Jonestown Audiotape
Primary Project : Transcripts
Transcript prepared by Fielding M. McGehee, III. If
you use this material, please credit The Jonestown Institute. Thank you.
Tape Number : Q 042
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Commentary on Q 042, by Fielding M. McGehee,
III
Q 042, the so-called "death tape" that recorded the final hours of the Jonestown
community, has been included in several documentaries about Peoples Temple and
the events of 18 November 1978. Indeed, in some ways, it has become the small
piece that now seems to represent the event itself, attaining the almost mythic
status of the Zapruder film of the JFK assassination, the wire service photo
of the young woman kneeling over Jeff Miller's dead body at Kent State, and
the videotape of the Challenger explosion.
Unlike these other icons, however, some people have raised questions about the
authenticity of the Jonestown tape. When they refer to Q 042 as the so-called
death tape, their emphasis is on "so-called." Whether they believe Jonestown
was a mind-control experiment gone awry, a CIA hit on a leading congressional
critic named Leo Ryan and/or a rogue agent named Jim Jones, or an act of genocide
against a predominantly black community, they claim the deaths at Jonestown
did not occur as depicted in the tape.
There are several elements of the tape which conspiracy theorists use to bolster
the claim that it is not what it purports to be. At one point, Jones demands
that "Dwyer" be taken to the East House. The only person named Dwyer at Jonestown
that day was Richard Dwyer, an official of the American Embassy in Georgetown,
Guyana. Dwyer had left with Congressman Ryan a couple of hours earlier and –
according to most reconstructions of the events, including our own – at
the time of the deaths in Jonestown was himself wounded at the Port Kaituma
airstrip. Depending upon the conspiracy theory challenging these reconstructions,
Dwyer was not at the airstrip, but rather was supervising the deaths in his
true role as the CIA spymaster in Guyana; or the deaths began earlier in the
day, before Dwyer made his way to the airstrip to be wounded with the others;
or the whole tape is a fabrication, assembled from pieces of tapes from earlier
White Nights, and one of the segments included Dwyer's name.
There are other problems with the tape, including its lack of continuity on
some of Jones' decisions. Will they die tonight, or not? There's a firm decision
to do so, then the issue is opened for discussion, then abruptly and mysteriously
dropped. Can they emigrate to the Soviet Union instead of dying? Jones initially
rejects the suggestion, then later says he's placing a call to Russia, then
fails to reveal whether that call was ever made.
Contributing to the ambiguity are the numerous breaks in the tape. There are
drop-outs in sound, there are edits, and there are sentences that seem to make
no sense or are out of context but that are punctuated with suspicious hesitations.
As the transcriber of the Jonestown tapes on this website, I believe the tape
is genuine. I do not believe it to be in true time – in other words, the
45 minutes of tape ends more than 45 minutes after it began recording –
but it does capture Jonestown's final hour(s) of existence on November 18, beginning
an hour or so after Ryan's party left the community.
I must begin with a personal bias. In general, I do not subscribe to conspiracy
theories. Instead, I believe in Ockham's Razor, which holds that the simplest
explanation is most often the best explanation. There may be more to the death
tape than this commentary allows, but unless a theory finds resonance in the
facts that have been established, without speculation or leaps of ideological
faith, I tend to reject them.
Even with that said, I have several reasons for my belief in the authenticity
of the death tape.
First, it matches the few eyewitness descriptions of the events as they unfolded
that day, in the same general order that those accounts have outlined.
Secondly, the references to those events are so specific to the day and approximate
time, that the creation of such a tape – with those ongoing references
spoken by the same voices in a consistent manner – would be a formidable
task, requiring the involvement of someone familiar with intimate details of
Jonestown life. A few examples should illustrate: Jones makes an early reference
to the anticipated attack on Leo Ryan's party. A few minutes later, he and Christine
Miller refer to the "twenty-odd" defectors who left with the congressman –
the number was closer to 15 – and then Jones asks what will happen to those
people when the "plane goes down." In the very next exchange, he talks about
the man who'll "stop the pilot by any means necessary... That plane'll come
out of the air." A moment later, Jones expresses his support for Ujara, the
nickname for the man who had attacked Ryan with a knife earlier that afternoon
in Jonestown. Later, when the news comes of the deaths at the airstrip, Jones
laments – by name – the loss of Patty Parks, the only Temple defector
who was slain at that scene. And so on.
