February 10, 1980, Boston Globe, page 1, Yellow Cinema's Schlock in Trade, by Michael Blowen, Globe Correspondent,
February 17, 1980, Boston Globe, The Strongest Poison," by Mark Lane. Hawthorn Books. 494 pp.
February 19, 1980, Boston Globe, US - World; Jonestown a Refugee Home?
February 25, 1980, Boston Globe, page 1, The Media Sideshow in N.H.; For Many, the High-Rolling Press Corps is the Main Event, by Judy Foreman, Globe Staff,
February 27, 1980, Boston Globe - AP, 2 Peoples Temple Defectors Are Slain,
February 29, 1980, Boston Globe - AP, page 1, News In Brief; People Temple Funds To US,
February 29, 1980, Boston Globe, page 1, News in Brief: Peoples Temple Money in US,
April 1, 1980, Boston Globe - AP, page 1, News In Brief; Guilty Plea In Guyana Killing,
April 8, 1980, Boston Globe - AP, page 1, News In Brief; Man Jailed in Jonestown Case,
April 9, 1980, Boston Globe, page 1, News In Brief; Temple Cultist Gets 5 Years,
April 15, 1980, Boston Globe, page 1, Television: Jim Jones: Profile of a God Who Failed, by William A. Henry 3d,
May 1, 1980, Boston Globe – AP, News in Brief ; Evidence in Killing of 3,
May 22, 1980, Boston Globe, page 1, More Docudramas Planned,
May 23, 1980, Boston Globe – AP, page 1, News In Brief; Acquittal in Guyana Trial,
May 23, 1980, Boston Globe – AP, page 1, News In Brief; Ex-Temple Member Acquitted,
July 6, 1980, Boston Globe, page 1, A fact-finding commission set up to look into the affairs of Israel's bizarre "Black Hebrews",
October 10, 1980, Boston Globe - AP, page 1, US World News in Brief; Layton's Return Thwarted,
October 19, 1980, Boston Globe, page 1, Latin America; Guyana Leader Tightens Grip, by Stephen Kinzer,
October 23, 1980, Boston Globe, page 1, Leftists Falter, But Caribbean Still Suffers, by Stephen Kinzer, Globe Correspondent,
November 19, 1980, Boston Globe - AP, page 1, Memorial Service For Dead of Peoples Temple,
November 24, 1980, Boston Globe - AP, page 1, 6 Indicted in Rare Bird Case,
December 20, 1980, Boston Globe - AP, page 1, US - World News Briefs; Guyana Election Called Fraud,
December 17, 1980, Boston Globe - AP, page 1, US - World; Vote Irregularities Charged,
January 4, 1981, Boston Globe, page 1, Mel King Criticizes Guyana Election, by Kenneth J. Cooper, Globe Staff,
March 15, 1981, Boston Globe, page 1, Ryan's Daughter...After Jonestown, by Marian Christy, 1,441 words
March 15, 1981, Boston Globe - AP, page 1, Pro-Leftists Hijack US-Bound Plane,
April 18, 1981, Boston Globe, page 4, A new look at Jim Jones, by Russell Chandler,
April 26, 1981, Boston Globe, page 1, News Analysis; The Horror and Fascination of the Events in Jonestown, by Bill Carter,
May 17, 1981, Boston Globe, page A67, Jonestown: The promised land became a sewer, by Margaret Manning,
June 16, 1981, Boston Globe, page L1, Book Review; Intriguing Story with Much Still Missing, by Tom Long, Globe Staff,
June 16, 1981, Boston Globe - AP, page 1, Delayed Trial Wanted,
June 16, 1981, Boston Globe, page 1, Latin America; Dispute Over Planes, by Stephen Kinzer,
June 30, 1981, Boston Globe - AP, page 1, In This Corner; History's Bottom Ten, by Mike Feinsilber,
August 23, 1981, Boston Globe - AP, page 1, Getting Ready For Armageddon; The Survivalists Believe the End Is Coming--Communism, Revolt in the Cities, Destruction and Death, 6,067 words
August 25, 1981, Boston Globe - AP, page 1, NO CIA Questions, Layton Judge Says,
August 25, 1981, Boston Globe, page 7, Ryan was urged to leave Jonestown,
August 30, 1981, Boston Globe - AP, page 1, Slain Legislator's First Wife Dies, 59,
September 8, 1981, Boston Globe, page 1, Defense Rests Its Case in Larry Layton Trial,
September 8, 1981, Boston Globe, page 1, Latin America; US Hard Line Emerging, by Stephen Kinzer,
September 9, 1981, Boston Globe, page 24, Layton defense rests,
September 20, 1981, Boston Globe, page 4, Layton trial jury still deliberating, by Sherman, Spencer,
September 27, 1981, Boston Globe - AP, page 5, Mistrial called in Larry Layton case, by Lisa Levitt,
September 28, 1981, Boston Globe, page 6, Prosecution weighs bid to seek new Layton trial, by Lisa Levitt,
October 2, 1981, Boston Globe - AP, page 1, Layton Freed, Faces 2d Trial, 62 words
October 25, 1981, Boston Globe, page 1, Heartbeat Explores Spirituality, by James L. Franklin, Globe Staff, 937 words
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January 29, 1980, Boston Globe, page 1, Movie Review; 'Guyana' a Primer on How to Exploit a Tragedy, by Michael Blowen,
GUYANA, CULT OF THE DAMNED - Produced and directed by Rene Cardona Jr.
Starring Stuart Whitman, Gene Barry and Yvonne De Carlo. At Sack Beacon Hill and suburbs. Rated R.
"It sounds like a script for a bad movie," commented one network newscaster as he watched news footage of the tragedy in Guyana. Now, it is a bad movie.
"This story is true," reads the opening legend. "Only the names have been changed." The moviemakers didn't have to change anything else. All the ingredients for a successful exploitation film were carried in the bizarre tale of a charismatic caricature named Jim Jones who "promised a dream and delivered a nightmare."
"Guyana, Cult of the Damned" is a tasteless sham disguised as a docu-drama. The details of sexual perversion, torture, religious fanaticism and a horrifying climax were ready-made for the purveyors of yellow cinema.
The story is uncomfortably familiar. Jim Johnson (Stuart Whitman) is a paranoid preacher who believes that everyone who doesn't follow him and his teachings is his enemy. After founding a temple in San Francisco, he decides that the CIA is after him and persuades his "parishioners" to surrender all their earthly possessions to his "church" and move to Guyana. This tropical paradise is soon transformed into a barbarous prison where Johnson exhorts the unfortunate inmates to work all day in the fields to prepare this "Promised Land." They are punished for having sexual relations with anyone not approved by some mysterious committee or Johnson; three children are tortured for stealing food from the warehouse; and Johnson demands rehearsals for the "white night" when they will give up their lives for eternal joy.
The script abounds with cliches. When Johnson's attorneys, John Ireland and Joseph Cotten, are told that the mass suicide is a "revolutionary statement against racism and fascism," Cole replies, in absolute seriousness, "Isn't there any alternative?"
The cast looks as if it was assembled from a dog-eared casting directory of actors who have recognizable names but never get any work. Stuart Whitman, Gene Barry, John Ireland, Joseph Cotten, Bradford Dillman and Yvonne De Carlo all give performances worthy of the tasteless subject matter.
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February 10, 1980, Boston Globe, page 1, Yellow Cinema's Schlock in Trade, by Michael Blowen, Globe Correspondent,
"Hundreds Die in Mass Suicide." "Cannibalism in the Andes." "Kennedy Drives Off Bridge; Woman Killed." Just as the sensationlist newspapers and magazines exploit "the stories behind" these news stories, their readers salivating over the lurid details, some movie producers also leap for joy.
They thrive on yellow cinema.
"Guyana: Cult of the Damned" is "loosely" based on the Jonestown tragedy; "Survive!" is "loosely" based on the 1972 ordeal undergone by a Uruguyan rugby team after crashing in the Andes and "Chappaquidick" is supposed to be "loosely" based on the death of Mary Jo Kopechne.
Television has usurped the tamer current events, such as "Helter Skelter," the "inside" story of Charles Manson's cultish execution of Sharon Tate, "Watergate," "The Ordeal of Patty Hearst" and the story of Gary Gilmore.
Television can get its products to the viewers more quickly, but the movies, given the R-rating and more freedom to be gruesome, can provide gorier details. The movie version of the Patty Hearst story was called "Abducted" and was produced in both a soft and hardcore version.
Yellow cinema is not a recent phenomenon, but film historians, who have chronicled B movies and science fiction exploiters, have largely ignored the profitable tradition of tabloid movies.
King Vidor, a director whose career peaked during the silent era and who made his last film, "Solomon and Sheba" in 1959, recalled in a telephone interview several short subjects that were "quickly and sloppily made to take advantage of current events." But he couldn't remember the titles. The films seem to disappear as quickly as yesterday's headlines.
The producers of celluloid schlock all have several characteristics in common - they're fast, mobile and they don't seem to care about quality. They realize that if their picture isn't completed within nine months, they might be stuck with yesterday's newsreel. While searching for a cast and crew, they assemble a script and their lawyers scrutinize the details for potential suits. The producers scan casting directories with an eye toward "names" that haven't worked in a while but still retain some audience recognition. They sacrifice quality and production values for timeliness. They've got a deadline.
The short, quick box office punch of yellow cinema films may not threaten the grosses of "Gone With the Wind" and "Star Wars" but their inexpensive casting requirements and lightening production schedules usually keep their budgets below a million dollars
"Guyana: Cult of the Damned," with an estimated budget of $850,000, is a case in point. From November, 1978, when the tragedy in Jonestown was exposed, until the film was completed in October, 1979, producer-director Rene Cardona Jr. and his partner, Alfonzo Lopez Negrete, didn't waste a moment. The two men, whose speciality, according to a Universal Studios press release, "lies in revealing dramatizations of actual events" realized the story was a natural for their type of movie.
They aren't novices. Cardona is the auteur behind "The Bermuda Triangle" and "Survive!" He is fast with a camera and doesn't seem to waste any time worrying about aesthetics or drama.
For example, the casting of both Stuart Whitman and Gene Barry was primarily based on their physical resemblances to Jim Jones and Congressman Lee O'Brien, but the characters' names were changed to "Jim Johnson" and "Lee Ryan" to avoid legal entanglements. The script contains lines such as "The Lord has instructed me to follow him to this land and it shall be called Johnsontown," "Johnson's angels were character assassins" and "it was a big night for death."
If your angle is yellow cinema, you don't have time to worry about acting and dialogue.
Discussions with actors and writers consume valuable time. You've got to be quick.
Cardona isn't the only schlockaholic who's fast on his feet. Glenn Stensel, a bit actor (he had cameo appearances in "The Godfather" and "The French Connection"), is about to add another chapter in the history of yellow cinema with his production plans for "Chappaquidick" - a quickie film that he plans to release to theaters and drive-ins this summer.
One suspects that when Stensel looks at the declining popularity of Sen. Kennedy in the polls, he sees declining profits for his low budget film about Mary Jo Kopechne's death.
Stensel, the disinherited heir to an Illinois funeral parlor fortune, claims to have $800,000 in financing from an Illinois real estate developer and a Los Angeles disco entrepreneur. He has cast Jack Knight as Ted Kennedy and he wanted former Edgartown Police Chief Dominic Arena to play himself. But, Arena, and the rest of the cast are having second thoughts. You see, none of the actors or technical crew have seen a script.
Of course, in the true tradition of yellow cinema, Stensel doesn't see why he needs to produce a script. "I'm writing it with the technical help of Tom Tedrow, who wrote Death at Chappaquiddick,' " Stensel is quoted as saying. "But don't judge my script on that book. My script will have its own point of view." Stensel, like Cardona, realizes that the commercial success of "Chappaquiddick" depends on hype, speed and current events.
Stensel tried to put together another exploitation film last year called "Peanuts" starring Billy Carter, but that fell through. He's even tried to persuade Billy Carter to appear as the gas station attendant who services Sen. Kennedy's car in "Chappaquiddick. "
Both Cardona and Stensel understand that the essence of the exploitation film is based on publicity. When schlock filmmakers read newspaper stories about various tragedies they see the news as pre-production promotion. They understand that the popularity of their films depends on the curiosity of the audience.
"People that go to see films like Guyana: Cult of the Damned' are the same people who read the National Enquirer," said a source at Universal Studios, the distributor of the film. "They don't want to know the truth - they don't want a stale documentary - they don't need big sets and great acting - they want action."
Action is precisely what Cardona gave them in "Survive!." The raison d'etre for the film was not the plane crash in the Andes or the idea that some of the people survived the icy cold but the sensationalist notion that they engaged in cannibalism.
"Let's face it," said an area exhibitor. "People went to see Survive!' and Guyana: Cult of the Damned' to see the cannibal scenes in one and the mass suicide in the other. Everything else in both movies was just filler."
Naturally, the producers disagree. Cardona's intent in "Guyana: Cult of the Damned" was, according to associate producer Alfonzo Lopez Negrete, "to look for the basic feelings within a tragedy . . . to face the human reactions at the given time of those tragedies . . . and to aim at 100 percent reality."
However, his statements aren't borne out by the facts. The film glosses over the psychological history of Jones; it reduces the pain and suffering of the victims and their relatives to unconvincing hysteria, and he refuses to investigate the relationship between Jones and the US government.
In fact, the film is so dramatically and factually unconvincing that the self-described "Last Supper" looks like a pot luck picnic.
"Frankly, we're embarrassed by the film," said Mike Ridges, an executive in the sales department at Universal. "It didn't do very well at the box office and it wasn't worth the grief we've been through answering questions about it."
Universal Studios, or some other distributor, may have even more to answer for when Cardona's two new movies are released. You guessed it - "Kill the Shah" and "Hostages."
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February 17, 1980, Boston Globe, Book Review, "The Strongest Poison", by Mark Lane; White Night, by John Peer Nugent, by Terrence Maitland,
"The Strongest Poison," by Mark Lane, Hawthorn Books. 494 pp. $12.95.
"White Night," by John Peer Nugent, Rawson, Wade Publishers. 278 pp. $11.95
Abstract (Document Summary)
In "The Strongest Poison," his investigation of the Jonestown affair, [Mark Lane] has written a convincing, painstakingly detailed account of his involvement with the Peoples Temple. He has, furthermore, presented a remarkable amount of new information about many of the principals involved and has enumerated the many lapses and inconsistencies in the handling of the event by the State Department and in the reporting of the massacre by the press. The forces, personalities and events which combined to produce the Jonestown Massacre are the components of a peculiar American tragedy for which Watergate, various CIA and FBI abuses and other breakdowns in our system have prepared us. It is a meal no longer so indigestible as it is unpalatable.
Lane's association with the Peoples Temple began only two months prior to the massacre. He had visited Jonestown once before returning to accompany US Rep. Leo Ryan (whose opinion of Jonestown was favorable, though he was wary of [Jim Jones] himself).
Prior to reading Lane's book, I read another Jonestown book, [John Peer Nugent]'s "White Night," a rather linear description of events. Thus I had a handy basis for comparison. What Nugent has added to the Jonestown story is proof that there is no such thing as an isolated incident. He demonstrates that every historical incident has numerous antecedents.
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First a declaration.
I have an open mind on the subject of Mark Lane.
That, I learned from querying various friends and associates while reading his book, is a distinctly minority position. Well informed people, those who read newspapers and magazines and books, who watch broadcast news - how else does one get informed? - almost uniformly express a negative opinion of Lane.
Indeed he has been portrayed in the press as a grasping, opportunistic, publicity-seeking, ghoulish conspiracy buff, who has made capital and built a career on the deaths of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. That the House Select Committee on Assassinations recently declared its belief that the murder of Kennedy resulted from a conspiracy ought to have restored some of the sheen to Lane's tarnished star. For most people it has not.
Wherever he turns up, it is said, there is bound to be trouble, and a nasty kind of trouble. His presence in Jonestown, Guyana, on the night of Nov. 18, 1978, when a US congressman and more than 900 other Americans died, underscored that sentiment. What was he doing there? What happened that night? What is the truth about the Jonestown Massacre (the available evidence is that the majority of victims were murdered, and did not die by their own hands) and that incredible rats' nest known as the Peoples Temple?
In "The Strongest Poison," his investigation of the Jonestown affair, Lane has written a convincing, painstakingly detailed account of his involvement with the Peoples Temple. He has, furthermore, presented a remarkable amount of new information about many of the principals involved and has enumerated the many lapses and inconsistencies in the handling of the event by the State Department and in the reporting of the massacre by the press. The forces, personalities and events which combined to produce the Jonestown Massacre are the components of a peculiar American tragedy for which Watergate, various CIA and FBI abuses and other breakdowns in our system have prepared us. It is a meal no longer so indigestible as it is unpalatable.
What is most impressive, and ultimately convincing, about Lane's book is his lawyerly method of marshalling many facts from many sources, and his ordering of those facts before drawing his conclusions. He write as if he knows he will be attacked, and therefore moves forward only when his flanks are covered. Some, although not many, of his conclusions are subject to question. Some elements of the story may be missing. But were I a member of the jury, I know how I would cast my vote.
Lane's association with the Peoples Temple began only two months prior to the massacre. He had visited Jonestown once before returning to accompany US Rep. Leo Ryan (whose opinion of Jonestown was favorable, though he was wary of Jones himself).
Reconstructions of the roles of lawyers Charles Garry, a blustering leftist advocate, and Timothy Stoen are harsh and startling. Stoen, a former assistant district attorney who regularly compromised his office as a Temple member, led the fight against Jones after leaving the Temple. A custody case over a boy both men claimed to have fathered precipitated the inquiry of Leo Ryan. Both Garry and Stoen contributed to the fortress mentality of Jones and stoked his paranoia, even though both were specifically aware of the possible consequences.
The strongest poison, according to Lane, who reprints many of the negative reports about himself and examines their sources, is the irresponsibility of a free press in an open society.
Prior to reading Lane's book, I read another Jonestown book, John Peer Nugent's "White Night," a rather linear description of events. Thus I had a handy basis for comparison. What Nugent has added to the Jonestown story is proof that there is no such thing as an isolated incident. He demonstrates that every historical incident has numerous antecedents.
Nugent traces the history of Guyana as it changed from a British colony to an independent republic in 1970. The popularly elected prime minister, a Marxist of East Indian descent, caused Washington to tremble in fear that the country would become a base for communism in the Western Hemisphere. Trade union riots, organized and financed by the CIA, toppled the leader.
Forbes Burnham, a black moderate, then won election with help from Washington. He promptly did a Castro-like about-face by declaring his Socialist beliefs and turning to the East bloc for aid. Because blacks are a minority in Guyana, Burnham was effectively leading a minority government. He devoted part of his efforts to recruiting blacks to settle in Guyana as a means of strengthening his political base.
When Jim Jones came, spouting his socialist rhetoric and seeking land to start an agricultural commune of almost 1000 blacks, the match was made. Burnham turned a deaf ear to negative reports emanating from Jonestown because to act would have meant taking a political risk.
Few people, it seems, who had the power to act with regard to Jonestown took the risk, in spite of the bulging reports at the American Embassy, the State Department and elsewhere, about the dangers posed by a congressional investigation.
Nugent's book is somewhat shoddily assembled, with repetitions, dangling characters and holes in the narrative among its flaws.
Yet both Lane and Nugent tell a similar, sad story, one that is peculiarly modern and American, even if, as Jimmy Carter was quick to point out, it didn't take place in this country.
Terrence Maitland is a free-lance writer who reviews regularly for The Globe.
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February 19, 1980, Boston Globe, US / World; Jonestown a Refugee Home?
Several US relief agencies have been holding discussions with the Guyanese government about a proposal to resettle Jonestown with Indochinese refugees, officials said last night. A State Department official said the US government was not involved in the plan to resettle the scene of the 1978 "Jonestown Massacre" but confirmed private agencies had such a plan under consideration.
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February 25, 1980, Boston Globe, page 1, The Media Sideshow in N.H.; For Many, the High-Rolling Press Corps is the Main Event, by Judy Foreman ,Globe Staff,
MANCHESTER, N.H. - Under normal circumstances, the Sheraton Wayfarer, the Howard Johnson's and the Holiday Inn here are just pleasant convention hotels in this city known for its old mills along the Merrimack River, its controversial newspaper and its position as a gateway to summer and winter playgrounds.
But for the past two weeks, these hotels have become command posts for an invasion of hundreds upon hundreds of reporters, photographers, television crews, elaborate equipment and, as they said in Vietnam, technical advisers by the score.
Presidential politics, of course, is the cause of it all. But when the exodus of politicos and pundits begins Wednesday, it is possible that in the minds of local folks here, it is the hungry - and thirsty - hordes of the press corps who will be remembered as the main event.
NBC-TV has taken over an entire wing of the Wayfarer, setting up in one day two weeks ago an instant bureau with more than $1.5 million worth of equipment flown in from Boston and Atlanta, an office which by primary night will be as large as its permanent Washington bureau.
NBC's hotel bill for its 100-plus correspondents, crews, editors and bigwigs will be more than $90,000.
And that doesn't count salaries, or the fact NBC has another broadcast center for election night, set up a few miles away in the Bedford Town Hall.
CBS is in another wing of the Wayfarer with a similiarly massive operation, and ABC is across town at Howard Johnson's doing the same.
Aside from their sheer numbers, the most impressive thing about the visiting fourth estate is the size of the egos involved.
In hotel lounges, bars and restaurants, national political reporters seem to use the pronoun "I" (as in "I wrote that months ago") even more often than the 10 candidates whose every move obsesses these political junkies, whose every utterance is cause for a new round of drinks and debate.
But in most cases, the large journalistic egos are backed up by even larger quantities of intense work under excruciating pressure, pressure that has overflowed onto the local folks and given Manchester citizens not only a lucrative respite from the snowless winter, but an adrenaline rush they'll likely talk about until four years from now, when it all happens again.
