submachine gun from Northeast Gun & Supply Co. of Needham, Massachusetts. A customer order filled out by Northeast Gun & Supply showed that in addition to the gun, the Rajneeshees ordered eight spare magazines, a shoulder holster and an “undercover briefcase.”

The second attempt – an order for a standard-sized Israeli Uzi 9mm submachine gun from Action Arms Ltd. of Philadelphia – was made March 26, 1984. Lonnie J. Muncy, chief of the bureau’s Firearms and Explosive Imports Branch, rejected the application in a letter to the dealer, noting that “we have been advised that the State of Oregon does not recognize Rajneeshpuram as a political subdivision or agency of the state.”

In the third attempt, two Rajneeshee men appeared in person – sometime during the first six months of 1984 – at the Davis Co. in West Sacramento to order two fully automatic, American-made Ruger rifles in .223 Remington caliber. The bureau rejected that application, too. Bill Davis, owner of the Davis Co., said the men identified themselves to his employees only as “Moses” and “Fats.”

Meanwhile, the Peace Force’s ammunition budget burgeoned, rising from $5,113 in 1983 to $25,000 in 1984. By comparison, the Portland Police Bureau – a 745-member force charged with protecting a population of 371,500 – has budgeted $45,000 for ammunition in 1984-1985.

Aside from protection services and car patrols, the actual police work done by the Rajneeshpuram force remains undefined. City records showed that it issued 15 citations in 1983 and 46 in the first 10 months of 1984.

However, city officials refused to allow public review of police crime reports, even for cases closed as long as two years ago. In response to a suit filed by The Oregonian, Circuit Court Judge William L. Jackson of Baker – sitting temporarily in The Dalles – ruled May 23 that the records should be produced, but he gave the Peace Force 60 days to weed out non-disclosable information. The court-ordered deadline for completion of the process is July 22.

The Peace Force has made several arrests, but none fueled the fires of contention more than the apparently illegal June 5, 1984, arrest of James L. Opray, 65, of Antelope – since named Rajneesh. The episode triggered a dispute between the Rajneeshees and District Attorney Bernard L. Smith of Wasco County, and prompted an FBI civil rights investigation.

Opray had made no effort to hide his distaste for the Rajneeshee presence in Antelope. At first, he had a large sign reading “The Wages of Sin is death” decorating his property. Later, he cut the sign into three pieces to conform with state highway restrictions and posted them, Burma Shave-style, on a friend’s land adjacent to Oregon 218, which runs through town.

The signs disappeared sometime between 2:30 p.m. and 5 p.m. June 5, 1984, according to police reports. Rajneeshpuram police, then on contract to patrol Antelope, reported that the signs were in place at noon, but the two officers on duty “noticed no one unusual or any strange vehicles later,” reported Assistant Chief Dhiresha, 35, also known as Patricia M. Dunsford, a native of Memphis, Tennessee.

Opray found the signs at the city dump, where he also encountered a sannyasin, Anand Sudhakar, 38, also known as Albert W. Raff, a native of Burbank, California. Opray told a reporter for The Dalles Weekly Reminder that the Rajneeshee had been dumping garbage in the wrong place, so Opray told him to put it where it belonged.

At 5:50 p.m., Opray reported the recovery of his signs to Dhiresha. Ten minutes later, Sudhakar reported that in the encounter at the dump, Opray had threatened to shoot him. Sudhakar later said he never saw a weapon.

Dhiresha said she decided to arrest Opray, based on his “extremely agitated, volatile state” and Sudhakar’s statement. But despite Opray’s supposed volatility, no arrest was made until 9 p.m., when Dhiresha and two other Peace Force members forced their way into Opray’s home, handcuffed him and hauled him off to the Wasco County Jail, where he was booked and released on recognizance.

Dhiresha claimed that she had talked with Deputy District Attorney Mike Bennett of Wasco County and that Bennett recommended that she arrest Opray. Bennett, however, said in a memorandum written the next day that he told Dhiresha the custody decision was up to the police department.

Sudhakar on June 7 signed a complaint against Opray that was filed in Wasco County District Court. Smith, on the same day, asked the court to dismiss the complaint because there wasn’t enough evidence of a crime.

