The Jonestown Genocide
by Robert Sterling
The Konformist
Robalini@aol.com
John Travolta, 70's icon thanks to Welcome Back Kotter, Saturday Night Fever, and Grease, is enjoying a incredible comeback in critical and commercial smashes such as Pulp Fiction and Face Off. Speaking of Saturday Night Fever, the Bee Gees are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The biggest box-office attraction this spring was Star Wars, and The Eagles Greatest Hits, Volume One has now sold 24-million copies in the U.S.
It should be obvious by now that America is in the middle of a huge love affair with the seventies, the wacky and wild by-product of the sixties rebellion. But all is not well from that era of long ago. One ugly element of the seventies has resurfaced in the news recently: cults led by psychotic would-be dictators, a la Jim Jones and The People's Temple -- witness the Aum Supreme cult of Japan and the 39 Heaven's Gate "suicides."
The korporate media incessantly warn of the dire threat of uncontrolled cults preying on society, recently armed with a nefarious new ally: the Internet. The undercurrent of these notions is that something must be done about cult activity, lest more victims be devoured by suicidal sects.
But the mainstream media outlets which warn that we must do something about these cults are the same mainstream media which proved themselves to be unreliable sources of information on the events at Jonestown. An honest evaluation of the facts brings to light a story even more morbid than a mass suicide: the prospect that Jonestown was a CIA-linked mind control experiment which ultimately self-destructed, taking with it the first Congressman to be killed in the line of duty.
Let's start with the biggest lie of the whole Jonestown affair: the suicide hoax.
Next: The Suicide Hoax.
The Suicide Hoax
The notion of a mass suicide at Jonestown has been repeated so many times that it is accepted as fact, and the association is so strong that when most people hear "Jonestown," the first thing which pops in their head is "Kool-Aid."
This association is false.
The source of the "Kool-Aid Suicide" stories was the U.S. State Department, which presented the story immediately after the "suicides" were reported as though it was the only obvious truth. A U.S. Army spokesman pronounced with complete authority, "No autopsies are needed. The cause of death is not an issue here." The bodies were then allowed to rot in the jungle.
Despite the lack of need for autopsies, Dr. C. Leslie Mootoo, the top Guyanese pathologist, was at Jonestown hours after the deaths, and, refusing the assistance of U.S. pathologists, accompanied the teams that examined the bodies. His conclusions? Dr. Mootoo found fresh needle marks at the back of the left shoulder blades on 80 to 90 percent of the victims. Others had been shot or strangled. A surviving witness stated that those who resisted were forced by armed guards to comply. Dr. Mootoo's opinion, and that of the Guyanese grand jury investigating Jonestown, was that all but three (only two of which were suicides) were murdered by "persons unknown."
If one was to go over the deaths in Auschwitz, it is almost a certainty, considering the horrendous conditions those who were there were under, that 0.2 % of all deaths could be attributed to suicides. Yet if anyone was to argue that Auschwitz was a suicide camp housing a bunch of religious freaks and not the compounds of murder that they were, they would (rightfully) be condemned for intellectual dishonesty, and their motives would be questioned.
Next: Body Count Bad Math
Body Count Bad Math
The suicide hoax is merely the beginning of the deception. The original death count was 408 (an odd number to use if the number was an estimate), with the added claim that 700 had fled into the jungle. The final total was changed to 913. To explain this rather minor difference in arithmetic, American authorities first explained that those backward ignorant Guyanese "could not count." Perhaps because the first "official" explanation of the bad math was so insulting, it was then proposed that they missed a pile of bodies, as if a pile of dead bodies is something that is easily overlooked. Finally, the official explanation that settled the whole question was presented: Bodies were stacked on top of each other.
Of the 150 photos taken of the massacre, not one shows any body lying under any others. Those who first worked on the bodies, to release the gasses of decay, had to puncture the dead, making it unlikely that they missed anyone. These facts aside, one must wonder how 408 bodies -- 82 belonging to children -- could cover 505 others. Talk about bad math.
With minor exceptions, pictures show the dead were found in neat rows, face down. The pictures also show drag marks leading to the bodies, indicating that victims were murdered elsewhere and placed there by someone else.
These facts have lead to a more likely conclusion: 408 was indeed the correct original body count. The other 505 were hunted down and slaughtered, then dragged back.
But who would do such a thing, and why? Furthermore, why were American officials giving such deceptive answers about Jonestown? To answer these questions, one must unravel the mystery of a man named Jim Jones.
Next: Gangster With a Bible
Gangster With a Bible
On May 13, 1931, James Warren Jones was born in Indiana, the state that would later give us Axl Rose and Dan Quayle. His father was in the Ku Klux Klan.
Jones became a Bible-thumping "faith healer," using wet chicken livers as evidence of cancer which he removed by "divine powers." He adopted eight children, some black, some white. Already the stench of criminal activity surrounded him, and his landlady referred to him as "a gangster who used the Bible instead of a gun." Fortunately for Jones, the local police chief at the time was Dan Mitrione, a friend from childhood. Mitrione kept him from being arrested or run out of town. Mitrione would later enter the International Police Academy, a CIA front for training counterinsurgency and torture techniques.
Despite having few sources for known funds, Jones found enough money to travel with his wife and family to Brazil in 1961. Coincidentally, Mitrione was there as well, having advanced quickly in the IPA. Mitrione had honed his skills at torture and assassination by practicing on kidnapped beggars. He himself was later kidnapped and murdered by guerrillas in Uruguay, an incident which became the basis of the Costa Gavras film State of Siege. Jones made regular trips to Belo Horizonte, site of CIA headquarters in Brazil -- and Mitrione's town of residence.
