Two county commissioners drink tainted water at Rajneeshpuram; both fall ill

Rajneeshpuram's leaders wanted control of Wasco County, Oregon, and they had already been denied the building permits they needed to keep expanding. On August 29, 1984, two visiting Wasco County commissioners were handed glasses of water laced with Salmonella bacteria during a visit to the commune. Both men grew sick. It was an early test of a delivery method the group's followers would use on a far larger scale weeks later, when contaminated salad bars sickened hundreds of residents of The Dalles…