[Editor’s note: The subjects of this serial whose name is deleted is self-described anticult expert Dr. Hardat Sukhdeo. The deleted information from the memorandum – designated by brackets – which is known to the editor has been indicated by red type.]
[This interview, conducted on December 12, was the second that the FBI had with Dr. Sukhdeo. A summary of the first, conducted on December 4, appears at Serial 850.]
FBI Airtel
Date 1/10/79
TO: DIRECTOR, FBI (89-4286)
FROM: SAC, BROOKLYN-QUEENS (89-495) (P)
SUBJECT: RYMUR
ReNYtelcall to SF, 1/9/79.
Enclosed for the Bureau and San Francisco are one copy of the transcript of a taped interview of Dr. [name deleted] [Hardat Sukhdeo], Chief of Psychiatry, NJ, College of Medicine on December 12, 1978. The interview was conducted by SAs [2 names deleted] of US Secret Service and was provided by US Secret Service, NY.
Armed and dangerous – suicidal tendencies.
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This is a transcript of a taped interview of Dr. [Hardat Sukhdeo], Chief of Psychiatry, New Jersey College of medicine, at his residence, [address deleted], on December 12, 1978. This interview was conducted by Special Agents [2 names deleted].
(Conversation Already In Progress)
Doctor: A lot of people come out of the cult, then are kidnapped by their parents, they are deprogrammed and then the parents bring them to me to help get them back. They keep floating back into the cult and out into the present and the future. The deprogrammer uses one technique and what we did for the group down in Park, the reporters and myself, they kept going around and if you stick to one technique they use at Yale, in a crisis intervention, was if you have trauma, if your father died, you get depressed. I get about five people, they come to you. Who are you, what are you doing, are you married, do you have children. So you have to describe yourself to me and then after about the fourth person asking you that (unreadable). You give them an identity. Because their identity was
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lost with the group. They have fused their identity with the group identity. That is why Rev. Jones says act, behave, do this, feel this. They felt it. They are a whole bunch of feelings. You have to imagine these people just feeling and doing what type of emotion that Jones made them feel. You are now going to be killed, the Americans are going to come and get you. It is better for us to die, kill ourselves, and they believed that. They feel it. They feel the fear that now they are going to be attacked and instead of dying, one by one or being killed, it is better to die.
[Agent]: Did they die with the sense of tranquility or happiness?
Doctor: Yes.
[Agent]: Can you recall any other time in history when there was this sort of mass suicide type of situation?
Doctor: The only thing I can think of was the Jews killing themselves.
[Agent]: Where, Masada?
Doctor: Yes. I would say that in Japan, yes, the enemies are coming to get you. It is better for us to die. The Japanese, instead of dying in disgrace from the enemy.
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[Agent]: In a situation like this would that be a part of a mass hypnosis? That the people have been socialized by belief that it is better they die of their own volition than to be killed by the Americans or be captured by the Americans. This is also a sort of brainwashing?
Doctor: Yes. It is part of the brainwashing. I am going to show you some of the letters. You have read some of the letters in the New York Times, haven’t you? These letters, and I have some, they are written in July and in a process that he does all the time. What you do. You have to confess how you feel. When you confess how you feel. You know. You thought this about Jones, you thought this about Jones. You state this, you feel that, you want money, you feel selfish. All of these things are very bad. Therefore, you have to then ask if you feel guilty, then you have to do something about the guilt. Most of the letters end, I have to kill myself for the cause. So you see they were all prepared. All along psychologically if anything happened they would die for the cause. So they were programmed to die for the cause.
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[Agent]: Do you believe that of the 900 people that died that most of it was self suicide or would you think that any of it was forced suicide?
Doctor: I would say maybe about 50 people were forced. I would say the majority.
[Agent]: We haven’t seen any conclusive evidence that the Rev. Jones was a suicide or was he murdered because apparently he was shot.
Doctor: I spoke to the pathologist. The wound was from here to here. The suicidal type. (The doctor described an upward angle of the bullet entering from the area around the ear on one side of the head and exiting the opposite side of the head at a higher location.)
[Agent]: Was it self-inflicted?
Doctor: Yes. This is here. This is if somebody else shot you. (The doctor described a bullet entering the head and exiting on the basic same line if it was a homicide.) Someone cannot come and shoot you like this unless you do it yourself (again described the upward movement of a bullet) and this is the Guyanese pathologist.
[Agent]: Why do you think he did this instead of drinking along with the rest of them?
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Doctor: It was an awful death I suppose.
[Agent]: How does cyanide kill you?
Doctor: You go into convulsions and you vomit. This is why I think they were all face down. Did you see the pictures? Did you see some of the people with vomit on their faces?
[Agent]: Everybody’s face seems to be down lying in a prone position.
Doctor: I have some of the pictures of the people with vomit on them. I think that is why most of them were lying with their faces down. Because those that were up could vomit on their own face. That is the only reason I would think that they were down.
[Agent]: Who did you speak to down there among the people, anybody that we had spoken to already that have arrived back in the US?
Doctor: Well, with [name deleted]. I spoke to [name deleted]. A short guy with glasses. [name deleted].
[Agent]: [name deleted]?
Doctor: [name deleted]. They say she is back in the cult, did you know that?
[Agent]: You have information she is back in the cult. Where, in San Francisco?
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Doctor: Yes. The thing is they come back here and are sent out to San Francisco because I was in touch with the people at Freedom House [Human Freedom Center] there. You know Freedom House? Freedom House is a house that they have where two ex-cult members trying to set up so that they deprogram anybody who wanted to leave.
[Agent]: Just for the People’s Temple or any kind of cult?
Doctor: Any kind. They are from the People’s Temple, and they told me because I met them on this “America Live” that the People’s Temple just went to the airport, greeted them, and took them right back to the Temple. She was a very difficult peculiar woman. She would not talk much and I thought something was wrong. She definitely was going back into the group.
[Agent]: We noticed when conducting many of our interviews, the people basically showed no emotion. Everything was on an even level. There was no highs or lows.
Doctor: Just a monotone.
[Agent]: This is even after a seven hour plane flight. After the people from Customs and Immigration had interviewed them for a couple of hours and after four hours of interview by us. There was still no noticeable change in their emotions. Is this part of that programming that they went through there?
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Doctor: They are programmed just to feel in a way that the group should feel. They don’t fluctuate. They cannot have individual feelings. Also, the feeling is cut off from the thought processes. One of them, for instance, was talking to me about her baby dying, and her husband dying. She was crying and she was smiling at the same time. That is inappropriate. The majority of them when I saw them in the hotel. They would also have a very peculiar walk. The walk is similar to the Moonie walk and they walk and they walk in a very slow pace and their hands are going like this. (He described a very feminine slow pace walk.) So what we have is a walk which may be due to shock but yet there were two of them, [name deleted] and [Mike] Prokes who did not walk that way. But they were never living in Jonestown. They were in Jonestown at the time it happened but they never lived there. They were always in the United States or back in Georgetown. They never had that walk. They did not have the talk either. They didn’t have that talk you described. The rest all have this talk. For instance, [name deleted] [Tracy Parks], the little 12-year-old girl talked about her mother [Patty Parks] being shot and it is absolutely nothing (unreadable). I was talking to
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the pathologist. Her mother had been shot a few days ago. The girl was talking of the autopsy. Nothing. No feelings. That doesn’t mean they don’t have the feelings. They have the feelings, but that feeling is not coming through.
[Agent]: Is there anything we can do in any future interviews with these people that might bring about some type of response. Any special questions you can think of now that might bring some type of abnormal response as we know it now?
