It remains difficult to comprehend what happened to the Americans who went to Guyana simply because so many of the so-called facts are, to say the least, a bit murky. What is generally agreed up is this: On November 18, 1978, nine hundred fourteen members of the People's Temple at Jonestown died in a mass suicide. This number included the leader of the congregation, the Reverend Jim Jones, who died of a shotgun blast to the head. Most of the others, including more than two hundred children, died from drinking Kool-Aid laced with potassium cyanide. Most of those who died did so because they willingly drank what they knew to be poison. And they took this ultimate step because Jim Jones told them to do so.
Jim Jones was born May 13, 1931, in the state of Indiana. His father was a Klansman, his mother a Cherokee. By his early twenties, Jim became a persuasive preacher, learning much about healing and prophesizing from the Indiana Pentecostals. By the mid-1950s, Jones had his own congregation, which he called the People's Temple Full Gospel Church. His teachings emphasized the essentiality of racial integration. His church fed the local poor and found jobs for the indigent. By the early 1960s, the church had set up soup kitchens and was giving away groceries and clothing to those in need. In 1961, Jones described a vision he had had that the American Midwest was destroyed in a nuclear holocaust. Having read that Brazil was a safe place to avoid such destruction, Jones picked up his congregation and moved to Belo Horizonte, where they stayed until the end of 1963.
Jones moved his tribe back to the United States, settling in the Fillmore ghetto section of San Francisco. There he became a social activist, speaking out against U.S. imperialism and decrying what he claimed were the contradictions of American capitalism. Statements such as these resulted in his organization being infiltrated by local and national intelligence operations and the local media was not always kind in its dealings with the church. And so in 1977, Jones announced that he was tired of the harassment and was moving the People's Temple to Guyana. Many of the tribe had given up hope in America's ability to correct itself and they likewise believed that they could build their own utopia in a land unfettered by the U.S. government.
Many parishioners who left before the great tragedy claimed that Jones turned the utopia into a nightmare. Followers such as Jynona Norwood, who lost twenty-seven relatives in the massacre, complained of beatings and forced donations. Others, such as Leslie Wilson and Richard Clark, claimed they were held in Jonestown against their will. By the time Reverend Jones began having conversations with the Soviet Embassy about the possibility of moving the church to the USSR, negative media reports in San Francisco became a daily affair. Because of this and complaints from family members, Congressman Leo Ryan took some relatives and reporters with him to survey conditions in the communal village.
California Congressman Leo Ryan
The Reverend Jim Jones
Arriving November 17, 1978, Ryan said to the People's Temple, "I can tell you that by the few conversations I've had already this evening that there are some people who believe this is the best thing that ever happened in their whole lives." Even after the massacre, Washington Post reporter Charles Krause said, "No one offered any proof that the people of Jonestown were being starved, mistreated or held against their will. The hundreds of people still at Jonestown, who had chosen not to defect, seemed ample proof that they were relatively content." Nevertheless, minutes before Ryan was to depart, he was slipped notes from some of the flock saying they feared for their lives and wanted to leave with the Congressman. As Ryan and entourage were boarding their plane at Port Kaituma airfield, the Congressman and four others were shot, including a U.S. Embassy official named Richard Dwyer, who turned out to be with the CIA.
Jim Jones, Charles Parry and Richard Dwyer
The world press assumed that because Jones knew of the murder of Ryan and his party, that he, Jones, knew because he'd ordered it, which in turn was used to explain why he ordered the mass suicide. As it turns out, there is not a shred of evidence that Jim Jones ordered the killings of Ryan and companions, although he did know of their fate.
The airplane and the bodies of Ryan and his party.
And so nine hundred fourteen people drank the Kool-Aid. They drank it because Jones ordered them to do so and because Jones' guards were walking around with rifles and shotguns, enhancing the conformity to commit. Official investigations have been insufficient in revealing what may have happened there. Was Jones a tool of some branch of government or was he simply the latest in a string of persecuted and deluded messiah-complex advocates? At this point, I do not know the answers. However, in the next few weeks, I will be contacting some of the survivors as well as researchers into this mystery, hoping to learn why these people died.
What follows below is a transcript of an audio tape made during the last minutes at Jonestown just prior to the suicide, or, as Jones called it, "revolutionary act." The transcript was prepared by Mark Lane. I have listened to the tape myself and can attest that I have heard no discrepancies between the audio and these transcripts.
Jonestown Audiotape Primary Project : Transcripts
Transcript prepared by Mark Lane
Transcript prepared by Mark Lane
Tape Number : Q 042, the so-called "Death Tape"
The following partial transcript of the death tape appears in Mark Lane, The Strongest Poison (New York: Hawthorn, 1982), pp. 199-206
Published here for the first time are substantial excerpts from the last minutes at Jonestown.
The transcript is but a partial record of the event. The transcript is a stage of evidence once removed from the tape recording and is, therefore, less valuable. It is devoid of the screams of protest and anguish. Yet if the transcript is understood in the context of the events, it has some validity.
The setting is the pavilion in the center of Jonestown. An audience, consisting to a large extent of black children, women, and elderly people, is surrounded by scores of guards armed with semiautomatic weapons, shotguns, pistols, and crossbows. Jones has control of the microphone. He knows that Christine Miller is probably one of the most despised members of the commune. During the months that she lived in Jonestown, she demonstrated lack of concern for the welfare of the other residents. Her antisocial behavior in a difficult pioneer setting earned for her the least enviable reputation in Jonestown. He calls upon her to speak for the opposition, thus attempting to solidify support for his position. Others, including Marceline Jones, who try to protest, are denied access to the microphone and must try to shout from the floor. Jones is supported in his decision by a voluble claque, especially huge Jim McElvane, who prevents dissenters from being heard. Jones silences Marceline, drowning out her protests with, "Mother, Mother, Mother."
JIM JONES: It was said by the greatest of prophets in time immemorial – no man takes my life from me, I lay my life down. So to sit here and wait for a catastrophe that's gonna happen on that airplane, it's gonna be a catastrophe. It almost happened here, a congressman was nearly killed here but you can't steal peoples' children; you can't take peoples" children without expecting a violent reaction.
What's gonna happen in a few minutes is that one of the men on that plane is gonna shoot the pilot; I know that; I didn't plan it, but I know it's gonna happen. They gonna shoot that pilot and down comes that plane under the jungle and we had better not have any of our children left when it's over cause they'll parachute here in on us. I'm praying just as plain as I know how to pray. I've never lied to you, never have lied to you. I know that's what's gonna happen. That's what he intends to do and he will do it. He'll do it.
It oppresses on my brain seeing all these people behave so treasonous. It was just too much for me to put together but I now know what he was telling me and it will happen, if the plane gets in the air even. So, my opinion is that we be kind to children and be kind to seniors, and take the potion like they used to take their infant [inaudible] and step over quietly because we are not committing suicide. It's a revolutionary act. We can't go back, they won't leave us alone, they are now going back to tell more lies, which means more congressmen. There is no way, no way we can survive....
CHRISTINE MILLER: Is it too late for Russia?
JONES: Looks like it's too late for Russia. They've killed. They've started to kill. That's why I think it's too late for Russia, otherwise I'd say [inaudible] that you're right but it's too late. I can't control these people. They are out there. They are gone with the guns. It's just too late. Once we kill anybody, at least that's the way I learned, I just put my lot with you. If one of my people do something, it's me. I don't have to take the blame for it but I don't live that way. If they deliver up [inaudible] who tried to get the man back there. The guy whose mother has been lying on him and lying on him and trying to break up his family and they've all agreed to kill us by any means necessary. You think I'm willing to let them get ya'll? [crowd roars, "No!"] Not on your life. No, you're not going, you're not going. I can't live that way. I cannot live that way. I've lived for all and I'll die for all....
MILLER: I'd say let's make an airlift to Russia. That's what I say. I don't think nothing is impossible.
JONES: HOW are you gonna airlift to Russia?
MILLER: Well, I thought they said if we got in an emergency, they gave us a code and to let them know.
JONES: No they didn't. They gave us a code that they'd let us know – not us creating an issue for them. They said if they saw the country coming down, they'd give us a code. We can check on them and see if it's on the code. Check with Russia to see if they'll take us immediately, otherwise we die; I don't know what else to say to these people. But to me, death is not a fearful thing. It's living that catches it. I have never, never, never, never seen anything like this before in my life. I've never seen people take the law and do – in their own hands – and provoke us and try to purposely agitate mother and children. There is just no future. It's just not worth living like this....
JONES: What's gonna happen when they don't leave? I hope that they could leave, but what's gonna happen to us when they don't leave, when they get on the plane and plane goes down?
MILLER: I don't think they'd do that.
JONES: YOU don't think they'd go down? I wish I could tell you why but I'm right. There's one man there who blames, and likely so, Debbie Blakey for the murder of his mother and he will stop that pilot by any means necessary. He'll do it. That plane will come out of the air. There is no way you can fly a plane without a pilot.
MILLER: I wasn't speaking about that plane. I was speaking about a plane for us to go to Russia.
JONES: To Russia? Do you think Russia's gonna [inaudible] want us with all this stigma? We had some value but now we don't have any value.
MILLER: But I don't see it like that. I feel like that as long as there's life, there's hope. That's my faith.
JONES: Why then is everybody dying? Some place that hope around God but everybody dies. I haven't seen anybody yet that didn't die. And I'd like to choose my own kind of death for a change. I'm tired of being tormented to hell, that's what I'm tired of. I'm tired of it....
ANOTHER WOMAN: Not that I'm afraid to die, by no means, but I look at our babies and I think that they deserve to live – you know?
JONES: I agree but also they deserve nothing more than to be at peace.
WOMAN: We also live for peace.
JONES: Have you had it?
AUDIENCE: NO!
JONES: I tried to give it to you. I laid down my life practically. I've practically died every day to give you peace. And you're still not having peace. You look better than I've seen you in a long while but it's still not the kind of peace that I want to give you. A person is a fool to continue to say that you're winning when you're losing. Win one and lose two [inaudible]. No plane is taking off. Suicide [inaudible] Stoen has done it. I've talked with San Francisco to see that Stoen does not get by with this infamy. That's infamy. He had done the thing that he wanted to do. To have us destroyed.
WOMAN: When you – when you – when we destroy ourselves, we're defeated. We let them, the enemy defeat us....
JONES: I'm speaking to you not as your administrator; I'm speaking as a prophet today. I wouldn't have said these things and talked so serious if I didn't know what I was talking about. If anybody calls back – the immense amount of damage that's gonna be done – but I cannot separate myself from the pain of my people. You can't either, Christine, if you stop and think about it; you can't separate yourself; we've walked too long together.
MILLER: I, I know that, but I still say, as an individual, I have a right to say what I think, what I feel and I think we all have a right to our own destiny as individuals and I think I have a right to choose and everybody else have a right to choose theirs. You know? I still have a right to my own opinion....
JONES: If anybody else wants to speak – what did you say, Louise? You'll regret this very day if you don't die. You'll regret it. You'll regret it.
WOMAN: [Inaudible] so many people?
JONES: I saved them, I saved them but I made my example, I made my confession, I made my manifestation and the will was not ready – ...
JONES: I'm gonna lay down my burdens, down by the riverside. So we lay Œem down here in Guyana – what's the difference? No man didn't take our life by now . . . but when they start parachuting out of the air, they'll shoot some of our innocent babies. I'm not gonna, don't want to see that – they gotta shoot me to get through to some of these people. I'm not letting l them take you. Dorothy, will you let them take your child?
AUDIENCE: NO!
WOMAN: John John –
JONES: What's that?
WOMAN: You mean you want to see John, the little one –
JONES: I want to see –
AUDIENCE: [much excitement]
JONES: Please, please, please –
WOMAN: [Inaudible] John's life above others?
JONES: You think I put John's life above others? If I put John's life above others, I wouldn't be standing here with you at all. I'd save John out and he could go out on the driveway tonight . .
WOMAN: [Inaudible] John [inaudible]
JONES: He's just no different to me than any of these children here. He's just one of my children. I don't prefer one above another. I don't prefer any of you above John. I can't do that. I can't separate myself from your actions or his actions. If you'd done something wrong, I'd stand with you. If they wanted to come get you, they would have to take me....
JONES: You're just as precious as John and I don't know what I'd do – wait and judge the things I do. I've waited against all evidence....
JONES: Stay at ease, stay at ease, stay at ease. Take Dwyer on down to the East House.
WOMAN: Everybody be quiet please.
JONES: We've got some respect for our lives......
JONES: I've tried so very hard......
JONES: Get Dwyer out of here before something happens to him. Dwyer? I'm not talkin' Œbout you [inaudible] I said Dwyer. Ain't nobody going to take your [inaudible] I'm not letting them take your child. GET IN FOLKS, IT'S EASY, IT'S EASY......
JONES: It's all over – all over. What a legacy. What a legacy. The Red Brigade's only ones made any sense anyway. They invaded our privacy, they came into our homes, they followed us six thousand miles away. The Red Brigade's showed them justice; the congressman's dead.
Please get us some medication. It's simple, it's simple, there's no convulsions with it, it's simple; just please get it before it's too late, the GDF [Guyanese Defense Force] will be here, I tell you, get moving, get moving, get moving.
Don't be afraid to die; we're guilty if these people land out here, they'll torture some of our children here. They'll torture our people, they'll torture our seniors, we cannot have this.
Are you gonna separate yourself from whoever shot the congressman? I don't know who shot him. Speak of peace and those had a right to go and they had a right to – how many are dead [inaudible] My God Almighty – God Almighty......
JONES: I don't know how in the world they'll ever write about us. It's just too late, it's too late. The congressman's dead, the congressman's [inaudible] dead, many of our traitors are dead, they're all laying out there dead.
AUDIENCE: [Inaudible]
JONES: I didn't but my people did, my people did. But – they're my people, and they've been provoked too much. They've been provoked too much. What's happened here has been an act of provocation....
JONES: Can we hasten, can we hasten with that medication, you don't know what you've done. I tried. [applause] [inaudible] [music]. I guess they saw it happen and ran in the bush and dropped the machine gun [inaudible] my life. But there'll be more.
You wanna get that medication here, you've got to move....
JONES: Give them a little rest, a little rest. I do hope that those attorneys will stay where they belong and don't come up here. [inaudible] It's hard only at first. Only at first is it hard. It's hard only at first. When you're looking at death, it's – living is much, much more difficult; raising up every morning and not knowing what the night's bringing. It's much more difficult. It's much more difficult....
WOMAN: I'm looking at so many people crying. I wish you would not cry and just step over. Just take it. ...
JONES: Please, for God's sake, let's get on with it. We've lived as no other people have lived and loved; we've had as much of this world as you're gonna get. Let's just be done with it. Let's be done with the agony of it. It's a lot harder to have to watch you everyday die slowly from the time you're a child to the time you get gray, you're dying. It's honest and I'm sure that they'll pay for it. They'll pay for it. This is a revolutionary suicide. It's not a self-destructive suicide, so they'll pay for this. They've brought this upon us and they'll pay for that. I leave that destiny to them.
Who wants to go with their child has a right to go with their child. I think it's humane. I want to see you go, though – they can take me and do what they want – whatever they want to. I want to see you go, I don't want to see you go through this hell no more. No more, no more, no more.
We're trying. If everybody would relax. The best thing to do is relax and we'll have no problem. You'll have no problem with the thing if you just relax....
JONES: It's not to be feared. It's not to be feared. It's a friend. it s a friend. While you're sitting there, show your love to one another.
Let's get gone, let's get gone. There's nothing we can do. We can't separate ourselves from our own people. For twenty years, lay them in some old rotten nursing home. They've taken us through all this [sic] anguished years. They took us and put us in chains and that's nothing. There's no comparison to that, to this. They've robbed us of our land and they've taken us and driven us and we tried to find ourselves we tried to find a new beginning but it's too late. You can't separate yourselves from your brother and your sister. No way I'm gonna do it. I refuse. I don't know who fired the shot. I don't know who killed the congressman but as far as I'm concerned, I killed him. You understand what I'm saying, I killed him. He had no business coming. I told him not to come. [music] [pause] Die with respect – die with a degree of dignity. Lay down your life with dignity. Don't lay it down with tears and agony. It's nothing to death, it's like [inaudible] said – it's like stepping over into another plane. Don't be this way. Stop this hysterics. This is not the way for people who are socialistic communists to die. No way for us to die and let's die with some dignity, let's die with some dignity. Then you'll have no choice, now we have some choice. You think they are gonna allow this to be done and allow us to get by with this? Must be insane. It's just something to put to the rest – oh, God. Mother, Mother, Mother, please. Mother please, please, please, don't do this. Don't do this. Lay down your life with your child but don't do this. Free at last. Keep your emotions down, keep your emotions down. Children, it will not hurt if you'll be quiet, if you'll be quiet....
JONES: I tell you I don't care how many screams you hear, I don't care how many anguished cries, death is a million times preferable to ten more days of this life. If you knew what was ahead of you. If you knew what was ahead of you, you'd be glad that you're stepping over tonight. Death, death, death is common to people – the Eskimos, they take death in their stride. Let's be dignified. If you'd quit telling them they're dying – if you adults would stop some of this nonsense. Adults! Adults! Adults! I call on you to stop this nonsense. I call on you to quit exciting your children when all you're doing is going into a quiet rest. I call on you to stop this now if you have any respect at all. Are we black, proud, and socialists or what are we? Now stop this nonsense; don't carry this on anymore. You're exciting your children. No, no sorrow – that it's all over. I'm glad it's all over. Hurry, hurry, my children, hurry. All right, let's not fall into the hands of the enemy. Hurry, my children, hurry. They're seniors out here I'm concerned about. Hurry. I'm not leaving my seniors to this mess. Quickly, quickly, quickly, quickly. [Inaudible] No more pain now. No more pain. I said no more pain. Jim Cobb is laying on the airfield dead at this moment. [cheers] That Oliver woman said she would come over and kill me if her son wouldn't stop her. These are people, the peddlers of hate. All we're doing is laying down our life. We're not letting them take our life, we're laying down our lives....
JONES: Stop it all this nonsense. Stop this screaming. All we're doing is taking a drink and going to sleep. That's what death is – sleep. You can have it, I'm tired of it all....
JONES: Where is the vat, the vat, the vat, with the green sea in it? The vat with the green sea in, please?
Lay it here, so the adults can begin. Don't follow my advice, you'll be sorry. You'll be sorry. Better we do it than they do it. Just trust me – you have to step across. You used to think this world, this world is not our home; well it sure isn't. As we were saying, it sure wasn't.
WOMAN: [Inaudible]
JONES: [Inaudible] telling me [inaudible], sure [inaudible] some people are sure these pilgrims, are for the [inaudible] of stepping over into the next plane. But it set an example for others. We've set one thousand people – said we don't like the way the world is . . . [inaudible] take our life from us. We laid it down, we got tired. We didn't commit suicide, we committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an angry, mean world.
What follows is the transcript of a letter written by San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk. Written several months before the tragedy at Jonestown, this letter is also interesting because of its attack on Timothy and Grace Stoen. As you may know, Tim Stoen worked as a legal advisor to Jones, so Milk's questioning of his behavior is odd in light of the fact that the Supervisor was supportive of Jones. Milk, of course, would be murdered a few days after the Jonestown massacre. Dan White assassinated both Milk and San Francisco Mayor Moscone.
CITY AND COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO
BOARD OF SUPERVISORS
CITY HALL, SAN FRANCISCO 94102
SUPERVISOR HARVERY MILK
February 19, 1978
President Jimmy Carter
The White House
Washington, D.C. 20500
Dear President Carter:
I am the Supervisor for District Five in the City of San Francisco. The Peoples Temple Christian Church is not located in my District, so I have no political ties or obligations to this church. I am writing to call an urgent concern of theirs to your attention. I am concerned at what I understand is the endorsement of some of our Congressmen for the efforts of Timothy Stoen against Rev. Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple. There are some facts I feel you should be informed of:
Rev. Jones is widely known in the minority communities here and elsewhere as a man of the highest character, who has undertaken constructive remedies for social problems which have been amazing in their scope and effectiveness. He is also highly regarded amongst church, labor, and civic leaders of a wide range of political persuasions. Our own Board of Supervisors has presented Rev. Jones with a Certificate of Honor, unanimously passed by all members, praising the church for its many projects "which have been so beneficial to all the citizens of the Bay Area." On the same occasion, he was also presented with a unanimously passed resolution by a Republican State Senator, Milton Marks representing that legislative body.
