Alternative Considerations of Jonestown & Peoples Temple

The Jonestown Report, November 2000, Volume 2
Alternative Considerations of Jonestown & Peoples Temple
http://jonestown.sdsu.edu

What's Happening on the Website
PeopleFind
Complete List of FBI Summaries of Jonestown Tapes Online
Tape Transcripts Continue to be Uploaded
Photo Archive Available Soon
48,000 FBI Documents on CD-Rom
State Department FOIA Documents on Microfiche
Air Force Releases Records on Microfilm
FBI RYMUR Documents Online
1999-2000 FOIA Activities
Access to Congressional Records
Speakers
Publications and Research
Report from California Historical Society
Obituaries 2000

What's Happening on the Website
After two years of operation, the Jonestown website, http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~remoore/jonestown has over 27,000 hits. We receive an average of two or three e-mail inquiries per week. About half of the inquiries come from students and researchers writing papers or studying "cults." About one-fourth to one-third come from family members of Peoples Temple members, who help with correcting the list of those who died in Jonestown, and with the list of those who survived. The remainder come from journalists in the news media who are doing stories or articles on Peoples Temple, Jonestown, or other issues related to New Religious Movements.

The editors of the jonestown report have re-envisioned the site as a source for primary source data about Peoples Temple. The site began two years ago at the University of North Dakota in anticipation of media coverage of the twentieth anniversary of the deaths in Jonestown. Due to the accelerating loss of documents, and the deaths of individuals knowledgeable about Peoples Temple, however, it has become clear that a need exists to recover as many documents, and to talk to as many people, as possible. Our goal is to make the site a repository for as much information as possible, and to make that information available free of charge.

The death list continues to be updated and corrected with the help of alert relatives and friends who point out inconsistencies, duplications, or errors. It was completely overhauled this year, thanks to the use of Peoples Temple census records kept in Jonestown. Because relatives have identified errors and problems, the list is without doubt the most complete and accurate record of those who died in Jonestown that exists anywhere. It can continue to be improved, however, as friends and relatives continue to discover the site for the first time.
PeopleFind
Throughout the year we get numerous requests from people trying to locate friends and relatives who were in Jonestown in November 1978. Sometimes it is clear that the people they are asking about have died; other times, it is not as clear. In addition, some people would like information about what their family members were doing when they lived in Jonestown.

In an effort to address these issues, we are running a sort of "PeopleFind" which lists the names of those who are looking for information about Peoples Temple members, and the name of the person they are seeking. We will serve as the gatekeepers to protect the privacy of those who don't want their e-mail or personal addresses published in the Internet. If you have any information about those listed below, please inform Rebecca Moore at: remoore@mail.sdsu.edu.

Cathy Tropp :

Donald Robert Bower :

Sandy Bradshaw :

Charlotte Gerber (b. ca. 1954) :

Karen Alexander

Mark Lane

Any word on Brian Csuk?

Complete List of FBI Summaries of Jonestown Tapes Online
The FBI reviewed 971 audiotapes it recovered from Jonestown for their potential evidentiary use in the prosecution of Larry Layton. FBI agents wrote the summaries as they reviewed the tapes, and divided them into the following categories:
Jim Jones Speaking : 411
Identified Individuals Speaking : 55
Unidentified Individuals Speaking : 89
Radio Transmissions : 50
Miscellaneous : 56 Tapes
Not Summarized : 65
Music : 223
Blank : 22
The only known compilation of all 971 summaries in numerical order may be found at http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~remoore/jonestown/tapes/tapes.html.

While upwards of 50 tapes were initially withheld from the public pending Layton's trial, all are currently available through the FBI's Freedom of Information/Privacy Act Office. In addition, the editors of the jonestown report. have almost 300 tapes on hand, indicated in the summary compilation by the pound symbol (#). We have filed requests for the balance of the collection, except for those which are blank or which contain only music, and will make their availability known as we receive them.

Copies of tapes are available from the editors for the cost of duplication and postage.
Tape Transcripts Continue to be Uploaded
The editors of the jonestown report continue to upload transcripts and summaries from the hundreds of audiotapes which the FBI recovered from Jonestown following the deaths in 1978. More than 40 are currently available on the "Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple" website, which may be found at http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~remoore/jonestown/tapes/tapes.html, and we plan to upload an additional dozen by November 18.

