A Konformist Special: The Jonestown Jenocide,

[n.d. 1st web capture May 7, 1999] www.io.com, A Konformist Special: The Jonestown Jenocide,

Robert Sterling

A LONG, LONG TIME AGO IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY...

John Travolta, 70's icon thanks to "Welcome Back Kotter", "Saturday Night Fever", and "Grease", is enjoying a incredible comeback in critical and commercial smashes such as "Pulp Fiction" and "Face Off". Speaking of "Saturday Night Fever", the Bee Gees are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The Black Crowes and Lenny Kravitz wear bell-bottoms and platform shoes. The biggest box-office attraction this spring was "Star Wars", and "The Eagles Greatest Hits, Volume One" has now sold 24-million copies in the U.S. And the biggest concerts of last year were by KISS and The Sex Pistols.

It should be obvious by now that America is in the middle of a huge love affair with the seventies, the wacky and wild decade that was a by-product of the sixties rebellion. But all is not well from that era of long ago. Take the combative anti-gay Anita Bryant politics, for example. Or how about double-digit inflation and high unemployment rates? And then there's that whole ABBA thing.

One recent ugly element of the seventies has returned in the news recently: krazy kults led by psychotic would-be dictators, a la Jim Jones and The People's Temple. Of course, there is the Aum Supreme cult of Japan, the "Branch Davidians" of Waco, Texas, and, with the most disturbing sense of deja vu, the 39 "suicides" of members of Heaven's Gate. Yes, we were told from the korporate media (with a strong dab of paranoia), the threat of such uncontrolled cults preying on the weakest members of society is certainly something to beware, especially now that cults have the nefarious internet as an ally. The undercurrent of such talk, of course, is that something must be done about these cults, or a whole bunch of mass suicides are sure to ensue.

What happened at Rancho Santa Fe (as well as in Waco and Tokyo) is still not completely clear, but the real story behind the events in Guyana are fairly evident during an honest inspection of the facts. And when one compares the level of deceit in the reportage of the deaths in Jonestown, there is little doubt that the "mainstream" korporate media is an unreliable source for truth in this area.

THE SUICIDE HOAX

Let's start with the biggest lie of the whole Jonestown affair: that this was a mass suicide. This has been repeated so many times that it is accepted as fact, and the association is so great that when most people hear "Jonestown", the first thing which pops in their head is "Kool-Aid".

The association is false.

The source of the "Kool-Aid Suicide" stories was the U.S. State Department, who presented the story immediately after the "suicides" were reported as though it was the only obvious truth. A U.S. Army Spokesman pronounced with complete authority, "No autopsies are needed. The cause of death is not an issue here." The bodies were then allowed to rot in the jungle, making it impossible for American officials to perform any such unneeded autopsy.

Despite the lack of need, Dr. C. Leslie Mootoo, the top Guyanese pathologist, was at Jonestown hours after the deaths, and, refusing the assistance of U.S. pathologists, accompanied the teams that examined the bodies. His conclusions? Dr. Mootoo found fresh needle marks at the back of the left shoulder blades on 80 - 90% of the victims. Others had been shot or strangled. A surviving witness stated that those who resisted were forced by armed guards to comply. Dr. Mootoo's opinion, and that of the Guyanese grand jury investigating Jonestown, was that all but three (only two of which were "suicides") were murdered by "persons unknown."

If one was to go over the deaths in Auschwitz, it is almost a certainty, considering the horrendous conditions those who were there were under, that 0.2 % of all deaths could be attributed to suicides. Yet, if anyone was to argue that Auschwitz was a suicide camp housing a bunch of religious freaks and not the compounds of murder that they were, they would (rightfully) be condemned for intellectual dishonesty, and their motives would be questioned. No such actions are taken on those who continue to insist the same about Jonestown, despite how the facts speak to the contrary.

