The Jonestown Massacre

I'm back with another conspiracy coming from Jesse Ventura's book American Conspiracies, this one taken from Chapter 8.

On November 18, 1978, 913 men, women, and children supposedly drank cyanide laced Kool-Aid in a mass suicide. They were said to be a part of the "brainwashed cult" of Reverend Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple. Congressman Leo Ryan and four others flew into Guyana to investigate whether or not US citizens were being abused or held against their will at Jonestown, and they were shot dead by Peoples Temple security forces before their plane could leave. However there is more than meets the eye here.

Ryan's aide William Holsinger had been investigating complaints of a Concerned Relatives Group in 1978, and the night it all went down, he received a message on his phone that "your meal-ticket just had his brains blown out." Holsinger later said "whether there was some broader conspiracy and what it might have consisted of, are matters I have determined to leave to future generations" [1].

Ventura brings up the color photos of the bodies lying all over the place, and makes a keen observation: All of the bodies are lying face down, as if they've been carefully arranged that way. When they were first discovered, the body count started out around 200, then the next day's papers reported 363, and it eventually escalated to 913. The official word was that adult bodies had been on top of kids, so apparently 500 bodies were hidden under the first 363....? [2]

Dr. Leslie Mootoo was Guyana's chief medical examiner and the first forensic specialist on the scene. He examined the bodies within the first few days and took specimens. He thought that in at least 700 of the cases, it wasn't suicide, but homicide. He observed puncture wonds on the shoulders on many victims, so maybe they were held down and forcefully injected with poison against their will? He also found cyanide in bottles labeled Valium, which probably meant that's what smoe people thought they were taking: a tranquilizer, not a deadly poison. [3]

Dr. Mootoo did find evidence of cyanide in most of the victims stomachs, and passed his samples along to a representative of the American Embassy in the Guyanese capital of Georgetown expecting them to be forwarded to American forensic patholigists, except they disappeared. [4]

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine seven months later found six leading medical examiners describing the handling of the bodies by the US military and others as "inept", "incompetent", "embarassing", and so on, with only circumstantial evidence of "probably cyanide poisoning". It also added that only 1/3 of the bodies could be positively identified, and that a medico-legal autopsy should have been performed on each one. [5]. It turns out that only seven bodies were autopsied, and not until a month after they were embalmed.


Some images show victims wearing ID bracelets, but these also vanished somewhere between Jonestown and the US air base where the bodies got shipped. The order to remove the medical tags is said to have come from the National Security Council's staff coordinator for Latin American and Caribbean Affairs, Robert Pastor. [6]

Shortly after the massacre became public, a psychiatrist named Dr. Hardhat Sukhdeo came to Georgetown to talk with the survivors. There were 33 of them, and most of them ran off into the jungle. He called Jim Jones "a genius of mind control, a master". This quote was widely used in the press and framed the official Jonestown story. Sukhdeo later admitted that his trip had been paid for by the State Department, and when he returned he met privately with FBI agents. Did he debrief the Jonestown survivors on behalf of the government, trying to find out what they might have seen? And why were Dr. Mootoo's conclusions ignored by the media, while Dr. Sukhdeo's speculation was praised?

It's also interesting that "virtually every survivor of the Jonestown massacre was eventually treated" at the Langley-Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute in San Francisco, where Jones himself had once been under psychiatric care [7]. Despite attempts to obtain Jones' medical file, it's never been released. Lots of the research done at Langley-Porter happens to be classified, much of it by the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency. Some of this research involves the effect of electromagnetic fields on human beings, and behavior-modification techniques including hypnosis-from-a-distance. [8]

Before his unfortunate trip to Jonestown, Congressman Ryan had been making a name for himself as a government watchdog. One amendment that he sponsored required the CIA to get congressional approval before it could undertake any covert acvitity. After stories of MK-ULTRA had surfaced, Ryan wrote a letter to the CIA "requesting confirmation or denial of the fact of CIA experiments using prisoners at the California medical facitlity at Vacaville", from which Jones was reportedly getting members of his church as part of a rehab program. [9]

Ryan wrote that he was especially interested ina former inmate Donald "Cinque" DeFreeze. The CIA responded that yes, it had sponsored tests on some volunteer inmates at Vacaville, but not involving DeFreeze, "in so far as our records reflect the names of participants." [10]. Of course most MK-ULTRA records had already been destroyed. A month after this correspondence, Ryan ended up dead on the tarmac in Guyana.