The transcripts and summaries include a complete White Night, recorded in Jonestown in April 1978 (Q 635-639). We have also assigned a priority to transcribing the sermons of Jim Jones and the recorded services of Peoples Temple in California, in an effort to put the mass migration of Temple members to Guyana in the context of the events of the day and the voices they were hearing (e.g., Q 612 & Q 612a, Q 929, Q 932, Q 955, Q 1016 and Q 1059 (Part 1)).

The website also includes two versions of Q 42, which has been referred to as "the death tape." The hour-long tape was made as people died in Jonestown on 18 November 1978. The two versions - which vary only slightly - were transcribed by the FBI and by Dr. Mary Maaga for her book, Hearing The Voices Of Jonestown (Syracuse University Press, 1998).

For copies of any of the summarized tapes, you may write to us through our e-mail address (remoore@mail.sdsu.edu) or our street address (Fielding M. McGehee III, 3553 Eugene Place, San Diego, CA 92116). We will request the cost of tapes and postage for any requests for duplication. We also have a number of other tapes which we have not yet transcribed (see related story, p. 00), and will duplicate those upon request as well.
Photo Archive Available Soon
More than 75 photos depicting everyday life in Jonestown will be online by the end of the year and available for viewing and downloading.The photos, which the editors of the jonestown report obtained from the FBI this past summer, show children at play and in school, adults at work - both in construction and in the industries which the community ran - and in recreational activities, the Jonestown health care facilities, and other glimpses of community life. There are no scenes of the final day.

As with many of the voices on the Jonestown tapes, most of the people in the photos are unknown to us. We would like to include identifying captions wherever possible, so if you recognize anyone in the photos, please let us know. The photos can be used free of charge, but please credit the jonestown report. Thank you.
48,000 FBI Documents on CD-Rom
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has released more than 48,000 pages of documents related to Jonestown and Peoples Temple on three compact disks. The release represents the FBI's first use of CD's as a response to requests under the Freedom of Information Act for massive numbers of documents. The FBI will offer the CD's as its principal response to all FOIA requests related to Jonestown and Peoples Temple, no matter how specific or targeted the requests might be. The CD's present the documents in raw form as the FBI processed and released the material in the years following the deaths in Jonestown. There is no master index to the documents, and because they appear as graphic rather than text files, there is no capability of identifying individual documents by key words or subject matter. Efforts to locate any index which the FBI may have used as a guide through the material have been thus far unsuccessful. An independent index will be offered through the jonestown report as soon as it becomes available.

In addition, the FBI did not review its past decisions to withhold all or parts of many documents under the FOIA's exemptions. The agency's last review occurred about seven years ago. The editors of the jonestown report have challenged many of the exemptions, especially those related to privacy of people who have died since 1978 and those records used in the prosecution of Larry Layton, who was convicted on conspiracy charges in 1985. We have also asked the FBI to release documents which originated in other agencies and which therefore were not included on the CD's. The CD's run on both PC's and MacIntosh computers. The FBI's cover letter accompanying the CD's gives instructions on how to open the files.

You can request your own set of CD's from the FBI through the following address: Freedom of Information/Privacy Act Section, Office of Public and Congressional Affairs, FBI, Washington, DC 20535-0001. The cost of the set of CD's is approximately $30.You may get a faster response if your letter notes that the CD's have already been released in response to FOIA Request #902718, filed by Rebecca Moore and Fielding M. McGehee III.
State Department FOIA Documents on Microfiche
The State Department has released 59 microfiche pages representing its initial compilation of documents related to Jonestown and Peoples Temple. Each microfiche page contains 100 pages of documents, although not all microfiche pages are full. State offered the microfiche records as its response to requests for the agency's complete listing of the Jonestown dead and for passport records recovered at the site of the mass deaths. As with the FBI's release, there is much material that has been withheld under the FOIA's exemptions. State has not yet responded to an appeal for review of these deletions. As with the FBI's set of CD's, there is no index or detailed guide to individual documents in the release of approximately 5000 pages. However, the State Department did create a catalogue for the microfiche pages under four broad areas. They are:

"Findings, Analysis and Investigation of the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project" (6 microfiche pages)

"People Who Died In Jonestown" (1 page)

"Operations Reports, Memoranda and other Documents" (6 pages)

"Rebecca Moore, Peoples Temple and Jonestown" (50 pages)

The final, largest category includes the raw material which the State Department used in compiling the other three. The records include cables between the U.S. and the American Embassy in Guyana, requests for assistance from relatives of Jonestown residents, and Peoples Temple records gathered by State Department personnel. There is no indication why the category was named after Rebecca Moore.

