Q309 Summary

Summary prepared by Fielding M. McGehee III. If you use this material, please credit The Jonestown Institute. Thank you.

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FBI Catalogue           Jones Speaking

FBI preliminary tape identification note: Labeled in part “Sat Oct 7 News”

Date cues on tape:     Contents of tape consistent with tape label

People named:

Bible verses cited:      None

Summary:

(Note: This tape was transcribed by Vicki Perry. The editors gratefully acknowledge her invaluable assistance.)

Jim Jones reads the news of the day – including two fairly lengthy commentaries – and issues instructions to the Jonestown community. Even though the news takes up the larger portion of the tape, the more important messages come through in its last third.

Jones opens the final portion by addressing rumors going around that Ava Jones has been having an adulterous relationship with one (or more) of three married men. He returns to the subject of the “gossip” towards the end of the tape by saying that the young woman feels “motherly” towards these men, and that “[m]ost men, all men, if they would admit it, need some motherliness.” He also denies that she came to Guyana to have a baby or an abortion. He concludes the warning about circulating gossip by noting that Ava “doesn’t get involved in the sex games.”

In addition to his usual exhortations to work harder to liberate oppressed people everywhere – some of which he reiterates during his news broadcast – Jones makes vague, nonspecific promises of offering “extra nights off” and more advance notice of free days when people “can do more creative things,” and asks for patience for another couple of months. Beyond that, intentionally without naming the Soviet Union, Jones reminds his followers that life will soon be easier “with the important golden opportunity of travel – and you know what I mean – with the important golden opportunity of living  without any kind of worry.”

But there is an undercurrent of watchfulness in the air. He speaks several times in the final segment about the “analyzers, observers, inspectors” in the community who monitor production levels. “I’m instructing the security to see that the job is done and that every name is put down. and the supervisors will be held responsible, by the way, for any of your workers that are not doing what they should be doing.”

His final message of the day concerns the “barefoot doctors” of the community, the young women – they number five by the end of the tape – who have volunteered as subjects for “full medical examination[s]” for people to learn about the human body. The doctor’s lectures are fine, Jones says, but “his best teaching method is to show what he’s doing as he does it with the physical body.” Even though the women will apparently be probed and poked, Jones warns that there is nothing sexual about this exercise, and “[t]here’ll be no laughter. If there’s the slightest snides, if there’s the slightest humor, you will see Public Service.”

The news portion of the tape begins with a commentary on the Central Intelligence Agency as “imperialist executioner.” Jones’ loaded adjectives such as “repressive,” “fascist,” and “dictatorial,” his use of terms such as “instruments of monopoly capital,” “the ruling class,” and “bourgeoisie political apparatus,” and his invocations of Marx, Lenin and Stalin in laudatory terms suggest the commentary comes from an Eastern Bloc news source.

The long commentary about the rise of the successful North Korean state – in contrast to “the most cruel, brutal, fascist tyranny in the world” in the South – seems as though it comes from a similar source, even though Jones makes a point  at the beginning of the reading that it comes from Harpers, not from “a pro-socialist magazine.”

Other news items include:

FBI Summary:

Date of transcription: 6/1/79

In connection with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s investigation into the assassination of U.S. Congressman LEO J. RYAN at Port Kaituma, Guyana, South America, on November 18, 1978, a tape recording was obtained. This tape recording was located in Jonestown, Guyana, South America, and was turned over to U.S. Officials in Guyana and subsequently transported to the United States.

On June 1, 1979, Special Agent (name deleted) reviewed the tape numbered 1B93-53. This tape was found to contain the following:

A lecture on current events by JIM JONES, preparing the People’s Temple members for a test.

Differences with FBI Summary:

The summary is accurate and meets the FBI’s purposes.

Tape originally posted May 2009