“The arrest of Mr. Opray is further complicated by the entry by your officers into a private home without a warrant to arrest Mr. Opray. You, as a trained police officer, full well know the limits on entry of a private home to make an arrest,” Smith wrote in a June 26 letter to Barkha. The FBI’s investigation of the incident is still pending.

Rajneeshpuram police also seem to be around when government officials or critics appear on the ranch. Daniel C. Durow, the Wasco County planning director who has locked horns with Rajneeshee officials over planning issues, was cited in Rajneeshpuram on March 26, 1984, for driving a county-owned car that lacked a rear license plate. The Wasco County District Court dismissed the citation on April 2, 1984.

Eckhart H. Floether, 45, of Munich, West Germany, who was once a sannyasin under the name Anand Virendra and who has since become one of the movement’s harshest critics, was selectively cited for trespassing on June 25, 1983, when he and two others went to Rajneeshpuram by car. Driving the car was Willis L. Driver, 66, of Wamic. Floether and one of Driver’s neighbors, Margaret P. Scranton, were passengers.

When they got to the ranch, Driver turned off the county road briefly to go around a road grader that was blocking his way, said a Wasco County sheriff’s department report on the incident. When Driver refused to submit to a citizen’s arrest for trespassing, Rajneeshpuram police were alerted and apprehended the visitors in Antelope. There they cited Floether – not Driver – for criminal trespassing, even though Floether was riding in the back seat of the car.

At the same time, the Peace Force issued a misdemeanor citation to William E. Driver, 31 – Willis Driver’s son – alleging that he surreptitiously tape-recorded the police conversations with his father and Floether. The younger Driver, a free-lance reporter who has written a number of articles criticizing the Rajneeshees, had been waiting in Antelope for the others to complete their tour of the ranch. A Wasco County grand jury voted “not true bills” on both charges July 29, 1983.

But state officials gave the Peace Force greater cause for concern. Attorney General Dave Frohnmayer filed suit in Portland U.S. District Court on November 9, 1983, challenging the constitutionality of Rajneeshpuram’s incorporation.

As fallout from that decision, the FBI’s National Crime Information Center denied the city direct access to its information. That precluded the Rajneeshees from installing a state Law Enforcement Data System computer terminal.

While the FBI decision didn’t prevent Rajneeshpuram from getting the information by other means, an FBI official later wrote that “no amount of explanation” would convince Mayor Krishna Deva, 36, born in Chicago as David Berry Knapp.

David F. Nemecek, chief of the National Crime Information Center, said in a letter filed in Portland U.S. District Court that Deva “began a series of progressively abusive telephone calls to the FBI Headquarters over the following weekend and the following Monday.”

At the time, the Peace Force was obtaining information from the state system through the Jefferson County sheriff’s office, although the state notified the city by letter of its intent to cut off even that access. Law Enforcement Data System officials have never followed up on the letter.

But the threat of losing access to the state crime computer system altogether brought howls of protest from Rajneeshee officials. Suddenly, Rajneeshpuram’s image as a crime-free utopia gave way to a darker picture – that of a city of potential victims.

Prem Sangeet, 33, the Roseburg-born city attorney also known as Therese Marie Wandling, argued in an October 1, 1984, memorandum that talk of a cutoff “is greatly increasing the probability of serious or fatal physical injury to peace officers, residents and visitors to the city.” She contended there was a “pattern of increasing hostility and violence directed at the community.”

The Rajneeshees eventually did gain a direct link to the state crime information system, but not on the ranch. The Rajneeshee council of Rajneesh, formerly Antelope, authorized its own peace force in March 1985.

That agency – with Dhiresha as chief – started with nine volunteer members, including the town’s Chicago-born mayor and peace commissioner, Prem Kavido, 35, also known as Cathy Lee Knapp. Kavido is the sister of Rajneeshpuram’s mayor, Krishna Deva. The new force got computer access to both the state and FBI systems March 4.

Lloyd A. Smith, manager of the state system, said the Rajneeshees thus received direct computer access to driver and vehicle information maintained by the Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles; criminal records generated by local police agencies in Oregon and 15 other states that are members of the Interstate Identification Index; FBI and other federal criminal records maintained in the National Crime Information Center computers; and state and federal advisories on warrants, fugitives, stolen property and other law enforcement concerns.