BODY COUNT BAD MATH

But that is merely the beginning of the deception. The original count of numbers of deaths was 408 (an odd number to use if the number was an estimate), with the added claim that 700 had fled into the jungle. The final total was changed to 913. To explain this rather minor difference in arithmetic, American authorities first explained that those backward ignorant Guyanese "could not count."

Perhaps because the first "official" explanation of the bad math was so insulting, it was then proposed that they missed a pile of bodies, as if a pile of dead bodies is something easily overlooked.

Finally, the "official" explanation that settled the whole question was presented: bodies were stacked on top of each other.

Of the 150 photos taken of the massacre, not one shows any body lying under any others. Those who first worked on the bodies, to release the gasses of decay, had to puncture the dead, making it
unlikely that they missed any of the dead. Even without these facts, one must wonder how 408 bodies - 82 belonging to children - could cover 505 others.

With minor exceptions, pictures show the dead were found in neat rows, face down. The pictures also show drag marks leading to the bodies, indicating that victims were murdered elsewhere and placed there by someone else.

These facts have lead to another likely conclusion: 408 was indeed the correct original body count. The other 505 were hunted down and slaughtered, then dragged back.

But who would do such a thing? And why? And why were American officials giving such deceptive answers about Jonestown? To answer these questions, one must unravel the mystery of who Jim Jones was.

GANGSTER WITH A BIBLE

On May 13, 1931, James Warren Jones was born in Indiana, the state that would later give us whiny hard-rock megalomaniac Axl Rose and dim-witted heartbeat-away-from-President Dan Quayle. His father was in the Ku Klux Klan.

Jones became a Bible-thumping "faith healer", with a side business of selling monkeys. He used wet chicken livers as evidence of cancer which he removed by "divine powers." He adopted eight children, both black and white. Already the stench of criminal activity surrounded him, and his landlady referred to him as "A gangster who used the Bible instead of a gun." Fortunately for Jones, the local police chief at the time was Dan Mitrione, a friend from childhood. Mitrione kept him from being arrested or run out of town.

Mitrione would later enter the International Police Academy, a CIA front for training counterinsurgency and torture techniques.

Despite having few sources for known funds, Jones found the money to travel with his wife and family to Brazil in 1961. Coincidentally, Mitrione was there as well, having advanced quickly in the IPA, and, while training security forces in torture and assassination, had beggars kidnapped so he could keep in practice. Mitrione was later kidnapped and murdered by guerrillas in Uruguay, which became the basis of the Costa Gavras film "State of Siege". Jones made regular trips to Belo Horizonte, site of CIA headquarters in Brazil - and where Mitrione was located.

Apparently, this wasn't the only curious intelligence link to Jones. He claimed he was part of U.S. Naval Intelligence to some of his neighbors. The U.S. Embassy provided him with transportation, groceries, and a large home. "Some people here believed he was an agent for the American CIA," one person was quoted as saying. Considering his dear friendship to Mitrione and the funding of "ministries" in Latin America by the CIA, the belief makes quite a bit of sense. In any case, according to his neighbor, Jones "lived like a rich man."

MADMAN OR MESSIAH IN UKIAH?

Soon after the JFK assassination, Jones returned to the states with $10,000. In 1965, he formed the first People's Temple in Ukiah, California, and set up Happy Havens Rest Home. Without trained personnel or proper licensing, Jones' camp drew in elderly, prisoners, people from mental institutions, and 150 foster children transferred often by court order. Among those who contacted him: "missionaries" from World Vision (an international evangelical order that often fronts for the CIA), the local chapter head to the John Birch Society, and leaders of the Republican party, whom his Layton family, whose patriarch, UC Berkeley chemist Dr. Laurence Laird Layton, had worked on the Manhattan Project and was chief of the Army's Chemical Warfare Division in the early 50's. (Mrs. Layton was the daughter of Hugo Phillips, a German banker/stockbroker who became rich representing Siemans & Halske and I.G. Farben, two notorious Nazi Holocaust profiteers.)