Timothy and Grace Stoen, the parties that are attempting to damage Rev. Jones' reputation, and seriously disrupt the life of his son, John, have both already been discredited in the news media here. The most widely-read columnist in the area, Herb Caen, printed Mr. Stoen's sworn testimony that John is not his child but rather Rev. Jones. Grace Stone is reported involved in what could be considered a blackmail attempt against another leader in the minority community, Dennis Banks, reported in the two major dailies with her name also given in Mr. Banks' sworn affadavit about the attempt.
It is outrageous that Timothy Stoen could even think of flaunting this situation in front of our Congressmen with apparently bold-faced lies. I have learned in addition, that he has pressured these Congressmen towards unwitting compliance with promoting State Department intervention in the custody case now pending in Guyana.
Not only is the life of a child at stake , who presently has loving protective parents in Rev. and Mrs. Jones, but our official relations with Guyana could stand to be jeopardized, to the potentially great embarassment of our State Department.
Mr. President, the actions of Mr. Stoen need to be brought to a halt. It is offensive to most in the San Francisco community, and all those who know Rev. Jones to see this kind of an outrage taking place.
Respectfully,
(Signed, 'Harvey Milk')
Harvey Milk
cc: Rep. John Burton; Rep. Phillip Burton; Lt. Gov. Mervyn Dymally
1. Why did the People's Temple move to Guyana? Jones originally had his eyes on the island of Grenada. He had even courted Grenadian Prime Minister, Sir Eric Gairy, and invested $200,000 in the Grenada National Bank to begin the camp. After the Jonestown massacre, about $76,000 was still in this bank. We may never know the reason for changing his mind. Perhaps the camp in Guyana was more remote and private for his needs. Jones finally settled on the Matthew's Ridge section in Guyana - the former site of a Union Carbide bauxite and manganese mine.
2. What was the expense of the move and how was it financed? A lot of the money came from public donations, and of course, there were the contributions made by the flock. Jim Jones could be quite persuasive. "Pastor Jim Jones. . . Incredible !. . . Miraculous! . . .Amazing!. . . . The Most Unique Prophetic Healing Service You've Ever Witnessed! Behold the Word Made Incarnate In Your Midst!
God Works as tumorous masses are passed in every service... Beforeyour eyes, the crippled walk, the blind see!" Potential members first confronted an almost idyllic scene of blacks and whites living, working, and worshiping together. Guests were greeted and treated most warmly and were invited to share in the groups meal. As advertised, Jim Jones also gave them miracles. A number of members would recount how Jones had cured them of cancer or other dread diseases. During the service Jones or one of his nurses would reach into the members throat and emerge with a vile mass of tissue -- the "cancer" that had been passed as the person gagged. Sometimes Jim Jones would make predictions that would occur with uncanny frequency. He also received revelations about members orvisitors that nobody but those individuals could know what they had eaten for dinner the night before, for instance, or news about afar-off relative. With such "miracles" occurring on a regular basis, donations and voluntary funding came easily.
3. What was City Supervisor Harvey Milk's relationship to Jim Jones and/or the People's Temple?
Harvey Milk
Because Milk and Moscone were murdered so soon after the Jonestown tragedy, there was immediate speculation that Peoples Temple was somehow involved. Ann Kronenberg, Milk’s hand- picked successor, told biographer Randy Shilts that when she first heard Milk was murdered, she thought Jim Jones was responsible. Rumors began to circulate of obscure connections between Jim Jones and Milk’s murderer, Dan White. Vague rumors of a falling out between Milk and Jones also surfaced. One story has it that Milk asked Peoples Temple to remove his name from the church’s list of supporters when reports of violence and theft first came to light, and that he was outraged when the Temple failed to comply with his demand. Eventually, history settled on an official story: Jim Jones was a master manipulator who used unwitting local politicians to gain power for himself. The politicians, including Milk and Moscone, used Jones for volunteers and votes, while remaining personally distant and blissfully unaware of rumors of Temple violence, abuse, theft and even murder. The timing of Dan White’s murderous rampage was deemed coincidental. It is readily apparent from the letters and historical memorabilia that Milk and the Temple enjoyed a mutually supportive relationship until their concurrent deaths. Why then is the relationship such a secret, even taboo to discuss? The only biography of Milk to date, The Mayor of Castro Street, by Randy Shilts, downplays the Milk/Temple relationship, even going so far as to paint Milk as one of the countless people who cruelly ridiculed and ostracized the surviving Temple members and their supporters. Like most historians, Shilts opted for an image of an expedient politician, instead of truthfully portraying how Milk worked with Peoples Temple until the end of his life.
Enough time has passed since Milk’s brutal murder to reanalyze this relationship, to explore how and why Harvey Milk supported Peoples Temple. As people who hold Milk in high esteem, we should honestly and openly explore and reevaluate what we know about Peoples Temple, to see what it was about the church that appealed to Milk. Whether it was its pro-gay public persona, its support for embattled gay teachers, its opposition to anti-gay ballot measures, its active opposition to racism and sexism, the multiple stories throughout the pages of the Peoples Forum denouncing violence against gays and lesbians, or simply its acceptance of him and its continued support for his political campaigns – whatever the reason – Harvey Milk irrefutably supported Peoples Temple.
It may be understandable why in November 1978 the supporters of Milk would attempt to distance the newly martyred supervisor from the still-unfolding horrors of Jonestown. As Dr. Susan Stryker states in the curator’s statement of the Milk exhibit, “While I wanted to respect Harvey Milk’s legacy, I also wanted to suggest that in venerating him, we risk obscuring a great deal of other equally compelling gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender history.”
4. Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Milk were killed ten days after the massacre. Is this coincidence?
According to Loren Coleman: On July 26, 1977, San Francisco Mayor George Moscone announced that he would not hold an investigation of Jim Jones. In a letter to President Jimmy Carter, San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk defended Jones as a friend to minority communities. But soon, San Francisco family members asked their congressional representative to fly to Jonestown to look into the situation. This finally occurred with a one-day delegation headed by Congressman Leo Ryan. On November 18, 1978, supposedly frightened by the investigative visit of Ryan, cult leader Jim Jones ordered Larry Schact, a medical school graduate and designated camp doctor, to prepare a huge cyanide‑laced vat of grape Flavor‑aide.
Congressman Leo Ryan
The Congressman and three journalists
Nine days after the Jonestown events, on November 27, 1978, San Francisco Bay Area residents would learn of the assassinations of Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Milk. Law enforcement officials repeated the local rumors that some Bay Area residents believed that Moscone and Milk were murdered by the hauntingly named "White Night" hit squads said to have been sent by the Peoples Temple to avenge Jim Jones. As San Francisco Chronicle reporter Richard Rapaport observed, “When authorities went through the personal effects left behind in San Francisco by Jones, they found a hit list with the names of erstwhile political friends and allies like George Moscone and Willie Brown.”
The Moscone-Milk murders were carried out by a recently resigned former supervisor, Dan White, and were not directly linked to Jim Jones. White had impulsively retired from his position one year after his election and a mere two days after the Jonestown event. A former Vietnam vet, former police officer, and former firefighter, White would often go into trances during supervisors’ meetings and then impulsively goose-step around the room. His past was filled with mystery, including an enigmatic “missing year” of 1972. White’s murderous instability appeared to have been set off by the Jonestown murder-suicides and their link to San Francisco. The Chronicle’s Rapaport noted in 2003: “Part of the connection between the events came through media coverage. Each day between Saturday, Nov. 18, and Monday, Nov. 27, new and terrible video, photos and revelations emanated from the jungle retreat where many former San Franciscans had chosen, been coerced or programmed to join the man they called ‘Father.’”
In 1979 Dan White was found guilty of “manslaughter by diminished capacity,” despite opening arguments by attorney Doug Schmidt that linked Jonestown to the assassinations. Many still believe that the reason White was not convicted of first degree murder was because of what most of the media reported as the “Twinkie defense” – a phrase coined by well-known satirist Paul Krassner - that junk food had made White do it. While it was in reality HoHos and Ding Dongs, White’s defense claimed that his love of junk food was the result of his depression, not the cause of it.
The night the verdict was handed down, on May 21, 1979, the streets around San Francisco, especially near City Hall, erupted in violent protests. They became known, ironically, as the “White Night Riots.” Dan White would only serve five of his seven-year sentence. He was paroled in January 1984, tried exile in Ireland, and then returned to San Francisco despite requests from Mayor Dianne Feinstein (who had succeeded Moscone) not to do so.
5. What role, if any, did local, state or national intelligence agencies play in the establishment, maintenance, and protection of the People's Temple before and after the move to Guyana?
Up until the Spring of 1977, Peoples Temple was a church highly-acclaimed for humanitarian service. Then a fierce campaign burst on the scene, in the Murdoch and Hearst presses in San Francisco. It pursued the church relentlessly, with innuendoes, insinuations, and unsubstantiated charges accusing the church of fraud, coercion, irregular notarizations, misuse of government funds, break-ins, intimidation, to implications of murder. All investigations that were whipped up were later dropped for lack of evidence. Every attempt to rebut the charges in the press was met with a refusal to print a word.
These attacks were not launched by amateurs. No "disgruntled ex-member" had the resources, funding or connections to launch a relentless, one-sided campaign, which also included the foreign press, especially cities known to have large concentrations of Guyanese immigrants, like London and Toronto. Intensive lobbying campaigns in both Washington and Georgetown (the Guyanese capital) ensued.
Who would have the power and clout to do this? The tiny but influential group had three components: disgruntled ex-members, without power, resources or funding; government plants in the group who later defected; and non-member government-based handlers.
The smear campaign, first line of attack, was launched by a couple named Elmer and Deanna Mertle, who changed their names to Jeannie and Al Mills for publicity purposes. They were veterans of the far-right-wing John Birch Society, having claimed a political conversion to the left when they joined the church.
It turned out that there was no conversion. They had been coordinating all along with a man named David Conn, who admitted to the Berkeley Barb in the Fall of 1977 that he had been "investigating Peoples Temple all the (six) years his friends the Mertles were members." David Conn also tried to bribe/blackmail Native American leader Dennis Banks into denouncing Jim Jones publicly, under threat of being extradited back to a South Dakota jail. Although Banks, a man with nineteen children, feared he could be killed in jail, he swore out an affidavit and went public with the tale. In his affidavit, he also swore that Conn had bragged of his ties with the Treasury Department.
David Conn and his ex-wife Donna, had also bragged of "high priority Treasury Department numbers" in secretly taped conversations. Indeed, in just the second smear against Peoples Temple, the I.R.S. tax code was quote chapter and verse, as to what it would take to remove the federal tax exemption of a church. Their specific grievance was listed aspolitical – that the church was secretly involved in politics.
It is likely that the Mertle/Mills and Conn were F.B.I. agents, common enough for infiltrators of left-wing groups by J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO in the 60’s and early 70’s. Jim Jones was swiftly gaining a reputation as a political dissident, setting up Peoples Temple as a public forum for a whole host of leaders and causes on the left.
But the Mills and Conn were only the kernel of a more menacing group of personnel. Joseph Mazor, whom the Temple discovered was an agent of Interpol, through a document authored by a known Interpol agent, Louis B. Sims, told the Berkeley Barb that it was he who hired the expensive P.R. firm of Russom, Lowry & Leeper, to launch the smear campaign against Peoples Temple, as confirmed with one of their account executives, Bob Kenney. Mazor refused to disclose his source of funding, but said that they were "not present not past members of Peoples Temple," i.e. an outside government source.
Mazor had also been mysteriously granted a State investigator’s license (including bonding) in May, 1977, "just in time to investigate Peoples Temple," even though he sported a recent prison record for fraud and bogus checks. A letter from the State of California claimed that high-level recommendations had overridden their normal strictures against bonding a convicted forger.
It was also Joseph Mazor who claimed to have led the mercenary raid into Jonestown in September, 1977, claiming that his original assignment had been to kidnap children and then "kill all the adults," i.e. mass extermination.
Just days following the tragedy, Mazor was paraded across the t.v. screen, claiming that "It was considered that Jim Jones would become a major political force in the Caribbean within five years." Was this his motive for involvement all along? And what of the known planned move to the then-Soviet Union? Would that have lessened the concerns? Undoubtedly not. But the key here is that these concerns were now international.
Indeed, the concerns were very international, beyond the province of the F.B.I. and into the province of the C.I.A. In fact, this was turned into an international matter nearly as soon as it began. In the Fall of 1977, just a month or two after the original smear in Murdoch’s New West magazine, duplicate smears appeared in newspapers thousands of miles apart, in the Toronto Star, where there was known to be a large concentration of Guyanese immigrants, and in the New Times weekly in the Soviet Union, with the interest of discreditation in a camp we wanted as "friends." The headline of one was "Profits of a Prophet" and the other, "A Prophet Heads South With Profit," with the corresponding texts similar. This was an expression never used in any other press coverage. The articles appeared within two weeks of each other, and could not have originated from any standard U.S. news service.
From there on in, scores of "dirty tricks" pursued Peoples Temple at every turn: anonymous threatening phone calls falsely blamed on the church, phony break-ins, even physical attacks on individuals. A reporter, Kathy Hunter, was lured to Guyana by a phony call claiming to be the Prime Minister, then when she arrived, she was taken in hand by one Pat Small, a woman thought to be C.I.A. by the Guyanese government. The rest was a series of bomb threats and fire alarms, disruptions of the Guyanese Parliament, and finally a government invitation to leave. All the press in the U.S. blamed Peoples Temple, although the church had nothing to do with it.
The person coaching reporter Kathy Hunter through this entire fiasco was one Timothy O. Stoen. Stoen had been the church’s top attorney, strategist and close confidante and friend of Jim Jones. It was Stoen who appeared to be a classic agent provocateur, compliments of the U.S. government, during his years in Peoples Temple, pushing terrorist ideas as extreme as building bomb factories and poisoning the water supply of Washington, D.C. Thank God no one followed through.
Stoen came to Peoples Temple claiming to be from the far left, but later information surfaced that he was really a far right wing ideologue who had run spying missions to East Berlin in the early sixties.
Stoen was in a favored position in the church, had no personal grievance to force his departure, and no relatives left in the church. Yet upon leaving, he falsely claimed paternity of Jim Jones’ own son, John Victor, by his wife, Grace Stoen. Scores of people had known for years the truth of the child’s paternity, which had been repeatedly admitted and discussed by both Timothy and Grace Stoen.
Stoen set up lobbying offices in Washington to push his false causes, and shuttled back and forth between Washington and Guyana. The source of his funding (being out of work, and having lived "communally" in Peoples Temple) has been undisclosed to this day, though Stoen was discovered to have secret accounts in countries where the church had never done any banking.
Stoen’s false vendetta was pushed ferociously through the courts, and shortly after the Stoen’s attorney came to Guyana to file court papers, a mercenary raid on Jonestown ensued. Thereafter, Stoen lodged repeated mercenary threats, even being recorded in a Ukiah Daily Journal editorial, and the State Department log in Georgetown, Guyana. This documentation appears in "SNAKE DANCE."
Just days before the tragedy at Jonestown, Stoen told a Temple member that he had "vowed to destroy Jonestown" and that he was "counting on Jim [Jones] to overreact."
Stoen also used the false paternity claim to lure Congressman Leo Ryan to Jonestown, to his death. The Congressman’s aid had been secured as early as a whole year before the tragedy when, on November 18, 1977, Ryan unsuccessfully petitioned the U.S. Justice Department to force the child’s return to the States. The Congressman arrived in Guyana long after the matter had already been decided in Jones’ favor in the Guyanese courts, yet he wrote the San Francisco Temple that he was indeed going to Jonestown to "retrieve Tim Stoen’s son."
Stoen knew this was a "non-issue," cruelly pushed to destabilize Jim Jones personally, to justify military threats against a peaceful community, and to force the disbandment of Jonestown. Yet he augmented his campaign by soliciting false affidavits from two spiteful young women, Yulanda Crawford and Deborah Layton, to brand Jonestown as "a concentration camp" and provoke a Congressional investigation he knew he could not fairly win.
This extreme, false, and dangerous vendetta went yet one step further. Why was it Leo Ryan who was targeted for the deadly mission overseas? Look at Ryan’s record. He was the most vocal anti-C.I.A. critic in the entire U.S. Congress at the time! Leo Ryan and the C.I.A. had an ongoing hatefest. There would have been no one more tempting for the C.I.A. to target for death than Congressman Ryan.
7. Congressman Leo Ryan was attacked prior to reaching the airstrip. Why?
This appears to have been at the discretion of Jones. The audio tapes of that day clearly demonstrate that Jones knew Ryan had been killed.
8. Who was in Ryan's travel party? Congressman Ryan traveled to Jonestown with seventeen Bay Area relatives of Peoples Temple members, several newspaper reporters and an NBC-TV team. November 17, 1978 Ryan and party left Georgetown, Guyana airport for Jonestown aboard a chartered aircraft at 2 pm. The group included Ryan, aide Jackie Speier, Deputy Chief of Mission at the U. S. Embassy Richard Dwyer, Neville Annibourne of the Guyana Ministry of Information, Temple lawyers Mark Lane and Charles Garry, eleven reporters, and four representatives of the Concerned Relatives.
9. Why was the Congressman murdered? When he learned about hunters clubbing baby seals, Ryan journeyed straight to the ice floes to confront them. When he heard horror stories about conditions in Folsom Prison, he had himself admitted undercover as an inmate to see for himself. And when relatives of Peoples Temple members began to accuse Jones of physically and sexually abusing his followers, brainwashing them and holding them against their will in a South American jungle, Ryan bucked the local Democratic establishment and the Jimmy Carter administration's State Department to embark on his own trip. Ryan was friends with the father of former Temple Member Bob Houston, whose mutilated body was found near train tracks on October 5, 1976, three days after a taped telephone conversation with Houston's ex-wife in which leaving the Temple was discussed. More than any other person on the political left, Congressman Leo Ryan stood above reproach in his reputation and incorruptible in his ethics. This made him the most potentially dangerous person in the world to Reverend Jones, especially once Jones became aware that some followers had passed a note to Ryan begging him to take them with him when he returned to the United States.
10. What contact, if any, did Jones or the Temple have with the Soviet Embassy?
Jonestown Audiotape Primary Project : Summaries
Summary prepared by Fielding M. McGehee, III.
Tape Number : Q 352
This tape includes Jonestown’s formal welcome of Feodor Timofeyev, the consular of Soviet Union embassy in Guyana and — as the book Raven points out — a man that Jim Jones wanted to cultivate in order to smooth the way for the community’s proposed move to the Soviet Union. The consular’s October 1978 visit had been months in the making, and Jones wanted to be sure that everyone in Jonestown could greet the Soviet visitor in the Russian language and knew enough Russian history to recognize important dates.
The tape opens with Deanna Wilkinson performing a song of protest — and some sorrow — of the U.S. government’s betrayal of its citizens. Jones then introduces Timofeyev by declaring Jonestown’s allegiance to the Soviet Union as their alternative to their own homeland. His first words of the evening are, "For many years, we have let our sympathies be quite publicly known, that the United States government was not our mother, but that the Soviet Union was our spiritual motherland."
The community gives Timofeyev an enthusiastic welcome, and the Soviet consular is just as effusive in his praise for Jonestown, which he describes as "the first American socialist and … communist community." He expresses his appreciation for the universal knowledge of some Soviet history by every resident he has met (thereby demonstrating the success of Jones’ recent exhortations). Later, he speaks approvingly of the exchange of views on health issues between the Russian doctor who accompanied the consular and the Jonestown clinic.
Timofeyev outlines the history of Soviet Russia, and praises the socialist states of Eastern Europe. To tremendous applause, he adds that the USSR will support national liberation movements in Angola, Mozambique, and South Africa, and across the African continent.
Timofeyev discusses the Soviet Union society of the present day, emphasizing its treatment of ethnic minorities. He notes that the country has 130 nationalities and cultures, and describes the challenge that diversity represents to all the people, a challenge, he adds, that they have met. He points out that Russia never imported slaves from the outside world, so didn’t have any African blacks throughout much of its history. Now there is a black population, but it is fully integrated into the culture. "So, there is no national discrimination, there is no racial discrimination in the Soviet Union."
The groups of people in the USSR include a Jewish population, and Timofeyev takes pains to deny discrimination against Soviet Jewry. "In the opposite," he declares in his modest English, look at the Jewish influence and presence in their sciences, in their academia, and in their professions. The United States is the first to attack the Soviet Union on this issue, Timofeyev says, but it should clean up its own house first before it goes around criticizing others. (Jones later affirms Timofeyev’s claims and his rebuke to the U.S.)
