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On the scene at Jonestown, Guyanese troops discovered a large cache of drugs,According to survivors, these were being used regularly "to control" a population of only 1,100 people.
enough to drug the entire population of Georgetown, Guyana (well over 200,000) for more than a year.
One footlocker contained 11,000 doses of thorazine, a dangerous tranquilizer.
Drugs used in the testing for MK-ULTRA were found in abundance, including sodium pentathol (a truth serum), chloral hydrate (a hypnotic), demerol, thalium (confuses thinking), and many others.
Schacht had supplies of haliopareael and largatil as well, two other major tranquilizers.complete with medical and psychiatric experimentation.
The actual description of life at Jonestown is that of a tightly run concentration camp,
The stresses and isolation of the victims is typical of sophisticated brainwashing techniques. The drugs and special tortures add an additional experimental aspect to the horror.
This more clearly explains the medical tags on the bodies, and why they had to be removed. It also suggests an additional motive for frustrating any chemical autopsies, since these drugs would have been found in the system of the dead.
Project Blue was/is the Guiana operation. Project Searchlight was the cover name forthe co-called Manchurian Candidate.
Project Blue: Resettlement of 34 Level 4 subjects. Level 4 refers to the degree of mind control that the subject has been programmed to. Level 4 "sleepers" are programmed assassins,
Jim Jones was only one of the project leaders. The actual project was headed by Wessley Baker of the Department of State. He introduced Jim Jones to Gary Monroe in the States. Hallucinogenic drugs, supplied by DOS, were put on the consecrated communion hosts. The doses of Trichloral-trimital was fed, in limited form,"to the entire church population.
Mass hypnosis & the drug laced communion "hosts" were the primary tools used to determine the candidates for the inner circle. All experiments were produced within the church walls. They used no outside sources or vehicles. The first doctor, flown in, & made a member of the congregation, came from Baltimore, & was a family practitioner of Martin, Delahny and Danvers. The doctor that was sent to be part of the select team was Dr. Danvers.
Danvers was approached by AGENCY personnel in Tran Loc, Viet Nam. (He became one of the first US Army majors to join the Company as a consultant. He was, again approached in 1969 to participate in Operation Strike Back, where he treated RVN soldiers as well as V.C. and sent them back into the field. This too, eventually fell under Operation Open Eyes (the overall name for the government mind control operation) It is still carried on the original Operations page.
Dr. Danvers was a close associate of Jim Jones, and the inner circle of cult members who had arrived, already trained, in part. Each member was assigned a group of three congregation members, whom they put through their paces until complete obedience was achieved. The congregation grew very slowly. The majority of those who went with him to Guiana, came from other church sites.
Programming was only applied to those past the age of eight. The manual that they used to program the children up to age 20 was a book called "Cornflower". It is part of the CIA training manual used in Honduras & Belize. It is still used in San Salvador today.
Project Blue was/is a systematic program used to continue and maintain the level of programming already installed in the small churches, from which the members came, from all over the U.S. and Canada. Then, the DOS sent 65 trained field experts down to oversee the daily programming and training schedule. Leaving the actual number of people on site aside for the moment, there were often 450-500 of our people in the encampment at a time.
Three 10 ml (milliliter) vats of potassium cyanide were delivered from Ft. Meade on a C-123 transport. This amount would have only provided lethal does for 10 men/women.
The actual danger to the camp people, was a self styled chain link fence with shooting platforms. The entire project went sour as some of the "less" programmed began to rebel against Jim. The selection process for membership was faulty, as all congregational members had not received a full dose of Level 3 and 4 programming prior to being brought on site. They rebelled against his "way of life", & wanted to take their young and leave.
No one was permitted to ever leave before they were fully programmed to performed specific tasks. (Ranging from small tasks to tasks of vital importance.)Trips out of Jonestown were only permitted by armed escort. No phones were allowed for anyone other than Jim and his closest staff.
Gun positions were mounted around the entire perimeter to prohibit the flight of any camp member. After two attempts at escape, security was ordered to deal with problems by "fire on sight".
The program was monitored closely by DOS. They even sent numerous delegations to "Jonestown", to monitor the process of this mass "type" experiment.
The Project deteriorated from week to week. Soon Jones' own council began to supercede his orders.Nowhere was potassium cyanide part of his trigger. Task Force 151 supplied the arms, AK-47's and AR 15's with silencers.
Jim originally came into our (CIA) hands because of his coc aine and heroin (speed balls) addiction. We didn't clean him up, we merely put a heavy Level 4 program in his head. The Level 5 trigger was to activate programming which would annihilate the entire group through gun fire.
Jones and 12 of his guards were still alive at that time. An Englishman then took the cargo from the plane. 4 pounds of cyanide in plastic. The cyanide cannister bore the usual markings and the name of Union Carbide of India. Parts of the shipment was produced by our company called Shalimar (the chemical weapons and munitions part of Shalimar perfumes).
The Englishman waved to the crew to take off before dusk set in. All twelve of the shooters fled the country on an English cutter called the M.S. Dunbar. The cyanide kool aid was then put in the open mouths of many of the dead.
Cyanide was not the cause of any death.
Contrary to what has been written, Jim destructed on his own using a .357 Python. At that time Project Blue was canceled. The autopsies were all a big cover-up. That experiment failed, but the data they gathered was integrated into new projects.
The next year Project Phoenix was born. It is the same as today's Contact Operation. It was run by DOS (at the beginning, and funded with AGENCY money.) An operations fund of $400,000 was granted to Project Phoenix by the DIA. That's when it changed hands.
Contact/Phoenix books and newspapers contain subliminal type of programs designed to keep the programmedwalking the Company line, years after the programming was put in.
"sleepers"
The Jonestown experiment was one that had gone sour and had to be terminated. However, enough was learned from the Jonestown experiment to use on other "cults" around the world.
Waco was one that was successful, so successful in fact that they were just about to carry out their programmed "terrorist" act, when the government sent in a Delta Force team to neutralize seven "sleepers" who were part of the Branch Davidian Church and had been accidently "triggered".
Somehow, the NWO part of the FBI and BATF decided that they were going to take over the operation and use it to teach America some lessons. The rest of the Waco story is history now.
The cult in Japan was financed by the same NWO part of the CIA that experimented with Jonestown.
The Temple of the Solar Order in Switzerland and Canada were also terrorist sleepers who were programmed to release biological and chemical weapons in targeted cities.
Programmed terrorists are used by the NWO governments around the world to cause the citizens to give up their freedom and demand a police state to keep them safe.
Once the police state is in place, the lessons learned from experiments like Jonestown can be used to program and re-educate the population in concentration camps, or as they will be called "Re-education and Training Camps".
This is part of the "school to work" legislation that is being rammed through Congress. Those people who have not been indoctrinated in the schools of today, will not be allowed to get a job unless they go back for re-education. The techniques used in Jonestown-like mind control experiments will quickly shape and mold people into good little NWO robots.
If they don't agree to enter one of these re-education camps, they will not be able to get a job, therefore, they will not be able to support themselves or buy food or shelter. If they become homeless they will be forced to enter a homeless camp in which they will be "taught" skills. All the forests and wild lands will have become part of the world's biospheres, there will be no place for dissenting citizens to run.
Those citizens who cannot be reprogrammed will "disappear".
Children will be separated from parents, and husbands from wives. You will be sent to whatever area of the country that your skill is needed. Old and useless people will be sent to "nursing" homes, and will "disappear". Families will be split asunder, and as a result of the programming, no one will even notice that they no longer have their loved ones around them. No one will ever be missed.
