00:00:05
in a small town in oregon in 1984
00:00:09
the first biological attack was launched
00:00:12
against the united states
00:00:14
for over a decade the details of this
00:00:17
nearly catastrophic event were withheld
00:00:20
from the public
00:00:22
this is how forensic science unearthed
00:00:25
the biological trail
00:00:29
[Music]
00:00:55
this small town in oregon is called the
00:00:58
dales and is perched high above the
00:01:00
columbia river about 80 miles due east
00:01:03
of portland
00:01:05
it seems like you've driven back in the
00:01:06
50s
00:01:08
and it seems in the physical appearance
00:01:10
it seems frozen frozen in time in that
00:01:12
way
00:01:14
dave and sandy lutkins are among the 11
00:01:17
000 residents who find the dales the
00:01:19
perfect place to raise a family
00:01:22
a half an hour or an hour from skiing a
00:01:24
lot of water sports a lot of hiking
00:01:27
it has pretty decent schools we have
00:01:29
pretty low crime
00:01:32
on september 25 1984
00:01:35
david and sandy both became violently
00:01:37
ill with cramps diarrhea and vomiting
00:01:40
their dehydration caused delirium
00:01:44
but i've never felt that bad in my life
00:01:46
the room was spinning and you just
00:01:48
didn't care about anything well let's
00:01:50
put it this way i would never want to be
00:01:51
that sick again
00:01:52
when david and his wife went to the
00:01:54
hospital they weren't the only ones
00:01:56
seriously ill
00:01:58
and then suddenly there were so many
00:02:00
people we had people laying on the floor
00:02:02
we had people leaning up against the
00:02:04
wall
00:02:05
there were people in the lobby
00:02:07
they all had the same symptoms
00:02:11
microbiologists identified the cause
00:02:14
salmonella
00:02:17
salmonella is a bacteria commonly found
00:02:19
in eggs meat poultry unpasteurized milk
00:02:22
water and an animal feces especially
00:02:25
that of reptiles
00:02:28
it is rarely fatal
00:02:29
but sometimes death occurs in infants
00:02:32
and the elderly
00:02:35
ten days after the first outbreak a
00:02:37
second wave hit
00:02:40
the number of patients exploded from
00:02:42
dozens to hundreds every hospital bed
00:02:45
was filled
00:02:49
by the time dave lutkins emerged from
00:02:51
four days of delirium
00:02:53
he encountered a disaster
00:02:55
lutkins owned a small restaurant 13 of
00:02:58
his employees were sick along with
00:03:00
hundreds of his customers
00:03:03
we had virtually no business i mean it
00:03:04
just disappeared
00:03:07
it was tough i mean that was
00:03:10
i was in the process of building another
00:03:12
facility in hood river and
00:03:16
i was going to have it all paid for and
00:03:18
opening up debt-free and it didn't work
00:03:20
out that way
00:03:22
but what was the source of the outbreak
00:03:25
food handlers who don't properly wash
00:03:28
their hands after using the bathroom
00:03:30
sometimes transmits salmonella
00:03:35
but hundreds of people were sick
00:03:37
and they hadn't eaten in the same
00:03:39
restaurant or even the same restaurant
00:03:41
chain
00:03:43
tests of the water supply revealed
00:03:45
nothing
00:03:47
the centers for disease control in
00:03:49
atlanta georgia was asked to investigate
00:03:52
whether it was some type of accidental
00:03:54
outbreak
00:03:56
or
00:03:57
was it intentional
00:03:59
[Music]
00:04:03
solving the riddle of the salmonella
00:04:05
outbreak in oregon is the job of
00:04:07
epidemiologists
00:04:08
scientists who study how disease moves
00:04:11
through large populations
00:04:14
they seem to be unrelated events
00:04:16
complicated things greatly it was almost
00:04:19
like doing multiple simultaneous
00:04:22
investigations
00:04:24
there seemed to be no common link among
00:04:27
the hundreds of residents who had gotten