Despite his rather right-wing history, Jones suddenly declared himself a liberal and a socialist, and a reincarnation of Jesus Christ and V.I. Lenin. At this point, suspicions were developing of his church, which was backed by jack-booted armed thugs who dressed in black uniforms. Using blackmail, extortions, and any other way possible to swindle money from those in his clutches, Jones took all he could from his followers, much of it in the form of welfare and social security checks. The local press reported about "seven mysterious deaths" of those who attempted to leave the "church" due to conflict with Jones. Accusations of kidnapping, beatings, and sexual abuse began to be whispered.

To escape controversy, Jones moved to San Francisco, and became an important fund-raiser for the political establishment there. Soon, he was schmoozing with the liberal and radical elite, meeting with (among others) Rosalynn Carter and Angela Davis.

Jones was rewarded with being put in charge of the city Housing Commission, and key followers were awarded jobs in the Welfare Department. The bulk of their membership came from the unemployed and dispossessed people found here. The cult preyed on the poor and helpless, going out of the way to enlist women, children, and minorities. They recruited many of their members directly from S.F. mental hospitals. The move did little to change the controversy surrounding his "church", and a 1977 expose was called an attack by Jones. He then moved his Utopia to Guyana, aided once again by the U.S. Embassy.

KOUNTDOWN TO NOWHERE

After receiving complaints lodges by relatives of cult members, Congressman Leo Ryan visited Jonestown of November 18, 1978 to investigate human rights abuse. Congressman Ryan was a noted CIA critic, and had authored the Hughes-Ryan Amendment, which would have required CIA disclosure in advance to the congressional committees on all covert operations. Ryan had been given no answers or help from the State department despite the numerous inquiries. He arrived with U.S. Embassy official Richard Dwyer, as well as some journalists, including Tim Reiterman (who had covered the Patty Hearst story for the San Francisco Examiner.) It is likely Ryan already suspected what was going on.

And then all hell broke loose.

At the airstrip, Leo Ryan soon became the first congressman to die in the line of duty, along with four other reporters. (The Hughes-Ryan Amendment was killed in congress soon afterwards.) The assassins were described by witnesses as "glassy eyed", "mechanically-walking zombies", and "devoid of any emotion." Others were shot, including Dwyer and Reiterman. Soon after that, the mass slaughter began.

A plausible explanation for the events that unfolded is that Jim Jones (or someone else) ordered the murders when Ryan's unexpected visit threatened to expose what was happening. In the chaos that followed, a mass extermination was carried out.

Just who were the zombie assassins? Well, besides the 913 dead, there were 167 survivors who returned from the camp. All news reports concede there were at least 1100 individuals at the camp (and most place it at 1200.) Who are these 20 or more people unaccounted for?

The survivors report that there was a special all-white group that were armed, well-treated and free to exit the compound. These guards were never accounted for by any news reports. Perhaps it is these same guards (assuming the total population was 1200) a congressional aide was referring to in a AP quote which stated, "There are 120 white, brainwashed assassins out from Jonestown awaiting the trigger word to pick up their hit."

Of course, they may have had a little help. Over 300 American Green Berets - trained for CIA covert assassinations - were in the area at the time. So were nearly 600 British Black Watch commandos, who were there on a "training exercise." Suddenly the death toll seems relatively low.

DAN WHITE'S LITTLE GAME OF SOLITAIRE AND OTHER CURIOUS DEATHS

But these weren't the last strange deaths involved with Jonestown. Nine days later, San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were slain by Dan White, who was either a "disgruntled police agent" or "angry about gays." These explanations were supplied to explain his utterly irrational behavior during the killings, as, sure enough, he was described as being in a bizarre zombie state. During the trial, his lawyers came up with the inventive but deservedly mocked "Twinkie defense", in which they claimed he went insane by a sugar high caused by eating too many sweets. Implausible, but easier to report in the news than stating he was a brainwashed assassin. Moscone and Milk had extensive financial backing from Jones during his stay by the Bay, and soon they both were going to be investigated in connection to missing funds from the People's Temple. That is, until a lone gunman took care of them.