Jonestown may have been a failure, but what they learned from it has been incorporated into the plan for the One World Government. 1984 should be must reading for everyone these days, because Big Brother is upon us.
The successful attempts by U.S. intelligence to develop techniques for manipulating individual behavior in a manner that subverts human will and consciousness. The discussion focuses on methods of causing people to commit assassinations against their will and without their conscious knowledge.
Joe Holsinger (former legislative assistant to the late Representative Leo Ryan), Holsinger cites indications that People's Temple may have been an extension of the intelligence community's mind control programs;the fact that most of the Jonestown victims had been murdered (they were not suicides, as generally reported); the presence of large amounts of psychiatric drugs at the Jonestown site; Temple stalwart Lawrence Layton, activities on behalf of the National Security establishment;
the role of alleged CIA officer George Phillip Blakey in establishing the Jonestown compound;
structural similarities between the People's Temple and features of the MK/Ultra program.
the presence at Jonestown of CIA's Guyanese Station Chief Richard Dwyer shortly before the massacre began;
the intelligence establishment's use of mind-control cults. After indications that the People's Temple may have been an intelligence operation, the program presents information about the Rajneesh cult suggestive of similar possibilities. Much of the analysis focuses on Reverend Moon's Unification Church. Mr. Emory hypothesizes that Moon's organization is an extension of the Japanese Patriotic and Ultra-Nationalist Societies, which paved the way for fascism's rise in Japan through a program of political assassinations, intimidation, bribery and propaganda.
Superficially Korean, the Moon organization drew heavily on capital and manpower from the fascist infrastructure of Imperial Japan. In the United States, the Unification Church is very well-connected to elements of the American intelligence establishment and the right wing. The program concludes with an examination of the Ananda Marga organization, a fiercely anti-communist cult, purporting to derive from Indian spiritual traditions. Program highlights include: the Nazi antecedents of the Philip family (involved with Jonestown);
an order to cease identification of the dead at Jonestown given by National Security Advisor Robert Pastor to the military commander of the U.S. forces a the massacre site;
the pivotal role of Japanese war criminals Yoshio Kodama and Royichi Sasakawa in the development of the Moon organization; Moon aide Bo Hi Pak's background in the Imperial Japanese Army; the anti-Christian, anti-American ideology of the Unification Church; connections of the Moon group to Watergate Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski and conservative organizer Richard Viguerie; the suspicious death of Robert Boettcher, a key aide investigating the Moon organization in connection with the Koreagate scandal; discussion of the Japanese Patriotic societies; the activities of Axis spy Subas Chandra Bose (the founder of Ananda Marga was a roommate of his); allegations of terrorism lodged against the Ananda Marga group in India.
.
political activist Dick Gregory claimed that CIA-FBI forces killed the people in Jonestown in order to use their bodies to smuggle heroin into the U.S. (Hall 305)
an inmate at a Federal prison, a prison guard and six others were charged yesterday with operating a heroin smuggling organization that was preparing to bring hundreds of pounds of the drug into the United States from Thailand, the authorities said yesterday.
The inmate, 60-year-old Leslie Atkinson, who is
serving a 44-year sentence for smuggling heroin into the country in body bags containing the corpses of American soldiers killed in Vietnam,
In 1979 an organization sponsored by the Church of Scientology began to circulate reports that a CIA agent had been present in Jonestown at the time of the deaths (Alliance for the Preservation of Religious Liberty). In addition, Joe Holsinger, Congressman Ryan's Legislative Assistant, testified before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Operations in 1980 that the CIA had a covert operation in Guyana. A report dated 20 July 1980 by Information Services Company notes connections between the CIA and Jim Jones as well as CIA interest in Guyana politics.
Washington -- Dr. Maya Angelou; California Reps. Barbara Lee and Maxine Waters; California Sen. Dianne Feinstein; San Francisco and Oakland Mayors Gavin Newsom and Jerry Brown and comedian Dick Gregory are among the celebrities who are lending their support to the construction of the Cherishing the Children Jonestown Memorial Wall to commemorate the lives of the 276 innocent children who lost their lives in Guyana.
Nov. 18 marks the 29th anniversary of the Jonestown massacre, among the nation's most tragic mass deaths in American history. More than 900 people, 276 children, 40 infants, mostly African-Americans, who were parishioners of cult leader Jim Jones, were murdered in the jungles of Guyana located on the northeastern tip of South America.
Commenting on the progress of the memorial, Norwood said, "The survivors and surviving families of Jonestown have finally raised enough money to begin construction The monument will be placed in the Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland where 406 bodies mostly children, lay in a mass grave. Forty three-and-a-half foot caskets of infants lay at Evergreen and it is in the spirit of the children that we say never forget, never again."
Jonestown was supposed to be an oasis from racism, sexism and discrimination. But things soon turned sour. In Guyana, no dissent was tolerated, there were frequent beatings, and Jim Jones' paranoid propaganda rang through loud speakers' morning, noon, and night. Parents were not allowed to speak or allowed to see their children.
Probably the best known case is Jonestown, a cult of over 900 followers in Guyana who committed "mass suicide" in 1978. led by the Reverend Jim Jones. Jonestown was a veritable prison where all the classic mind control techniques were utilized. While little more than a swamp, it nevertheless contained a modern hospital, from which massive quantities of behavioral modification drugs were recovered.
One of Jones' top aides, George Philip Blakely, who recruited mercenaries for the CIA in Angola, was the son-in-law of Dr. Lawrence Layton, a former Army biochemical warfare specialist.
The military purposefully took over a week to remove the bodies, ensuring, as in the Waco case, that no autopsies could be performed.
National Security Advisor Brzezinski's office ordered "all politically sensitive papers & forms of identification" be removed from the bodies, &(Kenneth Wooden, The Children of Jonestown (New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1981), p. 196, quoted in Brandt.)
Jonestown's mysterious financial resources were found scattered in banks & investments, estimated to be from $26 million to $ 2 billion.
In the current [post-Jonestown massacre] period,Ernest, and members of the Federation of Evangelical Ministries Association in Wheaton, Illinois (World Vision, World Medical Relief, Samaritan's Purse, and Carl McIntyre's International Council of Christian Churches).[194] Similar plans devised by the Peace Corps included moving inner-city Blacks from America to Jamaica, and other Third World countries. And World Relief attempted to move the population of the Island of Dominica to Jonestown.[195]
Jonestown is being "repopulated" with 100,000 Laotian Hmong people. Many of them grew opium for CIA money in Southeast Asia. Over 1,000 reside there already under a scheme designed by Billy Graham's nephew
Inside Guyana itself, approximately 25 miles to the south of Matthews Ridge, was/is a community called Hilltown, named after religious leader Rabbi Hill. Hill has used the names Abraham Israel and Rabbi Emmanuel Washington. Hilltown, set up about the same time as Jonestown, followed the departure of David Hill, who was known in Cleveland, a fugitive of the U.S. courts. Hill rules with an "iron fist" over someUsed as strong-arm troops, and "internal mercenaries" to insure Burnham's election, as were Jonestown members, the
8,000 Black people from Guyana and America who believe they are the Lost Tribe of Israel and the real Hebrews of Biblical prophecy.[188]Hill says his followers would gladly kill themselves at his command, but he would survive since, unlike Jones, he is "in control."[190]
Hilltown people were allowed to clear the Jonestown site of shoes and unused weapons, both in short supply in Guyana.[189]
Strangely enough, almost every map of Guyana in the major press located Jonestown at a different place following the killings. One map even shows a second site in the area called "Johnstown."[187] Perhaps there were multiple [Jonestown] camps and Leo Ryan was only shown one … In any case, the Jonestown model survives, and similar camps, and their sinister designs, show up in many places.