Doctor: You know the song in Saturday Night Fever? I have it on my tape. It was playing. They were playing it Friday night in Jonestown. That song will get a lot of response from the group. Also, you have to. I can get a little girl crazy. To cry if I ask her for her mother. If you ask in a special way. I can get most of them to cry. But the reporters couldn’t. I could elicit the feeling. Maybe because I appeal to their feeling. I could get that emotion coming out. Most of the reporters, I mean all of the reporters, that talked to this 12-year-old girl, they could not get her to cry. If the two of you are doing the interview, one of you got to do the normal interview
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and another one of you do a feeling type of interview. When you don’t ask questions for information. I wasn’t asking questions for information, but primarily how they felt. What was going on in their mind. What were they thinking about. If you were back there when the poison was being handed out what would you do. What would you be thinking about if you were drinking the poison. That type of thing. Those are difficult questions. I take them back from the present and the future into the past. You do it this way. You ask them to describe Jones. They will tell you in the present and the future. Jones was not good. This was the normal type of response that you expect them to say. That he was no good. He was this. He was that. Then you go on to say why do you think, this is how Jones was. You have been with him for 10 years. You have been with them for five years. You must have thought sometime or did you think he was a God-like person, God or a holy man. And then they go back and they say. Take [name deleted]. He really hated Jones. When I asked him that question, he just went back into. You could see an expression
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change and he says Jones really had this power. How Jones was able to call him out to tell him an episode in his life but nobody ever knew and how Jones was able to cure him. When he his relating back he is going back, way back, in a different frame of reference. So you can shift them back from the present and the future and get them back so you get a different story. Especially if they are floating. I don’t know how many now are still floating. They will be floating for some time. You can always take them back. The more tired you get them, the more they should start floating back.
[Agent]: What do you mean by the term floating?
Doctor: You have one person-personality, now. It is the present and the future. Before that they were in the past. This is in Jonestown, or way back when they joined. Then there is a personality even before they joined. Floating from the Jonestown personality or person to the present and the future person. This is a person who must remember. These people have been with Jones for a long time. Some for 24 years. Some for 10 years. Some for maybe as little as two years. They have been controlled
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totally by Jones. They feel and they think what Jones wants them to think. If the FBI was going to get them or the CIA was going to get them or the Secret Service, you know. American society was bad. It is capitalistic. Only Socialistic society or Communistic society is good. If you go back to the United States, the FBI and the CIA is going to get you. McDonald’s hamburgers is no good. They are taught this. Their day is directed. They know what they have to do in the morning, night. They don’t have to worry. They don’t have to think. They are absolutely total type of robots. And they now are coming out. They are confused. They are frightened. They have to come back to the United States. They don’t have any family. Real family that they want to be with. Otherwise they wouldn’t have joined Jones in the first place. They have lost the control for their lives. It was taken away from them. They have to come here. It is a place that you have to make up your mind what you are going to do. You have to make decisions. Because you have to figure out if you are going to get two or three jobs. Where I am going to live. What am
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I going to eat. Even that they didn’t have to think about. They came out from work and were given their food. They didn’t have to think about that. So that is what is frightening. That is the present. They are in a hotel now and the future is what they are going to do when they get back. This present and future is very frightening to them. When it becomes too frightening what are they going to do. They are going to step back into the past. Which is not so frightening, except for the episode itself. That is not frightening for the whole group. I could not elicit any fear or any type of revulsion that 900 of their friends had died. No feeling at all. They kept floating from an old person – personality and then they get back to that old person personality. They could remain in that for a long time. Then they come out into the present and future. Sometimes something just takes them back, like the song. If you play this song, I was telling you about. That will take them back.
[Agent]: Take them back to what period? Of the good times in Jonestown?
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Doctor: It will take them back to the good times in Jonestown. It will regress them to that time.
[Agent]: In this regard would you say it would be abnormal for the former members of the People’s Temple to degrade Jones and the Temple because of their experiences. We have had quite a few people say that Jones was no good, that the Temple was bad. Do you think this is an abnormal reaction because of the way they were programmed?
Doctor: No. What they are doing right now is that. You have to remember when you saw them, there have been two weeks. The last set came in just recently. They have been away a week and a half or two weeks from being in contact with reporters who had been telling them what the place was like. What Jones was like, and they were showing them pictures of the dead bodies. Some of them actually went back and saw the dead bodies. They have learned to say the challenge is no good. He is bad. Like [name deleted] told me that. That he is a mad man. He is terrible. And yet when I take him back – he was a god. Do you see what I am saying. He did not say that he was good. If you can look at their faces or when they talk. What is
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coming out is coming out right there and then. They feel it, right there and then.
[Agent]: What do you think the reaction was to our interviews? Here they are back in the United States. We have Federal agents starting to question them. We are taking them away in a bus to this hangar area. Have they been prepared and prepped for our interviews?
Doctor: No, they have not been prepared. I think that should be done. I think they should be told by the State Department that they have to be debriefed and questioned by the FBI and by you people before they are allowed to go free. I think this would be a good thing. However, there will be no resistance at all from this group because they are outwardly directed. They will take orders. If you say do this, they will do it. Did you notice that? They don’t resist.
[Agent]: But we have several instances where they wanted their attorneys present which is a form of resistance.
Doctor: The reason they will resist the FBI and the CIA and you people is because they were preached that you will kill them. And the paranoia is still
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there. They are still afraid of you people. Because you are the people who are going to kill them when they return here. So you have to understand maybe to a certain extent. I wonder. Are the FBI people down there talking to them?
[Agent]: Down in Guyana?
Doctor: In Guyana.
[Agent]: Just for forensic purposes. We are trying to get your expert advice on how we should approach the questioning of these people. Do you think that there should be a strong authoritative figure. To be hard and demanding on them or would it be better to be polite and courteous?
Doctor: You have two approaches. One – if you have two of you doing the interview.
[Agent]: You mean, the hard guy/good guy routine?
Doctor: Yes. The good guy/bad guy routine. You’ll get one approach and you will get another approach. You will get information that way.
[Agent]: Is there any possibility that during this programming that they received, they were given any type of keywords for some type of later assignment?
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Doctor: This is very possible. This is what I am worried about. I don’t know what they are programmed to do. First of all. The programming is that they are programmed to self-destruct type of thing. Destroy themselves on a command. This is what I see most in their letters and the whole philosophy of this Temple. This man had so much control over them to do that. I say so because in one of the interviews I have when I listened back to it. [Name deleted] said he did not say if we kill ourselves. He said when we kill ourselves. When there is a mass suicide, the Angels will go out and attack our enemies. This is definitely the way he said it. When we kill ourselves, the Angels will go out and attack our enemies, and destroy his enemies. Now he, [name deleted] and Mike Prokes. They were very frightened. They were the ones with the money. They were very frightened. He was terrified. And I said terrified. First they were terrified of being hit by all of this. And they did not know where it was going to come from. Whether it was going to come from the group in the hotel.
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[Agent]: They are the ones that took the money out of Jonestown?
Doctor: Yes.
[Agent]: Do you think they received instructions to take this money and you are the chosen few that will survive this massacre?
Doctor: No. They were given a gun and [name deleted] said they were told to kill themselves.
[Agent]: Where were they going with the money?
Doctor: In the Russian Embassy.
[Agent]: For what purpose?
Doctor: To deliver it.
[Agent]: Once the People’s Temple was destroyed the project was destroyed. What was the reason for that? That is one that I cannot figure out.
Doctor: Do you know what was in the letter.
[Agent]: Which letter?
Doctor: There was a letter in the suitcase with the money. There was money, there was jewelry and the letter. One reporter told me the letter contained “please to give the bearer of this free passage to the USSR.[“]
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[Agent]: Who’s in possession of that letter?
Doctor: (Unreadable)
[Agent]: What do you think about the involvement that the People’s Temple had with Russians and with the Russian Ambassador?
Doctor: Well you know they wanted to go to Russia.
[Agent]: That is what I understand.
Doctor: I think in some ways he felt the United States would go after him in Guyana. He wasn’t getting the protection from the Guyanese Government as he should and he was planning to move to Russia.
[Agent]: I am just surprised that the Russians would entertain this. I’m sure the Russians knew they were demented type people except for the possible propaganda value of having an American colony started in the USSR. I’m sure they did get a lot of mileage out of that.
Doctor: It is not a lot of mileage. If this thing is handled properly the indictment to white society in the United States is a big indictment. What it will say is that all those blacks here died because they were not treated well in the United States. They had to leave to find another country here and actually they killed themselves because they preferred
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to stay there than returned to the United States. And the indictment would be that the group killed themselves for the group remaining here. The black group. Like I told what’s his name that called me?
[Agent]: Mr. [name deleted]?
Doctor: Mr. [name deleted]. If it is easier to resurrect Jones in that movement. Did he tell you what I said?