Michael Prokes, a Jones aide, held a press conference and stated the CIA and FBI were withholding an audiotape of the massacre. He also stated that he was an FBI informant. Right after that, he went to the restroom...and never left. His death was proclaimed a "suicide".

In Georgetown, several Temple members were killed after the massacre. The man charged with the murders, Charles Beikman, was an early follower of Jones and had become an "adopted son" of his. Beikman was a Green Beret.

Jeanne and Al Mills, who were writing a book on Jonestown, were bound and shot to death at their home. In Detroit another survivor was killed near his home, and another was involved in a mass murder of school children in Los Angeles.

Ironically, the dead may not have included Jim Jones himself, as was claimed. The body alleged to be his didn't show his tattoos in the photographs. Fingerprints had to be checked twice, and his dental records were never looked at. He was known to use doubles.

THE CIA AT GUYANA AND THE TWO BILLION DOLLAR BLACK HOLE

As the massacre unfolded, Jones is tape recorded as yelling, "Get Dwyer out of here!" Jim Dwyer was later found at the airstrip, methodically washing his hands.

In 1968, Dwyer was listed in the publication entitled, "Who's Who in the CIA". When asked if the allegation was true, he replied, "No comment."

Of course, Dwyer isn't the only link to CIA in Guyana. Besides those previously mentioned, John Burke, the U.S. ambassador, and Richard McCoy, another official, were both heavily involved with the intelligence community. The U.S. Embassy in Georgetown also housed the Georgetown CIA station. At the time, Guyana had a socialist government, and thus was a likely target for covert operations. Dan Webber, sent to Guyana after the massacre, was CIA as well.

The "official" attorney for the survivors, Joseph Blatchford, was involved in a scandal involving CIA infiltration of the Peace Corps.

Then there is the missing money that just "disappeared" after the mass death. Conservative estimates place the amount at $26 million. Others place it at $2 billion. Judging the history of bank loot understatements, the second figure is likely closer to the truth. At the time, a major international money laundering operation was headquartered in Italy involving the Vatican and a mysterious fascist quasi-Masonic lodge known as the P-2. (The operation probably led to the murder of Pope John Paul I, but that's another conspiracy.) The P-2 had a major operation located in nearby Panama, and had numerous CIA links themselves. All this was disturbingly echoed in the S & L swindle of the eighties, which had CIA and Mafia prints all over the place.

Add in the FBI files on the Black Panthers and Weathermen found at the site, an attempt to lure Mark Lane (JFK assassination critic and James Earl Ray lawyer, among other things) and Donald Freed (Lane's sometime JFK collaborator and recent Simpson case investigator who has linked the Brentwood murders to Mafia in the L.A. underworld) to Guyana (which succeeded in having Lane witness the airstrip murders after Jones hired him as a lawyer) and a bizarre plot to kidnap Grace Walden Stephens (witness to the Martin Luther King assassination) and smuggle her to Jonestown, and you have the makings of a full fledge spook operation.

DID JIM JONES READ "CATCHER IN THE RYE"?

Perhaps the strangest CIA connection of all to Jonestown was the previously mentioned World Vision. As stated, the evangelical order often fronts for the CIA. They performed espionage work for the CIA in Southeast Asia while Operation Phoenix (the murderous project that left 40,000 people dead) was in full effect. In Honduras, they were a presence at CIA Contra recruiting camps in the war against the Sandinistas. In Lebanon, their camps were where the fascist Phalange butchered Palestinians. In Cuba, their refugee camps hosted numerous members of the anti-Castro terrorist group Alpha 66 of Bay of Pigs fame.

After the Guyana massacre, World Vision developed a scheme to repopulate Jonestown with CIA-linked mercenaries from Laos. Laos, of course, was where the CIA was running it's "secret war" during Vietnam, which for the most part was a smokescreen for a widespread opium trafficking operation.

One particularly important World Vision official was John Hinckley, Sr., an oil man, reputed CIA officer, and friend of George Bush. You may have heard of his son.