Investigative writer Jim Hougan speculated that Jones "initiated the Jonestown massacre because he feared that Congressman Leo Ryan's investigation...would uncover evidence that the leftist founder of the People's Temple was for many years a witting stooge, or agent, of the FBI and the intelligence community", and that the congressmans investigation "would embarass the CIA by linking Jones to some of the Agency's most volatile programs and operations." [11]

Jones history suggests that he very well may have been involved with the intelligence community in one way or another. By the age of 19, he became a faith-healing, anti-communist preacher. By his late 50's, he drew a congregation of 2,000. Jones may have been a police/FBI informant gathering "racial intelligence", as quite a few of his congregation were black and he'd taken to making pilgrimages to the headquarters of the Father Divine. [12]

One of Jones' boyhood friends was Dan Mitrione, later an FBI agent and full-time spook operating undercover with the Agency for International Development. Mitrione trained Latin American cops in interrogation techniques that included the use of torture and drugs. Jones admitted to staying friends with Mitrione, and even referred to him several times in taped speeches at Jonestown. [13]

After the Jonestown massacre, the CIA claimed that its file on "the Rev. Jimmie Jones" was almost empty. But actually, the CIAs Office of Security had opened a 201 file on Jones in the early 1960's, when he took off for Rio de Janeiro. Agency records showed that file stayed open for ten years, only being closed for no explained reason after Mitrione was killed. It's possible that Mitrione recruited jones into the CIA, using the State Department as his cover. [14]

By the time of his 201 file, Jones had already been to Castro's Cuba in 1960. He stayed at the Havana Hilton where the Soviet Union had some Sputnik satellites on display, which the CIA would have been happy to get pictures of. He and his wife even had their picture taken with Castro himself. (Sorry, I couldn't find it) [15]

In 1960, Jones got a passport toward making a several-week-long "sightseeing/culture" visit to Poland, Finland, the USSR, and England. This is similar to the journey made by Lee Harvey Oswald a year earlier. The State Department identified Jones world-tour as the first time he'd had a passport. But the problem with this is he would have needed one to go to Cuba months earlier, unless he went there covertly.

Jones first visited Guyana in 1961, and his whereabouts for a six-month period are then unknown. Somebody applied for a new passport in his name, and it looks like Jones was being impersonated on occasion, because he was said to be in Hawaii when he was actually in Guyana. This mirrors Lee Oswald being in two places in once as well. Two passports were issued to Jones, one in Chicago on June 28, 1960, and another in Indianapolis on January 20, 1962. [16]

Brazilian Federal Police records show that Jones and his family arrived in San Paolo by plane in April 1962, and traveled on to Belo Horizonte, where his boyhood chum Mitrione was an adviser at the US consulate. People there remembered Jones leaving his house early in the morning and coming back late at night, carrying a big leather briefcase. "Jim Jones was always mysterious and would never talk about his work here in Brazil", said Sebastian Rocha, an engineer who lived near the Joneses, who also assumed Jones was a spy. Jones socialized regularly with Mitrione during his 8 months in Belo Horizonte [17]. Then Mitrione moved to Rio, and wouldn't you know it Jones ended up in the same neighborhood not far away [18]. In Rio, Jones worked doing commission sales jobes for a "suspected CIA conduit" called Invesco [19].

Jones "is reported to have been fascinated by the magical rites of Macumba and Umbanda, and to have studfied the practices of Brazilian fait-healers...and conducted a study of extrasensory perception. These were subjects of interest to the CIA in connection with its MK-ULTRA program. So, also, were the 'mass conversaion techniques' at which Jones' Pentecostal training had made him an expert" [20]

Upon returning home and forming the People's Temple, Jones began espousing socialism, talking against racism, and his following grew. The FBI's COINTENPRO and the CIA's Operation CHAOS were going strong in the 60's, the same time that Jones went out of his way to form alliances with Huey Newton of the Black Panthers and Angela Davis of the Communist Party [21]. A congressional report showed that various agencies had "target populations" in mind for individual and mass control including blacks and young people. [22]

In 1976, Jones started putting Temple funds into Panamanian and Swiss banks, and had leased some 4,000 acres from the Guyanese government. Forbes Burnham, the prime minister who'd come to power with help from the CIA, approved the deal. Strangely, the location in Guyana's Northwest district was virtually at the same place where, back in 1845, a Reverend Smith had brought together the native population to tell them that the end was at hand. When this didn't happen, 400 of Smith's followers committed mass suicide, supposedly believing that they'd be resurrected as white people. [23]

Things eventually became strange in the jungle compound when Jones set up loudspeakers all over and would do long readings and speeches. A State Department officer who paid a visit reported that members seemed "drugged and robot-like in their reactions to questions, and, generally, in their behavior towards us visitors" [24].