The USSR is not perfect, Timofeyev acknowledges, but they have systems of self-criticism as they struggle to improve their society.11. Who was Richard Dwyer? There were two survivors named Richard: Richard Clark, and Richard Janaro. Neither were in Georgetown during the time-frame of the massacre. Of course, there was a third Richard involved with the events. Richard Dwyer was an Agency Man who survived the Port Kaituma shootout and even gets a hotly-debated reference from Jim Jones himself on the infamous Death Tape. If the people on Tape Q875 are indeed referring to Mr. Dwyer, we have as close to a smoking gun of CIA involvement as we are probably going to get.
Obviously, it is tenuous at best to assert that the "Richard" in question is Richard Dwyer, for two reasons. We cannot determine how Dwyer referred to himself--thus influencing what others would call him. There are multiple forms of the name: Rich, Rick, Dick, etc. Also, it is unclear just when Q875 was recorded, as efforts to time-stamp it against the broadcast times of the news broadcasts in the background have as of now been unsuccessful. If Q875 were recorded early enough, there may not have been enough time to have evacuated him to Georgetown and have this information known to the people on the tape.
However, the speakers on the tape show more than a passing familiarity with the whole situation, as reference to the "bigwig Costa Rica executor" demonstrates, which you would expect of CIA operatives handling the case.
Up until the Spring of 1977, Peoples Temple was a church highly-acclaimed for humanitarian service. Then a fierce campaign burst on the scene, in the Murdoch and Hearst presses in San Francisco. It pursued the church relentlessly, with innuendoes, insinuations, and unsubstantiated charges accusing the church of fraud, coercion, irregular notarizations, misuse of government funds, break-ins, intimidation, to implications of murder. All investigations that were whipped up were later dropped for lack of evidence. Every attempt to rebut the charges in the press was met with a refusal to print a word.
These attacks were not launched by amateurs. No "disgruntled ex-member" had the resources, funding or connections to launch a relentless, one-sided campaign, which also included the foreign press, especially cities known to have large concentrations of Guyanese immigrants, like London and Toronto. Intensive lobbying campaigns in both Washington and Georgetown (the Guyanese capital) ensued.
Who would have the power and clout to do this? The tiny but influential group had three components: disgruntled ex-members, without power, resources or funding; government plants in the group who later defected; and non-member government-based handlers.
The smear campaign, first line of attack, was launched by a couple named Elmer and Deanna Mertle, who changed their names to Jeannie and Al Mills for publicity purposes. They were veterans of the far-right-wing John Birch Society, having claimed a political conversion to the left when they joined the church.
It turned out that there was no conversion. They had been coordinating all along with a man named David Conn, who admitted to the Berkeley Barb in the Fall of 1977 that he had been "investigating Peoples Temple all the (six) years his friends the Mertles were members." David Conn also tried to bribe/blackmail Native American leader Dennis Banks into denouncing Jim Jones publicly, under threat of being extradited back to a South Dakota jail. Although Banks, a man with nineteen children, feared he could be killed in jail, he swore out an affidavit and went public with the tale. In his affidavit, he also swore that Conn had bragged of his ties with the Treasury Department.
David Conn and his ex-wife Donna, had also bragged of "high priority Treasury Department numbers" in secretly taped conversations. Indeed, in just the second smear against Peoples Temple, the I.R.S. tax code was quote chapter and verse, as to what it would take to remove the federal tax exemption of a church. Their specific grievance was listed aspolitical – that the church was secretly involved in politics.
It is likely that the Mertle/Mills and Conn were F.B.I. agents, common enough for infiltrators of left-wing groups by J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO in the 60’s and early 70’s. Jim Jones was swiftly gaining a reputation as a political dissident, setting up Peoples Temple as a public forum for a whole host of leaders and causes on the left.
But the Mills and Conn were only the kernel of a more menacing group of personnel. Joseph Mazor, whom the Temple discovered was an agent of Interpol, through a document authored by a known Interpol agent, Louis B. Sims, told the Berkeley Barb that it was he who hired the expensive P.R. firm of Russom, Lowry & Leeper, to launch the smear campaign against Peoples Temple, as confirmed with one of their account executives, Bob Kenney. Mazor refused to disclose his source of funding, but said that they were "not present not past members of Peoples Temple," i.e. an outside government source.
Mazor had also been mysteriously granted a State investigator’s license (including bonding) in May, 1977, "just in time to investigate Peoples Temple," even though he sported a recent prison record for fraud and bogus checks. A letter from the State of California claimed that high-level recommendations had overridden their normal strictures against bonding a convicted forger.
It was also Joseph Mazor who claimed to have led the mercenary raid into Jonestown in September, 1977, claiming that his original assignment had been to kidnap children and then "kill all the adults," i.e. mass extermination.
Just days following the tragedy, Mazor was paraded across the t.v. screen, claiming that "It was considered that Jim Jones would become a major political force in the Caribbean within five years." Was this his motive for involvement all along? And what of the known planned move to the then-Soviet Union? Would that have lessened the concerns? Undoubtedly not. But the key here is that these concerns were now international.
Indeed, the concerns were very international, beyond the province of the F.B.I. and into the province of the C.I.A. In fact, this was turned into an international matter nearly as soon as it began. In the Fall of 1977, just a month or two after the original smear in Murdoch’s New West magazine, duplicate smears appeared in newspapers thousands of miles apart, in the Toronto Star, where there was known to be a large concentration of Guyanese immigrants, and in the New Times weekly in the Soviet Union, with the interest of discreditation in a camp we wanted as "friends." The headline of one was "Profits of a Prophet" and the other, "A Prophet Heads South With Profit," with the corresponding texts similar. This was an expression never used in any other press coverage. The articles appeared within two weeks of each other, and could not have originated from any standard U.S. news service.
From there on in, scores of "dirty tricks" pursued Peoples Temple at every turn: anonymous threatening phone calls falsely blamed on the church, phony break-ins, even physical attacks on individuals. A reporter, Kathy Hunter, was lured to Guyana by a phony call claiming to be the Prime Minister, then when she arrived, she was taken in hand by one Pat Small, a woman thought to be C.I.A. by the Guyanese government. The rest was a series of bomb threats and fire alarms, disruptions of the Guyanese Parliament, and finally a government invitation to leave. All the press in the U.S. blamed Peoples Temple, although the church had nothing to do with it.
The person coaching reporter Kathy Hunter through this entire fiasco was one Timothy O. Stoen. Stoen had been the church’s top attorney, strategist and close confidante and friend of Jim Jones. It was Stoen who appeared to be a classic agent provocateur, compliments of the U.S. government, during his years in Peoples Temple, pushing terrorist ideas as extreme as building bomb factories and poisoning the water supply of Washington, D.C. Thank God no one followed through.
Stoen came to Peoples Temple claiming to be from the far left, but later information surfaced that he was really a far right wing ideologue who had run spying missions to East Berlin in the early sixties.
Stoen was in a favored position in the church, had no personal grievance to force his departure, and no relatives left in the church. Yet upon leaving, he falsely claimed paternity of Jim Jones’ own son, John Victor, by his wife, Grace Stoen. Scores of people had known for years the truth of the child’s paternity, which had been repeatedly admitted and discussed by both Timothy and Grace Stoen.
Stoen set up lobbying offices in Washington to push his false causes, and shuttled back and forth between Washington and Guyana. The source of his funding (being out of work, and having lived "communally" in Peoples Temple) has been undisclosed to this day, though Stoen was discovered to have secret accounts in countries where the church had never done any banking.
Stoen’s false vendetta was pushed ferociously through the courts, and shortly after the Stoen’s attorney came to Guyana to file court papers, a mercenary raid on Jonestown ensued. Thereafter, Stoen lodged repeated mercenary threats, even being recorded in a Ukiah Daily Journal editorial, and the State Department log in Georgetown, Guyana. This documentation appears in "SNAKE DANCE."
Just days before the tragedy at Jonestown, Stoen told a Temple member that he had "vowed to destroy Jonestown" and that he was "counting on Jim [Jones] to overreact."
Stoen also used the false paternity claim to lure Congressman Leo Ryan to Jonestown, to his death. The Congressman’s aid had been secured as early as a whole year before the tragedy when, on November 18, 1977, Ryan unsuccessfully petitioned the U.S. Justice Department to force the child’s return to the States. The Congressman arrived in Guyana long after the matter had already been decided in Jones’ favor in the Guyanese courts, yet he wrote the San Francisco Temple that he was indeed going to Jonestown to "retrieve Tim Stoen’s son."
Stoen knew this was a "non-issue," cruelly pushed to destabilize Jim Jones personally, to justify military threats against a peaceful community, and to force the disbandment of Jonestown. Yet he augmented his campaign by soliciting false affidavits from two spiteful young women, Yulanda Crawford and Deborah Layton, to brand Jonestown as "a concentration camp" and provoke a Congressional investigation he knew he could not fairly win.
This extreme, false, and dangerous vendetta went yet one step further. Why was it Leo Ryan who was targeted for the deadly mission overseas? Look at Ryan’s record. He was the most vocal anti-C.I.A. critic in the entire U.S. Congress at the time! Leo Ryan and the C.I.A. had an ongoing hatefest. There would have been no one more tempting for the C.I.A. to target for death than Congressman Ryan.
7. Congressman Leo Ryan was attacked prior to reaching the airstrip. Why?
This appears to have been at the discretion of Jones. The audio tapes of that day clearly demonstrate that Jones knew Ryan had been killed.
8. Who was in Ryan's travel party? Congressman Ryan traveled to Jonestown with seventeen Bay Area relatives of Peoples Temple members, several newspaper reporters and an NBC-TV team. November 17, 1978 Ryan and party left Georgetown, Guyana airport for Jonestown aboard a chartered aircraft at 2 pm. The group included Ryan, aide Jackie Speier, Deputy Chief of Mission at the U. S. Embassy Richard Dwyer, Neville Annibourne of the Guyana Ministry of Information, Temple lawyers Mark Lane and Charles Garry, eleven reporters, and four representatives of the Concerned Relatives.
Jim Jones, Mark Lane, and Charles Garry
9. Why was the Congressman murdered? When he learned about hunters clubbing baby seals, Ryan journeyed straight to the ice floes to confront them. When he heard horror stories about conditions in Folsom Prison, he had himself admitted undercover as an inmate to see for himself. And when relatives of Peoples Temple members began to accuse Jones of physically and sexually abusing his followers, brainwashing them and holding them against their will in a South American jungle, Ryan bucked the local Democratic establishment and the Jimmy Carter administration's State Department to embark on his own trip. Ryan was friends with the father of former Temple Member Bob Houston, whose mutilated body was found near train tracks on October 5, 1976, three days after a taped telephone conversation with Houston's ex-wife in which leaving the Temple was discussed. More than any other person on the political left, Congressman Leo Ryan stood above reproach in his reputation and incorruptible in his ethics. This made him the most potentially dangerous person in the world to Reverend Jones, especially once Jones became aware that some followers had passed a note to Ryan begging him to take them with him when he returned to the United States.
10. What contact, if any, did Jones or the Temple have with the Soviet Embassy?
Summary prepared by Fielding M. McGehee, III.
Tape Number : Q 352
This tape includes Jonestown’s formal welcome of Feodor Timofeyev, the consular of Soviet Union embassy in Guyana and — as the book Raven points out — a man that Jim Jones wanted to cultivate in order to smooth the way for the community’s proposed move to the Soviet Union. The consular’s October 1978 visit had been months in the making, and Jones wanted to be sure that everyone in Jonestown could greet the Soviet visitor in the Russian language and knew enough Russian history to recognize important dates.
The tape opens with Deanna Wilkinson performing a song of protest — and some sorrow — of the U.S. government’s betrayal of its citizens. Jones then introduces Timofeyev by declaring Jonestown’s allegiance to the Soviet Union as their alternative to their own homeland. His first words of the evening are, "For many years, we have let our sympathies be quite publicly known, that the United States government was not our mother, but that the Soviet Union was our spiritual motherland."
The community gives Timofeyev an enthusiastic welcome, and the Soviet consular is just as effusive in his praise for Jonestown, which he describes as "the first American socialist and … communist community." He expresses his appreciation for the universal knowledge of some Soviet history by every resident he has met (thereby demonstrating the success of Jones’ recent exhortations). Later, he speaks approvingly of the exchange of views on health issues between the Russian doctor who accompanied the consular and the Jonestown clinic.
Timofeyev outlines the history of Soviet Russia, and praises the socialist states of Eastern Europe. To tremendous applause, he adds that the USSR will support national liberation movements in Angola, Mozambique, and South Africa, and across the African continent.
Timofeyev discusses the Soviet Union society of the present day, emphasizing its treatment of ethnic minorities. He notes that the country has 130 nationalities and cultures, and describes the challenge that diversity represents to all the people, a challenge, he adds, that they have met. He points out that Russia never imported slaves from the outside world, so didn’t have any African blacks throughout much of its history. Now there is a black population, but it is fully integrated into the culture. "So, there is no national discrimination, there is no racial discrimination in the Soviet Union."
The groups of people in the USSR include a Jewish population, and Timofeyev takes pains to deny discrimination against Soviet Jewry. "In the opposite," he declares in his modest English, look at the Jewish influence and presence in their sciences, in their academia, and in their professions. The United States is the first to attack the Soviet Union on this issue, Timofeyev says, but it should clean up its own house first before it goes around criticizing others. (Jones later affirms Timofeyev’s claims and his rebuke to the U.S.)
The USSR is not perfect, Timofeyev acknowledges, but they have systems of self-criticism as they struggle to improve their society.11. Who was Richard Dwyer? There were two survivors named Richard: Richard Clark, and Richard Janaro. Neither were in Georgetown during the time-frame of the massacre. Of course, there was a third Richard involved with the events. Richard Dwyer was an Agency Man who survived the Port Kaituma shootout and even gets a hotly-debated reference from Jim Jones himself on the infamous Death Tape. If the people on Tape Q875 are indeed referring to Mr. Dwyer, we have as close to a smoking gun of CIA involvement as we are probably going to get.
Obviously, it is tenuous at best to assert that the "Richard" in question is Richard Dwyer, for two reasons. We cannot determine how Dwyer referred to himself--thus influencing what others would call him. There are multiple forms of the name: Rich, Rick, Dick, etc. Also, it is unclear just when Q875 was recorded, as efforts to time-stamp it against the broadcast times of the news broadcasts in the background have as of now been unsuccessful. If Q875 were recorded early enough, there may not have been enough time to have evacuated him to Georgetown and have this information known to the people on the tape.
However, the speakers on the tape show more than a passing familiarity with the whole situation, as reference to the "bigwig Costa Rica executor" demonstrates, which you would expect of CIA operatives handling the case.
12. How did Mark Lane know to leave the compound? Why was he allowed to leave? Unknown at this time.
13. Regarding the people who escaped before the massacre, who were they and where did they go?
The following people associated with Jonestown at the time of the massacre did not die. The ages given refers to the time of the mass suicide.
Eleven people fled through the jungle:
Richard Clark, 42
Julius Evans, 30
Sandra Evans, 30
Sonya Evans, 11
Sharla Evans, 7
Shirelle Evans, 5
Johnny Franklin, 33
Diane Louie, 26
Robert Paul, 33
Leslie Wilson, 21
Jakari Wilson, 3
Fourteen people lived through airport ambush:
Monica Bagby, 18
Jim Bogue, 36
Edith Bogue, 39
Teena Bogue, 22
Juanita Bogue, 21
Tommy Bogue, 17
Harold Cordell, 42
Vernon Gosney, 25
Chris O'Neal, 20
Edith Parks, 64
Gerald Parks, 45
Dale Parks, 27
Brenda Parks, 18
Tracy Parks, 12
Four people were sent away by Jones or his mistress:
Mike Carter, 20
Tim Carter, 30
Larry Layton, 32
Mike Prokes, 31
Four lived through the mass suicides:
Stanley Clayton, 25
Grover Davis, 79
Odell Rhodes, 36
Hyacinth Thrash, 76
14. Not everyone drank the Flavor-Aid. How many were injected? How many were shot? Still working on that one.
15. Who killed Jim Jones? Jim Jones himself did not drink the cyanide. He was killed by a single bullet to the head, possibly fired by his wife Marcelline. Those who were closest to him died in his living quarters, including his mistress Maria Katsaris.
16. What if any connection did Jones have with the Red Brigade? I have found no connection with the ultra left wing Italian-based political organization. However, Jones did on occasion refer to his internal hit squad by this term.
17. Would the people who killed Ryan have acted on their own? Not likely.
His full name was James Warren Jones. He had degrees from Indiana University and Butler University. He developed a belief system called Translation, meaning he and his followers would all die together and would move to another planet for a better life. In the mid-1970s, the Temple leased 4,000 acres of jungle from the government of Guyana. They developed a cooperative called The People's temple Agricultural Project.
Let us now take a look at the official government investigation. One thing that pops up immediately is the use of the passive voice, which, while it may have been a stylistic choice, is often a neat way of avoiding full disclosure. Another thing one may notice is the vagueness of details in several places. And a third point is that the document is not sourced. Clearly, this would have been a fine beginning for an investigation, but not an acceptable conclusion.
THE ASSASSINATION OF REPRESENTATIVE
LEO J. RYAN AND THE JONESTOWN,
GUYANA TRAGEDY
REPORT
OF A
STAFF INVESTIGATIVE GROUP
TO THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
MAY 15, 1979
FOREWORD
This investigative factfinding report has been submitted to the Committee on Foreign Affairs by the Staff Investigative Group. Per my directives and pursuant to the committee's investigative authority, the Staff Group conducted a comprehensive inquiry into the international relations aspects of the activities of the People's Temple, the tragic events that led to the murder of Representative Leo J. Ryan and other members of his party, and the mass suicide/murder of the followers of People's Temple that occurred in Jonestown, Guyana on November 18, 1978.
The findings and recommendations in this report are those of the Staff Investigative Group and do not necessarily reflect the views of the membership of the Committee on Foreign Affairs.
Clement J. Zablocki, Chairman.
INTRODUCTION
A. Ryan Trip Background
The chain of events which led to Representative Leo J. Ryan's death in Guyana on November 18, 1978 began 1 year earlier almost exactly to the date. The spark that ignited his interest was a San Francisco Examiner article of November 13, 1977, involving an old friend and constituent, Mr. Sam Houston of San Bruno, Calif. Headlined "Scared Too Long," the story recounted the death of Sam Houston's son, Bob, beneath the wheels of a train on October 5, 1976, 1 day after he had announced his decision to leave the People's Temple. The article explained that Mr. Houston was "speaking out" because he was outraged by the way the Temple had treated his son, about whose "accidental" death he had lingering doubts. He was also speaking out because his two granddaughters, who were sent to New York on a "vacation," ended up at the People's Temple agricultural mission in Jonestown, Guyana-never to return. Sam Houston was also described as speaking out because he didn't have much time left. Doctors would be removing his cancer-choked voice box within a few days. Finally, Sam Houston said he was speaking out because he was "tired of being scared."
Representative Ryan read that story and soon thereafter took the initiative to contact the Houstons and visited their home. Reinforced by the fact that a relative had been involved in an unusual church group, Mr. Ryan decided at that time that the matter needed to be looked into.
Over the next 6 to 8 months several other developments took place which increased his interest in the activities of the People's Temple. One was another San Francisco newspaper story recounting the defection from People's Temple of Debbie Blakey, including excerpts from her sworn affidavit of June 15, 1978, noting mass suicide rehearsals at Jonestown. Further impetus came in letters he received from concerned relatives of People's Temple members, some of whom were constituents, asking his assistance and alleging, among other things, social security irregularities, human rights violations, and that their loved ones were being held in Jonestown against their will. He subsequently met with a group of these concerned relatives in August 1978. As his interest in People's Temple became more widely known, he also began receiving extensive mail and petitions favorable to People's Temple. He also hired a young California attorney to interview former People's Temple members and concerned relatives. His specific instruction was to look for possible violations of Federal and California State laws.
The cumulative effect of this effort undertaken by Representative Ryan led him to request a meeting on September 15, 1978, with Viron P. Vaky, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Inter-American Affairs, U.S. Department of State, and other State Department officials. What he had earlier considered merely the "possibility" of going to Guyana appears to have become firm in his mind at that meeting. On October 4, 1978, he requested House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Clement J. Zablocki's permission to go to Guyana. He explained his interest in part stemmed from his membership on this committee's Sub-committee on International Operations, as a result of which he had become increasingly aware "of the problems related to protecting the lives and property of U.S. citizens abroad." A key paragraph in his letter stated:
It has come to my attention that a community of some 1,400 Americans are presently living in Guyana under somewhat bizarre conditions. There is conflicting information regarding whether or not the U.S. citizens are being held there against their will. If you agree, I would like to travel to Guyana during the week of November 12-18 to review the situation first-hand.