Apparently, this wasn't the only curious intelligence link to Jones. He told some of his neighbors that he was involved in the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence. The U.S. embassy provided Jones with transportation, groceries, and a large home. Considering his dear friendship to Mitrione and the funding of "ministries" in Latin America by the CIA, the theory that Jones was a U.S. intelligence asset makes quite a bit of sense.
In any case, according to his neighbor, Jones "lived like a rich man."
Next: Madman or Messiah in Ukiah?
Madman or Messiah in Ukiah?
Soon after the JFK assassination, Jones returned to the states with $10,000. In 1965, he formed the first People's Temple in Ukiah, California, and set up Happy Havens Rest Home. Without trained personnel or proper licensing, Jones' camp drew in prisoners, the elderly, people from mental institutions, and 150 foster children, many of whom were transferred by court order. Among those who contacted him: "missionaries" from World Vision (an international evangelical order that often fronts for the CIA); the local chapter head to the John Birch Society; and leaders of the Republican party, for whom his "church" members conducted voter organization and fund-raising activities for the Dick Nixon '68 campaign. Jones' advisors included a mercenary from UNITA, the CIA-backed Angola army. Also jumping on board was the Layton family, whose patriarch, U.C.-Berkeley chemist Dr. Laurence Laird Layton, had worked on the Manhattan Project. Dr. Layton was also chief of the Army's Chemical Warfare Division in the early 1950's. (Mrs. Layton was the daughter of Hugo Phillips, a German banker/stockbroker who became rich representing Siemans & Halske and I.G. Farben, two notorious Nazi Holocaust profiteers.)
Despite his rather right-wing background, Jones suddenly declared himself a liberal socialist -- in fact, he called himself a dual reincarnation of both Jesus Christ and Lenin. At this point, a cloud of suspicion began to gather around his church, which was staffed by jack-booted armed thugs who dressed in black uniforms. Jones took everything he could from his followers, much of it in the form of welfare and social security checks, using blackmail, extortions, and any other available means. The local press reported about seven mysterious deaths of those who attempted to leave the "church" due to conflicts with Jones. Accusations of kidnapping, beatings, and sexual abuse began to circulate.
To escape controversy, Jones moved to San Francisco and became an important fundraiser for the Bay area political establishment. Soon, he was schmoozing with the liberal and radical elite, meeting with (among others) Rosalynn Carter and Angela Davis.
Jones was rewarded by being put in charge of the city Housing Commission, and key followers were awarded jobs in the Welfare Department. The bulk of Jones' flock came from the unemployed and dispossessed people found there. The cult preyed on the poor and helpless, going out of its way to enlist women, children and minorities. Many members were recruited directly from San Francisco mental hospitals.
However, the move to San Francisco did little to quiet the controversy surrounding his "church," and a 1977 expose put Jones on the defensive. He then moved his Utopia to Guyana, aided once again by the U.S. Embassy.
Next: Countdown to Nowhere
Countdown to Nowhere
After receiving complaints lodged by relatives of cult members, Congressman Leo Ryan visited Jonestown on November 18, 1978 to investigate allegations of human rights abuses. Congressman Ryan, a noted CIA critic, had authored the Hughes-Ryan Amendment, which would have required the CIA to disclose to Congress -- in advance -- details of all covert operations. The State department offered Ryan no answers or assistance, despite numerous inquiries. He arrived with U.S. embassy official Richard Dwyer, as well as some journalists. Among the reporters was Tim Reiterman, who had covered the Patty Hearst story for the San Francisco Examiner. In all likelihood, Ryan already suspected what was really going on at Jonestown.
That was when all hell broke loose.
At the airstrip, Leo Ryan soon became the first congressman to die in the line of duty, along with four reporters. (The Hughes-Ryan Amendment was killed in Congress soon afterwards.) The assassins were described by witnesses as "glassy eyed," "mechanically-walking zombies," and "devoid of any emotion." Dwyer and Reiterman were also shot. Soon after that, the mass slaughter began.
A plausible explanation for the events that unfolded is that Jim Jones (or someone else) ordered the murders after Ryan's unexpected visit threatened to expose what was happening. In the chaos that followed, a mass extermination was carried out.
Just who were the zombie assassins? Well, besides the 913 dead, 167 survivors returned from the camp. All news reports concede that there were at least 1100 individuals at the camp (and most reports place the number at 1200.) Who are these 20 or more people unaccounted for?
The survivors report that there was a special all-white group that was well-armed, well-treated and free to exit the compound. These guards were never accounted for by any news reports. Perhaps it is these same guards (assuming the total population was 1200) whom a congressional aide was referring to in an Associated Press quote which stated, "There are 120 white, brainwashed assassins out from Jonestown awaiting the trigger word to pick up their hit."
Of course, they may have had a little help. Over 300 U.S. Green Berets -- trained for CIA covert assassinations -- were in the area at the time. So were nearly 600 British Black Watch commandos, who were in Guyana conducting a "training exercise." Suddenly, the death toll seems relatively low.
Next: Dan White's Little Game of Solitaire and Other Curious Deaths
Dan White's Little Game of Solitaire and Other Curious Deaths
The killings didn't stop in Guyana. Nine days later, San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were slain by Dan White, who was either a "disgruntled police agent" or someone who was "angry about gays." These explanations were supplied to explain his utterly irrational behavior during the killings; sure enough, he was described as being in a bizarre "zombie state."