[Agent]: He mentioned the fact that if someone comes up with a story that I have seen him and he is risen that it will become the second coming of Christ.
Doctor: If I have seen. He has risen and he has told me this. That the reason most people kill themselves is to sacrifice. They sacrifice themselves for all the blacks in the United States.
[Agent]: Is this a conjecture on your part or have you seen anything in this respect? Heard anything in this respect from those people?
Doctor: No, I think it is a feeling that I have gotten from talking to them. The blacks for instance all love Jones.
[Agent]: It would be curious to see how the Soviet press or the Communist countries are carrying this story. If there are any Marxist overtones, racist overtones.
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The people you spoke to got there, you began to name them. You came to Miss [name deleted].
Doctor: The two [Carter] brothers, Mike Prokes.
[Agent]: Did they go into the part about the money that was being carried out? Did you question them about this?
Doctor: They told me.
[Agent]: What did they say?
Doctor: They were given the money. Did not know why they were called. This was the brother talking.
[Agent]: Who gave them this money?
Doctor: The lieutenant. His name I cannot remember.
[Agent]: Dr. Shachs [Schacht]?
Doctor: No, there was one woman who was close to Jones.
[Agent]: Paula Adams?
Doctor: I have it on my tape recorder. Not Maria.
[Agent]: Maria Katsaris.
Doctor: Maybe Maria Katsaris or maybe somebody else. Some woman called them and gave them and told them to go.
[Agent]: Is this prior to Congressman Ryan’s murder?
Doctor: But [either Mike or Tim Carter] told me that he was with the money. His brother [either Mike or Tim Carter] came, joined him with the money and Prokes joined him. Prokes said that the
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same woman said Ryan was going to be attacked soon. He had not been attacked yet or could be they were on the way to be attacked.
[Agent]: Were they told how much money was in the suitcase. Because there was some speculation someone mentioned there was three million and there was only half-million found.
[No answer from Sukhdeo]
[Agent]: How does this programming take place? How do they get these people under some type of mind control?
Doctor: They do it this way. They do it the way the Chinese prison camps did it. First of all you have to be baited. You are baited and you are caught. Say the blacks that were poor and didn’t have anything. The old people. They set up homes for them. The drug addicts they take them out of jail. They showed a humanitarian front for those people. Attract them and then gradually took away their identity. You couldn’t have rings. You couldn’t have pictures of your family. Your family was the group. You couldn’t have your own identity. You should have a group identity. This is the way it went. From that identity they used physical and mental types of stress.
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You had to work and then you had to stay up late listening to lectures. All the groups to this. The Moonies do this. Everybody does it. After a while you get physically and mentally tired. You don’t get sleep. Lack of sleep. Two or three hours a night you get sleep. You don’t get enough food. They keep you on a regimen this is not to nourishing. Because if you eat too nourishing you get strong. You get debilitated. There is no question. You won’t fight back. They intimidate you. Fear. They tell [you] that people are going to get you. Like the CIA are going to get you. Police will get you. Like in Guyana the jungle is filled with animals, and that Guyanese soldiers they are going to attack you. You are going to come back to America and the CIA, the FBI will get you. Fear, fear, fear, terrorism. Then they use shame and guilt to bring you in line with the rest of the group. If you ever thought bad thoughts that were different from the group they make you stand up in front of the group and the group really made you ashamed. After a while what happened is that you couldn’t feel, you couldn’t think. Even if you
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thought I would like to have a McDonald’s hamburger. I would like to go back to America. Those are bad thoughts. Those are capitalistic thoughts you see. McDonald’s hamburgers, send money to South Africa, where whites are killing the blacks. You understand. So everything you thought about and everything you want to do for yourself is bad. Then you are criticized. Then you are told that Jones could read your mind so you better not hold anything from him. Then he tells you to write these confessions, but you don’t want to, so you write. You know he can read my mind anyway. So you write all the things you are thinking. Then you feel guilty and then you say I will die for you, father. So in this way after a while don’t you see what happens. You become sucked right into. You have to really understand.
[Agent]: Were these confessions real? I mean, did any actually do those things and they were guilty about them and they wrote them?
Doctor: No, they didn’t do them. They did it as a means of proving how loyal they were.
[Agent]: Were they making up the alleged crimes?
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Doctor: He tells them to do that.
[Agent]: They were told what to write?
Doctor: Yes.
[Agent]: This is an interesting question. Why, I am trying to find out the why of all this. We know about Jones. We know about the planning commission. Why, I mean, what were the self-interest that molded the five or six people that held the powers down there. Was it monetary or was it to enslave those people to keep them alive. To drain as much as they could out of them – monetarily. We heard about all those bank accounts. The Capitalistic bank accounts all over the world.
Doctor: Well, it was primarily. There was a monetary reason. He was providing a service for them. Obviously, they liked it. The majority of them didn’t want to leave. Ryan picked that up when he was there. It was just a lot of power. When you have so many people under control. Don’t you see. You become infested (unreadable).
[Agent]: Are you saying that the great majority of people that were at Jonestown were happy to be there and it was an enjoyable experience?
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Doctor: As far as they were concerned, yes.
[Agent]: If somebody wanted to leave do you think he was forcibly kept there.
Doctor: Yes.
[Agent]: Because a possible fear of reprisals it got back into the medium.
Doctor: The majority of them wanted to stay like [name deleted] who was a drug addict. He didn’t want to come back to the United States at all. What am I going to do. You know? He has always been an addict. He was in jail. He was shot in the leg. He got so many things. The first time in his life he felt like a person was in Jonestown.
[Agent]: Would you say, basically, the people who wanted to come back were the strong-willed people?
Doctor: The whites primarily wanted to come back. (Unreadable)
[Agent]: In regards to your mentioning they were programmed, I interviewed one of the small children. She mentioned that they took all the toys away from the children and this girl more than the other people we interviewed gave a fairly basic description of what they had for the meals. She described breakfast as rice, gravy and sugar. Lunch was rice, soup and
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bread. Dinner was rice, vegetables, gravy and maybe two or three times a week they had meat. They really followed the line with basic degrading from the diet. What do you think we can expect from these survivors in the near future and the far future?
Doctor: In the near future you are going to get a lot of anxiety attacks, they have already started. Two of them already had anxiety attacks and you will get depression and maybe suicide. Either suicide, actual suicide or suicidal behavior. Suicidal behavior can be any type of thing. Robbing a bank for instance is suicidal behavior. Drug addiction. Prostitution.
[Agent]: Can suicidal behavior also be trying to attack political figures?
Doctor: Yes. That could be suicidal behavior.
[Agent]: Do you think that we could anticipate that type of behavior directed towards the President or prominent persons?
Doctor: It’s got to be a person who Jones felt was against his Church. Now, or who the people who [are] now alive feel had done something bad to the name of Jonestown or to the People’s Temple. For instance, I could be
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on the list. If they feel as a psychiatrist I have said bad things about Jones. Some of the news reporters. Obviously he was out to get the newsmen. The newsmen who questioned Jones, particularly those, you know, were killed. Ryan was killed. They didn’t even go after people who defected. I don’t think that the President has said anything horrible as far as I know. The paranoia usually is against someone who has done something actually to them. It has to be someone who has done something to them.
[Agent]: What about the US Attorney now? Having some grand jury inquiries. They had the first grand jury session on Friday. All the people who arrived last Wednesday, were subpoenaed to appear before the grand jury.
Doctor: Where?
[Agent]: In San Francisco, I think most of them for the most part have appeared. A few might become fugitives but apparently they are following the orders and appearing. Do you think this inquiry, because it is a federal grand jury, do you think they might direct this wrath towards the Federal Government in some way? What I am trying to say do you think
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if an inquisition in their minds is going on by the Federal Government, the Chief Executive of the Federal Government being the President, do you feel this paranoia might make them think the President is behind it?
Doctor: I know he preached against the CIA and FBI. And the President is in charge of everything. I don’t know what type of mind they have. If you have a crazy man would link that and tie that then the President obviously comes out as the person in charge and the person who will being [be] doing it. This is always you have to see that. But right now as far as the members are concerned, I wouldn’t think that you have anything that the President has done to really affect them. I think I have done much more. Some of the newsmen have done a lot.
[Agent]: Have any of your interviews been published?
Doctor: No.