In response to Chairman Zablocki's request, and in compliance with committee travel guidelines, Mr. Ryan subsequently attempted to interest other committee members in accompanying him. Although Hon. Edward J. Derwinski was originally scheduled to do so, he subsequently had to cancel those plans because of unavoidable conflicts in his schedule.
Prior to his departure for Guyana on November 14, Mr. Ryan and members of his staff and this committee's staff received briefings and met with State Department officials on October 2, 25, and November 9 and 13. Chief among the topics discussed in those briefings was the Privacy act because both the Embassy and the State Department were highly sensitized by legal actions taken under this statute by the People's Temple and because some 1,000 Americans living in Jonestown were protected by the provisions of this act. Logistical problems in getting to Jonestown and other related matters were also reviewed.
During approximately this same period the media became aware of Mr. Ryan's trip as did members of the Concerned Relatives of People's Temple members in San Francisco. By the time he departed for Guyana on November 14, the group of newspaper and television media accompanying him grew to 9 and the Concerned Relatives delegation numbered 18. In this connection, it is important to note that neither the media nor Concerned Relatives were a part of Mr. Ryan's official Codel. Rather, the official party was made up of Mr. Ryan, Mr. James Schollaert, staff consultant for the House Foreign Affairs Committee; and Miss Jackie Speier, of Mr. Ryan's personal staff and whose expenses were not paid for by the U.S. Government.
On November 1, Mr. Ryan sent a telegraph to Jim Jones outlining his plans and expressing his desire to visit Jonestown. On that same date, Mr. Ryan wrote to Hon. John Burke, U.S. Ambassador to Guyana, informing the Ambassador of his proposed date of arrival in Georgetown (November 14), and relaying to Ambassador Burke the text of his telegram to Jones. On November 5 the U.S. Embassy advised Mr. Ryan that the People's Temple wanted Mr. Ryan to work with People's Temple legal counsel, Mark Lane, on the appropriate arrangements for the Ryan Codel to visit Jonestown.
The Embassy also relayed to Mr. Ryan that the People's Temple had informed an Embassy official that Mr. Ryan could visit Jonestown provided: (1) that the Codel was "balanced"; (2) that there would be no media coverage associated with the visit; and (3) that Mr. Lane be present during the visit. Attempts by Mr Schollaert to negotiate these matters with Mr. Lane on Representative Ryan's behalf were unproductive.
On November 6, Mr. Lane wrote a letter to Mr. Ryan outlining logistical difficulties if the Ryan Codel decided to visit Jonestown and informing Ryan that Lane would be unable to be in Jonestown at the time Ryan wished to visit the settlement. Lane also made inferences in the letter to a "witchhunt" against the People's Temple by the U.S. Government. On November 10, Mr. Ryan responded to Lane's letter, expressing regret at Lane's remarks about the Codel's motives and informing him that despite Lane's scheduling conflicts, the Codel planned to leave for Guyana on November 14. Further negotiations between Representative Ryan and Messrs. Lane and Charles Garry, also legal counsel to the People's Temple, resumed in Georgetown after the Codel's arrival.
B. Summary of Events of November 14-19, 1978
The Ryan Codel, together with its unofficial contingent of media and Concerned Relatives [This refers to a group headed by Timothy Stoen, former People's Temple attorney who split with Jones and formed a group called Concerned Relatives, claiming that people were being held in Jonestwon against their will.--PhilroPost.]arrived in Georgetown, Guyana at approximately midnight November 14. The official Codel group proceeded into Georgetown where Mr. Ryan was a house guest of U.S. Ambassador John Burke and Miss Speier and Mr. Schollaert registered at the Pegasus Hotel. Despite confirmed reservations, the Concerned Relatives group was unable to obtain rooms at the same hotel and spent the night in the lobby. With one exception, the media group cleared customs and took rooms at the Pegasus Hotel. The exception, Mr. Ron Javers of the San Francisco Chronicle, was detained overnight at the airport because he lacked an entry visa and for what was later described as on orders from "higher ups."
Over the next 2 1/2 days the following incidents took place:
With the assistance of Embassy personnel, Mr. Javers was eventually allowed to enter, other members of the media group were summoned to the Ministry of Immigration, and attempts were made to shorten their visas from 5 to 1 day; Representative Ryan, Miss Speier, and Mr. Schollaert received briefings from members of the U.S. Embassy team; Mr. Ryan paid a courtesy call on Guyanese Foreign Minister Rashleigh Jackson to discuss United States-Guyanese bilateral relations; Mr. Ryan arranged a meeting between Ambassador Burke and the Concerned Relatives group at which they voiced their concerns and allegations regarding their relatives in Jonestown; Mr. Ryan made an unannounced visit to the People's Temple Headquarters in Georgetown at 41 Lamaha Gardens; Mr. Charles Krause of the Washington Post accompanied Mr. Ryan but did not enter the headquarters; Some of the Concerned Relatives groups also attempted to talk with People's Temple representatives at the Lamaha Gardens People's Temple facility but were generally unsuccessful; Because negotiations between Representative Ryan and Messrs. Lane and Garry were still unresolved, the plane originally chartered to go to Jonestown on Thursday, November 16, was rescheduled for Friday, November 17; By late Friday morning Mr. Ryan advised Messrs. Lane and Garry that he was leaving for Jonestown at 2:30 p.m. regardless of Jones' willingness to allow the Ryan party to visit Jonestown. He also assured Lane and Garry of two seats on the plane if they decided to accompany him;
Mr. Ryan, Miss Speier, Deputy Chief of Mission Richard Dwyer, Messrs. Lane and Garry, all nine media representatives, four individuals representing the Concerned Relatives group, and Mr. Neville Annibourne, a Guyanese Information Officer, left for Jonestown at approximately 2:30 p.m., Friday, November 17, Guyana time (12:30 p.m., e.s.t., Washington, D.C.).
On the group's arrival at the Port Kaituma airstrip the chronology of events which ensued was as follows:
They were met initially by a Corporal Rudder, described as a Guyanese Regional Official assigned to the Northwest territory. He advised them that he had orders "from Jonestown" not to allow anyone off the plane except Messrs. Lane and Garry. Representatives of the Jonestown People's Temple facility also at the airstrip met privately with Lane and Garry and it was eventually decided that only they together with Mr. Ryan, Miss Speier, Mr. Dwyer, and Mr. Annibourne could proceed into Jonestown;
Mr. Ryan eventually obtained Mr. Jones' approval for the media group and Concerned Relatives to enter Jonestown and the People's Temple truck was sent back to Port Kaituma to transport them. They arrived in Jonestown after dark. Only Mr. Gordon Lindsay, a former free-lance reporter for the National Enquirer, and on this trip, working as a consultant to NBC, was denied entry. A previous unpublished story by Mr. Lindsay critical of People's Temple had incurred Jim Jones' wrath and accounted for the refusal to allow him into Jonestown. Mr. Lindsay thereupon immediately returned with the plane to Georgetown; Dinner was served to the entire delegation and they viewed a musical presentation by People's Temple members. Throughout this period the reporters were casually interviewing Mr. Jones; Mr. Ryan and Miss Speier were contacting and talking to People's Temple members whose names had been provided them by relatives in the United States. Although the evening was generally informal and casual, the emotional atmoshere was described as at a "fever pitch." At one point, Mr. Ryan addressed the assembled People's Temple audience of approximately 900 and received an extended, standing ovation in responce to his comment that "for some of you, for a lot of you that I talked to, Jonestown is the best thing that ever happened to you in your lives"; Sometime during the evening, a People's Temple member passed a note to NBC Reporter Don Harris indicating the individual's desire to leave Jonestown. Harris hid the note and later showed it to Mr. Ryan. That same evening another People's Temple member made a similar verbal request of DCM Dwyer to leave "immediately," which he passed on to Mr. Ryan; At approximately 11 p.m. the media group and Concerned Relatives were returned to Port Kaituma for makeshift accomodations after Jim Jones refused to allow them to spend the night in Jonestown. Only Ryan, Speier, Dwyer, Annibourne, Garry, and Lane stayed in Jonestown the night of Friday, November 17; Following their arrival in Port Kaituma, three members of the media were approached by local Guyanese, including one reported to be a local police official. The Guyanese related stories of alleged beatings at Jonestown, complained that local Guyanese officials were denied entry to and had no authority in Jonestown, and described a "torture hole" in the compound.
On Saturday, November 18, the following chronological order of events took place:
Following breakfast, Ryan, Speier, and Dwyer continued their round of interviews with People's Temple members in the process of which they were approached by a People's Temple member who indicated to them secretly that she and her family wished to leave Jonestown;
The media group and Concerned Relatives returned to Jonestown from Port Kaituma aboard the People's Temple truck at approximately 11 a.m., several hours later than the schedule promised by Mr. Jones on Friday night. The media began to seek access to various Jonestown facilities. They also continued their interviews of Jim Jones and People's Temple individuals;
At about 3 or 3:30 p.m. a total of some 15 People's Temple members who had indicated their desire to leave boarded the truck for return to the Port Kaituma airstrip. Only Mr. Ryan and People's Temple lawyers Lane and Garry planned to remain in Jonestown 1 more night. It was at this point that an unsuccessful knife attack was made on Mr. Ryan's life. The attacker, identified as Don Sly, was fended off by Mr. Lane and others but cut himself in the process and Mr. Ryan's clothes were spattered with blood. After receiving Mr. Jones' assurance that the incident would be reported to local police, Mr. Ryan assured Jones that the attack would not substantially influence his overall impression of People's Temple. Despite the attack, Mr. Ryan reportedly planned to remain in Jonestown and eventually left only after virtually being ordered to do so by DCM Dwyer [our emphasis]. In turn, Mr. Dwyer planned to return to Jonestown later in an effort to resolve a dispute between a family who was split on the question of leaving Jonestown; Because of the unanticipated large number of defectors, an unexpected request was made to the Embassy in Georgetown at about noon Saturday for a second plane. A considerable effort was required by Embassy personnel to obtain the aircraft on such short notice; The entire group, including the defectors, arrived at the Port Kaituma airstrip between 4:30 and 4:45 p.m. The planes, which were scheduled to be there on the group's arrival, did not arrive until approximately 5:10 p.m. A six-passenger Cessna was loaded and had taxied to the far end of the airstrip when one of the passengers in that plane, Larry Layton, a self-styled "defector," opened fire on its passengers. At approximately the same time, a People's Temple tractor and trailer which had arrived at the airstrip shortly before, was positioned near the twin-engine Otter aircraft onto which some had already boarded. The trailer occupants waved off local Guyanese who had gathered about and opened fire on the Ryan party. Mr. Ryan, three members of the media, and one of the defectors were killed; Miss Speier and nine others were wounded-five seriously. According to information received by the Staff Investigative Group, the shooting started at 5:20 p.m. (3:20 p.m. Washington time) and lasted about 4 to 5 minutes. The larger aircraft was disabled but the smaller Cessna took off in the ensuing confusion. The attackers left the airstrip and the survivors sought various cover and protection through the night under the direction of DCM Dwyer; The evidence the Staff Investigative Group has indicated that very shortly after the Ryan group left Jonestown, Jones was in a highly agitated state. In an apparent attempt to calm the situation his wife, Marceline, urged everyone to go to their cabins to rest. But shortly thereafter everyone was ordered back to the Pavillion. On the basis of the evidence we estimate that the mass suicide/murder ritual began at about 5 p.m. on Saturday afternoon, Guyana time. It ultimately claimed 909 lives, including that of Jim Jones. Word of the Jonestown deaths reached Port Kaituma about 2 a.m. Sunday morning with the arrival of two survivors, Stanley Clayton and Odell Rhodes. At approximately 7:40 p.m., Saturday, Sherwin Harris, a member of the Concerned Relatives Group, was informed by Guyanese police officials that his ex-wife Sharon Amos and three of her children were found dead at the People's Temple headquarters in Georgetown; Shortly after takeoff the Cessna aircraft radioed the Georgetown tower with news of the attack and Guyanese officials were informed. At about 6 p.m. Saturday, Prime Minister Forbes Burnham telephoned Ambassador Burke to request that he come immediately to his residence where he received word of the shooting. Ambassador Burke returned to the Embassy at 7:55 p.m., dictated a cable to the State Department which was sent at 8:30 p.m. (6:30p.m., e.s.t. Washington time). The text of that cable was subsequently read over the phone to a State Department official in Washington at approximately 8:40 p.m.; The first contingent of Guyanese Army rescue forces arrived in Port Kaituma shortly after dawn (approximately 6 a.m.) on Sunday, November 19. The complete contingent of 120 soldiers were on the scene 1 hour later. The first Guyanese rescue aircraft landed at Port Kaituma without medical supplies or personnel at about 10 a.m. All of the wounded and most of the survivors were airlifted by Guyanese from Port Kaituma before the end of the day. On arrival in Georgetown, the wounded were transferred to waiting U.S. Air Force medical evacuation aircraft.
Earlier reports of the mass suicide/murders at Jonestown were confirmed late Sunday morning when Guyanese Army contingents arrived there.
Congressman Leo Ryan
On the basis of the factual evidence obtained by the Staff Investigative Group, we render the following findings. In doing so we recognize that we are the beneficiaries of retrospect on the events which preceded November 18, 1978. In this respect, we have striven to utilize these advantages without falling victim to the pitfalls accompanying them. We have sought to be objective and balanced but not frozen from judgement. In attempting to be fair and understanding, we have not been timid.
A. Jim Jones and People's Temple
Background
Whatever Jim Jones ultimately became and whatever can be said of him now, there is little clear insight into what motivated him to begin his ministry in Indianapolis in the mid 1950's. Some contend he was always a committed Socialist who used religion as a vehicle to further his political beliefs and objectives. Others hold that Jones began as a genuine believer in Christianity but eventually became a nonbeliever or an agnostic. His own often-expresssed claim that he was the dual reincarnation of Christ and Marx reflects the dichotomy. Wherever the truth may lie on his religious beliefs, at the outset, he was seemingly genuine in his ardent support for such social causes as the welfare of older people, racial integration, and rehabilitation of alcoholics and drug addicts. His advocacy of such causes singled him out, and partially in response to the resistance he encountered in established churches where he had accepted pastorates, he began his own church, the People's Temple. By 1965 he had generated enough notoriety and displeasure in Indiana to cause him to decide to move his activities to California accompanied by a small band of Indiana followers. One reason he chose Ukiah, Calif. and its Redwood Valley area was because he had once read that its unique geographical assets made it one of three locations in the world thought to be safe from a possible nuclear holocaust.
By 1972 he decided to once again relocate People's Temple to the richer and more active political pastures of San Francisco and bought an old church building on the edge of the black ghetto area. A second People's Temple church was established in Los Angeles. In 1974 he began creating in the jungles of Guyana the agricultural community known as Jonestown. What finally drove him there together with the majority of his flock in mid-1977 was the publication of a New West magazine article which exposed many of his operations, a fact which he saw as part of the alleged mounting conspiracy against him.
Tactics of Jim Jones
The mental deviations and distortions and the psychological tactics which culminated and were most manifest in the holocaust of Jonestown on November 18 were rooted in Indiana and perfected in California. Who and what was Jim Jones? We believe it is accurate to say he was charismatic in some respects; in fact, he was especially adroit in the area of human psychology.
As we have studied him and interviewed those who knew him well and had come under his influence, we have concluded that he was first and foremost a master of mind control. Among the tactics he practiced with engineered precision are the following recognized strategies of brainwashing:
Isolation from all vestiges of former life, including and especially all sources of information, and substituting himself as the single source of all knowledge, wisdom, and information;
An exacting daily regimen requiring absolute obedience and humility extracted by deception, intimidation, threats, and harassment;
Physical pressure, ranging from deprivation of food and sleep to the possibility and reality of severe beatings. As a compliment to the physical pressures, he exerted mental pressures on his followers which he subsequently relieved in an effort to demonstrate and establish his omnipotent "powers." For example, he inculcated fictional fears which he would eventually counterpoint and dispel and thereby establish himself as a "savior." One of his favorite tactics was to generate and then exploit a sense of guilt for clinging to life's luxuries, for wanting special privileges, and for seeking recognition and reward;
So-called "struggle meetings" or catharsis sessions in which recalcitrant members were interrogated, required to confess their "wrongdoing," and then punished with alternate harshness and leniency. Interrogation could be gentle and polite, but more often it involved harassment, humiliation, revilement, and degradation. Vital to this strategy were two of Jones' favorite techniques. The first involved an exhaustive and detailed record for each member kept on file cards and generated by his vast intelligence network. A member would suddenly be confronted by Jones with knowledge of some action he was unaware had been observed. Jones would stage his "mystic" awareness of that action and then direct the outcome to his desired end. The second technique was to establish in each of his followers a mistrust of everyone else. Consequently, no one dared voice a negative view-even to the closet family member or friend-for fear of being turned in. Often as not, trusted aides were directed to test individuals by expressing some comment critical of Jones or the lifestyle in Jonestown to see if the person would report the incident. The end result was that no one person could trust another. As a result everyone feared expressing even the slightest negative comment. The system was so effective that children turned in their own parents, brothers informed on sisters, and husbands and wives reported on spouses.
Inherent in these principles which Mr. Jones masterfully and regularly employed was his central strategy of "divide and conquer" through which he consolidated his power over people.
In addition to these tactics, however, Mr. Jones regularly used other devices and methods to achieve his ends:
Requiring People's Temple members to contribute as much as 25 percent of their income and sign over to the People's Temple their properties and other assets;
At times dictating marriage between unwilling partners and at other times not allowing cohabitation between married couples;
Undermining and breaking a child's ties with parents. In progressive degrees the child was led to mistrust the parents and become more and more secretive in his actions and evasive to his parent's questions;
As a symbol of their trust in him, followers were required to sign statements admitting homosexuality, theft, and other self-incriminating acts; often as not People's Temple members would also sign blank pages which could be filled in later. Depending on Jones' need or objective, such documents were frequently used in attempts to defame defectors;
Rumor spreading in an attempt to ruin reputations or generally implant disinformation, thereby making true facts difficult if not impossible to establish;
Infiltration of groups opposed to People's Temple and surveilance of suspected People's Temple enemies;
Intense public relations efforts ranging from letter-writing campaigns to attempted control of news media in an effort to influence public opinion with a favorable image of People's Temple; like-wise, an aggressive program of seeking out political leaders and other influential members of a community in order to cull their favor and establish identification with them.
In the process of manipulating the control board of this extraordinary system Jones suffered extreme paranoia. One can speculate that while it may have been initially staged, his paranoia ultimately became a self-created Frankenstein that led not only to his fall but the tragic death of more than 900 others, including Representative Leo J. Ryan. His paranoia ranged from "dark unnamed forces," to individuals such as Tim Stoen and other defectors from the People's Temple, to organizations such as the Concerned Relatives group, and ultimately to the U.S. Government in the form of the CIA and the FBI--all of which he ultimately believed were out to destroy him.
Further, in establishing this analysis of Jim Jones it is worth noting that he apparently had several bisexual perversions. Finally, there is some irony in the fact that although he controlled considerable wealth (estimated at $12 million) he sought out special privileges but none of the usual trappings of wealth such as fancy cars or expensive houses. In short, Mr. Jones was more interested in ideas than in things. He was not driven by greed for money but for power and control over others. That control continues to be exerted even after his death on the minds of some of his followers. It is graphically illustrated by the suicide of Michael Prokes, one of Jones' closest associates, during a March 13, 1979, press conference in California in which he defended Jones and cited the achievements of People's Temple and Jonestown.
Jackie Speier
Motivation of People's Temple Members
The tactics and techniques of Jim Jones outlined above found fertile ground and were greatly facilitated because of the background and motivation of those who joined People's Temple. Generalities, of course, are always difficult if not dangerous. However, on this basis of the information which has come to us in the course of this investigation one can draw the following general profile of many who became People's Temple members and followers of Jim Jones:
Some of the young adults were college graduates out of upper middle-class backgrounds which provided privilege and even luxury. Their parents were often college-educated professionals or executives. Frequently, their families were active in demonstrations against the Vietnam war, campaigns for racial equality, and other social cuases. In some cases, the young People's Temple member had been alienated by the "emptiness" of his family's wealth.
A larger number, especially young blacks, had their roots in the other end of the American social and economic spectrum. The products of poor ghetto neighborhoods and limited education, some had been drug addicts, prostitutes, and street hustlers.