During White's trial, his lawyers came up with the inventive but deservedly mocked "Twinkie defense," in which they claimed he went insane during a sugar high induced by eating too many sweets. Moscone and Milk received substantial financial backing from Jim Jones during his stay by the Bay; afterwards they were both investigated in connection to missing funds from the People's Temple. That is, until a "lone gunman" took them out.
Michael Prokes, a Jones aide, held a press conference and stated that the CIA and FBI were withholding an audiotape of the massacre. He also stated that he was an FBI informant. Right after that, he went to the restroom... and never left. His death was proclaimed a "suicide."
In Georgetown, several more Temple members were killed following the Guyana massacre. The man charged with the murders, Charles Beikman, was an early follower of Jones who had become an "adopted son." Beikman was also a Green Beret.
Jeanne and Al Mills, who were writing a book on Jonestown, were bound and shot to death at their home. In Detroit another survivor was killed near his home, and yet another was involved in a mass murder of school children in Los Angeles.
Ironically, the dead may not have included Jim Jones himself. The body alleged to be his didn't show his tattoos in the photographs. Fingerprints had to be checked twice, and his dental records were never looked at. He was known to use doubles.
Next: The CIA at Guyana, and the Two Billion Dollar Black Hole
The CIA at Guyana, and the Two Billion Dollar Black Hole
As the massacre unfolded, Jones can be heard on a tape recording yelling, "Get Dwyer out of here!" Richard Dwyer was later found at the airstrip, methodically washing his hands.
In 1968, Dwyer was listed in the publication Who's Who in the CIA. When asked if the allegation was true, he replied, "No comment."
Of course, Dwyer wasn't the only link to the CIA in Guyana. Besides those previously mentioned, U.S. ambassador John Burke and another official named Richard McCoy were both heavily involved with the intelligence community. The U.S. embassy in Georgetown also housed the Georgetown CIA station. At the time, Guyana had a socialist government, and thus was a likely target for covert operations. Dan Webber, sent to Guyana after the massacre, was also with the CIA. The "official" attorney for the survivors, Joseph Blatchford, was involved in a scandal involving CIA infiltration of the Peace Corps.
Then we have the missing money that just "disappeared" after the slaughter. Conservative estimates place the amount at $26 million. Others place it at $2 billion. At the time, a major international money laundering operation was headquartered in Italy, involving the Vatican and a fascist quasi-Masonic lodge known as the P-2, or Propaganda Duo. (This operation probably led to the murder of Pope John Paul I -- but that's another conspiracy.) The CIA-linked P-2 had a major operation located in Panama, not too far from Jonestown.
Add in the FBI files on the Black Panthers and Weathermen found at the site, an attempt to lure Mark Lane (JFK assassination critic and James Earl Ray lawyer, among other things) and Donald Freed (Lane's sometime JFK collaborator and recent Simpson case investigator who has linked the Brentwood murders to Mafia in the L.A. underworld) to Guyana (which succeeded in having Lane witness the airstrip murders after Jones hired him as a lawyer), and a bizarre plot to kidnap Grace Walden Stephens (a key Martin Luther King assassination witness) and smuggle her to Jonestown, and you have the makings of a full fledge spook operation.
Next: Did Jim Jones Read Catcher in the Rye?
Did Jim Jones Read Catcher in the Rye?
One of the strangest CIA connections to Jonestown was the previously mentioned World Vision, an evangelical order which often fronts for the CIA. They performed espionage work for the CIA in Southeast Asia while Operation Phoenix (the murderous project that left 40,000 people dead) was in full effect. In Honduras, they maintained a presence at CIA contra recruiting camps in the war against the Sandinistas. In Lebanon, the fascist Phalange butchered Palestinians at World Vision's camp. In Cuba, their refugee camps hosted numerous members of the anti-Castro terrorist group Alpha 66 of Bay of Pigs fame.
After the Guyana massacre, World Vision developed a scheme to repopulate Jonestown with CIA-linked mercenaries from Laos. Laos, of course, was where the CIA was running it's "secret war" during Vietnam, which for the most part was a smokescreen for a widespread opium trafficking operation.
One particularly important World Vision official was John Hinckley, Sr., an oil man, reputed CIA officer, and friend of George Bush. You may have heard of his son.
Less than four months before Hinckley Jr. became known as Jodie Foster's biggest fan, another member of the World Vision order, Mark Chapman, gunned down John Lennon in what may have been a practice run for the bigger hit on President Reagan. One of the policeman who found him was convinced that he was a mind-controlled assassin. Chapman was clutching a copy of the novel Catcher in the Rye, which was also owned by John Hinckley Jr. (The book was written by J.D. Salinger, who worked in military intelligence with Henry Kissinger during World War II.) Before going to trial, Chapman plead guilty after a voice in his head (which he attributed it to God) commanded him to do so.
Considering the history of World Vision and what went on previously in Guyana, it is possible that the real purpose behind repopulating Jonestown was to create another breeding ground for brainwashed zombies like Chapman and Hinckley. Nearby Jonestown there was a place called Hilltown, a compound of 8,000 blacks that followed cult leader Rabbi David Hill, who held his flock with an iron fist. Hill had so much power that he was referred to as the "vice prime minister" of Guyana. There was also another place in Guyana called "Johnstown," as well as similar operations in the Phillipines and Chile. It appears that Jonestown (and World Vision's later attempt) is hardly the exception to the rule of using obscure locations in Third World nations as laboratories for covert cult operations.