Men like Richard Gibbons from Manchester and Dick Sister from Laconia have been grinding through 90-hour-plus work weeks installing 25 tons of telephone equipment in Manchester, Concord and Nashua.
They and their crews have put in 1500 extra telephone lines into journalists' hotel rooms and candidates' headquarters. They will have answered nearly 3000 service calls by tomorrow, putting in phones when a candidate and the press following him stop overnight, than yanking them out again when they all move on.
But it is not simply this kind of windfall that impresses townspeople about the media blitz.
For the college kids from "St. A's" (St. Anselm's College) hired as couriers, for bartenders, maids, waitresses and hotel sales directors like Susan Greenberger of the Wayfarer, it is the chance to rub shoulders with media celebrities.
"It's very confusing and hectic. These people's needs are so immediate and the energy level is so extreme. But I love it," Greenberger says over a quick lunch in the restaurant. "Just look over there. You come in here and you're with the people who are tops in the world, who know more than anybody. . . ."
At the Wayfarer alone, the biggest media center for the New Hampshire campaign, dinner and bar guests on any given evening include Jack Germond, Jules Witcover and Mary McGrory of the Washington Star; Lou Cannon of the Washington Post; Hayes Gorey of Time magazine and on and on - David Brinkley, Tom Brokaw, John Chancellor, Walter Cronkite, Howard K. Smith, Roger Mudd, David Broder, Joseph Kraft and many others.
Not to mention assorted newspaper editors who have come up, not so much to supervise their troops as to share in the excitement, to get their quadrennial "fix" of frontline politics, or as one overworked Washington correspondent sighed, "to tag along with us."
At the New Hampshire Highway Hotel up the interstate in Concord, life has become a "zoo" but a "a very interesting one" for hotel manager Ted O'Donnell, who has been pitching in himself to tend bar for the flock of New York Times reporters, 20 members of the foreign press and other journalists whose needs have meant opening a second bar and a second dining room - and no days off for the last month.
For the last nine days - like the proverbial boys who flock for jobs when other circuses roll through town - Bill Lappen, 20, Tom Kelley, 24, Bobby (Chico) Andrea, 20, and Peter Letvinchuk, 24, have been having the time of their lives, putting in 13-hour days at $5 an hour as NBC runners.
It is only 4 p.m. on this particular afternoon but they have already spent $130 on gasoline for the fleet of 12 cars NBC has rented.
They have driven a flu-stricken camera and sound crew to the airport for "R&R" in California. They have shuttled Garrick Utley, Don Oliver, Steve Delaney and other correspondents from field assignments with candidates to the hotel to cut and edit videotapes. They have met chartered NBC planes, picked up videotapes "choppered" in from distant correspondents and hovered outside the "EJ" (electronic journalism) editing rooms to gawk.
They stand, "in awe, really," of tape editors like Dave McCollum, 29, from Brockton, who has been at the Wayfarer for eight days now and out of the building exactly twice.
McCollum is editing Utley's piece on deadline for the evening news. Trained fingers fly over the buttons on nearly a half-million dollars' worth of equipment and McCollum pauses for Utley to watch his handiwork on the monitor.
"I'm here from 10 a.m. to 3 a.m. when we have both the Nightly News and the Today show to do. And it's fun - being under constant pressure and having a chance to show your stuff."
In an identical room next door, the couriers can glimpse editors Bill Theodore and Jim Townley split-second editing a piece by Ken Bode also scheduled for the evening show.
Editing supervisor John Long is pacing, cupping a phone to one ear and cocking the other to catch the audio on the monitor.
"This is truly monumental," says John Long between paces. "The only thing that compares with this coverage is Guyana or Three Mile Island. The pressure builds with each primary and it costs in the millions for each primary. I wouldn't have it any other way."
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February 27, 1980, Boston Globe - AP, 2 Peoples Temple Defectors Are Slain,
Some members of the Human Freedom Center, which the Mills formed in 1978 to help defectors from the Peoples Temple and other cults, said they feared "hit squads" had been organized to kill them following the mass murders and suicides of more than 900 [Jim Jones] followers in Jonestown, Guyana, Nov. 18, 1978.
About a month after the deaths in Jonestown, Terri Bufurd - once a top Temple administrator - claimed that the list did exist and that Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) and Sen. John Stennis (D-Miss.) were among those on it.
Until the deaths at the Mills' house, the only known death by a former Temple member was the suicide of a former newsman and Temple spokesman, Mike Prokes.
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February 27, 1980, Boston Globe - Associated Press, page 1, 2 Peoples Temple Defectors Are Slain,
BERKELEY, Calif. - Two defectors from the Peoples Temple who established a center to help other cult defectors were found shot to death in their Berkeley home, police said today.
The bodies of Al and Jeannie Mills, who followed Rev. Jim Jones for six years before leaving the cult in 1975, were found last night in separate rooms of their small cottage, located at the rear of a rest home, police said.
Another person, identified as the couple's daughter, Daphene Mills, 15, was found critically wounded in the cottage, police said. A spokeswoman at Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley said she was in "very critical" condition.
Some members of the Human Freedom Center, which the Mills formed in 1978 to help defectors from the Peoples Temple and other cults, said they feared "hit squads" had been organized to kill them following the mass murders and suicides of more than 900 Jones followers in Jonestown, Guyana, Nov. 18, 1978.
Police would not say if they believed the shootings were related to theMills' connection with the Peoples Temple.
The Berkeley center, which had offered a refuge for former members of any cult, was disbanded in November.
Police Capt. Thomas Johnson said the Mills were lying face down in in their southeast Berkeley home.
Sgt. Michel deLatour said the Mills' son, Eddie, about 17, was home at the time.
DeLatour said the young man told police he did not hear or see anything. Young Mills was released after questioning by police.
DeLatour said the victims had been shot, but he would not describe the weapon or the wounds.
Mrs. Mills was one of the first former Temple members to speak out against Jones and later published a book entitled, "Six Years with God: One Family's Story of Life Inside a Cult Group."
The month after the mass deaths at Jonestown, Mrs. Mills said: "Our entire family still lives under the conscious awareness that every member of the church would feel justified in killing any of us because we are considered to be traitors."
Temple defectors at the Human Freedom Center claimed there were death squads set up by Jones to get them.
No documents were ever found to prove Jones had drawn up a hit list, but the idea of such a list often spread from one ex-member to another by word of mouth.
About a month after the deaths in Jonestown, Terri Bufurd - once a top Temple administrator - claimed that the list did exist and that Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) and Sen. John Stennis (D-Miss.) were among those on it.
According to Buford, Jones told the assassination squad "to kill as many people as they could until they were killed themselves or took their own lives."
Until the deaths at the Mills' house, the only known death by a former Temple member was the suicide of a former newsman and Temple spokesman, Mike Prokes.
Prokes shot himself in the head last March in a motel in Modesto, moments after leaving a news conference he had called to release a 22-page statement on Jonestown.
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February 29, 1980, Boston Globe - AP, page 1, News In Brief; People Temple Funds To US,
The government of Panama has turned $6 million in assets from the Peoples Temple over to the United States, the Justice Department reports.
The department said yesterday the return of the money ends a year- long negotiating process.
More than 900 persons died in November 1978 when the Rev. Jim Jones, head of the California-based cult, led his followers in a ritual of murder and mass suicide at the group's Guyana commune at Jonestown.
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February 29, 1980, Boston Globe, page 1, News in Brief: Peoples Temple Money in US,
About $6 million from Peoples Temple bank accounts in Panama was transferred to America yesterday - money the Justice Department hopes will replace tax dollars used to fly the bodies out of Guyana after the mass murder-suicides in Jonestown. The transfer is likely to help resolve a suit the government filed Jan. 22, 1979, seeking more than $4.2 million from the Peoples Temple. Meanwhile, the 16- year-old daughter of slain Peoples Temple defectors Al and Jeannie Mills died without regaining consciousness yesterday, ending any hope she could provide police with clues in the slaying of her parents, who were found shot to death in their Berkeley, Calif., home on Tuesday.
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April 1, 1980, Boston Globe - AP, page 1, News In Brief; Guilty Plea In Guyana Killing,
One of two persons charged in connection with the Peoples Temple deaths pleaded guilty today to a charge of attempted murder. On a separate charge, the man, Charles Beikman, 44, said he was innocent in the slaying of a top cult member and her three children in Guyana in 1978.
Authorities said Beikman, 44, a cook and shoemaker for the Jonestown community, was likely to be sentenced later today or tomorrow for the attempted murder of Stephanie Jones, a 9-year-old girl not related to cult leader Jim Jones.
Guyana Criminal Court officials said the trial for the second person charged, Larry Layton, was postponed until May 5.
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April 8, 1980, Boston Globe - AP, page 1, News In Brief; Man Jailed in Jonestown Case,
A man charged in connection with the Peoples Temple deaths was sentenced today to five years hard labor for the attempted murder of a 9- year-old girl. Charles Edward Beikman, 44, a cook and shoemaker for the Jonestown community, had pleaded guilty to that charge but innocent of slaying a top cult member and her three children on Nov. 18, 1978. No charges are expected to be filed in those slayings.
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April 9, 1980, Boston Globe, page 1, News In Brief; Temple Cultist Gets 5 Years,
GEORGETOWN, Guyana - A People's Temple cultist has been sentenced to five years for the attempted murder of a 9-year child in a throat- slashing spree that claimed four other lives on the night of the Jonestown massacre.
Prosecutors said Charles E. Beikman, 47, a husky former Marine from Indianapolis, may be offered a plea-bargaining deal to spare him further punishment on the four remaining murder counts. A murder conviction could carry a sentence of death by hanging. Beikman, who cannot read or write and served as the commune's shoemaker and cook, stood impassively when Guyana High
Court Judge Cecil Kennard passed sentence. Beikman pleaded guilty to attempting to kill Stephanie Jones, an adopted granddaughter of self-styled bishop Jim Jones, the night of Nov. 18, 1978.
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April 15, 1980, Boston Globe, page 1, Television: Jim Jones: Profile of a God Who Failed, by William A. Henry 3d,
Jim Jones was foremost a man of God. He robbed people and drugged them and seduced and abandoned them. He beat people. He sermonized 900 people into committing mass suicide. He took political power by amoral means and then abandoned it to set up a small but absolute jungle kingdom. He did it all in the name of Christianity, and apparently believed what he was saying. His pathetic victims obeyed him in God's name. The story of Jonestown, Guyana, whatever its other sensations, is a story of religious obsession. It is a story of what can happen when people abandon the material world for the world of the soul and the hereafter.
CBS has had the courage to tell the essence of that story, and to place it in the context of the feel-good fundamentalism from which James Warren Jones came. Because the network risked something subtler than an orgiastic diatribe against "cults," its "Guyana Tragedy," which sounded when it was conceived like the sleaziest commercial television of the season, turns out instead to be by far the finest.
The four hours tonight and tomorrow on Channel 7 at 9 leave many questions unanswered about what drove Jones crazy, why his followers stayed, who in political power kept helping him. The show tries to be both drama and documentary, and falsifies many details that would more sensibly have been kept true - it even appears to kill off the reporter whose book was the source of the script.
Because it relies on fact, it does not attempt to explain the psychological beginnings of Jones' eventual communism and bisexuality. It barely guesses at how much of his lunatic ravings Jones actually believed. It does not settle whether his death by pistol shot was murder or suicide.
Those omissions are sound journalism. But they are unsatisfying in a drama. They would wreck "Guyana Tragedy" if it were not so tautly and provocatively written, so superbly cast and played, and about so haunting a microcosm of the major institutions in American life, above all religion, which permeates every moment on screen.
"Guyana Tragedy" begins with sirens and alarms in the middle of the night, with shots and toppling bodies and lineups of the faithful to drink from vats of poison. It looks like the end. But it is all a fake. It is only one of Jones' "white alerts," a "loyalty test" in rehearsal for what was to happen one sunny afternoon.
The story is told in flashback, and its real beginning is a mock burial, conducted by little Jimmy Jones, rapt in prayer while his playmates fidget. He asks to be told Bible parables the way other children want to hear war stories. His graces at meals get longer and longer. A neighbor woman, his "spiritual mother," takes him to a hymn-shouting, talking-in-tongues, evangelical church. He denounces his father and his cronies as sinners because they gamble. He is a model Christian child, a little self-righteous, but righteous in what everyone takes to be the ways of the Lord.
As a young man he works as an orderly while studying to be a preacher.From the first his faith breaks down all racial barriers despite, or perhaps because, his detested father was a Klansman. He loses his first ministry because elders resent his integrating the church. He takes to the streets in a ghetto neighborhood and with community help opens the People's Temple. He wins appointment to the Indianapolis Human Rights Commission. Through that job, and with the help of his parishioners, he integrates movie theaters, he opens a soup kitchen, he starts the real estate dealings that will win him funds to expand.
Then, in the mid-1960s comes the turning point. The script implies that Jones' sexual indulgence, his greed, his self-equation with God, all began in his early 30s with a visit to the black preacher and cult leader Father Divine. Can the explanation really be so simple? Could Jones, like Divine's followers, have glimpsed the promised land in that vast mansion? Could a dedicated servant of God have been so swayed by a single glimpse of riches he had long disdained? Could one much-maligned man's approval of yielding to temptation have broken down the disciplines of a Midwest fundamentalist? Probably not. But what is known of Jones offers no clearer explanation. And the script does not reduce his corruption to an arithmetic - it merely suggests a link between the events.
The visit to Father Divine comes well into the second hour of tonight's episode. From that point the lunacy is nonstop. Jones uproots his political machine from Indianapolis and leads his followers to Ukiah, Calif., because it is supposedly one of nine places that would survive a nuclear holocaust. It's unclear whether he believes this, as it is unclear whether any of his other performances is madness or shrewd dictatorship, but many of his people follow. And when he moves them to San Francisco, he creates a political machine as effective, and unscrupulous, as the one he left behind.
That machine had ties to Robert Kennedy, George Moscone, and Martin Luther King, all assassinated. Jones moved to Guyana at least in part to shieldhimself from the same fate. Then he started to torture dissenters, murder informers, dissolve laws and marriages. He told his followers and even told California Congressman Leo Ryan that the former San Franciscans in Jonestown were now "the constituents of God and Jim Jones."
An unknown actor, Powers Boothe, plays Jones so persuasively it is hard to remember he is acting. Ned Beatty plays Ryan, the murdered congressman, who was heroized at the time but who is portrayed by CBS as a hack pol on the make for headlines. No other roles count for much, but LeVar Burton, Colleen Dewhurst and especially Brad Dourif are intense as his spiritual associates, James Earl Jones is awesome as Father Divine, and John Dukakis, son of former Gov. Michael Dukakis, is amply professional as an aide to Ryan.
The final weeks, the final days, the compellingly crazy final hours of Jonestown were widely reported and are remembered. They are overpoweringly evoked in "Guyana Tragedy." It has the power to shock us anew. And yet it is about ideas until the final frame. A black woman speaks for all of Jones' followers, especially the loyal blacks who trusted this white man in a racist world, and she speaks for the faithful of every sect everywhere: "You were the only one who helped me when no one else would." She dies willingly. The blonde woman shot down moments later, as she is running away with a suitcase full of the followers' extorted money, does not. Jones robbed the people he helped. He helped the people he robbed. He gave their lives purpose and meaning, and he took their lives. He did what they believed God does. And although their behavior was entirely at odds with the believers of "normal" creeds, their words and ideas were the same.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.
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Abstract (Document Summary)
That machine had ties to Robert Kennedy, George Moscone, and Martin Luther King, all assassinated. Jones moved to Guyana at least in part to shield himself from the same fate. Then he started to torture dissenters, murder informers, dissolve laws and marriages. He told his followers and even told California Congressman Leo Ryan that the former San Franciscans in Jonestown were now "the constituents of God and [JIM JONES]."
An unknown actor, Powers Boothe, plays Jones so persuasively it is hard to remember he is acting. Ned Beatty plays Ryan, the murdered congressman, who was heroized at the time but who is portrayed by CBS as a hack pol on the make for headlines. No other roles count for much, but LeVar Burton, Colleen Dewhurst and especially Brad Dourif are intense as his spiritual associates, James Earl Jones is awesome as Father Divine, and John Dukakis, son of former Gov. Michael Dukakis, is amply professional as an aide to Ryan.
The final weeks, the final days, the compellingly crazy final hours of Jonestown were widely reported and are remembered. They are overpoweringly evoked in "Guyana Tragedy." It has the power to shock us anew. And yet it is about ideas until the final frame. A black woman speaks for all of Jones' followers, especially the loyal blacks who trusted this white man in a racist world, and she speaks for the faithful of every sect everywhere: "You were the only one who helped me when no one else would." She dies willingly. The blonde woman shot down moments later, as she is running away with a suitcase full of the followers' extorted money, does not. Jones robbed the people he helped. He helped the people he robbed. He gave their lives purpose and meaning, and he took their lives. He did what they believed God does. And although their behavior was entirely at odds with the believers of "normal" creeds, their words and ideas were the same.
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May 1, 1980, Boston Globe – AP, News in Brief ; Evidence in Killing of 3,
Tests have revealed traces of gunpowder on the hands of the son of People's Temple defectors Al and Jeannie Mills the night they and their daughter were shot to death in Berkeley, Calif. Eddie Mills,17, has denied any involvement in the triple murder at the family's home here. Mills claimed he did not hear any gunshots and said he was showering and smoking marijuana in the house.
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May 22, 1980, Boston Globe, page 1, More Docudramas Planned,
Entertainment based on actuality - either believe-it-or-not compilations such as NBC's "Real People" and ABC's "That's Incredible!" or docudramas such as CBS' "Guyana Tragedy: The Jim Jones Story" and PBS' "Death of a Princess" - will be stressed next season.
NBC has already announced a "Speak Up America" series, to be produced by "Real People" creator George Schlatter. ABC will add "Those Amazing Animals," from the producers of "That's Incredible!"
The networks reportedly are already examining proposals for docudramas based on the US hostage crisis in Iran.
Among docudramas announced for next season are "Miracle on Ice," about the US hockey team's victory at the winter Olympics; "Kent State," about the shooting of antiwar demonstrators at the Ohio university; "Enola Gay," about the bomber crew that dropped the atomic bomb on Japan in World War II, and "The Bunker," about Adolf Hitler's final hours.
The rating success of "Guyana Tragedy" last month has triggered network interest in other true-life stories involving multiple deaths. Among those being considered are docudramas about Theodore Bundy, the convicted Florida sorority house killer; John Gacy, the convicted Illinois homosexual mass murderer, and California's Hillside Strangler.
Susan Blakely will portray the late film star, Frances Farmer, who claimed she was kept in a mental institution long after doctors said she could leave, in a CBS video version of Miss Farmer's autobiography, "Will There Really Be a Morning?"
Other subjects of television biographies next season will include Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner, legendary black pitcher Satchel Paige, Pittsburgh Steelers star Rocky Bleier and the late film stars John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe.
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May 23, 1980, Boston Globe – AP, page 1, News In Brief; Acquittal in Guyana Trial,
Larry Layton, a former Peoples Temple member, was acquitted in Georgetown, Guyana, yesterday of charges he attempted to murder two temple defectors, then jailed pending a hearing next month to determine whether he should be tried for the murder of Rep. Leo Ryan and four others.
Layton has been held since shortly after the shootout at the Port Kaituma airport on Nov. 18, 1978. The assault preceded the mass suicide- murder of 900 followers of Rev. Jim Jones.
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May 23, 1980, Boston Globe – AP, page 1, News In Brief; Ex-Temple Member Acquitted,
GEORGETOWN, Guyana - Larry Layton, a former Peoples Temple member, was acquitted yesterday of attempting to kill two temple defectors as they fled the cult's Jonestown settlement with a California congressman and four others who died in the fusillade. Layton still faces trial on charges of killing Rep. Leo Ryan (D-Calif.), three journalists and another temple defector at the Port Kaituma airstrip near Jonestown.
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July 6, 1980, Boston Globe, page 1, A fact-finding commission set up to look into the affairs of Israel's bizarre "Black Hebrews",
Special to The Globe
WASHINGTON - A fact-finding commission set up to look into the affairs of Israel's bizarre "Black Hebrews" sect has urged the government of Prime Minister Menachem Begin to give the sect's 1500 members a settlement of their own in the Negev Desert at a cost of $8 million to $10 million.
The recommendation has sparked a storm of controversy for financial and other reasons, but the government is expected to go along with it, if only to prevent further friction between Israel and American blacks.
They fear that if they refuse the Black Hebrews a settlement of their own and pack them off to America where they come from - as many Israelis have urged - they may damage their image in the US by appearing racist.
Longstanding Israeli misgivings about the exclusive and highly secretive Black Hebrews were heightened by the events at Jonestown, Guyana, in November 1978, when followers of Rev. Jim Jones committed mass suicide on his instruction.
The Black Hebrews cult originated in Chicago in the late '60s. Its members are not Jewish by any generally accepted definition including that of Israel's Interior Ministry or Religious Affairs Ministry. But the cult's leadership claims that they are the only genuine Jews.
It was in 1967 that the Black Hebrews' leader and messiah, Ben- Ami Carter, led 134 followers out of "the Land of Oppression," as he calls the US, and took them to the West African republic of Liberia, founded by freed American slaves in the 19th century.
In 1969 they started arriving in small groups in Israel, posing either as black American tourists or Falashas (Ethiopian Jews) who had spent some time in the US. Later, others came, claiming immigrant status under the Law of Return, which guarantees Israeli citizenship to any Jew.
The authenticity of their claim to be Jewish was questioned, and the Ministry of Religious Affairs investigated the question. Meanwhile, the government gave cult members three-month tourist visas and temporary housing.
While officialdom dithered, more Black Hebrews slipped into the country. By October 1971 there were 300 of them living in a district allotted to the original arrivals in the Negev township of Dimona.
Finally, the Interior Ministry, on the advice of the Religious Affairs Ministry, ruled that the cultists were not Jews, and action was ordered to stop any more from coming into the country.