The editors of the jonestown report are working to compile an index of State's microfiche records. We have also filed an additional FOI request for documents which were not included in the original release. You can request any or all of the microfiche records through the following address: Office of IRM Programs and Services, Department of State, Room 1512, 2201 C St., N.W., Washington, DC 20520-1512. You may get a faster response if your letter notes that the records have already been released in response to FOIA Request #199804155, filed by Fielding M. McGehee III. The microfiche pages cost one dollar each, or $59 for a complete set.
Air Force Releases Records on Microfilm
The U.S. Air Force has released four rolls of microfilm with information related to the military service's participation in the airlift of bodies from Jonestown in 1978. As with the FBI and State Department, the Air Force's reply to requests related to Jonestown is a generic offer of the rolls of film which may or may not contain the specific information sought in the requests. Also as with the other agencies, there is no index or guide to the material, although most of it seems to be related to military activities following the deaths - such as the body identification processes and airlifting - rather than any military interest in Peoples Temple prior to November 18, 1978.

The microfilm may be obtained directly from the Air Force Historical Research Agency/ISR, 600 Chennault Circle, Maxwell AFB, AL 36112-6424. You may refer to FOIA request #00-0472 filed by Rebecca Moore for faster service. The cost of the microfilm is $30 per roll, or $120 for the entire set. However, the Air Force responded favorably to our request for a fee waiver under the public interest provision of the FOIA.
FBI RYMUR Documents Online
The website for the FBI's Freedom of Information/Privacy Act (FOIPA) Office includes a number of documents from its investigation of the assassination of Rep. Leo Ryan. The site includes more than 360 pages from the FBI investigation - code-named RYMUR, for "Ryan Murder" - into the deaths at the Port Kaituma airstrip and in Jonestown. It appears that the site does not include any of the documents generated by Peoples Temple which are on three CD's and available for purchase through the FBI's FOIPA Office (see above). The RYMUR files are located at http://foia.fbi.gov/jonestown.htm.
1999-2000 FOIA Activities
In addition to the government documents which the editors of the jonestown report have obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, we have numerous requests that are still pending. While we will report on those releases in future editions, we also invite readers who are interested in particular requests to contact us directly so we may keep you current on developments as they occur.

U.S. Army: This request seeks information about the activities of the U.S. Graves Registration team which participated in the bodylift of the Jonestown dead. The information we requested may be similar to that released to us by the Air Force, but the Army records will complete the picture of military involvement in the humanitarian effort.
Status: Beyond a release of a short four-page memo, the Army has been unable to locate the office which has the substantial portion of the records. The request is still active.

Central Intelligence Agency: In the early 1980's, in compliance with a court ruling on a lawsuit filed by the editors of the jonestown report, the CIA released a small number of heavily-redacted documents on Jonestown. We have now asked for reconsideration of the earlier decision to withhold much of the material. The new request notes the passage of time since the deaths, the deaths of numerous U.S. Embassy officials since that time, and President Clinton's 1994 Executive Order pledging greater openness of government records.
Status: The CIA has acknowledged receipt and is processing the request.

Federal Communications Commission: This requests seeks the 29 released - and four previously unreleased - tapes of ham radio transmissions between Temple members, primarily between San Francisco and Jonestown.
Status: The FCC has pledged to release the 29 tapes initially released to requester Brian Csuk. The agency is currently exploring the cost of duplicating the remaining tapes.

Internal Revenue Service: The IRS decision of February 1978 to investigate the tax exempt status of Peoples Temple did more than add fuel to the Jonestown community's belief in a government conspiracy against it; the decision represented a tangible threat to its financial stability. Our request seeks all IRS records related to the initial approval of the tax exempt status, and the subsequent investigation reviewing that approval.
Status: The IRS has asked for identifying information, such as the Temple's Employer Identification Number, which we have been unable to furnish. While we are trying to get this information through Indiana's state taxation agencies, we would certainly appreciate any assistance that any of you could provide us. The request is temporarily on hold.

Department of Justice (1): In response to the public outrage over the death of Leo Ryan at the Port Kaituma airstrip, the Justice Department prosecuted and convicted one man of conspiracy to kill a Congressman. Arguing that the trial of Larry Layton stemmed from the fact that there was no one else to charge - since everyone else, including those who planned the deaths, was dead in Jonestown - this request seeks all government records related to Layton's trial.
Status: The request is currently before the Criminal Division and the Executive Office of the U.S. Attorneys within the Justice Department. Neither office has made a substantive decision on the request.