Next: Crazy Cult, or Concentration Camp?
Crazy Cult, or Concentration Camp?
The Jonestown site in Guyana was originally a Union Carbide mine, and was loaded with an abundance of precious natural resources. It is very likely that the site was chosen to exploit these resources with cheap labor -- and cheap labor was plentiful.
Members of Jim Jones' "church" were bound and gagged immediately after landing in Guyana and taken to the compound. They were pumped with drugs, which were available in vast amounts at Jonestown -- enough to drug 200,000 people for more than a year. Among the drugs found there: Quaaludes, Valium, morphine, Demerol, Thorazine (a dangerous tranquilizer), sodium pentathol (a truth serum), chloral hydrate (a hypnotic chemical agent), thallium (which confuses thinking), and, of course, cyanide. Jonestown residents lived in cramped quarters and ate meager rations of often spoiled food. They were then forced to give 16 to 18 hours of slave labor per day. When they weren't working, they were required to stay up day and night listening to Jim Jones lecture. Among the charming punishments the flock endured were forced druggings, sensory deprivation in an underground box, physical torture, and public sexual rape and humiliation, not to mention your average ordinary beatings and verbal abuse.
All of the drugs and environmental conditions forced upon Jonestown residents were also employed in the CIA's notorious MKULTRA program, which was implemented to test and implement brainwashing and mind control techniques. A 1974 government report admitted that certain "target populations" were used, namely blacks, women, prisoners, the elderly, children, and inmates of psychiatric wards. The Center for the Study and Reduction of Violence, using the research of Strangelovian doctors Jose Delgado and Louis "Jolly" West, drew guinea pigs from the "target populations" to test drugs, implants, and psychosurgery techniques at an isolated military missile base in California. The dead at Jonestown were 90% women, 80% black, and included 276 children.
Which leads us back to Auschwitz and the ultimate deja vu. Auschwitz, after all, was not just a death camp: It was also a slave labor camp for Nazi military-industrial monolith I.G. Farben. There, the outcasts and refuse of society who no one cared about faced similar abuses, while an elite few profited from their misery. The brains behind the Final Solution became the brains behind MKULTRA. The MK is often said to stand for "Mind Kontrol" -- representing the Germanic origins of the project. Going the full ten yards, however, it is possible that MK merely stands for "Mein Kampf".
Next: Some Opinions the History Books Forget to Include
Some Opinions the History Books Forget to Include
Congressman Ryan probably suspected that Jonestown was a front for sinister covert activity. In 1980, Ryan aide Joseph Holsinger received a paper entitled "The Penal Colony," which explained that CIA MKULTRA operations did not terminate in 1973, as officially proclaimed, but instead continued in public hospitals, prisons, and religious cults which were used as fronts. Holsinger later stated at a San Francisco psychology forum on Jonestown that he believed the CIA worked with Jones to perform medical and mind control experiments at People's Temple. If Congressman Ryan had not been killed -- a big if -- many skeletons in the CIA's closet may have been exposed.
Michael Meiers, author of "Was Jonestown a CIA Medical Experiment?" had this to say: "The Jonestown experiment was conceived by Dr. Layton, staffed by Dr. Layton and financed by Dr. Layton. It was as much his project as it was Jim Jones's." Layton, remember, was head of the Army's Chemical Warfare Division.
Former Temple member Joyce Shaw wondered if Jonestown was "some kind of horrible government experiment, or some sort of sick, racist thing... a plan like that of the Germans, to exterminate blacks."
In October 1981, Jonestown survivors filed a $63 million lawsuit against Jonestown-era Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and CIA director Stansfield Turner. The suit stated that the State Department and CIA conspired to "enhance the economic and political powers of James Warren Jones," conducting "mind control and drug experimentation" there. The suit was dismissed four months later for "failure to prosecute timely," and all requests for appeal were denied. (Turner would become a director of Monsanto, now best known for providing the world with the brain-damaging poison bearing the innocuous moniker "NutraSweet".)
All this, of course, is forgotten in official accounts of the events at Jonestown. Instead, the more palatable -- but less accurate -- version of the Jonestown story blames the victims, echoing the ignorant grunt uttered by Pete Hamill, who dismissed the dead as "all the loose change of the sixties."
Next: Conclusion
Conclusion
Hanging over Jonestown was a mocking sign that proclaimed, "THOSE WHO DO NOT REMEMBER THE PAST ARE CONDEMNED TO REPEAT IT." One of the most elegant slogans of Holocaust survivors is "Never forget."
Jonestown makes it clear that, no matter how well meaning, all these slogans are but words. Never forget? We obviously already have. That Jonestown could unfold before our eyes without the realization of precisely what was going on says volumes. Certainly the blame falls partly at the feet of a powerful military-industrial complex that feels no shame for its deeds, and certainly partly at a Korporate Media that has become the witting mouthpiece (and collaborator) for this same cabal. But ultimately, the blame falls at the feet of the people, their brains dulled by sitcoms and soap operas, their reality gradually drawn within the boundaries of the cathode ray tube. By the time the Guyana massacre rolled around, the masses were too ignorant and apathetic to know or care about the truth. Instead, they swallowed the official version and waited obediently for the next big lie.
What's worse, the truth itself has become untenable. Instead of outrage and calls for justice, attacks are most often leveled at those who openly question the official account of the Jonestown massacre. Witness the treatment of Gary Webb (of CIA/contra/crack fame) by his editors and fellow journalists. Or try bringing up Jonestown in polite company and see the kind of response you get.