A Supreme Court decision in 1972, while also ruling the Black Hebrews were not Jews, urged that those already in Israel be allowed to stay.
It seemed the most humane thing to do, especially since many cult members had formally renounced their US citizenship and were thus stateless. But the Black Hebrews did little to endear themselves to their hosts. Ben-Ami Carter ranted against Israel, saying it was "racist to the core."
He claimed his followers were a nation whose identity, culture, history and language had been stolen "by those who call themselves Jews." At Dimona and two other Negev towns - Arad and Mitzpe Ramon - the Black Hebrews were at loggerheads with their neighbors. Living in tight, cohesive enclaves, they shunned contact with Israelis and began to acquire an unwholesome reputation.
Because their beliefs forbade them to serve in the Israeli army, pay taxes, send their children to government schools, or abide by public health regulations, they were described by some local officials as disloyal andcriminal, and their deportation was urged.
Cult members are strict vegetarians and abstainers. Their medicine is based on faith healing, and they practice polygamy. Rumors began to circulate about harsh and unnatural punishments being inflicted on members who broke the cult's rules.
defectors told of the disappearance of rebellious members, of others being locked up or driven out into the desert for 40 days, of property and passports being confiscated, of an increasingly paranoid leadership.
The Black Hebrews submit to an extremely rigorous discipline. For example, they are not allowed to read books or newspapers, or to watch television or listen to the radio, all this to preserve them from the "contaminating influence" of the outside world.
The cultists' neighbors complain of overcrowding, overflowing sewage and falling real estate values but are generally reluctant to talk about them to outsiders. "I just don't want to know much about them," said one woman. "Like everyone else here, I'm scared."
Little is known about the early life of Black Hebrews Messiah Ben- Ami Carter, except that he originates from Chicago's north side and his originalsurname is thought to be Parker. He is a handsome, slightly built man in his late 30s. His eyes are a startling green, and although he is soft-spoken, he has an air of authority.
He dismisses the allegations of criminality as "completely false." He is dismissive too of the current efforts to get an Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. "How can (Jimmy) Carter and Menachem Begin conduct negotiations about the future of this land without taking us into consideration?" he asked.
However absurd Carter's vision may appear to outsiders, he does seem to have instilled in his followers a remarkable degree of cohesion, discipline and dignity, which expresses itself in a striking physical grace.
The Black Hebrews run their own affairs according to their own beliefs, and Ben-Ami Carter has his own Minister of Defense, to handle internal security, Minister of Justice, to mete out punishment for infringement of cult rules, Minister of Education to run the cult's schools and Minister of Finance to handle the Black Hebrews' funds.
These come from a tithe of ten percent on the earnings of all employed members (many of whom work in local factories), from performances and recordings of the cult's rock group, "The Soul Messengers," and from the sale of jewelry and leather goods made by cultists.
Israeli Knesset member David Glass, chairman of the commission of enquiry into the cult, is inclined to discount most of the horror stories circulating about the Black Hebrews, including a police intelligence report that says they should be deported for "criminal activities."
Glass says this report seems based on supposition and ignorance and prefers the opinion of local police chiefs who say they find nothing dangerous or subversive about the Black Hebrews.
There were basically four choices facing the commission in its attempts to find a solution - to leave things as they are, to disperse the cultists throughout Israel, to deport them, or to give them a settlement of their own, as they have been asking for the past eight years.
It is understood that the final option was the only one the commission members considered either just or practicable.
Many Israelis remain dubious, to say the least. They think the attacks on Israel and Zionism have ceased only for tactical reasons. They think the Black Hebrews will become even more far-out and criminal if allowed a settlement of their own, far from government supervision. And they fear another Jonestown.
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October 10, 1980, Boston Globe - AP, page 1, US World News in Brief; Layton's Return Thwarted,
A Guyanese high court judge has barred efforts by the FBI to return former Peoples Temple member Larry Layton to the United States until he pays $37,000 owned his Guyanese lawyers, radio station KCBS in San Francisco said today. Layton, 33, owes the money for his defense on charges in Guyana that he attempted to kill Rep. Leo Ryan (D-Calif.) and four other people in a 1978 shootout at Jonestown hours before 900 Peoples Temple members died in a suicide-murder ritual.
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October 19, 1980, Boston Globe, page 1, Latin America; Guyana Leader Tightens Grip, by Stephen Kinzer,
Guyana's Prime Minister Forbes Burnham has strengthened his authoritarian rule. Burnham, who recently ascended to the new post of president, now has power over all executive, judicial and military officials, in addition to the right to veto bills passed by parliament.
Burnham has made no mention of the prospect for future elections. He has held power since 1966 through a series of elections in which charges of fraud have been widely circulated.
In nearby Barbados, the only national newspaper said in an editorial that the promulgation of the new constitution granting nearly total control to Burnham put Guyana "fully into the Latin American dictator syndrome."
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October 23, 1980, Boston Globe, page 1, Leftists Falter, But Caribbean Still Suffers, by Stephen Kinzer, Globe Correspondent,
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados - The wave of near-panic that spread through official Washington last year over the perceived leftist trend in the Caribbean has abated somewhat, but the economic and social problems that have created instability in the area remain as pressing as ever.
Sharp turns to the political left in Jamaica, Nicaragua and the tiny island of Grenada during 1979 led some American officials to predict gloomily that the entire Caribbean basin would soon turn Communist. Not only have those predictions not come true, but within the last 10 months leftist parties have suffered crushing defeats at the polls on the islands of Antigua, St. Vincent, Dominica and St. Kitts-Nevis.
The Caribbean nations had been largely ignored by the United States until the jolt provided by the leftist "revolution" in Grenada in March 1979. Although the ousted leader was widely disliked and his leftist successor appeared to have broad popular support, American policy-makers saw the coup as a direct challenge to US interests and scrambled to make up for lost time in the region. For the first time, they began to look seriously at the causes of Caribbean ferment.
One of the causes may be found in the character of some of the region's older leaders. Grenada's toppled caudillo Eric Gairy, a mystic who spent more time trying to communicate with extraterrestial beings than with his own people, was only one example of the personalistic rulers who still run some Caribbean nations like private preserves.
The southern Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago, for example, ought to be on the road to prosperity because of income from its enormous oil reserves. But, instead, it is wracked with widespread unemployment, racial friction and an impossibly backward transportation and communication system. The reason, according to many observers, is the long tenure in power of Eric Williams, who has ruled the nation almost by whim since 1956.
Now nearing 70, Williams has repeatedly disposed of any rising politicians who might be considered possible successors. As a result, the delicately balanced factions in Trinidad and Tobago may erupt in conflict when he finally passes from the scene.
A similar scenario exists in Guyana, an English-speaking nation on South America's Caribbean coast. Prime Minister Forbes Burnham has centralized all power in his own hands through a series of questionable elections since independence was granted in 1966. Strikes have hurt the bauxite and sugar industries, and the country is still reeling from the murder of one of Burnham's most articulate critics, Walter Rodney, in a car-bomb attack last June.
Both Britain and the Soviet Union have spurned Burnham's plea for aid,neither one wanting to be associated with his unpopular regime. In its August issue, the prestigious British journal Conflict Studies concluded that "With its serious racial disharmony, its overtly corrupt government and its ever- worsening economic position, Guyana is at present ripe for revolution."
The island of St. Vincent is also under the thumb of an entrenched autocrat, Milton Cato. Without beaches, an international airport or much arable land - and with a leader who attacks all reform movement as Communist- inspired - St. Vincent is calm at the moment but potentially unstable.
Another leader of this ilk, Patrick John of Dominica, was forced to resign last year after protest riots swept his country. Elections held in July brought a shrewd, tough corporate lawyer, Mary Eugenia Charles, to power on that impoverished island, but she faces an enormous challenge in trying to improve life in a country widely referred to as "the basket case of the Caribbean."
Like many of the smaller Caribbean nations, Dominica is a rocky outpost with almost no natural resources. During a recent visit to the United States, Prime Minister Charles made an impassioned plea for American aid, telling officials that "the sky's the limit" for what she can put to good use. She is pro-West in outlook and deeply distrusts Cuba, and Dominica's overwhelming problems present a big challenge.
A new area of concern in the Caribbean is the group of remaining French colonies, Martinique, Guadeloupe and French Guiana. Though they have received substantial development aid from France, all are now agitating for independence, and there have been armed attacks by activists in Martinique.
France has vowed to hold onto its colonies and blames Cuba for encouraging separatists, a charge Fidel Castro has denied. There is growing resentment of the heavily French civil service and police on the island, and popular sentiment for independence seems to be rising.
While many Caribbean countries could become trouble spots in the future, there are also causes for optimism. Barbados, for example, is the envy of the region with its strong democracy and thriving economy, and Prime Minister Tom Adams has not hesitated to use his influence and power in regional affairs. When a group of separatists tried to take over tiny Union Island lastDecember, for example, he dispatched aid to the government of St. Vincent, which helped it quell the revolt.
On the island of St. Lucia, observers see the potential for a viable economy to develop. Longtime conservative leader John Compton was defeated at the polls in July 1979 by the local Labor Party, and though the new government is divided between moderates and leftists, the country's excellent harbor and good agricultural base have made its leaders optimistic about the future.
In the northern Caribbean, the larger island nations pose what may be the most vexing long-term problems in the region. Haiti has been reduced to a social, political and economic disaster area by decades of dictatorship under the Duvalier family, the Dominican Republic is trying hard to consolidate democracy while the military awaits its chance to return to power, and leftists in Puerto Rico have made it clear that they will not sit peacefully by if the United States tries to turn their country into the 51st state. Jamaica's future course will be decided in a crucial election next week.
American response to the Caribbean challenge has come in several forms. A new military task force based in Key West was hurriedly established by President Jimmy Carter after he discovered Soviet troops in Cuba last year, and an American warship toured the southern Caribbean last spring, stopping at every island that would accept it. In addition, the US Agency for International Development has increased its budget for Caribbean projects from $12 million in 1977 to a projected $40 million in 1981.
But what Caribbean countries want most from the United States is a reduction or elimination of tariffs and other trade barriers that exclude their products from the lucrative American market. Despite repeated efforts, they have made little headway in convincing American officials to make concessions in this area. Most leaders in the Caribbean remain frustrated by what they perceive as Washington's crisis orientation and short attention span.
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November 19, 1980, Boston Globe - AP, page 1, Memorial Service For Dead of Peoples Temple,
Mourners held hands and sang softly in the Garden of Remembrance in Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland, Calif. to mark the second anniversary of the Peoples Temple mass murder-suicide.
The cemetery is the burial place for about 500 of the 913 members of the cult who died Nov. 18, 1978 in Jonestown, Guyana.
Many of those attending yesterday's 20-minute service, held under the auspices of the interdenominational Guyana Emergency Relief Committee of San Francisco, were relatives of the Jonestown dead.
Jynona Norwood, who lost 27 relatives in Guyana, told mourners she hopes to raise $50,000 to open a youth center in memory of the young victims of Jonestown.
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November 24, 1980, Boston Globe - AP, page 1, 6 Indicted in Rare Bird Case,
Six persons have been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of illegally importing rare birds and exposing them to other fowl suffering from the deadly Newcastle disease.
Indicted Friday on 16 counts were Bert Slocum, 40, his wife, Louise, 39, their son, Ray, 19, and two employees of their Quality Bird Co., Doris Fuller, 50, and Francille Miller, 28.
Mizri Persad of Guyana, who runs a South American export company and was one of Slocum's sources for rare birds, was indicted on five counts.
________________________________________________________________________________November 19, 1980, Boston Globe - AP, page 1, Memorial Service For Dead of Peoples Temple,
Mourners held hands and sang softly in the Garden of Remembrance in Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland, Calif. to mark the second anniversary of the Peoples Temple mass murder-suicide.
The cemetery is the burial place for about 500 of the 913 members of the cult who died Nov. 18, 1978 in Jonestown, Guyana.
Many of those attending yesterday's 20-minute service, held under the auspices of the interdenominational Guyana Emergency Relief Committee of San Francisco, were relatives of the Jonestown dead.
Jynona Norwood, who lost 27 relatives in Guyana, told mourners she hopes to raise $50,000 to open a youth center in memory of the young victims of Jonestown.
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November 24, 1980, Boston Globe - AP, page 1, 6 Indicted in Rare Bird Case,
Six persons have been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of illegally importing rare birds and exposing them to other fowl suffering from the deadly Newcastle disease.
Indicted Friday on 16 counts were Bert Slocum, 40, his wife, Louise, 39, their son, Ray, 19, and two employees of their Quality Bird Co., Doris Fuller, 50, and Francille Miller, 28.
Mizri Persad of Guyana, who runs a South American export company and was one of Slocum's sources for rare birds, was indicted on five counts.
December 17, 1980, Boston Globe - AP, page 1, US - World; Vote Irregularities Charged,
GEORGETOWN, Guyana - Opposition leaders and foreign observers are crying foul over voting irregularities as a slow count plods toward a certain election victory for socialist President Forbes Burnham's party. Jagan told a news conference the government engineered delays between the closing of polling stations at 6 p.m. Monday and the beginning of the count to give it time to switch votes and stuff ballot boxes.
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December 20, 1980, Boston Globe - AP, page 1, US - World News Briefs; Guyana Election Called Fraud,
The leader of a team of international observers of Monday's elections in Guyana said yesterday the victory of President Forbes Burnham's Peoples National Congress (PNC) was "fraudulent in every possible respect" and should be invalidated by the Guyanese. Speaking to reporters on arriving home, Lord Avebury said he hoped the group's conclusions would lead Guyana to call new elections. He said Guyana had a controlled press "that read like an election
broadsheet for the PNC," that opposition parties were barred from holding meetings and their members beaten up by PNC thugs, and that voter lists were falsified.
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January 4, 1981, Boston Globe, page 1, Mel King Criticizes Guyana Election, by Kenneth J. Cooper, Globe Staff,
State Rep. Mel King of Boston, a member of an international team that observed the recent elections in Guyana, has returned highly critical of the voting process in that South American country.
In an interview last week after returning to Boston, King said he had seen widespread evidence of voter intimidation and fraud. The most blatant of the fraudulent practices, he said, involved the ruling People's National Congress.
"In one instance, a person running for office had a polling place in his house," King said. "Now, you can't get more blatant than that."
Two days after the Dec. 15 election, President Forbes Burnham was declared the victor, claiming 76 percent of the vote to win a fourth five-year term. The main opposition candidate, Dr. Cheddi B. Jagan of the People's Progressive Party, received about 20 percent of the official count. The conservative United Force tallied less than 3 percent.
The observer team, in a press statement issued on election day, said it had collected "considerable evidence of voters being intimidated and preventedfrom voting." The statement cited double registration, deletion of other registrants' names, and abuse of postal and proxy voting as practices they said called the election into question.
The head of the 10-member team, Lord Avebury of Britain, later urged that the vote be invalidated.
"I think Burnham can't pass his government off as a liberal government any longer," King commented. "The election shows clearly that there is a dictatorship there."
King estimated that, at most, 20 percent of the electorate cast ballots, due to intimidation of East Indian voters and a boycott called by the Working People's Alliance, a labor group. He and Lennox Hinds, a New Jersey lawyer on the team, worked together on election day and visited 50 to 60 polling places in the capital city of Georgetown and nearby areas.
The East Indians make up a majority of the 825,000 population, but hold few positions in government. Most blacks support Burnham.
King said he and Hinds had also been assigned to check on postal and proxy voting but that they could not do so because election workers refused to admit them to ballot-counting centers.
The police officers and soldiers who manned the polls did not make preliminary counts before taking ballots to counting centers, King said, arousing suspicions that the men tampered with votes before delivery.
He said ballot procedures, combined with "a heavy military influence around the whole election," created system-wide opportunities for intimidation of opposition voters.
"They use paper ballots," King explained. "Everybody on the voter list has a number, and that number is on each person's ballot. So they can open the ballot up, look at the number and know who you voted for."
King, whose mother is Guyanese, was one of three observers from the United States. He is also a member of the Guyanese Assn. of Massachusetts.
The other Americans were Hinds, the United Nations representative of the International Assn. of Democratic Lawyers USA, and Francis Hollis, a lawyer from Los Angeles. The other observers were from Canada, England and Jamaica.
King said the observers were hampered by uncooperative government officials, including the chief elections official, who refused to grant the team an interview.
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March 15, 1981, Boston Globe, page 1,Ryan's Daughter...After Jonestown, by Marian Christy,
Shannon Jo Ryan is talking about everybody's ultimate dream, inner peace, a soul umblemished by anguish, guilt, rage or doubts. "Peace," she says softly, as if she has found it, "is the ability to quiet your mind chatter. It is the ability to drop self-judgments and criticisms, to refuse to make a mind game out of yourself and . . ."
Suddenly the words dangle unfinished, the strong thought severed by her own innate shyness. She blushes slightly, locking glances with a bearded guru- like man in a red skull cap and red clothes and the glance calms her, the brief storm of self-doubt suppressed in this silent confrontation. Her lover? Her bodyguard? Her teacher? Her colleague? Her publicist? Her co-disciple? It is never made clear. But he doesn't leave her. Encouraged by his magnetic eyes, eyes full of benign sentiment, she picks up where she left off.
"Peace," she continues, gaining momentum, "is being satisfied with what is. Peace is not wanting more, more. Before," she says, now the words coming in a small torrent, "money was not enough. The love I had was not enough. My friends were not enough. Nothing was enough. Even if I had everything, and I did, something was always missing." There is a certain casualness in Ryan's simple, matter-of- fact admission. But the key word is before. Yes, indeed, there is a "before Ryan" and an "after Ryan," the now-Ryan explaining the transition that is being audited by a fellow cultist.
Before she was fairly ordinary, fairly unknown, fairly miserable. She was the unassuming daughter of US Rep. Leo Ryan, who was murdered in an airstrip ambush that preceded the death of 900 People's Temple followers in a Jonestown, Guyana mass ritual. Ryan had graduated from the University of California, an arts major who had once worked as a cashier in a Lake Tahoe casino, a woman with a nagging sense of inferiority who had no plans whatever for herself. "I had been brainwashed into a neat little package, told to get along with everybody, to control my feelings, to hold back and stay in the background. I was told what to eat and how to dress and . . ."
Again the words hang there, unfinished thoughts too difficult to express,and she brings up the new Shannon Jo Ryan after her conversion to the teachings of one of India's most controversial gurus, Shree Rajneesh, who goes by the name Bhagwam, which means, "God." It is his picture, Rajneesh's, that hangs from the beaded necklace she wears. It is Rajneesh's color she wears, red, a simple peasant dress, red symbolizing his concept of a new dawning.
She is, in fact, the Bhagwam's media star, the "name" in his purported congregation of 200,000 followers, the woman who has been stationed in Bhagwam's Montclair, N.J., headquarters, the Rajneesh Meditation Center. Her voice is now his voice. Ryan even has a new name, Pritam, which means "lover of the eternal," and now Pritam is speaking: "I have given up living life according to other people's expectations . . . I am now free."
The personality makeover from the "before" Ryan to the "after" Pritam hinges, strangely, on her father's murder. The legacy he left her, his name and fame by death at the hands of one cult, is what she is using now to promote another cult. She sees the leap as a smooth transition, a natural evolution of her destiny rather than a personal revolution: "My father's death was public," she says. "It has made my experiences public. It is ironic that I am a vehicle, a device, for bringing attention to Bhagwam. It has all happened because of my father's death . . . Something good coming out of something bad."
Yet she says that last year, when she went to India, with money from her father's life insurance policy, it was with mixed feelings. She was both unhappy and skeptical.
"I wanted to experience inner freedom, this peace, but I harbored anger. I said to myself: I'm not going to be sucked into any organized religion again. I want the peace. But I want to stay on the fringe, I want to be on the outside of the organization." The words hang again. They always do. "But I was surprised that there was so little pressure on me . . ." Ryan, or Pritam, arrives at a certain point and, startled by her own frankness, hangs back like a frightened bird. The approving look comes from the strange man and she adds:
"What I'm into is not a cult, well, not that kind of a cult. There are people who think I'm crazy. Or brainwashed. But it is not my responsibility to change the whole world's thinking about cults . . ." She claims that members of Rev. Moon's Unification Church and the Hare Krishnas approached and pressured her to join. "They turned me off. Both of them. They were very pushy. Both of them."
Later, talking about the Jones cult, she is dispassionate, cool, sketching a clear contrast between her guru and Jones. "Jim Jones caused fear, paranoia, threats, violence. He hurt people. He satisfied his ego in terms of power over his people."
She smiles, but it is a slight smile, a wan smile. "This cult," referring to hers, "is teaching me life and living, how to treat the moment and not be concerned about the horrible things that happened two years ago."
The rest of the interview is an emotional self-portrait that is like a giant puzzle pieced together. But, like all puzzles, it is subject to instant change with any false move.
She is talking again about the "old" Shannon, the "before" Shannon: "I was subdued. My relationship with my family was subdued. There was closeness. But there wasn't a lot of communication. There was never a lot of talk about your inner feelings."
What did she and her father talk about? "Politics."
What did she and her mother talk about? "Politics."
"We were not as real as we could have been," she says, sounding like a scene from the movie, "Ordinary People." "There was no spontaneous hugging of each other without feeling funny." On occasion, she says, she felt rage toward her mother: "I wanted to say: Mother, I'm angry. I don't like what you're doing about such and such.' But I held it all in. I felt angry, very, but I thought that this was just part of my everyday life."
Then her father was murdered.
"His funeral was filmed. And I couldn't express my feelings. I know that at his funeral I should have been crying, but I couldn't cry on camera. The coffin was closed. I never had a chance to say goodby. So I cried later. Alone. It was the same old thing. Holding everything in until I was somewhere in private."