Less than four months before Hinckley Jr. became known as Jodie Foster's biggest fan, another member of the World Vision order, Mark Chapman, gunned down John Lennon in what may have been a practice run for the bigger hit on President Reagan. A policeman who found him was convinced he was a mind-kontrolled assassin. Chapman was clutching the novel "Catcher in the Rye" - which was also owned by Hinckley Jr. (The book was written by J.D. Salinger, who worked in military intelligence with Henry Kissinger in W.W.II.) Before going to trial, Chapman plead guilty after a voice in his head (he attributed it to God) commanded him to do so.

Considering the history of World Vision and what went on previously in Guyana, it is likely that the real purpose behind repopulating Jonestown was to create another breeding ground for brainwashed zombies like Chapman and Hinckley. Even after the massacre, nearby there was a place called Hilltown, a compound of 8,000 blacks that followed kult leader Rabbi David Hill, who held his flock with an iron fist. Hill had so much power behind him that he was referred to as the "vice prime minister" of Guyana. There was also another place in Guyana called "Johnstown", as well as similar operations in the Phillipines and Chile. It appears that Jonestown (and World Vision's later attempt) is hardly the exception to the rule of using obscure locations in Third World nations as laboratories for kult operations.

KRAZY KULT OR KONCENTRATION KAMP?

The site in Guyana was originally a Union Carbide mine, and was loaded with an abundance of precious natural resources. It is very likely that the site was chosen to exploit these resources with cheap labor - and cheap labor was plentiful. Members of Jim Jones' "church" were bound and gagged immediately after landing in Guyana and taken to the compound. They were pumped with drugs, and

Jonestown had enough to drug 200,000 people for over a year. Among the drugs found: Quaaludes, Valium, morphine, Demerol, Thorazine (a dangerous tranquilizer), sodium pentathol (a truth serum), chloral hydrate (a hypnotic), and thallium (which confuses thinking), and, of course, cyanide. They had both cramped living quarter and meager rations of often spoiled food. They were then forced to work slave labor for 16-18 hours a day and required to stay up day and night listening to Jim Jones lecture. Among the charming punishments the flock endured were forced druggings, sensory isolation in an underground box, physical torture, public sexual rape and humiliation, not to mention your average ordinary beatings and verbal abuse.

If all this leaves a strange feeling of deja vu, the reason may be because all these drugs and treatments were used in the CIA's notorious MK-ULTRA program, which was implemented to test and

implement brainwashing and mind control techniques, supposedly to protect us from some nefarious "communist threat". A 1974 government report admitted that certain "target populations" were used, namely blacks, women, prisoners, the elderly, children, and inmates of psychiatric wards. The Orwellian-named Center for the Study and Reduction of Violence, using the research of Strangelovian-doctors Jose Delgado and Louis "Jolly" West, was attempting to draw guinea pigs from the "target populations" to test drugs, implants, and psycho surgery techniques on at an isolated military missile base in California. The dead at Jonestown were 90% women, 80% blacks, and included 276 children.

Which leads us back to Auschwitz and the ultimate deja vu. Auschwitz, after all, was not just a death camp: it also was a slave labor camp for chemical monolith I.G. Farben. There, the outcasts and refuse of society that no one cared about were treated to similar abuses while a select few profited from the misery. The brains behind the Final Solution became much of the brains behind MK-ULTRA. The MK is often said to stand for "Mind Kontrol" - representing the Germanic origins of the project. Going the full ten yards, however, it is possible that MK merely stands for "Mein Kampf".

SOME OPINIONS THE HISTORY BOOKS FORGET TO INCLUDE

Much of this was known by Congressman Ryan, who probably suspected that Jonestown was a front for something even more sinister. In 1980, Ryan aide Joseph Holsinger received a paper, entitled "The

Penal Colony", which explained that CIA MK-ULTRA operations did not terminate in 1973, as officially proclaimed, but were instead continued in public hospitals, prisons, and religious kults which were used as fronts. Holsinger later stated at a S.F. psychologist forum on Jonestown that he believed the CIA worked with Jones to perform medical and mind kontrol experiments at People's Temple. If Congressman Ryan had not been killed - a big if - much of this information would have undoubtedly been uncovered, and many skeletons in the CIA closet would have been uncovered with a domino effect.