According to one story, Jones was seeking a place on earth that would survive the effects of nuclear war, relying only on an article in Esquire magazine for his list.[145] The real reason for his locations in Brazil, California, Guyana and elsewhere deserve more scrutiny.[146] At one point Jones wanted to set up in Grenada, and he invited then-Prime Minister Sir Eric Gairy to visit the Temple in San Francisco.[147] He invested $200,000 in the Grenada National Bank in 1977 to pave the way, and some $76,000 was still there after the massacre.[148]
The story of Jonestown is that of a gruesome experiment, not a religious utopian society.
On the eve of the massacre, Forbes Burnham was reportedly converted to "born again" Christianity by members of the Full Gospel Christian Businessman's Association, including Lionel Luckhoo, a Temple lawyer in Guyana.[182]
This same group, based in California, also reportedly converted Guatemalan dictator Rios Montt prior to his massacres there and they were in touch with Jim Jones in Ukiah.[183]With Ryan on his way to Jonestown, the seal of secrecy was broken. In a desperate attempt to test their conditioning methods, the Jonestown elite apparently tried to implement a real suicide drill.[185] Clearly, it led to a revolt, and the majority of people fled, unaware that there were people waiting to catch them.
They currently conduct the White House prayer breakfasts for Mr. Reagan.[184]
His [Jone’s] final choice, the Matthew's Ridge section in Guyana is an interesting one. It was originally the site of a Union Carbide bauxite and manganese mine, and Jones used the dock they left behind.[149] At an earlier point,Plans to inhabit the jungles of Guyana's interior with cheap labor date back to 1919.[151] Resources buried there are among the richest in the world, and include manganese, diamonds, gold, bauxite and uranium.[152]
it had been one of seven possible sites chosen for the relocation of the Jews after World War II.[150]
Forbes Burnham, the Prime Minister, had participated in a scheme to repatriate Blacks from the UK to work in the area. Like all earlier attempts, it failed.[153]
Once chosen, the [Guyana Jonestown] site was leased and worked on by a select crew of Temple members in preparation for the arrival of the body of the church.But if these were idealists seeking a better life, their arrival in "Utopia" was a strange welcome. Piled into busses in San Francisco, they had driven to Florida. From there, Pan American charter planes delivered them to Guyana.[155]
The work was done in cooperation with Burnham and the U.S. Embassy there.[154]The deception had finally been stripped bare of all pretense. The Blacks were so isolated and controlled that neighbors as close as five miles from the site did not know that Blacks lived at Jonestown. The only public representatives seen in Guyana were white.[157] Guyanese children were "bought" also.[158]
When they arrived at the airport, the Blacks were taken off the plane, bound and gagged.[156]
Jones, a poor, itinerant preacher, suddenly had money in 1961 for a trip to "minister" in Brazil, and he took his family with him.[89] By this time, he had "adopted" Beikman, and eight children, both Black and white.[90] His neighbors in Brazil distrusted him. He told them he worked with U.S. Navy Intelligence. His transportation and groceries were being provided by the U.S. Embassy as was the large house he lived in.[91] His son, Stephan, commented that he made regular trips to Belo Horizonte, site of the CIA headquarters in Brazil.[92] An American police advisor, working closely with the CIA at that point, Dan Mitrione was there as well.[93] Mitrione had risen in the ranks quickly, and was busy training foreign police in torture and assassination methods. He was later kidnapped by Tupermaro guerillas in Uruguay, interrogated and murdered.[94] Costa Gravas made a film about his death titled State of Siege.[95]
Dan Mitrione, Jones' friend, moved on to the CIA-financed International Police Academy, where police were trained in counter-insurgency and torture techniques from around the world.[88][96] Recent articles indicate that Catholic clergy are complaining about CIA funding of other denominations for "ministry" in Brazil; perhaps Jones was an early example.[97]
Jones returned to the United States in 1963, with $10,000 in his pocket.
With his new wealth, Jones was able to travel to California and establish the first People's Temple in Ukiah, California, in 1965. Guarded by dogs, electric fences and guard towers, he set up Happy Havens Rest Home.[98] Despite a lack of trained personnel, or proper licensing, Jones drew in many people at the camp. He had elderly, prisoners, people from psychiatric institutions, and 150 foster children, often transferred to care at Happy Havens by court orders.[99]
He was contacted there by Christian missionaries from World Vision, an international evangelical order that had done espionage work for the CIA in Southeast Asia.[100]
Mitrione was a police officer in Richmond, Indiana from 1945 to 1947 and joined the FBI in 1959. In 1960 he was assigned to State Department's International Cooperation Administration, going to South American countries to teach "advanced counterinsurgency techniques." A.J. Langguth, a former New York Times bureau chief in Saigon, claimed that Mitrione was among the US advisers teaching Brazilian police how much electric shock to apply to prisoners without killing them. Langguth also claimed that older police officers were replaced "when the CIA and the U.S. police advisers had turned to harsher measures and sterner men." and that under the new head of the U.S. Public Safety program in Uruguay, Dan Mitrione, the United States "introduced a system of nationwide identification cards, like those in Brazil… [and] torture had become routine at the Montevideo [police] jefatura."
From 1960 to 1967, Mitrione worked with the Brazilian police, first in Belo Horizonte then in Rio de Janeiro. A trainer in torture classes given to Brazilian police in Belo Horizonte, he led "practical demonstrations" of torture techniques using prisoners and beggars taken off the streets. … Mitrione has insisted, in agreement with the CIA manual, that effective torture was science. "The precise pain in the precise place, in the precise amount" was his motto.
LOS ANGELES – A few months ago, I received some clippings of interviews with a former Federal Intelligence agency official. That operative, Jesse Leaf, had been involved with the agency’s activities in Iran, and well into the stories Mr. Leaf made some damning accusations.
He said that
the C.I.A. sent an operative to teach interrogation methods to SAVAK, the Shah’s secret police, that the training included instructions in torture, and the techniques were copied from the Nazis.
… We can read the accusations, even examine the evidence and find it irrefutable. But, in our hearts, we cannot believe that Americans have gone abroad to spread the use of torture.
We can believe that public officials with reputations for brilliance can be arrogant, blind or stupid. Anything but evil. And when the cumulative proof becomes overwhelming that our representatives in the C.I.A. or the Agency for International Development police program did in fact teach torture, we excuse ourselves by vilifying the individual men.
This has been on my mind since I returned from Cuba recently. In Havana, I had tried to hunt down a former double agent, a Cuban named Manuel, who was said to have information about United States involvement with torture in Latin America. Manuel had revealed his true sympathies by leaving his job with the C.I.A. in Montevideo and returning to his homeland. But from his editor I learned that Manuel, whose full name turned out to be Manuel Hevia Conculluela, would be out of the country the entire time I was in Cuba. I could, however, get a copy of the book he had published six months earlier, "Pasaporte 11333, Eight Years With the C.I.A."
Mr. Hevia had served the C.I.A. in Uruguay’s police program. In 1970, his duties brought him in contact with Dan Mitrione, the United States policy adviser who was kidnapped by the Tupamaro revolutionaries later that year and shot to death when the Uruguayan Government refused to save him by yielding up politician prisoners.
Mr. Mitrione has become notorious throughout Latin America. But few men ever had the chance to sit with him and discuss his rationale for torture. Mr. Hevia had once.