She has arrived at the nub of her regret and it is tied to her relationship with her cult. "I never had the chance to express all the love and feeling I had for my father. I felt always that I missed my chance while he was alive. We both knew the love was there. But," and this is the only time she chokes on her words, "it was unspoken and undemonstrated." She says his clothes are still in her closet, the clothes being extensions of him. "They are peripheral things and . . ."
Again, the hesitation. Again, the glance. She changes her tune. "But it's getting easier and easier to give his things away." Again she is talking about the "new" Pritam. "I've turned a corner . . . Now I'm different without being totally outrageous."
The question of the hour, the question of the interview, is why Shannon Jo Ryan, now 29, didn't take her new self and reenter the world, strengthened by her cult experiences? Why is she an appendage of the cult, its spokesman, its star? She answers quickly, innocently. "I need constant reminders not to go back to my old ways. It's so easy for me to be the old Shannon again."
She insists she has not been brainwashed. "I am not mechanical . . ." She and this man lock glances. "I was not converted against my will." And still more about her new self: "The reservations I had were all connected to my father. I was always afraid that people would say: Oh, she's found herself a cult. It must be the same as the People's Temple cult.' The whole thing that has happened to me is accidental, not forced. This is not a matter of exploitation."
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.
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Abstract (Document Summary)
Before she was fairly ordinary, fairly unknown, fairly miserable. She was the unassuming daughter of US Rep. Leo Ryan, who was murdered in an airstrip ambush that preceded the death of 900 People's Temple followers in a Jonestown, Guyana mass ritual. Ryan had graduated from the University of California, an arts major who had once worked as a cashier in a Lake Tahoe casino, a woman with a nagging sense of inferiority who had no plans whatever for herself. "I had been brainwashed into a neat little package, told to get along with everybody, to control my feelings, to hold back and stay in the background. I was told what to eat and how to dress and . . ."
Again the words hang there, unfinished thoughts too difficult to express,and she brings up the new [Shannon Jo Ryan] after her conversion to the teachings of one of India's most controversial gurus, Shree Rajneesh, who goes by the name Bhagwam, which means, "God." It is his picture, Rajneesh's, that hangs from the beaded necklace she wears. It is Rajneesh's color she wears, red, a simple peasant dress, red symbolizing his concept of a new dawning.
The personality makeover from the "before" Ryan to the "after" [Pritam] hinges, strangely, on her father's murder. The legacy he left her, his name and fame by death at the hands of one cult, is what she is using now to promote another cult. She sees the leap as a smooth transition, a natural evolution of her destiny rather than a personal revolution: "My father's death was public," she says. "It has made my experiences public. It is ironic that I am a vehicle, a device, for bringing attention to Bhagwam. It has all happened because of my father's death . . . Something good coming out of something bad."
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March 15, 1981, Boston Globe - AP, page 1, Pro-Leftists Hijack US-Bound Plane,
MANAGUA, Nicaragua - Four armed men and a woman yesterday hijacked a Honduran jetliner carrying 84 other persons, including about 20 US citizens, ordered it to land here and demanded freedom for Salvadoran leftists jailed in Honduras.
The five hijackers later released 39 of the hostages, including at least one of the US citizens aboard the New Orleans-bound Boeing 737 of the TAN- SAHSA airline. The American was identified only as Mike Magger. His hometown was not given.
The hijackers, armed with pistols and submachine guns, allowed 29 women, six children and four men to leave the plane - surrounded by troops of Nicaragua's leftist government - in midday heat that reached 94 degrees.
The Honduran foreign minister, Col. Cesar Elvir Sierra, speaking with reporters in the capital of Tegucigalpa, said 38 passengers, the five hijackers and a crew of seven were still aboard the plane.
A Honduran television correspondent, Magra Navarro, one of the freed passengers, said in a telephone call to her station that she believed the hijackers would order that the plane with the hostages and crew be flown to Cuba, Guyana or Algeria.
She said the hijackers were demanding that Honduras release 15 Salvadoran leftists. El Salvador shares a border with Honduras, and Salvadoran leftists fighting to topple their US-backed government often cross the border to escape capture by Salvadoran troops.
A Honduran government spokesman reported one of the Salvadorans named by the hijackers was Facundo Guardado, who they claimed was captured in Honduras in February. The Honduran government has denied holding him.
Government sources in Tegucigalpa said the hijackers also had nine other demands, but the sources did not disclose them.
They said a commission was being formed to fly to Managua for direct negotiations with the hijackers.
Airport authorities in Tegucigalpa said one hijacker threatened to detonate a bomb if the demands were not met.
A Honduran woman and her two children were the first allowed off the plane. She reportedly said the two children had cancer and she was taking them to New Orelans for treatment. The freed passengers were awaiting a special flight back to Tegucigalpa.
Navarro, who called her station from Managua's Sandino airport, said she believed the hijackers were Salvadorans. The airline director-general in Tegucigalpa said he thought they hijackers were Nicaraguans.
The jet was commandeered shortly after takeoff from Tegucigalpa at 8:45 a.m. (9:45 a.m. EST) on a flight scheduled for the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula and then to Belize and New Orleans.
An hour later the plane landed here and was surrounded by soldiers as it taxied to a stop at the west end of the runway.
A Nicaraguan government spokesman said Vice Interior Minister Luis Carrion Cruz would serve as intermediary between Honduran authorities and the hijackers.
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April 18, 1981, Boston Globe, page 4, A new look at Jim Jones, by Russell Chandler,
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April 26, 1981, Boston Globe, page 1, News Analysis; The Horror and Fascination of the Events in Jonestown, by Bill Carter,
There is something nagging about what happened at Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978.
Call it an unwillingness to suspend disbelief. After all the news reports, a long, graphic "docu-drama" on CBS television, and books by the score, the principal question remains unanswered:
How could madness have existed on a scale large enough to account for the suicide - and murder - of 911 people?
That question is responsible for the continuing, almost macabre fascination with Jim Jones and the events of Jonestown. It's as though it can't be dropped until it can be explained, or understood. Maybe it can only be erased as a threat when someone can really say why it happened.
But it ought to be obvious by now that absolute madness provides - and demands - no explanations. If that wasn't clear before, it should be after 90 minutes of listening to the fulminations of Jim Jones.
They were heard on National Public Radio last week, and they can be heard again in Boston on Tuesday at 10 p.m. on WGBH radio, and then again on Sunday, May 17, at 6 p.m., on WBUR.
Originally the tapes were confiscated by the FBI. But a suit brought by James Reston Jr. under the Freedom of Information Act freed all but a select few of the tapes. Reston and another scriptwriter, Noah Adams (one of the weekend anchors of NPR's "All Things Considered"), edited the mass of material and worked it into a chronological format.
The result is "Father Cares: The Last of Jonestown," a radio documentary of powerful, disturbing dimension. It is upsetting, shocking, chilling, always bizarrely fascinating even as the tapes strain all rationale for listening. The show provides all the emotional trauma you might expect from a descent into human madness.
The Jim Jones that appears by voice on these tapes is a stark, raving crazy man. No one of reason could conclude anything else, after even a few minutes of listening to his hysterical babbling, his often purposeless ranting, his chilling cackle of a laugh.
But an entire community of educated American citizens listened to these constant exhibitions of profound psychosis and regarded his words as some perverse kind of new testament.
The words themselves are the meaningless pronouncements of a preacher- perfor mer whose theatrical nonsense has gone hopelessly berserk. Jones flies into an endless cant full of the mumbo-jumbo of an experienced charismatic speaker who has nothing of sense to say, but plenty of style in the way he says it.
Like all high-octane preachers, accustomed to wooing masses from in front of a microphone, he speaks in code words - fascism, racism, hatred. He rants at capitalism like a demogogue and lauds the joys of communism, though it's clear he has little or no idea what any of those political philosophies are about. It's all the ritual dance of a religious fanatic whose hold over his flock is based on emotional - never rational - dependence.
Early on, Jones reveals his obsession with death images and his suicidal tendencies. He speaks of dying or killing whenever his idealized vision - whatever the heck it was - seems threatened by an intrusion of reality. In the first segment of the program he is heard advocating the only alternative to abandoning his vision to the "anarchy" of the outside world:
"I'd rather bring it all to a gallant, glorious, screaming end."
In one particularly horrifying section, Jones asks his followers, whosefamilies have been attempting to gain information about what is really happening in Guyana, to spell out for him what they would do to members of their own families rather than turn on "Dad."
One says, "I'd like to kill my so-called brother." Another talks of disposing of a sister as though she were christening a ship: "If her skull is split, that's fine." A child is most inventive in describing how he'd take one of the Jonestown enemies and "cut him up and then put poison in him and invite all my relatives over there to eat him."
These messages of support so delight Jones that his deranged cackling punctuates every remark.
When he isn't luring his flock toward killing themselves or others, Jones can be heard insulting them and glorifying himself. His speeches are full of bombastic nonsense - and utter craziness. At one point he bellows: "You, who are pissants . . . lower than primates, can make your whoopie, but your whoopie makes me sickie."
Jim Jones was plenty sickie. And listening to his sickness, and that of those around him, feels at times like a trip to one of those cheapo, drive-in horror movies. What sense is there in paying any attention at all to one demented man's hideous ravings?
Perhaps it only makes sense in terms of recognition. Fanatics have performed atrocities in the name of causes countless times before, whether for religion, or nationalism, or morality, or ethnic purity. Jones was even in touch with the symbolism of such madness. His journey to the jungle was his personal trip into the heart of darkness.
On the Jonestown tapes, one of his disciples thrills him by leading the congregation in song. "I never heard a man speak like this man before," she sings.
The words may be different, more bizarre in some ways, but we've heard other men speak like this before.
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May 17, 1981, Boston Globe, page A67, Jonestown: The promised land became a sewer, by Margaret Manning,
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June 16, 1981, Boston Globe, page L1, Book Review; Intriguing Story with Much Still Missing, by Tom Long, Globe Staff,
OUR FATHER WHO ART IN HELL: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF JIM JONES by James Reston Jr. Times Books. 338 pp. $14.95.
It has been three years since the tragic event, but the haunting image of the bloated, decomposing corpses of Rev. Jim Jones' 900-odd disciples still floats in the memory like a half-remembered nightmare.
Questions still remain:
Was it a mass suicide, much like that of the 1st-century zealots of Masada, who took their own lives rather than submit to the authority of a Roman government that persecuted them?
Or was it the act of a deranged preacher with one eye on the history books intent on self-destruction and willing to take his followers along, like the ancient Chinese and Egyptian rulers who had their slaves entombed with them?
Who was Jim Jones, and what hold did he have on his ragtag band of black urban poor, the elderly and disenchanted white youths?
In pursuing this bizarre, apocalyptic "novel in reality," James Reston Jr. relies heavily on documents and tapes retrieved from the US government through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. Jones had a Nixonian sense of history; he taped his lectures and phone calls and kept copies of all his correspondence, especially when his band had emigrated to Guyana to escape the persistent criticism of the US media. Although the material is riveting - the rantings and ravings of a spellbinding, satanic prophet - the technique is less than revealing, since Jones is rarely portrayed when he's not on stage.
Contradictions abound:
Jones posed as a great radical and crusader for racial justice; yet the congregation of his People's Temple, while 90 percent black, was run by a small clique of young white women.
Jones led his band to Guyana seeking freedom from persecution; yet he set up a "relationship counsel" that had to approve sexual liaisons, both heterosexual and homosexual.
He sent out his "professional prostitutes" to trade their bodies for political information; had a "supervisor of political enlightenment" who indoctrinated members, and had beefy "angels" who enforced his rules through beatings and confinement in an underground isolation chamber. Jones held together his inner circle through a doctrine of "revolutionary sex," bestowing his sexual favors on both men and women of his inner circle.
Jones began his career as a charismatic preacher in Illinois, moved to California and became involved in community work. He eventually arrived in Guyana as a confirmed atheist and espouser of communism, preaching incomprehensibly late into the night in the obscene cadence of street language. But he cannot easily be dismissed as a nut; he was chairman of the San Francisco Housing Authority and arrived in Guyana with a portfolio of laudatory letters from Walter Mondale, Joseph Califano and Senators Mike Gravel, Hubert Humphrey, Sam Ervin and Warren Magnuson.
Reston barely scratches the surface of this intriguing story. Jones' congregation was mainly black and poor, but he examines the congregation through the life histories of two wealthy young white women. Most of the congregation gladly followed Jones to their deaths; yet there's no probing examination of the dynamics of group psychosis.
The critical years, when Jones must have formulated his ideals and expectations, are given only a cursory glance. The image of those haunting photographs still remains, but Reston offers little flesh and blood to give life to the bodies.
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June 16, 1981, Boston Globe - AP, page 1, Delayed Trial Wanted,
Lawyers for Larry Layton say they want the former Peoples Temple cultist's murder-conspiracy trial postponed.
Layton, 35, is scheduled to go on trial July 9 in connection with the Nov. 18, 1978, ambush-slaying of Rep. Leo Ryan, D-Calif., at the Port Kaituma airstrip near Jonestown, Guyana.
The lawyers said yesterday they wanted a 90-day continuance because they haven't received Layton-related government documents under the Freedom of Information Act.
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June 16, 1981, Boston Globe, page 1, Latin America; Dispute Over Planes, by Stephen Kinzer,
Venezuela wants to become the first South American country to buy advanced American F16 fighter planes, but neighboring Guyana doesn't like the idea.
The Venezuelans, traditional allies of the United States, have asked for 24 of the modern aircraft. Unofficial sources in Washington say the request is being given favorable consideration.
But last week, Guyana's minister of foreign affairs, Rashley Jackson, sent a diplomatic note to the State Department asking that the sale not be approved. There has been increased tension between the two countries lately. Venezuela claims that an 1899 treaty setting its border is not valid and that it is the rightful owner of more than half of Guyana.
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June 30, 1981, Boston Globe - AP, page 1, In This Corner; History's Bottom Ten, by Mike Feinsilber,
Ivan the Terrible made the list, and so did Idi Amin, but Hitler and Stalin were the only unanimous choices when the faculty at the Catholic University of America yesterday named the 10 worst villains of all time.
Jack the Ripper and the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini made dishonorable mentions.
The history and political science faculties were asked to consider the candidates' impact on history, their brutality and whether their villainy was deliberate. About 30 professors participated.
Here are the choices, listed in chronological order, with the university's comments:
Caligula (12-41 A.D.): "He was single-handedly responsible for squandering much of the Roman Empire's early riches for his own pleasures, which included reported incestuous relationships with his sisters. . . . Left a chilling reputation for degradation and cruelty."
Nero (37-68): "Among his deeds were the setting afire of Rome so that he could build a city more aesthetically pleasing, the murders of many Roman government officials opposed to his power, the sparking of several civil wars and the squandering of much of the Roman Army's salaries for his own foolish delights."
Atilla the Hun (?-453): "He ravaged the Mideast and Europe in countless attempts to gain control over the known world in the 5th Century."
Catherine de Medici (1519-1589), the only woman chosen: "As the queen of France, she pitted the two strongest religious groups, the Catholics and the French Calvinists, against each other. . . . She hoped to gain absolute power by wiping out the Calvinists."
Ivan the Terrible (1530-1581): "Ivan IV Vasilievich, Russian czar, maintained a steady flow of wars to keep his people busy. . . . Known for his fits of rage, including one in which he killed his son and heir for some unknown reason."
Abul-Hamid II (1842-1918): "The 34th ruler of the Ottoman Empire, infamous for setting up murders and blaming his opposition for the crimes. . . ."
Adolf Hitler (1889-1945): "He and his comrades Alfred Rosenberg, Rudolf Hess, Hermann Goring and Julius Streicher led Germany into World War II to gain control over the entire continent of Europe. Though his dreams were not realized, his damage is unforgettable."
Joseph Stalin (179-1953): "Stalin's tactics are his claim to infamy. He institutionalized terrorism . . . considered responsible for the deaths and deprivation of millions of people throughout Eastern Europe."
Mao Tse-Tung (1893-1976): "Untold millions of people were killed and millions expelled to Taiwan when Mao established the People's Republic of China in the form of a communist tyranny on the mainland."
Idi Amin (1925- ): "The only living person in the poll. During his reign, he was thought to have killed more than 90,000 people while expelling nearly 60,000 others from his country of Uganda."
Runners-up included the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran; Jack the Ripper; Napoleon; Mary Queen of Scots; King Louis XIV of France; King George III of England; Rev. Jim Jones of the Peoples Temple, who led more than 900 followers to suicide; Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and Col. Moammar Khadafy, chief of state of Libya. Neville Chamberlain, prime minister of Britain in the '30s, was also considered, "not for evil intent," but for "perhaps one of the worst blunders in history - signing the Munich pact with Hitler."
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August 23, 1981, Boston Globe - AP, page 1, Getting Ready For Armageddon; The Survivalists Believe the End Is Coming--Communism, Revolt in the Cities, Destruction and Death, 6,067 words
West. That is where you will find them. West, past the coastal cities swathed in confusion and violence, past the cheap suburban sprawl of New Jersey, past the stripped forests and slag heaps of Pennsylvania, past the industrialized deserts of Ohio, in the heartland of plains and mountains, that is where they are buying guns.
Out where the radio plays sad country songs about busted hopes, lost loves, daddies who ran out, and mommas who die alone, that is where they are hoarding food.
In places where you see "Jesus Saves" signs and the Bible thumpers rant in fairground revival tents and on five-thousand-watt radio stations about what is written in Ezekiel and Revelations about God and the Beast and the Anti-christ, that is where they are building bomb shelters.
In places where even the scruffiest, drugged-out hitchhikers speak of Jesus and being vorn again, where at night, over the CB, drunken country boys and would-be preachers scream tangled screeds of Bible passages and White Power at the truckers passing through on Route 70, where Kill Khomeini Kwik is spray-painted on roadside rocks, that is where they are burying gasoline.
In places where the only news of New York and Los Angeles - Sodom and Gomorrah, those decadent, effete co-stars in sin-is of violence, drugs, degrading sex, cancerous corruption, of a hundred laughing thugs watching a lone white boy from Connecticut die naked on the subway tracks, of ten thousand "faggots" marching through the streets, of rioting "niggers" looting and burning, of welfare "cheaters" demanding more and more handouts, and of the "Jew" politicians who give it to them, of floods of Mexican wetbacks and the brown-tinged California madness of food shortages, fuel shortages, earthquakes ...
Out where it seems nothing is going right and everything is going wrong, where the plains stretch from horizon to horizon and you can almost see the Russians rolling tanks through the corn and hear the hordes of starving refugees from the cities swarming across the clean fields and country towns like a biblical plague of locusts, that is where you will find the Survivalists waiting for Armageddon.
Louisville, Illinois, two hundred miles downstate from Chicago, is one of those small towns in which, when a presidential candidate visits, he is described as "working the hustings." It is a classic small town of a thousand residents with a courthouse square and green at its center and sun-scored old farmers sitting on benches, spitting and whittling and watching tractors go by. There are no parking meters or traffic lights, and the sidewalks are those double- high embankments you find in older towns.
It is the kind of town where candidates who fancy themselves "populists" like to be seen in, filmed by TV crews talking to the men hanging out in Dean's Barber Shop, listening to the housewives complain in the Lucky Dollar Food Store, maybe even visiting one of the surrounding farm fields to rub a handful of topsoil between their fingers and squint, handsome in the sun.
Reporters love these small towns as well. Those canny old coots in the barbershop are thought to possess the same keen political insights as big-city cab drivers, and they can usually be counted on to dispense some colorful and homely little metaphor, usable as a tag line in a Sunday"Week in Review" article, "The Mood of the Midwest."
Well, this is a drought year in much of the Midwest, and the mood of the boys in the barbershop is irritable. It has been hot and humid since April, and there has been little rain to settle the dust that hangs constantly in the air, drifting in from the fields to stick to sweaty skin in a fine and scratchy coat, gummy at the back of your throat. The last thing anyone wants to talk about is "Johnny Bob" Harrell and his Freedom Festival.
They have been asked to explain Johnny Bob for over twenty years now, through his fire-eating career of ceaseless warfare against Communism, socialism, Zionism, modernism, secular humanism, and any other "ism" that he feels is a threat to "Americanism," and they are a little tired of it.
It is understandable. Explaining John R. "Johnny Bob" Harrell is not easy. To say he is merely a colorful local character is an understatement . He is a rainbow, and the primary colors are red, white, and blue. He is a superpatriot of a particular America that hasn't been yet but he hopes will be soon.
He is often mistaken for a preacher - an easy mistake to make. With his handsome, ruddy face, striking white hair, dark blue suits, and rolling evangelical style of speaking, he looks like a preacher. And he knows his Bible and alludes to it frequently in responses to questions that are not answers but sermons. Harrell is a man with a vision, a jingoistic Jeremiah with prophecies of doom for America as we know her. It is all so clear to him.
First the collapse:
"The collapse of our country is coming. The signs are too many, too ominous, and too numerous. The country is ripe for it. We are at the bottom of the barrel, morally, militarily, economically, and socially.
"It will begin on the inside with racial and economic problems. The cities are going to explode into burning, rioting and anarchy."
Then will come the invasion:
"We will be invaded, plundered, and we'll lose half our country. The stage is set. Cuba is communist. The Russians are moving tanks into Central America. The Canal is gone. The Caribbean is a Russian lake. All of southern Mexico is communist.
"Our enemies are real. They can't be denied. The government is spending $150 billion a year on defense, so there must be a real enemy."
There will be a dark time when we will lose the battles:
"We are a marshmallow people ... a Twinkie people. I think if you turn off the electricity and the water and make Americans use outdoor toilets, half of the people will surrender right away. Americans are a weak, pampered people.
"The country will be split assunder into four parts - a black America (the East Coast*, a Hispanic America (the Southwest and California*, a Cuban America (Florida and parts of the South*, and a Caucasian, patriotic America in the Midwest."
But the white Christian America will win the war through God's help.
"We believe that we are a biblically destined nation. We are God's people. It will be a time that will test patriots, but make no mistake about it, we will win."