An even greater percentage were elderly, again perdominately black, who had come out of the San Francisco ghetto. They found in Jim Jones an abiding and protective concern. Despite the harshness of life in Jonestown, they regarded it as preferable to the poor housing they had left behind. They also found a warm sense of family and acceptance within the People's Temple community that they did not have before joining.
A goodly number of middle-class blacks and whites came out of strong fundamentalist religious family backgrounds and were attracted by what they saw as the evangelical nature of People's Temple.
By contrast, many of the younger people had little if any religious motivation in joining People's Temple. Rather, they tended to be compelled by humanitarian interests. Altruistic and idealistic, they were impressed by Jones' involvement in social causes and what they saw as the "political sophistication" of People's Temple. To the extent that a religious motivation was involved, it was seen chiefly in terms of Jones' seeming concrete application of Judeo-Christian principles. Over time, the dimension of their motivation was not only nonsectarian but eventually became embodied in the Socialist-Marxist-agnostic philosophy which Jones espoused.
People's Temple as a Church
Out of the findings outlined above regarding Jim Jones and members of his People's Temple, emerges one additional finding. It relates to the question of whether or not People's Temple was a "church" in the generally accepted sense of that word. Again, on the basis of testimony and compelling evidence collected in the course of this investigation we offer the following conclusion on that question:
Although People's Temple may have been a bona fide church in its Indiana and early California origins, it progressively lost that characterization in almost every respect. Rather, by 1972 and following in progressive degrees, it evolved into what could be described as a sociopolitical movement. Under the direction and inspiration of it founder and director and the Marxist-Leninist-Communist philosophy he embraced, People's Temple was in the end a Socialist structure devoted to socialism. Despite that fact, People's Temple continued to enjoy the tax-exempt status it received in 1962 under Internal Revenue Service rules and regulations. The issue of People's Temple's status as a "church" is also significant in connection with First Amendment protections it sought and received. Obviously, the latter issue is a difficult and complex matter beyond the purview of this committee and its investigation.
Also outside the parameters of this committee's inquiry is whether in fact People's Temple was a "cult." Once again, recognizing that the problem is complex and laced with emotions and strong connotative overtones, the committee's investigation went only to the extent of seeking the opinions of respected legal scholars.
B. Conspiracy Against Jim Jones and People's Temple?
Was there a conspiracy against Jim Jones perpetrated by the U.S. Government or some other organization? That was one of the questions on which the Staff Investigative Groupattempted to obtain evidence during the course of this inquiry. On the basis of the information received, the following findings are offered:
Jones' idea that there were elements opposed to his views and objectives dates back to his early days in Indiana. In fact, it was the adverse reaction he encountered relative to his racial integration and other policies that led him to establish his own church, the People's Temple
When the People's Temple relocated in Ukiah, Calif. in 1965 Jones' complaints of opposition increased. They ranged in progressive degree from alleged vandalism against People's Temple property, poisoning of his pets, and various threats against Jones, to a shooting attack on Jones' life (from which he "miraculously" recovered by his own power). No substantiation was ever found on any of these complaints reported to and investigated by Ukiah police.
The mood of Jones' allegations of anti-People's Temple conspiracy grew darker when the group moved to San Francisco in 1972. At that time its chief target was the media as well as unspecified "forces." Reported attempts to dissuade Jones from the notion were apparently unsuccessful.
Jones' idea of a U.S. Government plot against him, embodied mainly in the CIA and FBI, took full bloom after he and the vast bulk of People's Temple members moved to Guyana in 1977. Opposition of the Concerned Relatives group was eventually attributed to CIA backing as were periodic "alerts" he called to protect the People's Temple Jonestown community from mercenaries in the jungle around Jonestown.
Jones' two lawyers offer contradictory opinions on the question of a possible conspiracy against People's Temple and Jones. For example, Mark Lane told the committee's investigators: "***there is no doubt in my mind that various people sought to destroy Jonestown and that people in various government agencies manipulated Jones. Jones, himself, saw the efforts to manipulate him into an overreaction but somehow he was unable to control his own responses ***. I believe that a responsible investigation by the Congress would seek to determine why various elements within the United States Government including those in the State Department withheld from Congressman Ryhan and the rest of us who accompanied him to Jonestown the fact that they knew the place was an armed camp and that Jones was capable of killing the Congressman and many others." On the other hand, Charles Garry said: "***I want to unequivocally tell you in the year and a half since July 1977, with the years of experience I have had with governmental conspiracy and government wrongdoing, particularly the FBI, I found no evidence to support any of the charges that were made by People's Temple. I found no evidence to support any of that."
Granting the strong likelihood of Jones' paranoia, compounded by his manipulative abilities, Jones staged and exploited the idea of a conspiracy as a means of generating fear in his adherents and thereby gaining further control over them. The tactic also served to keep any opponents on the defensive and even had the apparent effect of sensitizing the U.S. Embassy in Guyana.
No conclusive evidence is available to indicate that the CIA was acquiring information on Mr. Jones or People's Temple. In this same connection it should be noted that under Executive Orders 11905 of February 18, 1976 and 12036 of January 24, 1978, which prohibit intelligence gathering on U.S. citizens, the CIA was legally proscribed from engaging in any activities vis-a-vis People's Temple.
The Department of Justice, on the other hand, has indicated to the Staff Investigative Group that the FBI did look into an allegation from a constituent of Senator S.I. Hayakawa that "Jim Jones was coaxing individuals into traveling to Georgetown, Guyana, where they were being held against their will for unknown reasons." The FBI interviewed the constituent, but found that "relatives of the constituent had traveled to Guyana voluntarily, and no evidence of forced confinement was developed." The investigation was thereupon terminated "because no violation of the Federal kidnaping statute had occurred."
The Staff Investigative Group was also informed by the Criminal Division of the Justice Department that it received a "citizen complaint" in December 1977, claiming "that a relative was being held in bondage in Georgetown, Guyana by Pastor Jim Jones." The facts spelled out in the complaint indicated no criminal violations within the Justice Department's jurisdiction. Accordingly Justice's information on the complaint was sent to the State Department.
Mark Lane
C. Opponents and Media Intimidated; Public Officials Used
As part of Jones' constant and pervasive effort to control people and events, the evidence obtained by the Staff Investigative Group established that he persistently intimidated and harassed those who left People's Temple and anyone else, especially the media, who he felt were opposed to his interests. This clear pattern of intimidation and harassment was reinforced and compounded into success by the widely held belief by People's Temple defectors and opponents, that government officials were friendly toward People's Temple or had in some way been compromised. Consequently, attempts at early efforts to alert the public to the nature of People's Temple's activities were largely ignored and/or rejected.
Typical of some of Jones' tactics to intimidate and harass People's Temple defectors who were actively opposed to him were the following:
Undermining of their credibility as witnesses by spreading falsehoods and releasing the so-called "confession" they had signed while members of People's Temple;
Fear campaigns generated through break-ins, late night phone calls, and unsigned letters threatening beatings and even death. One such break-in carried out against a couple who had left People's Temple was done with the help of their daughter who remained in the organization.
As a result of such tactics People's Temple defectors were frequently frozen in fear and severely hampered in their efforts to counteract Jones. The problem is illustrated in the following example which points up the desperate lengths to which opponents of People's Temple were driven as well as the degree to which officials in San Francisco appear to have been involved. Afraid to contact any public officials for fear that they were tied-in or friendly to Jones, one individual went to the length of writing consumer advocate Ralph Nader because he could not think of anyone else he could trust. The letter to Nader outlined many of the allegations against People's Temple which were later proven true. It also indicated that the letter writer feared for his life. It closed as follows:
If you want to help us, please write in the personal column of the Chronicle to "Angelo" and sign it Ralph and then we will respond and talk to you.
Rather than do that, Nader sent the letter to the District Attorney's Office in San Francisco. By some means, the letter filtered back to People's Temple and the writer soon thereafter received a threatening phone call that said "We know all about your letter to Angelo."
In another instance People's Temple defectors hired a private detective to surreptitiously observe their meeting with Jones' representatives in a public subway station. Their objective was to have an eyewitness in the event of violence.
With respect to Jim Jones' and People's Temple efforts to stifle the San Francisco media some of the following methods were employed:
The threat of law suits. In almost all instances in which this tactic was used it was based on the People's Temple possession of copies of stories in draft form prior to publication obtained through break-ins or provided to People's Temple by infiltrators within the media's office.
Threatening phone calls to reporters and their families, accepted by one as serious enough to warrant relocating children, moving into hotels, and obtaining guns for self-protection.
Extensive letter-writing campaigns intended to dissuade publishers and editors from printing stories being prepared by aggressive reporters. The soft-sell nature of this tactic was aimed at creating diversionary arguments contending that the story in question would reflect badly on San Francisco or prevent People's Temple "from continuing its good work with the 'disaffected and disaffiliated' in society." One such campaign produced letters supportive of People's Temple from San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, Lieutenant Governor Mervyn Dymally, the head of the San Francisco school system, and members of the California State Assembly. It would appear that such campaigns were particularly effective with the San Francisco Chronicle and the National Enquirer.
Encouraging San Francisco merchants and businesses to remove their advertising from "offending" publications. The chief target of such an effort was the New West magazine immediately prior to its publication in August 1977, of an article critical of Jones. The editor of the magazine persisted and the article is generally credited with breaking Jones' stronghold on San Francisco and led him to go to Guyana immediately before it appeared.
The picketing of newspaper offices which had run stories on Jones regarded as anti-People's Temple. One such effort, combined with the threat of a law suit, led to the cancellation in 1972 by the San Francisco Examiner of an eight-part series of articles, only half of which had already appeared. The end result was to make most editors and publishers highly sensitive and cautious regarding any critical stories involving Jones and the People's Temple.
Finally, as to the question of whether or not certain officials had in fact been compromised by Jones, the Staff Investigative Group believes the evidence is mixed. What is indisputably clear and solidly based on evidence is that many such officials were perceived of by Jones' opponents as extremely friendly to or enthusiastically supportive of Jones, thereby precluding them or their offices from pursuing actions against Jones in an impartial manner. In this regard, it should be kept in mind that Jones had endowed himself with the cloak of official legitimacy through his appointment by Mayor Moscone as director of the San Francisco Housing Authority. In addition political figures in San Francisco appear to have been enticed by Jones' ability to turn out hundreds of his followers to attend rallys, conduct mailings, man phone-banks, and otherwise provide support to political election campaigns, including some direct contributions.
Similarly, the media were not immune from Jones' wiles and attemped flatteries. For example, Jones made contributions of various sums totaling $4,400 to the San Francisco Examiner, the San Francisco Chronicle, and 10 other newspapers to be used as they saw fit in the "defense of a free press," Although the Examiner returned the money to the People's Temple, the management of the Chronicle sent the check to Sigma Delta Chi, the national journalism society, which in turn rejected suggestions that it be returned to People's Temple.
D. Awareness of Danger; Predicting the Degree of Violence
One area on which this inquiry concentrated under Chairman Zablocki's mandate dealt with the questions of whether (a) Representative Ryan had been adequately advised of the potential for danger, and (b) how accurately anyone could have predicted the degree of violence employed. On the basis of evidence gathered we have reached conclusions on both counts:
Representative Ryan was advised on more than one occasion of the possibility of violence inherent in his trip to Jonestown. However, he tended to discount such warnings with the thought that his office as a Congressman would protect him. Moreover, he was apparently willing to face whatever danger might be present, citing as a reason his own previous investigative experiences and his determination not to be influenced by fear.
The warnings Mr. Ryan did receive regarding the prospect for violence came chiefly from his own staff and the Concerned Relatives group. When the issue was raised in the State Department briefings prior to the trip, Mr. Ryan did not challenge State's assessment that potential danger was "unlikely." In fact, State's briefings for the Ryan Codel dwelled almost exclusively on the legal problems relative to the trip as well as the logistical difficulties involved in reaching the remote and isolated jungle compound.
No one interviewed by the Staff Investigative Group ever anticipated the degree of violence acutally encountered. Many expected that there might be adversarial encounters, arguments, or shouting; the worst anticipated was that someone might "get punched in the mouth."
From a variety of sources, Representative Ryan and some representatives of the media were cautioned that they were regarded as adversaries of People's Temple and Jones. They were further informed that Jones was paranoid. It is appropriate to note here that Mr. Ryan apparently did not advise anyone in the State Department or the U.S. Embassy in Guyana that one of the purposes of his trip was to help possible defectors leave Jonestown with him on November 18.
Some members of Mr. Ryan's staff as well as the media group had gut feelings on the possibility for violence. They ranged from advising Mr. Ryan that Jones had a "capacity" for violence, to a general concern based on allegations of guns in Jonestown, and finally, to the thought that a bomb might be placed on the plane on which the entire party flew to Guyana. At the most extreme end of such intuitive hunches and feelings was Miss Jackie Speier's premotion of fear that led her to write her own will.
To the extent that violence was considered a possibility by the Ryan Codel, there is evidence to suggest that Mr. Ryan may have looked on the accompanying media group as a "shield"; conversely, to the extent there was any apprehension in their ranks, the media regarded Mr. Ryan's status as a Congressman as their best protection. For other members of the media, the principal potential danger considered was the jungle against which they protected themselves by taking special supplies.
E. U.S. Customs Service Investigation
One key element relating to the question of whether the Ryan Codel had adequate awareness of the potential for danger as well as the degree of violence which ultimately ensued involves a 1977 U.S. Customs Service investigation of reported illegal gun shipments and other contraband to Jonestown. In the course of this inquiry, therefore, the Staff Investigative Group obtained evidence which warrants the following findings on the subject:
Working on allegations interspersed amid many "bizarre" tales about People's Temple, the investigation was begun in February 1977. One of the allegations contended that more than 170 weapons once stored in Ukiah had been transferred to People's Temple San Francisco headquarters and then possibly on to Jonestown.
The investigation was compromised 1 month after it began, not through any inadvertence on the part of the Customs Service, but when an individual conveyed some information on the matter to Dennis Banks, head of the American Indian Movement, in an effort to dissuade Banks from any further contact with Jones. That conversation was apparently taped and word was passed to Jones. Complete details of the investigation's report were further compromised when a copy of the report was sent to Interpol. From Interpol it was by normal procedure, shared with the Guyanese police. According to information provided us, Guyanese Police Commissioner C. A. "Skip" Roberts reportedly showed a copy to either Paula Adams or Carolyn Layton, two of Mr. Jones' trusted aides, one of whom passed the information to Mr. Jones.
Although the Customs Service investigation was not diluted or diminished in any way, it is clear that it was carried out in an unusually sensitive mode because of what was perceived to be Jim Jones' considerable political influence in San Francisco. Surveillance relating to the investigation was virtually impossible to carry out because of the tight security screen Jones placed around the Geary Street headquarters of People's Temple in San Francisco.
The investigation was concluded in August-September 1977 after a shipment of crates destined for Jonestown was opened and inspected by the Customs Service in Miami in August 1977. Shortly thereafter a report on the investigation was filed with negative results. Nonetheless, investigators apparently felt enough residual suspicion to send copies of the report to Interpol and the U.S. Department of State "because (the) investigation disclosed allegations that Jones intends to establish a political power base in Guyana, and that he may currently have several hundred firearms in that country***."
The copy of the Customs Service report was received in the State Department's Office of Munitions Control on September 1, 1997 and on September 6, 1977 a copy was forwarded to the Department's Bureau of Inter-American Affairs. although standard routing procedures provided that a copy should have been sent to the U.S. Embassy in Guyana there is no indication a copy ever was sent. In addition, only the Guyana desk officer saw the report: none of the more than 26 State Department officials we interviewed saw the report until after November 18, 1978, although one professed "awareness" of it earlier.
F. Conspiracy To Kill Representative Ryan?
Relative to the likelihood of a People's Temple-Jim Jones conspiracy to kill Representative Ryan, the Staff Investigative Group has reached the following conclusions based on evidence available to us:
The possibility of any prior conspiracy tends to be diminished by the fact that Gordon Lindsay, a reporter whom Mr. Jones regarded as an arch enemy of People's Temple, was not allowed to enter Jonestown with the Ryan party.
Still not to be discounted entirely, however, is the possible existence of a contingency conspiracy. In this connection, there are reports of an "understanding' in Jonestown that if efforts to delude Ryan as to the true conditions at Jonestown failed he would have to be killed, supposedly by arranging for his plane to crash in the jungle after leaving Jonestown. While circumstantial evidence is available on this theory we have not found any hard evidence.
Providing some moderate credence to the idea of a contingency conspiracy is the fact that the Jonestown mass suicide/murder ritual started before the Port Kaituma assailants returned to confirm the shootings of Representative Ryan and others.
Also lending some substance to the contingency conspiracy theory are unconfirmed reports that a large shipment of cyanide, used in the mass suicide/murder, arrived in Jonestown 2 days before Ryan's visit. Also related is the reported statement of a Jonestown survivor that several days before Mr. Ryan arrived in Jonestown he heard Jones say that the Congressman's plane "might fall from the sky."
In an effort to obtain detailed information on Mr. Ryan's upcoming trip, Jones placed a phony defector within the ranks of the Concerned Relatives group in San Francisco 1 month before the Codel's departure for Guyana. The "defector" was seen back in Jonestown when the Ryan party arrived. The late awareness that the defector was false produced a heightened sense of danger in the minds of some making the trip.
G. The Privacy Act and the Freedom of Information Act
Throughout this investigation there were repeated references made as to the pervasive role of the Privacy Act and, to a lesser degree, the Fredom of Information Act in the tragedy at Jonestown. The Staff Investigative Group made a careful and thorough review of the issue which resulted in the following findings:
The Privacy Act figured prominently in several important aspects of the State Department's and U.S. Embassy's briefings and relations with the Ryan Codel and their handling of all matters relating to People's Temple.
Officials within both the State Department and the Embassy clearly tended to confuse the Privacy Act with the Freedom of Information Act, thereby inhibiting the comprehensiveness of written reports and exchanges of information.1 One key Embassy official, for instance, was operating under the mistaken assumption that People's Temple was seeking cables reporting on consular visits to Jonestown under provisions of the Freedom of Information Act.
Representative Ryan's legal advisers contended that the State Department's interpretation of the Privacy Act was unreasonably narrow and restrictive and further felt that fact had ramifications on what the Codel wished to accomplish. Those differences, which began in Washington and continued in Guyana, resulted in somewhat strained relations between the State Department and the Codel.
The State Department's interpretation of the Privacy Act led them to deny Ryan access to certain information and documents relative to People's Temple. That problem could have been avoided or at least alleviated if Mr. Ryan had followed the Department's advice to obtain a letter from the chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs authorizing him such access under an exemption clause in the act. That exemption provision permits disclousure to any committee of Congress "to the extent of matter within its jurisdiction." Reflecting the State Department's lack of knowledge of the law and its application, it is pertinent to note that on February 28, 1979, the State Department was unaware of the exemption provision in denying to Chairman Zablocki requested information germane to the investigation.
Prior to the Codel's departure, the U.S. Embassy in Guyana reflected its own acute sensitivity regarding the Privacy Act by urging that Mr. Ryan be fully informed of the act's limitations. That sensitivity was reinforced by the Embassy's request that a Department legal expert accompany the Codel, a request denied by State because of travel freeze restrictions and the heavy press of other work.
Among the Embassy officials interviewed there is almost unanimous agreement that the Privacy Act is complex, difficult to understand, and confusing. Accordingly, they believe that regular guidance is required to guarantee proper implementation.
Initial State Department guidance on the Privacy Act provided to the U.S. Embassy in Guyana was so highly techhnical and legalistic that it had little if any practical value, a problem compounded by subsequent communications. It was not until November 18, 1977, almost 3 years after the Privacy Act became law, that the Embassy was provided with what could be regarded as practical guidance. However, even that communication contained the following prefatory comment: "Due to its rapid passage by Congress in December 1974 without hearings, less than the usual legislative history exists to guide executive departments in interpreting history exists to guide executive departments in interpreting it.***." Available at that time was a 1,500-page volume, "Legislative History of the Privcacy Act of 1974," which incorporated committee reports, markup sessions, excerpts from floor debate and other pertinent source materials.
In day-to-day operations and application, the Privacy Act impacts more on the State Department's consular section than on its diplomatic officers.
Given the confusion surrounding the Privacy Act and the lack of practical and understandable guidance, it appears that Embassy consular officers in Guyana found the act difficult to implement properly. In contrast, most of their Washington counterparts, in both political and consular sections of the Department, did not perceive the Embassy's problems and felt the guidance provided was adequate.