State records showed that the Rajneesh Peace Force queried the system 164 times during May. Although Smith said Rajneesh, with a population of 115, was hard to compare with other law enforcement jurisdictions, he didn’t consider its queries excessive. By comparison, Troutdale, with a population of 6,850, used the system 590 times during May; Sandy, population 3,500, used it 401 times; and Jacksonville, population 1,950, used it 368 times.

Barkha said her own department in Rajneeshpuram had used the system two to 20 times daily before its service was interrupted. Losing access to the state system, she said, would hamper Rajneeshpuram Peace Force efforts to maintain “a crime-free community.”

Rajneeshpuram had experienced “several dangerous arrests,” Barkha said. She cited incidents involving “attempted assault of a peace officer, driving with a revoked license and resisting arrest; criminal trespass by a person armed with a knife; and two attempts to elude arrest in a vehicle.”

Of the threats listed by Barkha, only a handful actually occurred in Rajneeshpuram. The rest came in letters, telephone calls and overheard conversations.

In an interview, Barkha drew a link between the frequency of threats and the amount of publicity about the community. The 1984 share-a-home program, in which the Rajneeshees spent about $1 million to bring in 3,000 homeless people from across the nation, spurred the threats. The prime example, however, was the July 29, 1983, bombing of Hotel Rajneesh in Portland.

The bombing led directly to the formation of Rajneesh Security, a commune “temple” so secure that Durga, its incumbent coordinator, claimed not to know even the identity of her predecessor.

“I’m not sure, actually. Things change so fast here,” Durga said. She said she had “worshiped” – Rajneeshee jargon for “worked” – in Rajneesh Security before taking the coordinator’s job, and she acknowledged that the hotel bombing was the catalyst for forming the volunteer force.

In a June 1984 letter signed by Prem Sahaja, 47, also known as Ione Lee Matteson, a native of Wausau, Wisconsin, the commune broadened the security temple’s charge.

“Rajneesh Security intends to provide armed security services within the city of Rajneeshpuram,” the letter said. “We can assure you that all of our people who will be carrying weapons are well trained in arms use and all safety procedures.”

Durga said the security force was “just like any other neighborhood watch association.” But its weapons purchases and its size suggested something more than a neighborhood watch.

The guns – prominently displayed during the guru’s drive-bys – have proved a powerful publicity tool, helping to spread the Rajneeshees’ message of warming. Durga acknowledged that Rajneesh Security provided protection, “basically crowd control,” for the drive-bys, but she refused to divulge any details about the force itself, its other duties or its weaponry.

Weapons dealers across the country said the commune had bought at least 28 military-style semiautomatic weapons, including 13 Uzi carbines and 15 Galil assault rifles, since the fall of 1984. It also acquired at least one Remington Model 700 bolt-action rifle with a telescope sight.

Individual Rajneeshees bought at least 16 other weapons, though it wasn’t clear where they went or who eventually controlled them. The list included two more Uzi carbines, four Springfield M1A1 assault rifles, which are copies of the Colt AR-15, and six .357 Magnums.

An American sannyasin identified as Ava Avalos, 25, a San Diego native, bought two Uzis and two CAR-15 from USIA Weapons Sales Inc. in Southeast Portland. Two CAR-15s eventually wound up in the Rajneeshpuram Peace Force inventory. Avalos was a commune member and manager of Hotel Rajneesh at the time of the 1983 bombing.

Sat Prabodhi, 34, also known as Joan Hilary, Stanton, the commune treasurer and Rajneeshpuram city recorder, also used her given name to buy six .357 Magnums from Maury’s Gun Rack in Portland on October 2, 1984.

If the security temple indeed has 150 members, as a Portland U.S. District Court exhibit said, then about one in 10 Rajneeshpuram residents belongs. What all those people do remains a mystery.

Another measure of Rajneesh Security’s penchant for secrecy is that its radio messages are digitally scrambled, while the rest of the commune’s two-way radios broadcast in the clear, with their operators making occasional frequency changes according to a simple color code.

“It’s just a security system, so I just don’t want to talk about it,” Durga said. Asked about training, she replied:

“The only thing I can say about that is that everyone that lives here, every disciple of Bhagwan’s that lives here, is very concerned about the security, is very interested in it, is prepared to take responsibility for seeing that our home is just maintained safe for our family, for our friends, for our children and our master.”