His job is to warn us and help us to prepare.
"Our job is to warn the American people that we are moving into a dictatorship. Either we will pick our leaders or the enemy will.
"We are looking for Christians who see the trouble ahead. There aren't many dedicated patriots left in this country, but we hope to amass twenty-five to thirty million of the fiercest patriots the world has ever seen to preserve this country. We are headed for this crisis whether we want it or not. We will lose half our people, but will be successful!"
Heady stuff, Armageddon.
It may be tempting to write off John Harrell as a more interesting species of crackpot except that he is not alone in his ideas.
While our eastern Elmer Gantrys - the Moonies, the Scientologists, the Krishnas - have adopted sophisticated marketing techniques to move their doctrines, with Midwest preachers it is still the hellfire and the final thunder that sells, and the radio, television, and newspapers are full ofpreachers warning of the approach of Judgment Day. Add to that the unsettled times we are experiencing, the steady parade of economists warning of monetary disaster, sociologists warning of urban disorders in the wake of Reagan budget cuts, defense analysts warning of military unpreparedness, and everything else in our daily diet of information that has been making for an anxious atmosphere in America these past few years (a "national malaise" ex-President Carter called it), and you have a context in which Harrell, and others like him are quite convincing to increasing numbers of Americans.
Just how many Americans is hard to say. A key tenet of survivalism is that you don't broadcast that you have a basement full of Krugerrands, guns, and freeze-dried food. All one can do is look at the surface indicators and by those indicators the movement is large and growing.
Books like Howard Ruff's How to Prosper During the Coming Bad Years, John Creasy's The Coming Currency Collapse, and similar titles are million-copy best-sellers. Soldier of Fortune, a monthly magazine geared to militarism and survivalism, has a circulation approaching two hundred thousand and has inspired two successful emulators, Eagle and Gung Ho. A developer in Utah has been marketing underground condominiums designed for survival, to a gratifying response. The Mormon church is actively encouraging its more than three million members to store a year's worth of food for the coming hard times, and even staid publications like the Wall Street Journal have been carrying advertisements promoting long-term-storage foods for unnamed emergencies that will leave the store shelves bare.
There is some disagreement among survivalists as to what exactly will happen. Many are primarily worried about economic disruption and are transferring their paper assets to investments with intrinsic value, such as gold, silver, art, and antiques. They hope to make it through a period of currency collapse, hyperinflation, and restructuring with their present wealth intact.
Others do not see how the decline can stop with "just hard times" and see serious social disorder as inevitable. Their scenarios go into uncharted realms of massive urban rioting, revolt, food shortages, race war, even invasion by communists using the confusion as an opportunity.
These survivalists aren't buying antiques. They are buying weapons and learning how to use them. They are stockpiling food and building fortified retreats. They are joining paramilitary units with their neighbors and setting up backwoods military bases.
Harrell has been involved in the movement since he formed the Christian- Patriots Defense League three years ago. Membership is free and open to all Caucasian "Christian-patriots." Harrell formed it as sort of an umbrella organization under which the fragmented and ceaselessly squabbling elements of the political and religious far right could gather, once a year, to pool their resources, ideas, and expertise regarding survival and the coming fall of America.
"We have everything here from a turkey buzzard to a turtledove," Harrell said of the people attracted to the CPDL Freedom Festival held in early July at Harrell's estate.
The three thousand people who came to learn how to survive certainly did run the gamet of hard-core doomseers. The Christian fundamentalists, political conservatives, Nazis, Klansmen, assorted unaffiliated racists and Jew-haters, the hard-money proselytizers, anarchists, violence junkies, frustrated soldiers, conspiracy seekers, unemployed factory workers, farmers, cops, scared suburbanites, fed-up city people, and preachers without portfolios were a fair and broad sampling of a certain segment of American society. Their fear and anger over "the way things are" was born sometime during the civil rights and women's liberation movements, the rise of crime, the battle over abortion, the loss in Vietnam, Nixon's resignation, the energy crisis, Iran, urban rioting, double- digit inflation, and all the other triphammer punches that have hit conservative Americans right between the eyes these past two decades.
The crisis that they talk about constantly is viewed almost with relief as a chance to, once and for all, separate the wheat from the chaff. After the separating is over they intend to pick up the pieces and "put this country back on the right tract."
"You are among an elite group," Harrell told them at the welcoming ceremonies. "Haven't you always thought you were special?"
Camping on Harrell's fifty-five-acre estate was free and encouraged as a way to "help condition and train and temper all of us for the much more prolonged and dangerous days ahead," and hundreds took up the offer. Every level spot on the rambling acreage was occupied by a motly assemblage of tents, Winnebagos, pickup trucks, vans, and motor homes, many flying American flags, the Confederate stars and bars, and "Don't Tread on Me" banners. Although it was hot and dusty and the facilities were primitive, the atmosphere seemed friendly. A large contingent of children and dogs running in and out of the sites made it all seem much like any one of the thousands of private campgrounds that stretch from here to Disneyland, except for the men in camouflage uniforms armed with shotguns, assault rifles, knives, machetes,clubs - just about every weapon you can think of.
They were from the CSA, "The Covenant, the Sword, the Arm of the Lord," a Christian fundamentalist prophetic paramilitary survivalist group based in Missouri. They were at the festival to provide security. A man like Harrell tends to attract various leftists, Jewish, and black groups, and the CSA men were patrolling the perimeter of the estate, stationed on the cupola on the roof of Harrell's Mount Vernon reproduction mansion. They also checked the cars coming in and out of the festival through the banner-and- bunting-bedecked gate underneath the sign "Welcome Patriots."
The group was founded about ten years ago and is centered around its own church, the Zaraphath-Horeb church. It is a fundamentalist church, and holds to the tenets of the Christian identity movement, which believes that the United States is a nation of destiny dating back to the Old Testament writings and that American Christians are the true descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. The Jews are viewed as usurpers and false claimants to the title of Chosen People.
According to Kerry Noble, 29, an ordained minister in the church, there are twenty-three families, eighty-five men, women, and children, living on two hundred acres near the Missouri-Arkansas border in what amounts to a survivalist commune.
"We share the land, but we have our own houses," Noble said.
The group supported itself for the first years by cutting cedar and doingironwork. They have recently established an Endtime Overcomer Survival School and hope to support themselves from the income. They operate it on a "no fixed charge, donation" basis and offer courses in urban warfare, riflery and pistol craft, military tactics, wilderness survival, and the like. It is all part of the group's own ongoing military training and preparation for what they are predicting will be total collapse.
"I think there will be economic collapse," said Noble, "followed by race riots, Russian invasion - everything you can imagine will happen, only ten times worse." He thinks it may begin within only two years, although he emphasizes that this is only his personal guess.
"Our goal is primarily defensive," he said of the CSA. After the war, they will seek to "rebuild America as a Christian country."
"The coming war is a step toward God's government," said Noble.
Ansel Watts, a loose-limbed southern man dressed in army fatigues and carring a fighting knife, was another member who got involved with the group about six years ago.
"I got saved in 1975," he said. "Randall and me (Randall E. Radar, defense minister-field commander of the CSA* are ex-drug addict hippies. One day I saw Randall and he had his hair cut and he was wearing clean clothes.From my viewpoint at that time, I thought there was something drastically "wrong' with him.
"He said to me, "Ansel, I found what we been looking for. It's Jesus Christ.' I thought to stay away from him, but I went to a church meeting and it was so different. The spirit of God was at the meeting."
The CSA is concerned about the direction in which it sees the world going and forecasts nothing but disaster. It began to realize that the "endtime" was near, Ansel said, from watching the television news and "from prophecies the Lord has given us," and from omens.
The Jonestown tragedy in Guyana was one such omen.
"I don't know how much truth has been written about that whole thing. I saw it as the persecution of Christian groups. He (Jones* was trying to live apart, nondenominational, Christian ... we are trying to do the same thing."
Truck strikes and fuel shortages were other omens.
"We know that New York has a six-day food supply. If any of the truck strikes (1973-1974 and 1979* had lasted longer, food would have run out and you would have had real trouble."
In preparation for real trouble, Ansel trains regularly with the others in paramilitary maneuvers. The men of the CSA are divided up into three squads, an A team, a B team, and a SS (special squad). The men favor H and K- 91 assault rifles with the powerful .308 cartridge; the Ruger Mini 14Carbine, probably the most popular survival weapon; and an assortment of pistols and shotguns.
The CSA women's auxiliary was also present at the festival, a squad of about half dozen. The daughters of adult members, they ranged in age from 13 to 17 and were armed with .22-caliber rifles. In a demonstration, they marched in formation well, were disciplined, and showed quick response to simulated ambush. Half the squad returned fire at the "ambushers" while the other half leapt into a roadside ditch to begin returning fire and covering the retreat of the first half.
Ansel's friend Randall Rader trained the girls as he did the men. He said he was never in the service himself and said "Jesus Christ" taught him to train them.
Ansel Watts said he was trained as a combat engineer. "I can blow bridges or buildings - do whatever is neccesary to fight them."
"Them" are city dwellers retreating to their vacation homes in the CSA's area of influence.
"It's a recreational area. There's a big lake there. The city people have said to us that if there was an emergency, they would just take what they needed from us. We just smile and tell them go ahead and try," Watts said.
To facilitate training for themselves and their students, the CSA people have built a "town" of one-and two-story stone and wood structures.
"In training we use firecrackers to simulate gunfire. We want people to feel the stress of combat. You walk through our town, and you find yourself getting keyed up," said Watts.
He is not optimistic about the days ahead. "Most men are evil, it says in the Bible. God will judge us. Some will live and some will die. ... Most will die.
"We (the CSA* are instruments of God's judment. We are fighting for God's country, not bureaucracy.
"I don't want to have to shoot anyone but I know that I will have to.
"I look forward to being able to die for what God wants to establish. The Scripture says, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil.' I want people to know that I love God and am willing to lay down my life for Him."
A long strip of some of the best camping spots were cordoned off by rope. "Reserved for Rock County" read small paper signs.
A middle aged couple who appeared friendly were sitting in front of their camper on one of the reserved spots. They were Chuck and Audi Fietz of Rock County and they explained that the spots were reserved for the Posse Comatatus of Rock County, Wisconsin.
Chuck tried to outline exactly what the Posse Comatatus is, but his explanation was unclear. Posse Comatati (which they say translates to "power of the people") have been springing up all over the upper Midwest, and they are still in the process of coalescing and finding their platform. Buy some definitions they are a constitutionally authorized (by some state constitutions) militia that assists the sheriff in time of trouble. Right now, however, they seem to be a loose affiliation of worried men and women with a variety of fears and hates.
Chuck Fietz is a semi-retired real estate appraiser. Audi is a college administrator. They have been married for only a year, and she is new to the posse.
"I'm being converted," she says.
"Or awakened," Chuck suggests.
Yet the process of conversion is not going smoothly. There are aspects of the Posse that Audi feels uncomfortable with, and that becomes apparent as her husband begins to talk.
The Rock County Posse was formed about two years ago. Chuck wouldn't say how many members it has, though at least nine campers and tents occupied Rock County turf at the festival.
"Just say we are a decent-sized group of nice people," he said with a smile.
Prospective members must be recommended by a member, and Chuck said they are checked with a voice stress (lie detector) machine to screen out government informers.
"I think that is terrible," Audi said. "You're doing exactly what you object to the government doing."
The posses have regular meetings, and the members engage in guerrilla war training in the Wisconsin backwoods. Chuck and Audi have purchased .44 magnum rifles and .44 magnum pistols in the belief that it would be logical to have interchangeable ammunition. Chuck is beginning to have second thoughts about the rifle, though. He is worried about its limited range in a survival combat situation. Survivalism is a posse concern.
"I'm not too concerned about the Russians," Audi said. "I'm concerned about the Cubans, Mexicans, blacks, the jobless ... especially with the new administration cutting off their freebies. For a preview, all you have to do is look at Miami."
Audi said she was in Detroit during that city's racial rioting. "I've known real fear. I know what can happen."
Among their preparations are food caches; Chuck asserts that he would shoot to defend his food.
Audi shakes her head. She is not comfortable about the idea and speculates about the possibilities of sharing food with the refugees.
Chuck said that there will be too many of them and he will shoot. "When they come out of the cities and they have nothing ... people do funny things when they are hungry."
"I don't know," said Audi. "You can't turn down starving kids."
Several other posse members joined the campsite interview. They were wary of reporters, however, and declined to say very much at all. They seemed to have a quieting affect on Chuck and Audi.
"Is The Globe a pro-Zionist newspaper," one of the men, Bob Tiegs, asked? "Do they support Israel?"
"They have run some supporting editorials," he was told.
"Whoa," he said grinning and shaking his head. "End of conversation."
Audi gave him a pained look, but there was little more talk with the posse until the next day.
To help survivalists in their preparations, Harrell brought together over fifty lecturers and instructors for a series of workshops and discussion groups. The topics ranged from personal and home defense, food preservation, and first aid to knife fighting, nuclear fallout protection, and survival base establishment. There were also political and religious workshops primarily dealing with what were considered the enemies of Christian America, Jews and communists.
Gerry Youghkins, a big, moon-faced country boy with arms and body thick with muscle and fat, gave the workshop on self-defense for men. He was dressed in the de rigueur outfit of military-surplus camouflage, black beret, and combat boots. Next to his chair sat a tray of weapons: brass knuckles, knives,clubs, chains. Their attitude toward "bureaucrats" was best expressed by one man who wants "to meet one of those sons a bitches in the alley behind the Wagon Wheel on a Saturday night after I've had a few Millers."
"We are talking about self-defense for when you can't call the policebecause there are no police. This is self-defense for total collapse conditions," Youghkins said. He proceeded to demonstrate a few basic, vicious street-fighting moves with a stick, a chain, his fists, and his feet.
"I kicked a guy in the groin once in a bar fight," he told his fascinated audience. "I kicked him hard, lifted him right off the ground. He stood there and looked at me. So. It is better to go for the eyes or the throat."
He began to display his edged weapons, for which he seemed to have a special affinity. He picked up a four-inch bladed folding hunter. "If you look rather casual with the knife when you flick it open, people don't like it." He stood there sort of loose and shambling, a plain expression on his face; then he suddenly clicked his knife open. He reached to the tray again.
"Now this," he said, waving an eight-inch fighting knife, "is not for everyone." He took a cut at the air. "It will cut a person's head off."
The audience muttered and stirred among themselves with interest. He was getting to the real goods now.
"Cut a man's hand when you fight him," Youghkins counseled. "He'll freeze. fascinated by the sight of his own blood. That's when you stick him in the throat. When you attack from the rear - if you ever have to take out asentry - stab him in the kidneys. That'll get him."
At the "Government Reestablishment after the Collapse" workshop, the moderator, Fred Weland, was guiding the discussion along lines that would result in a government along the lines of our present system. One particularly vocal participant was clearly not pleased. A democratic government, he felt, was what got us into our present trouble.
"The Bible says that at the Endtime, nations will gather unto nations. That means that people will go back to where they came from. Anyone who doesn't belong in the kind of society I want to live in will either be on a plane out or in the ground under."
Ray Baumgardt, a paunchy, fortyish fellow, told a small group about his work on the MO-ARK (Missouri-Arkansas) Survival Base. It is a two-hundred-and- twenty-acre section of woodlands that Harrell's own survivalist group, the Citizens Emergency Defense System, is developing as a retreat.
Baumgardt, a former music teacher in Wisconsin and a Posse Comatatus member, took over supervision of the league's base in September 1980. He lives on the property with his wife and two children in a primitive cabin. A nearby creek provides water.
"We have constructed a hundred-and twenty-foot-long building as a base headquarters," Baumgardt said. "All our labor is voluntary and contributed by Christian patriots. We have also cleared sixteen spaces for trailer camps with water hook-ups. But I can't establish this base myself," he told his audience. "I would encourage people interested in God's law to come down and work.
"We are not there for the short term. We are there for what is coming and for what will happen afterward."
He had a warning, though: "If you are not willing to follow God's laws, you are not going to make it. You will be axed."
Baumgardt, with his quiet music teacher mannerisms and appeal for practical, hard work, lost much of his audience. They drifted away in search of more exciting survivalist fantasies.
Bernard Zaynor had them. He was tall, young, and wiry and had a staccato, punchy delivery. He was from Chicago and possessed an exciting aura of a combat veteran, which impressed more than one Christian patriot farmer.
""By damm," said one. "He lives right in the city. He has to fight those niggers every day."
His workshop was "Crisis Relocation and Planning," and from the tone of his voice and his whole demeanor, he seemed absolutely serious. Many in the audience appreciated this. When you are just beginning to test the waters of the survivalist movement before diving in you can feel pretty foolish and self-conscious.
"Before you can relocate to a safe area," Zaynor said, "you must get out of the danger zone. So the first thing to do is have a good escape route. Have an alternate route. Have a CB radio so you know what is going on in the roadway. Then practice! Take a camping trip out along the route as a test.
"Make sure you take a month's supply of food.
"Use an older vehicle. If they see a new car they (the mobs roaming the streets under conditions of total and brutal anarchy, armed with knives, bottles, and implements of destruction, uttering hellish cries unlike any heard on earth* will go after you, figuring that you have money and food. Buy an old Cadillac. Take a hammer and give it a few dents. Make it look like one of those old bombs minorities drive. Maybe even put some shoe polish on your face.
"At all times keep your backpacks and food supplies packed and ready to go! Have a shotgun, twelve-gauge. Have a high-powered rifle. Have a .45 sidearm. Take something lighter, like a .22.
"Now men! Don't put your pack weight on the wife. She's got to watch the kids. Give her a .22 sidearm. The children, too. Twenty- two rifles. Conceal your longer weapons in the trunk. If you go through a roadblock, the authorities will stop and confiscate them if they see them.
"Remember. Practice. Prepare. Ponder. Think about what you will do.
"What would you do if you are driving with your family through the streets and a bullet comes through the window and smashes your son's brains all over the seat. What do you do? Do you stop? Cry? No! You bear down. You swallow your tears. You bite your lip and keep driving. You got the rest of the family to worry about.
"But! I want to tell you something. If you ever find yourself in such situations, it is too late! That's last-ditch escape. You should already be planning. A year early isn't too early, but a day late is too late!"
At this particular right-wing Woodstock, paranoia was the coin of the realm, and most of it was being spent on the Jews. At least ten of the workshops were devoted in part or entirely to Jews and Zionism. It seems the Jews are responsible for everything wrong in America:
They got the coloreds stirred up. They controlled banks and money lending and the Federal Reserve system. They controlled the news media. They were responsible for ERA and abortions. They took the silver out of coinage and took the country off the gold standard. They bought their way out of military service and started World War II for profit. They collected a hidden tax on all foods ("Look at that," a workshop instructor said, holding up a can, "right there on a can of Pringles. A "U.' That means it's kosher") thatwent right to the Anti-Defamation League.
Magazines and books were offered for sale that purported to tell the "truth" about the Nazi slaughter in the concentration camps (it never really happened). Other books told the story of who really killed Christ.
Harrell was suspicious of them.
"Many people think the Jews are God's people. They are not. The Israelites are God's people. The Jew has brainwashed the world into thinking that they are God's people."
Pastor Sheldon Emery, a special guest preacher, spoke in a corn- fed monotone about the "Jews' deceptions" and their control of international banking.
Brigadier General Gordon Mohr (brigadier general of the Christian Defense League, retired colonel of the US Army), a much-praised featured speaker at the festival, was virtually psychotic on the subject. Much of what he had to say in his spiraling paroxysms of anti-Semitic hate were both incoherent and unprintable.
Though many people sat through these diatribes nodding sagely in agreement, applauding, or adding a few pearls of their own, Audi Feitz of the Rock County Posse was upset.
"I'm not going to get involved in a hate movement," she said at her campsite on Sunday morning. "No way. If this means our marriage, then so be it."
She and her husband had had a fight the night before. She had been criticizing the posse's subscription to the hatred and her husband's acceptance of it and defense of his friends.
"My husband joined without conferring with me," she said. "I think he should have. Some of these posses are survivalist oriented, but I think that the group in Tigerton (Shawano County, Wisconsin* has gone overboard. They gave me the impression that they are looking for trouble. Their last lecture was on how to recognize Jews and shoot them. That was the last time I went to a meeting.
"But even my own husband, when he had to buy a part for the camp stove, he said, "Sheldon Coleman (a Jew* got me again.' "
Steven Rodgers was aloof and alone. He has joined no posses and drilled with no CSAs. "They're just a bunch of idiots playing at "cowboy and nigger,' " he said.
A roofer from Iowa (he wouldn't say which town), he said little through the first days of the festival, hanging back in the workshops, watching, taking notes. He was suspicious of strangers who asked questions.
But it was a dry camp. So he welcomed a chance to share a smuggled case of Ballantine ale. He had obeyed the rules and brought nothing to drinkhimself. On the floor of his pickup camper, however, from beneath a dirty Hudson's Bay blanket, protruded the sleek brown walnut stock of a shotgun, glowing warmly in the lamplight.
"No Firearms" was a festival prohibition he violated in spades. He pulled back the blanket and unzipped cases to display an awesome arsenal. And it was only his travel kit. There was a .45-caliber Colt automatic pistol "for infighting"; a shotgun; the time-tested Remington 870 pump in 12-gauge, a sure-fire riot-stopper; and a Ruger 77 bolt action in 30.06 with a sniper scope for those difficult long shots. Finally, there was a simple .22-caliber repeating rifle "for general harassing fire."
"If they were going to start something," Rodgers said, "this is the place they would do it, when we are all together without weapons." His "they" are "niggers, Puerto Ricans, Communists, whoever is gonna come boiling out of the cities when the shit-train comes."
"You got people in this country who don't know how to work. Two, three generations they've been living on food stamps and welfare and all that affirmative action money. They got to where they figure they got it coming to them. That we owe it to them, for Christ sake.