Also contributing to those official's ability to effectively implement the Privacy Act vis-a-vis the People's Temple was the understanding they held that as a religious organization People's Temple merited added protection under the act. Disregarding for now the question of whether or not People's Temple was a religion, few of the officials knew that the act's prohibition on maintaining records describing the exercise of the first amendment rights also provides and exception for matters pertinent to law enforcement activities. Further, there appeared to be little general awareness among State Department Personnel of other exemptions provided in both the Privacy Act and the Freedom of Information Act from mandatory agency disclosure of information.
The legal recourse Jones and People's Temple had under the Privacy Act and Freedom of Information Act to obtain Embassy cables had the chilling effect on Embassy personnel of making their communications to the State Department on People's Temple less candid than they might have otherwise been. That effect was reinforced when the Embassy learned on December 2, 1977, that People's Temple had in fact filed a total of 26 actions under the Privacy Act, for documents relating to specified People's Temple members. As a byproduct of these restraints it is reasonable to conclude that the Embassy's inhibitions to more candidly and accurately report their impressions of the true situation in Jonestown ultimately influenced the State Department's ability to more effectively brief the Ryan Codel. Also not to be discounted is the strong possibility that, knowing the law and the effect it could produce, Jones used the legal claim actions as a tactic in order to achieve the very effect it did.
Overall, many State Department officials appeared to be highly aware of the civil and/or criminal penalty provisions of both acts. That fact reinforced their perceived image of both acts as threatening and troublesome in that failure to comply could present them with serious personal legal problems. In turn, that thought made them doubly cautious in their dealings with People's Temple.
H. Role and Performance of the U.S. Department of State
The role and performance of the State Department in this matter was the central issue earmarked for investigation in Chairman Zablocki's mandate to the Staff Investigative Group. The points of reference surrounding that issue span 4 years and are complex and many. Given this reality, a major part of the investigation was devoted to this aspect of the issue. The following conclusions and findings based on evidence gathered are:
The U.S. Embassy in Guyana did not demonstrate adequate initiative, sensitive reaction to, and apprecitation of progressively mounting indications of highly irregular and illegal activities in Jonestown. The Embassy's one attempt to confront the situation and affect a solution did not occur until June 1978. Essentially embodying what could at best be described as the Embassy's heightened suspicion of problems with People's Temple, the effort was made in the form of a cable to the State Department requesting permission to approach the Guyanese Government and "request that the government exercise normal adminintrative jurisdiction over the community, particularly to insure that all of its residents are informed and understand that they are subject to the laws and authority of the Government of Guyana***." The State Department, failing to detect any linkage between Log 126 and the then recent defection of Temple member Debbie Blakey and other incidents, rejected the request in a terse cable because such an overture "could be construed by some as U.S. Government interference." (Debbie Blakey defected from the People's Temple in Georgetown, Guyana on May 12, 1978, with the assistance of U.S. Embassy officers Richard McCoy and Daniel Weber. Prior to her departure to the United States, she submitted a written statement to the Embassy warning, among other things, of the possibility of a mass suicide in Jonestown.)
The Department's negative response to Log 126 had the net effect of reinforcing the Embassy's already cautious attitude in all dealings with the People's Temple. Despite the fact that an affirmative response was anticipated, the Embassy surprisingly made no effort to challenge the Department's negative decision. Equally surprising was the Department's failure to contact the Ambassador and determine what specifically triggered his request. Testimony from Department witnesses indicates that the lack of specificity in Log 126 was the primary reason for the negative response in Log 130. Such specificity (e.g., Blakey defection) was deliberately avoided, according to the Ambassador, because of Privacy Act considerations. The upshot of this exchange was a lamentable breakdown in communication with neither side making any further efforts to discuss or follow up on the matter.
Mitigating factors were present wihich require acknowledgment. For example, it is understandable that the Embassy did not have an investigative or judicial function. It also felt compelled to abide by U.S. laws as well as strict State Department rules and regulations while simultaneously respecting the hospitality of Guyana. Embassy personnel were also faced with the challenge of trying to remain objective in the face of two opposing groups of Americans often presenting contradictory stories; a factor reinforced by numerous letters, articles, and documents reflecting equally pro and con dimensions on Jones and the People's Temple. Out of that balance the Embassy concluded only that People's Temple prior to November 18, 1978, was a "controversial" or "unusual" group.
Nevertheless, absent in the Embassy's dealings with People's Temple were the vital elements of common sense and an honest and healthy skepticism. Despite the acknowledged handicaps under which it worked the Embassy could have exerted sounder overall judgment and a more aggressive posture. One important result of such an effort would have been more accurate and straightforward reporting on the People's Temlple situation which, in turn, could have given the State Department a stronger and wider base on which to draw in biefing Representative Ryan and his staff. In this connection, the Privacy Act and the Freedom of Information Act, each of which was discussed in a previous section, played important roles.
It is proven beyond doubt that Jones staged a show for selective visitors to Jonestown which made it difficult to get a realistic and accurate picture of what was actually happening there. The aability of the Embassy to break through this facade was severely hampered by several factors. First, the "Embassy provided in advance to People's Temple, the names of most but not all of the individuals who were to be interviewed by visiting consular officers. That practice allowed Jones to rehearse those people on what to say and how to act. Second, such "staging" practices were greatly facilitated by the limited time spent in Jonestown by visiting U.S. Embassy officials-an average of 5-8 hours on four different occasions between August 30, 1977, and November 7, 1978.
In conducting normal consular activities in Jonestown and in other interactions with People's Temple, Embassy officials were restricted by constitutionally mandated safeguards prohibiting interference with free exercise of religious beliefs and with legally sanctioned religious organizations. Recognizing that this issue is not within the direct purview of the committee's investigation, we nevertheless note (as observed earlier) that many People's Temple members were originally motivated less by religious considerations than by a general social idealism. In addition, it is clear that People's Temple had little specific dimension or few surface trappings which would have made it a "church."
There was a laxness in State Department procedures for distributing certain important documents relative to People's Temple, thereby inhibiting the opportunity for taking appropriate action. Chief among these was the U.S. Customs Service report on possible gun shipments to Jonestown. Others include the April 10, 1978, affidavit by Yolanda D.A. Crawford, a People's Temple defector, describing beatings and abuses in Jonestown; the affidavit signed in May 1978 by Debbie Blakey, another People's Temple defector, describing suicide rehearsals and other serious charges; and finally the New West magazine article of August 1, 1977, which exposed Jones. A wider awareness of these and similar materials would have significantly enhanced the State Department's ability to evaluate the situation. As a reflection of the problem it is interesting to note that a number of State Department officials interviewed readily volunteered the observation that prior to his trip to Guyana "Mr. Ryan knew more about People's Temple and Jonestown than we did."
State Department organization and day-to-day operations created a distinction between its consular activities and its diplomatic responsibilities. Inadequate coordination between those two functions led to a situation in which matters involving People's Temple were regarded almost exclusively as consular. Despite mounting indications that the People's Temple issue was spilling over into the United States-Guyana diplomatic area, the mentality persisted of relegating it to the consular side.
In the area of crisis management following the tragedy of November 18 the State Department and Embassy performed with distinction. Particularly praiseworthy in this regard were the brave and dedicated efforts of Richard Dwyer in aiding and providing leadership under trying circumstances to survivors of the Port Kaituma shooting. Equally admirable were the Department's and Embassy's efforts in evacuating the wounded, providing assistance to others, and keeping Washington officials adequately informed of developments. Also commendable was the competent and efficient work of Department of Defense personnel in assisting the wounded and others and returning them to the United States.
As to allegations that a female member of People't Temple in Guyana had engaged in a sexual liaison with former U.S. Consul Richard McCoy and had made tape recordings of their sexual activities in an attempt to compromise McCoy, it is our firm judgment, based on our findings, that such allegations are false.The woman in question has in fact testified and signed an affidavit categorically denying all such charges. She further stated that, "To the best of my knowledge, no member of People's Temple engaged in any sexual activity with Richard A. McCoy" and that the People's Temple relationship with McCoy was one of "mistrust and strained discussion though not openly hostile." Nor is there any evidence to indicate that any other person affiliated with the U.S. Embassy in Guyana had at any time been compromised by the People's Temple.
I. Involvement of the Government of Guyana
On the issue of People's Temple involvement with the Government of Guyana, the Staff Investigative Group renders the following incomplete findings:
There is evidence of a strong working relationship between the People's Temple and some officials of the Government of Guyana, especially in the areas of customs and immigration. It is obvious that a special privileged status allowed People's Temple to bring that special privileged status allowed People's Temple to bring items into Guyana outside of the usual customs procedures, often with cursory inspection at best. Many shipments were inspected perfunctorily or not at all. It is likely that People's Temple brought large sums of money and guns into Guyana in suitcases and false-bottom creates as a result of such customs inspections. As a matter of fact, some of these concerns were expressed by Guyanese officials.
Guyanese immigration procedures were also compromised to the advantage of People's Temple on several occasions, chiefly in two key areas. First, People's Temple members were able to facilitate entry of their own members or inhibit the exit of defectors by having access to customs areas at Timehri Airport in Georgetown closed to all other citizens. Second, clearly arbitrary decisions were made to curtail the visas and expedite the exit of individuals regarded as opponents of People's Temple. Only upon the strenuous efforts of the U.S. Embassy were some of these decisions ultimately reversed and then at the last minute.
There are in the investigative record repeated charges of a sexual liaison between People's Temple member Paula Adams and Laurence Mann, Guyana's Ambassador to the United States. It has encounters with Mann. Transcripts of some of those tapes were apparently made for Mr. Jones and periodically turned over to high officials in the Guyanese Government.
There is also evidence, incomplete and inconclusive, that unknown officials of the Guyanese Government may have taken action to influence the outcome of the Stoen custody case proceedings in the Guyanese court system.
Testimony from some witnesses suggest that support extended to the People's Temple by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Development Ptolemy Reid was born of an ideological compatibility with an endorsement of the Temple's Socialist philosophy. While such support was exploited in the sense that it had the ultimate effect of furthering People's Temple objectives, it did not appear to be generated for illegal reasons.
Note-In reference to these findings regarding the relationship of the Government of Guyana to the People's Temple, the Staff Investigative Group was precluded from confirming or dispelling various allegations by the refusal of the Guyanese Government to meet and talk with the Group, per Chairman Zablocki's requests of March 2 and 16, 1979. Consequently, to our regret, some of the findings noted above must remain partial and incomplete. There is no doubt in our mind, however, that our inability to interview Guyanese Government officials leaves this report with a conspicuous void.
J. Social Security; Foster Children
Although this inquiry's scope did not require investigating allegations that the People's Temple stole or fraudulently used its members social security benefits, some information regarding these charges did surface during the course of the probe that is worth noting.
At the time of the tragedy of November 18, 1978, a total of 199 social security annuitants reportedly lived in Jonestown. Altogether their annuities amounted to approximately $37,000 per month. It is readily apparent that this income contributed substantially to the maintenance of the Jonestown operations. The Social Security Administration (SSA) is presently conducting a review of its responsibilities and performances in paying benefits to Temple members. In this regard, the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare has submitted an interim report to the committee. In essence, the report indicates that to date no wrongdoing on the part of the temple has been discovered. It does cite, however, four cases that are being investigated because the beneficiaries' checks were being forwarded to Guyana from the United States without Social Security Administration's records revealing their correct addresses. The Social Security Administration review is continuing and upon its completion the committee is to receive a copy of the final report.
The interim report indicates, inter alia, that the Social Security Administration is responsible for administering Section 207 of the Social Security Act (43 U.S.C. 407) which provides, "the right of any person to any future payment under this title shall not be transferable or assignable, at law or in equity***." Consequently, whenever a social security annuitant requests that his or her checks be mailed to someone else's address the Social Security Administration looks into the possibility of assignment. Such an inquiry was launched after Temple members moved to Guyana and asked that their monthly payments be mailed in care of the Jonestown settlement's post office box address.
The U.S.Embassy in Georgetown, Guyana was asked by the Social Security Administration to query Jonestown residents as to why they wanted their checks sent to the settlement's post office address and whether any of the beneficaries had assigned the right to future payments to the People's Temple.
In response to the Social Security Administration's request, U.S. Consul Richard McCoy, during January and May 1978 visits to Jonestown, determined that the post office box address was being used for the convenience of the beneficiaries, that each annuitant interviewed was receiving and controlling the use of his monthly payment, and that none had assigned their checks to the Temple. McCoy's successor, Douglas Ellice, accompanied by Vice Consul Dennis Reece, also checked into social security matters during a November 7, 1978, visit to Jonestown.
McCoy did find Jonestown social security beneficiaries who were heavily influenced to turn over their monthly benefits to the Temple. Nevertheless, in his estimation, these individuals volutarily gave their money to the Temple. In addition, he reported that all of the beneficiaries he saw in Jonestown appeared to be adequately housed, fed, and in relatively good health. Given these findings, the Social Security Administration decided to continue the procedure of mailing the monthly checks to the Jonestown post office box address.
Section 1611 (f) of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 1811 (f)) stipulates that:
***no individual shall be considered an eligible individual for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits, for any month during all of which such individual is outside the United States***
According to the Social Security Administration interim report:
***as soon as it was learned that members of the People's Temple were moving to Guyana, the Social Security Administration district office in San Francisco, working with postal officials and officials of the People's Temple, went to extraordinary lengths to ensure Social Security Administration was notified when a member who was entitled to social security benefits moved abroad. This action proved very effective. When members who had been entitled to SSI benefits left the United States, action was taken to stop the SSI payments.
To date, the Social Security Administration has discovered only one instance of a Temple beneficiary going to Guyana without notifying Social Security Administration authorities. This individual's checks were received and cashed by her husband who continued to live in the United States. The Social Security Administration has found nothing to indicate that the failure to report the wife's move to Guyana involved People's Temple officials.
The Staff Investigative Group has been informed by the Social Security Administration that its ongoing review of payments to Temple members is focusing on the following:
(a) Did any of the Retirement Survivors Disability Insurance (RSDI) beneficiaries living in Jonestown die there before November 18, 1978, without the knowledge of the Social Security Administration?
(b) Were any SSI payments made to a beneficiary for months after the month that individual left the United states? (As mentioned earlier, such payments are illegal.)
Some 656 social security checks were found uncashed and undeposited in Jonestown after the November 18 tragedy. According to one State Department official, the vast majority of the approximately $160,000 in checks recovered in Jonestown were August, September, and October 1978 social security checks.
The Social Security Administration claims it will be several months before the process of identifying the remains of the Jonestown dead is finished. At last report, 173 social security beneficiaries have been positively identified as dead. Eight others are known to have survived. The balance of 18 are still unaccounted for but the presumption is that they are among the unidentified deceased.
Possibly as many as 150 foster children have been alleged to have died in Jonestown during the mass suicide/murder ritual of last November. Senator Alan Cranston's Subcommittee on Child and Human Development is conducting an investigation of these charges with the assistance of the GAO. Preliminary indications are that 12 California foster children may be identified as having died. Greatly complicating the identification process is the fact that neither dental nor fingerprint records exist on most of the children. At this writing, it is hoped that the GAO investigators may be able to provide at least a preliminary report of their findings to Senator Cranston's subcommittee by the end of May 1979 for a hearing that will be held in Los Angeles.
The Staff Investigative Group was informed by State Department witnesses that the U.S. Embassy in Guyana was never asked by California welfare officials to check on the welfare and whereabouts of California foster children reportedly living in Jonestown. The U.S. Embassy, however, was aware that some foster children may have been living there and asked the Department of State to determine whether it was legal for such wards of the State to leave the United States. One Department witness stated that he queried appropriate California authorities and was told that court permission was required to take them out of the State. This same official also discerned some reluctance on the part of these authorities to talk about the subject.
K. Future Status of People's Temple
Although it was beyond the purview of the inquiry as mandated by Chairman Zablocki, the Staff Investigative Group obtained evidence and impressions relative to the possible future status of People's Temple and some related matters which the Group believes are useful to establish for this record.
Accordingly, it is our judgment at this time that the possibility of People's Temple being reconstituted cannot be discounted. This belief is based in large measure on the distinction seemingly held by surviving People's Temple members between Jim Jones as an individual and what People's Temple represented as an organization.Thus, while some remaining People's Temple members express varying degrees of regret, dismay, and disapproval over what Jim Jones did, they still seem to embrace the principles and objectives which they believer People's Temple sought to achieve. There is also some evidence to suggest that a power struggle may be underway within the ranks of surviving People's Temple sought to achieve. There is also some evidence to suggest that a power struggle may be underway within the ranks of surviving People's Temple members in an attempt to establish a new leader. Only time will determine whether in fact such a development may take place.
While the existence of a reported "hit squad" whose purported purpose is to eliminate Jones' staunchest opponents cannot be concretely documented it should not totally discounted. this group has been described as including some of Jones' most zealous adherents. There is evidence to suggest Jones and some of his key lieutenants discussed and had "understandings" to eliminate various individuals, including national political leaders. Time may diminish the possible threat of this factor in any and all future activities and investigations aimed at People's Temple.
A. Jim Jones and People's Temple
Background
Whatever Jim Jones ultimately became and whatever can be said of him now, there is little clear insight into what motivated him to begin his ministry in Indianapolis in the mid 1950's. Some contend he was always a committed Socialist who used religion as a vehicle to further his political beliefs and objectives. Others hold that Jones began as a genuine believer in Christianity but eventually became a nonbeliever or an agnostic. His own often-expresssed claim that he was the dual reincarnation of Christ and Marx reflects the dichotomy. Wherever the truth may lie on his religious beliefs, at the outset, he was seemingly genuine in his ardent support for such social causes as the welfare of older people, racial integration, and rehabilitation of alcoholics and drug addicts. His advocacy of such causes singled him out, and partially in response to the resistance he encountered in established churches where he had accepted pastorates, he began his own church, the People's Temple. By 1965 he had generated enough notoriety and displeasure in Indiana to cause him to decide to move his activities to California accompanied by a small band of Indiana followers. One reason he chose Ukiah, Calif. and its Redwood Valley area was because he had once read that its unique geographical assets made it one of three locations in the world thought to be safe from a possible nuclear holocaust.
By 1972 he decided to once again relocate People's Temple to the richer and more active political pastures of San Francisco and bought an old church building on the edge of the black ghetto area. A second People's Temple church was established in Los Angeles. In 1974 he began creating in the jungles of Guyana the agricultural community known as Jonestown. What finally drove him there together with the majority of his flock in mid-1977 was the publication of a New West magazine article which exposed many of his operations, a fact which he saw as part of the alleged mounting conspiracy against him.
Tactics of Jim Jones
The mental deviations and distortions and the psychological tactics which culminated and were most manifest in the holocaust of Jonestown on November 18 were rooted in Indiana and perfected in California. Who and what was Jim Jones? We believe it is accurate to say he was charismatic in some respects; in fact, he was especially adroit in the area of human psychology.
As we have studied him and interviewed those who knew him well and had come under his influence, we have concluded that he was first and foremost a master of mind control. Among the tactics he practiced with engineered precision are the following recognized strategies of brainwashing:
Isolation from all vestiges of former life, including and especially all sources of information, and substituting himself as the single source of all knowledge, wisdom, and information;
An exacting daily regimen requiring absolute obedience and humility extracted by deception, intimidation, threats, and harassment;
Physical pressure, ranging from deprivation of food and sleep to the possibility and reality of severe beatings. As a compliment to the physical pressures, he exerted mental pressures on his followers which he subsequently relieved in an effort to demonstrate and establish his omnipotent "powers." For example, he inculcated fictional fears which he would eventually counterpoint and dispel and thereby establish himself as a "savior." One of his favorite tactics was to generate and then exploit a sense of guilt for clinging to life's luxuries, for wanting special privileges, and for seeking recognition and reward;
So-called "struggle meetings" or catharsis sessions in which recalcitrant members were interrogated, required to confess their "wrongdoing," and then punished with alternate harshness and leniency. Interrogation could be gentle and polite, but more often it involved harassment, humiliation, revilement, and degradation. Vital to this strategy were two of Jones' favorite techniques. The first involved an exhaustive and detailed record for each member kept on file cards and generated by his vast intelligence network. A member would suddenly be confronted by Jones with knowledge of some action he was unaware had been observed. Jones would stage his "mystic" awareness of that action and then direct the outcome to his desired end. The second technique was to establish in each of his followers a mistrust of everyone else. Consequently, no one dared voice a negative view-even to the closet family member or friend-for fear of being turned in. Often as not, trusted aides were directed to test individuals by expressing some comment critical of Jones or the lifestyle in Jonestown to see if the person would report the incident. The end result was that no one person could trust another. As a result everyone feared expressing even the slightest negative comment. The system was so effective that children turned in their own parents, brothers informed on sisters, and husbands and wives reported on spouses.