[Agent]: Are you doing your own personal research or is it part of a group studying cult psychology?
Doctor: Well, I’m trying to set up a center for the study of cult persuasion because he had started that about a month before this.
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[Agent]: I am sure you must have studied Rev. Moon’s cult. It is in close proximity to us. Do you think these cults present a danger in the sense that this cult had the self-destructive or outward destructive type influence? Do you think there is a potential from the other large cults here in the United States?
Doctor: Definitely. This one, you know. Directed. Exploded. It could have exploded just as easily, if you just prime the people and just say go. Almost like animals. Like dogs who are just feeling and the leader will say: feel, attack, sit, come, sit again. That type of behavior.
[Agent]: Do you think Rev. Moon may be a dangerous man? Could he possibly become violent one day if things aren’t going his way or some other unforeseen reason?
Doctor: He is much more insidious, much more dangerous than any I have seen.
[Agent]: Rev. Moon?
Doctor: Yes. You know what he will do. He is trying to take over the Government. That is what he will do. Eventually by his people. Eventually you will find a Moonie running for office. And taking over and in this way his ideas to have religion and government
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hand-in-hand. This is the only way this country can be good.
[Agent]: Seems like the People’s Temple follows that same course until things didn’t go too well for them in San Francisco and that is when he moved out. He was as a matter of fact, he was one of the Commissioners in San Francisco.
Doctor: Yes. They try religion for social change and that is what Jones did and it did not work so he tried politics. But I think that Moon is a much smarter man.
[Agent]: Does he know you?
Doctor: Moon? I suppose they all know me. They all knew me. Five years in this business, I think I’m tagged by all of them.
[Agent]: Do you think that what happened in Guyana was Jones ready for that to happen at that time? Or was he looking to have this mass suicide sometime in the future if at all.
Doctor: No, he was expecting it, if the Ryan thing didn’t go off well. He expected this. And I am sure that basketball team was no accident it was not there. This is what I’m afraid of.
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[Agent]: Do you think the government and the people are luckier now because it happened now instead of a year from now?
Doctor: I don’t know how to answer that. I don’t know if we are lucky it [at] all that it happened.
[Agent]: What I am saying could the repercussions have been greater?
Doctor: A year from now?
[Agent]: A year from now, then [than] they are now. So far.
Doctor: You have to look into the future. I don’t know. I can’t really answer that. I think that the repercussions have really not hit us yet. And if you really get someone trying to resurrect Jones and then the way I have said it. It will really be bad.
[Agent]: Apparently from what you have learned about this group they don’t mind dying themselves. Obviously. Do you think that this could be an indication as to the type of assassinations or homicides they might try with prominent persons or even general citizens?
Doctor: This is what I am afraid of. I don’t know what they have programmed into the assassination squad. And I don’t know how we can remove that unless we actually and this is what I’m trying to tell people at
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NIMH [National Institute for Mental Health]. Get these people. You see you have to deprogram them. Break this cult personality from the old personality. After a while you tend to bring them back into this society. You have to give them again. They have to let them smoke. They have to let them drink. You have to let them have material things. You have to introduce them back to capitalism and let them enjoy the freedom and joys of capitalism. This is what I did with people you know. When you are in the Moonie group you can’t have sex, couldn’t tell lies. And one of the things you want to establish a normal relationship with another woman. Have sex. Because if they do the the things, they’re not supposed to do, they get further and further away from Jones or from Moon, and the further you get them away the easier it is for you to get them out, what the chants that are in their heads when they have come from the Moonies. You have to try to get rid of those chants. From what I know there are no chants in these people’s heads. But I don’t know if they have gotten any special words. If this group who are the assassins, you know, are programmed in a different way. Only the group will know.
[Agent]: Could this information be gotten out of these people by hypnosis?
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Doctor: Hypnosis or Amitol. They are very difficult to hypnotize. I will tell you why. I tried hypnosis on the Moonies. It would not work. And on people who are very good subjects. I am a hypnotist for 20 years. It does not work. I have to use Amitol.
[Agent]: Amitol does work?
Doctor: Yes. Amitol does work.
[Agent]: What are the legal ramifications of using Amitol. Do you need a court order. Have you ever heard of it being used in a legal sense in the judicial process?
Doctor: I have used it. You have to have signed consent.
[Agent]: Consent on the part the person being interviewed?
Doctor: As far as I know. It has to be done by a psychiatrist in any case.
[Agent]: For future interviews do you have any suggestions as to what type of questions we should ask these people?
Doctor: Yes. First of all, I would suggest that the song from Saturday Night Fever be played out. “How Deep Is My Love”. That is the song. Do you know it? If you play that song.
[Agent]: This is during the interview.
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Doctor: Play the song during the interview. Before they come in. Play it in the waiting room. So that because that song was played the night that Ryan was there, for instance, it would tend to take him back to Jonestown. If you play during the interview it will keep them in that frame. That’s the only song I know. They like rock music. If I thought of it I would have gotten some. Ask them about Jones. Ask them about being a God. What was it you like about him. He must have done some good for you. Then start talking about that. It takes them back. And then what you do is that when you get them back in the past, talking about the past. Then you ask them relevant questions about the past. Don’t have them in the present and future personality and ask them questions about the past. Don’t ask them about keywords when they’re in the present and the future. You won’t get the answer. Do you understand what I am saying. You have to get them back into the past. If you take them back to the past and get them to reminisce about Jonestown and about the good things, not about the bad. If you talk about bad things in Jonestown you see is
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going to keep them in the present. All right, you want to get them in the past. Talk of California maybe. Talk of something when Jones was doing something good for them. How he was bailing the people out of jail. That type of thing. What was it that people like about Jones. Then you praise Jones a little. That way you are going to get them into the past. Once you get them in the past then you can ask more relevant questions about the group. Because they will be in that past. When in the present or future and you ask about these questions, they will deny it. It is like taking them back in a hypnotic trance. Does it make sense? Are you sure you understand? It is very difficult for me.
[Agent]: How can this be used along with the bad guy/good guy routine?
Doctor: This will have to be the good guy doing that.
[Agent]: What will the bad guy be doing?
Doctor: The bad guy will have to be Jones. The bad guy will have to be the authority figure. Now, you listen to me. I want to tell me. You have to make them feel guilty, okay? They are going to react to guilt. So if you tell them that something like, you were part of those 900
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people dying. You should feel guilty about it. Or, it is because you were not a good enough socialist that you wanted to come away from here. If you use phrases like that. You are not good enough socialist, or not a good communist. You are going back to the United States. That will put them in such a conflict that immediately when you make a statement like that then you say now what it is he told you about being a communist. Do you see what I am saying. You do it in that way. Are you coming back to America? You are giving up everything that you have been taught by Jones. Then don’t you feel guilty or ashamed. You get a reaction. Then you hit them with the question of socialism. I couldn’t do that. You could do that. I couldn’t do that. You would be setting them up and hitting them with the question that will break them and make them answer. But if you knew exactly how they are thinking you could easily do that. They are coming back to the capitalist society and they are coming back to America. They are leaving all of what they worked for and lived for in that place. Choice of being free. Make them feel guilty about that.
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[Agent]: They are brainwashed. Do you think they will tell the truth?
Doctor: It depends. Not all the time. It depends on what stage you are in. If you use that technique that I am saying where you set them up and break them down with a guilt trick. You will not have them all give you the same story. It is like when people come to visit Jonestown they are told what to say. How to say it. How to act. They are accustomed to doing that.
[Agent]: I have here a list of some of the questions we have asked them. I would like you to take a look at these and see if there is anything here you think we should add to or any special way we should ask each one of these questions in relationship to what you just mentioned to us. These are the questions we are specifically interested in as far as assassinations in protection of our various protectees go. We do ask numerous other questions that are basically about lifestyle etc. But these are the ones we felt based on our assignment are the most important things that we should know about.
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Doctor: You are going to get canned answers to these. You see. To get these answers you got to build an interview where these are just brought in skillfully, woven into the interview. If you just ask these questions. I know you have to ask questions. You are going to get canned answers.
[Agent]: Is it possible to get a proper reply to these questions if asked properly, from a person who has been programmed like they have.
Doctor: Are you taping your interviews?
[Agent]: No.