A congressional aide was quoted in the AP wires on May 19, 1979, "There are 120 white, brainwashed assassins out from Jonestown awaiting the trigger word to pick up their hit."[70]
Similar camps [to Jonestown & Hilltown] were reported at the time in the Philippines. Perhaps the best known example [in Chile] is the fascist torture camp in Chile known as Colonia Dignidad. Also a religious cult built around a single individual, this one came from Germany to Chile in 1961. In both cases, the camp was their "Agricultural Experiment." Sealed and protected by the dreaded Chilean DINA police, Colonia Dignidad serves as a torture chamber for political dissidents. To the Jonestown monstrosities, they have added dogs specially trained to attack human genitals.[191]
The operations there have included the heavy hand of decapitation specialist Michael Townley Welch, an American CIA agent, as well as reported visits by Nazi war criminals Dr. Josef Mengele and Martin Bormann. Currently, another such campsite exists at Pisagua, Chile.[192] Temple member Jeannie Mills, now dead, reported having seen actual films of a Chilean torture camp while at Jonestown. The only source possible at the time was the Chilean fascists themselves.[193]
To comprehend [Jonestown] this well-financed, sinister operation, we must abandon the myth that this was a religious commune and study instead the history that led to its formation. Jonestown was an experiment, part of a 30-year program called MK-ULTRA, the CIA and military intelligence code name for mind control.[170]
A close study of Senator Ervin's 1974 report, Individual Rights and the Government's Role in Behavior Modification, shows that these agencies had certain "target populations" in mind, for both individual and mass control. Blacks, women, prisoners, the elderly, the young, and inmates of psychiatric wards were selected as "potentially violent."[171]
There were plans in California at the time for a Center for the Study and Reduction of Violence, expanding on the horrific work of Dr. José Delgado, Drs. Mark and Ervin, and Dr. Jolly West, experts in implantation, psychosurgery, and tranquilizers. The guinea pigs were to be drawn from the ranks of the "target populations," and taken to an isolated military missile base in California.[172]
In that same period, Jones began to move his Temple members to Jonestown. The were the exact population selected for such tests.[173]
Jones had amassed incredible wealth. Press estimates ranged from $26 million to $2 billion, including bank accounts, foreign investments and real estate. Accounts were set up worldwide by key members, often in the personal name of certain people in the Temple.[164]
Much of this money, listed publicly after the massacre, disappeared mysteriously. It was a fortune far too large to have come from membership alone. The receivership set up by the government settled on a total of $10 million. Of special interest were the Swiss bank accounts opened in Panama, the money taken from the camp, and the extensive investments in Barclay's Bank.[165]
Other sources of income included the German banking family of Lisa Philips Layton, Larry's mother.[166] Also, close to $65,000 a month income was claimed to come from welfare and social security checks for 199 members, sent to the Temple followers and signed over to Jones.[167]
In addition, there are indications that Blakey and other members were supplementing the Temple funds with international smuggling of guns and drugs.[168] At one point, Charles Garry noted that Jones and his community were "literally sitting on a gold mine." Mineral distribution maps of Guyana suggest he was right.[169]
Jeannie and Al Mills, who intended to write a book about Jones, were murdered at home, bound and shot.[73]
Some evidence indicates a connection between the Jonestown operation and the murders of Mayor Moscone and Harvey Milk by police agent Dan White.[74]
Another Jonestown survivor was shot near his home in Detroit by unidentified killers.[75]
Yet another was involved in a mass murder of school children in Los Angeles.[76]
Anyone who survived such massive slaughter must be somewhat suspect. The fact that the press never even spoke about nearly 200 survivors raises serious doubts
At the Jonestown site, survivors described a special group of Jones' followers who were allowed to carry weapons and money, and to come and go from the camp. These people were all white, mostly males.[60]
They ate better and worked less than the others, and they served as an armed guard to enforce discipline, control labor and restrict movement.[61]
Among them were Jones' top lieutenants, including George Phillip Blakey. Blakey and others regularly visited Georgetown, Guyana and made trips in their sea-going boat, the Cudjoe. He was privileged to be aboard the boat when the murders occurred.[62]
This special armed guard survived the massacre. Many were trained and programmed killers, like the "zombies" who attacked Ryan. Some were used as mercenaries in Africa, and elsewhere.[63] The dead were 90% women, and 80% Blacks.[64]
It is unlikely that men armed with guns and modern crossbows would give up control and willingly be injected with poisons. It is much more likely that they forced nearly 400 people to die by injection, and then assisted in the murder of 500 more who attempted to escape. One survivor clearly heard people cheering 45 minutes after the massacre. Despite government claims, they are not accounted for, nor is their location known.[65]
A Bible-thumper and faith healer, Jones put on revivalist tent shows in the area, and worked close to Richmond, Indiana. Mitrione, his friend, worked as chief of police there, and kept him from being arrested or run out of town.[83] According to those close to him, he used wet chicken livers as evidence of "cancers" he was removing by "divine powers."[84] His landlady called him "a gangster who used a Bible instead of a gun."[85] His church followers included Charles Beikman, a Green Beret who was to stay with him to the end.[86] Beikman was later charged with the murders of several Temple members in Georgetown, following the massacre.[87]
Articles indicate that Catholic clergy are complaining about CIA funding of other denominations for "ministry" in Brazil; perhaps Jones was an early example.
funnel donations for "medicine" through Sterling Drugs, linked to I.G. Farben.).
"The Messiah from Ukiah," as he was known then, met and recruited Timothy Stoen, a Stanford graduate and member of the city DA's office, and his wife Grace.[104] During this time,and other important members joined the Temple.[105] The camp "doctor," Larry Schacht, claims Jones got him off drugs and into medical school during this period.[106]
the Layton family, Terri Buford and George Phillip Blakey
These were not just street urchins. Buford's father was a Commander for the fleet at the Philadelphia Navy Base for years.[107] The Laytons were a well-heeled, aristocratic family. Dr. Layton donated at least a quarter-million dollars to Jones. His wife son and daughter were all members of the Temple.[108] George Blakey, who married Debbie Layton, was from a wealthy British family. He donated $60,000 to pay the lease on the 27,000-acre Guyana site in 1974.[109]
Most of the top lieutenants around Jones were from wealthy, educated backgrounds, many with connections to the military or intelligence agencies.
Lisa Philips Layton had come to the U.S. from a rich Hamburg banking family in Germany.[110]
These were the people who would set up the bank accounts, complex legal actions, and financial records that put people under the Temple's control.[111]
(Stoen was able to set up important contacts for Jones as Assistant DA in San Francisco.[112] Jones changed his image to that of a liberal.[113] He had spent time studying the preaching methods of Fr. Divine in Philadelphia, and attempted to use them in a manipulative way on the streets of San Francisco. Fr. Divine ran a religious and charitable operation among Philadelphia's poor Black community.[114] Jones was able to use his followers in an election once again, this time for Mayor Moscone. Moscone responded in 1976, putting Jones in charge of the city Housing Commission.[115])
American intelligence agencies have a sordid history of cooperative relations with Nazi war criminals and international fascism.[207] In light of this, consider the curious ties of the family members of the top lieutenants to Jim Jones. The Layton family is one example., for many years, and later worked as Director of Missile and Satellite Development at the Navy Propellant Division, Indian Head, Maryland.[208]
Dr. Laurence Layton was Chief of Chemical and Biological Warfare Research at Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah
His wife, Lisa, had come from a rich German family. Her father, Hugo, had represented I.G. Farben as a stockbroker.[209] Her stories about hiding her Jewish past from her children for most of her life, and her parents' escape from a train heading for a Nazi concentration camp seem shallow, as do Dr. Layton's Quaker religious beliefs. The same family sent money to Jonestown regularly.[210] Their daughter, Debbie, met and married George Philip Blakey in an exclusive private school in England. Blakey's parents have extensive stock holdings in Solvay drugs, a division of the Nazi cartel I.G. Farben.[211] He also contributed financially.[212]
[214] Maria Katsaris' father was a minister with the Greek Orthodox Church, a common conduit of CIA fundings, and Maris claimed she had proof he was CIA. She was shot in the head, and her death was ruled a suicide, but at one point Charles Beikman was charged with killing her.[215]
Terri Buford's father, Admiral Charles T. Buford, worked with Navy Intelligence.[213] In addition, Blakey was reportedly running mercenaries from Jonestown to CIA-backed UNITA forces in Angola.