Inherent in these principles which Mr. Jones masterfully and regularly employed was his central strategy of "divide and conquer" through which he consolidated his power over people.
In addition to these tactics, however, Mr. Jones regularly used other devices and methods to achieve his ends:
Requiring People's Temple members to contribute as much as 25 percent of their income and sign over to the People's Temple their properties and other assets;
At times dictating marriage between unwilling partners and at other times not allowing cohabitation between married couples;
Undermining and breaking a child's ties with parents. In progressive degrees the child was led to mistrust the parents and become more and more secretive in his actions and evasive to his parent's questions;
As a symbol of their trust in him, followers were required to sign statements admitting homosexuality, theft, and other self-incriminating acts; often as not People's Temple members would also sign blank pages which could be filled in later. Depending on Jones' need or objective, such documents were frequently used in attempts to defame defectors;
Rumor spreading in an attempt to ruin reputations or generally implant disinformation, thereby making true facts difficult if not impossible to establish;
Infiltration of groups opposed to People's Temple and surveilance of suspected People's Temple enemies;
Intense public relations efforts ranging from letter-writing campaigns to attempted control of news media in an effort to influence public opinion with a favorable image of People's Temple; like-wise, an aggressive program of seeking out political leaders and other influential members of a community in order to cull their favor and establish identification with them.
In the process of manipulating the control board of this extraordinary system Jones suffered extreme paranoia. One can speculate that while it may have been initially staged, his paranoia ultimately became a self-created Frankenstein that led not only to his fall but the tragic death of more than 900 others, including Representative Leo J. Ryan. His paranoia ranged from "dark unnamed forces," to individuals such as Tim Stoen and other defectors from the People's Temple, to organizations such as the Concerned Relatives group, and ultimately to the U.S. Government in the form of the CIA and the FBI--all of which he ultimately believed were out to destroy him.
Further, in establishing this analysis of Jim Jones it is worth noting that he apparently had several bisexual perversions. Finally, there is some irony in the fact that although he controlled considerable wealth (estimated at $12 million) he sought out special privileges but none of the usual trappings of wealth such as fancy cars or expensive houses. In short, Mr. Jones was more interested in ideas than in things. He was not driven by greed for money but for power and control over others. That control continues to be exerted even after his death on the minds of some of his followers. It is graphically illustrated by the suicide of Michael Prokes, one of Jones' closest associates, during a March 13, 1979, press conference in California in which he defended Jones and cited the achievements of People's Temple and Jonestown.
Jackie Speier
Motivation of People's Temple Members
The tactics and techniques of Jim Jones outlined above found fertile ground and were greatly facilitated because of the background and motivation of those who joined People's Temple. Generalities, of course, are always difficult if not dangerous. However, on this basis of the information which has come to us in the course of this investigation one can draw the following general profile of many who became People's Temple members and followers of Jim Jones:
Some of the young adults were college graduates out of upper middle-class backgrounds which provided privilege and even luxury. Their parents were often college-educated professionals or executives. Frequently, their families were active in demonstrations against the Vietnam war, campaigns for racial equality, and other social cuases. In some cases, the young People's Temple member had been alienated by the "emptiness" of his family's wealth.
A larger number, especially young blacks, had their roots in the other end of the American social and economic spectrum. The products of poor ghetto neighborhoods and limited education, some had been drug addicts, prostitutes, and street hustlers.
An even greater percentage were elderly, again perdominately black, who had come out of the San Francisco ghetto. They found in Jim Jones an abiding and protective concern. Despite the harshness of life in Jonestown, they regarded it as preferable to the poor housing they had left behind. They also found a warm sense of family and acceptance within the People's Temple community that they did not have before joining.
A goodly number of middle-class blacks and whites came out of strong fundamentalist religious family backgrounds and were attracted by what they saw as the evangelical nature of People's Temple.
By contrast, many of the younger people had little if any religious motivation in joining People's Temple. Rather, they tended to be compelled by humanitarian interests. Altruistic and idealistic, they were impressed by Jones' involvement in social causes and what they saw as the "political sophistication" of People's Temple. To the extent that a religious motivation was involved, it was seen chiefly in terms of Jones' seeming concrete application of Judeo-Christian principles. Over time, the dimension of their motivation was not only nonsectarian but eventually became embodied in the Socialist-Marxist-agnostic philosophy which Jones espoused.
People's Temple as a Church
Out of the findings outlined above regarding Jim Jones and members of his People's Temple, emerges one additional finding. It relates to the question of whether or not People's Temple was a "church" in the generally accepted sense of that word. Again, on the basis of testimony and compelling evidence collected in the course of this investigation we offer the following conclusion on that question:
Although People's Temple may have been a bona fide church in its Indiana and early California origins, it progressively lost that characterization in almost every respect. Rather, by 1972 and following in progressive degrees, it evolved into what could be described as a sociopolitical movement. Under the direction and inspiration of it founder and director and the Marxist-Leninist-Communist philosophy he embraced, People's Temple was in the end a Socialist structure devoted to socialism. Despite that fact, People's Temple continued to enjoy the tax-exempt status it received in 1962 under Internal Revenue Service rules and regulations. The issue of People's Temple's status as a "church" is also significant in connection with First Amendment protections it sought and received. Obviously, the latter issue is a difficult and complex matter beyond the purview of this committee and its investigation.
Also outside the parameters of this committee's inquiry is whether in fact People's Temple was a "cult." Once again, recognizing that the problem is complex and laced with emotions and strong connotative overtones, the committee's investigation went only to the extent of seeking the opinions of respected legal scholars.
B. Conspiracy Against Jim Jones and People's Temple?
Was there a conspiracy against Jim Jones perpetrated by the U.S. Government or some other organization? That was one of the questions on which the Staff Investigative Groupattempted to obtain evidence during the course of this inquiry. On the basis of the information received, the following findings are offered:
Jones' idea that there were elements opposed to his views and objectives dates back to his early days in Indiana. In fact, it was the adverse reaction he encountered relative to his racial integration and other policies that led him to establish his own church, the People's Temple
When the People's Temple relocated in Ukiah, Calif. in 1965 Jones' complaints of opposition increased. They ranged in progressive degree from alleged vandalism against People's Temple property, poisoning of his pets, and various threats against Jones, to a shooting attack on Jones' life (from which he "miraculously" recovered by his own power). No substantiation was ever found on any of these complaints reported to and investigated by Ukiah police.
The mood of Jones' allegations of anti-People's Temple conspiracy grew darker when the group moved to San Francisco in 1972. At that time its chief target was the media as well as unspecified "forces." Reported attempts to dissuade Jones from the notion were apparently unsuccessful.
Jones' idea of a U.S. Government plot against him, embodied mainly in the CIA and FBI, took full bloom after he and the vast bulk of People's Temple members moved to Guyana in 1977. Opposition of the Concerned Relatives group was eventually attributed to CIA backing as were periodic "alerts" he called to protect the People's Temple Jonestown community from mercenaries in the jungle around Jonestown.
Jones' two lawyers offer contradictory opinions on the question of a possible conspiracy against People's Temple and Jones. For example, Mark Lane told the committee's investigators: "***there is no doubt in my mind that various people sought to destroy Jonestown and that people in various government agencies manipulated Jones. Jones, himself, saw the efforts to manipulate him into an overreaction but somehow he was unable to control his own responses ***. I believe that a responsible investigation by the Congress would seek to determine why various elements within the United States Government including those in the State Department withheld from Congressman Ryhan and the rest of us who accompanied him to Jonestown the fact that they knew the place was an armed camp and that Jones was capable of killing the Congressman and many others." On the other hand, Charles Garry said: "***I want to unequivocally tell you in the year and a half since July 1977, with the years of experience I have had with governmental conspiracy and government wrongdoing, particularly the FBI, I found no evidence to support any of the charges that were made by People's Temple. I found no evidence to support any of that."
Granting the strong likelihood of Jones' paranoia, compounded by his manipulative abilities, Jones staged and exploited the idea of a conspiracy as a means of generating fear in his adherents and thereby gaining further control over them. The tactic also served to keep any opponents on the defensive and even had the apparent effect of sensitizing the U.S. Embassy in Guyana.
No conclusive evidence is available to indicate that the CIA was acquiring information on Mr. Jones or People's Temple. In this same connection it should be noted that under Executive Orders 11905 of February 18, 1976 and 12036 of January 24, 1978, which prohibit intelligence gathering on U.S. citizens, the CIA was legally proscribed from engaging in any activities vis-a-vis People's Temple.
The Department of Justice, on the other hand, has indicated to the Staff Investigative Group that the FBI did look into an allegation from a constituent of Senator S.I. Hayakawa that "Jim Jones was coaxing individuals into traveling to Georgetown, Guyana, where they were being held against their will for unknown reasons." The FBI interviewed the constituent, but found that "relatives of the constituent had traveled to Guyana voluntarily, and no evidence of forced confinement was developed." The investigation was thereupon terminated "because no violation of the Federal kidnaping statute had occurred."
The Staff Investigative Group was also informed by the Criminal Division of the Justice Department that it received a "citizen complaint" in December 1977, claiming "that a relative was being held in bondage in Georgetown, Guyana by Pastor Jim Jones." The facts spelled out in the complaint indicated no criminal violations within the Justice Department's jurisdiction. Accordingly Justice's information on the complaint was sent to the State Department.
Mark Lane
C. Opponents and Media Intimidated; Public Officials Used
As part of Jones' constant and pervasive effort to control people and events, the evidence obtained by the Staff Investigative Group established that he persistently intimidated and harassed those who left People's Temple and anyone else, especially the media, who he felt were opposed to his interests. This clear pattern of intimidation and harassment was reinforced and compounded into success by the widely held belief by People's Temple defectors and opponents, that government officials were friendly toward People's Temple or had in some way been compromised. Consequently, attempts at early efforts to alert the public to the nature of People's Temple's activities were largely ignored and/or rejected.
Typical of some of Jones' tactics to intimidate and harass People's Temple defectors who were actively opposed to him were the following:
Undermining of their credibility as witnesses by spreading falsehoods and releasing the so-called "confession" they had signed while members of People's Temple;
Fear campaigns generated through break-ins, late night phone calls, and unsigned letters threatening beatings and even death. One such break-in carried out against a couple who had left People's Temple was done with the help of their daughter who remained in the organization.
As a result of such tactics People's Temple defectors were frequently frozen in fear and severely hampered in their efforts to counteract Jones. The problem is illustrated in the following example which points up the desperate lengths to which opponents of People's Temple were driven as well as the degree to which officials in San Francisco appear to have been involved. Afraid to contact any public officials for fear that they were tied-in or friendly to Jones, one individual went to the length of writing consumer advocate Ralph Nader because he could not think of anyone else he could trust. The letter to Nader outlined many of the allegations against People's Temple which were later proven true. It also indicated that the letter writer feared for his life. It closed as follows:
If you want to help us, please write in the personal column of the Chronicle to "Angelo" and sign it Ralph and then we will respond and talk to you.
Rather than do that, Nader sent the letter to the District Attorney's Office in San Francisco. By some means, the letter filtered back to People's Temple and the writer soon thereafter received a threatening phone call that said "We know all about your letter to Angelo."
In another instance People's Temple defectors hired a private detective to surreptitiously observe their meeting with Jones' representatives in a public subway station. Their objective was to have an eyewitness in the event of violence.
With respect to Jim Jones' and People's Temple efforts to stifle the San Francisco media some of the following methods were employed:
The threat of law suits. In almost all instances in which this tactic was used it was based on the People's Temple possession of copies of stories in draft form prior to publication obtained through break-ins or provided to People's Temple by infiltrators within the media's office.
Threatening phone calls to reporters and their families, accepted by one as serious enough to warrant relocating children, moving into hotels, and obtaining guns for self-protection.
Extensive letter-writing campaigns intended to dissuade publishers and editors from printing stories being prepared by aggressive reporters. The soft-sell nature of this tactic was aimed at creating diversionary arguments contending that the story in question would reflect badly on San Francisco or prevent People's Temple "from continuing its good work with the 'disaffected and disaffiliated' in society." One such campaign produced letters supportive of People's Temple from San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, Lieutenant Governor Mervyn Dymally, the head of the San Francisco school system, and members of the California State Assembly. It would appear that such campaigns were particularly effective with the San Francisco Chronicle and the National Enquirer.
Encouraging San Francisco merchants and businesses to remove their advertising from "offending" publications. The chief target of such an effort was the New West magazine immediately prior to its publication in August 1977, of an article critical of Jones. The editor of the magazine persisted and the article is generally credited with breaking Jones' stronghold on San Francisco and led him to go to Guyana immediately before it appeared.
The picketing of newspaper offices which had run stories on Jones regarded as anti-People's Temple. One such effort, combined with the threat of a law suit, led to the cancellation in 1972 by the San Francisco Examiner of an eight-part series of articles, only half of which had already appeared. The end result was to make most editors and publishers highly sensitive and cautious regarding any critical stories involving Jones and the People's Temple.
Finally, as to the question of whether or not certain officials had in fact been compromised by Jones, the Staff Investigative Group believes the evidence is mixed. What is indisputably clear and solidly based on evidence is that many such officials were perceived of by Jones' opponents as extremely friendly to or enthusiastically supportive of Jones, thereby precluding them or their offices from pursuing actions against Jones in an impartial manner. In this regard, it should be kept in mind that Jones had endowed himself with the cloak of official legitimacy through his appointment by Mayor Moscone as director of the San Francisco Housing Authority. In addition political figures in San Francisco appear to have been enticed by Jones' ability to turn out hundreds of his followers to attend rallys, conduct mailings, man phone-banks, and otherwise provide support to political election campaigns, including some direct contributions.
Similarly, the media were not immune from Jones' wiles and attemped flatteries. For example, Jones made contributions of various sums totaling $4,400 to the San Francisco Examiner, the San Francisco Chronicle, and 10 other newspapers to be used as they saw fit in the "defense of a free press," Although the Examiner returned the money to the People's Temple, the management of the Chronicle sent the check to Sigma Delta Chi, the national journalism society, which in turn rejected suggestions that it be returned to People's Temple.
D. Awareness of Danger; Predicting the Degree of Violence
One area on which this inquiry concentrated under Chairman Zablocki's mandate dealt with the questions of whether (a) Representative Ryan had been adequately advised of the potential for danger, and (b) how accurately anyone could have predicted the degree of violence employed. On the basis of evidence gathered we have reached conclusions on both counts:
Representative Ryan was advised on more than one occasion of the possibility of violence inherent in his trip to Jonestown. However, he tended to discount such warnings with the thought that his office as a Congressman would protect him. Moreover, he was apparently willing to face whatever danger might be present, citing as a reason his own previous investigative experiences and his determination not to be influenced by fear.
The warnings Mr. Ryan did receive regarding the prospect for violence came chiefly from his own staff and the Concerned Relatives group. When the issue was raised in the State Department briefings prior to the trip, Mr. Ryan did not challenge State's assessment that potential danger was "unlikely." In fact, State's briefings for the Ryan Codel dwelled almost exclusively on the legal problems relative to the trip as well as the logistical difficulties involved in reaching the remote and isolated jungle compound.
No one interviewed by the Staff Investigative Group ever anticipated the degree of violence acutally encountered. Many expected that there might be adversarial encounters, arguments, or shouting; the worst anticipated was that someone might "get punched in the mouth."
From a variety of sources, Representative Ryan and some representatives of the media were cautioned that they were regarded as adversaries of People's Temple and Jones. They were further informed that Jones was paranoid. It is appropriate to note here that Mr. Ryan apparently did not advise anyone in the State Department or the U.S. Embassy in Guyana that one of the purposes of his trip was to help possible defectors leave Jonestown with him on November 18.
Some members of Mr. Ryan's staff as well as the media group had gut feelings on the possibility for violence. They ranged from advising Mr. Ryan that Jones had a "capacity" for violence, to a general concern based on allegations of guns in Jonestown, and finally, to the thought that a bomb might be placed on the plane on which the entire party flew to Guyana. At the most extreme end of such intuitive hunches and feelings was Miss Jackie Speier's premotion of fear that led her to write her own will.
To the extent that violence was considered a possibility by the Ryan Codel, there is evidence to suggest that Mr. Ryan may have looked on the accompanying media group as a "shield"; conversely, to the extent there was any apprehension in their ranks, the media regarded Mr. Ryan's status as a Congressman as their best protection. For other members of the media, the principal potential danger considered was the jungle against which they protected themselves by taking special supplies.
E. U.S. Customs Service Investigation
One key element relating to the question of whether the Ryan Codel had adequate awareness of the potential for danger as well as the degree of violence which ultimately ensued involves a 1977 U.S. Customs Service investigation of reported illegal gun shipments and other contraband to Jonestown. In the course of this inquiry, therefore, the Staff Investigative Group obtained evidence which warrants the following findings on the subject:
Working on allegations interspersed amid many "bizarre" tales about People's Temple, the investigation was begun in February 1977. One of the allegations contended that more than 170 weapons once stored in Ukiah had been transferred to People's Temple San Francisco headquarters and then possibly on to Jonestown.
The investigation was compromised 1 month after it began, not through any inadvertence on the part of the Customs Service, but when an individual conveyed some information on the matter to Dennis Banks, head of the American Indian Movement, in an effort to dissuade Banks from any further contact with Jones. That conversation was apparently taped and word was passed to Jones. Complete details of the investigation's report were further compromised when a copy of the report was sent to Interpol. From Interpol it was by normal procedure, shared with the Guyanese police. According to information provided us, Guyanese Police Commissioner C. A. "Skip" Roberts reportedly showed a copy to either Paula Adams or Carolyn Layton, two of Mr. Jones' trusted aides, one of whom passed the information to Mr. Jones.
Although the Customs Service investigation was not diluted or diminished in any way, it is clear that it was carried out in an unusually sensitive mode because of what was perceived to be Jim Jones' considerable political influence in San Francisco. Surveillance relating to the investigation was virtually impossible to carry out because of the tight security screen Jones placed around the Geary Street headquarters of People's Temple in San Francisco.
The investigation was concluded in August-September 1977 after a shipment of crates destined for Jonestown was opened and inspected by the Customs Service in Miami in August 1977. Shortly thereafter a report on the investigation was filed with negative results. Nonetheless, investigators apparently felt enough residual suspicion to send copies of the report to Interpol and the U.S. Department of State "because (the) investigation disclosed allegations that Jones intends to establish a political power base in Guyana, and that he may currently have several hundred firearms in that country***."
The copy of the Customs Service report was received in the State Department's Office of Munitions Control on September 1, 1997 and on September 6, 1977 a copy was forwarded to the Department's Bureau of Inter-American Affairs. although standard routing procedures provided that a copy should have been sent to the U.S. Embassy in Guyana there is no indication a copy ever was sent. In addition, only the Guyana desk officer saw the report: none of the more than 26 State Department officials we interviewed saw the report until after November 18, 1978, although one professed "awareness" of it earlier.
F. Conspiracy To Kill Representative Ryan?
Relative to the likelihood of a People's Temple-Jim Jones conspiracy to kill Representative Ryan, the Staff Investigative Group has reached the following conclusions based on evidence available to us:
The possibility of any prior conspiracy tends to be diminished by the fact that Gordon Lindsay, a reporter whom Mr. Jones regarded as an arch enemy of People's Temple, was not allowed to enter Jonestown with the Ryan party.
Still not to be discounted entirely, however, is the possible existence of a contingency conspiracy. In this connection, there are reports of an "understanding' in Jonestown that if efforts to delude Ryan as to the true conditions at Jonestown failed he would have to be killed, supposedly by arranging for his plane to crash in the jungle after leaving Jonestown. While circumstantial evidence is available on this theory we have not found any hard evidence.
Providing some moderate credence to the idea of a contingency conspiracy is the fact that the Jonestown mass suicide/murder ritual started before the Port Kaituma assailants returned to confirm the shootings of Representative Ryan and others.
Also lending some substance to the contingency conspiracy theory are unconfirmed reports that a large shipment of cyanide, used in the mass suicide/murder, arrived in Jonestown 2 days before Ryan's visit. Also related is the reported statement of a Jonestown survivor that several days before Mr. Ryan arrived in Jonestown he heard Jones say that the Congressman's plane "might fall from the sky."