Doctor: See because the canned answer. You could know whether it is canned or not. Secondly, you can know when a person is saying yes or no. Means saying yes means no saying no and means yes. If you have been trained sufficiently because of nonverbal communications. Eyes. Their other movements. Even the hesitation in their voice will tell you that yes means no and no means yes. Once I pick that up I can zero in on it. This is my job. To ask a patient a question. The patient says no when he means yes. Then I wouldn’t even say anything (unreadable). And then I come back with another question a few minutes later on the same thing and I keep breaking it down
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until she says yes. Because I know with the question I asked that she was lying and then I will try to get why she was lying. One other person that I am kind of very leery about in my group that I interviewed was Mike Prokes. If anybody would resurrect, he has a good chance. He is so depressive though. He doesn’t have the charisma.
[Agent]: Do you consider him dangerous?
Doctor: Could be. Could be. He is one person who still firmly believes in Jones and keeping the movement going.
[Agent]: Did you know of the People’s Temple in your study of cults before this worldwide publicity.
Doctor: No, that is the West Coast. And I have been dealing with cults in only on this coast, and cults that have been on both coasts.
[Agent]: Of the domestic calls here, do you consider the Rev. Moon the most potentially dangerous?
Doctor: I would say so.
[Agent]: What other cults are there on the East Coast? The Hare Krishna.
Doctor: Yes. That is a benign type. They are not directed in any way at all. To get people out of that is very
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easy. But they are mindless. But no structure. They get into a kind of a high. If someone wants to direct them, however, he could direct them like I told you, anyway, they want to. But the insidiousness I see in the plan that I see worked out in Rev. Moon’s, it upsets me considerably.
[Agent]: But all these cult members have basically the same things in common in their personality structure.
Doctor: Yes, I knew Jones and Moon are similar. I don’t think the man who heads up Krishna is anything like that.
[Agent]: What about the members of the cult. I was directing that toward the members who joined these cults.
Doctor: But yes. White middle-class. White upper-middle-class are the usual people who join cults. Because they are brought up with parents and given everything. They have been disenchanted with life. They want to change society. They want direction and they want guidance. Okay, now you ask me how the blacks got into this. Blacks want some things. They have never been accepted into society. They never had anything in society. They have always been the have-nots. They want society to change so that they could be accepted. So they both have the same ideals. You have the poor
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blacks, the have not blacks, and you have the intellectual whites. White middle-class. When you get it forming together like you had in Jonestown or you have in the SLA, the Simbianese [Symbionese] Liberation Army. They died by extinction, also, suicidal behavior. The SLA was shot down. You know that. It was same but it was same composition. The majority were blacks. Have-nots and the whites who were the intellectuals. This is the same thing. The same thing and this went down also by suicide.
[Agent]: Have the cults always been with us in our culture. It seems like the media has really been playing on them for the past 10 years.
Doctor: No. It has been very much more. This last decade and other decades, we had the war. We had the Korean War in the 50s. We had the Civil Rights movement in the 60s. We had [the] Vietnam War. We had the energies of the young people being directed and they were controlled by these movements. In this decade they had nothing except the cults so it went right up. If we have a war tomorrow it would take a lot of people out of the cults.
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[Agent]: What do you see in the future of the cults? Do you think they are going to grow in number?
Doctor: They will grow. They will grow unless our society changes and our society gives guidance and unless our family unit changes. Unless our children could learn good. Unless we could give them wisdom. We could teach them wisdom at home. And they could go to school and have them learn knowledge. We expect that they learn wisdom and knowledge at school. The parents, we have to teach that here. Right in the home. Secondly, our unit. You’re married and you’re married, wife and children. You live in a home like I do here. What do you do. The children after they grow up is mother and father against a whole peer group. You know the school group. They are much more powerful. They don’t listen to you and I. Or the mother. They listen to the friends. The friends wear this. I want to wear this. The peer pressure is much more powerful. When we had aunts, uncles, and grandmothers, at least we had a few other people besides mother and father who could put pressure on the kids to make them change their minds. You had a family group.
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We don’t have that in American families. And they go to look for that. Group living, cults and direction. They either get direction from their peers and don’t listen to you because you can’t no matter how much direction you want to give them. These are the things that really break down. Also, we do not give sufficient guidance. We are too permissive in the society for all our kids. Our kids just pick up and they do what you want to do. Study what you want to study. Buy what you want to buy. Nobody questions, why did you buy this. What are you going to do. Why do you want to do that. Nobody sits down and talks with their children. Do you see it is a structure in our society that people got to see it like this. If the society is a big boat going down and the cults are the lifeboats. People are jumping into the lifeboats. We have all turned to experts, and why shouldn’t the kids to the same. We are not experts. Mother and father are not seen as experts in life because they are physically together. They are not psychologically together. They are not happy. There is no happiness. They are not expert in life. Their life is miserable,
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so should I listen to them. You know they can’t even get their act together. I’m going to go to the expert. Okay. And they look for an expert. And the experts are in the cults. We are going to offer you happiness. We are going to offer you all of that. You see. Life is that way. You look at society. You look at the turmoil. Being a psychiatrist I know all the answers. To bring up four children is no easy thing. It is not easy for you either.
[Agent]: In a psychiatric sense, as you know Jones now, how would you diagnose him.
Doctor: Paranoid, psychotic-depressive, and suicidal. He had delusions. Definitely paranoid. Paranoia was always there. A couple of days before Ryan came, he was incoherent. One of the reporters said when they were there he became somewhat incoherent. Babbling. Something about him. He was suicidal. We wanted to die. It was there all the time. That was why he prepared. The delusion was that the whole group was part of him. When he died they all had to go with him.
[Agent]: You mentioned Prokes that you interviewed. How would you have diagnosed him?
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Doctor: Prokes – he is a depressive. He had been depressed all his life. He still is depressive. He might be somewhat paranoid.
[Agent]: Did you interview in the other members of the basketball team?
Doctor: I didn’t interview any basketball team. They were all in another house surrounded by police.
[Agent]: Where did you interview these people?
Doctor: In the Park Hotel.
[Agent]: Were they under house arrest in the Park Hotel or were they free to leave?
Doctor: For a few days they were under house arrest and then they were free to leave. They could go and come by the end of the week.
[Agent]: And you went down there of your own volition?
Doctor: I tried to get Washington to understand what was happening and the bureaucracy is so difficult. I decided that this is something I am doing. Something I am interested in. I am going to go down. Now that I am back, they want to hear everything.
[Agent]: If we have the opportunity to interview people here again would you be interested in being on that interview?
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Doctor: Do you have a one-way mirror?
[Agent]: What we have been doing is interviewing simply at the airport. We don’t really have the proper facilities for interviews the way we would like to [do] it. Unfortunately, we have no control over it at this stage.
Doctor: I would love to be there and assist you. Definitely. Except for the fact that if I am identified with either of you it will be difficult for me to reestablish a connection with any of them.
[Agent]: Do you plan to establish a connection with them in San Francisco.
Doctor: I am going out to the NIMH next week to set up a program there to start helping them out. It is like we should have set it up back in Guyana to start with the group there and see if you could get some deprogramming into them. The whole time this is what I do in my head. Or maybe you would have gotten information to at the same time.
[Agent]: This no doubt has been the most violent cult?
Doctor: Yes.
[Agent]: Do you have any fears that they may turn against you because they might see you as the enemy trying to destroy the Temple?
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Doctor: Yes, definitely. I could be one of their main objects if they’re resurrected and they would come after me, I knew that. But the Moonies are coming after me for a long time.
[Agent]: Do they harass you? Is there any campaign of trying to discredit you?
Doctor: They tried to sue me. They harass you that way and you have to hire lawyers. “The Circle of Friends” we have here in New Jersey is the one that is most like Jones. This man is very much like Jones.
[Agent]: The Circle of Friends?
Doctor: A small cult in Morristown. It has been meeting with all the politicians. It has money. It has arms. It has everything. Two mansions.
[Agent]: How have these cults managed to stay quiet as long as they do? Rev. Jones, nobody knew anything about him until the suicides. Rev. Moon only got popular a few years ago with the mass influx of people and now this is a group I have not heard of.