00:04:29
sick
00:04:31
dave and sandy ludkins both remembered
00:04:34
eating a salad in their restaurant
00:04:36
before getting ill
00:04:38
i think we were too sick to worry that
00:04:40
much about it at that time
00:04:42
it was later that we started you know
00:04:44
wondering if it was gonna
00:04:45
close us down
00:04:48
hundreds of their customers and most of
00:04:50
their employees became ill too
00:04:54
at the county health department nurse
00:04:56
diane kerr contacted everyone who fell
00:04:58
ill and discovered they had all eaten a
00:05:02
salad from one of ten local restaurants
00:05:06
most of the people seem to have eaten
00:05:07
potato salad
00:05:09
at another restaurant most of the people
00:05:11
seem to have eaten
00:05:13
a green salad
00:05:14
and so what was going on they looked at
00:05:17
common suppliers of food they looked you
00:05:19
know where did everybody get their
00:05:20
lettuce where did everybody get this
00:05:22
where'd everybody get that we couldn't
00:05:24
find one source of
00:05:26
cucumbers or lettuce or
00:05:28
meat or of anything that that would
00:05:30
explain all those restaurants being
00:05:31
contaminated at once
00:05:36
dr michael skeels runs the laboratory
00:05:38
that processed samples from the dale
00:05:40
salmonella outbreak
00:05:43
microbiologists discovered that all of
00:05:45
the victims had the same strain of
00:05:48
salmonella one that was exceptionally
00:05:51
rare
00:05:52
it was dulcitol negative which means it
00:05:55
didn't biochemically break down a sugar
00:05:57
called dulcetal and that's only the case
00:05:59
for two percent of salmonellas of this
00:06:01
type
00:06:02
this salmonella had another odd
00:06:05
characteristic
00:06:06
unlike most bacteria this one was not
00:06:09
resistant to antibiotics
00:06:14
when all the cases were tallied there
00:06:16
had been 751
00:06:18
cases of salmonella poisoning
00:06:23
10
00:06:24
were restaurant workers
00:06:27
and these people became ill before
00:06:29
outbreaks among
00:06:31
the outbreak was noticed among customers
00:06:34
nevertheless
00:06:35
two months after the outbreak the state
00:06:38
of oregon reported that poor hygiene of
00:06:41
restaurant workers and
00:06:43
cross-contamination were the most likely
00:06:45
causes of the outbreak
00:06:48
in other words
00:06:49
they didn't know
00:06:52
the oregon health department
00:06:53
basically hung us out and said well it
00:06:55
was
00:06:56
dirty employees it was you know it was
00:06:58
unsafe practices unsafe handling the
00:07:00
food officials found no salmonella in
00:07:04
dave lutkin's restaurant but they did
00:07:06
find traces of it in some of the other
00:07:08
restaurants
00:07:10
if you've worked in public health long
00:07:12
enough you'll figure out that lots of
00:07:13
times you really can't pinpoint where
00:07:15
things front come from the health
00:07:16
officials said this is the best we can
00:07:18
tell you it wasn't a very satisfying
00:07:20
explanation for them or for the public
00:07:22
or for the press
00:07:24
but at that time there was no other
00:07:25
explanation
00:07:29
local officials now began to suspect a
00:07:32
religious cult outside of town
00:07:35
the rajnishi's
00:07:38
as the rajnishi's expanded their
00:07:40
compound there had been growing tension
00:07:43
between cult leaders and local
00:07:45
politicians
00:07:47
just a year earlier one of the cult's
00:07:50
leaders
00:07:51
sheila hinted at potential violence
00:07:56
she said quote we are here in oregon to
00:07:59
stay at whatever the cost
00:08:02
if that means some blood is spilled
00:08:05
then this is the price we are prepared
00:08:08
to pay
00:08:11
a guru from india bhagwan shri rashnesh
00:08:14
started the farming commune in 1981.