"What do you think is going to happen when things get to where we can't give them things anymore. Things are that way now. You can't tax the workingman anymore. That's why Reagan is trying to cut the budget. What are the niggers going to do when the budget says there's no more money for welfare. Riot, that's what. Look at what Jesse Jackson said.
"He said that if welfare gets cut there is going to be a "long hot summer.' That means riots, burning, looting, just like in Miami. But is't gonna be much worse. All those white guilty liberals in their suburbs are going to get his this time. Hell, if I was a nigger, that's what I'd do. Those people would never fight for what they have.
"You know, the police aren't going to be there to protect them. The cops are going to be protecting their own houses.
"New York is going to get it first. You got two million niggers, two million Puerto Ricans, and two million Jews. I can't think of anything worse. It's a powder keg. You know, God is going to punish them in that city. It will be a judgment in fire and death. He will kill them all."
The guns were at his feet and he looked down at them. "If any stragglers try to get me I'm going to pick them off," he said. He looked up and smiled, saying, "You know, Jesus was against the cities. It say so in the Bible." The Israelites of the Old Testament, that is, the Christian Identity Movement, of which survivalists make up a large part, believes that the biblical Israelites immigrated to Europe and from there, thousands of years later, to the United States, which is thought to be the true "promised land," where God will have his final battle with evil in Armageddon and emerge triumphant.
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August 25, 1981, Boston Globe - AP, page 1, No CIA Questions, Layton Judge Says,
A judge has refused to allow attorneys in the murder- conspiracy trial of former Peoples Temple member Larry Layton to question a US diplomat about his alleged CIA links. US District Judge Robert Peckham rejected arguments by defense attorney Tony Tamburello yesterday that the testimony of Richard Dwyer, former deputy chief of the US Mission in Guyana, was "tainted" by CIA connections.
Layton, 35, is charged with conspiracy to murder Rep. Leo Ryan (D- Calif.) and conspiracy to harm Dwyer, an internationally protected person.
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August 25, 1981, Boston Globe, page 7, Ryan was urged to leave Jonestown,
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August 25, 1981, Boston Globe, page 7, Ryan was urged to leave Jonestown,
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(Similar article:)
August 25, 1981, Lakeland Ledger, Diplomat testifies he urged Rep. Ryan to flee Jonestown,
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August 30, 1981, Boston Globe - AP, page 1, Slain Legislator's First Wife Dies, 59,
BURLINGAME, Calif. - Margaret M. Ryan, 59, the first wife of slain US Rep. Leo Ryan, died Friday at Peninsula Hospital after suffering an acute asthma attack. Hospitalized in the morning, she slipped into a coma and never regained consciousness.
Mrs. Ryan, a native of McClellan, Iowa, was married 23 years to Ryan, a San Mateo Democrat, before their divorce in 1971. Ryan was shot to death Nov. 18, 1978, on a jungle airstrip while on a trip investigating conditions at Jonestown, Guyana. Former Peoples Temple member Larry Layton is now on trial in federal court in San Francisco, charged with conspiracy to kill the lawmaker.
Mrs. Ryan leaves two sons and three daughters.
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September 8, 1981, Boston Globe, page 1, Defense Rests Its Case in Larry Layton Trial,
Defense attorneys for former Peoples Temple member Larry Layton rested their case before it began today in Layton's murder-conspiracy trial.
In a surprise move, Frank Bell, the public defender, told US District Judge Robert Peckham the defense would call no witnesses because, "We do not believe the evidence has established the charges in the indictment beyond a reasonable doubt, therefore we are not going to offer any further evidence."
Layton is charged with conspiring to kill Rep. Leo Ryan on a jungle airstrip in Guyana.
Bell made his statement outside the presence of the jury.
Peckham called a recess to allow prosecutors to regroup.
Bell declined to comment on what precipitated the decision, although there were reports over the weekend that defense lawyers were revising their case in light of what they called a weak prosecution.
Bell said the next step would be to discuss with Peckham what instructions would be given to the jury of seven women and five men.
On the last day of prosecution testimony Thursday, a Guyana police superintendent read the confession Layton made there in connection with the ambush slayings of Ryan and four others.
Layton said he was "responsible" for the killings, but he has since declared he made the statement under duress. He is charged here in a federal indictment with conspiring to attack Ryan, a California Democrat, and Richard Dwyer, former deputy US chief of mission in Guyana.
Dwyer was wounded, but survived the attack.
Hours after the Nov. 18, 1978, ambush, Rev. Jim Jones led 912 of his followers in a bizarre murder-suicide ritual. Ryan had visited the settlement to investigate complaints that Jones was mistreating his followers.
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September 8, 1981, Boston Globe, page 1, Latin America; US Hard Line Emerging, by Stephen Kinzer,
There were new signs this week of an emerging hard line from the United States toward leftist regimes in the Caribbean basin. In Grenada, leftist Prime Minister Maurice Bishop warned that the massive US Navy exercise now under way in the Caribbean might be a cover, under which his country would be invaded. The entire population of 110,000 was urged to mobilize, and the militia held a three-day defense exercise.
Meanwhile, President Forbes Burnham of Guyana accused the United States of collaborating with his neighbor, Venezuela, to destroy his Marxist regime. Venezuela claims most of Guyana's mineral-rich territory for itself. Burnham charged that the United States and Venezuela are acting together to prevent the Inter-American Development Bank from aiding his country.
In what is possibly a related development, US officials said in Washington that the United States is considering creating a new Spanish-language radio station to beam news and commentary into Cuba. It would be modeled after Radio Liberty, which is aimed at the Soviet Union, and Radio Free Europe. The officials also said they were moving to tighten the 20-year-old American trade embargo against Cuba, which they said being quietly violated by some US firms.
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September 9, 1981, Boston Globe, page 24, Layton defense rests,
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September 20, 1981, Boston Globe, page 4, Layton trial jury still deliberating, by Sherman, Spencer,
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September 27, 1981, Boston Globe - AP, page 5, Mistrial called in Larry Layton case, by Lisa Levitt,
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Peoples Temple transfer,
The way was cleared yesterday for the transfer of 588 unclaimed bodies of Peoples Temple murder-suicide victims from Delaware to California, according to Rep. Thomas B. Evans Jr. (R-Del.). Under the plan, the Emergency Relief Committee of San Francisco, using money obtained in the dissolution of Peoples Temple assets---estimated to be at least $12 million---will oversee the transportation effort,
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September 28, 1981, Boston Globe, page 6, Prosecution weighs bid to seek new Layton trial, by Lisa Levitt,
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October 2, 1981, Boston Globe - AP, page 1, Layton Freed, Faces 2d Trial,
A judge released Larry Layton on bail yesterday after government lawyers said they would try him for a second time in connection with the Guyana ambush that killed a California congressman. US District Judge Robert F. Peckham granted a $50,000 personal recognizance bond for Layton. It was the first time the former Peoples Temple member has been free since his 1978 arrest.
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October 25, 1981, Boston Globe, page 1, Heartbeat Explores Spirituality, by James L. Franklin, Globe Staff,
A year ago independent radio producer David Freudberg of Cambridge asked National Public Radio how much of its programming has dealt with the topic of religion.
Freudberg, a frequent contributor to NPR documentaries and feature segments on its fine evening newsmagazine, "All Things Considered," was then proposing a weekly series that would portray "how people in all walks of life develop spiritual values."
NPR's own figures showed that just 15 of the 2590 hours the network produced from October 1978 to September 1979 involved religious topics, or 0.6 percent. And while the next six months included extensive news coverage of the papal visit to the United States and the People's Temple murders and suicides in Guyana, the total was just 19 of 1400 program hours, or 1.4 percent.
The results did not surprise Freudberg. "Rather than trying to probe the deepest part of human experience," he said, "public broadcasting has turned its back on religion and spirituality for fear of appearing sectarian," he said.
David Creagh, former executive producer of "All Things Considered," agrees. "This is the area public radio has covered least well," said Creagh, who is now general manager of radio station KLON-FM in Long Beach, Calif. "We never had anybody on the staff who was expert, and we had a sort of fear that people would be offended if we did too much on any one religious group."
But NPR, whose news and public affairs programming on any day of the week gives a crash course in how good radio can be, also has an Extended Programming Service that gives independent producers like Freudberg a chance to distribute their work to the public network's member stations.
And NPR's Program Development Fund makes grants to encourage quality programming by these independents. Creagh said the fund's seven-member panel voted unanimously to provide Freudberg with almost $15,000, the maximum grant allowable, because religion is a neglected subject in NPR's own programming and because "we were impressed that a producer of that caliber was proposing to explore why people have religion."
That grant, which amounted to about a third of the series' budget, represents a significant commitment, Creagh believes, and it is the first time the public network has provided such support for the coverage of religion.
The result is a 26-part series called "Heartbeat," which now runs on WGBH- FM (4:30 p.m., Sundays,fourth program in that series airs today). The series opens again today at 6 p.m. on WBUR-FM.
The first program, called "Kindred Spirits," surveys the many different languages that people use to relate to God. A Hindu speaks of "the cool and peaceful life." A Baptist talks about "a peace that passeth all understanding." A Jew warns about over-intellect utilizing one's relationship with God. A Buddhist talks of "exploring one's own experience so that inherent or latent tendencies of grasping or desire or anger or judgment or fear can be revealed rather than remain unconscious."
"Distinct metaphors, and yet, all expressions of a common yearning," the producer said.
Freudberg, who says that even after 10 years of producing he's still learning how to make a radio documentary, spent hundreds of hours listening in making the series. Some of what he shares in the Heartbeat series includes boxer and showman Muhammad Ali abdicating in front of Freudberg's microphone: "I don't say I am the greatest no more. It's Allahu Akbar' - God is the greatest . . . Now I'm just a little nobody who's going to die one day and meet our maker and he's going to judge us on how we treated people."
Other programs include conversations with Elisabeth Kubler-Ross about what dying patients teach their doctors - "we run after values that, at the moment of death, become zero" - with Norman Cousins about his own encounter with mortality - "panic is a disease in itself and you certainly don't want to add this disease to the other because the combination can be lethal" - and with Bawa Muhaiyadeen, a Moslem holy man or sufi - "find the truth and take it and taste it . . . for that taste you'll give up everything."
What distinguishes the series is Freudberg's willingness to record the mood, the commitment, even the practice of religious people and not to focus only on controversy within organized religious groups or their conflict with the rest of the world.
Most of those who do take seriously this intimate part of human life do so to raise money or membership for their own religious enterprises.
That's what discourages many broadcasters from spending time with the subject. One of the agencies using NPR's low-cost, public access satellite system to distribute programs to member stations is the Protestant Radio and Television Foundation in Atlanta, which for 36 years has produced a high- quality program called "The Protestant Hour."
Asked whether the new distribution arrangement, which began in August, represents an endorsement of the program, an NPR spokesman bristled. "We are just the distributor," said Ann Pincus of NPR. "We tend to stay very far away from religious topics. There is an enormous amount of local religious programming . . . and there is nothing in our charter that says we need to do it. We deal with religion at Christmas or Chanukah but that's about it."
In view of that distaste, David Freudberg views the funding decision as "a great victory for God.
"The more we get to know people who are Hindus, for instance, we find it isn't Hinduism but people who hurt, love, search, who have moments of insight and confusion. It's a great experience to have your preconceptions blown away."
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.
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Abstract (Document Summary)
NPR's Program Development Fund makes grants to encourage quality programming by these independents. [David Creagh] said the fund's seven-member panel voted unanimously to provide [David Freudberg] with almost $15,000, the maximum grant allowable, because religion is a neglected subject in NPR's own programming and because "we were impressed that a producer of that caliber was proposing to explore why people have religion."
Freudberg, who says that even after 10 years of producing he's still learning how to make a radio documentary, spent hundreds of hours listening in making the series. Some of what he shares in the Heartbeat series includes boxer and showman Muhammad Ali abdicating in front of Freudberg's microphone: "I don't say I am the greatest no more. It's Allahu Akbar' - God is the greatest . . . Now I'm just a little nobody who's going to die one day and meet our maker and he's going to judge us on how we treated people."
Asked whether the new distribution arrangement, which began in August, represents an endorsement of the program, an NPR spokesman bristled. "We are just the distributor," said Ann Pincus of NPR. "We tend to stay very far away from religious topics. There is an enormous amount of local religious programming . . . and there is nothing in our charter that says we need to do it. We deal with religion at Christmas or Chanukah but that's about it."
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MANAGUA, Nicaragua - Four armed men and a woman yesterday hijacked a Honduran jetliner carrying 84 other persons, including about 20 US citizens, ordered it to land here and demanded freedom for Salvadoran leftists jailed in Honduras.
The five hijackers later released 39 of the hostages, including at least one of the US citizens aboard the New Orleans-bound Boeing 737 of the TAN- SAHSA airline. The American was identified only as Mike Magger. His hometown was not given.
The hijackers, armed with pistols and submachine guns, allowed 29 women, six children and four men to leave the plane - surrounded by troops of Nicaragua's leftist government - in midday heat that reached 94 degrees.
The Honduran foreign minister, Col. Cesar Elvir Sierra, speaking with reporters in the capital of Tegucigalpa, said 38 passengers, the five hijackers and a crew of seven were still aboard the plane.
A Honduran television correspondent, Magra Navarro, one of the freed passengers, said in a telephone call to her station that she believed the hijackers would order that the plane with the hostages and crew be flown to Cuba, Guyana or Algeria.
She said the hijackers were demanding that Honduras release 15 Salvadoran leftists. El Salvador shares a border with Honduras, and Salvadoran leftists fighting to topple their US-backed government often cross the border to escape capture by Salvadoran troops.
A Honduran government spokesman reported one of the Salvadorans named by the hijackers was Facundo Guardado, who they claimed was captured in Honduras in February. The Honduran government has denied holding him.
Government sources in Tegucigalpa said the hijackers also had nine other demands, but the sources did not disclose them.
They said a commission was being formed to fly to Managua for direct negotiations with the hijackers.
Airport authorities in Tegucigalpa said one hijacker threatened to detonate a bomb if the demands were not met.
A Honduran woman and her two children were the first allowed off the plane. She reportedly said the two children had cancer and she was taking them to New Orelans for treatment. The freed passengers were awaiting a special flight back to Tegucigalpa.
Navarro, who called her station from Managua's Sandino airport, said she believed the hijackers were Salvadorans. The airline director-general in Tegucigalpa said he thought they hijackers were Nicaraguans.
The jet was commandeered shortly after takeoff from Tegucigalpa at 8:45 a.m. (9:45 a.m. EST) on a flight scheduled for the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula and then to Belize and New Orleans.
An hour later the plane landed here and was surrounded by soldiers as it taxied to a stop at the west end of the runway.
A Nicaraguan government spokesman said Vice Interior Minister Luis Carrion Cruz would serve as intermediary between Honduran authorities and the hijackers.
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April 18, 1981, Boston Globe, page 4, A new look at Jim Jones, by Russell Chandler,
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April 26, 1981, Boston Globe, page 1, News Analysis; The Horror and Fascination of the Events in Jonestown, by Bill Carter,
There is something nagging about what happened at Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978.
Call it an unwillingness to suspend disbelief. After all the news reports, a long, graphic "docu-drama" on CBS television, and books by the score, the principal question remains unanswered:
How could madness have existed on a scale large enough to account for the suicide - and murder - of 911 people?
That question is responsible for the continuing, almost macabre fascination with Jim Jones and the events of Jonestown. It's as though it can't be dropped until it can be explained, or understood. Maybe it can only be erased as a threat when someone can really say why it happened.
But it ought to be obvious by now that absolute madness provides - and demands - no explanations. If that wasn't clear before, it should be after 90 minutes of listening to the fulminations of Jim Jones.
They were heard on National Public Radio last week, and they can be heard again in Boston on Tuesday at 10 p.m. on WGBH radio, and then again on Sunday, May 17, at 6 p.m., on WBUR.
Originally the tapes were confiscated by the FBI. But a suit brought by James Reston Jr. under the Freedom of Information Act freed all but a select few of the tapes. Reston and another scriptwriter, Noah Adams (one of the weekend anchors of NPR's "All Things Considered"), edited the mass of material and worked it into a chronological format.
The result is "Father Cares: The Last of Jonestown," a radio documentary of powerful, disturbing dimension. It is upsetting, shocking, chilling, always bizarrely fascinating even as the tapes strain all rationale for listening. The show provides all the emotional trauma you might expect from a descent into human madness.
The Jim Jones that appears by voice on these tapes is a stark, raving crazy man. No one of reason could conclude anything else, after even a few minutes of listening to his hysterical babbling, his often purposeless ranting, his chilling cackle of a laugh.
But an entire community of educated American citizens listened to these constant exhibitions of profound psychosis and regarded his words as some perverse kind of new testament.
The words themselves are the meaningless pronouncements of a preacher- perfor mer whose theatrical nonsense has gone hopelessly berserk. Jones flies into an endless cant full of the mumbo-jumbo of an experienced charismatic speaker who has nothing of sense to say, but plenty of style in the way he says it.
Like all high-octane preachers, accustomed to wooing masses from in front of a microphone, he speaks in code words - fascism, racism, hatred. He rants at capitalism like a demogogue and lauds the joys of communism, though it's clear he has little or no idea what any of those political philosophies are about. It's all the ritual dance of a religious fanatic whose hold over his flock is based on emotional - never rational - dependence.
Early on, Jones reveals his obsession with death images and his suicidal tendencies. He speaks of dying or killing whenever his idealized vision - whatever the heck it was - seems threatened by an intrusion of reality. In the first segment of the program he is heard advocating the only alternative to abandoning his vision to the "anarchy" of the outside world:
"I'd rather bring it all to a gallant, glorious, screaming end."
In one particularly horrifying section, Jones asks his followers, whosefamilies have been attempting to gain information about what is really happening in Guyana, to spell out for him what they would do to members of their own families rather than turn on "Dad."
One says, "I'd like to kill my so-called brother." Another talks of disposing of a sister as though she were christening a ship: "If her skull is split, that's fine." A child is most inventive in describing how he'd take one of the Jonestown enemies and "cut him up and then put poison in him and invite all my relatives over there to eat him."
These messages of support so delight Jones that his deranged cackling punctuates every remark.
When he isn't luring his flock toward killing themselves or others, Jones can be heard insulting them and glorifying himself. His speeches are full of bombastic nonsense - and utter craziness. At one point he bellows: "You, who are pissants . . . lower than primates, can make your whoopie, but your whoopie makes me sickie."
Jim Jones was plenty sickie. And listening to his sickness, and that of those around him, feels at times like a trip to one of those cheapo, drive-in horror movies. What sense is there in paying any attention at all to one demented man's hideous ravings?
Perhaps it only makes sense in terms of recognition. Fanatics have performed atrocities in the name of causes countless times before, whether for religion, or nationalism, or morality, or ethnic purity. Jones was even in touch with the symbolism of such madness. His journey to the jungle was his personal trip into the heart of darkness.
On the Jonestown tapes, one of his disciples thrills him by leading the congregation in song. "I never heard a man speak like this man before," she sings.
The words may be different, more bizarre in some ways, but we've heard other men speak like this before.
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May 17, 1981, Boston Globe, page A67, Jonestown: The promised land became a sewer, by Margaret Manning,
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June 16, 1981, Boston Globe, page L1, Book Review; Intriguing Story with Much Still Missing, by Tom Long, Globe Staff,
OUR FATHER WHO ART IN HELL: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF JIM JONES by James Reston Jr. Times Books. 338 pp. $14.95.
It has been three years since the tragic event, but the haunting image of the bloated, decomposing corpses of Rev. Jim Jones' 900-odd disciples still floats in the memory like a half-remembered nightmare.
Questions still remain:
Was it a mass suicide, much like that of the 1st-century zealots of Masada, who took their own lives rather than submit to the authority of a Roman government that persecuted them?
Or was it the act of a deranged preacher with one eye on the history books intent on self-destruction and willing to take his followers along, like the ancient Chinese and Egyptian rulers who had their slaves entombed with them?
Who was Jim Jones, and what hold did he have on his ragtag band of black urban poor, the elderly and disenchanted white youths?
In pursuing this bizarre, apocalyptic "novel in reality," James Reston Jr. relies heavily on documents and tapes retrieved from the US government through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. Jones had a Nixonian sense of history; he taped his lectures and phone calls and kept copies of all his correspondence, especially when his band had emigrated to Guyana to escape the persistent criticism of the US media. Although the material is riveting - the rantings and ravings of a spellbinding, satanic prophet - the technique is less than revealing, since Jones is rarely portrayed when he's not on stage.
Contradictions abound:
Jones posed as a great radical and crusader for racial justice; yet the congregation of his People's Temple, while 90 percent black, was run by a small clique of young white women.
Jones led his band to Guyana seeking freedom from persecution; yet he set up a "relationship counsel" that had to approve sexual liaisons, both heterosexual and homosexual.
He sent out his "professional prostitutes" to trade their bodies for political information; had a "supervisor of political enlightenment" who indoctrinated members, and had beefy "angels" who enforced his rules through beatings and confinement in an underground isolation chamber. Jones held together his inner circle through a doctrine of "revolutionary sex," bestowing his sexual favors on both men and women of his inner circle.
Jones began his career as a charismatic preacher in Illinois, moved to California and became involved in community work. He eventually arrived in Guyana as a confirmed atheist and espouser of communism, preaching incomprehensibly late into the night in the obscene cadence of street language. But he cannot easily be dismissed as a nut; he was chairman of the San Francisco Housing Authority and arrived in Guyana with a portfolio of laudatory letters from Walter Mondale, Joseph Califano and Senators Mike Gravel, Hubert Humphrey, Sam Ervin and Warren Magnuson.
Reston barely scratches the surface of this intriguing story. Jones' congregation was mainly black and poor, but he examines the congregation through the life histories of two wealthy young white women. Most of the congregation gladly followed Jones to their deaths; yet there's no probing examination of the dynamics of group psychosis.