As for the contradictory statements, I believe they are not only understandable
in the atmosphere of death and confusion around Jones as he spoke, but also
in the context of Jonestown's life. Practically every tape of previous community
meetings – whether they took place during the crisis of a White Night or
during a regular meeting to review schedules and production of the Jonestown
farm – reveals similar contradictions. Jones invites people to air their
grievances, then reprimands them for their pettiness, or their number, or the
capitalistic mentality that must underlie their complaints. He speaks of the
influence he has with the government of Guyana, and a few minutes later, warns
of their vulnerability to their enemies, including those in the government of
Guyana. Such contradictions, inherent within most community discussions, are
merely exacerbated – and captured on tape – in the project's final
hour.
The specific reference to Richard Dwyer is seemingly the most incomprehensible
and hence most troubling detail. Everything else in the tape can be explained
in context, but on the surface, this cannot. In my opinion, though, this does
not prove the tape has been faked (especially since if someone takes the trouble
to create a fiction to cover the truth of what happened, that agency would certainly
edit out a loose end such as a man purported to be the agent who oversaw the
carnage) or that something more sinister happened at Jonestown.
What I believe is that the tape simply shows that Jim Jones made a mistake.
Moreover, the evidence of the mistake exists alongside the misidentification
itself.
Jones says: "Take Dwyer on down to the East House... Take Dwyer." It doesn't
immediately happen, so Jones repeats: "Get Dwyer out of here before something
happens to him." After a pause, he says: "Dwyer? I'm not talking about Ujara.
I said" – and he is emphatic about this – "Dwyer." This order and
its repetition in the course of a few minutes tells me that the person Jones
addresses is confused, and asks several times for clarification about who Jones
meant.
It could be that Jones eventually corrects himself. Later in the tape –
some time after his instructions about Dwyer – Jones says, "Make sure those
attorneys stay where they belong." The attorneys are unnamed, and Jones' voice
indicates he can't remember their names.
In fact, the only people who were not members of the Jonestown community but
who stayed behind after the congressional party left on 18 November, were two
Temple attorneys, Charles Garry and Mark Lane. The former, like Dwyer, was white,
late middle-aged, with white hair. Could this be the man Jones called Dwyer?
Finally, according to Mark Lane in his book, The Strongest Poison, the two attorneys
had been escorted to the East House, the place Jones had directed "Dwyer" to
be taken.
For these reasons, I believe that Jones was instructing people to escort Garry,
not Dwyer, to the East House. While there is certainly room for argument on
this point, I think this is the most plausible explanation.
Conspiracy theories seem to put much stock in the edits on the tape. Certainly
if Q 042 is the only tape you listen to, the edits are as obvious as they are
baffling, perhaps even ominous. But the fact is – as with the inconsistencies
in conversation – in this respect, the death tape is like every other Jonestown
tape. From Jones' sermons before 20 people in Indianapolis (e.g., Q 1058-2), to
his political addresses before hundreds of followers in California (e.g., Q
953), to the White Nights in Jonestown (e.g., Q 635), every tape has pauses
and dropouts. Some are short and obvious, as an organ in the background will
still be on the same note; others are of an unknown duration, but seem to be
short, as the conversation picks up in context with the same speakers; others
are of an unknown length, and the speakers are on a new subject, but the speakers
are the same people, and the background noise is the same as before the break;
while others are long enough to lose their context completely. Whether the reasons
for the pauses are periodic equipment failures or maintenance, or a switch from
one microphone to another, or a decision by the person doing the recording –
sometimes Jones himself – that the conversation of the moment wasn't important,
it still remains that pauses, silences, and drop-outs characterize every Jonestown
tape. Rather than call into question the veracity of Q 042, in my opinion, these
edits serve to demonstrate it.
This commentary added 6 July 2001.