Michael Meiers, author of "Was Jonestown a CIA Medical Experiment?", had this to say: "The Jonestown experiment was conceived by Dr. Layton, staffed by Dr. Layton and financed by Dr. Layton. It was as much his project as it was Jim Jones's." Layton, remember, was head of the Army's Chemical Warfare Division.

Former Temple member Joyce Shaw said it best, when wondering out loud if Jonestown was "some kind of horrible government experiment, or some sort of sick, racist thing... a plan like that of the Germans to exterminate blacks."

In October of 1981, Jonestown survivors filed a $63 million lawsuit against Jonestown era Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and CIA director Stansfield Turner. The suit stated that the State Department and CIA conspired to "enhance the economic and political powers of James Warren Jones," conducting "mind control and drug experimentation" there. The suit was dismissed four months later for "failure to prosecute timely," and all requests for appeal were denied. (Turner would become a director of Monsanto, now best known for providing the world with the benignly named poison and brain-damaging substance "NutraSweet".)

All this, of course, is forgotten in "official" or "mainstream" accounts of the event. Instead, the "acceptable" version of describing Jonestown blames the victims, echoing the ignorant grunt uttered by Pete Hamill, who dismissed the dead as "all the loose change of the sixties."

CONCLUSION

Hanging over Jonestown was a mocking sign that proclaimed, "THOSE WHO DO NOT REMEMBER THE PAST ARE CONDEMNED TO REPEAT IT." One of the most elegant slogans of Holocaust survivors is "Never forget."

Jonestown makes it clear that, no matter how well meaning, all these slogans are but words. Never forget? We obviously already have. That Jonestown could unfold before our eyes without the realization of precisely what was going on says volumes. Certainly the blame falls partly at the feet of a powerful military-industrial complex that feels no shame for its deeds, and certainly partly at a Korporate Media that has become the witting mouthpiece (and collaborator) for this same cabal. But ultimately, the blame falls at the feet of the people, their brains dulled from all those Brady Bunch episodes and Bay City Rollers albums they consumed during the glorious seventies. By the time the Guyana massacre rolled around, the masses were too ignorant and apathetic to neither know nor care about the truth. Instead, they swallowed the official version and waited obediently for their next piece of mindless glop.

What's worse, if one was to try to inform people of the truth, instead of outrage at those behind the evil deeds, the attacks would be leveled at the informant for uttering such disturbing facts. See Gary Webb (of CIA-crack fame) and his treatment from his editors and his fellow "journalists" for proof. Or try bringing up this story in polite company and see the kind of response you get.

Could the Holocaust happen again? It already has, and will continue to happen. One wonders if it ever really ended.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

"The Black Hole of Guyana," John Judge

From "Secret and Suppressed," edited by Jim Keith

Most of the infomation in this report is taken directly from Mr. Judge's work. It is highly recommended to all interested in learning more to read this vital source.

"Operation Mind Control," Walter Bowart

"Who Killed John Lennon?," Fenton Bresler

"Psychic Dictatorship in the U.S.A.," Alex Constantine

Donald Freed, Interview by Author

"Raven: The Untold Story of the Reverend Jim Jones and His People," John Jacobs and Tim Reiterman

"Guyana Massacre: The Eyewitness Accounts," Charles Krause

"The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control," John Marks

"Was Jonestown a CIA Medical Experiment?," Michael Meiers

"The Big Book of Conspiracies," Doug Moench

"A Sympathetic History of Jonestown," Rebecca Moore

"Conspiracies, Coverups, and Crimes," Jonathan Vankin

"60 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time," Jonathan Vankin & John Whalen

"The CIA's Greatest Hits," Mark Zepezauer

Return to Patrick's Weird Politics page.

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