The critical years, when Jones must have formulated his ideals and expectations, are given only a cursory glance. The image of those haunting photographs still remains, but Reston offers little flesh and blood to give life to the bodies.
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June 16, 1981, Boston Globe - AP, page 1, Delayed Trial Wanted,
Lawyers for Larry Layton say they want the former Peoples Temple cultist's murder-conspiracy trial postponed.
Layton, 35, is scheduled to go on trial July 9 in connection with the Nov. 18, 1978, ambush-slaying of Rep. Leo Ryan, D-Calif., at the Port Kaituma airstrip near Jonestown, Guyana.
The lawyers said yesterday they wanted a 90-day continuance because they haven't received Layton-related government documents under the Freedom of Information Act.
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June 16, 1981, Boston Globe, page 1, Latin America; Dispute Over Planes, by Stephen Kinzer,
Venezuela wants to become the first South American country to buy advanced American F16 fighter planes, but neighboring Guyana doesn't like the idea.
The Venezuelans, traditional allies of the United States, have asked for 24 of the modern aircraft. Unofficial sources in Washington say the request is being given favorable consideration.
But last week, Guyana's minister of foreign affairs, Rashley Jackson, sent a diplomatic note to the State Department asking that the sale not be approved. There has been increased tension between the two countries lately. Venezuela claims that an 1899 treaty setting its border is not valid and that it is the rightful owner of more than half of Guyana.
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June 30, 1981, Boston Globe - AP, page 1, In This Corner; History's Bottom Ten, by Mike Feinsilber,
Ivan the Terrible made the list, and so did Idi Amin, but Hitler and Stalin were the only unanimous choices when the faculty at the Catholic University of America yesterday named the 10 worst villains of all time.
Jack the Ripper and the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini made dishonorable mentions.
The history and political science faculties were asked to consider the candidates' impact on history, their brutality and whether their villainy was deliberate. About 30 professors participated.
Here are the choices, listed in chronological order, with the university's comments:
Caligula (12-41 A.D.): "He was single-handedly responsible for squandering much of the Roman Empire's early riches for his own pleasures, which included reported incestuous relationships with his sisters. . . . Left a chilling reputation for degradation and cruelty."
Nero (37-68): "Among his deeds were the setting afire of Rome so that he could build a city more aesthetically pleasing, the murders of many Roman government officials opposed to his power, the sparking of several civil wars and the squandering of much of the Roman Army's salaries for his own foolish delights."
Atilla the Hun (?-453): "He ravaged the Mideast and Europe in countless attempts to gain control over the known world in the 5th Century."
Catherine de Medici (1519-1589), the only woman chosen: "As the queen of France, she pitted the two strongest religious groups, the Catholics and the French Calvinists, against each other. . . . She hoped to gain absolute power by wiping out the Calvinists."
Ivan the Terrible (1530-1581): "Ivan IV Vasilievich, Russian czar, maintained a steady flow of wars to keep his people busy. . . . Known for his fits of rage, including one in which he killed his son and heir for some unknown reason."
Abul-Hamid II (1842-1918): "The 34th ruler of the Ottoman Empire, infamous for setting up murders and blaming his opposition for the crimes. . . ."
Adolf Hitler (1889-1945): "He and his comrades Alfred Rosenberg, Rudolf Hess, Hermann Goring and Julius Streicher led Germany into World War II to gain control over the entire continent of Europe. Though his dreams were not realized, his damage is unforgettable."
Joseph Stalin (179-1953): "Stalin's tactics are his claim to infamy. He institutionalized terrorism . . . considered responsible for the deaths and deprivation of millions of people throughout Eastern Europe."
Mao Tse-Tung (1893-1976): "Untold millions of people were killed and millions expelled to Taiwan when Mao established the People's Republic of China in the form of a communist tyranny on the mainland."
Idi Amin (1925- ): "The only living person in the poll. During his reign, he was thought to have killed more than 90,000 people while expelling nearly 60,000 others from his country of Uganda."
Runners-up included the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran; Jack the Ripper; Napoleon; Mary Queen of Scots; King Louis XIV of France; King George III of England; Rev. Jim Jones of the Peoples Temple, who led more than 900 followers to suicide; Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and Col. Moammar Khadafy, chief of state of Libya. Neville Chamberlain, prime minister of Britain in the '30s, was also considered, "not for evil intent," but for "perhaps one of the worst blunders in history - signing the Munich pact with Hitler."
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August 23, 1981, Boston Globe - AP, page 1, Getting Ready For Armageddon; The Survivalists Believe the End Is Coming--Communism, Revolt in the Cities, Destruction and Death, 6,067 words
West. That is where you will find them. West, past the coastal cities swathed in confusion and violence, past the cheap suburban sprawl of New Jersey, past the stripped forests and slag heaps of Pennsylvania, past the industrialized deserts of Ohio, in the heartland of plains and mountains, that is where they are buying guns.
Out where the radio plays sad country songs about busted hopes, lost loves, daddies who ran out, and mommas who die alone, that is where they are hoarding food.
In places where you see "Jesus Saves" signs and the Bible thumpers rant in fairground revival tents and on five-thousand-watt radio stations about what is written in Ezekiel and Revelations about God and the Beast and the Anti-christ, that is where they are building bomb shelters.
In places where even the scruffiest, drugged-out hitchhikers speak of Jesus and being vorn again, where at night, over the CB, drunken country boys and would-be preachers scream tangled screeds of Bible passages and White Power at the truckers passing through on Route 70, where Kill Khomeini Kwik is spray-painted on roadside rocks, that is where they are burying gasoline.
In places where the only news of New York and Los Angeles - Sodom and Gomorrah, those decadent, effete co-stars in sin-is of violence, drugs, degrading sex, cancerous corruption, of a hundred laughing thugs watching a lone white boy from Connecticut die naked on the subway tracks, of ten thousand "faggots" marching through the streets, of rioting "niggers" looting and burning, of welfare "cheaters" demanding more and more handouts, and of the "Jew" politicians who give it to them, of floods of Mexican wetbacks and the brown-tinged California madness of food shortages, fuel shortages, earthquakes ...
Out where it seems nothing is going right and everything is going wrong, where the plains stretch from horizon to horizon and you can almost see the Russians rolling tanks through the corn and hear the hordes of starving refugees from the cities swarming across the clean fields and country towns like a biblical plague of locusts, that is where you will find the Survivalists waiting for Armageddon.
Louisville, Illinois, two hundred miles downstate from Chicago, is one of those small towns in which, when a presidential candidate visits, he is described as "working the hustings." It is a classic small town of a thousand residents with a courthouse square and green at its center and sun-scored old farmers sitting on benches, spitting and whittling and watching tractors go by. There are no parking meters or traffic lights, and the sidewalks are those double- high embankments you find in older towns.
It is the kind of town where candidates who fancy themselves "populists" like to be seen in, filmed by TV crews talking to the men hanging out in Dean's Barber Shop, listening to the housewives complain in the Lucky Dollar Food Store, maybe even visiting one of the surrounding farm fields to rub a handful of topsoil between their fingers and squint, handsome in the sun.
Reporters love these small towns as well. Those canny old coots in the barbershop are thought to possess the same keen political insights as big-city cab drivers, and they can usually be counted on to dispense some colorful and homely little metaphor, usable as a tag line in a Sunday"Week in Review" article, "The Mood of the Midwest."
Well, this is a drought year in much of the Midwest, and the mood of the boys in the barbershop is irritable. It has been hot and humid since April, and there has been little rain to settle the dust that hangs constantly in the air, drifting in from the fields to stick to sweaty skin in a fine and scratchy coat, gummy at the back of your throat. The last thing anyone wants to talk about is "Johnny Bob" Harrell and his Freedom Festival.
They have been asked to explain Johnny Bob for over twenty years now, through his fire-eating career of ceaseless warfare against Communism, socialism, Zionism, modernism, secular humanism, and any other "ism" that he feels is a threat to "Americanism," and they are a little tired of it.
It is understandable. Explaining John R. "Johnny Bob" Harrell is not easy. To say he is merely a colorful local character is an understatement . He is a rainbow, and the primary colors are red, white, and blue. He is a superpatriot of a particular America that hasn't been yet but he hopes will be soon.
He is often mistaken for a preacher - an easy mistake to make. With his handsome, ruddy face, striking white hair, dark blue suits, and rolling evangelical style of speaking, he looks like a preacher. And he knows his Bible and alludes to it frequently in responses to questions that are not answers but sermons. Harrell is a man with a vision, a jingoistic Jeremiah with prophecies of doom for America as we know her. It is all so clear to him.
First the collapse:
"The collapse of our country is coming. The signs are too many, too ominous, and too numerous. The country is ripe for it. We are at the bottom of the barrel, morally, militarily, economically, and socially.
"It will begin on the inside with racial and economic problems. The cities are going to explode into burning, rioting and anarchy."
Then will come the invasion:
"We will be invaded, plundered, and we'll lose half our country. The stage is set. Cuba is communist. The Russians are moving tanks into Central America. The Canal is gone. The Caribbean is a Russian lake. All of southern Mexico is communist.
"Our enemies are real. They can't be denied. The government is spending $150 billion a year on defense, so there must be a real enemy."
There will be a dark time when we will lose the battles:
"We are a marshmallow people ... a Twinkie people. I think if you turn off the electricity and the water and make Americans use outdoor toilets, half of the people will surrender right away. Americans are a weak, pampered people.
"The country will be split assunder into four parts - a black America (the East Coast*, a Hispanic America (the Southwest and California*, a Cuban America (Florida and parts of the South*, and a Caucasian, patriotic America in the Midwest."
But the white Christian America will win the war through God's help.
"We believe that we are a biblically destined nation. We are God's people. It will be a time that will test patriots, but make no mistake about it, we will win."
His job is to warn us and help us to prepare.
"Our job is to warn the American people that we are moving into a dictatorship. Either we will pick our leaders or the enemy will.
"We are looking for Christians who see the trouble ahead. There aren't many dedicated patriots left in this country, but we hope to amass twenty-five to thirty million of the fiercest patriots the world has ever seen to preserve this country. We are headed for this crisis whether we want it or not. We will lose half our people, but will be successful!"
Heady stuff, Armageddon.
It may be tempting to write off John Harrell as a more interesting species of crackpot except that he is not alone in his ideas.
While our eastern Elmer Gantrys - the Moonies, the Scientologists, the Krishnas - have adopted sophisticated marketing techniques to move their doctrines, with Midwest preachers it is still the hellfire and the final thunder that sells, and the radio, television, and newspapers are full ofpreachers warning of the approach of Judgment Day. Add to that the unsettled times we are experiencing, the steady parade of economists warning of monetary disaster, sociologists warning of urban disorders in the wake of Reagan budget cuts, defense analysts warning of military unpreparedness, and everything else in our daily diet of information that has been making for an anxious atmosphere in America these past few years (a "national malaise" ex-President Carter called it), and you have a context in which Harrell, and others like him are quite convincing to increasing numbers of Americans.
Just how many Americans is hard to say. A key tenet of survivalism is that you don't broadcast that you have a basement full of Krugerrands, guns, and freeze-dried food. All one can do is look at the surface indicators and by those indicators the movement is large and growing.
Books like Howard Ruff's How to Prosper During the Coming Bad Years, John Creasy's The Coming Currency Collapse, and similar titles are million-copy best-sellers. Soldier of Fortune, a monthly magazine geared to militarism and survivalism, has a circulation approaching two hundred thousand and has inspired two successful emulators, Eagle and Gung Ho. A developer in Utah has been marketing underground condominiums designed for survival, to a gratifying response. The Mormon church is actively encouraging its more than three million members to store a year's worth of food for the coming hard times, and even staid publications like the Wall Street Journal have been carrying advertisements promoting long-term-storage foods for unnamed emergencies that will leave the store shelves bare.
There is some disagreement among survivalists as to what exactly will happen. Many are primarily worried about economic disruption and are transferring their paper assets to investments with intrinsic value, such as gold, silver, art, and antiques. They hope to make it through a period of currency collapse, hyperinflation, and restructuring with their present wealth intact.
Others do not see how the decline can stop with "just hard times" and see serious social disorder as inevitable. Their scenarios go into uncharted realms of massive urban rioting, revolt, food shortages, race war, even invasion by communists using the confusion as an opportunity.
These survivalists aren't buying antiques. They are buying weapons and learning how to use them. They are stockpiling food and building fortified retreats. They are joining paramilitary units with their neighbors and setting up backwoods military bases.
Harrell has been involved in the movement since he formed the Christian- Patriots Defense League three years ago. Membership is free and open to all Caucasian "Christian-patriots." Harrell formed it as sort of an umbrella organization under which the fragmented and ceaselessly squabbling elements of the political and religious far right could gather, once a year, to pool their resources, ideas, and expertise regarding survival and the coming fall of America.
"We have everything here from a turkey buzzard to a turtledove," Harrell said of the people attracted to the CPDL Freedom Festival held in early July at Harrell's estate.
The three thousand people who came to learn how to survive certainly did run the gamet of hard-core doomseers. The Christian fundamentalists, political conservatives, Nazis, Klansmen, assorted unaffiliated racists and Jew-haters, the hard-money proselytizers, anarchists, violence junkies, frustrated soldiers, conspiracy seekers, unemployed factory workers, farmers, cops, scared suburbanites, fed-up city people, and preachers without portfolios were a fair and broad sampling of a certain segment of American society. Their fear and anger over "the way things are" was born sometime during the civil rights and women's liberation movements, the rise of crime, the battle over abortion, the loss in Vietnam, Nixon's resignation, the energy crisis, Iran, urban rioting, double- digit inflation, and all the other triphammer punches that have hit conservative Americans right between the eyes these past two decades.
The crisis that they talk about constantly is viewed almost with relief as a chance to, once and for all, separate the wheat from the chaff. After the separating is over they intend to pick up the pieces and "put this country back on the right tract."
"You are among an elite group," Harrell told them at the welcoming ceremonies. "Haven't you always thought you were special?"
Camping on Harrell's fifty-five-acre estate was free and encouraged as a way to "help condition and train and temper all of us for the much more prolonged and dangerous days ahead," and hundreds took up the offer. Every level spot on the rambling acreage was occupied by a motly assemblage of tents, Winnebagos, pickup trucks, vans, and motor homes, many flying American flags, the Confederate stars and bars, and "Don't Tread on Me" banners. Although it was hot and dusty and the facilities were primitive, the atmosphere seemed friendly. A large contingent of children and dogs running in and out of the sites made it all seem much like any one of the thousands of private campgrounds that stretch from here to Disneyland, except for the men in camouflage uniforms armed with shotguns, assault rifles, knives, machetes,clubs - just about every weapon you can think of.
They were from the CSA, "The Covenant, the Sword, the Arm of the Lord," a Christian fundamentalist prophetic paramilitary survivalist group based in Missouri. They were at the festival to provide security. A man like Harrell tends to attract various leftists, Jewish, and black groups, and the CSA men were patrolling the perimeter of the estate, stationed on the cupola on the roof of Harrell's Mount Vernon reproduction mansion. They also checked the cars coming in and out of the festival through the banner-and- bunting-bedecked gate underneath the sign "Welcome Patriots."
The group was founded about ten years ago and is centered around its own church, the Zaraphath-Horeb church. It is a fundamentalist church, and holds to the tenets of the Christian identity movement, which believes that the United States is a nation of destiny dating back to the Old Testament writings and that American Christians are the true descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. The Jews are viewed as usurpers and false claimants to the title of Chosen People.
According to Kerry Noble, 29, an ordained minister in the church, there are twenty-three families, eighty-five men, women, and children, living on two hundred acres near the Missouri-Arkansas border in what amounts to a survivalist commune.
"We share the land, but we have our own houses," Noble said.
The group supported itself for the first years by cutting cedar and doingironwork. They have recently established an Endtime Overcomer Survival School and hope to support themselves from the income. They operate it on a "no fixed charge, donation" basis and offer courses in urban warfare, riflery and pistol craft, military tactics, wilderness survival, and the like. It is all part of the group's own ongoing military training and preparation for what they are predicting will be total collapse.
"I think there will be economic collapse," said Noble, "followed by race riots, Russian invasion - everything you can imagine will happen, only ten times worse." He thinks it may begin within only two years, although he emphasizes that this is only his personal guess.
"Our goal is primarily defensive," he said of the CSA. After the war, they will seek to "rebuild America as a Christian country."
"The coming war is a step toward God's government," said Noble.
Ansel Watts, a loose-limbed southern man dressed in army fatigues and carring a fighting knife, was another member who got involved with the group about six years ago.
"I got saved in 1975," he said. "Randall and me (Randall E. Radar, defense minister-field commander of the CSA* are ex-drug addict hippies. One day I saw Randall and he had his hair cut and he was wearing clean clothes.From my viewpoint at that time, I thought there was something drastically "wrong' with him.
"He said to me, "Ansel, I found what we been looking for. It's Jesus Christ.' I thought to stay away from him, but I went to a church meeting and it was so different. The spirit of God was at the meeting."
The CSA is concerned about the direction in which it sees the world going and forecasts nothing but disaster. It began to realize that the "endtime" was near, Ansel said, from watching the television news and "from prophecies the Lord has given us," and from omens.
The Jonestown tragedy in Guyana was one such omen.
"I don't know how much truth has been written about that whole thing. I saw it as the persecution of Christian groups. He (Jones* was trying to live apart, nondenominational, Christian ... we are trying to do the same thing."
Truck strikes and fuel shortages were other omens.
"We know that New York has a six-day food supply. If any of the truck strikes (1973-1974 and 1979* had lasted longer, food would have run out and you would have had real trouble."
In preparation for real trouble, Ansel trains regularly with the others in paramilitary maneuvers. The men of the CSA are divided up into three squads, an A team, a B team, and a SS (special squad). The men favor H and K- 91 assault rifles with the powerful .308 cartridge; the Ruger Mini 14Carbine, probably the most popular survival weapon; and an assortment of pistols and shotguns.
The CSA women's auxiliary was also present at the festival, a squad of about half dozen. The daughters of adult members, they ranged in age from 13 to 17 and were armed with .22-caliber rifles. In a demonstration, they marched in formation well, were disciplined, and showed quick response to simulated ambush. Half the squad returned fire at the "ambushers" while the other half leapt into a roadside ditch to begin returning fire and covering the retreat of the first half.
Ansel's friend Randall Rader trained the girls as he did the men. He said he was never in the service himself and said "Jesus Christ" taught him to train them.
Ansel Watts said he was trained as a combat engineer. "I can blow bridges or buildings - do whatever is neccesary to fight them."
"Them" are city dwellers retreating to their vacation homes in the CSA's area of influence.
"It's a recreational area. There's a big lake there. The city people have said to us that if there was an emergency, they would just take what they needed from us. We just smile and tell them go ahead and try," Watts said.
To facilitate training for themselves and their students, the CSA people have built a "town" of one-and two-story stone and wood structures.
"In training we use firecrackers to simulate gunfire. We want people to feel the stress of combat. You walk through our town, and you find yourself getting keyed up," said Watts.
He is not optimistic about the days ahead. "Most men are evil, it says in the Bible. God will judge us. Some will live and some will die. ... Most will die.
"We (the CSA* are instruments of God's judment. We are fighting for God's country, not bureaucracy.
"I don't want to have to shoot anyone but I know that I will have to.
"I look forward to being able to die for what God wants to establish. The Scripture says, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil.' I want people to know that I love God and am willing to lay down my life for Him."
A long strip of some of the best camping spots were cordoned off by rope. "Reserved for Rock County" read small paper signs.
A middle aged couple who appeared friendly were sitting in front of their camper on one of the reserved spots. They were Chuck and Audi Fietz of Rock County and they explained that the spots were reserved for the Posse Comatatus of Rock County, Wisconsin.
Chuck tried to outline exactly what the Posse Comatatus is, but his explanation was unclear. Posse Comatati (which they say translates to "power of the people") have been springing up all over the upper Midwest, and they are still in the process of coalescing and finding their platform. Buy some definitions they are a constitutionally authorized (by some state constitutions) militia that assists the sheriff in time of trouble. Right now, however, they seem to be a loose affiliation of worried men and women with a variety of fears and hates.
Chuck Fietz is a semi-retired real estate appraiser. Audi is a college administrator. They have been married for only a year, and she is new to the posse.
"I'm being converted," she says.
"Or awakened," Chuck suggests.
Yet the process of conversion is not going smoothly. There are aspects of the Posse that Audi feels uncomfortable with, and that becomes apparent as her husband begins to talk.
The Rock County Posse was formed about two years ago. Chuck wouldn't say how many members it has, though at least nine campers and tents occupied Rock County turf at the festival.
"Just say we are a decent-sized group of nice people," he said with a smile.
Prospective members must be recommended by a member, and Chuck said they are checked with a voice stress (lie detector) machine to screen out government informers.
"I think that is terrible," Audi said. "You're doing exactly what you object to the government doing."
The posses have regular meetings, and the members engage in guerrilla war training in the Wisconsin backwoods. Chuck and Audi have purchased .44 magnum rifles and .44 magnum pistols in the belief that it would be logical to have interchangeable ammunition. Chuck is beginning to have second thoughts about the rifle, though. He is worried about its limited range in a survival combat situation. Survivalism is a posse concern.
"I'm not too concerned about the Russians," Audi said. "I'm concerned about the Cubans, Mexicans, blacks, the jobless ... especially with the new administration cutting off their freebies. For a preview, all you have to do is look at Miami."
Audi said she was in Detroit during that city's racial rioting. "I've known real fear. I know what can happen."
Among their preparations are food caches; Chuck asserts that he would shoot to defend his food.
Audi shakes her head. She is not comfortable about the idea and speculates about the possibilities of sharing food with the refugees.
Chuck said that there will be too many of them and he will shoot. "When they come out of the cities and they have nothing ... people do funny things when they are hungry."
"I don't know," said Audi. "You can't turn down starving kids."