Could the Holocaust happen again? It already has, and will continue to happen. One wonders if it ever really ended.
 | Jonestown Bibliography: Suggested Reading |
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Jonestown Bibliography
"The Black Hole of Guyana," by John Judge, from Secret and Suppressed, edited by Jim Keith. This report draws heavily from Mr. Judge's work. Highly recommended to anyone interested in learning more.
Operation Mind Control, by Walter Bowart.
Who Killed John Lennon?, by Fenton Bresler.
Psychic Dictatorship in the U.S.A., by Alex Constantine.
Donald Freed, interview with author.
Raven: The Untold Story of the Reverend Jim Jones and His People, by John Jacobs and Tim Reiterman.
Guyana Massacre: The Eyewitness Accounts, by Charles Krause.
The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control, by John Marks.
Was Jonestown a CIA Medical Experiment?, by Michael Meiers.
The Big Book of Conspiracies, by Doug Moench.
A Sympathetic History of Jonestown, by Rebecca Moore.
Conspiracies, Coverups, and Crimes, by Jonathan Vankin.
60 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time, by Jonathan Vankin & John Whalen.
The CIA's Greatest Hits, by Mark Zepezauer.
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 | Senate MKULTRA Hearing Docs Added 1/29/99 The full text of the 1977 Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on the CIA's mind control program. Full text, key documents and testimony; includes keyword search feature. |
 | Subliminal CIA Added 1/22/99 When spy scientists peered into the power of hidden persuasion, what did they see? Declassified documentation unveils the secret story of the agency's investigation of subliminals. |
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 | Iraq Bombing Protests Updated 12/18/98 Citizens nationwide took to the streets recently to protest the cruise missile strikes on Iraq. Demonstration photos, news & more. |
 | King Assassination Documents Added 11/17/98 Documents related to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Now online: Volume 1 of the HSCA report, keyword search feature & more. |
 | Cold War, Hot Nukes Added 10/20/98 An online exhibit documenting the projects, propaganda and scorched earth of U.S. atomic weapons tests during the 1940s and '50s. |
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| Assassinations Politics by murder. JFK, Martin Luther King, Jr., Yitzhak Rabin, the Reagan shooting, Vince Foster, Kurt Cobain and other victims of suspicious deaths. The New World Order There's a global political, economic and military coup afoot, and humanity is about to get shafted. Secret Societies & Illuminati George Bush's connection to the Order of Skull & Bones, the Council on Foreign Relations and other hidden hands tugging at humanity's destiny. Technological Tyranny The dark side of the technological revolution: virtual prisons, "non-lethal" electromagnetic weapons, information warfare and more. Mind Control A collection of special reports on mind control from the files of Matrix and Dossier. Waco and the Oklahoma City Bombing Two blood-soaked episodes in recent U.S. history which deserve much greater scrutiny than they received from the corporate-controlled media. The CIA/Contra/Crack Connection Gary Webb lanced a boil of allegations in 1996, when the San Jose Mercury News published his investigative report on the CIA's connection to drug smuggling by the agency's Nicaraguan contra army. Conspiracy A-Go-Go Police State Amerika, Clinton's capers, the new COINTELPRO and more word from the underground. |
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November 19, 2008, Sott.net, The Lesson of Jonestown, by Sarah Golstene,
Wed, 03:59 CST
The events of November 18, 1978 in Jonestown, Guyana were a tragedy that few can come to grips with even today, 30 years later. But that was not a singular event. As a sign posted at Jonestown read, "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
I'm Warren Olney in Los Angeles. Ninety minutes ago came word from Guyana, making this bizarre story more bizarre than ever. Troops from Guyana have found between three and four hundred bodies at the People's Temple commune at Jonestown. No marks of violence on any of the bodies. No marks of anyone alive, despite reports that as many as 1,200 people lived in Jonestown. There had been predictions that a mass suicide would occur from several defectors. We don't know that that's what happened. We don't know what happened to the rest of the people who lived at the commune. We don't know what's happened to attorneys Mark Lane or Charles Garry, or to the Reverend Jim Jones. And we don't know how much longer this awful story will take to unfold. For Edwin Newman and for all of us at NBC, I'm Warren Olney in Los Angeles.
This is not the article I'd intended to write to mark the 30th anniversary of the horrific events the took place in Jonestown, Guyana on November 18, 1978. I'd already written several pages of scathing expose of the CIA and their ongoing criminal activities in South America and of how Jonestown was a CIA sponsored mind control experiment.
Is that really the key lesson of Jonestown? Is there anyone with half a working brain that is not aware of what the CIA does? That The Agency is filled to the brim with murderous psychopaths who get their jollies by torturing innocent citizens and manipulating foreign governments?
The evidence of CIA involvement in Jonestown is too strong to ignore. Jim Jones was friends with Dan Mitrione, the CIA agent notorious for both torturing South American political dissidents and teaching the security thugs of the right-wing dictators there how to torture for themselves. Mitrione's torture lessons were hands-on, demonstrating the techniques using beggars taken from the streets. He was memorialized in the film State of Siege, though his name was changed in the film to Philip Michael Santore. Following his death at the hands of the Uruguayan Movimiento de Liberacion Nacional, or Tupamaros, Mitrione was all but canonized as a saint by the right-wing in the U.S. None other than Frank Sinatra and Jerry Lewis held a benefit to raise money for his family in his home town of Richmond, Indiana after his death. White House spokesman, Ron Ziegler, said of him, "Mr. Mitrione's devoted service to the cause of peaceful progress in an orderly world will remain as an example for free men everywhere.''