Congressman Ryan decided to have a look after hearing that some weird things were going on there, so after he arrived with a national news crew, he was met by Richard Dwyer, Deputy Chief of MIssion at the US Embassy. He accompanied Ryan to the compound for a two-day visit, and was present when the congressman and his party were later ambushed at the airport, and at the massacre itself. In the "Last Tape" transcribed by the FBI, Jones can be heard amid wailing and screams exhorting his followers to take their lives and also saying "Get Dwyer out of here before something happens to him!" [25].

James Adkins, the CIA's station chief in Guyana, was monitoring radio transmissions in the middle of the night, and was the first outsider to hear about what one Jonestown escapee called the "suicides and murders" [26]. As for Dwyer, he may have been keeping tabs on Jonestown for the State Department. In a later court proceeding, Justice Department attorneys kept him from being questioned.

Before Congressman Ryan left the compound, he was attacked by a guy wielding a knife. A death squad was then waiting for him back at the airstrip. Witnesses described the killers as walking mechanically and emotionless, "like zombies" and "looking through you, not at you" [27]. Larry Layton was the only individual ever prosecuted and sent to prison. Oddly, his sister Deborah Layton was a defector of Jones circle from who Leo Ryan learned of the potential abuses of Americans in Jonestown. [28]

An autopsy on Jones body concluded that he didn't take poison, but had killed himself with a self-inflicted gunshot to the head, but the pistol was found 200ft from his body. Other researchers think the body identified as Jones couldn't have been him, because it didn't mesh his essential physical characteristics. One said that "photos of his body do not show identifying tattoos on his chest. The body and face are clearly not reckognizable due to bloating and discoloration. The FBI reportedly checked his fingerprints twice, a seemingly futile gesture since it is a precise operation. A more logical route would have been to check dental records." [29]

Here's what Congressman Ryan's friend Joe Holsinger once wrote:

"The more I investigate the mysteries of Jonestown, the more I am convinced there is something sinister behind it all. There is no doubt in my mind that Jones had very close CIA connections. At the time of the tragedy, the Temple had three boats in the water off Brazil. The boats disappeared shortly afterwards. Remember, Brazil is a country that Jones is very familiar with. He is supposed to have money there. And it is not too far from Guyana. My own feeling is that Jones was ambushed by CIA agents who then disappeared in the boats. But the whole story is so mind-boggling that I'm willing to concede he escaped with them."

[30]

Almost three years after the Jonestown massacre, some of the survivors filed a $63 million lawsuit against Stansfield Turner, CIA director when the massacre occured, and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. The lawsuit alleged there had been a conspiracy to "enhance the economic and political powers of James Warren Jones" in conducting "mind control and drug experimentation". The lawsuit was dismissed for "failure to prosecute timely", and all requests for an appeal were turned down. [31]

The surviving children of Congressman Ryan also sued the government, charging the State Department with knowing of the dangers ahead of time but failing to warn him; also, that Jonestown was a mind-control experiment and the community was heavily armed and infiltrated by the CIA. The lawsuit was later dropped, for reasons that never got explained. [32]

"Bo" Gritz trained a special forces team that went into Jonestown afterwards, which he says was needed "after it had reached a point where they had to destroy the evidence." Gritz believed Jonestown "was an extension of MK-ULTRA from the CIA and there are probably other experiments going on." [33]

Sources:

American Conspiracies, Jesse Ventura, Chapter 8.

My refrences vs. the books:

[1] - 2
[2] - 5
[3] - 6
[4] - 7
[5] - 8
[6] - 10
[7] - 11
[8] - 12
[9] - 13
[10] - 14
[11] - 15
[12] - 16
[13] - 17
[14] - 18
[15] - 19
[16] - 20
[17] - 21
[18] - 22
[19] - 23
[20] - 24
[21] - 25
[22] - 26
[23] - 27
[24] - 28
[25] - 30
[26] - 31
[27] - 32
[28] - 29
[29] - 34
[30] - 35
[31] - 36
[32] - 37
[33] - 38

Refrences: Page 98 / 112
Chapter 8 - Page 47 / 112

reply to post by CynicalDrivel


Thank you for posting before the thread was even completely posted, that's greatly appreciated.

very interesting theory, it seems plausible that JJ was working for the alphabet clans doing psy-op research. This is the first i have heard of this theory on this subject. Thank you for bringing it to my attention im off do do some research and see if i can dig anything else up on this topic.

S & F Great write up.