On their return to the United States, the "official" survivors were represented by attorney Joseph Blatchford who had been named prior to that time in a scandal involving CIA infiltration of the Peace Corps.[216] Almost everywhere you look at Jonestown, U.S. intelligence and fascism rear their ugly heads.
… connections to U.S. intelligence, such as the long-term friendship of Jones and CIA associate Dan Mitrione. But the ties are much more direct when a full picture of the operation is revealed. To start with, the history of Forbes Burnham's rise to power in Guyana is fraught with the clear implication of a CIA coup d'état to oust troublesome independent leader Cheddi Jagan.[196] In addition, the press and other evidence indicated the presence of a CIA agent on the scene at the time of the massacre. This man, Richard Dwyer, was working as Deputy Chief of Mission for the U.S. Embassy in Guyana.[197] Identified in Who's Who in the CIA, he has been involved since 1959, and was last stationed in Martinique.[198] Present at the camp site and the airport strip, his accounts were used by the State Department to confirm the death of Leo Ryan. At the massacre, Jones said, "Get Dwyer out of here" just before the killings began.[199]
Other Embassy personnel, who knew the situation at Jonestown well, were also connected to intelligence work. U.S. Ambassador John Burke, who served in the CIA with Dwyer in Thailand, was an Embassy official described by Philip Agee as working for the CIA since 1963.
A Reagan appointee to the CIA, he is still employed by the Agency, usually on State Department assignments.[200] Burke tried to stop Ryan's investigation.[201] Also at the Embassy was Chief Consular officer Richard McCoy, described as "close to Jones," who worked for military intelligence and was "on loan" from the Defense Department at the time of the massacre.[202]
According to a standard source, "The U.S. embassy in Georgetown housed the Georgetown CIA station. It now appears that the majority and perhaps all of the embassy officials were CIA officers operating under State Department covers . . ."[203] Dan Webber, who was sent to the site of the massacre the day after, was also named as CIA.[204] Not only did the State Department conceal all reports of violations at Jonestown from Congressman Leo Ryan, but the Embassy regularly provided Jones with copies of all congressional inquiries under the Freedom of Information Act.[205]
Ryan had challenged the Agency's overseas operations. He was an author of the controversial Hughes-Ryan Amendment that would have required CIA disclosure in advance to the congressional committees of all planned covert operations. The Amendment was defeated shortly after his death.[206]
The international operations of World Vision and the related evangelical groups continue unabashed. World Vision official John W. Hinckley, Sr. was on his way to a Guatemalan water project run by the organization on the day his son shot at president Reagan.[280] A mysterious "double" of Hinckley, Jr., a man named Richardson, followed Hinckley's path from Colorado to Connecticut, and even wrote love letters to Jody Foster. Richardson was a follower of Carl McIntyre's International Council of Christian Churches, and attended their Bible School in Florida. He was arrested shortly after the assassination attempt in New York's Port Authority with a weapon, and claimed he intended to kill Reagan.[281]
Another World Vision employee, Mark David Chapman, worked at their Haitian refugee camp in Ft. Chaffee, Arkansas. He was later to gain infamy as the assassin of John Lennon in New York City.[282] World Vision works with refugees worldwide. At the Honduran border, they are present in camps used by American CIA to recruit mercenaries against Nicaragua. They were at Sabra and Shatilla, Camps in Lebanon where fascist Phalange massacred the Palestinians.[283] Their representatives in the Cuban refugee camps on the east coast included members of the Bay of Pigs operation, CIA-financed mercenaries from Omega 7 and Alpha 66.[284] Are they being used as a worldwide cover for the recruitment and training of these killers? They are, as mentioned earlier, working to repopulate Jonestown with Laotians who served as mercenaries for our CIA.[285]
Leo Ryan's daughter, Shannon, lives among the disciples of another cult today, at the new city of Rajneeshpuram in Arizona. She was quoted in the press, during the recent controversy over a nationwide recruiting drive to bring urban homeless people to the commune, saying she did not believe it could end like Jonestown, since the leader would not ask them to commit suicide. "If he did ask me, I would do it," she said.[288]
Homeless recruits who had left since then are suing in court because of suspicious and unnecessary injections given them by the commune's doctor, and a liquid they were served daily in unmarked jars that many believe was not simply "beer." One man in the suit claims he was drugged and disoriented for days after his first injection.[289]
The connection of intelligence agencies to cults is nothing new … the Unification Church, tied to both the Korean CIA (i.e., American CIA in Korea), and the international fascist network known as the World Anti-Communist League (WACL). The Moonies hosted WACL's first international conference.[217] What distinguished Jonestown was the level of control and the openly sinister involvement.[218]
The meticulous daily notes and drug records kept by Larry Schacht disappeared, but evidence did not.[174] The history of MK-ULTRA and its sister programs (MK-DELTA, ARTICHOKE, BLUEBIRD, etc.) records a combination of drugs, drug mixtures, electroshock and torture as methods for control. The desired results ranged from temporary and permanent amnesia, uninhibited confessions, and creation of second personalities, to programmed assassins and preconditioned suicidal urges. One goal was the ability to control mass populations, especially for cheap labor.[175] Dr. Delgado told Congress that he hoped for a future where a technology would control workers in the field and troops at war with electronic remote signals. He found it hard to understand why people would complain about electrodes implanted in their brains to make them "both happy and productive."[176]
After his arrival in Ukiah, his methods were visible to those who took the time to investigate.[125] His armed guards wore black uniforms and leather jackboots.
The period when Jones began the Temple [in Ukiah] there marked the end of an important political decade. Nixon's election had ushered in a domestic intelligence dead set against the movements for peace, civil rights and social justice. Names like COINTELPRO, CHAOS, and OPERATION GARDEN PLOT, or the HOUSTON PLAN made the news following in the wake of Watergate revelations.[118] Senator Ervin called the White House plans against dissent "fascistic."[119] These operations involved the highest levels of military and civilian intelligence and all levels of police agencies in a full-scale attempt to discredit, disrupt and destroy the movements that sprang up in the 1960s. There are indications that these plans, or the mood they created, led to the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, as unacceptable "Black Messiahs."[120]
One of the architects under then-Governor Reagan in California was now-Attorney General Edwin Meese. He coordinated "Operation Garden Plot" for military intelligence and all police operations and intelligence in a period that was plagued with violations of civil and constitutional rights.[121] Perhaps you recall the police attacks on People's Park, the murder of many Black Panthers and activists, the infiltration of the Free Speech Movement and antiwar activity, and the experimentation on prisoners at Vacaville, or the shooting of George Jackson.[122] Meese later bragged that this activity had damaged or destroyed the people he called "revolutionaries."[123] It was into this situation Jones came to usurp leadership.[124]
At one point, to show his powers, Jones arranged to be shot in the heart in front of the congregation. Dragged to a back room, apparently wounded and bleeding, he returned a moment later alive and well. While this may have been more of his stage antics to prompt believers' faith it may also have marked the end of Jim Jones.[139]
For undisclosed reasons, Jones had and used "doubles."[140]
This is very unusual for a religious leader, but quite common in intelligence operations.[141] Even the death and identification of Jim Jones were peculiar. He was apparently shot by another person at the camp.[142]The body and face are not clearly recognizable due to bloating and discoloration.[143] 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.[144] Several researchers familiar with the case feel that the body may not have been Jones.