All this for a man who not only tortured innocent beggars pulled from the streets of South Amercian countries but also had a soundproof room built in the basement of his Montevideo, Uruguay home. I don't want to even think of what went on there for his personal entertainment.
It was in Richmond, Indiana that Mitrione and Jones met. Mitrione was the Chief of Police and Jones was a young street preacher who'd had an obsession with religion, death and racial integration since he was a small child. And he was charismatic.
Mitrione took a keen interest in the young preacher. While we have no solid documentation on the details of any ongoing relationship between them after Mitrione left the Richmond Police and joined the CIA, we do know of one very curious fact. In the early 1960's, Mitrione was stationed in Brazil. At the very same time, Jim Jones packed up his family and moved to Brazil, ostensibly to preach there. What he told his Brazilian neighbors had nothing to do with preaching, however. He claimed to work for Naval Intelligence and to be supported in Brazil by the U.S. Embassy. One of his sons claims that Jones took regular trips to Belo Horizonte, the home of the CIA's Brazilian headquarters and the first place Mitrione was stationed in Brazil.
Jones left Brazil in 1963 $10,000 richer, nearly twice the average yearly income in the U.S. at that time. He returned to Indiana and established the People's Temple there, eventually moving it to Ukiah, California, a few hours north of San Francisco. He gathered his flock from amongst the poor and disenfranchised, mostly black, preaching racial integration, equality and an utopian society in which all would be respected for who they were rather than the color of their skin. His notoriety was such that he was referred to as the "Messiah from Ukiah."
When Jones eventually moved the Temple to San Francisco and Los Angeles, his star really began to rise. His flock numbered in the thousands, and they would do whatever he asked them to do. Thousands of people at your command meant serious political clout. Jones put that clout to work helping George Moscone become the Mayor of San Francisco. Moscone won by a narrow margin - a margin so narrow that it could be accounted for by the population of the People's Temple, all of whom voted for Moscone. There were also rumors that Jones had bussed in thousands to vote illegally for Moscone, too. Jones was rewarded with the title of Housing Authority Chairman of San Francisco.
Political support for Jones was strong. He was passionately promoted by Speaker of the California State Assembly, Willie Brown, Angela Davis and, of course, Mayor George Moscone. Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley visited the temple. California Lieutenant Governor Mervyn Dymally flew to Guyana to visit the agricultural project then underway. First Lady Rosalyn Carter invited Jones for a private dinner during a visit to San Francisco. When Mrs. Carter arrived to speak at the shabby San Francisco Democratic Party headquarters, it was Jones who swelled the embarrassingly small showing of 150 people into a more respectable 750 by busing in 600 People's Temple members for the event. Incidentally, hundreds of letters arrived the very next day at Party headquarters praising Jones. For the letters to arrive the next day, they had to have been mailed before the event.
It was understood in San Francisco that if a political race was close, it was impossible to win it without the support of Jones. But word was about to leak in the press that all was not as it appeared on the surface at the People's Temple. Mere hours before the August 1, 1977 edition of New West Magazine hit newsstands, Jones and a large number of followers were on a plane headed for Guyana to join the already large number of people already populating Jonestown. Within that issue of the magazine was an article titled "Inside People's Temple" by Marshall Kilduff and Phil Tracy. The revelations in the article were damning. It told of abuse, beatings, crooked financial dealings. And Jones, who had been read the article before publication, clearly knew it meant the beginning of the end.
According to those who lived at Jonestown and managed to get out before the tragedy, the atmosphere of Jonestown changed dramatically upon the arrival of Jim Jones. What had been a vibrant and joyful community became somber and fearful. Jones had become a monster. More specifically, he had become a drug addicted monster. He talked all day over the compound speaker system. When night came, tapes of his talks were played. No one could go anywhere without hearing the sound of his voice, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
There is some evidence of medical experimentation at Jonestown. The cache of psychoactive drugs found there was staggering. The fact that Jones had armed guards around the camp is telling, as is the fact that Jones was not the only one with interesting connections to U.S. Intelligence organizations in the hierarchy. The fact that his attorney, Mark Lane, also served as the attorney for John Hinckley (the would-be assassin of President Reagan), James Earl Ray (the accused assassin of Martin Luther King) and, for a short time, Lee Harvey Oswald is interesting, to say the least.
Then there is the description of the men who drove a tractor onto the Kaituma airstrip and opened fire, giving Leo Ryan the dubious distinction of being the only U.S. Senator in history killed in the line of duty. Like nearly every political assassin, they were described by the survivors as glassy-eyed and mechanical. Where have we heard that one before? Sirhan Sirhan, James Earl Ray, Lee Harvey Oswald, who seemed completely oblivious to why he was being held by the Dallas Police. And San Francisco Supervisor Dan White.
Dan White was the assassin of Mayor Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk, both strong advocates of Jim Jones. Interestingly, like many other assassins, White somehow managed to live a life that seemed far beyond the salary he drew. Also, like some other assassins, White had an episode of "missing time" in his life. In 1972, White mysteriously disappeared to points unknown for a year.
Harvey Milk, portrayed recently by Sean Penn in the movie The Times of Harvey Milk, was the nation's first openly gay elected public official. He was a man who had fought his entire life for the world of equality and acceptance that Jones preached and seemed to be working to achieve. Naturally, he was more than a mere political ally of Jones. He often spoke at the Temple and wrote personal letters to Jones. Moscone, as you'll remember, is the mayor who was virtually elected by Jones.