Several other posse members joined the campsite interview. They were wary of reporters, however, and declined to say very much at all. They seemed to have a quieting affect on Chuck and Audi.
"Is The Globe a pro-Zionist newspaper," one of the men, Bob Tiegs, asked? "Do they support Israel?"
"They have run some supporting editorials," he was told.
"Whoa," he said grinning and shaking his head. "End of conversation."
Audi gave him a pained look, but there was little more talk with the posse until the next day.
To help survivalists in their preparations, Harrell brought together over fifty lecturers and instructors for a series of workshops and discussion groups. The topics ranged from personal and home defense, food preservation, and first aid to knife fighting, nuclear fallout protection, and survival base establishment. There were also political and religious workshops primarily dealing with what were considered the enemies of Christian America, Jews and communists.
Gerry Youghkins, a big, moon-faced country boy with arms and body thick with muscle and fat, gave the workshop on self-defense for men. He was dressed in the de rigueur outfit of military-surplus camouflage, black beret, and combat boots. Next to his chair sat a tray of weapons: brass knuckles, knives,clubs, chains. Their attitude toward "bureaucrats" was best expressed by one man who wants "to meet one of those sons a bitches in the alley behind the Wagon Wheel on a Saturday night after I've had a few Millers."
"We are talking about self-defense for when you can't call the policebecause there are no police. This is self-defense for total collapse conditions," Youghkins said. He proceeded to demonstrate a few basic, vicious street-fighting moves with a stick, a chain, his fists, and his feet.
"I kicked a guy in the groin once in a bar fight," he told his fascinated audience. "I kicked him hard, lifted him right off the ground. He stood there and looked at me. So. It is better to go for the eyes or the throat."
He began to display his edged weapons, for which he seemed to have a special affinity. He picked up a four-inch bladed folding hunter. "If you look rather casual with the knife when you flick it open, people don't like it." He stood there sort of loose and shambling, a plain expression on his face; then he suddenly clicked his knife open. He reached to the tray again.
"Now this," he said, waving an eight-inch fighting knife, "is not for everyone." He took a cut at the air. "It will cut a person's head off."
The audience muttered and stirred among themselves with interest. He was getting to the real goods now.
"Cut a man's hand when you fight him," Youghkins counseled. "He'll freeze. fascinated by the sight of his own blood. That's when you stick him in the throat. When you attack from the rear - if you ever have to take out asentry - stab him in the kidneys. That'll get him."
At the "Government Reestablishment after the Collapse" workshop, the moderator, Fred Weland, was guiding the discussion along lines that would result in a government along the lines of our present system. One particularly vocal participant was clearly not pleased. A democratic government, he felt, was what got us into our present trouble.
"The Bible says that at the Endtime, nations will gather unto nations. That means that people will go back to where they came from. Anyone who doesn't belong in the kind of society I want to live in will either be on a plane out or in the ground under."
Ray Baumgardt, a paunchy, fortyish fellow, told a small group about his work on the MO-ARK (Missouri-Arkansas) Survival Base. It is a two-hundred-and- twenty-acre section of woodlands that Harrell's own survivalist group, the Citizens Emergency Defense System, is developing as a retreat.
Baumgardt, a former music teacher in Wisconsin and a Posse Comatatus member, took over supervision of the league's base in September 1980. He lives on the property with his wife and two children in a primitive cabin. A nearby creek provides water.
"We have constructed a hundred-and twenty-foot-long building as a base headquarters," Baumgardt said. "All our labor is voluntary and contributed by Christian patriots. We have also cleared sixteen spaces for trailer camps with water hook-ups. But I can't establish this base myself," he told his audience. "I would encourage people interested in God's law to come down and work.
"We are not there for the short term. We are there for what is coming and for what will happen afterward."
He had a warning, though: "If you are not willing to follow God's laws, you are not going to make it. You will be axed."
Baumgardt, with his quiet music teacher mannerisms and appeal for practical, hard work, lost much of his audience. They drifted away in search of more exciting survivalist fantasies.
Bernard Zaynor had them. He was tall, young, and wiry and had a staccato, punchy delivery. He was from Chicago and possessed an exciting aura of a combat veteran, which impressed more than one Christian patriot farmer.
""By damm," said one. "He lives right in the city. He has to fight those niggers every day."
His workshop was "Crisis Relocation and Planning," and from the tone of his voice and his whole demeanor, he seemed absolutely serious. Many in the audience appreciated this. When you are just beginning to test the waters of the survivalist movement before diving in you can feel pretty foolish and self-conscious.
"Before you can relocate to a safe area," Zaynor said, "you must get out of the danger zone. So the first thing to do is have a good escape route. Have an alternate route. Have a CB radio so you know what is going on in the roadway. Then practice! Take a camping trip out along the route as a test.
"Make sure you take a month's supply of food.
"Use an older vehicle. If they see a new car they (the mobs roaming the streets under conditions of total and brutal anarchy, armed with knives, bottles, and implements of destruction, uttering hellish cries unlike any heard on earth* will go after you, figuring that you have money and food. Buy an old Cadillac. Take a hammer and give it a few dents. Make it look like one of those old bombs minorities drive. Maybe even put some shoe polish on your face.
"At all times keep your backpacks and food supplies packed and ready to go! Have a shotgun, twelve-gauge. Have a high-powered rifle. Have a .45 sidearm. Take something lighter, like a .22.
"Now men! Don't put your pack weight on the wife. She's got to watch the kids. Give her a .22 sidearm. The children, too. Twenty- two rifles. Conceal your longer weapons in the trunk. If you go through a roadblock, the authorities will stop and confiscate them if they see them.
"Remember. Practice. Prepare. Ponder. Think about what you will do.
"What would you do if you are driving with your family through the streets and a bullet comes through the window and smashes your son's brains all over the seat. What do you do? Do you stop? Cry? No! You bear down. You swallow your tears. You bite your lip and keep driving. You got the rest of the family to worry about.
"But! I want to tell you something. If you ever find yourself in such situations, it is too late! That's last-ditch escape. You should already be planning. A year early isn't too early, but a day late is too late!"
At this particular right-wing Woodstock, paranoia was the coin of the realm, and most of it was being spent on the Jews. At least ten of the workshops were devoted in part or entirely to Jews and Zionism. It seems the Jews are responsible for everything wrong in America:
They got the coloreds stirred up. They controlled banks and money lending and the Federal Reserve system. They controlled the news media. They were responsible for ERA and abortions. They took the silver out of coinage and took the country off the gold standard. They bought their way out of military service and started World War II for profit. They collected a hidden tax on all foods ("Look at that," a workshop instructor said, holding up a can, "right there on a can of Pringles. A "U.' That means it's kosher") thatwent right to the Anti-Defamation League.
Magazines and books were offered for sale that purported to tell the "truth" about the Nazi slaughter in the concentration camps (it never really happened). Other books told the story of who really killed Christ.
Harrell was suspicious of them.
"Many people think the Jews are God's people. They are not. The Israelites are God's people. The Jew has brainwashed the world into thinking that they are God's people."
Pastor Sheldon Emery, a special guest preacher, spoke in a corn- fed monotone about the "Jews' deceptions" and their control of international banking.
Brigadier General Gordon Mohr (brigadier general of the Christian Defense League, retired colonel of the US Army), a much-praised featured speaker at the festival, was virtually psychotic on the subject. Much of what he had to say in his spiraling paroxysms of anti-Semitic hate were both incoherent and unprintable.
Though many people sat through these diatribes nodding sagely in agreement, applauding, or adding a few pearls of their own, Audi Feitz of the Rock County Posse was upset.
"I'm not going to get involved in a hate movement," she said at her campsite on Sunday morning. "No way. If this means our marriage, then so be it."
She and her husband had had a fight the night before. She had been criticizing the posse's subscription to the hatred and her husband's acceptance of it and defense of his friends.
"My husband joined without conferring with me," she said. "I think he should have. Some of these posses are survivalist oriented, but I think that the group in Tigerton (Shawano County, Wisconsin* has gone overboard. They gave me the impression that they are looking for trouble. Their last lecture was on how to recognize Jews and shoot them. That was the last time I went to a meeting.
"But even my own husband, when he had to buy a part for the camp stove, he said, "Sheldon Coleman (a Jew* got me again.' "
Steven Rodgers was aloof and alone. He has joined no posses and drilled with no CSAs. "They're just a bunch of idiots playing at "cowboy and nigger,' " he said.
A roofer from Iowa (he wouldn't say which town), he said little through the first days of the festival, hanging back in the workshops, watching, taking notes. He was suspicious of strangers who asked questions.
But it was a dry camp. So he welcomed a chance to share a smuggled case of Ballantine ale. He had obeyed the rules and brought nothing to drinkhimself. On the floor of his pickup camper, however, from beneath a dirty Hudson's Bay blanket, protruded the sleek brown walnut stock of a shotgun, glowing warmly in the lamplight.
"No Firearms" was a festival prohibition he violated in spades. He pulled back the blanket and unzipped cases to display an awesome arsenal. And it was only his travel kit. There was a .45-caliber Colt automatic pistol "for infighting"; a shotgun; the time-tested Remington 870 pump in 12-gauge, a sure-fire riot-stopper; and a Ruger 77 bolt action in 30.06 with a sniper scope for those difficult long shots. Finally, there was a simple .22-caliber repeating rifle "for general harassing fire."
"If they were going to start something," Rodgers said, "this is the place they would do it, when we are all together without weapons." His "they" are "niggers, Puerto Ricans, Communists, whoever is gonna come boiling out of the cities when the shit-train comes."
"You got people in this country who don't know how to work. Two, three generations they've been living on food stamps and welfare and all that affirmative action money. They got to where they figure they got it coming to them. That we owe it to them, for Christ sake.
"What do you think is going to happen when things get to where we can't give them things anymore. Things are that way now. You can't tax the workingman anymore. That's why Reagan is trying to cut the budget. What are the niggers going to do when the budget says there's no more money for welfare. Riot, that's what. Look at what Jesse Jackson said.
"He said that if welfare gets cut there is going to be a "long hot summer.' That means riots, burning, looting, just like in Miami. But is't gonna be much worse. All those white guilty liberals in their suburbs are going to get his this time. Hell, if I was a nigger, that's what I'd do. Those people would never fight for what they have.
"You know, the police aren't going to be there to protect them. The cops are going to be protecting their own houses.
"New York is going to get it first. You got two million niggers, two million Puerto Ricans, and two million Jews. I can't think of anything worse. It's a powder keg. You know, God is going to punish them in that city. It will be a judgment in fire and death. He will kill them all."
The guns were at his feet and he looked down at them. "If any stragglers try to get me I'm going to pick them off," he said. He looked up and smiled, saying, "You know, Jesus was against the cities. It say so in the Bible." The Israelites of the Old Testament, that is, the Christian Identity Movement, of which survivalists make up a large part, believes that the biblical Israelites immigrated to Europe and from there, thousands of years later, to the United States, which is thought to be the true "promised land," where God will have his final battle with evil in Armageddon and emerge triumphant.
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August 25, 1981, Boston Globe - AP, page 1, No CIA Questions, Layton Judge Says,
A judge has refused to allow attorneys in the murder- conspiracy trial of former Peoples Temple member Larry Layton to question a US diplomat about his alleged CIA links. US District Judge Robert Peckham rejected arguments by defense attorney Tony Tamburello yesterday that the testimony of Richard Dwyer, former deputy chief of the US Mission in Guyana, was "tainted" by CIA connections.
Layton, 35, is charged with conspiracy to murder Rep. Leo Ryan (D- Calif.) and conspiracy to harm Dwyer, an internationally protected person.
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August 25, 1981, Boston Globe, page 7, Ryan was urged to leave Jonestown,
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August 25, 1981, Boston Globe, page 7, Ryan was urged to leave Jonestown,
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(Similar article:)
August 25, 1981, Lakeland Ledger, Diplomat testifies he urged Rep. Ryan to flee Jonestown,
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August 30, 1981, Boston Globe - AP, page 1, Slain Legislator's First Wife Dies, 59,
BURLINGAME, Calif. - Margaret M. Ryan, 59, the first wife of slain US Rep. Leo Ryan, died Friday at Peninsula Hospital after suffering an acute asthma attack. Hospitalized in the morning, she slipped into a coma and never regained consciousness.
Mrs. Ryan, a native of McClellan, Iowa, was married 23 years to Ryan, a San Mateo Democrat, before their divorce in 1971. Ryan was shot to death Nov. 18, 1978, on a jungle airstrip while on a trip investigating conditions at Jonestown, Guyana. Former Peoples Temple member Larry Layton is now on trial in federal court in San Francisco, charged with conspiracy to kill the lawmaker.
Mrs. Ryan leaves two sons and three daughters.
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September 8, 1981, Boston Globe, page 1, Defense Rests Its Case in Larry Layton Trial,
Defense attorneys for former Peoples Temple member Larry Layton rested their case before it began today in Layton's murder-conspiracy trial.
In a surprise move, Frank Bell, the public defender, told US District Judge Robert Peckham the defense would call no witnesses because, "We do not believe the evidence has established the charges in the indictment beyond a reasonable doubt, therefore we are not going to offer any further evidence."
Layton is charged with conspiring to kill Rep. Leo Ryan on a jungle airstrip in Guyana.
Bell made his statement outside the presence of the jury.
Peckham called a recess to allow prosecutors to regroup.
Bell declined to comment on what precipitated the decision, although there were reports over the weekend that defense lawyers were revising their case in light of what they called a weak prosecution.
Bell said the next step would be to discuss with Peckham what instructions would be given to the jury of seven women and five men.
On the last day of prosecution testimony Thursday, a Guyana police superintendent read the confession Layton made there in connection with the ambush slayings of Ryan and four others.
Layton said he was "responsible" for the killings, but he has since declared he made the statement under duress. He is charged here in a federal indictment with conspiring to attack Ryan, a California Democrat, and Richard Dwyer, former deputy US chief of mission in Guyana.
Dwyer was wounded, but survived the attack.
Hours after the Nov. 18, 1978, ambush, Rev. Jim Jones led 912 of his followers in a bizarre murder-suicide ritual. Ryan had visited the settlement to investigate complaints that Jones was mistreating his followers.
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September 8, 1981, Boston Globe, page 1, Latin America; US Hard Line Emerging, by Stephen Kinzer,
There were new signs this week of an emerging hard line from the United States toward leftist regimes in the Caribbean basin. In Grenada, leftist Prime Minister Maurice Bishop warned that the massive US Navy exercise now under way in the Caribbean might be a cover, under which his country would be invaded. The entire population of 110,000 was urged to mobilize, and the militia held a three-day defense exercise.
Meanwhile, President Forbes Burnham of Guyana accused the United States of collaborating with his neighbor, Venezuela, to destroy his Marxist regime. Venezuela claims most of Guyana's mineral-rich territory for itself. Burnham charged that the United States and Venezuela are acting together to prevent the Inter-American Development Bank from aiding his country.
In what is possibly a related development, US officials said in Washington that the United States is considering creating a new Spanish-language radio station to beam news and commentary into Cuba. It would be modeled after Radio Liberty, which is aimed at the Soviet Union, and Radio Free Europe. The officials also said they were moving to tighten the 20-year-old American trade embargo against Cuba, which they said being quietly violated by some US firms.
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September 9, 1981, Boston Globe, page 24, Layton defense rests,
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September 20, 1981, Boston Globe, page 4, Layton trial jury still deliberating, by Sherman, Spencer,
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September 27, 1981, Boston Globe - AP, page 5, Mistrial called in Larry Layton case, by Lisa Levitt,
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Peoples Temple transfer,
The way was cleared yesterday for the transfer of 588 unclaimed bodies of Peoples Temple murder-suicide victims from Delaware to California, according to Rep. Thomas B. Evans Jr. (R-Del.). Under the plan, the Emergency Relief Committee of San Francisco, using money obtained in the dissolution of Peoples Temple assets---estimated to be at least $12 million---will oversee the transportation effort,
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September 28, 1981, Boston Globe, page 6, Prosecution weighs bid to seek new Layton trial, by Lisa Levitt,
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October 2, 1981, Boston Globe - AP, page 1, Layton Freed, Faces 2d Trial,
A judge released Larry Layton on bail yesterday after government lawyers said they would try him for a second time in connection with the Guyana ambush that killed a California congressman. US District Judge Robert F. Peckham granted a $50,000 personal recognizance bond for Layton. It was the first time the former Peoples Temple member has been free since his 1978 arrest.
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October 25, 1981, Boston Globe, page 1, Heartbeat Explores Spirituality, by James L. Franklin, Globe Staff,
A year ago independent radio producer David Freudberg of Cambridge asked National Public Radio how much of its programming has dealt with the topic of religion.
Freudberg, a frequent contributor to NPR documentaries and feature segments on its fine evening newsmagazine, "All Things Considered," was then proposing a weekly series that would portray "how people in all walks of life develop spiritual values."
NPR's own figures showed that just 15 of the 2590 hours the network produced from October 1978 to September 1979 involved religious topics, or 0.6 percent. And while the next six months included extensive news coverage of the papal visit to the United States and the People's Temple murders and suicides in Guyana, the total was just 19 of 1400 program hours, or 1.4 percent.
The results did not surprise Freudberg. "Rather than trying to probe the deepest part of human experience," he said, "public broadcasting has turned its back on religion and spirituality for fear of appearing sectarian," he said.
David Creagh, former executive producer of "All Things Considered," agrees. "This is the area public radio has covered least well," said Creagh, who is now general manager of radio station KLON-FM in Long Beach, Calif. "We never had anybody on the staff who was expert, and we had a sort of fear that people would be offended if we did too much on any one religious group."
But NPR, whose news and public affairs programming on any day of the week gives a crash course in how good radio can be, also has an Extended Programming Service that gives independent producers like Freudberg a chance to distribute their work to the public network's member stations.
And NPR's Program Development Fund makes grants to encourage quality programming by these independents. Creagh said the fund's seven-member panel voted unanimously to provide Freudberg with almost $15,000, the maximum grant allowable, because religion is a neglected subject in NPR's own programming and because "we were impressed that a producer of that caliber was proposing to explore why people have religion."
That grant, which amounted to about a third of the series' budget, represents a significant commitment, Creagh believes, and it is the first time the public network has provided such support for the coverage of religion.
The result is a 26-part series called "Heartbeat," which now runs on WGBH- FM (4:30 p.m., Sundays,fourth program in that series airs today). The series opens again today at 6 p.m. on WBUR-FM.
The first program, called "Kindred Spirits," surveys the many different languages that people use to relate to God. A Hindu speaks of "the cool and peaceful life." A Baptist talks about "a peace that passeth all understanding." A Jew warns about over-intellect utilizing one's relationship with God. A Buddhist talks of "exploring one's own experience so that inherent or latent tendencies of grasping or desire or anger or judgment or fear can be revealed rather than remain unconscious."
"Distinct metaphors, and yet, all expressions of a common yearning," the producer said.
Freudberg, who says that even after 10 years of producing he's still learning how to make a radio documentary, spent hundreds of hours listening in making the series. Some of what he shares in the Heartbeat series includes boxer and showman Muhammad Ali abdicating in front of Freudberg's microphone: "I don't say I am the greatest no more. It's Allahu Akbar' - God is the greatest . . . Now I'm just a little nobody who's going to die one day and meet our maker and he's going to judge us on how we treated people."
Other programs include conversations with Elisabeth Kubler-Ross about what dying patients teach their doctors - "we run after values that, at the moment of death, become zero" - with Norman Cousins about his own encounter with mortality - "panic is a disease in itself and you certainly don't want to add this disease to the other because the combination can be lethal" - and with Bawa Muhaiyadeen, a Moslem holy man or sufi - "find the truth and take it and taste it . . . for that taste you'll give up everything."
What distinguishes the series is Freudberg's willingness to record the mood, the commitment, even the practice of religious people and not to focus only on controversy within organized religious groups or their conflict with the rest of the world.
Most of those who do take seriously this intimate part of human life do so to raise money or membership for their own religious enterprises.
That's what discourages many broadcasters from spending time with the subject. One of the agencies using NPR's low-cost, public access satellite system to distribute programs to member stations is the Protestant Radio and Television Foundation in Atlanta, which for 36 years has produced a high- quality program called "The Protestant Hour."
Asked whether the new distribution arrangement, which began in August, represents an endorsement of the program, an NPR spokesman bristled. "We are just the distributor," said Ann Pincus of NPR. "We tend to stay very far away from religious topics. There is an enormous amount of local religious programming . . . and there is nothing in our charter that says we need to do it. We deal with religion at Christmas or Chanukah but that's about it."
In view of that distaste, David Freudberg views the funding decision as "a great victory for God.
"The more we get to know people who are Hindus, for instance, we find it isn't Hinduism but people who hurt, love, search, who have moments of insight and confusion. It's a great experience to have your preconceptions blown away."
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.
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Abstract (Document Summary)
NPR's Program Development Fund makes grants to encourage quality programming by these independents. [David Creagh] said the fund's seven-member panel voted unanimously to provide [David Freudberg] with almost $15,000, the maximum grant allowable, because religion is a neglected subject in NPR's own programming and because "we were impressed that a producer of that caliber was proposing to explore why people have religion."
Freudberg, who says that even after 10 years of producing he's still learning how to make a radio documentary, spent hundreds of hours listening in making the series. Some of what he shares in the Heartbeat series includes boxer and showman Muhammad Ali abdicating in front of Freudberg's microphone: "I don't say I am the greatest no more. It's Allahu Akbar' - God is the greatest . . . Now I'm just a little nobody who's going to die one day and meet our maker and he's going to judge us on how we treated people."
Asked whether the new distribution arrangement, which began in August, represents an endorsement of the program, an NPR spokesman bristled. "We are just the distributor," said Ann Pincus of NPR. "We tend to stay very far away from religious topics. There is an enormous amount of local religious programming . . . and there is nothing in our charter that says we need to do it. We deal with religion at Christmas or Chanukah but that's about it."
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