Photos of his body do not show identifying tattoos on his chest.
According to survivors' reports, they entered a virtual slave labor camp. Worked for 16 to 18 hours daily, they were forced to live in cramped quarters on minimum rations, usually rice, bread and sometimes rancid meat. Kept on a schedule of physical and mental exhaustion, they were also forced to stay awake at night and listen to lectures by Jones. Threats and abuse became more common.[159] The camp medical staff under Dr. Lawrence Schacht was known to perform painful suturing without anaesthetic. They administered drugs, and kept daily medical records.[160] Infractions of the rules or disloyalty led to increasingly harsh punishments, including forced drugging, sensory isolation in an underground box, physical torture and public sexual rape and humiliation. Beatings and verbal abuse were commonplace.
Only the special guards were treated humanely and fed decently.[161] People with serious injuries were flown out, but few ever returned.[162] Perhaps the motto at Jonestown should have been the same as the one at Auschwitz, developed by Larry Schacht's namesake, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, the Nazi Minister of Economics, "Arheit Macht Frei," or "Work Will Make You Free." Guyana even considered setting up an "Auschwitz-like museum" at the site, but abandoned the idea.[163]
long-term friendship of Jones and CIA associate Dan Mitrione. But the ties are much more direct when a full picture of the operation is revealed. To start with, the history of Forbes Burnham's rise to power in Guyana is fraught with the clear implication of a CIA coup d'état to oust troublesome independent leader Cheddi Jagan.[196]
In addition, the press and other evidence indicated the presence ofIdentified in Who's Who in the CIA, he has been involved since 1959, and was last stationed in Martinique.[198] Present at the camp site and the airport strip, his accounts were used by the State Department to confirm the death of Leo Ryan. At the massacre, Jones said, "Get Dwyer out of here" just before the killings began.[199]
a CIA agent on the scene at the time of the massacre. This man, Richard Dwyer, was working as Deputy Chief of Mission for the U.S. Embassy in Guyana.[197]
Other Embassy personnel, who knew the situation at Jonestown well, were also connected to intelligence work. U.S. Ambassador John Burke, who served in the CIA with Dwyer in Thailand, was an Embassy official described by Philip Agee as working for the CIA since 1963. A Reagan appointee to the CIA, he is still employed by the Agency, usually on State Department assignments.[200] Burke tried to stop Ryan's investigation.[201] Also at the Embassy was Chief Consular officer Richard McCoy, described as "close to Jones," who worked for military intelligence and was "on loan" from the Defense Department at the time of the massacre.[202]
According to a standard source,operating under State Department covers . . ."[203] Dan Webber, who was sent to the site of the massacre the day after, was also named as CIA.[204] Not only did the State Department conceal all reports of violations at Jonestown from Congressman Leo Ryan, but the Embassy regularly provided Jones with copies of all congressional inquiries under the Freedom of Information Act.[205]
"The U.S. embassy in Georgetown housed the Georgetown CIA station. It now appears that the majority and perhaps all of the embassy officials were CIA officers
as a member of the House Committee responsible for oversight on intelligence. He was an author of the controversial Hughes-Ryan Amendment that would have required CIA disclosure in advance to the congressional committees of all planned covert operations. The Amendment was defeated shortly after his death.[206]
Ryan had challenged the Agency's overseas operations before,
Maria Katsaris sent Michael Prokes, Tim Carter, and another guard out at the last minute with $500,000 cash in a suitcase, and instructions for a drop point. Her note inside suggests the funds were destined for the Soviet Union.[219] Prokes later shot himself at a San Francisco press conference, where he claimed to be an FBI informant.[220] Others reported meeting with KGB agents and plans to move to Russia.[221] This disinformation was part of a "red smear" to be used if they had to abandon the operation. The Soviet Union had no interest in the money and even less in Jonestown. The cash was recovered by the Guyanese government.[222]
Their hidden funding may include more intelligence links. A mysterious account in Panama, totaling nearly $5 million in the name of an "Associacion Pro Religiosa do San Pedro, S.A." was located.[223] This unknown Religious Association of St. Peter was probably one of the twelve phony companies set up by Archbishop Paul Marcinkus to hide the illegal investments of Vatican funds through the scandal-ridden Banco Ambrosiano.[224]
A few days after the story broke about the accounts, the President of Panama, and most of the government resigned,
Roberto Calvi of Banco Ambrosiano was murdered, and the Jonestown account disappeared from public scrutiny and court record.[225]
The direct orders to cover up the cause of death came from the top levels of the American government. Zbigniew Brezezinsky delegated to Robert Pastor, and he in turn ordered Lt. Col. Gordon Sumner to strip the bodies of identity.[226] Pastor is now Deputy Director of the CIA.[227] One can only wonder how many others tied to the Jonestown operation were similarly promoted.
Guyanese troops, and police who had arrived with American Embassy official Richard Dwyer, also failed to defend Congressman Leo Ryan and others who came to Guyana with him when they were shot down in cold blood at the Port Kaituma airstrip, even though the troops were nearby with machine guns at the ready.[54]
Although Temple member Larry Layton has been charged with the murders of Congressman Ryan, Temple defector Patricia Parks, and press reporters Greg Robinson, Don Harris and Bob Brown, he was not in a position to shoot them.[55]
Blocked from boarding Ryan's twin engine Otter, he had entered another plane nearby. Once inside, he pulled out a gun and wounded two Temple followers, before being disarmed.[56]
The others were clearly killed by armed men who descended from a tractor trailer at the scene, after opening fire. Witnesses described them as "zombies," walking mechanically, without emotion, and "looking through you, not at you" as they murdered.[57]
Only certain people were killed, and the selection was clearly planned. Certain wounded people, like Ryan's aide Jackie Speiers, were not harmed further, but the killers made sure that Ryan and the newsmen were dead. In some cases they shot people, already wounded, directly in the head.[58]
These gunmen were never finally identified, and may have been under Layton's command. They may not have been among the Jonestown dead.[59]
There are other indications that the Guyanese government participated with American authorities in a cover-up of the real story, despite their own findings. One good example was Guyanese Police Chief Lloyd Barker, who interfered with investigations, helped "recover" 2.5 million for the Guyanese government, and was often the first to officially announce the cover stories relating to suicide, body counts and survivors.[38]
Among the first to the scene were the wife of Guyanese Prime Minister Forbes Burnham and his Deputy Prime Minister, Ptolemy Reid.
They returned from the massacre site with nearly $1 million in cash, gold and jewelry taken from the buildings and from the dead.