About a week before the Jonestown massacre, Dan White unexpectedly resigned his position with the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. The reason he gave was that he could not support his family on the city salary he was receiving. Lobbying by supporters convinced White to approach Moscone and ask that he be allowed to rescind his resignation. Moscone, on advice from Milk and others, refused. On November 27, just nine days after the Jonestown massacre, White entered San Francisco City Hall, strangely through a basement window, and murdered Moscone and Milk.
What should be no surprise by now is that White was described by witnesses as being in a "zombie" state during and after the murders.
I could go on. Others already have, for thousands upon thousands of pages. The facts of CIA involvement in assassinations, both in the U.S. and abroad, are so well documented that anyone who doesn't get it by now probably never will. The sordid details of the Jonestown massacre that have come to light over the past 30 years are easily available to anyone with an Internet connection and a couple of hours to spare reading. Search, read and judge for yourself. I have my own ideas, but they don't really matter in the long run. Sure, the CIA was involved. So what else is new?
Jonestown was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, a mind control experiment. Whether that experiment included well-researched aspects of MKULTRA, such as drugging, hypnotism and torture, I don't know. What I do know is that one form of mind control that was used by Jim Jones, the one I haven't seen written about in any of the countless pages I've read on the subject, is one that is used on you and me every single day. It is the most effective form of mind control known.
Jim Jones sold an insane agenda by convincing his followers they were buying something else entirely: their dreams.
The secret of mind control is not the complete replacement of human will with programmed instructions, which was ostensibly the goal of MKULTRA. The secret of mind control is the control of perception, of making the controlled believe they are doing one thing while they are doing something else entirely. This can be done over long periods of time or, under the right circumstances, rather quickly. It is a technique that you are subjected to every day of your life. No one ever sells you a car, do they? They sell you luxury, excitement, status or practicality. There is no need to sell you on the idea of a car. You already think you need one. The only question posed is, "which car?"
Jones had no need to sell his flock on the idea of an alternative society. His followers were taken from the downtrodden, disenfranchised and abused of society. The idea of the need for an alternative to the culture that had abused them was already in their minds.
His followers had recently suffered the assassinations of John Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy and many members of the Black Panthers. Men rose to lead only to be just as quickly laid to rest. To many, the situation must have seemed hopeless.
The came Jim Jones. Bigger than life, charismatic, a mover and shaker. He had political connections and he got things done. He told them exactly what they wanted to hear and they believed. They hoped. They dreamed that they could, at last, build the world that so many times had seemed almost within their grasp, only to be violently taken away again. When Jones told them there were plots against the Temple and the good work they were doing, what sliver of evidence would contradict his claims? They knew he was telling them the truth because they had witnessed it for themselves in the previous decade.
These were a people raised on misery and the super-hero comic literature of Christianity. They had been trained from day one to believe in a savior. With enough faith, God and Superman would swoop down from the sky and make everything right again. Jim Jones did not need to brainwash his followers. They came to him with minds already drowning in suds. Like every other con man, he just identified his mark, played the game and reaped the rewards.
I can't count the number of times I've heard references to "those people" in Jonestown, as if those making the references were any less brainwashed than the members of the People's Temple. Look no further than the recent presidential election to find exactly the same hopes and dreams that lead the followers of Jim Jones to their deaths. I am not speaking only of those who saw Barak Obama as practically the second coming of Jesus. I am talking about everyone across the ridiculously narrow U.S. political spectrum sure that the election of their candidate would mean a bright new day for the country.
With all due respect to the dead of Jonestown, is that event really so singular and spectacular in our history? How many men and women have been lead to their deaths by every "savior" to hit the scene? Look at what has come from the latest political savior, the wartime President George Bush?
Following the events of 9/11, we all felt dazed and abused, much like how many of Jones' followers felt every day of their lives. When Bush stood before the citizens of the U.S. and promised a brave new world of freedom and liberty, a world that would require sacrifice to achieve, did we run for the doors and disavow this mad man? Absolutely not. We rallied behind him and his insane "war on terror." When evidence of his misdeeds became so common as to be almost comical, did we say, "stop the madness now?" No, we did not. We told ourselves that we needed to stay the course and finish what we'd begun.
And when our children were sent to a foreign country to kill and rape innocent people then get killed themselves, did we rebel and demand that this lunatic be stopped before more innocent lives were taken? No. We reminded ourselves that freedom and liberty would require sacrifice or just waited for the election of the next messiah and hoped for the best.
So I ask the question again. What is so special about Jonestown? It was a terrible tragedy, to be sure. Yet, that same tragedy is playing out right now, right here amongst us. We willingly send our sons and daughters to the jungles and deserts of foreign lands to kill and be killed, solely because our "leader" has told us this is what needs to be done. We still believe that someone else is going to fix our problems and build utopia for us. All we have to do is elect the right people, follow the right leader, then pack our stuff and get ready to move in.
Mourn for the people who lost their lives at Jonestown, then mourn for yourself and the life you are willingly handing over to whatever savior you happen to like. The result is always the same. When you abdicate your responsibility to think for yourself and build a sane world to someone else, you have abdicated the choice of whether you get to live or die.
Jonestown did not just happen 30 years ago, it is happening right now.