00:08:19
after two years and 30 million dollars
00:08:22
the 64 000 acre organic farming and
00:08:25
meditation compound had its own post
00:08:28
office school hospital and shopping mall
00:08:32
with housing for over a thousand
00:08:34
followers
00:08:36
they're doctors and lawyers and
00:08:37
accountants who've given up everything
00:08:39
to drive tractors and plant potatoes and
00:08:42
and have you know daily chance
00:08:46
as he drove through the compound each
00:08:48
day in one of his 80 rolls-royce
00:08:50
automobiles the guru preached the
00:08:53
benefits of meditation and free love
00:08:57
published reports say that the bhagwan
00:09:00
claimed to have had more sex partners
00:09:03
than anyone in history
00:09:06
in 1982 the rajnishis took over the
00:09:08
nearby town of antelope
00:09:11
and with it the majority of seats on the
00:09:13
city council and school board which
00:09:15
horrified long-time residents of the
00:09:18
small town
00:09:20
before the outbreak the rajnishi's had
00:09:23
set their sights on control of the
00:09:25
larger town of the dales and had put up
00:09:28
their own slate of candidates running in
00:09:31
the november election
00:09:34
in the absence of a scientific
00:09:36
explanation some thought the rashnesses
00:09:39
might have intentionally poisoned the
00:09:42
community in some way
00:09:45
so there was suspicion but there was no
00:09:47
evidence why would they do this and
00:09:51
the other thought was was maybe there
00:09:52
was somebody some hot head trying to
00:09:55
incriminate the raj niche
00:09:58
one year later
00:09:59
the rajnishi's behavior grew even more
00:10:02
bizarre revealing evidence that would
00:10:06
eventually solve the mystery
00:10:13
since health officials could not find
00:10:15
the source of the salmonella outbreak in
00:10:17
the dales oregon
00:10:19
suspicion among local officials
00:10:21
continued to be
00:10:22
the rosh nishis a religious cult living
00:10:25
on a farm outside of town
00:10:34
leaders of the cult and town officials
00:10:37
were often at odds
00:10:39
the cult was founded by bhagwan sri
00:10:42
rajneesh
00:10:43
but today today operations were run by
00:10:46
his associate
00:10:48
ma anand sheila
00:10:50
they met each other's needs sheila
00:10:52
provided for him whatever he wanted you
00:10:55
want 60 rules for isis we'll get you 60
00:10:57
rolls royces you want a new disciple
00:10:59
tonight we'll get you new disciples you
00:11:01
want to fly in a jet we'll get you to
00:11:03
what you know whatever to make you happy
00:11:05
and and the trade-off was that the black
00:11:07
one would say okay
00:11:09
you're number one you're in control you
00:11:11
take care of all the details i don't
00:11:13
care how you do it
00:11:14
the raj nishis were becoming paranoid
00:11:17
for many reasons
00:11:20
they were being investigated for
00:11:22
possible immigration fraud
00:11:24
and there was growing internal conflict
00:11:27
between sheila and other commune leaders
00:11:30
nonsense
00:11:31
you better believe me i'm a tigress
00:11:34
she and her group
00:11:37
were in a power struggle with
00:11:39
another group which we always kind of
00:11:41
called the hollywood faction they were
00:11:43
rich members of the cult headed up by a
00:11:45
lady who was the ex-wife of a hollywood
00:11:47
producer they had money
00:11:50
they had access to rajneesh
00:11:53
and
00:11:55
sheila and her group were very paranoid
00:11:58
about these people
00:12:00
the struggle was for control of the guru
00:12:02
the cult and its finances
00:12:06
former cult members told of plans to
00:12:10
assassinate several local politicians
00:12:13
rival cult members a united states
00:12:15
attorney and journalist les zeits in
00:12:18
retaliation for some investigative
00:12:20
pieces he had written about the group in
00:12:23
the local newspaper
00:12:25
to be told that you're on a hit list and
00:12:28
for a group that
00:12:29
i believe is the time they were capable
00:12:31
of that they're just purely evil folks
00:12:32
by that time uh it was really quite a
00:12:35
chilling chilling way to start the day
00:12:38
one year after the salmonella outbreak
00:12:40
without warning
00:12:42
sheila and the head of the rashnesh
00:12:44
medical clinic a nurse named puja fled
00:12:47
to europe
00:12:49
rajneesh disowned them
00:12:52
they had turned it into a passive
00:12:55
concentration camp
00:13:00
