Q364 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 “7/13/78”

Date cues on tape:     News items consistent with tape identification note

People named:

Bible verses cited: None

Summary:

Jim Jones reviews recent news developments and announces additional classes in socialism for those who have either failed to turn in their papers of self-analysis or who didn’t pass a recent news quiz. He is forgiving of and sympathetic of most of the people who have to take the extra class: many people who didn’t turn in their papers were on other assignments, either in Georgetown or on the boat; and many Jonestown residents who didn’t pass the news quiz are elderly and uneducated, people who didn’t have the advantages of growing up in middle class America, and they shouldn’t “feel any stigma about failing the test.” Nevertheless, he asks for those he names to “cooperate with loving requirements [because] a community has to follow rules to succeed.”

Jones’ only reprimand – repeated on two occasions during the tape – is in demanding that children and other members of the community stop calling each other “capitalists” when they criticize one another. “The benefits of socialism must be pointed out in the nursery and toddler and school-age levels,” he says early in the tape. “Don’t speak of someone in terms of being capitalist. No one here is capitalist.” He reiterates the point near the close when he says, “[N]o member of the cooperative is allowed to call another member capitalist. This will be name-calling in the same category of name-calling and teasing. We will not tolerate this labeling.”

While he declares that “Socialism is a doctrine of environmental determinism,” he is also emphatic that Jonestown is its true manifestation. The community does not have crime, does not have disease, and does not have the poverty of capitalist America, and Jonestown should celebrate that. “The benefits of socialism, is what I want pointed out. Otherwise, children will rebel. And that would be tragic against the most beautiful thing in the world, socialism.”

In addition to the news items, Jones reads a lengthy description of the history and political geography of Israel. While his source is likely the same almanac he read from a few days earlier in a href=”http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=93628″>Q 324, he adds several criticisms of Zionism, including charges that many rich Jews sold out to Nazi Germany and undercut socialist movements, to the extent that “the Zionist element of the Jews all cooperated in the murder of the Jews in the gas oven, the incinerators in Hitler’s Germany.”

His only observation on Christianity reflects his latter atheism: “The original Jewish state in Palestine was destroyed by the Romans 70 years after the death of Jesus – so-called Jesus – of Nazareth.”

Among the shorter news items:

• The Israeli Defense Minister meets his Egyptian counterpart in preparation for a meeting with US Secretary Vance;
• Israel holds on to South Lebanon.
• The Guyana referendum with strengthen the power of the working class;
• Carter challenges the Soviet Union for putting dissidents on trial;
• Three men of wealth – Groucho Marx, Elvis, and Howard Hughes – all die in circumstances of deprivation;
• Andrew Young admits existence of political prisoners in America, faces criticism;
• China charges Vietnam with attempted infiltration;
• Namibian independence still on course by year’s end;
• Spain bans tourist ships of a class that recently burned.

FBI Summary:

Date of transcription: 6/18/79

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 3, 1979, Special Agent (name deleted) reviewed the tape numbered 1B93-98. This tape was found to contain the following:

Reverend JIM JONES with his commentary and review of news and world events as pertains to socialism and Jonestown.

Differences with FBI Summary:

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