I read somewhere about a possible connection between Jones and Charles Manson before both men were involved in all the crazy, are you familiar with that? (Mk Ultra type)

MK Ultra type operations are most certainly still going down ( behind the green door that is)

Your post reminded me of this:

Guantanamo Torturers
The Men Who Stare At Goats by Jon Ronson (extract and author interview)

[Editor's Note: The entire US military apparatus (Air Force, Navy, and Army), especially the leaders of "special force" outfits, is now under the control of individuals who are dedicated to the One World Government takeover agenda and are no longer loyal to the US Constitution or the people of America.

Many of them are involved in satanism, as the murder rituals and gore tends to keep them locked down under mind control and under the thumb of the Illuminati elites pulling the strings from above. Kay Griggs recently published articles on the Internet and was interviewed in a video revealing the dark side of one such individual, her former husband, Marine Corps Colonel George Raymond Griggs. Fritz Springmeier and Cisco Wheeler reported in their book, The Illuminati Formula for a Total Mind Controlled Slave, that the military men involved with the First Earth Battalion are all subjected to mind control programming.

These men are programmed to be killer robots, so torturing people-and the psychological stress it would normally produce-is not really a problem for these individuals because they no longer control their minds, but rather they are controlled by their programmers and the embedded mind control programs. Please read this story from beginning to end as it reveals justs how evil, illicit, and unjustified are the horroific cruelties heaped upon innocent men at Guantanamo by the 'new" American military/CIA/private contractor monster that has replaced the once honorable (and admired) American military... Ken]

The story's based around the US Army's semi-mythical First Earth Battalion, which apparently investigated psychic powers and non-lethal weapons during the late 1970s and 1980s, after Lt. Col. Jim Channon went on a fact-finding mission through the hippy communes of California and came back advocating ginseng regulators, divining tools, omni-directional thought and colourful uniforms so that "individuals will shine through the conformity. Groovy dude. They also had a goat lab at Fort Bragg, where for 25 years soldiers tried to kill goats by staring at them. Allegedly, it worked once, but we suspect that had more to do with the goats by that point probably being quite old.

Vigilant Citizen shows it in the MSM and pop culture
vigilantcitizen.com...

Part 5 of the excellent documentary series “evidence of revision” is mostly about the Jonestown massacre and provides historical footage of this incident. The narrator at the beginning of this video is the Pulitzer-winning journalist Jack Anderson. Anderson was one of the first, who suspected the CIA and mind control experiments to be behind the Peoples Temple.






CIA director Richard Helms ordered the destruction of all MK-Ultra files in 1973. Witnesses have claimed, that even after the destruction of the files, some MK-Ultra projects were continued in secret. There is nothing funny or ridiculous about these vile experiments.

According to the former Nebraska State Nebraska John DeCamp, who is featured in Conspiracy of Silence and wrote a book about the Franklin Scandal, his mentor, the former C.I.A.-director William Colby advised him to write a book for his own safety. DeCamp also tells, that Colby wanted to warn the world about the danger of mind control experiments. DeCamp believes, that Colby's boating accident was an assassination (Guns and Butter radio show from December 23, 2009 - length 1hour).
www.kpfa.org...

reply to post by TupacShakur


I'll bite...

This is a interesting bunch of theories. I've always wondered how many of the victims were actually shot, instead of ingesting the poison.The count varies with the research.

One thing is clear: JJ was drugged out of his mind, and there were many who questioned his sanity up to the very end. There are one or two good documentaries about this unfortunate event, and a audio recording of the last hour or so of that sad day available if you have the stomach for it.

I think Gritz was right and then when Ryan began investigating the CIA decided to pull the plug on the operation. There were also rumors that Jonestown was being prepped as a possible Russian missile site using the People's Temple as a cover story.
In the end I believe they sent in a Delta team that's why none of the survivors would come out of the jungle, They were afraid of getting shot.
I'm still amazed that nobody ever got to the bottom of it considering how much publicity and lawsuits came after. It was a good choice by the CIA geographically speaking as it allowed no-one access without their knowing.
Great write up! You picked the best parts of the story and presented them very well as per your usual.

reply to post by MasterGemini

I read somewhere about a possible connection between Jones and Charles Manson before both men were involved in all the crazy, are you familiar with that? (Mk Ultra type)

Hmm, I've never heard the theory that Manson was a Manchurian Candidate, but it wouldn't shock me. Somebody he knew did try to kill a president, I can't remember which one. So it's possible that he could have been the "programmer".

MK Ultra type operations are most certainly still going down ( behind the green door that is)

Yeah that's pretty likely, but we'll never know for sure because that stuff is kept hidden from the people that pay for it....