prosecutors heard that puja had been
00:13:02
experimenting with biological poisons at
00:13:05
the clinic including
00:13:08
salmonella
00:13:11
but there was no hard evidence
00:13:14
with the increasing scrutiny the bhagwan
00:13:17
stepped up the level of personal
00:13:19
security
00:13:20
[Music]
00:13:22
there were times when he would move from
00:13:24
one end of the town to the other where
00:13:27
he would be in a bulletproof limousine
00:13:30
he would have a lead suv with armed
00:13:32
guards in it he would have a trailing
00:13:36
suv with arm guards and then he'd have a
00:13:38
jet ranger helicopter in the air
00:13:41
[Applause]
00:13:42
we felt we could be confronted by a 45
00:13:46
person private army with fully automatic
00:13:48
weapons
00:13:49
in october of 1985
00:13:52
a federal grand jury issued a 35-page
00:13:54
indictment charging the bhagwan with
00:13:57
lying on his visa application and
00:13:59
arranging sham marriages so his
00:14:02
followers could remain in the united
00:14:04
states
00:14:06
when officials planned to search the
00:14:08
compound they asked epidemiologist dr
00:14:11
mike skeels to come along because of
00:14:14
fears of biological retaliation and as
00:14:17
we were going up that road i was
00:14:19
thinking you know for a microbiologist
00:14:21
this is going to be a pretty interesting
00:14:22
day
00:14:23
no shots were fired
00:14:27
in the commune's licensed medical center
00:14:30
skills found samples of various bacteria
00:14:33
standard testing material for a small
00:14:35
clinic
00:14:37
one of these vials contains salmonella
00:14:39
typhy muriel
00:14:40
and
00:14:41
i remember at the time thinking well
00:14:43
they told me to look for salmonella if i
00:14:44
find any i'm supposed to seize it as
00:14:46
evidence well there it is so i'll seize
00:14:48
it
00:14:48
but i wasn't thinking at all that this
00:14:50
was related
00:14:51
to the outbreak
00:14:53
shortly after the raid
00:14:55
rashnesh left on one of his private jets
00:14:58
he was arrested in north carolina on the
00:15:00
immigration charges
00:15:03
meanwhile the cdc tested the salmonella
00:15:06
found in the commune's lab using a
00:15:08
technique called plasmid profiling
00:15:12
plasmids are sections of free-floating
00:15:15
genetic material outside the bacterial
00:15:18
chromosome
00:15:20
bacteria can exchange plasmids allowing
00:15:23
a colony to genetically adapt
00:15:26
and you would then use the size of the
00:15:28
plasmid and
00:15:30
some other characteristics of it to see
00:15:32
whether it matched the plasmids from
00:15:33
other bacteria mostly the size and so if
00:15:37
you found that you had the same plasmid
00:15:39
type you could assume that these were
00:15:41
related or similar strains
00:15:44
the salmonella from the rashnesses
00:15:46
clinic had a plasmid profile similar to
00:15:50
the organism from the
00:15:52
dales
00:15:54
and it could be killed by all
00:15:56
antibiotics just like the strain used in
00:15:59
the epidemic
00:16:01
that really was a smoking gun that
00:16:03
showed us that the isolate that
00:16:06
i found in their clinic and the isolates
00:16:08
that we were getting from the people in
00:16:10
this outbreak really were the same
00:16:12
bacterial strain
00:16:14
the question remained
00:16:16
why
00:16:17
would the rashnesses poison the
00:16:19
residents of this small town
00:16:25
inside the rashnishi commune
00:16:28
investigators found evidence connecting
00:16:30
the group to the mass salmonella
00:16:32
poisonings
00:16:34
and they discovered other bizarre
00:16:36
activities
00:16:38
sheila had installed surveillance
00:16:41
devices everywhere in the commune
00:16:44
every pay phone in the town was tapped
00:16:47
and almost every building this is the
00:16:50
largest incident of wiretapping in the
00:16:52
history of the united states
00:16:54
they wired this whole town
00:16:55
they were illegal interceptions there
00:16:57
were thousands of them they had banks of
00:16:59
tape recorders running all the time
00:17:02
it's indescribable
00:17:05
[Music]
00:17:06
most rashinishi's didn't know they were
00:17:08
being monitored
00:17:10
it was kept quiet by sheila and her
00:17:13
inner circle which held their meetings
00:17:15
on her round bed a bookcase concealed a
00:17:19
metal door opening onto a tunnel or in
00:17:22
secret rooms
00:17:23
complete with escape tunnels
00:17:27