Doctor: They have been in the papers the last two weeks, three weeks. Because I saw one of their members just before Jonestown. About a week before Jonestown and her father and a detective took her back. The
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detective kidnapped her and somehow she escaped right here in Montclair and got back to the cult and she sued her father for kidnapping and sued the detective and they sent me papers. That cult, that was the first I’ve seen like that.
[Agent]: This Circle of Friends are friendly with politicians?
Doctor: Yes.
[Agent]: Are they trying to get into political life locally?
Doctor: Locally.
[Agent]: You said they have arms?
Doctor: From what I heard they have arms, yes.
[Agent]: What was the use of the arms?
Doctor: I don’t know. I just know the police were trying to look at the arms, raiding the house.
[Agent]: What is their whole thing? Is it social reform?
Doctor: Social reform. Yes. They wanted to build a mental health center. That is their goal. I don’t know for what reason. Back to your question. If you could arrange it. In a way that I could be behind a one-way mirror. I would be happy to help.
[Agent]: You wouldn’t want to get involved in an actual interview situation?
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Doctor: No. But I would definitely tell you what to go and ask. What questions were being evaded. That type of thing. I would be looking for the nonverbal communications.
[Agent]: Over the next six months to a year period, what do you think is the most likely thing we can expect from this group.
Doctor: The depression. Suicidal behavior. The hit squad. I don’t know what to expect from that group. If they are intact in their minds they will come out and gather forces and continue and in that they will not lose. And in six months from now they will still be in the cult.
[Agent]: Is there anything we can look for in some type of overt matter that they might do to give us an indication that they are getting ready to make a strike of some sort?
Doctor: I don’t know them. I really don’t know that group at all. One of the things that will happen is it they will have to develop that whoever they strike at they will have to get very angry with.
[Agent]: Will this be a public anger first?
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Doctor: No. It will be within the group unless you have somebody in the group who would know that. Even if nothing is told just when you hear anger being expressed toward one person you have to pick it up at that point in time because then the paranoia. You see this is the way like Ryan, right, Ryan was coming and they had an alert. I am sure they had planned to kill him, if anything. If any members were going to leave I think he had planned that this had to happen. Because if you know the mind of the man. There were 16 people leaving with Ryan is what triggered this whole thing. Not Ryan, you know. It was the people leaving with Ryan. You got to understand. If you read the letters. And you understand that psychology in that whole cult. That people (unreadable). Once you break that cult like that. That was like taking his arm and pulling it off. Okay. That is what broke up the cult. The 16 people going. Now I don’t want to say this and I kept it to myself because those 16 people, two families. The [names deleted, likely Parks and Bogue] families, are also in great danger from the people in San Francisco and from the hit squad. Because they are
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seen as the cause for this whole thing. Their leaving. If anybody is going to be hit it will be them.
[Agent]: Going back to Jonestown, did you hear specifically of any of the punishments that the people were put through?
Doctor: Yes. The hard labor camp. The hard labor. And they were ostracized when they were in the hard labor. They could only talk to security guards and that type of people. That you are made to go into the rice fields and pick the weeds. They had nobody to talk to. If you wanted to leave you would be put in intensive treatment where you would be medicated with tranquilizers and just kept in a daze. They had a black box. A black box. A sensory deprivation box which they would put you in. Take away sound and light from you. Prokes said they fed you while you were in there; and his reaction was that they did not keep them long enough so that they would be able to brainwash them. You got to understand they are dealing with ex-addicts who sometimes can be very difficult people to deal with.
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[Agent]: Did they ever talk about “white nights”?
Doctor: White night is the night for suicide.
[Agent]: Did they ever talk about practice runs?
Doctor: Yes.
[Agent]: Who specifically mentioned that? They have rehearsals. They have to know exactly what had to be done.
Doctor: One was in May. They had a practice run.
[Agent]: Did they actually take Kool-Aid?
Doctor: One of the letters described it very well. When this woman took the Kool-Aid and she did not know whether it was poison or not. She just drank it. And she wrote in her letter she did not know whether she was going to die or not. It was a test. Her son was afraid, he squeezed her hand.
[Agent]: All of these practice runs, people didn’t know whether it was the real thing or in fact a practice run.
Doctor: Yes. They didn’t know if it was a practice run. He called alert, alert, alert. We have to die because this is what is happening, you know, etc., etc.
[Agent]: You are talking about the entire community being involved in this practice run.
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Doctor: Some people told me that they were busy and were not at the practice run, so I don’t know who to believe. Most of the people I talked to were not in the practice run. If they are denying it, or ashamed to talk about it. I think many of them are ashamed to talk about it. This is the feeling I get. That they don’t want to say they were involved in a practice run and therefore they drank it. Then they would be questioned, how come you drank it.
[Agent]: How many total people did you interview?
Doctor: About 20.
[Agent]: 20?
Doctor: Twelve on tape. The rest I had to get without tape.
[Agent]: Have you been playing those tapes over looking for other leads?
Doctor: Yes.
[Agent]: And after listening to them for several times were you able to tell whether the people were trying to deceive you. Whether they were trying to evade certain questions.
Doctor: I didn’t get anyone evading questions. I just didn’t ask certain questions. I knew the reporters
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were asking those questions and I knew I would get that type of answer. I was more interested in the feeling and understanding why would they take the poison. Why were they behaving this way. What were they thinking. Taking them back to previous personality and getting Jones out of them. In that way and doing that type of setting.
[Agent]: I take it you were successful in breaking through this brainwashing exterior?
Doctor: Yes. I was able to do that. Get them thinking and get that tone out.
[Agent]: There was a temporary breakthrough. In essence they’re still brainwashed?
Doctor: Yes. I can get a certain feeling that they go right back to the set.
[Agent]: People who returned to San Francisco apparently ended up back in the Temple again. What do you think is happening to them now?
Doctor: It is easier for them to hold onto that cult personality. Because you still have a certain amount of regimentation there, and support systems in that Temple. You get out of the Temple you have no support system. This is what I’m trying to tell
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the people at NIMH. That is what I am trying to tell you. We got to put in our own support system and help these people. So that the People’s Temple don’t do it. They have to be psychological support. They have to have financial support; and we have to build a program when we can direct them out and back to society. Otherwise, they tend to be directed back into this group, when they feel secure. Where their needs are taken care of; where people think like them and that type of thing and that type of thing.
[Agent]: In other words, these people are not deprogrammed.
Doctor: Yes.
[Agent]: Things will continue with a possibility that things will get worse?
Doctor: They will continue back to the same. Take the 4 to 6 people who were in the Lamaha House, along with the basketball team. There the woman was killed. Her three daughters were killed. Nobody knows what the hell happened. Can you imagine that? And then they were surrounded by police for all these weeks. Nobody could get to them. Taken from the house. Put in a plane. Brought back here. You
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people interview them. They’re sent back to San Francisco. Picked up and put back in the Temple. You want to tell me they still don’t have Jonestown mentally? They are right back with Jones. They will hold onto that for a long time.
[Agent]: Did you ever question them with regard to anything about possible assassinations, hit list, on the possibility of them trying to have contingency plans.
Doctor: [Name deleted] is the only one who told me that there was the “Angels” who were going to. What did he say, there was this assassination squad that was going to go out and get their enemies. He believed it so firmly. He was very scared for himself because they did not complete the mission they were supposed to. Therefore, they could be killed easily.
[Agent]: Did you ask them what they meant by their enemies?
Doctor: I did not.
[Agent]: Did he infer that the enemies were the defectors?
Doctor: Yes. He said anybody that said anything bad about the Church. (The doctor changed the subject.) I look at this as a mental health emergency and to
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see if we can get the type of help for these people to reprogram then if we can guide them into (unreadable). Then you do not have to worry. If we can get this out of their system. If we leave them as is, I don’t know what to expect. I don’t think you even know what to expect.
[Agent]: Did the Guyanese authorities questioned these people at length down there.
Doctor: They questioned them, I don’t know.
[Agent]: Seems like a primitive country from what I have been reading.
Doctor: It is. I am from Guyana you know.
[Agent]: You have a particular interest.
Doctor: I left there in 1954. They’re so backward. It is ridiculous.
[Agent]: I learned that the Guyana was a Marxist State?
Doctor: It is.
[Agent]: I was under the impression that the only Marxist State in this hemisphere was Cuba?