Department of Justice (2): According to the 1979 report of the congressional investigation of Congressman Ryan's assassination, the NBC television network turned over all of its video of Jonestown which was taped during Ryan's visit to Jonestown, as well as of the shootings at the Port Kaituma airstrip, to the Justice Department. We have asked for a copy of everything which NBC submitted to Justice.
Status: The Justice Department is searching for the tapes. There is no indication where the tapes might be, when they might be located, or whether they will be released upon their discovery. The request is pending.

Department of State: Microfiche records created by State and released to us may be incomplete, according to the caseworker on our original request. The original compilation is several years old and does not include anything processed for release since that time. In addition, it does not include classified records which State turned over to Congress in 1979. This supplemental request seeks all those records.
Status: State is processing the request.
Access to Congressional Records
The call for Congress to open its secret files on Jonestown is back before several committee and individual members' offices. The request, first made on the twentieth anniversary of the deaths in Jonestown, asked the House Committee on International Relations to declassify the contents of several boxes of material collected during the congressional investigation of Leo Ryan's assassination. As the table of contents to the May 1979 report indicates, the classified material includes information on the "Tactics" and "Motivations" of Jim Jones and Peoples Temple, the question of "Conspiracy against Jim Jones and Peoples Temple," and the Temple's use of benefits from "Social Security and foster children." The secret documents also explore the "Awareness of danger, predicting the degree of violence," presumably within the U.S. government, as well as the question of "Conspiracy to kill Representative Leo Ryan." Among the agencies with secret documents in House committee files are the U.S. State Department, Customs Service and the Social Security Administration.

Scholars of new religious movements who have studied Peoples Temple, including Dr. J. Gordon Melton, Dr. Massimo Introvigne and Dr. Mary Maaga, used the occasion of the twentieth anniversary in 1998 to ask Congress to lift the veil of secrecy. Having heard no answer from Congress in the meantime, the editors of the jonestown report renewed the request in June 2000. "The documents' release might well put to rest a number of conspiracy theories that have arisen concerning the deaths of Ryan and those in Jonestown," Rebecca Moore wrote in a letter to committee staff members and several congressional offices. "Moreover, they are critically needed by scholars trying to write accurate accounts of what happened over twenty years ago. As more of the key players die, and as government records are routinely destroyed, it is vital to recover and review the documents generated by House investigators."

Several of the offices contacted in June have agreed to review the request, but none have yet given any substantive reply.
Speakers (in alphabetical order)
A number of speakers are available and willing to talk about Peoples Temple and Jonestown to various groups. A brief list follows.

Please note: some of these email addresses may no longer be operational.

Tim Carter escaped from Jonestown in the final hours with his brother Mike. He has a unique perspective as a resident of Jonestown and as one who survived the deaths on 18 November 1978. He can be contacted at tcarter999@att.net for more information.

John R. Hall, Department of Sociology, University of California - Davis, Davis, CA 95616; e-mail jrhall@ucdavis.edu. Hall is the author of two books on Peoples Temple and Jonestown.

Jim Hougan, 4209 Taylors Creek Road, Apton, VA 22920; e-mail jimhougan@aol.com. Hougan has written articles about Jim Jones' CIA connections, and produced a documentary on Jonestown the Arts and Entertainment Network.

Massimo Introvigne, author of articles and a book on Peoples Temple, at CESNUR - Center for Studies on New Religions, Via Juvarra 20, Torino, Italy 10122; telephone 39-011-541905; e-mail cesnur@tin.it.

Former Temple member Laurie Efrein Kahalas has a website at www.jonestown.com and is the author of the book, Snake Dance: Unravelling The Mysteries of Jonestown. Her description of herself and her work follows: "This is the only survivor with complete, authoritative documentation regarding the political conspiracy to destroy Peoples Temple, the who, the how and the why. Aghast at the suicides, she contends that it was not members of Peoples Temple who killed the Congressman. Instead, she contends this was a master ploy to sacrifice an anti-CIA Congressman, frame Jonestown for the assassination, and provoke the destabilized community to its doom. She claims that all known evidence points away from the community's guilt in those killings. The reader is directed to 'Un-Silent Night' on her website, www.jonestown.com."

Deborah Layton is the author of Seductive Poison, a critical view of Peoples Temple by an insider. E-mail her through her websites, which include seductivepoison.com; peoplestemple.com; and deborahlayton.com.

Rebecca Moore, Department of Religious Studies, San Diego State University, 5500 Campanile Drive, San Diego, CA 92182-8143; telephone 619/594-6252; e-mail remoore@mail.sdsu.edu.