the fbi also found a number of manuals
00:17:31
for making bombs and
00:17:34
doing dirty tricks and they found a
00:17:36
number of articles about bioterrorism or
00:17:38
biowarfare
00:17:40
the salmonella was the weapon chosen for
00:17:42
a power struggle but not an internal one
00:17:47
did i understand you correctly yesterday
00:17:49
when you said that you were in fact now
00:17:52
going to attempt to take over wasco
00:17:53
county that's correct you understood
00:17:55
right
00:17:57
when the rajinishis put up their own
00:17:59
candidates to run for election for the
00:18:01
local county commission they wanted to
00:18:03
make sure their candidates won
00:18:07
to do that they wanted to make the local
00:18:09
voters sick enough so they couldn't get
00:18:11
to the polling places to vote
00:18:14
the russian issues would have enough
00:18:16
people in antelope and other nearby
00:18:18
places that they would all vote 100
00:18:21
turnout among the russian issues enough
00:18:23
that they would
00:18:24
install their own candidates on the
00:18:26
county commission
00:18:29
but why had the outbreak happened in
00:18:31
september
00:18:33
informants say it was a rehearsal
00:18:37
and it wasn't their first
00:18:39
at sheila's direction
00:18:41
the rajnishi's took off their red robes
00:18:44
and put on regular clothing and went
00:18:47
through the town with spray containers
00:18:50
filled with salmonella
00:18:53
in august their first experiment was
00:18:56
spraying the door handles in the county
00:18:58
courthouse and produce in the local
00:19:01
supermarkets
00:19:02
[Music]
00:19:04
but no one got sick
00:19:09
their second experiment in september was
00:19:12
to spray salmonella on salad bars in 10
00:19:15
local restaurants
00:19:17
which worked
00:19:18
contaminating over 700 residents
00:19:27
just before election day the rajnishi's
00:19:30
made plans to contaminate the city's
00:19:34
water supply
00:19:35
apparently they were unsuccessful
00:19:38
there was evidence that someone had
00:19:40
gotten to the reservoir for the city of
00:19:42
the dallas and gotten into it but no
00:19:45
evidence that they actually ever
00:19:46
contaminated
00:19:48
all of the rajonishi candidates lost in
00:19:51
the november elections
00:19:54
armed with the forensic biological
00:19:56
evidence sheila and puja were extradited
00:19:59
from europe and charged with tampering
00:20:01
with consumer products
00:20:04
they both pled guilty served less than
00:20:07
three years in federal prison were
00:20:09
released and fled to switzerland before
00:20:12
state charges could be filed
00:20:15
last we knew sheila was in europe
00:20:17
running at
00:20:18
the equivalent of a nursing home which
00:20:20
is sort of chilling to think about
00:20:22
turning grandma over to sheila in her
00:20:24
final days
00:20:28
there was no proof rashnesh himself ever
00:20:30
knew anything about the salmonella plot
00:20:33
he pleaded guilty to immigration
00:20:35
violations was deported and died in
00:20:38
india in 1990
00:20:41
most of the restaurants targeted in the
00:20:44
attack never recovered from the economic
00:20:46
blow
00:20:47
and went out of business
00:20:50
that's what happened to dave lutkin's
00:20:52
restaurant
00:20:54
we never regained the position we had in
00:20:56
the community
00:20:57
afterwards i had people that would tell
00:20:59
me that you know i know it wasn't your
00:21:00
fault but i just can't eat there anymore
00:21:04
he now runs a catering service
00:21:07
[Music]
00:21:08
the scientists who investigated the
00:21:10
outbreak wrote a paper about it
00:21:13
but the centers for disease control
00:21:16
asked that it not be published fearing
00:21:19
copycat crimes
00:21:24
in 1997
00:21:26
13 years after the outbreak when
00:21:28
bioterrorism had become a growing
00:21:31
concern
00:21:32
the paper was finally published in the
00:21:34
journal of the american medical
00:21:36
association
00:21:38
evidence discovered in the rashneshi's
00:21:40
health clinic revealed
00:21:42
they had even more potent biological
00:21:45
weapons in their possession
00:21:47
had they been used
00:21:49
the results would have been catastrophic
00:21:53
neither the epidemiology alone
00:21:55
nor a criminal investigation alone would
00:21:58
have would have cracked this it took
00:21:59
both to put it together
00:22:02
[Music]
00:22:19
so
00:22:20
[Music]
00:22:27
[Music]
00:22:36
you