Doctor: Listen. Guyana, the majority of the people living there are Indians. Next to that 40 per cent are black (Describes former Government) Continuing.
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So that is a very Marxist State. That is why Jones went there.
[Agent]: You said that this [name deleted] tape is the only tape where there was a specific mission made of the hit team or the “Angels”?
Doctor: Maybe a couple of other times but he was frightened. He was just giving me this information. I wonder why he was giving me information like this. I have to question it because, himself, his brother and Prokes; they were high up with Jones as far as reliability. I think this one is the most reliable. And he is the most honest. He is not hiding anything. I was able to get a lot out of Prokes as to how much money he had spent in the United States. He spent one half-million dollars to buy things for Jonestown to go back, which had not reached there yet. Two hundred thousand in Georgetown. He knew a lot about. Either he was doing the spending for Jones because he knew all the figures. He said they made $40,000 in selling the dolls they made in Jonestown. You know they made dolls. So, obviously, he knew a lot about money, so he must have been entrusted with it.
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[Agent]: There has been some speculation that the Guyanese Government and representatives of the State Department at the Embassy in Guyana have been compromised by illicit sexual contacts with members of the Jonestown community. Did you manage to get any type of information relative to that?
Doctor: No. Except that all the people that I interviewed told me that they were told that if they went to the Embassy they would be picked up and sent back to Jonestown. So don’t go to the Embassy and look for help.
[Agent]: What is the Ambassador specifically mentioned.
Doctor: No.
[Agent]: Did they ever mention anything about talks with political figures in California?
Doctor: No they didn’t mention that.
[Agent]: Were there any instances where people were sent back from the American Embassy the Jonestown?
Doctor: I tried to get that. I don’t think I got that.
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[Agent]: Did you ever theorize that the Mosconi [Moscone]-Milk murders in San Francisco
might have been linked?
Doctor: I don’t know how to theorize about it. Certainly coming on this episode it did not look good at all. And the immediate reaction of the group was that I didn’t believe anything the papers say, because it is all lies. I’m sure it had to do with killings by Jones or Jones’ people.
[Agent]: How did they react to that? How did you link their reaction to the murder?
Doctor: They react in the same blimy way as they react to everything. They didn’t react with fear. There was slight fear. I know they were frightened. Okay. But fear did not come out. They linked it, definitely. The murder of Mosconi with Jones.
[Agent]: They linked it in their minds?
Doctor: In their minds.
[Agent]: Do you think there is a possibility that that might have been connected with the Jones cult?
Doctor: I don’t know a sufficient amount about this guy but certainly they all believe it. I would believe what they are saying to me and their fears for the simple reason, I spoke to Dale Parks on the phone last week
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and then he called me again last Sunday when his sister’s boyfriend had an anxiety attack and had been hospitalized. They are getting into anxiety attacks. You know this is what I expected. But [Dale Parks] says he is very much afraid of Steven [Stephan] Jones. Steve Jones has the same piercing eyes. All these people have piercing eyes. The cult members look at you. Eyes are wide. Look straight in the face. They don’t blink. They keep looking. Steve Jones has piercing eyes. Met [Dale Parks] in a hotel. [Dale Parks] was immediately afraid. I could hear fear in his voice. Steve had been coming to the Park Hotel and trying to offer money so he could ingratiate himself with the survivors. They wouldn’t accept them at all because they are very scared. They called the police and ask them to get rid of him. My feeling is that in the same way when they say don’t take [name deleted, likely Larry Layton]. He is a traitor. You remember that. The reporters and Ryan said, you know. This group is paranoid. What we have to do here is, these people get a feeling. If you ask them a question they don’t know. When I asked them about Mosconi, there
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is a feeling they get. They link them and they can’t tell you because they only react in this way, okay? So I have to go by the way they feel and the way they react. And I say let’s believe what they are saying. I am not going to want to hear and listen to the survivors, because we have done it to the extent where we have ended up with 908 people dead. We are not beneath them. I think that Steven Jones should be looked at. Very carefully. I think they have said that he cannot be trusted. Two or three people in the group said he could not be trusted, at all. That what he said were lies and he was told to make up his lies and announce his father if this thing should happen. I don’t know what is going on. (Four-point plan explained to the doctor. His reply.) There is a good possibility to that. I will definitely fit in the assassinations six months from now. I will tell you. I will be one on their list.
[Agent]: You seem to have no fear of them.
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Doctor: I am afraid. It is psychiatric. There were three reporters that went off completely. If I would have stayed more than 10 days I would have. I was so tired. I was working so hard. I might have been really upset, but they became so paranoid. The paranoia was all over the place and they thought they were going to be killed, one NBC cameraman, I mean a correspondent. He thought there was voodoo in the place taking him. He thought everything. They had to send him back. There was another one there, from a magazine. I had to follow him straight to his room. He said, do you know you’re going to be killed? And he got very agitated. If they are going to kill anybody they are going to kill me. (Unreadable.) If you wrote a bad story about me and he went on and on and on. He is going back to New York and take off for Paris. Nobody will ever find him.
[Agent]: Were they threatened down there in all by people in the Temple during time of the news coverage after Jonestown?
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Doctor: The fear is just crazy. He took off the next day. I told him to relax and not to worry.
[Agent]: Were you the only psychiatrist down there?
Doctor: I was the only psychiatrist in Guyana so I had to calm him down, get him going, then the next day I was discussing it with a new NBC guy who came down, [name deleted] and I sat down and said what is happening (unreadable). Another crazy woman from Chicago Tribune and she was (unreadable) then I said what’s happening to these people. They step out of their role as being reporters and became therapists and could not handle it (unreadable). One came up to me I was talking (unreadable). He was writing a book. He is not even a reporter. He does not know what he is going to do. I could not think. Wants to know what he is going to do. He is going to lose either my sanity. I had to structure what he was going to do, one, two, three, just like a child, and he couldn’t even remember that he had to write it down. He went back the next day too. It was not easy. A lot of pressure. [Name deleted] (phonetic) who looked so suicidal. You know, you could actually cut the depression.
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You could see it. There was Prokes who was depressive, could not sleep. [Name deleted]. They had reasons to be very depressed. They were frightened, scared, going to be killed. All of them were very depressed. The group that I am concerned about, is the group that I never saw. The basketball team. [Name deleted] and the others. They are very well protected. They are still. Jonestown is a Valhalla. It is a great place. Jones is great.
[Agent]: What you know about the basketball group as a whole, would you consider them dangerous?
Doctor: I would have to from what I heard. They were not in Georgetown by accident.
[Agent]: Would you say that the other people that happened to be in Georgetown when the suicide occurred. Do you think that was by accident. We interviewed a few people on December 3, Sunday. I interviewed one woman and there were at least three or four others in that group that were going to the dentist that day in Georgetown and it is my understanding that they were among 10 or 12 people, that were going there. The woman I specifically interviewed was a news analyst for Jonestown. She got news
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over the radio. She wrote it down and apparently Jones came along and edited it. Then later had given it over the loudspeakers. Apparently she was some sort of hierarchy.
Doctor: Was this an older woman?
[Agent]: She was about 52.
Doctor: Fair skin?
[Agent]: Yes.
Doctor: Her name is Chubbs.
[Agent]: Beatrice Grubbs?
Doctor: Grubbs yes, that’s it. She really thought that.
[Agent]: I had nothing but flowery reports from her.
Doctor: About Jonestown? Oh God she was way into it. What a woman she was. Grubbs and Walker were the other one I saw on the plane. Grubbs and Walker.
[Agent]: Do you think that that was planned on their part to be there.
Doctor: To be?
[Agent]: To be away from what had happened.
Doctor: I don’t know, maybe. What I can’t figure out. Maybe you can. Why was Sharon Amos killed. Sharon Amos and her daughters.
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[Agent]: In the Georgetown house?
Doctor: Yes – can you figure that out.
[Agent]: Supposedly it was simultaneous.
Doctor: Maybe a little later in the morning when she was killed. I can’t figure that out. If we could figure that out, we could make a heck of a lot of understanding of who is going to be killed. You understand, and what the reason. If we can figure out why she was killed. That will be a key. She was very high up you know. If we could figure that out it would be good.
[Agent]: Did you hear any speculation as to why she died?
