Index of FBI Tape Summaries

Jonestown Members
In 1979, the Federal Bureau of Investigation prepared a list which summarized the contents of all audiotapes recovered from Jonestown, Guyana. The FBI tape summaries appear in the following files:

Summaries Q 001-Q 059
Summaries Q 101-Q 200
Summaries Q 201-Q 300
Summaries Q 301-Q 400
Summaries Q 401-Q 500
Summaries Q 501-Q 600
Summaries Q 601-Q 700
Summaries Q 701-Q 800
Summaries Q 801-Q 900
Summaries Q 901-Q 1000
Summaries Q 1001-Q 1290

These listings include links to transcripts, summaries and MP3s (including MP3s for tapes which have not yet been transcribed). The dagger symbol (†) denotes the 53 tapes which were initially withheld from public disclosure. The hashtag notation (#) indicates the tapes which are in possession of the Jonestown Institute and which may not have yet been digitized. Copies of these tapes may be ordered directly from Fielding M. McGehee III, at fieldingmcgehee@yahoo.com. To order any audiotape directly from the FBI, write: Freedom of Information/Privacy Act Section, Office of Public and Congressional Affairs, FBI, Washington, DC 20535-0001.

Even before it prepared these summaries, however, the FBI made notes of what was written on the boxes which held the individual tapes and the markings on the cassettes or reel-to-reel tapes themselves. While those identification notes have been incorporated into the summaries above, you can click here for a full listing of the FBI’s preliminary tape identification notes in numerical order.

A second listing of the FBI notes – a chronological list only of those tapes which seem to have been recorded in Jonestown itself – appears here.

Any of the 750 tapes in this collection – whether transcribed or not – are available for duplication in cassette form. In addition, about half of the tapes have been digitized and are available as MP3s. Tapes which have been transcribed and/or digitized are indicated throughout the links above.