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http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=VFhYAAAAIBAJ&sjid=6kYDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6184%2C3459883]
http://www.whale.to/b/jonestown.html
"Quotes
Jonestown was a CIA experiment to determine whether it was possible to establish a large mind-controlled slave labor force. Jim Jones was a CIA operative and former Housing Commissioner for San Francisco. Ukiah District Attorney Tim Stone was assigned the task of procuring state mental patients and transferring their guardianship to the Peoples Temple. Assisting Jones was former police chief Dan Mitrioni, a contract CIA operative, who previously had instructed Brazilian and Bolivian security personnel in advanced torture interrogation techniques. Prior to the purchase of the Guyana property, the entire staff of the Mendocino State Mental Hospital were dismissed and replaced by Jim Jones's personnel. According to mind-control survivors, Josef Mengele programmed inmates there, at that time period. One member of Jones's staff at Mendocino was allegedly the mother of O.J. Simpson. Perhaps this explains why one psychologist, very experienced in observing mind-control survivors, noted that during Simpson's trial, he displayed symptoms of alter-personality switching. STOP MISLEADING the CHILDREN, MR. JENNINGS by Brian Desborough
The People's Temple parishioners did NOT commit "suicide," despite widespread belief to the contrary. Most took forced injections under the shoulder blade, and some 30 percent were shot. There wasn't enough cyanide in a glassful of the punch to kill an adult. It killed children. The adults had to be murdered at the People's Concentration Camp by Jones's death squads.
Jones was a Nazi with a KKK father. At the age of five, little Jimmy combed his hair in Hitler's style, and he delivered "funeral orations" over the dead pets of his friends - animals he'd murdered. Jones was Nazi, not "left-wing" (the charade is an echo of the National "Socialist" front used by the far-right Nazis to co-opt and kill off Germany's communist agitators in the wake of WW I).
And it was not Jones's corpse found at Jonestown, but a double - CIA agents and Nazis do that (look into Heinrich Mueller's "death" at the close of WW II for the classic example. CIA recruit Joseph Mengele kept getting found in South America and had to "die" five times).
Jones survived the carnage. (If the world believes otherwise, it should have a good talk with the CIA/military media. ... )
[2008] Jonestown, Harvey Milk, and George Moscone By Alex Constantine
Thorazine was used regularly at the CIA's Jonestown , Guyana group control experiment. Survivors of Jonestown have testified as to its effectiveness. After this gruesome experiment in mind control came to its end with a massacre, large amounts of drugs were discovered. Just one footlocker at Jonestown alone contained 11,000 doses. The authorities prevented chemical autopsies of the bodies to insure secrecy of this sophisticated concentration camp which was used for medical and psychiatric experimentation by the CIA. An examination of the drugs that are used in mental hospitals to alter the minds of patients offers a clear indication of what is being used in the Monarch Mind Control programming. The Illuminati Formula 3. THE USE OF DRUGS
On page 584, Col. Gritz outlines the true story of the Jonestown, Guyana, camp massacre, and how Jonestown was actually a tightly-run concentration camp, complete with medical and psychiatric experimentation, run with the assistance of the CIA. The people who died didn't drink cyanide-laced Kool-Aid, as reported; half of them were cold-bloodedly murdered by hypodermic injection in the camp, and the other half who fled into the jungle were deliberately hunted down and shot in cold blood by British and American Special Forces troops. Col. Gritz spoke to an embittered SF Sergeant who'd taken part in the operation, and who subsequently wrote a book on the experience, entitled, "All The Niggers Are Dead!" When Col. Gritz asked him to explain the crudeness of that name, he replied, "Sir, that's what they were. Both blacks and whites were niggers; that's what any slave is; that's what they were. That was our final radio message when the job we were assigned was finished. " (From the book CALLED TO SERVE, by Special Forces Lt.Colonel "Bo " Gritz, 1991, p. 524.)
"A few weeks ago there was a report out of Montreal about people winning cases against the CIA because they were utterly abused in the mental health clinic that was set up by the CIA in Canada. That all came down under Allen Dulles tried to make a Manchurian Candidate. I think the Jonestown incident was an extension of In Search of the Manchurian Candidate, I think those people were conditioned to act in certain ways and would have probably just moved from Montreal to Guyana, in this case. You look at Jim Jones' background carefully, he had a lot of intelligence contact there for doing exactly what he did.........It escalated once they killed congressman Leo J. Ryan; basically, they had no other way to go, so they just tried to self-destruct the whole mission. And that means the death of hundreds of people. As I point out in the book, the medical examiner there made some startling statements, and we wouldn't even allow the bodies to be properly examined when they were brought back in to the East Coast and turned in. So obviously it was a cover-up. Jonestown I think was an extension of Mk-Ultra from the CIA and there are probably other experiments going on........I think the Special Forces units were pulled together as an exterminator after it had reached a point where they had to destroy the evidence."--Bo Gritz Interrogated by Adam Parfrey
"I hope it is becoming clear to you the various levels that are used by the Intel community to get their job done. Remember Jonestown? It was one of ours that went sour because a "Clear Eyes" was in the group. "When he, the "Clear Eyes", began firing on the runway, it all self destructed. Congressman Leo Ryan, who was killed, knew it was a government operation. The "Clear Eyes" was accidentally, through a lone sequence, activated! There was no way to stop the killings. All members of the cult were programmed to at least level 3. There were only 3 deaths attributable to cyanide, the rest died of gunfire. Now you know little more about our line of work. I am glad I am out of it." Gunther Russbacher"
Book
Was Jonestown a CIA Medical Experiment?: A Review of the Evidence by Michael Meiers
External
The Jonestown Genocide by Robert Sterling
http://www.parascope.com/articles/0997/jonestown.htm
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