In an effort to obtain detailed information on Mr. Ryan's upcoming trip, Jones placed a phony defector within the ranks of the Concerned Relatives group in San Francisco 1 month before the Codel's departure for Guyana. The "defector" was seen back in Jonestown when the Ryan party arrived. The late awareness that the defector was false produced a heightened sense of danger in the minds of some making the trip.
G. The Privacy Act and the Freedom of Information Act
Throughout this investigation there were repeated references made as to the pervasive role of the Privacy Act and, to a lesser degree, the Fredom of Information Act in the tragedy at Jonestown. The Staff Investigative Group made a careful and thorough review of the issue which resulted in the following findings:
The Privacy Act figured prominently in several important aspects of the State Department's and U.S. Embassy's briefings and relations with the Ryan Codel and their handling of all matters relating to People's Temple.
Officials within both the State Department and the Embassy clearly tended to confuse the Privacy Act with the Freedom of Information Act, thereby inhibiting the comprehensiveness of written reports and exchanges of information.1 One key Embassy official, for instance, was operating under the mistaken assumption that People's Temple was seeking cables reporting on consular visits to Jonestown under provisions of the Freedom of Information Act.
Representative Ryan's legal advisers contended that the State Department's interpretation of the Privacy Act was unreasonably narrow and restrictive and further felt that fact had ramifications on what the Codel wished to accomplish. Those differences, which began in Washington and continued in Guyana, resulted in somewhat strained relations between the State Department and the Codel.
The State Department's interpretation of the Privacy Act led them to deny Ryan access to certain information and documents relative to People's Temple. That problem could have been avoided or at least alleviated if Mr. Ryan had followed the Department's advice to obtain a letter from the chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs authorizing him such access under an exemption clause in the act. That exemption provision permits disclousure to any committee of Congress "to the extent of matter within its jurisdiction." Reflecting the State Department's lack of knowledge of the law and its application, it is pertinent to note that on February 28, 1979, the State Department was unaware of the exemption provision in denying to Chairman Zablocki requested information germane to the investigation.
Prior to the Codel's departure, the U.S. Embassy in Guyana reflected its own acute sensitivity regarding the Privacy Act by urging that Mr. Ryan be fully informed of the act's limitations. That sensitivity was reinforced by the Embassy's request that a Department legal expert accompany the Codel, a request denied by State because of travel freeze restrictions and the heavy press of other work.
Among the Embassy officials interviewed there is almost unanimous agreement that the Privacy Act is complex, difficult to understand, and confusing. Accordingly, they believe that regular guidance is required to guarantee proper implementation.
Initial State Department guidance on the Privacy Act provided to the U.S. Embassy in Guyana was so highly techhnical and legalistic that it had little if any practical value, a problem compounded by subsequent communications. It was not until November 18, 1977, almost 3 years after the Privacy Act became law, that the Embassy was provided with what could be regarded as practical guidance. However, even that communication contained the following prefatory comment: "Due to its rapid passage by Congress in December 1974 without hearings, less than the usual legislative history exists to guide executive departments in interpreting history exists to guide executive departments in interpreting it.***." Available at that time was a 1,500-page volume, "Legislative History of the Privcacy Act of 1974," which incorporated committee reports, markup sessions, excerpts from floor debate and other pertinent source materials.
In day-to-day operations and application, the Privacy Act impacts more on the State Department's consular section than on its diplomatic officers.
Given the confusion surrounding the Privacy Act and the lack of practical and understandable guidance, it appears that Embassy consular officers in Guyana found the act difficult to implement properly. In contrast, most of their Washington counterparts, in both political and consular sections of the Department, did not perceive the Embassy's problems and felt the guidance provided was adequate.
Also contributing to those official's ability to effectively implement the Privacy Act vis-a-vis the People's Temple was the understanding they held that as a religious organization People's Temple merited added protection under the act. Disregarding for now the question of whether or not People's Temple was a religion, few of the officials knew that the act's prohibition on maintaining records describing the exercise of the first amendment rights also provides and exception for matters pertinent to law enforcement activities. Further, there appeared to be little general awareness among State Department Personnel of other exemptions provided in both the Privacy Act and the Freedom of Information Act from mandatory agency disclosure of information.
The legal recourse Jones and People's Temple had under the Privacy Act and Freedom of Information Act to obtain Embassy cables had the chilling effect on Embassy personnel of making their communications to the State Department on People's Temple less candid than they might have otherwise been. That effect was reinforced when the Embassy learned on December 2, 1977, that People's Temple had in fact filed a total of 26 actions under the Privacy Act, for documents relating to specified People's Temple members. As a byproduct of these restraints it is reasonable to conclude that the Embassy's inhibitions to more candidly and accurately report their impressions of the true situation in Jonestown ultimately influenced the State Department's ability to more effectively brief the Ryan Codel. Also not to be discounted is the strong possibility that, knowing the law and the effect it could produce, Jones used the legal claim actions as a tactic in order to achieve the very effect it did.
Overall, many State Department officials appeared to be highly aware of the civil and/or criminal penalty provisions of both acts. That fact reinforced their perceived image of both acts as threatening and troublesome in that failure to comply could present them with serious personal legal problems. In turn, that thought made them doubly cautious in their dealings with People's Temple.
H. Role and Performance of the U.S. Department of State
The role and performance of the State Department in this matter was the central issue earmarked for investigation in Chairman Zablocki's mandate to the Staff Investigative Group. The points of reference surrounding that issue span 4 years and are complex and many. Given this reality, a major part of the investigation was devoted to this aspect of the issue. The following conclusions and findings based on evidence gathered are:
The U.S. Embassy in Guyana did not demonstrate adequate initiative, sensitive reaction to, and apprecitation of progressively mounting indications of highly irregular and illegal activities in Jonestown. The Embassy's one attempt to confront the situation and affect a solution did not occur until June 1978. Essentially embodying what could at best be described as the Embassy's heightened suspicion of problems with People's Temple, the effort was made in the form of a cable to the State Department requesting permission to approach the Guyanese Government and "request that the government exercise normal adminintrative jurisdiction over the community, particularly to insure that all of its residents are informed and understand that they are subject to the laws and authority of the Government of Guyana***." The State Department, failing to detect any linkage between Log 126 and the then recent defection of Temple member Debbie Blakey and other incidents, rejected the request in a terse cable because such an overture "could be construed by some as U.S. Government interference." (Debbie Blakey defected from the People's Temple in Georgetown, Guyana on May 12, 1978, with the assistance of U.S. Embassy officers Richard McCoy and Daniel Weber. Prior to her departure to the United States, she submitted a written statement to the Embassy warning, among other things, of the possibility of a mass suicide in Jonestown.)
The Department's negative response to Log 126 had the net effect of reinforcing the Embassy's already cautious attitude in all dealings with the People's Temple. Despite the fact that an affirmative response was anticipated, the Embassy surprisingly made no effort to challenge the Department's negative decision. Equally surprising was the Department's failure to contact the Ambassador and determine what specifically triggered his request. Testimony from Department witnesses indicates that the lack of specificity in Log 126 was the primary reason for the negative response in Log 130. Such specificity (e.g., Blakey defection) was deliberately avoided, according to the Ambassador, because of Privacy Act considerations. The upshot of this exchange was a lamentable breakdown in communication with neither side making any further efforts to discuss or follow up on the matter.
Mitigating factors were present wihich require acknowledgment. For example, it is understandable that the Embassy did not have an investigative or judicial function. It also felt compelled to abide by U.S. laws as well as strict State Department rules and regulations while simultaneously respecting the hospitality of Guyana. Embassy personnel were also faced with the challenge of trying to remain objective in the face of two opposing groups of Americans often presenting contradictory stories; a factor reinforced by numerous letters, articles, and documents reflecting equally pro and con dimensions on Jones and the People's Temple. Out of that balance the Embassy concluded only that People's Temple prior to November 18, 1978, was a "controversial" or "unusual" group.
Nevertheless, absent in the Embassy's dealings with People's Temple were the vital elements of common sense and an honest and healthy skepticism. Despite the acknowledged handicaps under which it worked the Embassy could have exerted sounder overall judgment and a more aggressive posture. One important result of such an effort would have been more accurate and straightforward reporting on the People's Temlple situation which, in turn, could have given the State Department a stronger and wider base on which to draw in biefing Representative Ryan and his staff. In this connection, the Privacy Act and the Freedom of Information Act, each of which was discussed in a previous section, played important roles.
It is proven beyond doubt that Jones staged a show for selective visitors to Jonestown which made it difficult to get a realistic and accurate picture of what was actually happening there. The aability of the Embassy to break through this facade was severely hampered by several factors. First, the "Embassy provided in advance to People's Temple, the names of most but not all of the individuals who were to be interviewed by visiting consular officers. That practice allowed Jones to rehearse those people on what to say and how to act. Second, such "staging" practices were greatly facilitated by the limited time spent in Jonestown by visiting U.S. Embassy officials-an average of 5-8 hours on four different occasions between August 30, 1977, and November 7, 1978.
In conducting normal consular activities in Jonestown and in other interactions with People's Temple, Embassy officials were restricted by constitutionally mandated safeguards prohibiting interference with free exercise of religious beliefs and with legally sanctioned religious organizations. Recognizing that this issue is not within the direct purview of the committee's investigation, we nevertheless note (as observed earlier) that many People's Temple members were originally motivated less by religious considerations than by a general social idealism. In addition, it is clear that People's Temple had little specific dimension or few surface trappings which would have made it a "church."
There was a laxness in State Department procedures for distributing certain important documents relative to People's Temple, thereby inhibiting the opportunity for taking appropriate action. Chief among these was the U.S. Customs Service report on possible gun shipments to Jonestown. Others include the April 10, 1978, affidavit by Yolanda D.A. Crawford, a People's Temple defector, describing beatings and abuses in Jonestown; the affidavit signed in May 1978 by Debbie Blakey, another People's Temple defector, describing suicide rehearsals and other serious charges; and finally the New West magazine article of August 1, 1977, which exposed Jones. A wider awareness of these and similar materials would have significantly enhanced the State Department's ability to evaluate the situation. As a reflection of the problem it is interesting to note that a number of State Department officials interviewed readily volunteered the observation that prior to his trip to Guyana "Mr. Ryan knew more about People's Temple and Jonestown than we did."
State Department organization and day-to-day operations created a distinction between its consular activities and its diplomatic responsibilities. Inadequate coordination between those two functions led to a situation in which matters involving People's Temple were regarded almost exclusively as consular. Despite mounting indications that the People's Temple issue was spilling over into the United States-Guyana diplomatic area, the mentality persisted of relegating it to the consular side.
In the area of crisis management following the tragedy of November 18 the State Department and Embassy performed with distinction. Particularly praiseworthy in this regard were the brave and dedicated efforts of Richard Dwyer in aiding and providing leadership under trying circumstances to survivors of the Port Kaituma shooting. Equally admirable were the Department's and Embassy's efforts in evacuating the wounded, providing assistance to others, and keeping Washington officials adequately informed of developments. Also commendable was the competent and efficient work of Department of Defense personnel in assisting the wounded and others and returning them to the United States.
As to allegations that a female member of People't Temple in Guyana had engaged in a sexual liaison with former U.S. Consul Richard McCoy and had made tape recordings of their sexual activities in an attempt to compromise McCoy, it is our firm judgment, based on our findings, that such allegations are false.The woman in question has in fact testified and signed an affidavit categorically denying all such charges. She further stated that, "To the best of my knowledge, no member of People's Temple engaged in any sexual activity with Richard A. McCoy" and that the People's Temple relationship with McCoy was one of "mistrust and strained discussion though not openly hostile." Nor is there any evidence to indicate that any other person affiliated with the U.S. Embassy in Guyana had at any time been compromised by the People's Temple.
I. Involvement of the Government of Guyana
On the issue of People's Temple involvement with the Government of Guyana, the Staff Investigative Group renders the following incomplete findings:
There is evidence of a strong working relationship between the People's Temple and some officials of the Government of Guyana, especially in the areas of customs and immigration. It is obvious that a special privileged status allowed People's Temple to bring that special privileged status allowed People's Temple to bring items into Guyana outside of the usual customs procedures, often with cursory inspection at best. Many shipments were inspected perfunctorily or not at all. It is likely that People's Temple brought large sums of money and guns into Guyana in suitcases and false-bottom creates as a result of such customs inspections. As a matter of fact, some of these concerns were expressed by Guyanese officials.
Guyanese immigration procedures were also compromised to the advantage of People's Temple on several occasions, chiefly in two key areas. First, People's Temple members were able to facilitate entry of their own members or inhibit the exit of defectors by having access to customs areas at Timehri Airport in Georgetown closed to all other citizens. Second, clearly arbitrary decisions were made to curtail the visas and expedite the exit of individuals regarded as opponents of People's Temple. Only upon the strenuous efforts of the U.S. Embassy were some of these decisions ultimately reversed and then at the last minute.
There are in the investigative record repeated charges of a sexual liaison between People's Temple member Paula Adams and Laurence Mann, Guyana's Ambassador to the United States. It has encounters with Mann. Transcripts of some of those tapes were apparently made for Mr. Jones and periodically turned over to high officials in the Guyanese Government.
There is also evidence, incomplete and inconclusive, that unknown officials of the Guyanese Government may have taken action to influence the outcome of the Stoen custody case proceedings in the Guyanese court system.
Testimony from some witnesses suggest that support extended to the People's Temple by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Development Ptolemy Reid was born of an ideological compatibility with an endorsement of the Temple's Socialist philosophy. While such support was exploited in the sense that it had the ultimate effect of furthering People's Temple objectives, it did not appear to be generated for illegal reasons.
Note-In reference to these findings regarding the relationship of the Government of Guyana to the People's Temple, the Staff Investigative Group was precluded from confirming or dispelling various allegations by the refusal of the Guyanese Government to meet and talk with the Group, per Chairman Zablocki's requests of March 2 and 16, 1979. Consequently, to our regret, some of the findings noted above must remain partial and incomplete. There is no doubt in our mind, however, that our inability to interview Guyanese Government officials leaves this report with a conspicuous void.
J. Social Security; Foster Children
Although this inquiry's scope did not require investigating allegations that the People's Temple stole or fraudulently used its members social security benefits, some information regarding these charges did surface during the course of the probe that is worth noting.
At the time of the tragedy of November 18, 1978, a total of 199 social security annuitants reportedly lived in Jonestown. Altogether their annuities amounted to approximately $37,000 per month. It is readily apparent that this income contributed substantially to the maintenance of the Jonestown operations. The Social Security Administration (SSA) is presently conducting a review of its responsibilities and performances in paying benefits to Temple members. In this regard, the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare has submitted an interim report to the committee. In essence, the report indicates that to date no wrongdoing on the part of the temple has been discovered. It does cite, however, four cases that are being investigated because the beneficiaries' checks were being forwarded to Guyana from the United States without Social Security Administration's records revealing their correct addresses. The Social Security Administration review is continuing and upon its completion the committee is to receive a copy of the final report.
The interim report indicates, inter alia, that the Social Security Administration is responsible for administering Section 207 of the Social Security Act (43 U.S.C. 407) which provides, "the right of any person to any future payment under this title shall not be transferable or assignable, at law or in equity***." Consequently, whenever a social security annuitant requests that his or her checks be mailed to someone else's address the Social Security Administration looks into the possibility of assignment. Such an inquiry was launched after Temple members moved to Guyana and asked that their monthly payments be mailed in care of the Jonestown settlement's post office box address.
The U.S.Embassy in Georgetown, Guyana was asked by the Social Security Administration to query Jonestown residents as to why they wanted their checks sent to the settlement's post office address and whether any of the beneficaries had assigned the right to future payments to the People's Temple.
In response to the Social Security Administration's request, U.S. Consul Richard McCoy, during January and May 1978 visits to Jonestown, determined that the post office box address was being used for the convenience of the beneficiaries, that each annuitant interviewed was receiving and controlling the use of his monthly payment, and that none had assigned their checks to the Temple. McCoy's successor, Douglas Ellice, accompanied by Vice Consul Dennis Reece, also checked into social security matters during a November 7, 1978, visit to Jonestown.
McCoy did find Jonestown social security beneficiaries who were heavily influenced to turn over their monthly benefits to the Temple. Nevertheless, in his estimation, these individuals volutarily gave their money to the Temple. In addition, he reported that all of the beneficiaries he saw in Jonestown appeared to be adequately housed, fed, and in relatively good health. Given these findings, the Social Security Administration decided to continue the procedure of mailing the monthly checks to the Jonestown post office box address.
Section 1611 (f) of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 1811 (f)) stipulates that:
***no individual shall be considered an eligible individual for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits, for any month during all of which such individual is outside the United States***
According to the Social Security Administration interim report:
***as soon as it was learned that members of the People's Temple were moving to Guyana, the Social Security Administration district office in San Francisco, working with postal officials and officials of the People's Temple, went to extraordinary lengths to ensure Social Security Administration was notified when a member who was entitled to social security benefits moved abroad. This action proved very effective. When members who had been entitled to SSI benefits left the United States, action was taken to stop the SSI payments.
To date, the Social Security Administration has discovered only one instance of a Temple beneficiary going to Guyana without notifying Social Security Administration authorities. This individual's checks were received and cashed by her husband who continued to live in the United States. The Social Security Administration has found nothing to indicate that the failure to report the wife's move to Guyana involved People's Temple officials.
The Staff Investigative Group has been informed by the Social Security Administration that its ongoing review of payments to Temple members is focusing on the following:
(a) Did any of the Retirement Survivors Disability Insurance (RSDI) beneficiaries living in Jonestown die there before November 18, 1978, without the knowledge of the Social Security Administration?
(b) Were any SSI payments made to a beneficiary for months after the month that individual left the United states? (As mentioned earlier, such payments are illegal.)
Some 656 social security checks were found uncashed and undeposited in Jonestown after the November 18 tragedy. According to one State Department official, the vast majority of the approximately $160,000 in checks recovered in Jonestown were August, September, and October 1978 social security checks.
The Social Security Administration claims it will be several months before the process of identifying the remains of the Jonestown dead is finished. At last report, 173 social security beneficiaries have been positively identified as dead. Eight others are known to have survived. The balance of 18 are still unaccounted for but the presumption is that they are among the unidentified deceased.
Possibly as many as 150 foster children have been alleged to have died in Jonestown during the mass suicide/murder ritual of last November. Senator Alan Cranston's Subcommittee on Child and Human Development is conducting an investigation of these charges with the assistance of the GAO. Preliminary indications are that 12 California foster children may be identified as having died. Greatly complicating the identification process is the fact that neither dental nor fingerprint records exist on most of the children. At this writing, it is hoped that the GAO investigators may be able to provide at least a preliminary report of their findings to Senator Cranston's subcommittee by the end of May 1979 for a hearing that will be held in Los Angeles.
The Staff Investigative Group was informed by State Department witnesses that the U.S. Embassy in Guyana was never asked by California welfare officials to check on the welfare and whereabouts of California foster children reportedly living in Jonestown. The U.S. Embassy, however, was aware that some foster children may have been living there and asked the Department of State to determine whether it was legal for such wards of the State to leave the United States. One Department witness stated that he queried appropriate California authorities and was told that court permission was required to take them out of the State. This same official also discerned some reluctance on the part of these authorities to talk about the subject.
K. Future Status of People's Temple
Although it was beyond the purview of the inquiry as mandated by Chairman Zablocki, the Staff Investigative Group obtained evidence and impressions relative to the possible future status of People's Temple and some related matters which the Group believes are useful to establish for this record.
Accordingly, it is our judgment at this time that the possibility of People's Temple being reconstituted cannot be discounted. This belief is based in large measure on the distinction seemingly held by surviving People's Temple members between Jim Jones as an individual and what People's Temple represented as an organization.Thus, while some remaining People's Temple members express varying degrees of regret, dismay, and disapproval over what Jim Jones did, they still seem to embrace the principles and objectives which they believer People's Temple sought to achieve. There is also some evidence to suggest that a power struggle may be underway within the ranks of surviving People's Temple sought to achieve. There is also some evidence to suggest that a power struggle may be underway within the ranks of surviving People's Temple members in an attempt to establish a new leader. Only time will determine whether in fact such a development may take place.
While the existence of a reported "hit squad" whose purported purpose is to eliminate Jones' staunchest opponents cannot be concretely documented it should not totally discounted. this group has been described as including some of Jones' most zealous adherents. There is evidence to suggest Jones and some of his key lieutenants discussed and had "understandings" to eliminate various individuals, including national political leaders. Time may diminish the possible threat of this factor in any and all future activities and investigations aimed at People's Temple.
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