Inexplicably, one of Burnham's political party secretaries had visited the site of the massacre only hours before it occurred.[39] When Shirley Field Ridley, Guyanese Minister of Information, announced the change in the body count to the shocked Guyanese parliament, she refused to answer further questions. Other representatives began to point a finger of shame at Ridley and the Burnham government, and the local press dubbed the scandal "Templegate." All accused them of taking a ghoulish payoff.[40]
Key members of the armed guard were ordered to be on board the Temple Ship, Cudjoe -- at the hour of the massacre they were on a supply run to Trinidad. George Phillip Blakey phoned his father-in-law, Dr. Lawrence Layton, from Panama after the event.[268]
while Nigel Slingger, a Grenada businessman and insurance broker for Jonestown, repaired the 400-ton shipping vessel. Then Charles Touchette, Paul McCann, Stephan Jones, and George Blakey set up an "open house" in Grenada with the others. McCann spoke about starting a shipping company to "finance the continued work of the original Temple."[269]
At least ten members of the Temple remained on the boat, and set up a new community in Trinidad
That "work" may have included thethat eluded government security by promising free medical care.[270] The hospital as operated by Sir Geoffrey Bourne, Chancellor of the St. George's University Medical School, was also staffed by his son Dr. Peter Bourne.[271] His son's history includes work with psychological experiments and USAID in Vietnam, the methadone clinics in the U.S., and a drug scandal in the Carter White House.[272]
mysterious operations of the mental hospital in Grenada
The mental hospital was the only structure bombed during the U.S. invasion of Grenada in 1983. This was part of a plan to put Sir Eric Gairy back in power.[273] Were additional experiments going on at the site?[274]
In addition, the killers of Leo Ryan and others at Port Kaituma were never accounted for fully. The trial of Larry Layton was mishandled by the Guyanese courts, and the U.S. system as well.[275]
No adequate evidentiary hearings have occurred either at the trial or in state and congressional reviews. The ]Jonestown killers, trained assassins and mercenaries, are not on trial. They might be working in Africa or Central America.
Their participation in Jonestown can be used as an "explanation" for their involvement in later murders here, such as the case of the attack on school children in Los Angeles.[276]
The money behind Jonestown was never fully examined or recovered.
The court receivership only collected a fraction. The bulk went to pay back military operations and burial costs. Families of the dead were awarded only minimal amounts.[277] Some filed suit, unsuccessfully, to learn more about the circumstances of the deaths, and who was responsible. Joe Holsinger, Leo Ryan's close friend and assistant, studied the case for two years and reached the same unnerving conclusions: these people were murdered, there was evidence of a mass mind-control experiment, and the top levels of civilian and military intelligence were involved.[278]
He worked with Ryan's family members to prove the corruption and injustice, but they could barely afford the immense court costs and case preparation. Their suit, as well as a similar one brought by ex-members and families of the victims, had to be dropped for lack of funds.[279]
The assets of Jim Jones' People's Temple have yet to be fully accounted, but early research in the press and by independent investigators put the total between $26 million and $2 billion.
Following the money leads down a twisted trail of international banks, dummy fronts, real estate investments and conflicting government reports.
Various sources estimate a total of at least $17-$20 million in foreign investments, and property worth $2.5 million that passed through deed, sale and ownership from 1976 to 1979. Some $12 million dollars was deposited in mysterious accounts in Panama. During the recent scandal involving the Vatican Bank, Bank Ambrosiana and deceased Italian financier Roberto Calvi, information surfaced indicating that some of the siphoned millions went to Panamanian banks.
Time magazine noted in a July 26 issue this year that Archbishop Paul Marcinkus of the Vatican Bank set up twelve ghost companies in Panama for the movement of funds. A short five days later, on July 31, 1982, the New York Times carried an AP wire story that the President of Panama was resigning, and all high officials were soon to be replaced there. A review of the holdings known to the public in the Jonestown affair may reveal to serious researchers what connections exist between the financial operations.
LAT = Los Angeles Times; SFE = San Francisco Examiner
Amount Bank Location Source
$711,000 Barclay’s Bank Int. Ltd. Georgetown, Guyana LAT 1/5/79
$100,000 Bank of Montreal (CA) San Francisco, CA LAT 1/5/79
$21,000 Bank of Montreal (CA) San Francisco, CA LAT 1/5/79
Unknown United California Bank San Francisco, CA LAT 1/5/79
Unknown Bank of America Los Angeles, CA LAT 1/5/79
$10,000* Bank of America (personal) San Francisco, CA SFE 1/9/79
Unknown Wells Fargo Ukiah, CA SFE 1/9/79
$2,043,000 Swiss Banking Corp. Panama City SFE 1/9/79
$5,231,536 Union Bank of Switzerland Panama City SFE 1/9/79
$5,173,000 Union Bank of Switzerland Panama City SFE 1/9/79
$206.396 Bank of Nova Scotia Nassau,Bahamas SFE 1/9/79
Unknown No name given Curacao SFE 1/9/79
Unknown No name given Virgin Islands SFE 1/9/79
$76,000* Grenada National Bank Grenada SFE 1/9/79
$560,000 Barclay’s Bank (supplies) Pt.-Au-Spain, Trin. SFE 1/9/79
$200,000 National Cooperative Bank Georgetown, Guy. SFE 1/9/79
$33,757 Banco Union de Venezuelas Caracas, Ven. SFE 1/9/79
$2,000,000 No name given Caracas. Ven. SFE 1/9/79
Unknown No name given Paris, France SFE 1/9/79
$1,000,000 Union Bank of Switzerland Zurich, Switz. SFE 1/9/79
Safe Deposit* Union Bank of Switzerland Zurich, Switz. SFE 1/9/79
$11,000,000* “Treasure Chest” (1974) Redwood Valley, CA SFE 1/9/79
$2,000,000 Jonestown site total Guyana SFE 1/9/79
$1,000,000* Bank of Nova Scotia San Francisco, CA SFE 1/9/79
Unknown Wells Fargo Los Angeles, CA SFE 1/9/79
These were the assets revealed shortly after the massacre. Jones' personal account at Bank of America was reported to have dwindled from "hundreds of thousands," the Grenada account may have been part of an initial reported investment of $200,000 in 1977 to pave the way for a colony there.
The contents of the Zurich bank's safe deposit box may have been as much as $2,000,000 by some reports, but later claims that the Swiss accounts were "emptied" into Panamanian banks don't gibe with these figures for Union Bank of Switzerland accounts. Naturally, the Redwood Valley "Treasure Chest" of $11 million may not be an addition to the later totals, but it should be considered in context.
The Bank of Nova Scotia account was reportedly "closed out" and may or may not have become the same bank's account in the Bahamas. But it certainly shrank in size. Despite the possibility of some overlap, these totals do not match the final tally of $10,000,000 given out by court receiver Fabian.
Terri Buford, one of Jones' top lieutenants, was often responsible for setting up the international accounts. For instance, both she and Debbie Layton Blakey were reported to have carried out a "mysterious financial mission" from Panama to London, where they were alleged to have "studied Socialist and Communist banks," then on to France and Switzerland. Terri repeatedly instructed the bank clerk in Switzerland not to "discuss anything" during their visit, but he did mention a $2,000,000 account in passing, perhaps the one in the safe deposit box (San Francisco Examiner, 1/9/79).
Accounts were secured in many names besides Jones' and People's Temple. Terri Buford, Carolyn Layton, Maria Katsaris and others from Jones' entourage were used. In addition, dummy organizations like Bridget, S.A., Angelique, and others, disguised the accounts.
Terri Buford reportedly gave the Grand Jury investigators records of deposits in Panamanian banks totalling $7.5 million, while press reports suggested that more money was residing in Swiss and Guyanese banks. Following the massacre, Buford and Mark Lane traveled in Europe, leading to speculation that they had been instrumental in removing money from the Swiss accounts, a charge (LAT, 1/20/79) Lane was to vehemently deny in print.