Doctor: Well the speculation was that she might have been insisting that they all kill themselves. (The doctor then began to play a tape he had taken of his conversation with [name deleted]. He also physically described the wounds of Sharon Amos and her children.) The cut was from here to here.
[Agent]: This is on Sharon Amos or her children?
Doctor: On both. Sharon Amos and her children.
[Agent]: I was under the impression that someone was under arrest.
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Doctor: One person.
[Agent]: Who is that?
Doctor: I can’t remember.
[Agent]: I have the name on the tip of my tongue.
Doctor: I don’t see how one person could kill four people. It was originally said that she and her kids committed suicide but if you get cut from here to here, you can’t pull a knife like this. If you are pulling a knife to cut your throat you pull it like this. The cut will have to be like that, but the cut was right down here. That had to be somebody else doing it. He has done a lot of autopsies. He says that he thought it was murder. (The doctor described the wounds as going from the neck below the ear down onto the chest instead of going around the neck.) This is why they cordoned it off. He can’t figure out why they were killed. It is [an] important question.. You don’t have that on your list?
[Agent]: No we don’t (unreadable).
Doctor: (The doctor played the [name deleted] interview tape.) Okay, you see me use the word humanitarian. Humanitarian is a word that they all are calling him.
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Describe Jones as being a humanitarian person. His greatest quality. They all want to identify with that. So then you want to take people back to get them into the past you have to use words like humanitarian, socialist, another is father, dear dad, dear father, and these are words that will tend to trigger them into the past. (He again plays [name deleted] interview.) Do you see the song that is playing in the background? Do you hear the song? That song for instance made Tim Carter cry like the devil. So it (unreadable). Have a subliminal effect. (He turns on the [name deleted] tape.) Use that word battle plan. (Turns on the interview tape.) Did you want to hear his comment about the money and everything? (Again the [name deleted] tape.) I had to give him Valium because he could not sleep at all.
[Agent]: Who is playing that music?
Doctor: There was an organist there.
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[Agent]: At the hotel?
Doctor: Yes.
[Agent]: Did you know that had an association with that music. Did he tell you?
Doctor: Yes, because he burst into tears at this song. (Tape back on.) He is so frightened. The three of them were extremely frightened. They were frightened, scared. (Tape back on.) Do you feel like one person or two people. What do expect him to answer? What is a normal answer? (Tape back on.) Did you hear that? I did not put a word in this boy’s mouth. Did you hear how he actually described that? One person in the past, one person in the present and in the future. He was able to conceptualize that so well. He is a very, very smart young man. (Tape back on.) Something will trigger and bring him back into the past. Use the memory, use things that will trigger and he will go right back. (Tape back on.)
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Now you see, as far as that goes the expression that he was supposed to say was that he could direct his life. Then he did a double take and he said, “God, no.” He could not do it (Tape back on.) He is honest. See what he is saying. He is honest. The majority would say the Temple’s all bad. But he says he learned something here. He learned something about people. (Tape back on.) You heard what he said? When we do this. We will send people out and get our enemies. He did not say if. (Tape back on.) This is the other important thing. If they want to kill themselves, this is like Tim Carter send in the last tape. Because of this 500 times. They didn’t mind somebody shooting them and killing them. He doesn’t want to commit suicide, but [name deleted] who is frightened and wouldn’t mind committing suicide doesn’t want to commit suicide but he doesn’t mind an assassin getting him. Then he will die and it will be all over.
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[Agent]: He mentioned the term revolutionary suicide. Is this what they–
Doctor: That whole thing is revolutionary suicide. That is “Hughie [Huey] Newton” if the people could pick up on that message, it could really raise the blacks up in this situation. See I work in Newark. I know how people think. The black masses. I worked at Yale with the Black Panthers when I was there. You know I had all of that. The group in the 60s. I was in New Haven when the whole town almost closed down. I could see the sociology of all this.
[Agent]: From a propensity toward violence aspect of this entire group now what do you feel is the most likely way they will bring out their aggressions. Think it will be toward a suicide type mission or homicide?
Doctor: If they have a set pattern like you said and what I have heard. For example, now there is a denunciation of what is happened and then six months later I would tend to believe that. I want to believe what I am hearing right now from these arrivals and that will certainly, unless we could do something to disband that group and
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deprogram them, get that programming out of them. First of all, you have to find out what has been programmed into them. This is what I don’t know.
[Agent]: Are you saying that unless these people are deprogrammed we can expect to see violence. We can expect to see their contingency plan carried out.
Doctor: I would say so. Yes. Because there is nothing. If they go back to San Francisco and they get into cliques where they had been fed upon one another with their thought patterns. They will continue from the Jonestown pattern all the time. This is like the Moonies. The Moonies go and spend time on a farm. They spent a week or two weeks and really get brainwashed. Then you can take those people out and spread them into 10 or 15. Send them across and they will continue in that little group and feed on that no matter how far away they are from Moon or anyone else they will continue no matter for a long, long time, in that pattern. They will sell their flowers, they will do everything, they will interact with people in the streets
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and you will not be able to take away what is in their minds. What I am saying, if it has been programmed into them.
[Agent]: The frightening thing is the first part has already happened and something is bizarre as what happened two weeks ago (unreadable). It is very difficult to believe that even this could. There was a guy on the West Coast who was telling people this is what people planned to do, it is very bizarre. Nobody wanted to listen to him. All of a sudden now everybody wants to listen to him (unreadable). If somebody told you about this before you wouldn’t believe it.
Doctor: Even I have seen Moonies who said they would kill themselves for the moon and the cause and I knew it could happen. But I didn’t know it could happen on a scale like this. Who would believe. A couple of Moonies killing themselves for the cause. I never believed that one man could actually have that amount of control. You see the Moonies. You look at the Moonies, no matter how much you let them out. They are so much under that mind control they will never leave. They don’t run away. You send them
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selling flowers for 16 hours a day and they come right back.
[Agent]: Where did Jones or Rev. Moon, where did they learn that. It must be an intense science.
Doctor: It is a science. It was developed by the Chinese. Moon learned that in Korea. And you get people who are well-trained. He has built in the chants which Jones didn’t have. I have to get the chants out of the children’s heads. And to get the chants out I cannot use hypnosis. I have to use Amitol. They will have to sing the songs and have to write them out and I will then use the type of hypnosis and the Amitol and bang away at them with that to reduce the chant and tell them that whenever this chant comes into their heads how they should stop it. Because every time the chant comes into their head they are back into the cult. If it lasts for two minutes or three minutes they are back into the cult, and the chants are sometimes triggered off by TV commercials. Because they have the same tune. It is so skillfully done. The other thing is that he protected them by telling them evil spirits will get them so that no matter where
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they went, they felt themselves attacked by ghosts and the devil in that type of thing. So Moon has built in his structure much more sophisticated things.
[Agent]: You say that Moon’s group is violence oriented or a more peaceful type of takeover?
Doctor: He is a more insidious peaceful type of takeover. He will never turn to violence. He has much more savvy, than violence.
[Agent]: You still consider him dangerous?
Doctor: He is more dangerous. That is more dangerous I think than blowing it all. He is insidious. He gets into everything. He will take over just like the Mafia and you will never know how he is taking over.
[Agent]: As far as physical violence would you say this Jones group is potentially the most dangerous of all cult operations now?
Doctor: You had a very sobering effect on me as far as this is concerned. Because I heard this thing I didn’t know. It was six months. Like Jones, he was told to say this about his father but it was just a plan and I didn’t follow through on the plan to ask. But certainly these people are frightened
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and scared. A lot of people don’t want to go back to San Francisco. And if we allow them to just go and continue that way. They will keep this programming in and keep their programming with them. That is all I have to say. I am not saying this because I want to frighten you. I am saying this also because of my own welfare too. Because I know the people much more than you do. I think that at least we have to believe what we hear. It looks outrageous but so was that suicide. The mass suicide was outrageous. We didn’t think that it would happen. If that did happen, I think we have to project that the rest of the plan is going to happen that the rest of the plan is going to happen.
[Agent]: If they come up with a leader now do you think it would be Steve Jones? Do you think he would most likely be the candidate?
Doctor: This is what I hear. They say he is much more dangerous that his father.
[Agent]: Thank you.