Here is where Jesse Ventura messed up on his analysis.

1. While the body count was initially much lower, the reason it was significantly increased later is because they also found the bodies of hundreds of children, teenagers and adults who were brutally murdered in the compound's housing units. It turns out that not everybody wanted to kill themselves. So they were shot, stabbed, drowned or strangled to death.

The initial body count was based on those found in the courtyard. Not elsewhere.

2. Not all of the bodies were on their stomachs. Some were on their sides in the fetal position. Others were on their backs. Even in the second photo you posted, you can see a man in the upper left corner lying on his back.

Notice this photo right here:


See the guy in yellow and blue on the left? He's also on his back.

3. There were survivors. Some people were actually able to escape alive. They explained in great detail about the murders and forced suicides.

reply to post by Drunkenshrew


Cool, I'll definitely check that out. While I was reading about it I was hoping there'd be some videos of Jonestown while it was still up and running, because the only pictures I could find of the compound were of the dead bodies.

reply to post by allenidaho

1. While the body count was initially much lower, the reason it was significantly increased later is because they also found the bodies of hundreds of children, teenagers and adults who were brutally murdered in the compound's housing units. It turns out that not everybody wanted to kill themselves. So they were shot, stabbed, drowned or strangled to death.

The initial body count was based on those found in the courtyard. Not elsewhere.

OK that would make sense, but it's still pretty odd that they didn't search the entire compound when they first arrived. Wouldn't you want to look for survivors right away? Hmm...maybe it was just a nooby investigation.

2. Not all of the bodies were on their stomachs. Some were on their sides in the fetal position. Others were on their backs. Even in the second photo you posted, you can see a man in the upper left corner lying on his back.

OK not every single body is flat on their stomachs, but the vast majority of them are, giving that area the appearance that the bodies were arranged like that, which is pretty weird and brings up the question "Why bother doing that?"

Maybe cyanide poisoning does some odd thing where it causes a person to seize up right before they die and fall on their stomachs or something?

3. There were survivors. Some people were actually able to escape alive. They explained in great detail about the murders and forced suicides.

Yes 33 of them survived, I said that in the OP and talked about the survivors.

reply to post by Tuned Agent

This is a interesting bunch of theories. I've always wondered how many of the victims were actually shot, instead of ingesting the poison.The count varies with the research.

To be honest I've never even heard of this event until I read about it in Ventura's book, so I didn't really know what the official word was from the get-go.

One thing is clear: JJ was drugged out of his mind, and there were many who questioned his sanity up to the very end.

Yeah and lots of his followers were probably drugged up too, because the killers of the Congressman were described as zombie like, and also Valium laced with cyanide is described. But the tripped-out appearance could potentially be from the hypnosis looked at from the MK-ULTRA perspective.

reply to post by Asktheanimals

I think Gritz was right and then when Ryan began investigating the CIA decided to pull the plug on the operation.

I agree, based on Jim Jones' government ties and his shady background, it's hard for me to think he wasn't involved with the government in one way or another with Jonestown. What other reason would there be to kill the Congressman and news crew than trying to hide the mind-control experiments? Did they consider their compound holy or something?

There were also rumors that Jonestown was being prepped as a possible Russian missile site using the People's Temple as a cover story.

Wow that's something I didn't consider at all, but he did make the trip to the USSR so it's another possibility.

Weirdly enough, I vividly remember when that hit the news and the photos and such were broadcast for all to see. Always thought there was something fishy behind it all, considering that the congressman was murdered as he tried to get back to his plane to leave. Jim Jones was well known to be on several illicit as well as prescription drugs as I understand things, and remember them, from back then. Let's see, in 1978, I was 15, so I have some fair recollection of what was going on then.
Rather reminded me of Heaven's Gate some years later.

S&F great thread thanks

I remember doing a lot of study on this back in 1984, however your thread puts the whole thing in a much broader spectrum that fills a lot of gaps in my understanding

thanks again

reply to post by TupacShakur


That was an excellent post on a very interesting case. You should look into what WorldVision was doing
there as well.
S&F

reply to post by SweetKarma


I remember it too. I was in 5th or 6th grade at the time. It was on the cover of Time magazine, and the story was in all the periodicals. I read the news story while I was at the library waiting for my Mom to finish some appointment and pick me up. I was freaked out then and am freaked out now. So many unanswered questions. What a tragedy.

Come to think of it...I think this was the first time I EVER saw a picture of dead people (or any dead person, for that matter) let alone on the news or in any paper or magazine. The fact that it was in full color, on the cover of Time magazine made it that much more of a big deal, at least in my mind.