Catherine Wessinger, author of How The Millennium Comes Violently, Department of Religious Studies, Loyola University, 6363 St. Charles Avenue, New Orleans LA 70118; telephone 504/865-3182; e-mail wessing@loyno.edu.

Yulanda (Crawford) Williams, a former Temple member who left Jonestown in 1978 and provides a critical view from the African American perspective, can be reached via e-mail at: yopopo@mindspring.com.

Leslie Wagner Wilson escaped from Jonestown with her two-year-old son - the youngest survivor of Jonestown - strapped to her back on the morning of the mass deaths, 18 November 1978. Seven others left with her. She describes herself as follows: "Ms. Fortier grew up in Redwood Valley, the heart of the Peoples Temple, from the age of 12, and has a special perspective on life in the organization, the training techniques and the betrayal which led her to Jonestown. She would like to talk about her experiences as a member of an interracial family in Jonestown. Please contact her at Maat2U@aol.com for more information.
Publications and Research
John R. Hall's book Apocalypse Observed: Religious Movements and Violence in North America, Europe, and Japan (co-authored with Philip D. Schuyler and Sylvaine Trinh) includes a chapter on Peoples Temple in its analysis of violence in New Religious Movements (Routledge, 2000)... Catherine Wessinger edited Millennialism, Persecution, and Violence: Historical Cases (SUNY, 2000), which includes a chapter on Peoples Temple by Rebecca Moore titled, "'American as Cherry Pie:' Peoples Temple and Violence in America." Wessinger's book How the Millennium Comes Violently (Seven Bridges Press, 1999) became available this year and was reviewed by a panel at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion in November... Nova Religio, the journal of alternative and emergent religions, published an article by Rebecca Moore, titled "Is the Canon on Jonestown Closed" in the October 2000 issue. The article looks at the literature on Peoples Temple that has been published in the last ten years... Richard Williams, an independent researcher in North Carolina, is studying the ideological, political, and possible direct connections between Peoples Temple, MOVE, and the Symbionese Liberation Army... Jon Stone (UC Berkeley) developed an article on Pentecostalism and utopianism which included Peoples Temple, and plans to make it part of a book that looks at popular religions in California in the 20th Century... Matthew Thomas Farrell's article, "Jonestown: A Skeptic's Perspective" which analyzes the tape of Jonestown's final hour in the context of various conspiracy theories about Jones's CIA connections can be found on-line at: http://members.aol.com/Stshade/wdu45.html#jones. The article was originally published in the World Domination Update, a newsletter which, as Farrell describes it, "purports to expose various conspiracies and control groups." Farrell's e-mail address is: saint@extremezone.com.
Report from California Historical Society
We have had a very quiet year here, with only one new addition to the Peoples Temple Collection: the papers of Ross E. Case, minister, who joined Peoples Temple in 1961 as a "Visiting Minister." He ended his relationship with Jim Jones in 1964. The collection includes mainly ephemera and publications of Peoples Temple, the bulk of which is related to the years he was affiliated with them. The collection is currently unprocessed.

[report submitted by Tanya Hollis, Assistant Librarian, California Historical Society, 678 Mission Street, San Francisco 94105, 415/357-1848, ext. 20. E-mail at: bakerlib@calhist.org.]
Obituaries 2000
Since the events of November 18, 1978 claimed the lives of 913 people, more than a score of people with substantial knowledge of Peoples Temple and Jonestown have died, taking with them their unique perspectives and pieces of the truth. We know of two such deaths in the last 12 months:

Reporter John Jacobs died of cancer in Davis, California in May. The Sacramento Bee political columnist had covered Peoples Temple during the 1970's when he worked for the San Francisco Examiner. He was the co-author with Tim Reiterman of Raven, the most definitive biography of Jim Jones published to date.

Guyanese forensic pathologist Leslie Mootoo died in the country's capital of Georgetown in February. The only Guyana doctor known to have traveled to Jonestown after the deaths in November 1978, Dr. Mootoo made cursory examinations of 200 bodies, and claimed that at least 70 of them showed signs of injection. The observation led him to conclude that, with few exceptions, the people of Jonestown were murdered.

We have an unconfirmed report that former Soviet Embassy official Feodor Timofeyev died earlier this year (2000). Members of the Jonestown community met with the Soviet official on several occasions in 1978 to discuss the possiblity of relocating the group to the Soviet Union. Mr. Timofeyev's visit to Jonestown in October 1978 - and the glowing praise he delivered there - gave the group hope of escaping its enemies in the U.S. once and for all.