Elected Through Terror

The Rajneesh Through the Eyes of a Local Sheriff

By: Art Labrousse

Narrated by: Steven Labrousse

Length: 4 hrs and 34 mins

Publisher's summary

On November 2nd, 1984, Art Labrousse was elected sheriff of Wasco County in what would become one of the most controversial elections in modern US history. With the first bioterrorist attacks on American soil, Elected Through Terror tells the story of a small group of people desperate to hold on to law and order in a troubling time. These people were willing to give up everything to keep their way of life. What they did not know would cost them dearly. Learn the truth firsthand from a trusted source.

©2015 Art Labrousse (P)2017 Art Labrousse

Worst production ever

Appears to be unedited.
Undeleted bad takes. Headphone mix unlistenable. Fascinating story that falls flat.

Worth listening to

I wish there was more detail in the story and the narration was unfortunately under produced and still included a lot of editing that was left. The narrator has several areas of the book that repeat the lines several times with mistakes or different inflection before continuing. These need to be edited out. In the beginning of the book it’s almost as if they are speed reading and there is a lack of pausing after sentences. These make the book a little hard to listen to but the story itself is amazing history and while I would have liked it to have more detail and more specific information it was still an interesting account.

Editing Issues not enough story and offensive end

I have always been interested in cults and their history in America. When I discovered the topic of the Rajneesh and what they did in Wasco county, I was excited to find a book about it. The beginning of the book met my expectations, but the middle and end of the book let me down.

First, there are major editing issues. Whoever recorded this, must have done it in one take or forgotten to go back and fix their mistakes. You will hear the narrator stop, pause, redo sentences or even paragraphs more than once. It got to the point where I was not sure which sentence he was on anymore.

But my bigger issue was the content of the book itself from the middle to the end. I wanted a book that told me the story of the Rajneesh, what I got was a story about the sheriff of Wasco county with the Rajneesh mixed in when it applied. I had several chapters on how the sheriff reformed his position, dealt with his staff, hired and fired other people with county positions, and complained about a multitude of problems going on before he came.

I also had him talking very little about the Rajneesh from the middle section on. It was like he would throw it in every once in a while just to keep on topic, but most of it was about him and how he ran his sheriffs department. This is not the book I was looking for.

The worst part, is the very last few paragraphs. The sheriff takes the liberty of going into a monologue about how Bad things happen when religious groups are allowed to change the ways of a community. He likened this to the Muslim community and how their desire to be able to practice their religion when it clashed with community norms was the same thing that the Rajneesh where doing in 1985.

This totally ruined what little I liked of the book. To compare the Muslim faith to a cult, is absolutely ridiculous and offensive. I would not recommend this book to anyone.

Interesting

This is the memoir of Sheriff Art Labrousse, the third longest seated Sheriff in the Wasco, Oregon County history. The book is about his first year in office in 1980. The author started his career as a reserve officer in 1970 at The Dalles City Police Department. He then joined the force and in 1980 ran for Sherriff.

Wasco County found that thousands of members of the Rajneesh cult were flooding into small communities. They completely took over the small town of Antelope and renamed it Rajneesh. The organization bought a large ranch and proceeded to make it into a commune. Labrousse tells about the religious extremists demanding special treatment and exceptions from inconvenient laws. The Rajneesh poisoned county officials who opposed them. Then they poisoned the salad bars in the area and killed or sickened up to seven hundred people. This was the first and largest biological terrorist attack in the United States. The cult ran the largest illegal wiretapping operation ever uncovered. The cult operated a large immigration fraud scheme as well as other illegal activities such as local voter fraud. The Sheriff tells how he dealt with the bullying and terrorism in his county the first year he was in office. The author spends time explaining the lies behind exploitation of religious freedom.

The book was four and a half hours long. Steve Labrousse did an adequate job narrating the book. I did have a problem with the last half of the book with sentences being repeated and blank spots and then prior sentence repetition. I think they needed a sound editor. The audio production was not very professional, but I was interested in the topic and it was not so bad that I could not tolerate it.