Buford's Panama visit may have been connected to a "few banking trips to Caracas, Panama City and the San Francisco suburb of Belmont" (Miami Herald, 3/27/79) made by Jones' confidant, Maria Katsaris, in 1978. Clearly, three numbered accounts were in place there by 1978. Court-appointed receiver Fabian finally admits in November of 1979 that there were two accounts. One in the name of Annie McGowan at the Union Bank of Switzerland in Panama, a follower of Jones who died in the carnage.
The two accounts described there by the San Francisco Examiner could both meet the description in terms of cash balance. They are, respectively, accounts #121-00-191A and #121-00135A (see chart above). In addition, Fabian notes the existence of a $2,000,000 balance in the Swiss Banking Corporation of Panama in the name of a "dummy front." This is account #3357 (see chart above) (LAT, 11/18/79).
Michael Prokes and Tim Carter, two of the camp guards who survived, claim that Maria Katsaris instructed them to take a chest with $500,000 to the Soviet Embassy. On their return to the United States, they claimed contact with Soviet Embassy officials in Guyana. They said they knew Valerly Koval (reportedly a Major in the KGB and a top operative in Latin America), and Feodor Timofeyev (a KGB Deputy, allegedly).
Timofeyev's name appeared on letters addressed to the Soviets instructing them on access to $7 million in a Panamanian account at the Union Bank of Switzerland (San Francisco Chronicle, 1/21/79). This story is most likely an elaborate ruse to cover the real money flow, or an excessive trap to lure Soviet "involvement" with Jones' camp after the massacre. Jones was not in any way disposed to give money to the Soviet Union.
In January, 1979, the Department of Justice released its intention to bring a $4.2 million suit against People's Temple funds to recover the cost of body removal by the U.S. military. Defendants named at that point included the Asociacion Religiosa Pro San Pedro, S.A. of Panama.
The following day, the presiding magistrate, Judge Brown, sent a "lawyer to Panama," and the suit claimed that the "Panama affiliate" was "organized to handle the assets of People's Temple" (Oakland Times, 1/23/79). The San Francisco Chronicle had estimated a financial empire of at least $26 million (SFC 1/9/79), but when Judge Brown moved to dissolve the People's Temple on January 24, State Attorney General Appalas placed the total much lower.
"Contrary to previous press reports, Appalas said, total Temple assets approached only $12 million and were located in Grenada, Venezuela, the Barbados, Guyana and Trinidad," said the San Francisco Chronicle (1/24/79). No mention of Panama. The same day, Guyanese official Kit Nascimento attempted to absolve Guyanese government officials, including President Burnham's wife, of any wrongdoing in the removal of a reported half million dollars by plane from the Jonestown site, claiming it was all deposited in the Bank of Guyana in Georgetown.
It is not clear how this claim, which involves an account totaling $700,000 relates to the reported money in Guyana after the deaths (see chart above) (Washington Post, 1/24/79). A few days later, Jim Jones' mother-in-law, Charlotte Baldwin in Richmond, Indiana, denied that he left a large estate, and recounted his daughter Suzanne's claim that there was only property and "$17,000 in a Nassau account," presumably not a reference to the Bank of Nova Scotia deposit (WP, 1/29/79).
Not until a Newsweek story on March 12, months later, did Robert Fabian confirm that the Temple had a safe deposit box in Switzerland, and bank accounts in "Panama and Guyana." However, his claim at that point was that the three sources together could account for only an additional $6 million.
The following day, in Berne, Switzerland, the Swiss government blocked access to funds and information on the Swiss accounts under a 1973 U.S.-Swiss Legal Assistance Treaty. They were only willing to give further information if the FBI could prove the funds were gotten by criminal means. U.S. officials were still estimating the Swiss accounts topped $10 million (WP, 3/13/79). The following day, March 14, Michael Prokes held a press conference, revealed the phony tapes that suggested the Jonestown suicides were not coerced, then shot himself in the head. Finally, in August, conflicting stories began to emerge from Switzerland.
An official announcement of August 3 established that three bank accounts had been held since 1976, and that money was suddenly transferred to the U.S. and to Panama around the time of the killings. The statement also seemed to involve the release of $2 million and the papers from the safe deposit box to U.S. authorities. These authorities were now saying that assets totalled more than $10 million, "most" in Panama City branches of Swiss Bank Corporation and Union Bank of Switzerland.
No reason was given for the transfer and names of the depositors and exact dates were not released. Other reports and rumors persisted: Jones had ordered $7 million sent to the Soviet Union in December, 1978. Swiss accounts numbered from six to a dozen. Money was held in dummy fronts in Guyana. Some even suggested funds were being sent to the PLO. (SFC 8/3/79). Another story suggested that the amount suddenly shifted to Panama had been $2,000,000, and Justice Department officials were surprised and skeptical that money had come into the U.S. without their knowledge (WP 8/3/79).
Suddenly, court-appointed receiver Fabian announced in October that he had "found" $7.2 million in Panama. "We've gotten word from Panama that there's $5.2 million in one bank and another $2 million in another." However, Fabian said this was not new money, and total assets were still in the $10 million range, because "part of the money in Panama" was transferred there in 1978 from Swiss banks whose accounts were now "empty."
How does this story match the rest of the evidence about the Swiss and Panamanian accounts? Does it belie the Swiss government claims, the U.S. authorities, or Mark Lane? Fabian also claimed that there was another $3,000,000 in Guyana, but said we were unlikely to ever see it in the U.S. due to Guyanese government claims.
The only claim at that point was Nasciemento's plea that the money taken from the site was held in anticipation of U.S. claims, and in good faith. Another $200,000 was located in the Caribbean banks, and $1.7 billion was outstanding in claims, said Fabian (WP 10/6/82). The government claims held steady from this point on. Ten million total, $3 million in Guyana and $7 million in Panama (SFC, 11/17/79), usually split into two accounts of $5.2 million and $2 million (SFC 10/26/82) coming by way of Switzerland. Charles Touchette, a Temple officer, was to claim hidden accounts totaling $66 million, but Fabian scoffed at it (SFC 11/17/79).
What, then had become of the additional $5 million account in Panama, and the mysterious Asociacion Religiosa Pro San Pedro, S.A. (referred to later as "Asociacion Pro Religiosa do San Pedro")? Was it the "dummy front" for Jones, or for other interests? Was it one of the operations set up by Robert Calvi to hide Vatican investments?
Fabian dissolved the assets. Of the Asociacion he said, "We'll have to dissolve that one and get it in the name of People's Temple, the California Corporation" (SFC, 11/17/79). He managed to sell the church building in San Francisco to a Kraft Company employee, Ho Deuk Bae, for $300,000, who in turn said he would establish there the Korean Central Christian Church and the Korean Presbyterian Evangelical Reformed Church, reportedly not connected to the vast Unification Church of Rev. Moon. (OT, 3/15/79).
At one point, he threatened to sell the Albatross, the 400-ton shipping vessel out on a supply run to Trinidad when the murders came down. Top Jones aide, Phillip Blakey made a reported "last call" to his father-in-law, Dr. Lawrence Layton, from Panama. About ten followers stayed on the boat, setting up a community in Trinidad at first, while one Nigel Slingger, a Grenada businessman and insurance broker for Jonestown, repaired the vessel.
Charles Touchette set up an open house in Grenada for Temple members, and Paul McCann, Phillip Blakey, Steven Jones (son), and others continued to live together. McCann indicated on KPIX-TV that they wanted to set up a shipping company to "finance the continued works of the original Temple." That financing, and those works, continue to elude scrutiny. There was no later record of the sale of the Albatross. The Jonestown accounts, as they were, have been divided. But the reality of the horror, like the money that backed it up, continues to flow in unseen channels.